He peeked out. The cell was old-fashioned, the kind he’d seen in movies like The Man in the Iron Mask. Rough-hewn walls. A door of thick metal bars. The only nods to any kind of civilised living were the toilet and the sink. Omen recognised binding sigils carved into the stone. They were dull, which meant inactive. That was good.

He took out his phone. No signal. Omen, like most other sorcerers on the planet, had boosted it to work anywhere. It was a quick and easy procedure – not even he could have messed it up. But it seemed that prisons operated under different rules. Omen reckoned he was in a considerable amount of trouble now. Trapped, alone and with no way of calling for help, the only things he had to rely on were his own magic and ingenuity.

He was, he realised, totally screwed.

Crawling out from beneath the bed, he did his very best not to hyperventilate. He was suddenly freezing. His hands shook and he looked at the open cell door like it was a mouth waiting to spring shut the moment he passed through.

Slowly, slowly, Omen got to his feet and peeked out. The other cell doors were open, too. Empty. They were empty. For the moment – for the fleeting moment he currently existed in – he was safe. Relatively.

He tucked in his shirt, then walked quietly in the direction Nero had gone. The light out here wasn’t good, and he welcomed the cold shadows. All the better to hide in, my dear. He laughed a little, and the laugh died and his eyes widened. His laugh had sounded a lot like panic.

He clamped both hands over his mouth as a high-pitched whine started up from somewhere within him. He shook his head, but the whine kept growing. The more he tried to stop it, the louder it got. He took a deep breath and balled his fists, thumped them against his forehead while he screwed his eyes shut.

He would not panic. He would not panic. Auger wouldn’t panic in a situation like this and neither would Omen.

The whine, amazingly, went away.

Omen opened his eyes and let out his breath in a slow, controlled manner. He heard voices coming from one direction and so he went the other way. This was not a bad plan. If he could keep walking away from whoever was close, he’d stay safe and undetected until he found a way out. Of a prison. Which were notoriously difficult to leave.