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As Elijah led the way through the narrow, mirror-covered passage, several new questions were added to his ever-growing list: why could Zoe see illusions? Why could her father? And what else was she hiding? He didn't know too much about demons other than what he'd learned through Lyca Corp.'s twisted lessons and what he discovered while killing and escaping, and he admittedly wanted to know more about not only who and what he was but his species, too because clearly, not all demons were the same.

He glanced back at Zoe, who was following behind him beside Jake. "Do all demons have some sort of visual power?" he asked.

"No, it's only a rare bloodline thing," she said.

"So, everyone in your family can see illusions?"

Zoe shook her head. "No, that's just my Papa...and now me, too. My Papa has a few different visual abilities, and my siblings and I all got one of them. The asmodi demons also sometimes develop like...a fraction of an ability, but not always."

"Can't your brother like...heal people or something?" Jake asked.

"Yeah," she said with a nod. "He can heal anything so long as it wasn't caused by silver or deridiuz."

Elijah frowned. "What's deridiuz?"

"It's um...like silver but for Ancients."

The demon nodded and set his eyes on the end of the passage. "What about your cousin, Lucian? Does he have one of these visual powers?"

"No, but his father was an angel, so he can see astral Caeleste."

"Dude can see like ghosts and shit," Jake added.

As he reached the end of the passage, Elijah pushed the wooden door open and stepped out onto a busy sidewalk. He waited for Zoe and Jake to join him, and then he led them through the crowd and over to a large glowing amber crystal. "Where do we find a pilot?" he asked, looking at Jake.

"Uh...from what I've heard, the kind of people we're looking for usually hang around in like...bars and stuff. Loud places with lots of people to cover behind, you know?"

Elijah scoured the street, but he couldn't see any bars. They were going to have to head deeper into the underground city.

"What if we can't find anyone?" Zoe asked as Elijah led the way across the road.

"We'll find someone," Jake said confidently. "I mean look at this place. That guy's probably selling organs," he said, nodding to a cloaked man lurking in an alley between two market stalls. "She's definitely selling plasma," he muttered, pointing to a woman surrounded by crimson-eyed vampires. "And that dude...I mean, come on," he snickered, gesturing to a man on the other side of the street; he had his hood up, looking around cautiously, and when people passed, he discreetly handed them something while taking cash from them.

Elijah continued leading the way up the street, and when they reached the end, he chose to turn left, where a lot more commotion was coming from. He followed the sidewalk, eyeing each building they passed; most of them were take-out places or stores selling alchemy items and potions.

"What about that place?" Zoe asked, pointing to a small casino.

"No," the demon muttered, turning right at the end of the street. "Anyone we find in there is either going to be in debt, an alcoholic, untrustworthy, or all three."

"Or we could find someone real smart," Jake suggested.

Elijah didn't reply. He set his sights on a tavern sitting between a pizza place and a loan office. That might work. "This way," he said, crossing the road.

"Don's Bar," Jake read. "Looks...friendly."

Several drunks were passed out on the pavement, and one guy had fallen asleep with his face in his food. Loud rock music echoed from inside, as did the yelling and laughing.

Zoe hesitated when they reached the door. "Uh...maybe I should wait outside. It sounds like a lot's going on in there."

"No one's waiting outside," Elijah muttered as he pulled the door open. "In."

The girl sighed but followed Jake inside.

Elijah stepped in, too, and as the door closed behind him, he glanced around the mess and commotion. There were people everywhere. Demons, vampires, lycans, and even some sort of spider-human hybrid standing in the back right corner playing darts. The music was so loud that the floor was vibrating, and every table and bar was occupied by yelling, laughing patrons.

"Where do we even start?" Zoe questioned.

"We could ask around," Jake suggested.

The demon led the way over to the bar, which was so crowded that he had to pull several people out of the way, and when they growled and complained, Elijah snarled at them, sending them running. Once he got to the bar, he rested his arm on it and waved the bartender over.

"What can I get you?" the man asked with a smirk.

"I'm looking for a pilot," Elijah said. "Someone who can fly me someplace."

