by Tracy Wolff
It takes a minute, but when he next speaks, the worry is gone. And so is everything else except the teasing drawl that’s as much a part of him as his amber eyes and muscles. It’s like the warning never happened, even before he says, “Where’s the fun in that?”
“You’ve got an odd definition of fun.”
“You have no idea.” He wiggles his brows. “So what are you up to anyway?”
I stare at him. “Do you ever finish any conversation without starting another?”
“Never. It’s part of my charm.”
“Yeah, just keep telling yourself that.”
“I will.” He walks several more feet with me, happily bopping along to a song that’s only in his head. “Where are you going? The classrooms are back that way.”
“I’ve got to go to my room and grab some warmer clothes. I have art next, and I’ll freeze if I go outside like this.”
“Wait.” He stops dead. “No one told you about the tunnels?”
“What tunnels?” I eye him suspiciously. “Are you messing with me again?”
“I’m not, I swear. There’s a whole network of tunnels that run under the school and lead to the different outbuildings.”
“Seriously? This is Alaska—how did they dig tunnels in the frozen ground?”
“I don’t know. How do they drill in the frozen ground? Besides, summer is a thing.” He gives me the best Boy Scout look in his repertoire. “I promise. The tunnels are real. I just can’t believe the omnipotent Jaxon Vega forgot to mention them to you.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re going to start in on Jaxon now?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying, I’m the one telling you about the tunnels and keeping you from freezing off all the important parts of your anatomy. He could have mentioned them to you before sending you out into the cruel, cruel winter.”
“It’s fall.” I roll my eyes. “And are we going to do this every time we talk about Jaxon?”
He holds his hands up in mock innocence. “As far as I’m concerned, we never have to talk about Jaxon.”
“Funny claim coming from a guy who keeps bringing him up.”
“Because I’m worried about you. I swear.” He draws an X over his heart. “Jaxon’s a complicated guy, Grace. You should stay away from him.”
“I find it interesting that he says the exact same thing about you.”
“Yeah, well, nothing says you have to listen to him.” He makes a disgusted face.
“Nothing says I have to listen to you, either.” I give him a shit-eating grin. “You see my conundrum, right?”
“Ooh. The new girl’s got some claws after all. I like it.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re a total weirdo. You know that, right?”
“Know it? I own it, baby.”
I can’t help but laugh as he makes a ridiculous face at me, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue. “So are you going to show me these tunnels sometime this year, or am I going to have to do my best impression of the abominable snowwoman?”
“Definitely the tunnels. Turns out I’m headed that way myself. Come on.”
He reaches for my hand and makes an abrupt left turn, tugging me down a narrow corridor that I don’t think I would have even noticed if he hadn’t dragged me into it.
It’s long and winding and slopes down so gradually that it takes me a minute to notice we’re descending. Flint keeps a firm grip on my hand as we pass a couple of students coming the other way.
The hallway is so narrow that all four of us have to press our backs up against the wall to keep from crashing into one another as we pass.
“How much farther is it?” I ask as we get back to walking normally. Or at least as normally as we can walk as the ceiling starts to get lower as well. If this keeps up, we’ll be duck-walking through this thing like they had to do in the pyramids.
“Just another minute to the tunnel entrance and then a five-minute walk to the art studio.”
“Okay, cool.” I pull out my phone to check how we are on time—seven minutes—and see that Jaxon has texted me twice. The first one is just a string of question marks that I assume is a reminder about my schedule. And the second is the start of a joke:
Jaxon: What did the pirate say when he turned 80?
Oh my God. I’ve totally created a monster. And I love it.
I text him back a laughing emoji along with a string of question marks of my own. I also text a copy of my schedule—not because he demanded one earlier but because I want to see if he’ll follow through and find me again. Once the texts are delivered, I shove my phone back in my pocket and try to tell myself that I don’t care that much if he shows up or not. But it’s a lie, and I am very well aware of that fact.
The light is getting dimmer and dimmer the farther we go down this corridor, and if I were with anyone but Flint (or Jaxon or Macy), I’d be getting nervous. Not because I think there’s anything wrong necessarily, but because I can’t help wondering: If the walkway to the tunnels is this creepy, what are the actual tunnels going to look like?
“Okay, here we go,” Flint finally says as we come up against an old wooden door—one that’s protected by an electronic keypad that has my eyebrows lifting to my hairline. Nothing in my life has ever looked as incongruous as that keypad in the middle of this musty, dusty corridor with a door that looks to be at least a hundred years old.
He punches in a five-digit code so fast that I don’t see any number past the first three. It takes a second, but then the light above the door flashes green at the same time as the door unlocks.
Flint glances over his shoulder at me as he reaches to pull open the door. “You ready?”
“Yeah, of course.” Another glance at my phone tells me we better hustle or I’m going to be late.
Flint holds the door for me, and I smile my thanks at him, but the second I take a step over the threshold, a little voice deep inside me starts screeching—telling me not to go any farther.
Telling me to run.
