Scout glanced back, eyebrow arched. “What’s going on back there?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Some dork is trying to scare me with tales of murderous creatures.”
She snorted. “What, ’cause that’s so different from an average Monday around here?”
“Seriously, right?”
“People,” Jason said, “I’m busy trying to work my mojo.”
Michael turned around and offered Jason his fist, and they did a manly knuckle-bump thing.
Scout and I simultaneously rolled our eyes. But before I could respond, Jason grabbed my hand again and pulled me to a stop. My stomach fluttering, I kept my eyes on Scout and Michael, who continued in front of us, flashlights bobbing until they realized that we weren’t following behind.
Scout looked back. “What’s up, peeps?”
“Could you, maybe, give us a minute?” Jason asked.
“You are not serious.”
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find time to kiss an Adept?”
Scout blew out a dramatic breath that puffed out her cheeks, grabbed Michael’s hand, and pulled him down the hall. “Fine. Have a hot make-out session. But we’re going to be like twenty feet down the hallway. I hope they get eaten by one of those headless horsemen,” she muttered. “Or the Chicago version, anyway.”
As they walked down the hallway, I kept my gaze on them, still too nervous to look at Jason.
“What would that be exactly?” I heard Michael ask.
“What would what be?”
“The Chicago version of the headless horseman?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a fangless vampire? Or—or a werewolf with mange?”
“We can still hear you!” Jason called out. “And werewolves don’t get mange!”
That earned him a huff from Scout. I finally screwed up my courage and looked back at Jason.
He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. But they weren’t royal blue or the blue you’d see in the middle of a rainbow. They were so blue they were nearly turquoise, the color so deep it seemed that he stared out with precious jewels instead of irises.
Currently, those crazy eyes were trained on me. His lips curled, the dimple at the corner of his mouth puckering as he smiled.
My nerves tumbling, I kept things light.
“So you’re trying to kiss an Adept?”
“Very, very diligently,” Jason said. Before I could get out a snarky answer, he was dipping his head. His lips found mine, his mouth soft and warm. He put his hands at my waist and kissed me until I felt a little light-headed, until my heart fluttered in my chest. I’d been kissed before, sure, but I hadn’t been kissed like this. Not by him, since we’d been interrupted when he’d tried to kiss me before. And not like my feet were going to lift off the ground and I was going to float right up to the ceiling.
I almost opened my eyes to make sure that hadn’t happened—I mean, we were Adepts, after all.
Jason sighed and wrapped his arms around my back, and we kissed in the darkness beneath Chicago.
At least until Scout let out a “Holy crap!” that poured through the tunnel.
We separated and ran full out, relieved when we saw Scout and Michael still standing at the edge of the next segment of tunnel.
“What happened?” Jason asked, his gaze scanning the two of them. “Are you okay?”
“There,” Scout said, swinging her flashlight across the tunnel in front of us.
It took me a minute to process exactly what I was seeing. The floor of the tunnel and part of the walls were coated in some kind of clear slime, five or six trails of it from one end of the corridor to the next.
“Wait,” Jason said. “Is that—Is that slime?”
“Appears to be,” Michael said. “It looks like they filmed Aliens in there.”
Jason kneeled down, found a piece of metal on the tunnel floor, and stuck it into the goo. When he raised it again, he pulled up a long, stringy strand of slime.
“Eww,” Scout said. “That is heinous. That’s even worse than the time we fought off that nematode.”
“What’s a nematode?” I asked.
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said. “I think you should have the joy of looking it up on the Internet and seeing the kind of pictures I had to see.”
“So what did this come from?” I asked. “Some kind of animal?”
“Maybe not,” Michael put in. “Maybe there’s a leak somewhere. Some kind of—I don’t know—industrial fluid or something?”
We all looked up. The ceiling of the tunnel looked old and nasty, but not even a little slimy.
“Hmm,” Jason said, then tossed the metal into a corner. “That’s definitely new.”
“What do we do now?”
Scout put her hands on her hips. “Since the exit is in that direction, I guess we should see how far it goes.”
“Lily and I will take the lead,” Jason said, stepping forward into the tunnel. When I snapped to face him, shocked that we’d be going first, his expression was apologetic.
“Firespell,” he explained. “Just in case we need it.”
It was definitely an adjustment to play the lead heroine, but I sucked it up, nodded, and stepped beside him.
With flashlights aimed before us and Michael and Scout behind us, we took one tentative step into the tunnel. And then another. And then another.
“I’m not seeing anything,” Scout said, flashlight beam circling across the ceiling of the tunnel as she searched out whatever had slimed the corridor.
“One tunnel at a time,” Jason said. My hand in his, we took the lead, walking to the end of the corridor.
I was scanning the walls, bouncing my flashlight beam along them, looking for a hint of slime. So when Jason came to a full stop, I almost tripped forward, but he pulled my hand—and me—back.
That was when I saw them—and screamed.There were five of them—half walking, half crawling toward us. They were human-shaped, but a little smaller than your average adult. They were bald, with pointed ears and milky eyes, and their fingers were thin and tipped by long, pointed white nails. They scowled and snorted as they moved toward us. Their naked skin glistened in the light, a trail of slime on the ground beneath and behind them.
“What—” I began, but Jason shook his head. “Scout, Michael. Stop walking, and move backward. Just a few feet.”
Scout and Michael began to move behind us. With each step they took, we followed suit until the four of us stood in a cluster a dozen feet or so away from the creatures. Still, they lurched in our direction, their movements coordinated like a school of nasty, pasty fish.