“The heat coming off the road keeps the fog in motion,” Niten said. “There is no reflected heat coming off the soil and stones on our sides, so the fog is still.”

“So that’s how you keep the car on the road.” He nodded, impressed.

Niten smiled. “Well, that and the white line running down the middle.”

Perenelle leaned forward and breathed deeply. “But this is no ordinary fog is it?”

Aoife blinked and then she slowly and deliberately turned to look at the Sorceress. “No, it is not natural. He knows we’re coming. Any moment now, we will shift…”

Even as she was speaking, the smooth hiss of tires on concrete changed to rattling grit.

“… from this world into his Shadowrealm.”

Josh frowned. Was it his imagination or was the fog clearing? He was turning to ask Sophie when, in the space of a single heartbeat, it vanished altogether, revealing a lush pastoral landscape that swept down to a distant blue sea. The road was now little more than a dirt track, lined on either side with fruit trees, only neither the trees nor the fruits they bore were at all familiar. He looked over the back of the seat at his sister and raised an eyebrow. Where are we? he mouthed.

She shook her head. Safe.

He was about to ask her how she knew, but he saw the way her eyes darted toward Aoife and understood instinctively that Sophie didn’t want Scathach’s twin to know the extent of her knowledge.

The landscape looked similar-very similar-to his own world, but there were subtle differences. The trees were just a little larger, the grass taller and all the colors sharper and brighter. He leaned forward and looked up into the sky. It was a bright eggshell blue streaked with white clouds, but he could see no sign of the sun. He ducked his head to get a better look out the windshield, then searched the sky. “There’s no sun,” he whispered in awe.

“That’s because this is the realm of Prometheus,” Nicholas answered from the backseat. “We’re underground, in the Shadowrealm once known as Hades.” He coughed, the sound wet in his chest, and sat back again.

“Everything you see around you is an illusion-remember that,” Perenelle finished.