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We trekked on, and—to my surprise—didn’t encounter any creatures in the subterranean passageways, supernatural or otherwise, humans included. The first hour passed, then the second. I couldn’t seem to put off the nagging feeling that something was wrong, out of place. Missing, maybe. It took Nikki leaning against a cavern wall during our dinner break to point it out.

“You know, there’s no sound down here at all,” she observed. “We don’t have anything scurrying, dripping, or moving at all in any direction that I can pick up. That’s weird, isn’t it? That seems weird. This is a natural cave. It should make noise.”

Emilio frowned at her, then gusted out a soft breath as he leaned against the cavern wall, the faint hint of words mixing in with the sigh. A prayer, I thought. The guy was praying. That didn’t necessarily make me feel any better.

“We got no movement, that’s for sure, not underground,” Simon confirmed, fiddling with his handheld device. “And I’m not doing any outreach up on the surface right now. It’s too risky. Anyone trying to protect themselves would feel the push.”

“But why?” Nikki asked. “Why aren’t there animals screwing around, or spiders, or any of that? Was there ever? I mean, this is some nice real estate. It seems to me that somebody should be enjoying it.”

Nigel turned toward our guide. “Well, we’re in here far enough, Emilio. We’re not turning back. You can go ahead and tell us the rest.”

Emilio gave a credible job of looking confused. “The rest of what?”

But Nigel wasn’t having any of it. “You were warned against taking this risk, weren’t you? It’s cursed. That’s why there’s no sound. Cursed and possibly booby-trapped. You mollified this shaman, I suspect, only with the explanation of who your traveling partners would be and that we could handle ourselves. Either that or this shaman has real skin in the game, and her urgency overrides her caution. Was Roland her hunter originally?”

I stared at Nigel for a hard second. The Brit had played this one close to his vest, but I didn’t begrudge him that. A cursed path wouldn’t have stopped us, which he well knew. But now that Emilio had gotten us this far, he needed us more than we needed him. At least if he wanted to get back out.

“It—it’s not like that,” Emilio stammered.

Nigel lifted a canteen full of tea toward him. “You’ve got quite the captive audience. What is it we need to know that you haven’t told us?”

“Nothing. That I swear,” Emilio said, seeming almost too relieved at the specific wording of Nigel’s question. “Yes, you are right, Roland was known in these parts, had gone on several hunts for minerals the shaman used in her practice. On one of those hunts, he came up with a chunk of labradorite and several small moonstones, which are not native to the area. The shaman isn’t stupid. She may be a simple woman with simple needs, but she appreciates money as much as the next Connected. She sold what he found, and sold it at quite a profit, then sent him down for more. Then came the time that she needed her plunder more quickly. She told him about these caves, and he walked these paths, telling her about the curse but giving it scant attention. Only then, she had a vision of a ring of great worth. She had to have it, so she sent him running again. She wasn’t the only one. This time, however, Roland didn’t come back.”

I frowned. I still had the ring that had been sent to me via Justice Hall, tucked tightly into my jacket pocket. It didn’t seem like a good idea for me to flash it to Emilio now. “So that’s what everyone is looking for? This ring?”

“No,” Emilio said, surprising me. “The ring was a symbol of a greater bounty. Through her networks, the grandmother shaman in my village learned that shamans all over the world had gotten the same vision. The ring would be where the Moon would be, but the Moon herself was the ultimate goal. The ring was simply a sign that everyone was in the right place.”

Oh, great. Suddenly, me carting this rock back into the lost city didn’t seem like the brightest idea. “It’s a homing device?”

“A beacon,” Emilio agreed, nodding eagerly. “A siren song for the Moon. The shaman believes it is in the lost city, perhaps recently unearthed, and where it beckons, the Moon must follow.

Nikki shifted against the rock wall, taking it all in. “Back to these caves,” she said. “What is this about them being cursed? Cursed by who, and with what?”

“Stories of lost cities in Peru don’t date back solely to the Incan times,” Emilio said. “There were many people who sought refuge in these sacred mountains, many who bartered with the gods for their safe passage and protection.”

“Yeah, well,” Nikki said. “The fact that these cities got lost in the first place doesn’t seem to argue too much for their rep as a safe haven.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Emilio said. “Yes, enemies prevailed on occasion, but not before that which was most sacred was able to be secreted away and protected. In those dark days, the survivors gave up their lives, but not their legacy. The secrets of this land remained.”

