“Probably the caretaker’s entrance,” I said as we approached it.
Arthur took out his key chain and fumbled through the keys until he found a tiny silver lock-picking tool. In a second the padlock was off. After waiting until no passersby were watching, we slipped through the door and down the stairs into the grassy area, hiding in the shadows until we were sure no one had seen our illegal entry.
It was chillier among the ruins, as if by descending into the ancient maze of open-air rooms we had actually traveled to another place and time. Like Siberia in mid-winter. I drew my coat more tightly around me and led the way through the dark maze, heading in the direction Arthur had indicated. A minute later, we were standing in a completely unremarkable corner at the juncture of two fifteen-foot-high walls. There was no door carved into the side. No suspicious cracks in the walls. No sign of a passageway of any sort.
“How about using that volant future-sight ability, bro, and telling us where to look,” Ambrose said. After a second, he nodded and said, “Vin says that in a few minutes Kate is gone and we’re here waiting for her, but he can’t see where she went or anything about how it happened. There must be some weird guérisseur juju goin’ on around here blocking revenant powers. Which means we must be in the right place.”
My spine tingled as I wondered just how powerful Bran and his people actually were. They seemed so . . . ordinary. Especially his mother, who had looked like any other little old lady knitting in front of her fireplace.
“Well, I guess we gotta do things the hard way,” Ambrose said. He dropped to his knees and began feeling around on the ground, knocking at places where the grass had worn away. “There doesn’t seem to be a trapdoor or hollow space,” he said. Arthur and I took opposing walls and began feeling our way along them with our fingertips.
“What was it exactly that the guérisseur told you?” Arthur asked as he worked.
“Same as what he told you,” I responded. “He just said that the entrance was in the southwest corner of the ruins and that I could enter by using my signum.” I pulled the pendant out from my shirt, and the little crystal memento mori clinked against it as I pulled them over my head and held them up.
What’s that you’re wearing with the signum? Vincent asked immediately.
“It’s a lock of your hair,” I responded. Arthur and Ambrose glanced at me quizzically but returned quickly to their work. For the hundredth time I thought how weird it must be for them to constantly have volant spirits around and only catch the part of conversations that were directed at them. “Jeanne gave it to me,” I continued self-consciously.
As I turned the signum in my fingers, the light of the streetlamp above flashed on the gold and reflected off something shiny embedded in the wall. I leaned forward to take a better look. Something metallic was set into the stone and completely covered in white dust, making it invisible from a few feet away. I brushed it off to uncover a golden signum bardia the size of my own.
“That’s our girl,” Ambrose crowed.
Be careful, I can’t see anything in the future from this moment forward, Vincent told me.
“I will,” I promised, and glanced to Arthur, who leaned forward, inspecting the signum. He stepped back and nodded his go-ahead.
“Let’s see what this baby does,” Ambrose said eagerly.
I held my pendant up and pressed it against the symbol on the wall, my cabochon sapphire depressing a button in the center as the encircled triangle slotted snugly into place. Arthur, Ambrose, and I stood, watching for any sign of movement. “Well, that felt very Indiana Jones-ish,” I said after a pause. “So what happens now?”
At that second, the ground rumbled slightly under our feet, feeling as if a Métro train were passing directly beneath us, and a section of the wall swung forward into the dark. Ambrose’s eyebrows shot up. “Awesome!” he exclaimed.
Not awesome. At all, I thought, peering into the pitch-black space behind the door. Noticing a flashlight hanging from a hook on the wall just beyond the opening, I tentatively reached through to detach it and quickly pulled it out. Flicking it on, I pointed it down the passageway.
A narrow tunnel carved into the stone appeared in the yellow beam of artificial light. It went straight ahead a long ways, then sloped downward at a steep rate until it turned to the right and disappeared. My chest tightened with anxiety, and I started sweating again. This didn’t look like a cave. It looked like a tomb.
I don’t want you to go in there alone, Vincent said.
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t mind if you came along,” I admitted, wiping a clammy hand on my jeans. Who knew that palms could sweat this much? I thought.