He squeezed her hand. "This isn't how I expected to end up, you know?"

"Guys, I hate to break up your moment, but we have to get the hell out of here. Those weren't the only guards in the place, and I can guarantee others are headed up those stairs right now." Ziggy ran toward the section of wall that had rotated to reveal the Oracle. "They'll be behind here, too. Are you ready for a fight?"

"It's all we've been doing for the past week. I think we'll manage." Max looked at Bella. "What about you?"

"Have you ever known me to back down from a fight?" She smiled encouragingly at him. "Even half-crippled?"

"Listen, guys, if we make it through this, you gotta do something for me, okay?" Ziggy held Max's gaze so long it became a little uncomfortable.

Still, Max nodded. "Sure, kid. I think I've got a pretty good idea what you want."

"Good." Ziggy put his hand on one of the wooden panels. "Ready?"

Max took Bella's hand and squeezed it. "I love you."

"I have always told you that." She smiled up at him. "We will be fine. It is not our destiny to die today."

"Good. Then let's kick some ass."

Ziggy pushed on the panel, and they started to move.

Chapter Twenty-Six
Grave

At the end, we went underground. Literally.

We stopped at the apartment briefly, where Nathan loaded up on blood and weapons, then he took me down to the bookshop. He put a Closed for Remodeling sign on the door and locked us in, then began pushing aside the counter. I wondered what he was doing, but it was from a faraway place, and not enough to motivate me to speak. The counter, which I'd always assumed was fixed to the floor, moved aside after a lot of work on Nathan's part. Beneath it, a trapdoor slid aside to reveal a narrow wooden staircase leading into a subbasement.

It was what I'd heard people in the area refer to as a Michigan basement, with a dirt floor and stones packed into concrete to form the rough walls. There was a sleeping bag and a cooler, a camping lantern and a utility sink connected to a single hose that disappeared into the floorboards above. Nathan unrolled the sleeping bag and helped me into it, and I could feel the dampness from the floor seeping into my bones already. He went back up the stairs and I heard him pulling the counter in place to cover the hole before he slid the trapdoor closed.

"We'll be fine for now," he said, taking the stairs faster than he would have if they'd been a bit less steep. "Max will be on his way, and we have enough blood for a couple days. And anyone who comes into the shop probably won't… " He stopped when he looked at me, and cursed.