“Buried treasure,” Nigel said. “That’s what you’re talking about, treasure of one stripe or another.”

Emilio nodded. “There is no end to the magic of this place, the healing totems and plants, deadly venoms that, mixed in the right way, can transform those who take them into creatures of myth and magic. And protecting all of it was a deep and powerful magic—perhaps the shadows, darkness, and the mystery of the Moon.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “There’s a temple of the moon at Machu Picchu, but it’s tiny compared to the temple of the sun. Moon worship isn’t the primary focus of this area of the world. It never has been.”

“It never will be,” agreed Emilio. “The moon is ever a retiring maiden, hidden behind the brightness of the sun and the glittering strength of the star. She makes her way quietly across the skies, never drawing attention.” He flashed a grin. “Until now. Now she has grown fierce, yes?”

“Right,” I echoed. I stared down the long corridor. About twenty yards ahead, it split off into two directions. “No one else knows of these caverns?”

“The shaman guards her secrets most zealously,” Emilio said. “If she shared it with anyone, it would only be because she thought they had a better chance than we did of getting her what she wanted. That is unlikely, given your involvement, Justice Wilde. But not impossible.”

“She also is not impervious to attack or corruption,” Nigel pointed out. “If someone got to her and extracted the information they needed from her, we could have company down here before we know it.”

“Yeah, but, like I said, I’m not picking up any readings,” Simon said. “So if there are other people down here, they’ve got better toys than I do, which would put them in a highly specialized group.” He stopped short of saying it wasn’t possible, but that assessment was certainly implied. I tended to agree with him.

“Okay, well, we’ll go with that,” I said. “If someone else got to your contact, she didn’t send them this way. That doesn’t mean there isn’t another way into the lost city. We’ll head out in five.”

I moved off from the group, leaving them to reset their packs. Meanwhile, I had some instrument readings of my own to do. I dipped my hand into my pocket, not for the gaudy Moon ring, but for my deck of cards, this time illustrated in a more standard Rider-Waite style. I drew three cards out of the deck at random, pulling them free and flashing them toward the dim light shining from Emilio’s lantern.

The first card that caught my eye was the last I’d drawn, and one I expected. The Moon. I smiled despite myself. Always nice of the cards to let me know I was on the right track. Still, one of the images on the card caught my attention specifically, the dogs howling up at the crescent moon, paying no attention to the lobster beside them. I could almost hear their howls against the dark and lonely night, and I wondered again about the guardians of this place and where they might be.

If Simon couldn’t pick up on their energy readings, who was protecting them? Or where had they gone?

The other two cards drew my focus, but I knew them so well already that I stuffed the pack back into my pocket, willing to chew on the information without further study. The Four of Swords was a card of rest and recuperation. That could also speak to the Moon herself, secreted down here in her lost city, potentially in some sort of long, protracted contemplation. But I’d been through my share of cave systems enough to bet on a slightly different reading. Namely, that we were going to find ourselves knocked flat on our backs before too long, whether by choice or not.

Then there was the final card, one of the few cards I actively disliked in the deck, and one I’d already seen once all too recently. The Five of Swords. You win, but you’re not happy that you win. Or, someone else didn’t want you to win. Or, whatever it is you wanted wasn’t going to be handed to you on a platter, you had to work for it. It was a messy card with messy readings influenced far too much by the cards around it. Only, this wasn’t a traditional reading, and the supporting cards had shed no light on the subject. Feeling incomplete, I drew another card.

The Six of Cups. Something from the past was going to become really, really important.

Here we go.

“Sara,” Nikki called, indicating we were ready to start out again. I turned back toward her, but the card tugged at me, and I glanced down at it more closely. Two children playing in a yard, one handing off a cup to the other. The Six of Cups was the card of nostalgia and childish things, remembering the past, celebrating it, being like a kid again. Something about all this bothered me. My childhood hadn’t been especially fantastic, though I was still luckier than most people in the world. What was it about the past, then, that was important? What was the clue hidden in the card?

The answer was doomed to elude me, as the first sound outside our group in twelve hours broke across the chamber—so loud, it practically shattered my eardrums.

Screaming.