I had no idea what would have happened if we hadn’t descended the stairs two at a time, but I was glad we hadn’t found out.
“Have you ever been in the tunnels?” I asked Xander, once we’d made it uneventfully down.
Xander was silent long enough to make the question feel loaded. “No.”
Concentrating, I took in my surroundings. The tunnels were metal, like a giant pipe or something out of a sewer system, but they were surprisingly well lit. Gaslights? I wondered. I’d lost any sense of how far down we were. Up ahead, the tunnels spread out in three directions.
“Which way?” I asked Xander. Solemnly, he pointed straight ahead. I frowned. “How do you know?”
“Because,” Xander replied jauntily, “that’s what he said.” He gestured near my feet. I looked down and yelped.
It took me a moment to realize that there were gargoyles at the bottom of the stairs, a match for the ones in the Great Room, except that the gargoyle on the left had one hand—and one finger—extended, pointing the way.
Come find me.
I started walking. Xander followed. I wondered if he had any idea what we were walking toward.
Come find me.
I remembered Xander telling me that even if I’d thought that I had manipulated Tobias Hawthorne, the old man would have been the one manipulating me.
He’s dead, I told myself. Isn’t he? That thought hit me hard. The press certainly thought Tobias Hawthorne had died. His family seemed to believe it. But had they actually seen his body?
What else could it mean? Come find me.
 |
Five minutes later, we hit a wall. There was nowhere else to go, nothing to see, no turns we could have taken since we’d started down this path.
“Maybe the gargoyle lied.” Xander sounded like he was enjoying that statement a little too much.
I pushed against the wall. Nothing. I turned back. “Did we miss something?”
“Perhaps,” Xander said thoughtfully, “the gargoyle lied!”
I looked back way we’d come. I walked the path back slowly, taking in every detail of the tunnel. Bit. By bit. By bit.
“Look!” I told Xander. “There.”
It was a metal grate, built into the tunnel floor. I ducked down. There was a brand name engraved on the metal, but time had worn away most of the letters. The only ones that were left were M…
And E.
“Come find me,” I whispered. Squatting down, I grabbed the grate with my fingers and pulled. Nothing. I pulled again, and this time the grate popped up. I fell backward, but Xander caught me.
The two of us stared down into the hole below.
“It is possible,” Xander whispered, “that the gargoyle was telling the truth.” Without waiting for me, he lowered himself into the hole—and dropped. “You coming?”
If Oren knew I was doing this, he would kill me. I dropped down and found myself in a small room. How far underground are we now? The room had four walls, three of them identical. The fourth was made of concrete. Three letters had been carved into the cement.
A. K. G.
My initials.
I walked toward the letters, mesmerized, and then I saw a red laser-like light pass over my face. There was a beep, and then the concrete wall split in two, like an elevator opening. Behind it was a door.
“Facial recognition,” Xander said. “It didn’t matter which one of us found this place. Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to get past the wall.”
Poor Jameson. He’d gone to all that effort to keep me close, then ditched
me before I could play my part. The glass ballerina. The knife. The girl with the face that unlocks the wall that reveals the door that…
“That what?” I stepped forward to examine the door. There were four touch pads, one in each corner of the door. Xander hit one to wake it up, and an image of a fluorescent hand appeared.
“Uh-oh,” Xander said. “What uh-oh?” I asked.
“This one has Jameson’s initials on it.” Xander moved on to the next one. “Grayson’s. Nash’s.” At the last one, he paused. “Mine.” He placed his hand flat on the screen. It made a beeping sound, and then I heard what sounded like a deadbolt being thrown.
I tried the door’s handle. “Still locked.”
“Four locks.” Xander winced. “Four brothers.”
My face had been needed to get this far. Their hands were required to go farther.
