He sighed. "Decatur."
"Okay, I'll—ah crap."
"Ah crap what?"
"Thomas Borathen called a meeting in an hour. He wants me to go back to Colombia."
Shelton snorted. "Tough titty. He ain't the boss of you."
I gave a dubious laugh. "And you are?"
"Damned right. You promised Bella and me could have our way with you. So unless you want to prove you're a scum-sucking—"
"Fine, fine, I get it. I'll see you later today."
"With a new phone."
"Yes."
"And don't let those salespeople talk you into magical accident insurance."
I didn't even want to think about what that might cover.
Elyssa offered a reassuring smile as I shoved my phone back into my pocket. It was a nom phone, but I really liked it, despite all the cracks and grime it had accumulated from my adventures. Unfortunately, it couldn't run magic code, so I had to go to Atlanta's super-secret place for all things magical, the Grotto, and snag one capable of running Arc OS—something like a magical version of Windows.
"I'll tell Dad we can't meet him in an hour," Elyssa said.
Thanks to his ghost-ninja skills I'd forgotten Michael, who was standing nearby until he said, "I'll tell him." He tossed Elyssa a key fob. "Take my car."
Her eyes went as wide as giant lollipops. "Are you serious?"
For the first time, I detected the barest sense of uncertainty flicker in Michael's face before he stabbed it with a mind sword. "Yep."
We reached Phipp's Plaza in record time thanks to Michael's black Porsche and Elyssa's supernatural driving skills. I left a handprint embedded in the door handle, happy I hadn't broken it. Sure, a wreck probably wouldn't have killed us thanks to our healing abilities, but I'd lived most of my life as a vulnerable nerd. After a terrifying ride down the spiral driveway into the giant cavern beneath the Phipp's parking garage, Elyssa slid the car into a parking space next to a giant Rolls Royce someone had apparently dipped in purple glitter paint, and adorned with decals of pink unicorns.
"G'day guvnah!" shouted the cheerful lad who cleaned up after the elephants, camels, and other assorted beasts, which arrived in the cavern via the towering Obsidian Arch set in the center of the space.
I waved back.
"Your hands are sweaty," Elyssa said as she wreathed her fingers into mine.
"Gee, I wonder why."
She laughed. "Did you decide which phone you want?"
"Yeah, I'm going with Orange." I watched the dung boy shovel a heap of crap into a wagon. "Who is that kid?"
Elyssa shrugged. "No idea."
"Does he live here? Have family? I mean, who do you have to piss off to get a job like this?"
"Why the curiosity all of a sudden?"
I gave her a questioning look. "All of a sudden? I've only been here three times. It's not like I've had much time to question the socio-economic situation of dung boys in super-secret towns built by angels and used as portals to zip from one side of the world to the other."
A deep throated laugh burst from her mouth. "Where in the world do you come up with this stuff?"
"Quite possibly the very bowels of hell."
We entered the towering doors leading into the Grotto itself. The town—if it could be called such a thing—looked like something right out of the history books. A cobblestone road known as Golden Way led past fancy shops constructed of black marble with green-slate roofs and shiny copper gutters. It had such an old world appeal, it could almost pass for an amusement park or the movie set for a film based in the days of sail-driven galleys and pirates.
Crowds of shoppers strolled casually through the maze of streets, colorful shopping bags in hand. A tired-looking sorceress led a group of excited children dressed in the green robes of elementary grade Arcanes down the street toward a store named Bixby's Arcane Supplies. A large, white wolf with blazing blue eyes nipped at the heels of straggling kids to keep them in line.
"Is that a werewolf?" I asked.
Elyssa followed my gaze. "If it was a normal wolf, it would eat the kids."
"Can you imagine how much better discipline would be at nom schools if we had werewolves?"
"Everyone would be too busy wetting their pants to pay attention," Elyssa said, laughing. She tugged my hand to keep me moving. "No time to sightsee today."
I groaned and continued on.
The sun shone brightly overhead and fluffy clouds drifted on a light breeze despite our location some hundred yards or so underground. The temperature felt pleasantly cool and warmer than the gray chilly city aboveground.
I tried not to stare like a tourist but ended up rubbernecking every few seconds as one bizarre sight after another caught my eyes. This place was just weird—juxtaposed between our reality and some other place. A sudden thought hit me like a brick wall and I stopped in my tracks. A hurrying shopper bumped into me and muttered an apology, though her pinched eyebrows and glare said something else entirely.
