Chapter Thirteen #2
My instinct says he’d never do something like this, but even if what I heard was a recording, that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone down here.
Probably Natalia. She had her minion shove me down the stairs, and if that’s not enough to scare me out of the Optima race, she’s hiding, waiting to do more.
I climb up the stairs, wincing at the pain, and check the door. Then I check my phone. Still no signal.
The sound comes again—a thunk, deep in the bowels of the basement.
I should stay here at the top of the stairs. Don’t let myself be drawn in deeper.
But does that do any good? I can’t escape, and if Natalia is waiting for me, she’ll eventually come out. Better to find and confront her.
My hip throbs as I shift my weight, considering. Then I turn on my cellphone flashlight and slowly walk down the stairs. At the bottom, it looks like any old basement with a concrete floor and semi-finished walls. Smells like an old basement, too—that musty odor.
The sound seemed to come from the far end of the basement. I look around for a weapon, but the hall is spotless. I start forward, rolling my feet, making no noise.
I reach the end just as another sound comes, a whooshing that echoes from behind a closed door. I take a deep breath and throw it open—
It’s a room filled with storage boxes. My breath quickens. If Natalia is hiding here, she could be anywhere.
I take my time moving through the room, checking behind each stack. Minutes pass, seemingly endless minutes, and sweat trickles down my forehead as my heart races. There are so many boxes. So many places to hide.
I finally reach the last stack, and there’s nothing behind it. I stand there, catching my breath, thinking hard, when another thunk nearly has me jumping out of my skin. The noise comes from overhead, and I look up sharply. All I see is a ceiling. Then comes the whoosh I heard.
Water.
The thunk of a pump followed by the whoosh of water running through pipes. Somebody using the bathroom. Flushing the toilet and then washing their hands. The plumbing must be in the room above.
I shake my head as I relax. Then I tense again. While I’ve identified the mysterious sounds, that doesn’t mean I’m alone in the basement.
The next room I enter is also storage—furniture wrapped in plastic. I search it and then move on to the next. When my phone flashes a warning, I glance down to see that the battery is at ten percent. Right, because I usually plug it in when I go to bed.
I don’t dare drain the battery and risk being trapped down here even when the Wi-Fi comes back on. I put my phone in low-power mode and rely on the overhead lights, which makes searching tricky. Shadows lurk behind every storage box and covered chair.
I conduct a full sweep, and I’m about to move to the next room when I spot an old screwdriver on the floor behind a cabinet.
Well, I was looking for a weapon.
There’s a gap behind the cabinet—which is how I saw the screwdriver—but it’s too narrow to reach into.
To get the screwdriver, I need to move the cabinet, and I can’t imagine that’s happening, but when I tug, it shifts easily, as if it’s empty.
It’s still not feather-light, and my battered body screams as I pull, but soon I’ve yanked it far enough forward to reach—
There’s something behind the cabinet, and when I see what it is, I rub my eyes, certain this is proof that I’m actually asleep, that I drifted off and dreamed the message from Maddox and everything that followed.
Because what I see is a tiny door.
It’s a hatch—about three feet high and narrow.
I move the cabinet until I can clearly see the little door.
There’s no handle, and I push on the wood, but nothing happens.
I also notice something on the back of the cabinet.
Old duct tape that’s flapping free. I frown at that.
Then I look between the hatch and the screwdriver on the floor, and I give a soft laugh.
The tape used to hold the screwdriver. Considering the amount of dust, it held it on there a very long time ago. Eventually, though, it fell off. And why was a screwdriver taped to the back of the cabinet? Because it’s used to open the hatch.
I test my theory by wedging the screwdriver into the gap around the little door and prying, like a crowbar. Sure enough, the door pops open…and dust rolls out, and I back up, eyes watering as I hack enough to make my battered ribs scream.
Once I’ve recovered, I turn on my cellphone light, crouch—my injured hip complaining about that—and crouch-walk through the door.
It leads to a room. A very small room, maybe ten square feet, but inside, I can straighten.
As I turn, I see a flashlight on a little table near the door.
It’s very old and very heavy and, unsurprisingly, doesn’t work, but there are also matches and a candle.
I light the candle and shine it around. The first thing I see is some kind of art on the far wall. I walk over and peer at it.
Not art but a symbol. A circle painted in red. And, yes, of course my brain screams painted in blood!, but the red is too bright for that.
Inside the circle is…
A two-headed scorpion.
I pull up the photo I took of the magnified symbol in my dad’s yearbook.
The one someone drew beside the vague threat against my father.
It looked like a bug, but the parts match a scorpion—a line for a body ending in a curved one for the stinger, six lines for legs, and two longer forked ones for pinchers.
I take a photo of the wall symbol. Then I look around. There are mats on the floor, like the kind preschoolers sit on. They’re arranged in a circle around a metal thing.
I crouch by the “metal thing.” It has a grill, and when I open it, inside are very old ashes. The word brazier springs to mind. A little metal cage that holds a fire.
At this point, maybe I should freak out.
Two-headed scorpion painted in red on the wall.
Mats arranged around a brazier. It screams “dark ritual.” But it’s also all very old and seems long abandoned.
I can see my footsteps in the thick dust, and I know no one has been down here in, well, decades probably.
I crouch by the brazier again. It’s about eighteen inches in diameter, and the grill comes off. When I remove it, I see more than ash inside. There’s paper. Burned pages.
I sift around for something big enough to read and finally find one scrap. I pull it out, but all I get is a date.
May 10, 1956.
There’s the top edge of a handwritten line below, which makes that date look like the header on a journal entry. It’s lined paper.
Like a Dux’s journal?
I dump out the contents of the brazier. It’s mostly very well burned, but down at the bottom, I find another scrap with two words: Janus Society.
There’s part of a date under that, too. It looks like it’s also 1956.
The Janus Society? What is the—?
Footsteps pound on the stairs, and I leap up.
Jayden. He’s peeked in and seen that I’m gone and now he’s running down to find me.
I grab the screwdriver and hurry through the hatch as fast as my battered body can move. Steps pound down the hall now, and they sound like multiple sets. Natalia and Jayden?
I grip the screwdriver as I creep toward the hallway.
“Liliana!” a voice bellows.
Theo?
I step into the hall, and the first person I see isn’t Theo. It’s Maddox. He runs for me, with Theo right behind him.
“I’m okay,” I say.
Maddox holds me at arm’s length and as his gaze trips down me, his face hardens. “You are not okay.”
His hands move to my shoulders, and when I wince, he loosens his grip but his mouth tightens. Theo hovers behind him.
“What happened?” Theo says. “Who did this?”
“Jayden. He pushed me down the stairs.”
“Jayden pushed you?” Maddox explodes.
Maddox wheels, and I tense, expecting to see Jayden there, but no one is behind him. No one at all. Theo is already running up the stairs two at a time.
“Theo!” Maddox says. “Get back here! Do not—”
Theo hits the top and disappears, footfalls thudding. Maddox lets out a string of profanity. Then he turns to me. “I need to stop him before—” He cuts himself off. “No, I’m not leaving you. He’s a big boy. Can you walk?”
I remember that tabloid photo. The rage on Theo’s face. “Go after him.”
“You’re hurt. I’m—”
“I’m right behind you.”
More cursing. “I don’t want to leave you, but he—”
“I’m right behind you.”