Skye DeVille did not show up with her new blood buddies to enact bloodthirsty revenge on all of us at the office, and the grind of the new coffee machine and the workload as Pepper Smith’s assistant seemed to agree with me just fine. I spent the whole day sorting emails and taking calls, thinking about what Dr Barrett had told me. An entry to the Underworld? Could such a thing be real? Celia had suspected something like what Barrett had told me, but had not known for sure, she’d said. Yes, there had been clues – the cryptic warnings, the strangeness of Spektor, the way the whole suburb preferred to remain hidden. The sounds under the floor, even the sulphur smell in the stairwell. But how could I have guessed the reason for those things? There were so many questions I wanted to ask Barrett, so many things I wished I’d said. Yet despite his claim that he wanted to speak to me again, the evening came and went without his presence, so I didn’t get the chance.