Telling me to get the hell away from these tunnels and never look back.
But Flint’s waiting for me to go. Plus, if I don’t get moving, I’ll be seriously late to art. Definitely not the first impression I wanted to make on the teacher of my favorite class.
Besides, this is Flint. The guy who jumped out of a tree and took the brunt of a very nasty fall just to save me. It’s ridiculous to think that I might have to run from him of all people, no matter what Jaxon says.
Which is why I shove all the new and bizarre misgivings I’m suddenly having back down where they belong. And walk straight across the threshold.
29
With Friends
Like These,
Everyone Needs
Hard Hats
Flint follows me through, then lets the door close behind us with a solid thump.
The room is dim, even dimmer than the passageway here, and it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust.
“What is this place?” I demand once they do. “It doesn’t look like a tunnel.”
In fact, what it looks like is a prison. Or at least the holding area of a jail. There are several cells lining the wall in front of us, each one equipped with a bed—and, more importantly, two sets of shackles. Castle or not, Alaska or not, I am not okay with what I’m seeing. At all.
“I think we should go back,” I tell him, pulling at the door handle, to no avail. “How do I get this door open?” There’s no keypad on this side, nothing I can see that will get us out of here.
“You have to open it from the other side of this room,” Flint tells me, looking amused. “Don’t worry. We’ll be through here in a second.”
“I thought we were going to the tunnels. I’ve got to get to art, Flint.”
“This is the way to the tunnels. Chill, Grace.”
“
What tunnels? This is a dungeon!” Alarm is racing through me at this point, my brain warning me that I don’t know this guy that well. That anything could happen down here. That— I take a deep breath, try to shut down the panic tearing through me.
“Trust me.” He puts a hand on my lower back, starts guiding me forward. I don’t want to go, but at this point, it’s not exactly like I’ve got a dozen alternatives. I can pound on the door, hoping that someone hears me, or I can trust Flint to do what he says and get me to the tunnel I need. Considering he’s been nothing but kind to me since I got here, I let him propel me forward and pray I’m not making a mistake.
We walk all the way to the end of the room, past four separate cells, and I don’t say a word of complaint. But when Flint stops in front of the fifth cell and tries to get me to go in, my trust and patience come to an abrupt end.
“What are you doing?” I demand. Or screech, depending on your point of view. “I’m not going in there.”
He looks at me like I’m being completely irrational. “It’s where the entrance to the tunnels is.”
“I don’t see an entrance,” I snap at him. “All I see are bars. And shackles.”
“It’s not what it looks like, I swear. These are secret tunnels, and when they built the castle a hundred years ago, they did a really good job of disguising the entrance.”
“A little too good a job, in my opinion. I want to go back up, Flint. I’ll make up some excuse for my art teacher for being late, but I—”
“It’s okay.” For the first time, he looks concerned. “We use these tunnels all the time. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Yeah, but—” I break off as the door at the other end of the room opens. And in walks Lia.
“Hey, hold the door!” I call to her, slipping out of Flint’s loose hold and making a mad dash back toward the only obvious exit point in this hellhole of a room.
But she obviously doesn’t hear me. The door slams shut behind her. Damn it.
“Grace!” She looks surprised to see me as she fishes a pair of earbuds out of her ears. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m taking her to the tunnels.” Flint shoots me an exasperated look as he catches up to me. “She’s got art.”
“Oh yeah? With Kaufman?” Lia looks interested.
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Me too.” She gives Flint a cool glance. “I’ll take it from here.”
“No need for that,” he answers. “I’m going that way, too.”
“You don’t have to bother.”
“No bother. Right, Grace?” He grins at me, but this time he sure seems to be showing a lot of teeth.
Then again, who can blame him? He was trying to help me, and I freaked out on him for no reason. “If you’re sure.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” He loops an arm through mine. “I would love to escort you ladies to class.”
“Lucky us.” Lia’s own smile is saccharin sweet as she takes hold of my other arm and starts to walk us back toward the end of the room. As we move—both of them holding on to me—I can’t help but feel a little like a ping-pong ball caught between them.
Lia doesn’t let go until we reach the final cell. She marches inside and grabs hold of one of the arm shackles—exactly as Flint was aiming to do when I freaked out—and then pulls, hard.
The portion of the stone wall the shackles are attached to opens wide. She glances back at us, eyebrows raised. “Ready?”
Flint looks at me, tilts his head questioningly.
I feel myself blushing yet again, this time out of shame. “Sorry. I freaked out when I shouldn’t have.”
He shrugs. “No worries. I guess I come down here so often, I forget how creepy it looks.”
“So creepy,” I tell him as we move into the cell. “And when you reached for that shackle—”
He laughs. “You didn’t really think I was going to chain you up down here, did you?”
“Of course she did,” Lia tells him as we walk through the trick door and she pulls it closed behind us. “I wouldn’t trust you, either. You look like exactly the kind of pervert she should never be alone with.”
“And what kind of pervert is that exactly?” he demands, glancing between the two of us.
