"Yeah," he said. "I'll make sure Deidre hasn't set the place on fire yet." Gabriel followed Rhyn into the portal. Instinctively, he looked around for the grey door leading to his underworld.
Every time he didn't find it where it should be, he grew more homesick.
Rhyn went through one door while Gabriel went through another. He emerged beside the lake, where two death dealers stood over Cora. The female dealer was in her bra and a soaked pair of pants.
Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and he went to them curiously. Of all the insanity going on around him, he figured Cora was the last to go crazy and dive into the lake.
"We figured it out!" she exclaimed. "Well, Deidre did."
"Figured out what?" he asked.
"Where the souls are coming from."
Gabriel glanced out over the lake. Cora flung water from her arms and stood. A rope was tied around a rock nearby. It was taut. His gaze followed it to the water, where it disappeared into the lake.
"She thinks the Lake of Souls cracked the same way the sky did," Cora said in excitement. "We found where the souls are coming into the lakes. There are little tears between the two worlds, and the souls are escaping."
Though terrible news, Gabriel couldn't help thinking it was the best thing he'd heard all week. He was able to tackle this kind of problem, unlike the strange tension between him and his mate.
"Deidre figured it out," Cora said again.
"How?" he asked, hoping this wasn't secret knowledge she hadn't shared with him.
"She noticed the currents then climbed a tree and said they were moving in a pattern around the lake. We went to where the pattern started, and there were the cracks."
"Wow."
"Yeah. We found five tears. They're letting in about five souls a minute."
"Five souls a minute times how many minutes in the past six months …" Gabriel shook his head. "If souls can get out, maybe we found a new way in."
"Well … I tried to hack a part one of the tears," Cora said. "It didn't work. The only thing we might be able to do is plug the holes."
He chose to overlook Cora's disappointment at how close she'd been to home without being able to go back. They were all suffering; the more he dwelled on it, the worse it seemed.
"What is this?" he asked, kicking the taut rope.
Cora's eyes dropped, and she jerked forward. "Oh, gods. I forgot about her." She leaned over to grab the thick rope and yanked it up, pulling it up hand over hand. Her lean body handled the strenuous task easily.