The man threw his towel over his shoulder and pointed through the crowd. "You can find the transporters over in that corner."

Elijah looked to where he was pointing. In the far-left corner, it wasn't as busy; a few people sat in the booths, some with bodyguards watching from nearby. It looked like that area was specifically made for people to barter with transporters, and Elijah felt relieved that he wasn't going to have to search the entire underground for someone.

"We've also got a guy who can make you disappear in the back. And if you want money, loans are in the corner near the dartboard," the bartender explained.

The demon nodded and started heading towards the left corner as Jake and Zoe trailed behind him. But as he was about to approach the brunette woman sitting in the first booth, her bodyguard—a tall, muscular man with no hair on his face or head whatsoever—stepped in front of him and looked him up and down.

"What's your business?" he questioned.

"It's fine, Mark," the woman said and gestured to the seats across the table from her. "Take a seat."

The three of them sat down.

With a curious smile, the woman leaned her arms on the table. "What's the cargo and where's it heading?"

"No cargo," Elijah answered. "Just the three of us. We need to get to a place called The Spear...over The Ice Wall."

The woman stared at him for a moment like she was waiting for a punchline, but when she realized that he wasn't joking, she laughed and shook her head. "We got ourselves a trio of crackpots," she exclaimed amusedly, leaning back in his seat. "The Ice Wall? You hearing this, Mark?"

Elijah snarled irritably and shoved Jake, who was sitting next to him, and the three of them got up and left the table. He was aggravated already, and a part of him was already convinced that they weren't going to find someone who could take them to where they needed to go. But Zoe was already on her way to the second booth, so he followed, trying to stay focused.

Zoe slid into the booth first, then Jake, and then Elijah.

The demon's attention gravitated towards the figure seated across the table. Bathed in the subdued glow emanating from a single lantern, the man exuded an otherworldly allure. His skin bore an ethereal hue of blue, while his obsidian jaw-length hair—half of which was hidden beneath his black beanie—seemed to carry a subtle tint of the same mystical shade. Dark, enigmatic violet eyes swept over Zoe, Jake, and finally landed upon Elijah, lingering with a mesmerizing intensity. The demon wasn't afraid to admit to himself that he was strangely beautiful, but that only made him feel skeptical, as did the fact that most of his body was hidden beneath his long coat, scarf, and hat. It seemed almost as if he was hiding something...or from someone.

"I couldn't help but overhear your brief conversation with Kira," the man said as he leaned back in his seat and rested his arms along the back of it. He fiddled with the ends of his dark grey scarf. "The Ice Wall? That's not something you hear every day."

"We need to get over it," Zoe said.

The man shifted his sights to her. For a moment, he just stared...almost as if he was thinking, and then he looked at Elijah again. "Why? What's over there that's so important that it's got you down here at Don's?"

Elijah wasn't about to share every single detail with this guy—he hadn't even agreed to fly them yet. "It doesn't matter. I've got however much it's going to cost, so give us a number, take the money, and get us to where we need to go."

With a quiet laugh, the man leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. "I like your attitude. Just tell me one thing: if I take you over that wall, am I going to be flying into something that I really don't want to be getting involved in?"

"No. You'll fly us there, land, and wait for us to get back," Elijah told him.

He nodded slowly and glanced at Zoe and Jake. "What are you, like...conspiracy theorists looking to grab evidence for your little internet cult?"

Elijah deadpanned. "No."

"We're researchers," Zoe lied. "We want to study some of the animals that live out there."

The man raised an eyebrow but looked intrigued. "You mean the dragons?"

"Uh...well...yeah," Zoe agreed.

Dragons? Elijah glanced at Zoe, who shot him a conflicted frown. There were dragons out there?

"And does this studying include the capture and transportation of said creatures?" the man asked.

Zoe shook her head.

"We just want pictures and samples and shit," Jake said.

With a curious but skeptical expression, the man eyed them one by one. "You don't look like researchers—not the government type, anyway. Who do you work for?"

Elijah didn't know what to say, and he hoped that Zoe would.

