A loud snuffling noise reaches us from no more than two feet above my head. I suck in a breath, heart pounding so loud that I’m certain Sel can hear it. The question is, can the hellfox above us? I pray that it can’t, because if Sel has chosen to hide rather than fight, it means he doesn’t think he can beat these creatures. The other two foxes join the first. We freeze in the darkness while the three demons try to sniff us out. Their paws are silent, but the weight of their aether bodies sends soil showering down over my hair, down the back of my T-shirt. I shut my eyes and let the pebbles rain over my cheeks and Sel’s fingers, still covering my mouth. What if they start digging? My mind races, questions coming faster. Do they know the hidden door is here? Can they sense the aether that hid it, just like Sel can sense the aether that makes them solid? Wait. Why didn’t Sel notice the foxes approaching in the first place?

I must make some sound, or maybe my breathing changes against his knuckles, because he leans against me as if in warning. My eyes snap open—and meet his glowing yellow ones in the dark. Definitely a warning. One I can read clear as day: Don’t. Move.

After a minute, the sounds of their snouts grow distant as the hellfoxes move on. Sel waits a beat for good measure, then a second, and releases me. He snaps his fingers, and a small blue flame appears over his palm, illuminating the cave he’s put us in. No, not a cave. A tunnel.

“Let’s move.” He walks forward, the blue mage flame casting eerie shadows against wide exposed roots, crumbling dirt walls, and ancient beams holding the earth up above us.

“Did you just cast a tunnel?”

He doesn’t wait for me to follow, so I have to clamber after him to keep up.

“I revealed a tunnel. The tree trunk is the illusion, and an old one. The founders knew that the university would need to be a public front, so they dug tunnels for easy movement and caves for storage before the campus was built.”

“They dug all these to get around more easily?”

“These are fail-safes. Escape routes. The original Merlins warded them to mask aether so that Shadowborn cannot follow, even above ground.”

I tug my phone out of my pocket, but there’s no cell signal. The battery’s half-dead, so I could use the flashlight, but why drain it when Sel’s lighting the way plenty himself? “Why are we here and not the Lodge? You could have run us back there—”