Almost Midnight (Shadow Falls: After Dark #3.5)(82)

Fear told her to be quiet. Logic forced one word to the tip of her tongue. “Hello?”

She stood in the dark silence, breathing in scents that were keeping her from using her powers. Tilting her head to the side, she listened to make sure she hadn’t been mistaken.

Only a dead silence filled her ears. Her stomach knotted. Part of her wanted to fall to the ground and sob. Part of her thought of Kylie and Della and how strong they were and how she longed to be more like them.

She took another step and heard it again—a slight intake of air. Swallowing the knot of fear down her throat, she stiffened her backbone.

“Is someone else in here?” Her words seemed to echo and terror again spidered down her spine.





Chapter Sixteen


“What do you want with me?” the voice answered.

Miranda recognized the voice.

“Tabitha? Is that you? It’s me, Miranda.”

“Are you doing this to me? Are you—”

“No, I’m in here, too.” She inhaled. “A dirty vamp, one that was at the Eiffel Tower, he grabbed me, brought me here, and tossed me in.”

“Me, too.” Her voice shook as if she’d been crying.

Miranda didn’t take any points off for that. Her cheeks were still damp with her own tears. “Where are we, do you know?”

“I think it’s a dungeon,” Tabitha said.

Miranda slowly started inching toward the voice. “Keep talking so I can find you.”

“It looked like a castle from above,” her half-sister said.

“Yeah, I saw that, too.” Miranda’s foot hit something. Something that didn’t feel like a rock. She knelt down and touched the object, quickly recognizing it as a foot. With a boot on it. Had Tabitha been wearing boots?

“Is that you?” Miranda asked.

“Is what me?”

Tabitha’s words send a wave of panic through Miranda and she bolted back, tripped over her own feet, and landed on her butt.

She scrambled to get up, to get farther away from the foot she’d just touched.

One step.

Two.

Tabitha’s thin voice rang out, “Miranda, what happened?”

Trying not to hyperventilate, she spit out the question, “Did I just touch you?”

“Nooo,” Tabitha said, sounding confused.

A whimper escaped Miranda’s lips. “Then I just touched someone else’s foot.”

“What? Are you saying … that someone else is in here?” Her voice sounded winded.

Miranda swallowed. “Yeah.” She brushed off her fingertips as if to wipe away the touch.

“Who are you?” Tabitha demanded.

No answer came back.

“Are they dead?” Tabitha asked.

Dread hit Miranda like heavy smoke. “I … I don’t know.”

“Were they cold?”

“I just touched a foot … with a shoe on it.” The thought of touching death had her rubbing her hands on her jeans.

“I hate this. I want to go home.” Tabitha started crying.

“Me, too,” Miranda said, but then realized panicking wasn’t going to help. “Don’t cry. Talk so I can find you.”

“I’m here. Against a wall. What do you want me to say?”

“Count,” Miranda said and started moving again.

“One. Two. Three.” Tabitha’s voice sounded closer and closer with each step. Meanwhile Miranda tried to keep her orientation so that when she found the courage she could go back and check on the foot.

Or rather the body connected to the foot.

Oh, God. She hoped there was a body connected to the foot. Her breath hitched in her throat.

“Is this you?” she asked, her shoe hitting something.

“Yeah,” Tabitha answered, her voice shaky.

Miranda moved a few more inches until she felt the wall and then she turned and sat down beside her half-sister who immediately started sniffling again. “Don’t cry.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m locked in the dark with a dead person. And probably a ghost. Oh shit, I hate ghosts.”

“We don’t know if there’s a ghost,” Miranda said. But right then she figured out what this place might be. Spooky music ran through her mind. Chances were this place wasn’t just a dungeon, but part of the catacombs. Old mines for limestone used to build Paris thousands of years ago. Alone that wouldn’t have been so bad, but then the mines had been used as a place to toss the dead.

Tabitha was right. They probably had ghosts down here.

“Stop making this worse than it is,” Miranda said and told herself the same thing. “We don’t even know if … if they are dead. And we need to figure a way out of here.”

“They haven’t spoken and I’ve been in here for a good twenty minutes.”

“Well, maybe they’re unconscious?” Miranda said. “Why don’t we hold our breath and listen to see if anyone else is breathing.”

“Okay,” Tabitha answered.

Miranda heard her sister inhale and she did the same.

Silence filled the blackness and not a sound entered their prison.

“They’re dead!” Tabitha squealed.