"An independent research facility that exists to protect and study ethos beasts," the girl answered confidently...almost as if such a place actually existed. "We're based here in Nefastus."

The man nodded again and leaned back, crossing his arms. "Five hundred coronam. There and back."

Zoe went a little pale and looked at Elijah.

He knew that he had enough. "Fine. When can you leave?"

"Hmm...well, I need to go down to Margot's and buy some new clothes; I'm gonna need some furs if we're going over The Ice Wall, and so will you. And then I need—"

"I need to leave now," Elijah interjected.

The man frowned. "Well, for another fifty coronam, I guess I could put off my other tasks, but we're all still going to need suitable clothes for the cold. You do know how low the temperature gets over there, don't you?"

"We do," Zoe answered before Elijah could reply. "But we're demons," she said, gesturing to Elijah. "And he's a muto pardus. We'll be fine."

"Okay, well I'm not either of those things, and I need clothes." He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. "You can meet me by Lorell's Hardware on Westford Lane above the surface at midnight. That's when I'll be ready to leave."

Elijah scowled irritably and glanced at the clock. That was ten hours away. What the hell was he supposed to do for ten hours?

"I also need half up-front," the man said to Elijah.

The demon scoffed at him. "You'll get the first half when we're on the plane."

He smirked. "All right." He then held out his hand. "The name's August."

Elijah reluctantly shook it. "Elijah."

August then held his hand out to Jake.

"Jake," he said, shaking his hand.

And then he held it out to Zoe.

"Zoe," she told him, lightly shaking his hand.

"All right, we're in business," August said with a grin. "I'll see you at midnight."

Elijah got up, and Jake and Zoe followed as he headed for the door. To his relief, it hadn't taken very long to find a pilot, but now he had to wait ten more hours until he could get on the plane and head to The Spear. He couldn't help but ask himself if those ten hours of waiting would be the thing that made him lose Haru forever. What if Haru didn't have ten hours? He scowled in dismay and pulled the door open.

"Well, that was easier than I thought it'd be," Jake said.

Zoe nodded and said, "He seemed nice."

"He better get us to The Spear," Elijah muttered as he led the way back down the street.

"He talked like he knew what's out there...over the wall," Jake said. "Do you think he's been there before?"

"Maybe we should go back and ask more questions," Zoe suggested.

"No," Elijah grumbled, heading back the way they'd come. "The longer he sits around talking, the longer we'll be waiting to take off."

"What are we supposed to do for like ten hours, then?" Jake mumbled.

Zoe patted her dog, which started barking at a cat across the street. "No, Antonio. Leave the cat alone and stay in the bag," she said, holding him so that he didn't pounce out of her bag. Then, she looked up at Elijah. "Should we go somewhere and get some rest?"

He didn't want to rest and risk going into The Darkness again, but he did want to sit somewhere and find out what he could about The Spear and the world beyond The Ice Wall. If there were dragons out there, then he needed to know how to deal with them.

"What do you know about dragons?" he asked Zoe.

She looked hesitant. "Well...not much, just that there's a lot of different species."

"And most of them breathe fire or ice," Jake said matter-of-factly.

"Are they aggressive? Territorial? What happens if we come across one?" the demon questioned.

"I don't think they're all hostile," Zoe said, pondering. "But I really don't know enough off the top of my head. We could look it up, though. There's bound to be information online since dragons exist here, too."

Elijah had never seen or faced one, and he needed to be prepared. "We'll find somewhere to sit and research once we get back to the surface."

"We could go back to the jet," Zoe suggested. "It's comfy and safe, and it saves us having to deal with like hotels or cafés and stuff."

The demon nodded. August's ride cost a lot, and he wasn't sure how much money he'd have left over once he paid him. He wanted to make sure that he had enough to get him and Haru to safety once he found him. Once he got back to the jet, he'd count what he had, and then he'd find out whatever he could about dragons and what to expect once they got over The Ice Wall. It wasn't going to be easy, he knew that already, but Lyca Corp. and detainers were one thing; dragons were a whole different level of danger.

He'd make sure that he was ready, though. He was getting Haru out of that lab, and no detainer or dragon was going to stop him.

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