A Guard creeps into the kitchen. On silent feet, she stalks to the cellar door. I draw my knife and follow her, reaching the top of the stairs just as she sneaks up behind Kai.

I hurl the blade. Kai spins, bow raised, as the Guard tumbles down the last few steps, landing facedown at the bottom with my knife in her back.

Kai blinks up at me and lowers her bow. Neither of us speaks as I bend to retrieve my knife and grab the Guard’s key card from her pocket. We shield our eyes as her magic flares and soars away. When the light fades, I hand over Kai’s backpack and one of the key cards, keeping the other for myself.

I snap on my flashlight, swinging the beam around the cellar. The elevator to the Summer wing sits in the far corner of the room. Resting the flashlight on the floor, I pry the elevator doors open and peer into the shaft. Dank, musty air whips up from below. It smells strongly of minerals and moss, the same closed-in smells that fill the catacombs under the Observatory. An open Coke can sits on a rectangular folding table beside me. I pour the remaining contents onto the floor and pitch the empty can into the shaft.

Kai tiptoes up behind me, both of us listening as the can falls. After a long, long time, I hear a faint echo of it rattling at the bottom.

I scrub my face with a muffled swear. Getting up an elevator shaft as a Season was one thing. Getting down an elevator shaft as a human feels like stepping out of a plane without a parachute. I stare at the heavy cables that disappear into the blackness below. We could slide down them for a story or two . . . but thirty? It’d be far too easy to lose our grip and fall.

Kai hauls a length of rope from her pack. Without warning, she grabs me by the front of my shirt and pulls me toward her, working the rope into a series of knots.

“What are you doing?” I swat at her hands as she runs the rope around my backside and cinches a knot at my groin.

“Making you a harness. I’m strapping you to the cables.”

“No,” I tell her, wishing we had infiltrated the Winter portal instead. “This is a very bad idea.”

“You have a better plan? This is the only way down.” She repeats the process with a second length of rope, creating a sling around her own midsection. Satisfied, she moves to the folding table beside the door. With a sweep of her arm, she clears the clutter from its surface. “Help me with this,” she says as she flips the table and collapses its legs.