Getting out of the tunnel had been far easier than I’d thought. Like many things, I’d been overthinking it.

I took a chance. Troy had been quite confident about light leading me to a good place. If it had been Troy alone I’d have been hesitant to trust him, but Wyatt had unilaterally agreed. That had to mean something.

Not all light had been good. The red glow from the stones hadn’t brought me any luck, but that hadn’t been a light specifically, and maybe in some messed up way I was supposed to end up in this place so I could hear the Rose conversations. Either way, it didn’t really matter. Following the light was the only solid lead I had of how I could use my Lightness powers to get where I wanted to go.

Truthfully, I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I mean I needed to get back to Wyatt and the others, but what if they weren’t where I left them? What if they assumed I’d left and went ahead without me? But once again I was worrying about things that couldn’t help me in my current predicament. I needed to find a light to follow and then I’d go from there.

I started by focusing on the flashing orbs. It took me a few tries to even focus on one of them. Then when I finally did it successfully I ended up with a headache. After a dozen attempts I was still floating in nothingness.

Time for a new plan. And here is where the over thinking it part came in. I glanced down at my glowing torso. That was it. I’d been so concerned with what the tunnel was that I’d forgotten what I was. I was a light. Albeit I was also a person, a Pteron-Lightness or Lightness-Pteron depending on how you wanted to view it. But I provided light, and maybe that was the same thing.

I stopped looking outwardly. I stopped looking for flickering lights and listening for dripping water. Instead I focused inside. The more I pulled my focus in, the warmer I became. I also glowed brighter. Far brighter. The kind of brightness where it was even hard to look. The sane part of me panicked. What if I made myself so bright I exploded? Was that even possible? I pushed the panic down. I wasn’t going to explode. Besides which, what was the alternative? To spend an eternity floating?

I’d brought myself into whatever tunnel I was in, surely I could get myself out. I wouldn’t be stuck in there forever because I couldn’t be. There was too much riding on me to let everyone down. Jesalyn wouldn’t have bothered to transfer her abilities to me if she didn’t think I was capable.

I was capable. I could do this, and I would get the heck out. Glendale was wrong. I had the confidence, and I was sure as hell going to use it now.

I closed my eyes out of instinct, pleasantly surprised I could still see my glowing form through my closed lids. An intense pressure beat down on me, making me want to curl into a ball, but I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t move a muscle.

My eyes flew open of their own accord. I expected to see nothing but darkness and those darn flashing lights. Instead I was blinded. The light? I forced myself to look even though it burned my eyes. Or did it? Maybe I was imagining the burn because as soon as I looked at it I was swallowed up by the warm light, cradled in it, and carried away. I could only see the light, but the sensation of moving was unmistakable. It was the same sensation I felt after the red glowing floor.

I knew I was leaving my temporary prison of darkness behind. But where was Wyatt? Eloise? The others? Where was this light taking me? I considered closing my eyes, pulling back, but what good would that do me? I’d just end up back in that dark prison. At least I assumed that’s exactly where I’d be.

The light grew brighter, then suddenly it dimmed. I opened my eyes, blinking as I looked down at my no longer glowing form. I wasn’t floating. I was standing. My hands moved up and down. I looked around at my surroundings. I was in a dark room, surrounded by floor to ceiling bookcases aside from a single door on the furthest wall from where I stood. The floor was wood, old wood by the looks of it. Dim light shone in from underneath the door.

I ignored the urge to try the door first. Instead I walked over to the closest bookshelf. The spines of the books were coated in dust. I brushed some off of a book at my eye level hoping the first title I found would shed some light on why I was in this room.

The spine was blank. There was no evidence ink had ever touched the dark red binding. I flipped the book over in my hand and used the side of my hand to brush away a thick layer of dust and grime. I kept wiping, convinced there had to be some text hidden, but there was nothing but a two-inch-wide symbol type picture of a flame. It could have technically represented any flame, but considering everything that had happened so far, I assumed it was the flame. The Emerald Flame.

With a mix of anticipation and nerves I opened the book, a small part of me half expecting it to burst into flames when I did.

Nothing happened aside from a fresh plume of dust flooding my eyes. I blinked away the dust and looked down at the handwritten script on the page.

The words meant nothing to me, written in a language I had never seen before. The letters were the same, but none of the combinations resembled words I knew. I flipped through another few pages. They were filled with the same beautiful writing, but none of the words jumped out at all. A few pages further the writing changed. It was no longer using the same alphabet. These pages were written in symbols I also didn’t recognize.

I slid the book back onto the shelf and tried one from the shelf above. I discovered this one was the same red color once I brushed off the dust, so I quickly moved onto another that was yellow. If there was some sort of color coding, I might as well move through the different types.

Like the red book, the only marking on the cover of this one was that same flame. After flipping through a few pages, I hit the same problem. I couldn’t read a word of it. I returned the book. Even if the books were illegible to me at least I knew, thanks to the small flame symbols, I hadn’t ended up in this room by random chance.

I considered pulling more books down, but the light from under the door beckoned, reminding me this room didn’t exist in isolation.

I walked slowly, far more cautiously than I ever normally would. It’s not that I’d always been reckless, but I normally charged ahead before my nerves could catch up.

This time my nerves did catch up, and I tapped the doorknob with my finger to make sure it wasn’t hot, or otherwise affected by a physical spell, before I wrapped my palm around the doorknob. The knob turned easily in my hand, surprising me as I’d anticipated finding it locked. After giving myself a moment to prepare, I pulled on the handle, and the door opened into the room. The hallway outside was one I immediately recognized. There was only one place where I’d seen those polished marble floors before. The Society headquarters. I was back at The Society headquarters. But what room had I just come from? I glanced again at the nondescript worn wood door. It was out of place among the far more ornate doors that lined the hall.

