“Well, we’ve learned there are gray areas between life and death. Maybe it isn’t Peter writing the notes. It could be an avatar.”
The cavern seemed to follow a symbolically spiraling path. Water dripped from invisible crannies. Thick, bulbous tree roots now poked through and slithered down the walls.
The final stretch of the slope met the ceiling. The stone above was suspiciously flat.
“I think I know where we are,” Andy said.
“Who would raise Peter’s avatar, and why?” Kerri insisted, watching Andy trace the edges of the slab above them. “Debo?n wants us dead; why would he go and resurrect the one of us who died?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Andy said, pausing for a second before going on to inspect the carved rock columns that seemed to support the ceiling. “Unless it’s Debo?n’s avatar using Peter’s body.” The candlelight was now outlining the links of a heavy chain and gears fixed to the rock. “Maybe that’s what happens if we die—the part of Debo?n inside us would take control.”
“Yeah, sure,” Kerri said, defeated. “It’s magic, so who cares how it works.”
(Touching every part of the mechanics.) “Gee, Kerri, I wish this were closer to your area of expertise too, but we’re fighting lake creatures and a necromancer, so common science is not going to help us much and how the fuck does this secret door open?!”
Kerri snatched the pickax from Andy and struck a brick jutting out from under a column in a corner. The brick smashed to dust, the column descended, gears rattled, and the marble slab above them slid back before Andy’s eyes.
Kerri pointed at the different pieces of the puzzle.
“Door, rails, cogs, counterweight, wedge. (Embracing all with a gesture.) Physics.”
ANDY: (Smirking, foolproven.) You enjoy this, don’t you?
KERRI: Being trapped with you in dark miserable caves? I can think of worse things.
—
They climbed out of Debo?n’s grave to cold, clean air inside the vault of the willow tree.
Andy pushed aside the curtain of drooping branches and met a full moon and gentle rain. Kerri took the glowstick from Tim before allowing him to explore the isle again.
“Okay, so this answers the question of how they sneak in and out of the house with the front door chained,” Kerri explained, glancing at the open tomb and the spiral cavern they had just ascended. “I bet you the other end of this cave flows into the basement. Or even the mines.”
Andy shushed her, then pointed up. The mansion slept peacefully, a round cat eye shining yellow atop.
“He’s still bunkered up there,” Andy said, glaring at the attic window, and then she checked herself. She had lost much of her gear, considerable ammo, one man of the team, their two-way radio (which Nate happened to carry), and about 40 percent off her health bar, judging by the bleeding cuts all over her arms. And she was back at square one, standing in front of the mansion, armed with a shotgun and a pickax.
An icy lake breeze took the opportunity to remind her she’d also lost her jacket somewhere during the skirmish, raising goose bumps on her neck.
“Okay, look…uh…maybe…”
She had no trouble finding the words—they weren’t difficult ones. It was just that they caused her physical pain to utter.
“Maybe…we should just wait for someone else to take care of this. I…I mean, we barely got out of there alive, and we’re right back where we started. (Checks her Coca-Cola watch.) Copperseed and Joey must’ve evacked the town by now. Maybe Al and the cavalry are on their way. We can just take the motorboat, find Nate, and wait on the mainland. Right?” Her own ears couldn’t believe what her mouth was babbling. “I mean…it’s not our fight. We’re just a summer detective club. Let’s go home.”
Kerri, rain-freckled, replied, “I don’t think that’s an option anymore.”
Andy followed her line of sight to the nearest shore. For a second she feared (and felt her heart clenching, anticipating the blow) that Joey’s motorboat would be gone. It was still there. But not far from it, the rowboat was beached there too. The rowboat Nate was supposed to have escaped in.
Tim came back from reconnaissance, looked expectantly at the team leader.
“Nate’s inside,” Andy muttered.
All three gazed up at the house, black and huge and pointy like the back of a sleeping dragon.
ANDY: Okay, listen, new plan. We go in, bust the attic door, take Nate—
KERRI: That’s exactly what he’s expecting us to do, and we can’t be sure that Nate’s up there anyway.
ANDY: Right. Okay, so we cut his oxygen supply. We connect the duct pipes there to the motorboat’s exhaust and we gas the fucker!
KERRI: Not enough pipe, and if Nate is in there, we just killed him.
ANDY: Right. What if we lure him out and set a trap like last time? We build a Lake Creature Phony Express!
KERRI: You expect a hundred-fifty-year-old necromancer to pull open a fake door in his own house, roll down two flights of stairs on a serving cart, and land in a fishing net? Also, no cart and no net.
ANDY: True. (Thinks, then to Tim.) Feel free to jump in any time.
TIM: (Tilts his head, resenting the pressure.)
ANDY: Okay, wait, I got it. We go in the way Tim came to us in the dungeon—inside the walls. We can just follow the duct pipes to the attic and reassess. If Nate’s there, we rescue him; if the necromancer is, we catch him by surprise.
Kerri figuratively sat on it for a minute.
ANDY: I don’t need to hear it’s a good plan, just tell me it ain’t the worst thing you heard me say.
KERRI: Actually, “ain’t” is the worst thing I heard you say.
ANDY: Good enough. But first, let’s plan our escape route. And we need to pack.
—
The packing bit was arduous but relatively quick: it involved taking a gold ingot each and hiding it inside the glove compartment in Joey’s motorboat. Andy decided to take a second one, for Nate’s sake, and then Kerri pushed herself to carry two as well, for Tim’s. In the end, they had carried up the spiral cavern about 1,800 ounces, but as Andy put it, any man could carry that.