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“I heard other people on this floor. They aren’t going to be alone… so, you’re probably right. I could create a distraction.”

“Distraction? How?”

“Diaboli don’t just deal with demons. We have magic, too.”

My eyes narrowed. “What kind of magic?”

“The kind that creates a distraction. I’ll make them both hallucinate.”

“And when they start hallucinating out of the blue, what then? The Recondites will know someone’s messed with their minds, and they’ll be on alert.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

I looked to the right, at the wall immediately next to me. I placed my hand on the cold concrete and ran it up and down. The humming, those magic vibrations, they were stronger against the wall. The answer was obvious—I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it until now.

“I do what you brought me here to do,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to take a shortcut inside.” I reached for his hand. Lucien didn’t seem convinced at first, but he took it. “Ready?”

“I’m not sure that I am.”

“You didn’t throw up the first time. You’ll be fine.”

With my hand placed against the wall I concentrated, summoned my power, and quickly turned my body to ephemera. In an instant, Lucien and I were phasing, caught between the material world and the Ether. Transitioning was getting easier, but it was also taxing. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep doing this all night.

This time, instead of phasing as quickly as possible, I pushed us through the concrete wall and held onto my concentration for as long as I could. I needed to see who was in the temple room first. I couldn’t very well just let us both drop into a hornet’s nest of surprised Recondites.

Luckily, the room was empty. I let us both drop, becoming again on the other side of the wall.

It was smaller than I remembered, probably because in the Ether, everything looked a little different—a little warped. It looked like any other small congregation room I had seen on television. The air smelled like burned out candles and old leather. Pews, lined up in two columns, went all the way to the back of the room. There were drapes on the walls with the Recondite symbol, that crown of light on top of a scepter.

Though the room was empty, neither of us felt confident enough to stand upright, so we stayed low.

“Okay, so, where’s the box?” Lucien asked.

“Over there,” I said, pointing at the wall behind the pulpit. “At least… wait.”

“Wait?”

I perked up and scanned the room. “Fuck.”

“Fuck?!”

“It’s not there,” I hissed.

“What do you mean, it’s not there?”

“I mean, it was there, but look—it’s gone.”

Lucien arched his neck. “Fuck!” he hissed. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know. They must have moved it.”

“Why would they have moved—shit, get down!”

He hadn’t had to tell me; I had heard the door open, too. I grabbed his hand again and pulled him toward me, concentrating on calling down my magic and phasing us both the hell out of here. But there was a problem. I managed to shift our bodies into ephemera, but I couldn’t move through the wall.