I hurried down the hall, turning at the fork toward the hallway where Allie and I both worked. I had to find her, or Levi, or someone to warn them. Maybe I didn’t really understand the threat, but it was a threat all right, and they needed to be prepared. They also needed to send help for Wyatt and the others.

I encountered no one in the hall. Evidently my arrival hadn’t been noticed. How I’d even managed to get down there was a question I had no answer to. The basement was protected by the strongest kinds of magic to prevent infiltration.

I knocked on Allie’s door. “It’s me. Are you in?”

There was no answer, so I pushed the door open. I found a completely empty office. Allie’s black cardigan hung neatly on the back of her chair.

I stepped back into the hallway. “Hello?” Someone had to be in. I went next to the front desk. I’d have even been happy to see Geo. Anyone would have been better than nothing.

The desk was empty. The chair pulled back as if someone had been sitting there but had left for a moment with full plans to return.

I went down the next hallway checking everyone’s offices stopping second to last at Jared’s since he was almost always out working in the field. All were empty.

The final office I checked was Levi’s. I expected it to be locked, but it pushed right open. “Levi?” I called into the dark room. I flipped on the lights. Neat piles of papers sat on the edge of his desk. A small black box lay on the other side. I opened the box and smiled. It was a delicate chain with a diamond. No doubt a gift for Allie, but why would he have left it out like that?

Finally, I walked over to the council chamber. It was where the most important meetings were held. I tried the door handles. They didn’t budge. Okay. Maybe there was something going on inside? An urgent meeting? An urgent meeting that included Geo, though? I highly doubted that. Still, I knocked, half expecting the door to be wrenched open. It didn’t move. I put my ear to the door even though I was well aware the double doors, like the rest of the room, were completely sound proof.

I turned, pressing my back against the door. None of this made sense. They never held meetings with everyone on the inside. There should have been guards standing wait both inside and outside the room. This was completely against protocol. Was this all a dream? Maybe I was still in the tunnel? Or a new kind of prison place?

I hurried over to my office. It was unlocked, and the inside was exactly as I’d left it, down to the paper coffee cup in the small wastebasket.

Even the trash was accurate? I ran back to Allie’s office. I pulled open her desk drawer and found her secret stash of candy. I was the only one other than her who knew of its existence. So either this was all real, or I had created this whole thing in my head. No one else could have.

For a second I considered taking the elevator to the main hotel lobby, but I couldn’t do that yet. First I had to figure out if there were any clues in the library room I’d originally found myself in.

I turned the corner and back into the hall half expecting the worn wooden door to be missing like it usually was, but the door still stood open just as it had when I left.

As soon as I stepped into the room, I noticed a flicker of light in the left most corner. I followed tentatively. Once again, I was following a light, and I really hoped Troy was right about lights being good things for me.

The light suddenly disappeared, leaving me in the dark corner. “Great. Absolutely great.” I pressed my hands into the wall where I’d last seen the light, and I heard a small creak, as if a gear was turning. The wall started to give, pushing back to reveal a whole secret section of the room. Smack dab in the middle of this newly discovered space was a narrow spiral staircase. I looked down the stairwell, noticing the barest flicker of the light again.

Even more than the secret section of the room, the stairs surprised me. New Orleans is below sea level. Basement aren’t common things to find, let alone basements below basements. There was a reason the dead were buried in tombs above the ground.

The flickering light was fading, so I shook off my wariness and descended the stairs as slowly and quietly as I could.

Each step my feet touched gave me momentary relief. The step hadn’t given way, and it hadn’t disappeared.

Finally, I reached another stone floor. The light was even further away now. I sped up. This wasn’t the time to hold back. But I wasn’t going to be stupid. I let my Pteron side take over, releasing my wings, and soaking up the increased strength that always came from the transformation.

The light disappeared, sending me back into deep darkness. I saw only the darkness as I waited for my eyes to adjust.

A few blinks later something dark came into focus in my periphery.

I looked closer. It appeared to be a dark cloud. As I watched the cloud became two and then three, until at least a half dozen floated toward me. I looked around for the light again, but I saw no sign. The dark clouds grew closer and closer.

I stepped backward only to find the dark clouds had encircled me. They were penning me in. Okay, this was nothing I couldn’t handle. Sometimes an offense is the best defense. In a flash, I punched at one. My fist slid straight into the vapor. I tried to pull my arm out, but I couldn’t. Instead the cloud grew larger, the small clouds were all merging into one again.

I pulled back on my arm as hard as I could, but the dark shape only tightened around me until I was stuck in the middle of the mass. My throat tightened. There was no air. This thing was going to suffocate me.

No. I felt the heat and knew the glow had started from deep inside me. The tightness lessened, slowly at first before the blackness completely disappeared all at once in a flash of light.

Without looking I knew I was glowing bright. Take that dark blobs. Or Shadows. That’s what they were. My brother had warned me about them. But they only took orders from a stronger power. They didn’t work on their own.

I readied myself, throwing off the short-lived release, as I prepared to take on whoever had sent the horrible creatures.

I was a Pteron and a Lightness. I could do anything. Nothing could hurt me.

In the distance, I saw the flickering light again. I hurried after it, surprised the light seemed to be steady and standing in one place.

I moved toward it, urging my legs on even as fear seeped into my brain.

I was so close, and then I stopped short. The flickering light came from a candle.

I came face to face with the candle’s owner, a man wearing a charcoal gray suit and a matching fedora hat. He wore fancy dress shoes and a bright red tie. He looked youngish, maybe in his thirties, but his dark eyes somehow suggested he was even older. He stared at me, his mouth falling open. His eyes were wide and full of confusion and fear. “Now? They’ve sent you now?”