It wasn't the first note, but the next and the next and the next strung together that cut through the buzzing silence of the underground chamber and made the pressure build inside his head, until it felt like a star ready to explode.

The werewolf hunter might have cried out as the sharp, white pain flared across his vision.  He gritted his teeth tightly, fingers pressed to his temples. It felt as if there were a Concusso blast threatening to burst out of his skull, as if the low base note from Nemo's song had driven all of the voices buzzing in his head until they reverberated from a whisper into an agonizing roar.

But then, just as suddenly, the base note cut out and everything ended.

It took a moment longer for him to realize that he was partially doubled over.  The chamber was silent now -- truly silent, with no murmuring to indicate that a whole host of churchgoers were having a whispered conversation in the next room.

Keeping one hand pressed to the side of his head, Kurby straightened cautiously, jaw still clenched tight as he took stock of their little group.  Abigail stood dazedly by herself, looking as if she'd just been drawn out of a daydream. Aileen had her back to the rest of them.  In front of her, the sarcophagus was yawning; her wand aloft, she peered into its depths, drawn by the mystery and intrigue that it offered. And Nemo...

Nemo's eyes were still closed, her chin raised and the flute hovering near her lips.  She teetered for a moment, balancing on her tiptoes as if the last deep, grinding note had threatened to vibrate her straight into the air.  And then, as if she'd been drawn upright by a single thread that had suddenly snapped once the song had ended, she seemed to crumple all at once and collapsed to the ground.

Nearly swearing, the werewolf hunter tried to cross the space between them, but it still felt as if his legs weren't quite working the way that he wanted them to.  Nemo hit the stone floor with less force than she might have, spilling onto it almost gracefully, as if she'd just decided to slip into bed and tumble asleep.

Kurby reached her side hastily, fingers searching for a pulse.  It didn't take long to find one.  As frustrated as he felt with the American teenager who'd broken her promise to him, a wave of relief still washed over him.  Whatever the spooky tailor shop was doing to murder young witches, at least the cause of death wasn't enchanting them into playing six excruciatingly painful notes on a cursed flute.

He half-considered trying to pry the hellish flute away from her so that he could crack it in half and then incinerate the damned thing, but Nemo's fingers were wrapped too goddamned tightly around it.  Besides, the little musician seemed to already be stirring, her eyelids fluttering.  Keeping a careful eye on her, Kurby rose cautiously to his feet and turned to face the unknown maw behind him, which could very possibly still send a new danger to come and kill them. 

The middle of the stone coffin had cracked open in response to the flute's haunting tune.  Silently, the werewolf hunter stepped over to the foot of the sarcophagus just in time to see Aileen Reid's wand-light dive out of sight into the darkness.

A tunnel.

It felt like he was at the top of a precipice, staring down, down into the depths below.  Kurby gazed into it, his breath caught in his throat.  There was an uneasy sense of familiarity about all this, as if he stood at the top landing of a narrow stone staircase, peering down into the cascading shadows of the cold, musty cellar below.

He forced himself to tear his gaze away from the darkness, to examine the inside of the sarcophagus immediately below him.  "There's notches runnin' down the side of this thing," he said, running his fingers along the edge of the top one. 

Silently, he pressed his fingers inside it, testing the grip.  The indenture was wide enough and deep enough to fit a hand or toe, with a smooth lip that made it feel well-used.  About a foot and a half below it was another narrow crevice, and then he could just make out another equidistant below that.

He looked up at Aileen again, dark eyes unreadable in the flickering light from the torches.  "It's a ladder."

While Nemo's fingers had played the notes and while her lungs had fed the flute, her heart and head had gone away. The next thing she perceived was the smell of petrichor and leather, then the cold ground beneath her, then a ringing in her ears that faded as quickly as she noticed it. She pressed herself to sitting. Kurby and Aileen were standing around the sarcophagus, now open, but from the floor Nemo couldn't see what was inside.

Abby? Nemo, a seventeen-year-old runaway with stars in her brain, looked not to the adults for comfort in her confusion, but Abby.

"Abby," she whispered. Then she noticed her own ice-hard grip on the flute. In a flash of lucidity, she set it down and shifted to kneeling, legs tucked under her. "Abby."

The sound of her name cut through the aria in her head. Abby? Yes, she was Abby. She'd become Abby again ten days ago.

"I'm here!" Abby forgot to whisper, kneeling beside Nemo and hooking arms with her. Few friends called her name for help. She was always the one calling.

Was Nemo ok? Were any of them? Bagnold had checked on Nemo earlier, but now he was staring into the abyss with Aileen.

