Memnon comes around to my front. “Yesterday, I sought revenge,” he says slowly, walking backward toward the far wall. “Today and for the rest of my life, I will seek to make you happy. If it’s romance you want from me,” he says, his eyes too bright, “then that’s what I will give you.”

I scowl. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it?” he says. “You want a soul mate who can love you as you mean to be loved.”

I raise my eyebrows, trying to ignore the tug of those words. “This might come as a huge shock to you,” I say, “but I am actually fine not being in a relationship with anyone. Especially you.”

“Mmm,” he says noncommittally.

I can tell he’s disregarded my words as soon as he hears them.

Memnon turns to the wall and places a hand against it. “Ifakavek.”

Reveal.

The doorway fades away, exposing a hidden room and a spiral staircase that descends down from it. The two of us set that spell what feels like lifetimes ago. Good to know it still works.

The sorcerer steps through the opening, then glances back at me. “Coming, Empress?”

I cross the room and step into the small antechamber where the spiral staircase waits.

I turn to face the exposed wall.

“Buvekatapis,” I murmur.

Conceal.

And I seal us inside.

Unlike the last time I visited the persecution tunnels, I’m no longer afraid of what’s down here. Perhaps it’s because then, I was interested in running from those who had hurt me. Now I’m interested in finding them.

My gaze sweeps over the subterranean room where the spell circle was held only two weeks ago. It appears just as it had the last time we visited.

“What are we looking for down here?” I ask.

“Anything at all. We can start with figuring out where the witches entered from,” Memnon says. “The night of that circle, did you notice anyone in your house going to that room above us?”

“The Ritual Room?” I think back to the night in question. I’d waited in the library for Kasey. The rest of the house, however, had been quiet. I shake my head. “I don’t think so…

“Wait,” I say as something comes to me. “Some of the tunnels down here were lit.”

As opposed to right now, when the torches sitting in the sconces are dark.

“Then it’s possible they were meeting somewhere else and then entering these tunnels from that point.”

The trouble is there are so many tunnels that branch in all directions.

“Which way should we go?” I ask.

“I don’t think it matters, little witch.”

I can’t quite suppress the pleasant shiver that endearment evokes.

I decide to head down the same one I took when I last fled this room. We haven’t gone a hundred feet when the tunnel splits apart.

Did I go left or right last time? I’d been so hyped up on adrenaline, I don’t remember.

On a whim, I go right, Memnon close behind me. Then I make a left. Then a right. The torches hiss to life as we go. Eventually, we hit a staircase that lets out into the Everwoods.

We backtrack, then begin again. Ten minutes later, we hit another exit, this one leading into a crypt that smells like mold and old bones.

“Hey look,” I say, nodding to the stone coffin as I drag away a thick web. “It’s my second lover”—I squint at the name—“Ephigenia. I’ll wake her in another year when I get tired of you. I do so like burying my lovers.”

When I turn to look at Memnon, his face is displeased.

Too soon for jokes apparently.

We retrace our steps and try again, the torchlight making our shadows dance. The futility of what we’re doing is starting to set in. I don’t even know what we’re looking⁠—

Thump.

The sound echoes off the walls from somewhere far ahead of us.

Memnon and I look at each other, then we both quicken our pace.

This is probably a bad idea, I say silently.

Don’t tell me you’ve lost all your courage now, est amage.

In the distance, the tunnel dimly glows, the light growing brighter the closer we get. Either we are recrossing our old tracks, or another person is down here.

If someone else is down here, we shouldn’t assume the worst of them, I caution. It could be literally anyone. Maybe Henbane’s staff uses these passageways.

For what? Memnon challenges me. Casual get-togethers? These tunnels were created for illicit purposes.

They weren’t, I argue. They were created to avoid capture.

Yes, Memnon agrees. That would be considered illicit behavior.

Fuck, I guess it would.

The two of us finally get to the previously lit hallway. A little farther down it opens up into another subterranean room similar in size and structure to the one beneath the residency hall. But where the latter room was empty, this one is full.

I pause as I take it all in. It looks almost like a witchy clubhouse. There’s a lit candelabra hanging from the ceiling. Along the right wall is a series of inset cabinets and shelves. On several of them rest moth-eaten grimoires, their clashing magic pooling in the air above us. On another shelf is a crystal ball and a scrying bowl and a bust of a woman with a very large nose and a determined air about her.

Across the room is a massive tapestry depicting an enchanted forest. Beneath it are several chests and an armoire painted with flowers and serpents. A few broomsticks lean together in the corner.

There’s a worn green velvet couch, a plum-colored wingback chair, and a table between them stacked with books. I drift over to the stack and rifle through them, reading their titles as Memnon continues past me, cutting through the room toward another chamber that houses a spiral staircase.

I’ll be back in a minute, he says as he heads up the staircase, clearly determined to find whoever was down here.

“Mmm…” I say noncommittally as I look at the book titles. The Sisterhood: The Dynamics and Culture of Witches; Ancient Symbols and Their Meanings; Into the Dark: An Exploration of Forbidden Magic.

The book titles are somewhat interesting but not revealing in the least. Abandoning them, I wander around the rest of the room, peering at the items. The grimoires on the shelves are old, and their magic has a musty, rotting smell to it, as though it’s unmaking itself. I pause when my eyes land on one of the grimoires. It’s a small, thin tome, its spine mostly gone. Threads of dark magic waft off it.

Before I can think better of it, I pull the book off the shelf. I flip through the spellbook, but there are no bookmarked pages or obvious spells of interest. Only disturbing drawings of dismembered fingers and eyes. Real cozy reading.

I put the spellbook back, wiping my hands on my jeans to get the oily feel of the magic off me. Turning my attention to the cabinets that run along the lower part of the wall, I crouch down and open them one by one.

Inside all of them are baskets filled with bars and snack packs of chips, trail mix and mini bottled waters.

This is definitely a clubhouse of some sort. And while it’s unusual, I’ve seen nothing here that’s overtly nefarious—dark grimoire aside.

Closing the cabinets, I move to the other side of the room, drawn to the armoire simply because the painted serpent and flowers on the front of it are so beautiful. I run my hand over the image of the snake, noting how the phases of the moon have been detailed on its body. Beneath my touch, it seems to come alive for a moment, the delicately painted scales rippling as it slithers a little. I hear a click, and then one of the armoire’s doors swings open slightly.

I did not even realize it would do that.

I nudge the door open wider.

My eyebrows rise.