After a brief discussion with some of the others, all of them agreed the shapeshifting sniffing idea was the one they should try first. They split into smaller groups so as not to arose too much suspicion and each group followed a shifted crew member through the city. They each started from a different location. Convinced the vampires had something to do with Sirius’s disappearance, Shiv started his group from near where he thought Sandy and Sirius might have had their conversation. One group started from the ship. The rest of them fanned out in different directions from the hotel.

  The agreement was to meet back at the ship in two hours. Amanda wasn’t sure how that was going to work given most of them didn’t wear watches, but they all seemed to have a good sense of time and half an hour this way or that never seemed to matter much out on the sea.

  Soon, Amanda, along with Pierre and Alice were following Thatch through the city tunnels. Amanda wasn’t sure how regular visitors found their way around given there were no signposts anywhere. For a city constructed inside natural rock, the place was surprisingly varied as if every part of the city had been constructed by a different person with a different idea of what good architecture should look like, as well as what was practical. Some sections were obviously newer than others and she was certain someone with a better knowledge of structural style probably could have guessed the decade based on the construction.

  Some hallways were narrow enough that larger men, like Alice, had to turn sideways to walk down them.

  “Gods dammit Thatch! Wait up!” Alice called out to his brother as he squeezed down one particularly narrow staircase. “Are all vampires freakishly skinny?” he asked as he popped out the bottom into a rounded room with angelic figures carved into the walls.

  The figures were split in two, one half a soft and fluffy design with feathery wings, the other half more bat-like with wicked sharp features. Their eyes were hollowed such that they appeared to be watching you no matter where you moved. Amanda found them very disconcerting.

  “I’ve never seen a fat vampire, have you?” Pierre asked.

  Alice shook his head.

  They all looked around. There were at least five corridors branching off from this junction and Thatch was nowhere in sight. He returned a moment later, and gave them all an impatient look before darting off again.

  Pierre had no trouble keeping up but Amanda kept finding herself having to jog, while Alice spent most of his time cursing at the impracticalities of the current architecture for one his size.

  Soon, they’d gone up and down so many stairs and corridors that Amanda wasn’t sure where they were in relation to where they’d started. She couldn’t have said if they were higher or lower, nearer the sea or further from it. At least they had Thatch to find their way back, assuming he didn’t leave them behind.

  Eventually they found him shifted back into his usual form and standing by a wooden door at the end of a long corridor. “It’s locked,” he told them as they approached. “But I’m pretty sure he went through here.”

  “Ow!” Alice cried as his head bumped the ceiling. The architecture had changed again. This area was a lot less fancy, no decorative statues and the texture of the walls was rough and unsmoothed as if someone had simply dug it out and left it like that. The width of the hallway had widened and the ceiling had dropped.

  “Now this is ridiculous,” Alice said as he was forced to stoop. “I can understand the narrowness given how thin most vampires are but not a single one I’ve seen so far is this short. They’re all tall as poles.”

  Amanda frowned at his comparison and resisted the urge to ask him how tall a pole was. The urge did not last long, she was too worried about Sirius.

  “It looks like it’s been dug recently,” Thatch remarked as he studied the walls. “It’s definitely different from the rest of the city.”

  “The whole city looks different though,” Amanda replied, trying to see whatever it was he saw. She gave up quickly and instead turned her attention to the door. It had hole where a key was supposed to go but a twist of the handle confirmed Thatch’s remark that it was locked.

  Thatch shook his head. “Nah, everywhere else has some design to it. This though, this area’s just been dug out for nothing more than practical reasons.

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  “This ain’t practical.” Alice pointed at the ceiling.

  “It is lazy though,” Pierre replied. He pointed at a spot on the ground near the wall. “Something’s been stored here recently. You think that’s maybe why it’s so wide? Cause it had to be?”

  Thatch shrugged.

  Amanda pulled the locked door open a crack. She peered through the gap. It was pitch black inside. No lighting whatsoever.

  “How’d you do that?” Thatch whispered.

  “Melted the lock,” she replied. She figured Thatch would have been able to smell if there was anyone else nearby so she pulled the door open wider and summoned a flame in the palm of her hand.

  The room beyond the door was very wide but not very long. Only a few paces away was another door just like the one she’d just opened. To the left and right a narrow walkway continued off for quite a distance in both directions before reaching a sharp 90 degree bend. Either side of the walkway was just enough space for a single line of crates and barrels. The room smelt of blood.

