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Grateful to have so the slab aside to reveal a stone staircase spiraling down into darkness

“Grab the torch,” she said

He did, bringing it back to illuminate the stairs And the smooth black water that covered them about five feet down Now he understood why she’d left the phones “You didn’t say we’d need scuba gear”

“We don’t”

She stretched out her hands At first nothing happened Then the surface of the water began to ripple and sink Mick glanced at her face, snared by the electric blue eyes that flashed with lightning and power The to as she see the path below

“Holy Moses,” he muttered “What are you?”

“My faht now Give me the torch”

Mick handed it over, noting the tension in her back “You’re still holding all that water back, aren’t you? It’s not gone”

“Right So we need to hurry” She stepped over the ledge and started the descent

Underground It had to be underground The wolf paced restlessly under his skin Neither part of him liked enclosed spaces At all But, resolutely, he followed Sophie down the stairs, stepping carefully to avoid slipping in the still wet stone To distract hi in his brain since the ransom call “Who else knows about this Devil’s Eye? I mean, I’ve never heard of it”

“You wouldn’t It was lost to legend for centuries”

“How did you find out about it?”

She hesitated aup on soh the wilds of—well you don’t need to knohere Let’s just say ere feeding our inner Indiana Jones And then it turned out that it wasn’t a rumor, wasn’t myth The artifact was real We didn’t knohat it e brought it back I still don’t know exactly what it does, just that it’s extreerous After soain, and a core group of us brought it here As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it’s still lost”

“It has to be soot Liza, I mean Those of you who placed it here in the first place Or at least somebody who knew you were part of that mission”

“That does seem likely,” she admitted