36

      Idiot.

      There was no other word for it, really. Only idiot summed up the magnificent stupidity that Omen was capable of displaying at any moment and in any situation. Only he could have hitched a ride from relative safety to absolute jeopardy without actually needing to, at all, in the slightest. He had been fired, for God’s sake. Skulduggery Pleasant himself had told him to leave all this danger stuff to the professionals. He was no longer involved in whatever the hell was going on.

      And yet who had teleported, with a man who had already tried to kill him, moving in the span of an eyeblink from beneath a bed in the dormitories of Corrival Academy to the cold floor of what appeared to be a prison? That would be Omen Darkly, yes, sir, it would. No one else could have managed something like that. The Boy Most Likely to Get Himself Killed.

      What had he been thinking? What the hell had possessed him to do something so bloody stupid? He hadn’t had anything even remotely resembling a plan. He was impossibly lucky that Nero had just walked off when they’d arrived. If he’d looked around, he would have seen Omen lying there on the ground with his hand outstretched. He might have accidentally trodden on him, which would have been a ridiculous way to be discovered.

      And, as Nero had walked away, did Omen spring to his feet, stealthy as a ninja? Or did he roll sideways into an empty cell, and then crawl under another bed to hide?

      The word repeated itself in his head, just for good measure. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

      He peeked out. The cell was old-fashioned, the kind he’d seen in movies like The Man in the Iron Mask. Rough-hewn walls. A door of thick metal bars. The only nods to any kind of civilised living were the toilet and the sink. Omen recognised binding sigils carved into the stone. They were dull, which meant inactive. That was good.

      He took out his phone. No signal. Omen, like most other sorcerers on the planet, had boosted it to work anywhere. It was a quick and easy procedure – not even he could have messed it up. But it seemed that prisons operated under different rules. Omen reckoned he was in a considerable amount of trouble now. Trapped, alone and with no way of calling for help, the only things he had to rely on were his own magic and ingenuity.

      He was, he realised, totally screwed.

      Crawling out from beneath the bed, he did his very best not to hyperventilate. He was suddenly freezing. His hands shook and he looked at the open cell door like it was a mouth waiting to spring shut the moment he passed through.

      Slowly, slowly, Omen got to his feet and peeked out. The other cell doors were open, too. Empty. They were empty. For the moment – for the fleeting moment he currently existed in – he was safe. Relatively.

      He tucked in his shirt, then walked quietly in the direction Nero had gone. The light out here wasn’t good, and he welcomed the cold shadows. All the better to hide in, my dear. He laughed a little, and the laugh died and his eyes widened. His laugh had sounded a lot like panic.

      He clamped both hands over his mouth as a high-pitched whine started up from somewhere within him. He shook his head, but the whine kept growing. The more he tried to stop it, the louder it got. He took a deep breath and balled his fists, thumped them against his forehead while he screwed his eyes shut.

      He would not panic. He would not panic. Auger wouldn’t panic in a situation like this and neither would Omen.

      The whine, amazingly, went away.

      Omen opened his eyes and let out his breath in a slow, controlled manner. He heard voices coming from one direction and so he went the other way. This was not a bad plan. If he could keep walking away from whoever was close, he’d stay safe and undetected until he found a way out. Of a prison. Which were notoriously difficult to leave.

      He came to metal stairs and went up, careful not to make too much noise. He took the tunnel, plunging from greasy yellow light into pitch-black with every third step. He came to a corner and peeked. Across a divide he saw a curved wall of cells, all occupied by prisoners, men and women, in yellow jumpsuits. Almost every single one of them was either sitting or lying on their bunk. They were so quiet in their solitude it was eerie. Omen actually felt sorry for them.

      He hurried on.

      He found another tunnel, which led to another corridor, which led to a row of open cells.

      Except the two cells at the end. Their doors were closed.

      Omen bit his lip. Going back would mean passing by all those prisoners again. It would mean risking being seen. There was no way out behind him – but for all he knew there could be an open door just ahead.

      He moved forward quietly. The cell on the left was dark, but there was a light on in the cell on the right.

      Step