"What is it?" Elyssa said, turning to look through the window of the shop where we stood. A skimpy outfit made from sheer fabric hung from a very lifelike looking mannequin in the display and left very little to the imagination. "You want me to try it on?"
I imagined Elyssa's athletic curves pressing tight against the scant outfit and felt a blush creeping up my neck. "Um, actually I was thinking of something else."
"You want to try it on?" She winked. "I'm sure you'd look sexy."
I laughed uneasily. "Exactly." I took her arm and led her down the sidewalk and away from the distraction. "Actually, I remembered something you told me about this place when I first arrived. About how this place exists in our world and somewhere else."
"What about it?"
"Nightliss's people—angels, or whatever you want to call them—built the framework for this place, right? And supernaturals have added to it over time? What if the Grotto is partly in the same place the angels come from? What if that out there"—I jabbed a finger at the sky—"is the realm of angels?"
Chapter 3
It was Elyssa's turn to stop dead in her tracks. She flicked her gaze to the innocent-looking sky overhead.
"Freaky, right?" I said.
She nodded slowly, eyes never leaving the clouds, as if waiting for a host of angels to burst from behind them and yell, "Surprise!"
"If the environment we see outside the Grotto really belongs to their world, it must look a lot like our own," I said.
Elyssa recovered and motioned me to follow her. "Even if we are partly in their plane, the Grotto is barricaded off from it. I read the history of the place. Looked at images with only the original buildings here. When you get to the edges of the Grotto, there's endless water to the north side, and thick forest on the others. A magical barrier won't let you go any further. The Arcanes tried for years and never succeeded. They ended up using an obfuscation spell so gray mist hides most of the view, supposedly to keep people with more curiosity than brains from trying to break through."
"Or to keep anything on the other side of the barrier from looking in? You said this place is a nexus, like a bubble in between." I imagined it as a full-scale snow globe with alien eyes peering in at us.
She looked inside a dress shop as we walked past it, her eyes settling on one of the complicated Victorian era dresses inside. "I guess it's like a pocket dimension. Maybe this place isn't even visible from the other side."
"Or maybe the sky and everything else is illusion. For all we know, we might be on the moon."
She chuckled. "I guess we're safe then."
"So there's no danger of an invasion sweeping through here?"
"Not unless they built in a back door we don't know about." She shrugged. "Anything is possible, I guess."
I grimaced, imagining an army of insane blonde women like Daelissa lining up to raid the Grotto. "The other thing that occurs to me is how you called this place a nexus. Didn't you tell me Daelissa blamed the destruction of the Grand Nexus for turning her people into those creepy cherub things and stranding her here?"
Elyssa threw up a hand as if warding the memories away. "Ugh. I really don't want to talk about the husks, cherubs, whatever you want to call those nasty little things."
The husks—or cherubs as I called them—were the creepy infantile remains of the angels caught up in the destruction of the Grand Nexus, according to Vadaemos. They wobbled around on nubby feet, like toddlers with oversized, ungainly heads and little T-rex arms. But the shiny pitch black skin and nearly featureless head hid horrors beneath. Sometimes when they shrieked, the outline of a face seemed to appear beneath the surface.
I shook my head to clear the images of our last encounter with the cherubs and found my way back to the point I wanted to make. "What makes this place different than Thunder Rock or El Dorado? Was it not connected to this Grand Nexus of theirs? And what about La Casona and the other functioning relics?"
Elyssa quirked an eyebrow. "I have no idea." She tapped a finger to her chin. "But I have a feeling we should pump Nightliss for answers the next time we see her. After all, Foreseeance Forty-Three Eleven says our former rulers were going to come through the Gloom."
We entered an alley and skidded to a halt. In this very alley, we'd had our first encounter with gray men, the creepy golems used by a man we called Mr. Gray for obvious reasons. I'd discovered a large mural of him down in El Dorado and concluded he must be an angel like Nightliss and Daelissa. He apparently wanted me dead or captured, judging from my every encounter with his minions.
"Uh, why don't we take the scenic route?" I backed up a step, remembering the ambush all too clearly. "Not that I'm scared or anything." Yeah, right.
"Let's go down another block," Elyssa said, mouth set in a grim line.
