Labyrinth (Book 5) by Kat Richardson

officer was looking us over but seemed satisfied we were just a couple out walking their dog. I was grateful Chaos was keeping still in the darkness under my collar—no one would believe we were out walking the ferret. We needed to keep up the illusion and negate their interest by moving along. Investigating the site of Simondson’s death would have to wait.
    I glanced at Quinton as if I were irritated by the delay. “Is he ready to go?”
    “I think he’s done for now.”
    I nodded and walked down the other set of steps, the one farthest from the cops and more shadowed by the freeway ramp overhead. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
    Quinton shrugged and twitched the leash again. Grendel stood up, wagging his tail at the prospect of moving; his doggy grin broke out and he panted in excitement. Quinton just nodded to the cops and walked past to catch up to me, the dog trotting alongside. We strolled off under the freeway as the patrolmen gave us one last look and dismissed us from their minds to go back to their beat.

EIGHT
    A s we walked away from the policemen, I felt the hot/cold presence of Simondson’s ghost in my pocket, thrumming in the metal box. Grey things whispered in my ear, not quite comprehended, not quite ignored. “Are we clear?” I asked Quinton.
    He bent down and adjusted the dog’s leash, shooting a look back toward the old brewery under the cover of his long coat. “Yup. They’re checking out the bar up the street.”
    I lifted the ferret out of my collar and she made a disgusted chittering sound. “Don’t give me that, you furry knee sock. You almost got us in trouble.”
    “How?” Quinton asked. “I didn’t see her doing anything.”
    “She was wiggling down my back trying to get into my pocket with the box full of ghost.” I put my free hand into the pocket in question. As my fingers brushed the metal surface, an electric shock ran up my arm and with it came a shriek of sound. Chaos made a high-pitched bark and twisted in my hand as I jerked, consumed in the moment of noise.
    My grip failed and Quinton grabbed the ferret, tucking her into one of his own pockets before reaching to catch me as my knees buckled. I pushed him away, afraid the shattering noise in my head would envelop him, too. The shouting, muttering cacophony meant nothing, a jumble of sounds and words running over one another, breaking apart in my mind like exploding fireworks. I pulled my hand out of my pocket, clasping both of them together at my chest, bending as if I’d been punched by a heavy fist. The sound fell away slowly, leaving a single word in its fading echo in my mind: “ maiandros .”
    Quinton hooked his arm around me against my will and hauled me upward, the dog dancing alongside us. I braced for another blast of uncanny sound, but it didn’t come as he moved me along. “Are you all right? Can you breathe now?”
    I sucked in air, stunned to realize I was almost faint from lack of oxygen. I’d blown out my breath when the sound hit, as if I had, indeed, been physically struck in the gut. I nodded and settled my breathing into a normal rhythm, pulling out of his arm to walk on my own. But I stayed close. “I don’t know what happened. Did you hear anything?” I asked.
    “No. What did you hear? I mean, that is what happened, isn’t it? You heard something . . . weird?”
    “More like I got hit by the sound, but it doesn’t make any sense. What I heard doesn’t mean anything to me. It was just . . . words and noise....” I had a feeling, a certainty. . . . “We have to go back and get into that building. There’s some . . . information there.”
    “How do you know?” he asked, but he turned around with me and started walking back to the brewery office with Grendel’s leash in one hand and the ferret peeking out of his pocket under the other hand.
    “I just do. It’s . . . like the sound told me something I know but can’t understand in words. It makes my head ache, though.” I rubbed