CHAPTER 130

These lines were proof that the real Radley house had been there, but was now gone. She ran her fingers along the dotted lines, wondering just where it had gotten off to. All this extra-planar data must have been so confusing for Cyrus, but she wasn't about to fill him in on the truth of the house. It not only wasn't her place to do so, but she was still fuzzy on plenty of the details herself.

"But all of these were trivial," Cyrus continued. "I could detect their essence, but it's something that will fade with time. I was lucky to spot them at all, a function of how recent the event was. Still confusing as hell, by the way, that you won't tell me what happened, but no matter. Now, the big red one in the backyard is far more interesting."

"How so?"

He tilted his head back and forth as if lost in thought. Or maybe there was a gap in the fibers and he was trying to get a good look at her. Just in case, she held perfectly still.

"Two scars, fairly large, one on top of the other. I imagine this place had magical connections to somewhere else, which I would love to discuss--"

"Nope." This came from Sofia. "We aren't talking about us right now. Answer the queen's question."

Cyrus groaned in annoyance. "Fine. The big iron gate you have out back was the boundary for somewhere big. That was no casual portal to somewhere else, I can tell you that much. These other marks I made were for little things, such as connecting one place to another. This, however, is like a giant scar on space-time that goes somewhere outside of, well, here. Like, this reality. What interests me the most about it is that I can see that someone stretched it open and used it very recently."

"How so?" Now, this was interesting. If she remembered correctly, the gate went to the Underworld itself.

"Because of the overlap. When I was doing my experiments, I was detecting a portal inside of another portal, which is impossible for so many reasons. So I have a theory that--" Cyrus sneezed, then shook in his hood. "Oh, c'mon! This is just disgusting!"

Eulalie held back laughter as Cyrus shifted the hood around, clearly trying to wipe himself off. She didn't care if it was another attempt to remove the hood, it was pretty funny.

"Okay, I was going to give you an in-depth analysis of extra-dimensional folding, but I need to clean myself up. This is nasty!"

"Give me the TLDR."

"The what now?"

Eulalie rolled her human eyes. Her spider eyes stayed focused on the mage. "The Too Long, Didn't Read version."

"This must be a millennial thing," he muttered. "You're all too damn impatient. In short, I suspect that someone folded another space inside of the first one. A bubble in a bubble, if you will. The portal at the gate went somewhere large enough that it was far more convenient to stretch the portal itself out and just shove everything through, then let it snap back into place and gobble up whatever was taken. Kind of like how I'm using the inside of my hood to wipe snot off my face instead of a tissue or a rag." Cyrus leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest.

Fascinating. So instead of the Radley house being moved, another dimension had been stretched over it and then closed off. Eulalie's fingers tapped a rhythm on the desk as she pondered the implications of what this meant. Whoever had done this would have to be insanely powerful. And if they were, then why not just attack the house? Why did it need to be moved in the first place?

Sofia gasped at the revelation and grabbed Suly's arm hard enough that her knuckles popped. The dullahan winced, then yanked his arm away to rub the injured area.

"Ye damn'd giant women and yer man hands," he muttered as he shook his arm and took a step toward Cyrus. "Okay, I be thinkin' we be done here. Let's be takin' care of yer bogies."

"Thank you." Cyrus held up a hand and was led away by Sulyvahn, who would take him over to the Radley house. Though devoid of magic, it still had plumbing that worked and Cyrus wouldn't accidentally see Eulalie.

"We need to get a hold of Ratu," Sofia said. "If Cyrus is right, then the others are trapped in the Underworld."

"Hmm." Eulalie pondered this with her chin in her hand. "If so, then why haven't they escaped?"

"You can't think of it as a local thing. The Underworld is infinitely large. They may be stuck somewhere millions of miles from here, or ten feet away behind a magical boundary. It isn't somewhere you can just casually escape. And even if they could escape, without a guide, you can't go more than a hundred feet without getting lost in the fog. There is also the problem of roaming demons."

Eulalie chewed her lip in contemplation. She couldn't worry about every possible iteration of the Underworld issue. "Let's just focus on solutions rather than potential problems. If they are trapped in the Underworld, how do we find them?"

"We could ask Cerberus, but..." Sofia frowned. "Last I checked, she only listens to Mike and Lily. And her gate is disabled."

"Yeah, well..." Eulalie looked at a nearby rat, who stared at her with eager eyes. "The rats can do it."

"They can't, actually. The rules for building portals have their limitations, and the Underworld is one of them." Sofia moved close by and knelt down so that she was eye to eyes with Eulalie. "However, I bet Ratu will have some ideas. If we can somehow reconnect the gate, we can at least speak with Cerberus and figure out our options. Maybe she can sniff out the house?"