They must have storage space somewhere, where they were keeping bottled water, food, who knew what else. They’d probably stashed my stuff there. Another room had to be Kumarbis’s. Probably in the deepest, darkest tunnel, with no chance of sunlight reaching it.

The gang found me first. When running footsteps approached, I decided to hold my ground. Breathing calm into my body, keeping my chin up and face neutral, I waited.

Enkidu arrived, loping out of the dark. “Kitty—Regina Luporum!”

And there was a slip of the tongue. How much of this avatar thing did he believe, really? I wondered what their real names were, all of them. When I didn’t run or flinch—or react at all, really—he slid to a stop.

“What are you doing?” he said, hand on his head, like he wanted to pull out his hair.

“Looking for my phone,” I said. “You want to tell me where you put it?”

He was sweating, his heart was racing. Had I actually scared him by running off? Or was he just really pissed off? A little of both, by the nervous scent of him.

“You—you didn’t leave,” he said.

“Yeah. Made it all the way outside. It’s a beautiful day out.”

“You came back.”

“And I may yet come to regret that,” I said. Never mind, moving forward.

My returning to the tunnel was almost worth it just to see his expression of stark bafflement. He’d probably thought he had a crisis on his hands.

Sakhmet and Zora trotted up the tunnel after him and seemed just as shocked to see me standing still, regarding him calmly.

“I don’t understand you,” Enkidu said.

“Likewise. So, can I have my phone back?”

“No,” he said. He shook his head, as if trying to shed his confusion.

“Oh, well. Never hurts to ask.”

Probably intending to bodily escort me back to the main chamber, he grabbed my arm. I pushed away, showing my teeth, rasping a growl. Because he was also a dominant wolf who couldn’t back down from a fight, he snarled back and lunged. I ducked, shoved into him with my shoulder, knocking him into the wall, and the fight was on. Three days of stress erupted. He turned, and we went after each other, arms out, fingers bent like claws. My Wolf growled with delight. No ambivalence, no decisions. Just claws, teeth, and blood.

“Stop! Stop it, both of you!” Sakhmet shouted.

Enkidu broke away from me, bowed his shoulders, ducked his gaze—the body language of a puppy who knows he’s done something wrong. His beloved had spoken, and he obeyed.

Wolf hesitated, because her instincts said you didn’t attack someone showing all the signs of standing down. I trembled, wanting to strike, knowing I shouldn’t. My breath came in growls. All he had to do was look at me funny and I’d be on him again.

Sakhmet moved into the space between us. She was tall, regal in her skirt and tunic. Her skin shone like mahogany in the faint light. Her movements were fluid, feline. Her stance said I could try to fight her, but she could hold her own against the best of them. Sakhmet, the warrior goddess, the lioness of Egypt.

I didn’t lower my gaze, but I let myself relax. I backed off a step.

“You’re all animals!” Zora muttered. She stood a few paces away—reasonable safe distance—her hands on her hips.

I couldn’t help it; I giggled. Doubled over, tried to stop laughing, but that only brought on hiccups. I was crazy. They were crazy. We were all crazy. I’d go ahead and blame that on Roman, too.

Sakhmet regarded me calmly, maybe even with pity. “Regina Luporum, will you come with me, please?” She held her hand out, careful not to touch me, not to even get close enough to where she might touch me by chance. I stepped forward, and she moved down the tunnel, gently encouraging me.

Eventually we made our careful, suspicious way back to the wide tunnel before the ritual chamber. Sakhmet escorted me through the doorway while the others waited outside.

“Zora would want me to lock the door on you, so you don’t go snooping around. But you came back. I don’t think you’ll leave again, but will see this through to the end. Am I right? Can I trust you, and leave the door unlocked?”

“You all have asked me to trust you,” I said. “It’s only fair.”

“Promise me that you’ll wait here, until we all gather at nightfall.” Her eyes gleamed, and she wore a sly, catlike smile.

The words shouldn’t have pressed down on me. It was my imagination—the ambient silver, itching at my skin. But I couldn’t deny: the idea of making a promise had a physical weight here. Magic saturated the tunnels, the stone. Zora and all her rituals and symbols, Kumarbis and his history, all the stories they’d been telling and plans they’d been making. In this place of magic, a promise meant something. If I made that promise, I couldn’t go back on it, and I couldn’t even say why. They were only words, weren’t they?

“I promise,” I murmured.

She left me there, closing the door behind her. She didn’t lock it.

I slumped to the floor, hands resting loose in my lap, my mind an odd blank. Nothing to do for it, then, than to wait for night to fall and see if this ritual actually worked.

Chapter 14

RULES OF the underworld: don’t eat pomegranate seeds. Don’t eat or drink anything the fairies give you. When you enter through the gates, you must remove all your clothing, all your possessions. You must bring an offering of blood to the shades who dwell there, especially if you want to ask them questions. When you leave the underworld, don’t look back, not for anything.

When Inanna passed the seventh gate and reached the heart of the underworld, she wept at what she found, and all that she had lost. Hubris had brought her to this plight. Divine intervention brought her out.

She had to find a replacement to take her place in the underworld. But her servants had been loyal to her, and she was loathe to repay their kindness by sending them to the land of the dead. Her friends had mourned her, and they, too, she would not ask to take her place. But her husband, Dumuzi, had been at leisure and without care during her time in the underworld, and so she condemned—

No. Ben was looking for me. He’d never give up on me. The only reason he hadn’t found me yet was that he had too much ground to cover, too many places to search. But he was trying, I knew it. I had faith.

The underworld doesn’t always mean death, it isn’t always the end. Sometimes, it’s the beginning. The Hopi tell stories about the beginning of the world, the transition from the previous age to this one, the birth of civilization. Humanity first lived underground, and one day Spider Woman—messenger of the creator, herself a creator of life, a weaver of knowledge—led them through caves to an opening that emerged into the world we know. The underworld, the old world, is the womb that gave birth to humanity. The journey from under the earth is the journey from ignorance to wisdom.