Page 54 of Elven Lies

As soon as she was safely through, followed by Rowan’s half-shuffling, half-skipping footsteps close behind, the door creaked, swung inward on its own, and latched itself shut, plunging them into near complete darkness.

Mr. Kaplan’s shuffling footsteps up ahead were the only indication of anywhere to go within this magically concealed building constructed without viable physical space for its existence. Somehow, the old elf had managed such a feat anyway.

“Oh, my dear?” Kaplan called over his shoulder. “Do be sure he doesn’t touch anything, won’t you?”

That was absolutely something she could do and a mandate with which she wholeheartedly agreed.

She turned around to make sure Rowan had heard their host’s warning and instead found Rowan reaching toward one of thesoftly glowing orbs of light embedded in the walls of this strange entryway.

“Rowan,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down. “Did you not hear a word he said?”

He paused and shot her a playful smile, though he didn’t yet retract his hand. “I guess you’re gonna have to deal with me personally now, huh?”

“Just leave it alone. You’ve already given him enough reason to think—”

“Oh,hethinks plenty all on his own. And I’m justsocurious…”

“Don’t—”

He tapped two fingertips against the orb and grinned.

Beneath his mischievously investigative touch, the light pulsed with a deep orange glow, immediately followed by a screeching, burbling siren blaring through the surrounding space. Through either age or lack of use, the siren sounded more like a sick and dying animal, loud enough to make Rebecca duck and cringe.

Then all the other glowing orbs along the wall in Mr. Kaplan’s inter-alley entryway darkened into the same orange glow and pulsed an increasingly quickening rhythm with the first.

Kaplan spun around toward them, his eyes wide with accusation and terror even as he fought to be heard over the wailing siren and roared, “What part of ‘don’t touch anything’do you not understand?”

18

Dammit, Rowan. We haven’t even gotten started, and you’ve already screwed us!

Before Rebecca or Rowan could form a response to Mr. Kaplan’s shout, the darkened tunnel they’d entered rocked violently beneath a massive tremble.

The bricks beneath their feet buckled and rolled, sending them both stumbling off-balance only to crash back and forth against the cold walls to either side.

One by one, the magical light orbs—all of them now a matching shade of reddish-orange—detached from the wall to zip haphazardly up and down the tunnel. They crashed into each other between the walls and against anything else they encountered along their erratic flight paths. Every time an orange orb hit something solid, a flare of crackling blue light zapped out of the floating lights to consume whatever it had just hit.

Rebecca ducked beneath two of them swinging toward her in quick succession, then straightened and glared at Rowan. “People don’t just hand out warnings for fun! Ninety-nine percent of the time, they actuallymeansomething.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time,” he shouted back, “people don’t get attacked by their own alarm systems inside their own domicile!”

Rowan jerked his head to the side to avoid another diving orange orb, then leaped away from the wall when the orb crashed into the bricks and lit up the whole thing with an electrifying jolt of blazing blue energy.

“Don’t even try to make thishisfault!” she shouted. “He told you not to touch anything!”

“If he didn’t want me to touch anything, he should have just kept quiet about it!”

“Oh,nowyou’ve done it,” Kaplan groaned up ahead. “This way! Hurry! We don’t have much time!”

With another scathing glare at Rowan, Rebecca huffed out an exasperated sigh and raced after their host.

Rowan’s maddened laughter echoed behind her. “Say what you like. This is certainly more exciting.”

“I already have more excitement than I can handle without you stepping in to help, thank you very much.”

Up ahead, Kaplan’s dark silhouette flickered in and out of view as the orange orbs zipped back and forth and the siren wailed at head-splitting volume. The old elf ducked beneath an orb careening toward his head, then leaped forward just before another violent tremble rippled across the floor and sent all three of them lurching forward.

Now that the orbs had made it in front of Mr. Kaplan, they illuminated one of the stranger spaces Rebecca had seen in Chicago. If they’d been in Xahar’áhsh instead of a modern human city, she would have called it a hovel.

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