Suddenly, I remember what Macy said about Jaxon when she was trying to warn me off him, and I can’t resist. “You know, the kind who starves a girl so he can make a dress out of her skin.”
They both stare at me like I’ve lost my mind completely. Lia looks taken aback but amused, and Flint…Flint looks more offended than anyone ever. It’s totally inappropriate, but I can’t help laughing. Because, come on. Who hasn’t seen that movie—or at least heard of it?
“Excuse me?” he says after a second, more ice in those words than in the entire school grounds outside.
“From Silence of the Lambs? That’s what the serial killer Jodie Foster is trying to catch does to his victims. It’s why she needs Hannibal Lecter.”
“Never saw the movie.”
“Oh, well, he would kidnap girls and—”
“Yeah, I got it.” He lets go of my arm for the first time since Lia showed up. “For the record, clothes made of skin, not so much my style.”
“Obviously. That’s why I made the joke.” When he doesn’t respond, I bump my shoulder against his. “Come on, Flint. Don’t be mad. I was just playing.”
“Don’t waste your breath,” Lia tells me as we make our way farther into the tunnels. “He’s a total drag—”
“Bite me,” Flint growls.
She eyes him scornfully. “You wish.”
“I wish you’d try.” He returns her look with interest.
Wow, this devolved quickly.
“Don’t we need to get to class?” I ask, determined to interrupt whatever this is before it gets even worse. “The bell’s going to ring in a minute.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lia tells me. “Kaufman knows it’s a pain to get to her class, so she doesn’t sweat it.”
But she does pick up the pace—after giving Flint one last look that’s a cross between a snarl and a smirk.
I follow her, leaving Flint to bring up the rear, as I figure we’ll all do better with me as a buffer between them. For the first time since last night, when Macy tried to explain that I can’t be friends with both Jaxon and Flint, I actually start to believe her. Lia’s obviously Team Jaxon despite whatever I witnessed between them the other day, and look how well this little excursion is going.
We’re moving fast through the tunnels now, so I don’t get to check them out the way I really want to. Still, the recessed lighting, dim as it might be, gives me at least a decent view of where I’m walking. And I have to say, terrifying entrance notwithstanding, these things are freaking cool.
The walls are made entirely of different-colored stones—mostly white and black, but there are colored stones, too. They gleam red and blue and green even in the faint light, and I can’t help reaching out to touch one of the bigger ones, just to see what it feels like. Cool, obviously, but also smooth, polished, like a gemstone. For a second, I wonder if that’s what they are. But then I dismiss it as ridiculous, because what school (even a fancy, rich one like Katmere Academy) has the money to embed gemstones in the walls?
The floor is made of white brick, as are a bunch of the columns we pass as we walk. But what really gets me is the art that is down here—bone-like sculptures embedded in the walls, hanging from the ceiling, even resting on pedestals in various alcoves along the way.
It’s an obvious homage to the Paris catacombs, where seven million skeletons are laid to rest—or used for macabre decorations throughout. And I can’t help wondering if the school’s art classes added the “bone” sculptures to the tunnels here. I also want to know what art supplies the bones are really made of.
But t
rying to figure that out has to wait, too, if I have any hope of making it to art class even close to on time.
As we follow the tunnel, we get to a kind of rotunda-type room that pretty much has my eyes bugging out of my head. It’s obviously a main hub for the tunnels, because eleven other tunnels feed into it as well. But that’s not what has my eyes going wide, even though I have no idea which of the other tunnels we should take.
No, what has my mouth falling open and my eyes pretty much bugging out of my head is the giant chandelier hanging in the center of the room, unlit candles at the end of each arm. But it’s not the size of the chandelier or the fact that there are actual candles in it that catches my attention (although, fire code, anyone?). It’s the fact that the chandelier, like so many of the other decorations down here, looks to be made entirely of human bones.
I know it’s just art, and the bones are made of plastic or whatever, but they sure look realistic hanging off the chandelier—so much so that a chill creeps down my spine. This is more than an homage to the catacombs. It’s like someone actually tried to re-create them.
“Why are you stopping?” Flint asks, following my gaze.
“This is bizarre. You know that, right?”
He grins. “A little bit. But it’s also cool, isn’t it?”
“Totally cool.” I step farther into the room to get a better look. “I wonder how long it took. I mean, it had to be a class art project, right? Not just one student.”
“Art project?” Flint looks confused.
“We don’t know,” Lia interjects. “It was done years before we got here—years before your uncle or any of the other current teachers got here, too. But yeah, it had to be a class project. No way one artist could do all this in a semester or even a year.”
“It’s amazing. I mean, so elaborate and lifelike. Or…you know what I mean.”
She nods. “Yeah.”
There are more bones above each of the tunnels, as well as plaques bearing inscriptions in a language I don’t recognize. One of the Alaskan languages, I’m sure, but I want to know which one. So I take out my phone and snap a pic of the closest plaque, figuring I’ll google it along with the cottage names.