"We need to stand, ok? We don't need to be any shorter than we are," the faintest trace of teasing laced her voice, dreamlike. Too soft in the harsh underground.

But it was true. It was best to stand and face danger, or at least to stand and run away from it. To do that, they had to be ready. Stand together. 

"On three? Let's stand. Remember your wand. And the darkness in our pockets."[1]

Abby refused to look at the flute, though she was relieved in a distant way when Nemo set it down. It was a dangerous, bad thing, like the song that threatened to loop around in her head.

"One," she tugged her arm gently but firmly.

"Two..."

1.	Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder

Bagnold had found the ladder that her light hadn't found. He told her this, reaching into the tunnel. Watch it, don't touch the stones - but he must have earlier, outside perhaps, and they already knew him.

"Nox," she responded, her face pale, her eyebrows drawn together. It was all she could say, repeated without rhyme or rhythm.

"Finite!"

There! A different word, but not the words she'd been looking for earlier. The thrumming of her wand began to quiet and fade, leaving only the silence below.

Maybe it would be fine. Maybe her wandlight would return on its own. Maybe silence made everything safe again. Bagnold really did not look well. Even the torchlight was unable to chase away the paleness and the tension in his jaw. Aileen should ask after him, she thought distantly in the back of her mind.

She spared a glance behind her. Her sister was with Nemo. Nemo was waking. Aileen frowned. She hadn't realized that the girl had fallen.

Just as she wondered if she should go get her light back, find the light that would chase the pallor from her own face, that had been there since the December of many days ago and the December a year ago -

The firelight on the walls flickered.

Then one by one, the lights of the torches dove into the tunnel, making the tunnel fill with a bright and terrible light.

Kurby stood at the edge of the open sarcophagus, brows knitted as he peered down into the darkness. What the hell could possibly be down there? Was this some other strange entrance into the ossuary that they'd found beneath Grimshaw's, or was this the ingress to somewhere else?

Silently, he took stock of himself, only half aware of Abigail and Nemo's voices behind him. The morning felt like a distant memory, but he knew that he'd arrived today expecting not much in the way of trouble, aside from...what had he expected? Getting his boots muddy as they poked around the graveyard, perhaps, a recollection whispered. Even if his silver chain and silver mail might not offer much protection against dark magic outside of lycanthropic curses, it still didn't seem like the smartest idea to go charging down a dark tunnel without anything but his wand, especially when his head still felt strangely fuzzy.

Across the open sarcophagus, Aileen looked strangely pale and drawn. "Nox," she said again and again. "Nox. Finite!"

That finally seemed to have the effect she was looking for. The former Cursebreaker fell quiet, her expression wan and haunted, and then she slowly glanced back over her shoulder, her gaze drifting towards her sister and Nemo.

Something was wrong. Kurby opened his mouth, and then shut it again. It felt as if the whole chamber was holding its breath, with an electricity in the air that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Then the torchlight began to flicker, and the lights from the torches went whizzing by down the dark hole, one after the other. 

A great, terrible light began to grow in the tunnel below them, and Kurby felt more than he heard a sharp, high-pitched keening that resonated deep in his skull.  Flinching, he threw up an arm, turning away from the open tomb to protect his gaze against the brilliance that was quickly growing to blinding effulgence.

"Did you want to give Nox another go, then?" he snapped at Aileen, even though there was clearly no way the spell would do any good against the erupting light. 

Jarred to action, Kurby looked across the room, gripping his wand tightly.  All of the torches had gone out, but the light from the open tomb behind him was so bright now that the underground chamber was practically lit up like it was day. What the hell could they do to close the sarcophagus? From what he could tell, they were directly under the church now, so it wasn't as if they could simply blast the ceiling and let the whole damned place collapse on top of it.

Frustrated, he turned to the next-nearest stone sarcophagus, this one with a marble effigy that had already decayed to a skeleton. Aiming the heel of his boot at the corner of the lid, he tried to see if he could get it to budge so that they could somehow maneuver it into place on top of the still-open tomb.

Abby had helped Nemo find her feet, and just in time for the big show. The light from the sarcophagus was overwhelming, stealing every shadow. There didn't seem to be a question among them that they'd trespassed and that nothing pure was going to come from the blinding below. Aileen the sister-witch was trying to cast spells, and Kurby was pushing with his feet against a stone slab.

'Just lock up when you leave,' had always been the hospitable thing, hadn't it. Or, depending on the status of an invitation, 'don't get caught.'

