“Grandchildren change everything,” said the spokesghoul.
Right. “That’s why I’m here,” I said, trying not to sound impatient, even as I stressed the words as hard as I dared. “My grandmother is missing. If you were missing, sir, don’t you think Aurelie would want to be able to go after you? I need to know about the Crier Theater. Please.”
“I’m getting there,” he said—but he didn’t sound annoyed. If anything, he sounded approving, like he’d been hoping I’d push a little harder. “They tore down our whole complex. People rejoiced. Said it was a beautification project. The people who’d bought the land built a shopping complex there. It failed—something about sabotage and rats in the walls that kept chewing the wiring—”
“You say ‘rats,’ I say ‘vindictive hidebehinds who didn’t appreciate being rendered homeless,’” interjected his daughter.
“—and the place sat empty for a good ten years,” finished her father. “We were starting to put together a plan for buying it back and making our new home in the mall when that Crier fellow swooped in with his big network bank account and bought the whole thing lock, stock, and barrel. He tore it down, and built his new theater over the bones.”
“Which explains why there are six basements,” I said. “The shopping mall wouldn’t have seen the need to fill them in, and Adrian might not even have known they were there.” Or maybe he had, and that was why there were unmarked doors in the halls. He’d left the unused spaces accessible but ignored. That was better than hiding them. Hidden things got found, after all.
The elder ghoul stared at me for a moment. Then, slowly, he said, “No.”
“No?” I asked.
“No,” he repeated. “No, there are not six basements. That was our home. Haven’t you been listening? For fifty years, we lived and died in the warehouses he tore down to build his theater.”
The warehouses had been torn down before Adrian got there, but somehow I didn’t think pointing that out was going to make me any friends just now. “What are you saying?”
“He’s saying six basements wouldn’t be enough for a community the size of ours,” said his daughter. “That place is a honeycomb. There are dozens of underground rooms. Some of them probably still have hidebehind illusions covering the doors, too. We may have all lived in the same place, but that didn’t mean they ever trusted anyone who wasn’t part of their clade.”
“Well, Verity, I’m impressed,” said Dominic. “You seem to have found the only reality show filmed atop a labyrinth. Good for you. That’s some remarkable bad decision making.”
I slanted a look in his direction. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Me? Make fun of you? Never. I’m simply doing my best to mock your way of looking at the world, to conceal my own sudden, bone-deep terror.”
“Right.” I took a deep breath before putting on my most winsome smile, looking back to the ghoul, and asking, “I don’t suppose you have some sort of a map?”
The ghoul blinked.
They had a map. It was incomplete, missing most of the areas constructed by the hidebehinds, but it was a map, and all it cost us was the promise of eight hundred dollars and a favor to be determined later. (I would have been happier with more money and less favor. “Favors to be determined later” are the way people wind up breaking into tombs looking for the lost idols of spider gods who really just want to be left alone. To select a purposefully nonspecific example.)
“So now what?” asked Malena. She was walking on my left, keeping close. I couldn’t blame her. The ghouls had followed us out of the house and were on the lawn with Aurelie, watching us go. They weren’t the only ones. I wouldn’t have wanted to wager a guess as to how much of the neighborhood was nonhuman, expats from their private, lost community—but I was assuming it was more than just the one household. Shadows moved on front porches as we passed them, and bushes rustled in ways that implied watchers larger than the average raccoon.
“Now we head back to the theater and start searching the basements for signs of our missing people.” I couldn’t say “bodies.” Not yet. Alice was one of the most dangerous women in the world. She couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t believable.
“I’m sorry, but no,” said Dominic.
I actually stopped walking to stare at him. Malena did the same. If anything, she looked more surprised than I did.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“I said no,” he said. “You can’t return to the theater right now.”