The thirteenth floor didn’t exist. Which didn’t surprise me. I was familiar with the superstition surrounding the number 13, and the various ways people on Earth had combatted it.

Skipped floors, missing airport gates, the whole fear around Friday the 13th. Hell, we’d come up with names for it. Triskaidekaphobia, the general fear of thirteen, and paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is a very real word for the fear of Friday the thirteenth. Not what happens when you let a monkey smash a keyboard for a few seconds.

Anyway, apparently, this whole triskaidekaphobia thing was a first for Garrett. Because he stopped in his tracks when we reached the thirteenth floor, labeled with an ornate ’14.’

And once again, I slammed into his back. Cursing and getting zapped for my trouble, I told him, “You can’t just stop in the middle of the walk. Not unless you take that stupid cloak off, so I can see you.”

“I don’t understand. We were just on the twelfth level, but this – the next floor – says fourteen. Is there an inaccessible level somewhere between?”

I shook my head. There hadn’t been room for another story. Not with the high ceilings they’d built into this place. “It’s just for luck.”

“What?”

“Thirteen. It’s an unlucky number.”

“It is?”

“Sure. You must have heard that?”

“No. Never.”

“Huh.” Now that I thought of it, I hadn’t actually encountered that particular superstition anywhere in the Realm. I hadn’t encountered a lot of our Earth superstitions here. They didn’t care about broken mirrors or walking under ladders. It was white cats that were unlucky. And no one carried a rabbit’s foot for luck, but rather carried around clay scarab beetles.

Still, it had to be luck. What would be the point of skipping the thirteenth floor otherwise? “Well, it’s a thing.”

“But why label them wrongly?”

“Like I say, it’s bad luck to have a thirteenth floor. So they don’t.”

“Why is it bad luck?”

“I don’t think it is, not really. But, people thought it would be, because they don’t like the number. It’s a whole thing. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it. But because they don’t want that number, they go straight to the fourteenth floor.”

“But it’s still the thirteenth floor, whatever they call it. You would not stop being yourself, if I called you something else. So the thirteenth in a sequence is still the thirteenth, whatever we call it.”

“Look, take it from an expert at the art: you’re way overthinking this. Superstition isn’t about making sense, it’s about – you know, feeling better. Safer. If you don’t call it the thirteenth floor, you don’t have to worry about it being unlucky.”

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“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to,” I told him. “All we have to do is find this guy – if you insist – and then get out of here.”

“Fine.”

“I’m glad you think so,” I said, stepping around him gingerly – and hoping he hadn’t moved in the last few seconds. If he had, it had been out of my way at least. I reached for the door handle, and tried not to yelp when the scream sounded again.

I knew it had nothing to do with me and what I was doing. But I couldn’t help being jumpy. It seemed like every time I touched something, the guy started screaming all over again.

Taking a breath, I turned the knob and slowly, very slowly, pulled the door open. Sound flooded into the stairwell.

“Hellllllllpppppp.”

I shuddered as the voice echoed up and down. That would certainly draw the attention of anyone in the vicinity.

As quickly as I could, I scoped out the hallway beyond the door and stepped inside, ducking into the nearest patch of shadow. A moment later, the door closed after me.

“Let me out at once, confound you!” the voice called, sounding very near at hand. This close, it sounded more real, more tangible, and so lost something of its spine-chilling qualities.

For a moment, I crouched in the darkness and studied my surroundings. A quick glance had satisfied me that no one lay lurking to intercept intruders. But now I took in the place itself.

It looked a world apart from the floors we’d already explored. No marble here, no wood paneling and fine rugs, no rich ornamentation and fancy baubles. Here, the interior matched the exterior: a sea of grim, gray concrete.

Now and then, metal doors broke up the concrete. Some had windows, some were barred, and some were solid. Lanterns hung from hooks in the ceiling, casting dim red light in uneven patches.

No guards stood outside the cells, or patrolled the floor. Not in this sector, anyway.

As for the voice, it seemed to be coming from one of the cells about halfway down the hall. Every now and then, it would call out again. Sometimes it would plead, others demand to be released. Now and then, it would threaten to have someone’s head.

It never specified whose head, or on what authority. Just vague promises about all the evils to be visited on his jailers, whenever he finally escaped. Some of them were quite grim.

“For all we know,” I hissed, “he’s some sort of killer or something.”

“Yeah,” Garrett said dryly. “Definitely can’t trust killers.”

“That was an accident.”

“And yet –”

“I know, I know. ‘You’re still dead.’”

“Exactly right.”

“God knows, I’ve heard it often enough. Alright, I’m going in.” So far, we’d seen no one, and it didn’t sound like there was anyone to spot. Anyone aside from the prisoner, anyway. So the sooner I got this over with, the better.

“I should go first,” he whispered. “I’ve got the cloak. If there’s someone out there, they won’t be able to see me.”

“But I’ve got the lockpicks. If we’re going to break him out, I’m assuming we’ll have to pick a lock.”

“You could give me the lockpicks,” he suggested.

“You could give me the cloak,” I countered.

“Fine. Do it your way.”

Bastard, I thought. He didn’t trust me to not take the cloak and disappear.

Not that, if I was being honest, I particularly blamed him. Hell, I didn’t completely trust myself on that score.

Still, I wouldn’t have minded the cloak as I set off. I could feel my pulse racing as I approached each pool of light. Moving as fast as I dared, I crossed from one patch of shadow to the next, drawing nearer and nearer the source of those plaintive wails.

The cells I passed looked as bare and desolate as the hall. Some held rough wooden cots. Others boasted piles of hay, while yet others had no bedding at all. Just a rough concrete floor with a drain grate in the center.

In addition to the grate, a few sported iron manacles, and furniture of an altogether less comfortable nature than the cots: a rack in one, and an iron maiden in another.

Grim reddish-brown stains adorned the walls and floor of a few cells, and a biting, somewhat vinegary smell pervaded in the air.

I reminded myself of Garrett’s words from earlier. Whatever the prisoner’s complaints might be, he wasn’t being tortured.

Now, anyway.

On I went. And then, suddenly, I was standing in front of a cell with an iron bar door. And there across from me, chained to the wall and looking miserable and forlorn, hung a familiar and unmistakable figure.

King Leopold.