"The powder!" Nemo reached into the pocket of Abby's lavender-colored cloak and grabbed the back of instant darkness powder. Traces of it puffed out of the seam of the baggie like steam, small pieces fell in clumps to the floor and hissed like water on a dry-hot pan. With all the coordination of a witch who had given minimal effort in P.E., Nemo stepped forward and flung a handful of powder towards the open tomb.

At first the dark powder just hung in the air above the sarcophagus, but in the next blink it swelled like an explosion. It billowed and reached and thrust, swallowing the light and seeking every corner. The unnatural light from below kept reaching nonetheless, and the affect was a writhing strobe that broke the geometry of columned chamber.

Shadow and light fought each other, swirling around the chamber, a dance to match the words fighting to form in Abby's head.

Shadow was losing.

Abby looked at her sister, who had flung the hood of her cloak up and turned, her wand still poised in her hand. The light streaked across Aileen's face, pale and bright with fear.

Though Abby had always reached for Aileen before, this time, she reached for Nemo. No red cord tied them to life above, just to each other. It would have to be enough.

"Can you apparate us out?" Abby gasped at Nemo.

"Can we all apparate out?" Abby called to her too-still sister and Bagnold. Can we, can we, she chanted the words against - the bones beneath the - no!

Abby gripped Nemo's arm. Hurry, hurry.

Abby's voice cut through the keening wail and terrible light. Aileen was so used to guarding her sister from the dark, hiding her pentral from the dark, hiding the dark itself within her, that she didn't know how to stop the bright light from below. It surged into the chamber, colder than the veil of death.

Yes, apparate. Yes.

"Yes!" she told her sister but jerked her head at Nemo, hoping she had recovered enough to disapparate. "Go now! We'll be right there."

Though Aileen had always reached for Abby before, this time, she moved around the sarcophagus toward Bagnold. What was he doing? They didn't have time, did they?

Aileen raised her wand anyway, unsealing the edges of the second sarcophagus in a controlled and scholarly gesture, meant for careful excavation and not defense. It took precious seconds. The light grew and grew beside her, blinding through her hood and around the curve of her raised arm.

Stone would not stop the thing below. Stone would not even rest smoothly atop the open sarcophagus with its marble hands and arms and screaming face split down the middle and poised like teeth.

But stone might, it just might, block the entrance to this tomb. Aileen turned her head to squint behind her, but could barely see with the growing light.

"Bagnold! Help me levitate this to the doorway. We'll seal the chamber from the other side."

It would take cooperation. Coordination. A stone and a rune might be enough, if they had time.

"Go now! Aileen cried, and Kurby turned his head just enough to see Nemo and Abigail disappear with a loud pop as the air rushed in to fill the space that they'd left behind.

But he couldn't just leave. Not with the white light growing brighter and brighter, not with the Muggle church above them. Whatever the hell they'd awakened, it was his fault that they'd stumbled into it, his fault that he'd coerced Aileen into this misadventure and dragged the two girls along. The others could and should apparate away to safety, but he was damned well going to find a way to seal that bleeding light up again or meet his own end trying.

Kicking the sarcophagus had done absolutely nothing to budge the lid. Kurby backed up a step, raising his wand in preparation to blast it into rubble so that at least he could move it, when Aileen stepped forward and began to undo the seal with her wand, businesslike and efficient.

The werewolf hunter stopped in his tracks. It couldn't have been more clear that he didn't have a single goddamned idea of what he was doing. While he was left feeling like an idiot, here was Aileen Reid, cool and clear-eyed under pressure, who knew exactly what needed to be done even as the monstrous strobing light threatened to overwhelm them all.

It took her mere moments to finish.

"Bagnold!" she called out as she did so.  "Help me --!"

But the light was too bright. As it pulsed to overwhelm Nemo's tiny cloud of darkness, it was so white-hot, so phosphorescent, that it felt like it was inundating his senses, making it as hard to hear and breathe as it was to see. Even so, between the words that he could catch and the pointed look that Aileen directed back towards the entrance to the underground crypt, he could make out enough of her meaning. Move the stone, seal the chamber.

He hated leaving things unfinished, hated the thought of leaving a monster loose in a room where someone else might unknowingly stumble upon it, but what the hell other choice did they have? Clenching his teeth, Kurby gave her a grim nod and aimed his wand at the stone lid of the second sarcophagus: too heavy to move alone but possible together.

---

He couldn't tell if it had taken a heartbeat or a lifetime to maneuver the stone lid across the crypt and angle it into place. But it had been just big enough to close the entryway from inside, blocking out the terrible light behind it. After Aileen had laid down the runes to seal and secure it in place, they had waited for a terrible few minutes longer, watching to make sure that her magic held.

