“That’s it?” Silvie looked back. “We missed something! There has to be another tunnel!”

She spun and headed back, chasing the sound of her breathing now. Miranda was torturing Johnis in a land far away, while they wasted their time here beneath a cabin outside Paradise, Colorado.

“Silvie!”

She plowed on. The quicker they covered this search and left Paradise, the better. Nothing here looked like Teeleh.

“Silvie!”

She spun back. “What?”

“Do you hear that?”

Silvie heard her own wheezing. Her thumping heart. “No.”

“There, listen!”

Silvie held her breath and listened. Then she heard it, a very faint, high-pitched squealing sound that sent a streak of terror down her spine.

She studied the dirt ceiling. The walls. It seemed to come at them from every direction from far away. Her eyes met Karas’s, round like saucers. The squealing was louder now that they were perfectly still.

“What is that?” Silvie breathed.

“I . . . I don’t know.” She shoved her gun into her belt, leaned her ear close to the wall, and listened. “It’s . . .” But she didn’t know more.

Silvie drew her light slowly over the rough dirt walls. She walked farther down the tunnel. The sounds faded.

She walked back slowly. “It’s louder here. Something’s behind the walls. There has to be . . .”

Silvie suddenly saw the demarcation along the tunnel wall, rockier along a five-foot section between her and Karas. She stepped up and placed her ear between the rocks.

The squealing was now distinct, like the wailing of a million insects or lobsters, protesting their capture.

“You’re right,” Karas said.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” She headed back down the tunnel. “But we’re going to find out.”

IT TOOK THEM NEARLY AN HOUR TO DIG THROUGH THE TUNNEL wall using shovels from the helicopter. Silvie swung her spade, fighting to hold her frustration in check. It was clear that Johnis wasn’t here because the earth had been undisturbed for a long time.

The books probably weren’t here either. They couldn’t be so fortunate as to find them so quickly after arriving in the Histories. Then again, Karas had been searching for over ten years. She and Johnis had just shown up near the end of the search. Either way, something was here. The more they dug, the louder the squealing sounded.

“We should just use dynamite and be done with this!” Karas mumbled.

“Dynamite?” Silvie pried up on a rock, attempting to pluck it from the earth, but it remained stuck. “What’s dynamite?”

The rock suddenly rolled. Not toward her, but away. Into darkness beyond.

The squealing became a faint, but much clearer, high-pitched screaming. Silvie went rigid. The sound of the boulder rolling down a slope was unmistakable. It landed far below with a dull thump.

The squealing stopped.

Karas scrambled for one of the torches. Shone it through the hole. The beam revealed nothing but darkness. And an eerie silence.