I shake my head. “No, I’m not the Chosen One, that’s my best friend,” Dina starts to look deflated so I hold up a hand, “but I’m like…Chosen One adjacent and that’s just as good.”
“Is it?” she asks.
“Yes, it is. I’m powerful, you felt it yourself and I’m not alone. I have backup,” I say, pointing at Charlie and Jaak. “And we’re going to stop the World Eater. We’re going to save everyone and you’re going to get to be with Clyde.”
At the mention of Clyde her eyes go soft and Dina smiles. “Then I will help you. Follow me to the Chamber of Commerce. That is where the summoning will happen.”
“So you know about the World Eater? Can you tell us anything about the one that we’re going up against?” I ask.
“I know it’s old, like one of the oldest to have ever been created. I don’t know much other than that except that it needs an anchor. Something about the old one deserting them.” Jaak and I look at each other when she says anchor, but neither of us say anything. We let Dina keep talking as we walk down the tunnels. “Everything I know is just bits and pieces. I was neverin the cult, I refused it. I married my husband for love and it was out of the memory of that love that I stayed with him and pretended what I felt for Clyde wasn’t real. I would have left him years ago if I’d been selfish.”
Dina balls her hands into fists and presses them to her eyes with a ragged sigh. “I should have been selfish. I waited all my life for permission to be me and now the world is about to end? A-and they took him,” she says, voice breaking. “That’s why the diner is in the state it's in. He was helping me open. We were excited. We’d confessed our feelings when I was sure my husband was dead. Everything seemed so bright and on the start of a busy holiday too. But when we opened the doors it wasn’t the crowd that came in, it was the cult’s thugs. Not all of them went out into the woods to do whatever it was they were doing. They wrecked the place and grabbed Clyde. Said that only he would do for the offering.”
The offering.
“I know a thing or two about that. I’m sorry, Dina. I know that had to have been scary but we’re going to fix it. Just because they took Clyde doesn’t mean he isn’t still alive. Can you remember anything, anything at all, about when they said this World Eater was going to be chowing down?”
Dina takes a deep breath and thinks. I can see it in the way that she tenses up and curls in on herself as we keep walking. “I-I can’t,” she says. “They never talked about that at the meetings at our house. Only that it would be a feast on Halloween. I kept thinking it was going to be a secret meal or something but just a few days ago, the day before he left, my husband said the World Eater would bless them. Devour us whole,swallow the world whole.I thought he was talking big, he does that so much that I didn’t take what I heard seriously. I was so stupid.”
I put a hand on her back. “You weren’t stupid. It’s not like there’s a handbook for the end of the world. You’re doing great now, Dina. We’re going to fix this, remember?”
She gives me a teary smile. “Yeah. You’re being so nice to me, why?”
“Why not? You were kind to us when we arrived in town.”
“That was just breakfast though, this is so much bigger.”
“What’s one kindness versus another? There’s no way to say something was kinder, it just is.”
“You’re really going to bring Clyde back to me?”
Earlier when I promised we would help her clean up the diner, I thought hey, what’s the worst that can happen? If we don’t succeed then it’s not like we broke a promise but now I don’t think that way. Now, I know I’m going to save the world.
“Yes, I am. I swear it.”
Chapter Thirty Six
The tunnels feel nice and safe, well at least I think they are. It’s hard to tell with the way we have no idea what’s going on above us. I did hear what I thought sounded like footsteps once, behind us, and I thought the cult goons from earlier were after us but those disappeared. Jaak even doubled back to look and there was nothing to be found.
“We’re safe in these tunnels. The magic is old and strong. My great-great-grandmother knew about the tunnels from the witches. She was their friend and they blessed her line with abilities like mine. She passed that knowledge on to her family. Nothing can harm us as long as we’re down here.”
“Hey, where do these doors go?” I ask, pointing at one of the doors we’re standing in front of. I’ve seen a door every so often as we walk. Each has a different sigil etched into it’s surface.
“The other businesses. No one else but my family uses the tunnels though.”
“So we could enter a business from here?”
“Yes, we could, in theory. If the way is not blocked.”
An idea comes to me. I know exactly where I want to go. Even if there’s something in the way, I’ll blast it out of my path. “Which way is it to the toy store?”
“That one,” Dina says and points to a door ahead of us. “Why would you want to go there?”
“To see a friend. Do you know Mort?”
Dina nods. “Yeah, quiet guy. He always orders a BLT and coffee, except for on Sunday when he gets a milkshake.”
“I would kill for a milkshake. You want to get one after this?” Charlie asks Jaak.
