I turned back, trying to see if I could free Beezle from a distance. The thick, greasy smoke pouring off the nowdead monster made it impossible to see. I inhaled shallowly but I still coughed and choked as the smoke filled my lungs. A heavy, oily residue filled my mouth and nose.
“Why can’t anything ever be easy?” I muttered.
I dropped to the ground and tried not to think about what I was crawling through. My fingers clawed in moss and mud, and I could feel my knees sinking in the muck as I pushed forward. Sweat and smoke stung my eyes and made them water.
“Beezle, shout out, would you?” I called. “I can’t find you in this mess.”
“To your right,” a growly voice said in a long-suffering tone, and it was not three inches from my ear.
I turned my head to see Beezle watching me frog-crawl through the mud.
“That look really works for you,” he said.
“Why is it that I wanted you back again?” I said.
I came to my knees, inspecting the cage. There didn’t appear to be any kind of door or lock.
“How does this open?” I asked.
“Antares sealed it with one of his momma’s spells,” Beezle said.
“Antares took you?” I asked. “Did he throw the bomb through the window, too?”
“Yup,” Beezle said. “He came up on the house under a cloak of invisibility and then manifested in front of me. Before I had a chance to warn you he had me magically bound and was tossing the bomb.”
“Then he came back and took you to the portal in the alley,” I finished. “Do you know if he was the one who put the portal there?”
“I don’t think that he did,” Beezle said thoughtfully.
“It seemed like, from the many evil-villain mutterings that I could catch, he was using someone else’s portal for his own device. He seemed to think he was being pretty clever.”
“He usually does,” I said. “But why would he send me that note when he clearly wants me to get blown up? What’s the point?”
Beezle frowned inside the cage. “What note?”
“The one that said, ‘I know where they are keeping him,’” I replied, running my hand around the seam of the cage. I could sense the spell that Antares had used to seal the cage shut. It was imperfect, and when I prodded it gently with my own power I could feel the spaces in the magic where it would give way. The only thing that I was afraid of was a booby trap. “Do you know if Antares wove anything dangerous in with this seal?”
“It didn’t seem that way, unless there’s a trap already inside the spell. He was in kind of a hurry.”
“Trying to avoid the big monster that lives in the swamp, I bet. Well, there’s nothing for it but to try.”
“Says the woman who’s probably not going to get splattered into a million pieces if you’re wrong.”
“Do you really think I’d let you get splattered into a million pieces?” I said, and tried to keep the uncertainty that I felt out of my voice. I wasn’t going to let Beezle get blown up if I could help it.
I carefully found a weak spot in the spell and pushed my power through it as gently as I could. The top of the cage flew off with a surprising amount of force and clocked me in the chin.
Beezle snorted a laugh as he flew out of the cage.
I rubbed my chin. “And I say it again: why was it that I wanted you back?”
He shrugged as he hovered in front of me. “Because you’ll never survive without me?”
I pushed wearily to my feet. “I may not survive with you at this rate. Now, what the hell happened to my useless fiancé?”
Beezle pointed into the woods. “Like I said, he went that way.”
“I wonder if he got knocked out,” I said as I squelched my way through the mud toward the trees. “Nathaniel!”
He didn’t answer. The heavy mist and the shadows of moss cascading from the branches made everything look eerie. I kept thinking that I saw a person in the mist, but when I looked closer I would see that it was nothing but the twisted claw of a tree or a shifting bit of moss.
After a few minutes I stopped. Beezle, who fluttered just next to me, took the opportunity to rest on my shoulder.
“Why are we stopping in this creepy place?” he asked.
“Because I don’t think I should go any farther and get myself hopelessly lost. As it is, I’m not sure that I could retrace my steps back to the swamp.”
“Just follow your nose,” Beezle said. “I’m sure the stink of burning monster carcass will lead the way.”
“Nathaniel!” I called again.
We waited in the silence, and as we did I realized something. There was no noise in this place. No buzzing of insects, no chirping of birds, no slosh of toads as they leapt from lily pad to pond.
I stepped back, all of my self-preservation instincts coming to the fore. If you walk in the woods and you hear no noise, it’s usually because something big and scary is on its way. “I’m not sure that we should stay here any longer.”
“What about Nathaniel? Azazel won’t like it if we leave him here.”
“He’s an angel. I think he can take care of himself,” I said, and turned on my heel. And stopped.
Standing in front of me were three people aiming bows and arrows at us. They were all male, tall and thin and dark haired, and the tips of their ears were just slightly pointed. They were dressed like refugees from Peter’s Lost Boys—animal-skin pants and leaves woven into shirts.