Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville 12)

I’d managed a few bites, but I wasn’t hu

ngry, even though I should have been. The bits of sandwich were only making my stomach more upset. I wrapped the remainder of the meal in its cellophane and set it on the floor. Took a long drink of water because I knew I needed it, not because I felt thirsty.

“Wake me up when the party starts.” I went a few steps away, curled up, and pretended to sleep.

When I tried to sleep, I thought of Ben, and had to fight tears. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my head. Wished I had a tail to tuck around myself. Wished for a lot of things.

I heard the sound of wrappers crinkling, trash being gathered up and taken away. Enkidu and Sakhmet didn’t speak, but I imagined them brushing hands, shoulders, exchanging glances like longtime couples did. I tried to breathe slowly, regularly, but I probably didn’t fool them into thinking I slept. Still, they didn’t bother me.

Eventually, the pair of them curled up again, and they did sleep. Who knew how long they’d been sleeping on stone floors, without plumbing or lighting, eating sandwiches out of plastic or hunting the odd deer. This was their normal, why shouldn’t they feel safe? And they had each other. No matter what happened, they’d be all right, because they had each other.

Me, I had something I had to do.

I went into a crouch, breathed softly, waited. Glanced at the wooden slab of a door, and crept toward it. My bare feet didn’t make a sound. I got all the way to the tunnel door without waking them, which encouraged me. I could keep going.

They left the door open this time. Finally, I had earned their trust. Plan B had worked after all. I waited and listened, but Sakhmet and Enkidu maintained their steady breathing. I hadn’t woken them.

I explored some of the branching tunnels and side rooms I hadn’t had time to see before, searching for the storeroom I hadn’t found last time. Wherever they kept their water, food, and supplies. Tranquilizer gun. And, I hoped, my shoes and my phone. Wedding ring. Maybe Kumarbis kept a diary somewhere that would lay the whole story out in sensible terms. Wouldn’t that be swell?

It would probably be written in Phoenician, which wouldn’t help me at all. Amelia, she would know Phoenician. God, I even missed Amelia. She’d be able to talk sense into Zora, if she were here.

Focus. I needed to focus. I didn’t want Amelia and Cormac here, I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.

I paced, nose working, searching for a useful trail. I still didn’t know where Kumarbis’s … crypt, for lack of a better word, was. Not that I wanted to find it, but wouldn’t it be just my luck to find out he was sleeping with my phone under his pillow?

I stood quietly, listening as hard as I could, my nose flaring for the scent of my phone, my stuff, me. But cell phones didn’t leave nice trails to follow. The four of them had been living here for a long time, weeks probably, before they’d brought me here. Their scents were pervasive, and following any trail became impossible.

But I heard a tapping. Occasional, artificial. Not animal claws on stones, nothing like a footstep. Someone was typing on a keyboard. A computer, here?

I followed the sound.

Past the cell where they’d kept me, a tunnel curved to the left and sloped gently down. The ancient rails of the old mine cars were just visible. One of the battery-operated LED lights sat on the floor of the juncture and cast a faint white light, just enough to keep people from stubbing their toes. The light caught flashes in the wall, chips of quartz or ore.

Kumarbis’s chill, bloodless scent was stronger here. I’d probably find his cave farther down. Before that, though, the tunnel branched. A side chamber forked off, and at the branch, I smelled Zora. Another light marked the turn. I crept forward, as quietly as Wolf and I knew how, crouched at the rocky corner, and leaned around to look.

Zora, lit by another of the lamps, worked at a laptop. I wondered how the hell she was powering it, until I saw the stack of battery packs and a solar-powered charger piled against the wall. She’d come prepared to work without a wall to plug into.

But what was she doing on her battery-powered computer? Googling for new ritual techniques, I might have thought, but we were in the middle of nowhere, where she couldn’t possibly have an Internet connection. Maybe she had a magical Internet connection.

That sounded ridiculous even to me.

She had her back to the tunnel opening, but was too far away for me to make out any details on the screen, which was turned at exactly the wrong angle.

She’d eaten something as well—a sandwich wrapper and empty bottle of water sat against one wall. An air mattress and a couple of blankets lay piled against the opposite wall. She had her own little cozy den. This was where she’d been spending her nonritual time—with her laptop. Doing what?

Along with the laptop she had a small pad of paper and a pencil, and she scratched notes on it every now and then, drawing diagrams and symbols. She’d chew on the end of the pencil, stare at her drawings, type a few words, read what she’d typed. Back and forth, working intently on her project.

Did I even need to ask what her project was? It was all of this. She was less than a day away from the most important ritual of her life, the culmination of all her plans. She was studying. I almost felt sorry for her.

While I watched, she must have finished, or grown too frustrated and tired to continue. She put the pad and pencil into a document bag, closed programs, powered down the computer. Last thing she did was yank a USB thumb drive out of the back of the laptop and close it up in a kind of box she wore on a chain around her neck. One of the many amulets she wore. This was a little bigger than a matchbox, made of pressed tin and inset with polished stones. Like a saint’s reliquary. Only instead of bones, it held the thumb drive, close at hand.

She kept her spells on that thumb drive. A twenty-first-century wizard, with her searchable, electronic spell book. Who would have thunk?

I didn’t want to draw her attention, now that she wasn’t focused on the laptop. Quickly, I backed out the way I’d come, slipping quietly up the passage to the main tunnel. She didn’t follow, and she didn’t make any more noise. She must have curled up on her little bed to get some sleep, so she’d be at her best for tonight.

Maybe I was the crazy one. They all knew exactly what they were doing, and I was flopping like a beached fish.

Didn’t matter, I still wanted to find my phone. Maybe Zora had it under her pillow.