Page 189 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“You’re asking me to undress you? Never thought I’d see the day.”

I give him a weak, withering look, and he heaves out a tired breath. He lifts a hand and twirls a finger. “Come on. Turn around.”

I do, pulling my hair over my shoulder. Aemon tuts a little sound before working at the bundle of laces. “He’s such a beast. You poor thing, you must feel like a holiday roast.”

“I’d prefer not to think about being food, right now. Little close to home.”

“Right,” he says.

The laces give way and I inhale my first deep breath in I don’t know how long. “How is Bash here? What about The Buried City?”

“Wren is holding them up,” Aemon says, something tense in his tone.

I turn and look at him. “How the fuck is she doing that?”

“Very, very recklessly,” he says, displeasure clear in the tight set of his mouth. “So, let’s get out of here as quickly as we can.

Aemon helps me to my feet, keeping hold of my wrist, as we run through the corridors. I get the sense he’s continuing to feed a trickle of vitality into me by way of physical contact, so I let him tug me along like a child. I’m not exactly athletic. The chase through the forest with Damien proved that. But I don’t get a stitch in my side, or any aches in my chest, no matter how long we run over the marble floors. I’m grateful for that.

It’s unnerving, though, how well Aemon seems to know this place. I chalk it up to luck for a while, or maybe even sensing Wren’s location now that they’re... married. Gods, that’s fucking weird. But then he slows, just before a strange pattern of tile work, lifting me over it and placing me on the other side while he straddles the tiles.

“Uhm. Are we dancing now?”

“Yes, Lillith,” he says sardonically. “I’m pausing our pursuit to halt a potential apocalypse because I want to waltz with you.”

I blink at him, and he rolls his eyes. He pulls a coin out of his pocket, joins me where I stand, and tosses the coin so it perfectly lands in its center.

The floor drops out from beneath it, opening into a black void, just wide enough to fit a single body.

“Oubliette,” he says.

“How did you—”

“There’s a reason I didn’t come with you to Virginia, Lillith,” he says. “My fear of this monster wasn’t unsubstantiated. It wasn’t just some cowardly boogie monster of my own creation. His mind is uniquely suited to torture. I know firsthand.”

I frown, guilt tightening the muscle of my heart. Wren and I called him a coward.

If I’d known this is what he’s been avoiding—if I’d had any concept of just how terrible it could be...

I open my mouth to apologize, but I stop short when I see him look at the mouth of the oubliette with a furrow in his brow. “Huh,” he says, as if just realizing something.

“What?” I ask.

“Well... It’s just that, I’ve been in this maze before. That’s why I know it,” he says. He looks around the corridor, eyes clocking details that bear no great meaning to me. “But he’s never used the same method twice.”

“Maybe he was being hasty?” I ask.

Aemon shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I don’t think that’s it, as vindictive as he is.”

“What is it then?”

“I think something’s weakening him,” he says. “I think something’s wrong with his magic.”

“Maybe the gods he ate aren’t agreeing with him.”

Aemon’s gaze lands on me again, eyes narrowing. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“His appearance,” I say. “The antlers—the strange moony eyes…”