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megalith.
    Michael would be trapped.
    She screamed his name. Fin wailed, flailed his arms, and wriggled so much she struggled to keep hold of him.
    Michael ran, the sloshing sucking sound of the mud marking his progress. He literally threw first one human, then the other out of the trench, then vaulted up the earthy bank and collapsed on his back beside her. The glowing mantle extending from the gatekeepers’ hands blazed incandescent. Cordelia screwed her eyes closed and struggled to hold on to the squirming baby. Suddenly her arms were empty, clutching at thin air.
    Her eyes sprang open. Temporarily blinded by the burst of light, she dropped to her knees, scrabbled around in the mud, feeling for the child. When she grabbed a warm body, she thought she had him, but she was grasping Michael’s arm.
    “Finian,” she cried on a sob. “Where’s Finian?”
    The Teg had disappeared. Silent darkness pressed around them. Michael pulled away from her and sat up. “What do you mean where’s Finian?”
    She shook her head, a useless gesture in the dark but she couldn’t seem to stop. “I had him; then my arms were empty.”
    Slowly her eyes recovered from the blinding flash. She started to pick out shapes in the dark: the ragged outline of trees and bushes on the hill, the excavator on the other side of the trench.
    Michael rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled between clods of earth toward the lip of the hole. A strangled sob broke from his throat. A sound that clawed her heart, burned tears in her eyes.
    She gathered her dress out of the way and shuffled on her knees through the mud to Michael’s side. At the sight of Fin, her muscles locked, paralyzed with shock. He sat in the mud where the humans had been minutes before, deathly still, eyes open, mouth frozen in a silent cry, right beside the fallen megalith that led to the Underworld.

Chapter Three
    Time paused. Cordelia’s body ceased to feel, her heart silent, her breath still. Then fear oozed up as she imagined the poor little boy lost in endless darkness.
    “Fin!” Michael’s anguished cry kicked the air out of her lungs. It shuddered back in on a moan.
    Michael launched himself at the trench and disappeared into the gloom. Was he, too, lost in the Underworld? Terror held her rigid until she saw movement on the far side of the hole. Her fingers clenched the gritty mud. Squinting, she made out Michael on the ground by the excavator.
    Relief flashed, quickly chased away by confusion. How did he get over there? He scrambled to his feet and jumped toward the trench again. An instant later, he skidded to a halt beside her.
    “I cannot get to him,” he cried. “I can see him, but I cannot get to him.”
    She reached out in a blind need to comfort him. But he spun in the mud and launched himself wildly into the air, landing a moment later next to the excavator again.
    He circled the area the gatekeepers had isolated. Each time he jumped toward Fin, he landed on the other side of the hole.
    Finally, her numb brain stumbled back to life. She understood.
    With her teary gaze fixed on Fin, she crawled to the lip of the trench. Biting down on her lip, she reached out. Whenher forearm passed through the Teg’s shroud, her hand disappeared. With a yelp, she snatched back her arm and cradled it to her body, the burn of fear slowly fading. She stared unseeing into the night, her muscles trembling.
    However many times Michael jumped, he wouldn’t reach Fin. That part of the trench no longer existed in the physical world.
    Michael trudged back to stand beside her, his hair and clothes soaked and filthy. His labored breaths echoed across the dark, silent field. He rubbed his face, spat out some mud.
    She reached for him, brushed her fingers over the back of his hand, gritty with dirt. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
    He dropped to a crouch, elbows on his knees, and closed his eyes.
    Her heart cracked, brittle as glass. He’d entrusted Fin to her and she’d let him