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“Perhaps it is nothing,” Fox admitted as he leaned back and clasped his hands in his lap. A contemplative look appeared on his face as he stared into the fire. “But there was a rather strange business there during my era. As I said before, my friends and I had dared one another to venture alone into the catacombs. One among us traveled deeper than the rest-he disappeared for nearly an hour-and when he returned his hair had turned a shocking shade of white.”
Ben frowned. “What happened to him?”
Fox shook his head. “He refused to tell us what he had seen. Mind you, this all happened a long while ago, a mere five years before my demise.”
I examined his body, but his corpse was too far gone for me to easily judge the reason. “How did you die?”
He wrinkled his rotten nose. “It turns out that rats have quite a sturdy mind, and the one with which I tried to connect my brilliant brain refused entrance with such force that my mind was essentially blasted to nothing.”
“That. . .that’s terrible,” I replied, with my mind teetering between laughter and nausea.
Ben pushed off from the mantel. “Perhaps we should venture down there and see what we might find. We have no other leads with which to follow other than venturing out into every graveyard with an academy member.”
My face fell. “But do we really want to find out what’s down there? One of his friends came back with white hair.”
Ben studied my hair with a twinkle in his eyes. “You would look quite fetching with white hair.”
I snorted but stood. “Don’t go complaining if I also come back aged twenty years.”
Fox, too, climbed to his feet. “I will join you on this adventure. Should you find another of my lost compatriots, I would like to attempt to speak with them.”
Ben nodded. “Very well.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
We venturedout into the aging night, and in an hour we had reached the gates of The Court. I kept close to Ben as we made our way through the many graves. Fox had nary a worry on his face as he studied the stones around us. “My goodness. I recognize a number of these names as old professors of mine.”
“Anyone we should worry about if they rise from their grave?” I asked him.
He wrinkled his nose. “Only if they have enough sentience to control their magic but not control their hunger. Then we might have much to worry about.”
“Comforting thought. . .” I murmured as we reached the mausoleum. The door was still ajar from Ben and my previous visit.
Ben turned to our rotten companion and gestured to the stone building. “Is this the entrance?”
Fox nodded. “Just the same. We would sit on the floor with a nice picnic and swap spells while waiting for our comrades to return from the catacombs.”
“Any idea how anyone would still know about that entrance?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “A relative, perhaps, or perhaps one of my companions has gone insane in their old age and decided to raise the dead to relive the old days.”
Ben stepped up to the open door and half-turned to us. He reached into his coat and drew out the channel orb which he held out to me. “Let’s see if we might discover which answer is true.”
“That is quite a neat little toy,” Fox mused as I grasped the ball and it illuminated the area around us.
We slipped into the silence that enveloped the mausoleum. The place still gave me the creeps, and Fox’s presence didn’t much help. The light from my orb shone off his dirty skin and accented the crevices between his sagging skin, giving him an even more corpse-like appearance.
I made sure to be behind Ben as we made our way under the altar and into the dank tunnels. The dry air again tickled my nostrils, but there was something else. The air felt charged, like somebody had rubbed a balloon against their head a little too long and a single touch would make them regret that decision.
I only hoped I wasn’t the one who would be electrocuted.
Ben led the way down the passages and back to the intersection. Fox slipped past me and sidled up to Ben. The pair studied the left-hand passage, and after a moment Ben shook his head. “I can’t sense anything.”
Fox squinted at the darkness and frowned. “There is something in there.”
Ben tensed. “What is it?”
Our companion shook his head. “I can’t make out what it is, but it’s not completely unfriendly, nor is it welcoming.”