Still, Kurby hadn't expected the cold night air that hit him as they apparated back to the churchyard, reappearing just next to the rusted iron gate that had led them down to the crypt. How long had they been down there? It hadn't felt like hours, but when he looked up past the crumbling stone arch to the sky, he could see the hints of stars and the thick crescent of the moon in between the dark clouds.

Sometime during their misadventure, just as the day had turned to night, the afternoon's drizzle had transformed into a light dusting of snowflakes. The snow hadn't yet begun to stick, but it drifted through the air in a light drove, catching the moonlight and giving an otherworldly appearance to the abandoned yard.

He felt sick to his stomach and a little dizzy, as if he'd hit his head too hard on something but it hadn't had a chance to truly catch up with him yet. Kurby forced himself to swallow and glanced at Aileen, catching her gaze to make sure that she was physically all right and also physically capable of staying upright.

"Nemo?" he called out into the chill of the night. "Abigail?"

Nemo didn't hesitate. At Abby's question and Aileen's orders, Nemo hooked her arm around Abby's waist, exhaled and cracked away. They arrived gently exactly where she intended to, alighting gently pushing snowflakes out of their way. The wet air welcomed them. Nemo's eyes searched for light, snowblind from the tomb.

'Shit, Natalie! How do you do that?' Miguel asked, breathless. Natalie giggled where she'd appeared behind him, having Apparated nearly without a sound. 'You have to breathe. You always clench.' Miguel looked offended. 'I don't clench!'  Nemo stuck out her chin. 'You clench so hard, though. Like, just let it out. Just go.'

The cemetery was silent except for the wind. The glow from Abby's phone screen lit their worried faces from below. Nemo placed her hand on Abby's arm as if to ask her to just wait, just wait another second. They would come. After a little, they heard the blessed crack of another Apparition and Kurby calling for them. Nemo turned in place looking towards the sound. They were at the gates.

"Here!" Nemo called back. She wrapped her jacket around herself more tightly and trotted over. "Over here. You okay? Did you close it? The fuck was that?"

Abby shivered in the darkened courtyard beside the broken fountain with Nemo, watching the tunnel to the catacombs, hoping for and fearing any sign of light below. They'd agreed to dissaparate! Unless they couldn't. Unless-

Phone lit, Abby's thumb hovered over 'dial' on Jonas Trevelyan's number. Snowflakes fell and melted instantly on her hand, marking the seconds. Come on, come on! Was this how Aileen had felt ten days ago, outside the death chamber while Abby had fought for her life? Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing until Abby had emerged, safe and sound and herself again?

No, it must have been much worse. Aileen would have had to wait longer than a few minutes. Aileen would have known there were only opposing outcomes - life or death, dark or light, pentral or self, song or silence.

There! A crack in the distance. Was that one pop or two?

At the sound of Bagnold's voice, Abby trotted with Nemo through the passageway of hanging vines, casting a relieved glance at Bagnold - he was standing, seemingly uninjured - and then throwing her arms around her sister.

Aileen stood. Wand in hand. Hair out of place.

Abby's nose itched, her cheek pressed against her sister's wool cloak, catching a whiff of catacomb dust and something she couldn't identify - the same smell that had followed her from below.

Aileen hugged her closely, smoothed a blond curl away from Abby's face.

"...The fuck was that?" Nemo bluntly asked.

"A dementor I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy," Aileen muttered into Abby's hair.

Abby raised her eyebrows at her.

Well, actually...

In the minutes that followed, Aileen and Bagnold clarified that yes, they did seal it to the best of their ability, and that it should hold for now, and that they should also seal the tunnel entrance they'd used. So they did. They put the iron gate back in place, the loose stone tile over it, and Aileen casted another rune. They checked on each other, making sure everyone was alright to apparate again. Though Bagnold had a headache and Nemo's fingers played an invisible flute and Aileen looked pale as marble and Abby jumped at every noise, they were going to survive the night.

Talk turned to what next. They should go somewhere warm. Somewhere not too bright.

"I'd invite you all over for tea, but Raine might be home and she would have lots of questions," Abby half-joked.

Aileen remained silent, her arm light and protective around Abby's shoulders. She didn't love having a lot of people over.

Abby glanced up at her sister. Aileen was glancing cautiously at Bagnold.

Nemo was glancing at Bagnold?

Poor Bagnold! It was decided then. They'd meet at his place. They'd leave this crumbling courtyard and church, the grave of Clementine, the string of six sad notes, the screaming effigy, the piercing wave of light, and-

-the bones beneath the stones.