She could feel him aroused against her—and that focused her attention. She didn’t want this—whatever this was. She needed to get out of here.

She was very much afraid that meant she needed to figure out what was beyond this room. What it was that smelled like death, and what smelled of magic and old power.

Wait.

If she had listened to that inner voice in the first place, if she’d run when they got out of the Suburban, she might be back in that hotel by the river. She thought of the miles they had driven and amended herself. She would at least be on the way to the river by now—though an odd part of her remained convinced she could have made it to the river.

He stepped back and shook his head, then walked over to a dark corner of the room and pulled out an instrument case. If he hadn’t been standing between her and the tunnel, she’d have taken her chances. But without a head start, she wasn’t going to be able to get far enough into the tunnel fast enough that he couldn’t simply grab her ankles and drag her out.

She wondered why he’d brought her here. The kisses—and that bed—were making her very uncomfortable.

Wait.

He pulled out a mandolin that was a lot older than the case it was stored in. As he began tuning, he said, “You are not going to be hurt, Anna.”

She’d had a dentist who used to say that right before he stuck the needle in. It was a lie then—and it was a lie now. Even if he thought he was telling the truth.

And then he began to play. She loved music—it spoke to her, and always had. It gave her joy when she was sad and comforted her when she was afraid. And she had been so afraid.

After a while he put the mandolin back in its case.

“Hello, Anna,” he said.

“Hey, Zander.” She gave him a shy smile.

“How old are you?”

She laughed. “Jailbait for you. Seventeen.”

“Good,” he said. “Would you go sit on the bed and wait for me? I won’t be a long time. Maybe a half hour.”

She didn’t mind waiting. She liked to use downtime to work through the solo that she was going to play for auditions for Northwestern. There were a couple of spots that weren’t as smooth as they could be. And she still wasn’t sure that slowing down that movement in the middle a little more wouldn’t make the music better, even if it might mean that the adjudicators thought she was doing it to make the piece easier.

He gave her a soft kiss she didn’t pay much attention to and then gently propelled her to the bed. She couldn’t help wrinkling her nose. The sleeping bags had been here long enough to absorb the smell of death and whatever that other weird scent was. It wasn’t a pleasant smell. Her instincts told her not to react. There was something wrong here, and she needed him to go away.

“All right?” he asked.

She wished he’d shut up; she wanted to work on her music. If she’d been a mathematician, she would have solved equations or counted in prime numbers or something. Music would clear her head.

She gave him a perfunctory smile. “Yes, fine.”

He watched her for a second, then he nodded and walked out.

As soon as he was out of sight, something rose out of the hollow place inside her, something vibrating with life and strength and rage. Her hands curled and every muscle in her body tensed. She needed to get out of here. Her head was foggy as all hell, but she knew that much.

She was on her way out, halfway up the squeeze-chute tunnel, when she heard a soft click and all the lights in front of her went out. She paused. Could she find her way out in the dark? The darkness of the cave was not the darkness of night. There was no light. She’d be able to make it out of the narrow passage, where there was only one direction to go, but after that? When her memory of how they had made the trip in was foggy?

She slid back out into the bedroom cavern. Improbably, given that it was presumably attached to all of the other lights, the single bulb was still lit, but the lanterns on either side of the bed were out. She picked one of them up and pressed the red button to turn it on. Nothing happened.

It had just been lit. It was a simple, battery-operated device. She tried the other one with the same result.

She was trapped.

And that was when she became aware of the sounds. Muffled scuffling noises with an odd wet edge to them. Groaning. A shushing sound almost like a croon that ended in a sound like grain spun in a basket. Then a wet squishy smacking sound, like someone had thrown a giant sponge out of an airplane so it could land on pavement.

She stood frozen, curiosity pushing her forward, curiosity and the desire to see what the hell was making that noise. But caution and that small voice in her head held her still.

And then the sound changed, becoming a rhythmical squicking, as if some film director decided to make a parody of sex. It was too loud and too . . . harsh, as if something huge and wet scraped over and over against a rough surface. Someone—Zander?—cried out in a mix of passion and pain.

It sounded, she thought, with a sort of revolted horror (and a weird desire to laugh), like the tentacle sex in the old anime movie that had been passed around the high school girls’ locker room. Yes, she had watched it.

She and her best friend had consumed two buckets of popcorn and laughed themselves sick. Her dad had caught them. Being her dad, he’d grabbed a handful of popcorn and stayed to observe a tentacle enter a place a tentacle had no business being. He’d winced theatrically and then rolled his eyes before wandering out.

She wished her dad were here now.

A very distinctive odor hit her nose. The sounds did not lie. Sex was taking place.

She also caught a whiff of something else, musk and mint like the flannel shirt she wore as armor, but lighter somehow and vaguely familiar. There was a gentle scuffing sound just outside the cavern—and a naked, very dirty woman padded in on soft feet.

For a moment, she reminded Anna of Zander.

Then she came closer, dispelling the illusion—a thing of shadows and the shape of her eyes.

“Anna?” the woman said in a whisper so quiet Anna was surprised that she could hear. “Are you okay?”

The woman, even naked and dirty, carried with her an air of command that had Anna responding to her as if she were here to help. Anna looked at the bed, then pointed in the general direction of the sloppy wet noises—and shook her head definitively.

The woman nodded and then gestured for Anna to follow her back the way she’d come—the direction that Zander had not taken. This section of the tunnel was still lit, and Anna couldn’t help but look the way Zander had gone, but it dropped down and turned. All she could see was that the light from that direction had a distinct orange tinge and looked too bright to have been provided solely by ordinary bulbs.

The woman stopped and Anna stopped with her. There was something odd about Anna’s own reaction to this woman—who was a stranger, a naked stranger, even. And she felt like a trusted comrade, if not a friend. But unlike the happy, safe feeling that Zander’s music inspired, this felt true.

She turned to Anna as if to say something.

Anna spoke first. “Who are you?” she asked. “Have we met?”

The other woman’s eyes flashed to icy blue, as if she wore some kind of contacts designed to make her look like a superhero or an alien.

Wolf eyes. And that thought felt true as well.

The woman didn’t answer Anna’s question, her voice still quiet—though she would have had to be singing full-throated opera to have pierced the noises coming from behind them. “You need music to clear your head. The wrong kind of music will make you vulnerable to him—anything soft or emotional. Music in general is dangerous. The Singer’s powers are music and memory. But they can also be used to defend against him. You need something defiant. A war song. Maybe something like—” She hummed a little and Anna recognized the tune.

“Queen,” Anna said. “I can channel Freddie Mercury.”

“Wait until we get somewhere safer—or if the enemy appears. Think defiance while you sing, or it will backfire. I hope it won’t be necessary, because we are going to try to make it out before they are finished back there. I warn you, though, this next cavern is bad. Stay beside me.”

“What if he cuts the lights?” Anna asked.

“I have a flashlight,” the woman said. “I picked it up at the cave entrance.” For the first time, Anna noticed that she was carrying a small black flashlight in one hand. In the dim light, it blended with the dirt on the woman’s hands.

“Something killed the electric lanterns back there.”

“Well, then, Anna,” said the woman in a biting tone—so familiar. Who was this woman? “I guess we’ll have to fight in the dark, or”—she nodded her head toward the disturbing sounds behind them—“you can go back and wait until he gets done in there.”