Page 50 of The Devil Went Down to Laughlin
Bingo.
He backed away and headed over to the base of the stairs.
“Ty? I found something!”
Almost at once, the half angel poked his head in the doorway.
“What is it?”
“A witch’s knot as big as I am. You and Pru need to get down here.”
Ty disappeared, presumably so he could go upstairs and fetch Prudence. A few minutes later, the two of them came hurrying down the basement steps.
“Wow,” she breathed as she came farther into the room and saw the glowing knot Caleb had uncovered.
“That’s…impressive,” Ty said. He walked toward the knot, and it seemed to glow brighter and brighter the closer he got.
“Why is it there?” Pru asked. “Is it guarding something?”
“That’s my guess,” he replied. “The trick now is to let it know that we don’t mean it any harm and that it’s safe to let us pass.”
“Pass where?” Caleb asked. “That’s a solid cement wall.”
Ty’s mouth lifted at one side. “Is it?”
He now stood only a few inches from the glowing knot. For a moment, he remained where he was, appearing to contemplate the thing, and then he lifted one hand and reached out toward it.
Light flared away from the wall toward his outstretched fingers and then ran down his arm. He didn’t flinch or make a sound, so Caleb guessed the golden glow wasn’t painful in any way.
Or maybe Ty had a very high tolerance for discomfort.
A few seconds passed, and then the light traveled back into the knot. It pulsed again…and immediately afterward, a dark doorway yawned in the wall.
“What the hell…?” Pru breathed.
“I was hoping I would find something like this,” Ty said. “Like I told you earlier, Alba and the other guardians would have needed a secret place to conduct their rituals. No one would have ever realized this was here. The knot would have kept those who wished ill upon the river far away, and the bookcase that hid this spot would have prevented anyone in the family from wanting to investigate further. Let’s go.”
He stepped into the passageway, then paused and looked over his shoulder when it seemed clear the other two weren’t too eager to follow.
“We need to see where this leads,” he said.
Pru’s crimson lips pressed together. “I’m not a huge fan of enclosed spaces.”
Neither was Caleb, but he thought he could handle that part okay. No, his big problem was the prospect of the passage being filled with rats, just like the scene in that old Indiana Jones movie where the tunnels under Venice were just choked with rodents.
“There’s nothing in here that can harm you, Prudence,” Ty said, and his gaze moved toward Caleb, even as he pulled his phone out of his pocket so he could turn on the flashlight function. “Nor you, even though your kind normally wouldn’t be allowed in this place.”
Your kind? echoed in Caleb’s mind, but he knew Ty hadn’t meant the words in a cruel way. No matter how you sliced it, Caleb understood that he was always going to be a quarter demon, so he just needed to accept that reality and move on.
“Then let’s get this over with,” he said, and inclined his head toward Pru. “Come on — it doesn’t look as if that passageway is too small. Ty’s standing straight up in it.”
Yes, he was, even though his head nearly brushed the ceiling. But since he had a good ten inches on Prudence, if not more, she definitely didn’t have anything to worry about.
She still didn’t look too thrilled. However, she didn’t argue, but only followed Caleb over to the passageway, her mouth still tight.
Once they were past the cinderblock walls of the basement, their surroundings became packed soil with timbers placed every so often to keep the tunnel from collapsing in on itself. The air felt and smelled damp, something he hadn’t encountered in Nevada too often.
Well, the Colorado River wasn’t very far from here, maybe a quarter-mile at the most.
