Bitten by Cupid(10)
Mirabeau might be concerned about someone’s following them, but so far there had been no sign of that. He was more concerned about running into more underground crazies wandering the sewers. While Tiny felt bad for them, he didn’t feel so bad that he was willing to risk one of the girls getting hurt.
Chapter Four
Mirabeau paused when Stephanie did and glanced expectantly toward Tiny. He had the map out again and was peering at it, running his flashlight around the area, then peering at the map again, his eyebrows drawing together in a way that made her uneasy. Eager to keep moving and get the hell out of the endless tunnels, she shifted impatiently, then grimaced as her skirt shifted with her. The damned thing was drying and attaching itself to her as it did. So were her panties…and it was damned uncomfortable.
“What is it?” she asked finally, as Tiny repeated the map-checking and area-scanning deal again. She moved around Stephanie to his side to peer at the map.
“I think we took a wrong turn.”
“What?” she gasped with disbelief, her eyes scanning the map. Much to her relief there was a tunnel offshoot on the map just as there was here in the tunnel. Relieved, she said, “No. It was two offshoots after the last turn, then this one we take. We passed two offshoots since the last turn, so we take this one.”
“Yes,” Tiny agreed patiently, then pointed out, “But according to the map there should be another offshoot across from this one and—” He raised the flashlight to shine it over the wall opposite. “No offshoot.”
Mirabeau stared blankly at the solid wall, then at the map, but it didn’t suddenly change. Cursing, she took the map from him and, using her finger, silently backtracked on it, counting off the offshoots they’d passed between each one they’d taken, trying to see where they had made a wrong turn. She retraced their steps all the way back to where she’d been grabbed and fallen.
“Crap,” she breathed unhappily as she stared at the map.
“What?” Tiny asked, leaning close to peer at the map as well.
“Everything seems fine,” she said quietly. “From what I can tell, we took the right turns according to the map. The only thing I can think is…” Mirabeau fell silent and simply pointed to the two tunnels side by side.
“That was back near the beginning, the third turn,” Tiny murmured thoughtfully, looking at where she pointed, then he straightened slightly. “That’s where that guy—”
“Yes,” Mirabeau interrupted on a sigh. “I’m thinking we may have taken the wrong tunnel. If they’re right next to each other, we might have gotten a bit turned around after the attack.”
Tiny cursed and glanced back the way they’d come. Then he sighed, and said, “We’ll have to backtrack. See if that’s where we—”
“But that was hours ago,” Stephanie protested, moving up beside them to peer at the map as well. “Look, it’s practically all the way back at the beginning. I am not slogging back through these tunnels just to start over again. Besides, what if you’re wrong, and we just counted off wrong at one of the other turns?”
“We didn’t count off wrong,” Mirabeau said quietly. “We’ve both been counting. It has to be that we took the wrong tunnel at that stop.”
“Well, then, maybe the map is wrong,” Stephanie argued desperately. “People make mistakes, even Lucian must make mistakes once in a while.” Her desperation turning to rebellion, she crossed her arms, and snapped, “I am so not backtracking. You’ll have to knock me out and carry me because I am not walking back all that way only to start again. I’m tired and hungry and sick to death of this stink. I want a shower and a bed and blood. I just want out of here,” she ended with frustration.
Silence filled the tunnel as Stephanie snapped her mouth closed. She was sulking. Mirabeau didn’t much care so long as she did it silently. Her mind was taken up with the words “shower and a bed and blood” all of which she rather wanted herself. They hadn’t been in the tunnels for hours, maybe an hour and a half, and she suspected that had they taken the right tunnel, they would have been out of the sewers long ago.
“A bed?” Tiny asked quietly. “It’s only a little after midnight, Stephanie. That’s the middle of the day for you now, isn’t it?”
The teenager clucked with disgust. “We aren’t vampires, Tiny. Heck, I don’t even have fangs, and I don’t stay up all night and sleep all day. As long as I avoid the sun, I can stay up during the day. Besides, there’s nothing on television at night, just old movies and crappy shows selling crappy gizmos.” She sighed. “I usually go to bed by midnight or so.”