Yet every time she started to drift off, the result was the same. The whimpers, the pleas, the moans and grunts of anguish seemed to drift into her awareness, until it was all she could hear, blotting out even the sounds of her own dreams. She heard the wereverine’s brazen taunts between screams of agony, the phoenix’s confused voice, rising in fear and pain, the bastet calling for his children, the various fey, their tremulous voices alternating between flinging insults and offering bribes. Hundreds of voices. More voices than they held in the prison below, Imelda knew. It’s in my head, Imelda thought. There was one voice in particular, though, that made her blood feel like acid in her veins when she heard it. When it first came, Imelda started awake, heart thundering in her chest, and laid there in the dark hum of silence, wondering if this was what it felt like to lose one’s mind. He’s not in the basement, Imelda thought. He’s not. After she heard the voice of her Padre cracking with tears for the third time that night, however, Imelda climbed out of bed and threw on her clothes. She barely took the time to knot the laces of her boots before she was out the door and rushing down the hall to the keycode-locked basement.
