Page 33 of The Ferryman’s Rest Inn & Grogshop

She groaned. “Feel like I got run over by a semi.” She got slowly to her feet. Bracken turned his back on the naked Coco as I handed her backpack to her.

“At least I have a change of clothes in here.” She blew out a breath and winced as every hurt made itself known. “What do you say we don’t do that again, okay?”

I nodded. “Seems fair.”

Stheno walked back from the break in the rock wall, taking a sip from her canteen. She held it up for me to see. “Do you think we get charged for dents?”

Bracken flicked his fingers and the dent disappeared.

“Nice. You’re handy to have around.” Stheno took another sip and then stowed the canteen again. “There’s a tunnel through there, by the way.” She looked behind me across the lake. “The water is settling down. I think we’ve officially made it past those two.”

I nodded, looking over my shoulder. “One tunnel out means we know which way to go.” I wished Meg would show up again and escort us the rest of the way.

“Shit.” Coco limped toward us, a wide raw band of abraded skin around one calf.

“Oh, Coco, your leg. Is that from that tentacle thing he wrapped around your foot?” I asked.

She nodded. “It hurts like hell. It had spikes or quills or whatever digging into me. Asshole.” She pointed at her bare feet. “The problem right now is I only had one pair of shoes with me.”

“Damn.” I scanned the uneven ground and found far too many rocks for bare feet.

“Do you have socks?” Bracken asked.

She went into her backpack and pulled out a pair of ankle socks.

Bracken nodded. “Can you put them on? I can spell them to make the bottoms firm, but they should be stretched to the proper size before I do it.”

“Oh, my goodness. Thank you.” She dropped her bag, balancing on one foot and then the other to pull on her socks.

Bracken’s fingers flicked.

Coco gasped. “That felt so weird.” She tapped her foot experimentally against the ground. “So much better. It’s like my socks have soles now. Thank you.”

“Of course. And thank you for getting us past those two.” He called his light ball to him, illuminating the entrance to the tunnel, before adding a second.

There was only one way to go, so that was the way we went. Unlike that first tunnel, though, this one had offshoots.

At the first one, we stopped. “What are we thinking?” I asked. We seemed to all still be mentally going over our narrow escape from Scylla and Charybdis, so no answers were forthcoming. They shrugged or, if it was Stheno, said, “Hell if I know. Just pick.”

I picked left, as that had served us with the original tunnel. After that, it felt like tunnels were branching off every fifty to a hundred feet.

“Great,” Stheno griped. “We’re stuck in a damn labyrinth.”

“Damn it. I should have been dropping breadcrumbs or something.” Exhaustion was pulling at me. I knew my brain wasn’t working well and I was sure I’d missed my daylight deadline. Clive was probably up and worrying.

“This one,” Stheno said, gesturing to Bracken, “has been doing something.”

Bracken’s lips turned up. “You caught that, did you? Yes, I’ve been leaving a kind of breadcrumb as we move from tunnel to tunnel. I have an excellent sense of direction, but it’s failing me down here. I have no idea where we are.”

Coco’s eyes were drooping. “Me neither.”

“I think we need to eat and sleep,” I suggested. “Especially Coco. She had to shift for us.”

Bracken checked his watch and then shook his head in frustration. “I keep doing that. Force of habit. My watch hasn’t worked since we crossed into the Underworld. I think you’re right, though. I think we could all use sleep.” He scratched the stubble on his jaw. “At a guess, I’d say it’s the middle of the night.”

Stheno nudged Bracken with her elbow. “Check your breadcrumbs.”

His fingers twitched and lines glowed on the tunnel walls, lines that crisscrossed over each other multiple times. I wanted to thunk my head against the rock wall but was too tired to put in the effort.