Sumi gave Jack an approving look. “You’re like unnerving fudge with a chewy creepy center. School is a lot more boring without you there.”

“Perhaps, but I wager there have been fewer murders.” They had reached a rickety wooden suspension bridge, stretched across a canyon wide enough to almost qualify as an abyss. Jack pulled the horses to a stop again. This time, she tied off the reins before sliding out of the wagon and announcing, “We walk from here. Follow me, and try not to plummet to your deaths.”

“Ha, ha,” said Christopher flatly. When Jack didn’t laugh, he frowned. “That was a joke, right?”

“I’m not a comedian,” said Jack.

“We should at least go one at a time,” said Christopher. “That doesn’t look entirely stable.”

“We can’t.” Jack gave him one of those unnervingly anxious looks, the ones that seemed to be ticking off her remaining capacity to cope. “Splitting up here, this close to the Drowned Gods … when they feed, they feed on the unprotected. We go together, or we’re likely to disappear alone.”

“That’s fun,” said Sumi.

“I’m well aware of the situation, thank you,” said Jack, and stepped out onto the bridge.

It was narrow enough to sway with every step she took, and while there were rails, of a sort, they were made of braided rope, and didn’t seem nearly sturdy enough to keep her from losing her balance and falling to the water below. The water far below: the drop from the bridge to the surface looked to be around eighty feet, and there were … things … writhing in those depths, things that would have looked like the arms of an octopus, if not for the fact that each of them was easily as big around as Cora’s torso.

“This is terrible,” said Sumi brightly. “I mean, we knew it was going to be terrible when we followed a mad scientist and her dead girlfriend to a horrifying murder world, but this is bonus terrible. This is the awful sprinkles on the sundae of doom.” She skipped out onto the bridge, not seeming to care when it twisted and swayed under her feet. Christopher followed, his bone flute already in his hands, fingers moving through silent arpeggios to calm his nerves.

Kade was the last to leave solid ground for the swaying causeway. As bad as the bridge had looked from solid ground, it was worse. It shifted. It shook. The boards were damp from the ocean air, and his feet slipped and slid with every step, making him cling even harder to the ropes. If he missed a step, he’d fall, and if he fell—