“Uh, right. Conveniently located first-floor windows, which I completely missed as an escape option. Duh.”

“Perhaps not. They appear broken and boarded from here. Yes?”

I nodded. “This one’s cleared of glass, though, and I bet I could break the boards.” I went to put my hand out…and hit a solid wall. The illusion flickered and I saw the wall.

“No window,” Gabriel said. “Now, take three steps forward, staying within my sight.”

I did, and when he called, “Stop there,” I did…and his voice came from in front of me.

“All right,” he said. “You’re back in this hall. You don’t see me, do you?”

“No, but I hear you in front of me. Hold on.”

I closed my eyes and ran my hand along the window, picturing wood instead. When I opened my eyes, that’s what I saw—the original hallway, with the hole and Gabriel on the other side.

I returned to him. “Okay, so I’m caught in a vision maze. You’re not.”

“I have an idea,” he said.

“Excellent.” I grabbed the side of the hole and swung down into it.

He gave an alarmed, “Olivia!”

I dropped and then looked up. “Yes.”

He sighed. “That was not my idea.”

“Nope, it’s mine. Now I just need to re-pile this stuff and come up on your side.”

“Just climb what’s there and reach.”

I did, and he grabbed my wrists. We locked together, and he said, “On the count of—” and disappeared, me tumbling back as his hold vanished.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Gabriel?” I peered through the hole to the dark first floor, no sign of him. “Well, that was too easy,” I muttered, and started piling the debris. I was adding another piece when Gabriel appeared—the bottom half of him, at least, and then the rest as he jumped down into the hole with me.

“I don’t think that helps,” I said.

“Given the choice, I would rather be lost in the vision maze with you than stuck alone on the other side.”

“That’s really kind of sweet.”

“It’s practical.”

“Also sweet. Own it. I won’t tell anyone. Okay, so we’ll both climb up on the other side and…”

He kept walking, heading for the exit door.

“That still doesn’t open,” I said.

He took hold of the knob and murmured something in Welsh. And it opened.

“Huh,” I said. “So that’s like an ‘open sesame’ for sluagh-locks?”

“Hmm.”

I didn’t ask how he thought of it—I suspected he didn’t know, either, only that the urge sprang from deep in his Gwynn-memory bank.

Not surprisingly, the door led into another basement room. We continued past a furnace, shining the light this way and that until…

“Stairs,” I said. “Which will lead right back to the hole again.”

“Don’t even say that.”