“So, who is it?” I asked.

“It’s someone I can’t talk about. Someone very old. Someone I’m not supposed to have contact with.”

I frowned. “Why? Is it like a double agent?”

After a pause, Blondie nodded. “In a way, yes. You could definitely say that… a double agent.”

I wasn’t entirely satisfied, but at the same time I kept remembering touching her tattoos. I trusted her, damn it. I felt I’d seen what she was made of. And I also really liked her.

I want to trust her, I realized. For better or worse, I want her to be a friend.

So instead of arguing, or pursuing more answers, I merely nodded.

Blondie smiled at me, clearly relieved. But I shook my finger at her.

“You had better be telling me everything. I’m sick of being one step behind you. If there’s something I need to know, I wanna know now.”

“I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”

I nodded my head, accepting her apology. Then, as one, we turned back toward the silent, ghostlike figures. Blondie took my hand, again, and together we stepped forward. As if we’d flipped a switch, the four figures before us started to move.

There was no sound, but there didn’t need to be. The mist behind the huge statues took shape to create a translucent, sinister landscape. Behind the figures, swirls of mist came together to become a giant beast, which looked like the love child of an angler fish and a giant squid. Tentacles and teeth and weird dangling eyes were everywhere as the monster churned in front of us, a writhing mass of fog-hued flesh.

Calmly, majestically, the translucent figures of the long-dead Alfar confronted the beast, and we watched as they bested it after what had to be a vastly abridged version of a fight. While the creature, lashing and gyrating, fought what looked like itself, the Alfar calmly dispatched spell after spell. Eventually, one of the ghosts laid down, obviously slain in the battle, but it was done in the same way one lays down to begin doing crunches at the gym. Shortly thereafter, the creature also stopped moving, as if its strings had been cut. It slowly settled to earth, but its tentacles were wrapped around a glowing sphere, as if it were dragging the sphere down with it to its grave. The Alfar tried to wrest the sphere away from the creature’s limbs, but to no avail. Eventually, they gave up and used their combined power to bury the creature and its sphere in the sea, before covering it all up with land. Upon this natural prison, they set locks… the very sigils we’d found here and beneath Gus’s house. We watched as four sigils floated up into the air above where the creature was bested, and then flew down to nestle in various places on an otherwise unreconizable landscape that appeared under them. Then the four Alfar figures turned to face us, again, raising their arms with their palms facing outward.

“No trespassing,” Blondie whispered, translating.

“Or you’re all fucked,” I added. My own little spin on the sitch.

We studied the four figures, one still fallen, standing in front of us.

“So they captured the creature and locked it away, along with its power. They tried to get the power from the creature, but it didn’t work and they gave up. I’m assuming that’s the power that can make a champion?” I asked, making sure I’d gotten everything. When Blondie nodded, I continued. “But what was it? It looks like a kraken.”

“Krakens are smaller, with more eyes,” Blondie said, and I got a weird feeling of déjà vous at her mention of eyes. Before I could explore that sensation, the Original kept talking. “But it is something very ancient. Probably the most ancient thing here besides the Earth herself. Very big, very powerful, and very prone to destruction.”

“So what happens if it wakes up?” I asked, pretty sure I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Well, first of all, we’ll lose much of what it’s sleeping under.”

“Which is?”

“A large chunk of the Eastern Seaboard.”

I gulped, staring at her. “And?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I meant, like, is it evil? Will it destroy even more stuff than just where it’s sleeping?”

Blondie frowned. “Evil doesn’t matter in this case. It’s just too big for this world.”

“So how do we destroy it if it wakes up?”

“I dunno. I dunno if it can be destroyed. If all that lot could do was contain it…” she said, pointing at the ghostly ancient Alfar.

“Shit,” I repeated.

“Yep. But if it makes you feel any better, we know how to unlock the actual locks,” Blondie said.

“Great, because that’s what we need. To unlock them.”

She gave me the stink eye. I sighed.

“Seriously,” I said. “Do you really think it’s the best idea to unlock the sigils?”

“If one of Phaedra’s lot does it, and gets all that power…” Blondie replied, her expression grim.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Champion, shmampion. ‘There will be only one.’ Yadda, yadda, yadda. So how do we unlock them?”

“Finish the sigil, obviously. At the halfway point we got the handy-dandy instructional video. The full glyph must open it up for us. Ready to try it?”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s go up there and unlock us some Alfar glyph action.”

I gave her a long look.

“You sure about this?”

“Sometimes we have to confront things head-on, Jane.” The way she’d said that again made it sound like she knew more than she said she did… like she was trying to warn me of something.

I sighed. “Did your double agent tell you this?”

“Nope. Everyone knows that sometimes the bull needs to be grabbed by the horns,” Blondie said. Then she laughed, a little maniacally.

My brain wasn’t convinced still, but I could see that Blondie thought she knew what she was doing. And there was something else: Even though my brain disagreed with the present course of action, my gut felt like it was the right thing to do.

Just like your gut trusts the Original, my brain responded sourly, not at all happy at being trumped by my instincts.

“Fine. On yer head be it,” I said, in my best pirate voice, before backing up a step to give Blondie room to work. But instead of stepping up to finish the sigil, she motioned me forward.

“It has to be your hand,” she said. When I frowned, she pulled a face. “Cuz you did the first half, dork.”

I shrugged, and raised my arm. She grasped my wrist again, right where she had before, and began tracing the other half of the sigil. It took her a while to get the knack of it again, but soon her finger was twisting over the glyph. Power flared, died, and flared again—this time illuminating the full wreath shape of the ancient Alfar lock—but still nothing happened.

“What the hell?” she said, her turn to kick the wall. “I know I’m doing it right, but it won’t work!”

“Maybe it’s a different key,” I said, soothingly. “Maybe that’s not the way it’s done.”

“Or,” she said, as the color drained from her face, “it’s already unlocked.”

I felt my own face fall. “Shit. Graeme and Fugwat.”

“The Grays said they came down here.”

“But for fifteen minutes. We’ve been down here well over an hour and we’ve just figured the thing out. How the hell could they have done it so quickly?”

“Cuz they knew, babydoll. They’ve known all along. I’ve got my own memories, and some very old friends, but they have access to Alfar knowledge that we don’t. Now put your game face on and up shields,” she said, putting her hand out toward me.

“Why?” I asked. But I raised defenses anyway, and then grabbed her fingers in mine.

“Because I think we’re about to be in the middle of a showdown.” And with that, Blondie apparated us into another dark space. Before I could get my bearings, a powerful mage ball clipped the edge of my shields, shoving me toward the Original.

“I said your game face, not your Girl Scout face,” she warned, spinning me around to face our opponent.

Phaedra didn’t look at all happy to see us.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

We were in the crystal cavern beneath where Gus’s rock had stood, but everything had changed. The crystals were cold and dead, and the mirrorlike glyph surface was static now, showing the same fully traced Celtic-knot-wreathlike pattern that we’d last seen underneath Jason’s former home. Phaedra had her full contingent with her: the two harpies, Kaya and Kaori; Graeme, her rapist incubus; and Fugwat. The spriggan was picking his slab-like teeth with a broken-off crystal.

For about five seconds, there was quiet as Phaedra and her lot stood gaping at us. When I suddenly felt her power swell to match Blondie’s, I resisted the urge to fall face first on the floor. Instead, I swiftly wove my shields through the Original’s. Her odd power signature made it more difficult than with other elementals, but it just took a little more nudging. Once our shields were set, I started surging power through them, and not a second too soon.