  “Careful,” Pierre warned. He appeared right behind her a moment later.

  Behind him Amanda could hear Thatch and Alice bickering about something. They often bickered about things, very rarely about anything important.

  “What do you mean you read in in your book on architecture? You don’t have a book on architecture,” Alice could be heard saying.

  “Yes I do,” Thatch replied.

  There wasn’t much room in this space for them to all fit but despite the presence of the other door, Amanda was too curious to move forward yet. Something told her to look in the barrels. She pulled the lid off one.

  It was blood. Well, there was nothing suspicious about that given the city they were in but still her gut was telling her something was off.

  In the span of less than a minute Thatch and Alice, who were still in the other room, had moved on to a new topic.

  “You never tell me what you’re doing anymore,” Alice complained.

  “Yes I do,” Thatch replied.

  “You didn’t tell me about the plan to rescue those snakes.”

  “Oh, don’t start up on that again. You gotta get over it already. I told you that was top secret.”

  “Amanda,” Pierre whispered. He’d gone to the crates on the other side of the room, ones which were more square and less likely to hold blood. He was holding the lid open on one.

  Amanda walked over to see what he had found.

  Silence made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. And that wasn’t all that sent a shiver down her spine. Inside the crate were guns, rifles just like the ones their attackers had been carrying.

  She met Pierre’s eyes and she could see the worry she felt reflected there. They had stumbled into their enemies camp and at some point Sirius had been here too. Thatch had smelt him.

  That was when she realised what else was wrong. The silence. She could no longer hear Thatch and Alice arguing.

  She turned toward the door to see what had made them go so quiet all of a sudden.

  “Watch out!”

  Pierre’s warning came too late.

  No sooner had she started to turn than something black was suddenly thrust into her face. There was the smell of something sweet and then nothing.

  “Amanda. Psst, Amanda.”

  As Amanda came to she rapidly became aware that she wasn’t lying on the ground. Her hands were above her head in what was a most uncomfortable position. She tried to pull her arms down and found she couldn’t. Dammit, she was shackled to the wall again.

  The surrounding scene came into focus. She was indeed shackled to the wall, this time the shackles were lower down such that she could be seated on the floor. She and several others.

  “Oh good, you’re awake,” said the voice. Then a little louder, “She’s awake.”

  Amanda recognised the voice. It was Sonny, the crewman who was still learning to drive the boat. He’d been part of Shiv’s search group. As she looked around she saw more faces she recognised. There was Shiv, as well as Crick and Dickie who all been in Shiv’s scouting group, Dickie being the shapeshifter. Thatch and Alice were also shackled to the wall. And right down near the end was Sirius.

  He smiled at her. A smile of relief. For a moment she felt the same. He was alive and they had found him. Then she remembered they were all shackled to the wall.

  The room was otherwise empty but well lit by what appeared to be natural sunlight. They were facing the sea in a way that suggested the shackles had been placed along this wall intentionally so that once the sun got high enough in the sky, the window in the upper wall across from them would let it in and whoever was shackled to the wall would get hit with the full force of the sunlight directly.

  As far as Amanda knew, even indirect sunlight could be enough to cause severe burns to a vampire. Their captors however did not appear to be vampires. Further down the room a group of about eight people all dressed in dark colours were bunched together whispering.

  It was not the fact that they seemed unbothered by the daylight that gave them away as witches, for the right kind of sunscreen easily solved that problem, at least for a few hours. Nor was it the colour of their skin, even though they bore a range of skin tones, some too dark for a vampire. It wasn’t the colour of their eyes. Amanda could not see those from her position on the floor some distance from them. What gave them away was the fireball one of them casually toyed with as he talked with his companions.

  “What are they saying?” asked Alice.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Thatch.

  “We should have brought Griff with us. He’d be able to hear them.”

  Thatch nodded. “I suppose it was too much to hope for a monologue of their plans.”

  Instead of speaking to the prisoners, the group soon left.

  “They’re fire islanders,” Shiv said once the group was gone.

  “You can’t know that just cause one of them’s a firestarter,” replied Sonny. He glanced at Amanda and then quickly looked away again.

  But for once Amanda had to agree with Shiv. Given what Sirius had told her of the city’s history with the fire islands, for once the firestarting was suspicious.