The Key of Lost Things

by Sean Easley

  I adjust the have-sack on my shoulder and point to the arrows I’ve drawn in the dirt over the past few weeks. “It’s marked.”

  She grabs my wrist, dragging me to a stop. “Hold up. Help me understand this.”

  “We can’t. Queenie—”

  “The cat will wait, silly boy. That’s the whole point of the infusion. She won’t go far if you don’t want her to.”

  I glance down the path, and sure enough, Queenie has stopped and is licking her paws.

  Sana stoops and runs her fingers through the soil. “What is this place?”

  I fill her in on what I know, which admittedly isn’t as much as I’d like.

  “Fascinating.” She wets her finger to feel the direction of the wind. “So, the Nightvine’s a House, then. Like the Hotel?”

  “I—I think so.” I hadn’t considered that. “A House of lost things. Though I think . . . I think the House itself is lost too, maybe?”

  “If it’s lost, how did you find it?”

  I point to a cluster of Nightvine blossoms at the foot of a nearby arch. “Those.”

  She squints at me. “I don’t see anything, Cameron.”

  “Of course you do. These flowers are huge.” I push past her and grip the tuft of bright, lime-colored blossoms, and peel up the veil to reveal sunlight beyond.

  Sana’s eyes widen again. Then she presses a finger to her lips, deep in thought. “You must have bonded with this place’s magic.”

  I drop the veil, and the sunlight fades. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t see any blossoms, Cam. That means the Nightvine is revealing more of itself to you than to me. The magics that form great Houses choose who they share themselves with, so the Nightvine must have chosen you.”

  Like it chose the admiral.

  “We must show this place to Agapios,” Sana says. “There should never be another House connected directly to the Hotel. It’s not safe. When powerful magics intertwine, bad things can happen.”

  “We’ll deal with that later. Right now we need to follow that cat.”

  Sana bobs her head in what I think is agreement. Though, now that she mentions it, I don’t like this idea that the Nightvine might be a threat. Why didn’t I think of that?

  We track Queenie down the vine’s twists and turns until at last she squeezes under a veil and into whatever lies beyond.

  “What’s through there?” Sana asks as we draw up to the arch.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  I lick a pin from my pin-sleeves and scribble my name on my coin before slipping it into the new suit, hoping its magic delivers on Sev’s promise. A shimmer of light ripples through the fabric as the binding renews.

  Sana touches the sleeve of my jacket. “Nice. Sev gave you his gift, then?”

  “Kinda? I had to pick it up from his room on my own.”

  “He didn’t show you what it can do?”

  “Umm,” I say, grasping for an answer. “I know it stays clean?” Truth is, I have no idea, but like he says . . . what kind of friend promises bread but gives a stone? Or something like that.

  Sana shakes her head. “I’m sure you will figure it out.”

  We exit the Nightvine into a street lined with gray cinder block buildings. The dingy sky is tinged with dust, and a weirdly familiar aroma stings my nose, almost like . . . french fries? Sana coughs on the thick air.

  “Time for Oma’s game,” I reply. Though it isn’t just a game, is it? Oma’s where-in-the-world exercise has trained us to orient ourselves whenever we pass through unknown doors—a necessary skill when a door could take you anywhere.

  Sana checks her watch. “Time zone combined with the position of the sun puts us somewhere around forty degrees longitude. Anywhere from Russia to South Africa.”

  “Not Russia.” I kick at the dirt. “Somewhere in the Middle East?”

  She motions to a series of swooping ruby-red letters spray-painted on a nearby building. “That’s Arabic, so maybe you’re right.”

  Rocks shuffle beneath our feet as we venture away from the arch. Hollow concrete buildings line the road, broken and crumbling. Landslides of whitewashed walls pour into the street, bristling with spikes of rebar. Many of the structures are missing their highest floors, as if some giant monster pounded and munched on the buildings as it went.

  Working at a place as shiny as the Hotel, it’s easy to forget that some places are a little rougher around the edges. It was the same when all I knew was my small Texas town—I’d forget that my experience wasn’t necessarily true for everyone. Agapios says every House contains terrors and treasures, but in some places the terrors are hidden, and in others they’re out in the open for everyone to see. Like war. War isn’t just something found in video games and movies. Real war is a strange, thick cloud that smothers those who breathe it in.

  This place smells like war.

  Queenie rubs against a wall nearby, and Cass’s coin drops to the dirt. The cat gives it a quick sniff, then struts around the corner.

  I retrieve it. “This place doesn’t look like anywhere Cass would be. Should we try again?”

  “No.” Sana holds up a finger to test the wind again. “Can you feel that? There’s a door nearby.”

  She leads the way up the broken remains of a building to a flat roof. With the suit reshaping itself with every step, I find myself climbing the rubble faster than I usually would. It’s like wearing comfy pajamas. Really fancy pajamas. I wonder what else it can do.

  Sana shushes me as we peer through an open crack in the roof into the space below. Inside, a group of women dressed in shades of gray stand around a shorter girl with her back to us. I can’t quite get a good look at the girl, though—there are crates blocking my view.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” I whisper.

  “Could be anything,” Sana says, “but look at those boxes. I think that’s food.”

  The roof beneath us groans. “Umm, what was that?” I ask.

  Sana’s eyes grow wide, and she starts to back away.

  I glance down to see a spiderweb of cracks spreading out from my palm. Uh-oh.

  My equilibrium shifts as the roof begins to crumble and give way. I reach for anything I can find to stop myself from falling, but there’s nothing to grab. My world flips as I tumble into the hole.

  As I fall—certain I’m about to meet my painful and untimely demise—the bits of mortar and plaster and stone falling around me brighten. The rubble in the air takes on an amber glow, and a strange, tingling sensation runs up my arms, as if something’s . . . growing out of them. I feel a sense of weightlessness, and for the briefest moment I wonder if the suit is somehow slowing my fall. But then . . .

  Oof. My back smacks into the ground, hard. The force of it knocks the wind out of me. I cough, gazing blearily up through the billowing cloud of dust and into the hole where Sana still stands, tugging on her braid with a worried expression. She’s almost two stories above me. That fall should have hurt a lot worse.

  I move slowly, testing my legs and arms, noticing the change in my jacket. The sleeves are fringed with strips of fabric, each about three inches wide, dripping down along my sides. I barely have time to notice before the strips roll up into my sleeves and disappear.

  Whoa.

  “Cam?”

  The group of women parts to reveal the girl at their center, dusting off her vest and picking bits of rock out of her braids.

  Bee’s expression cycles through at least twenty different emotions—confusion, wonder, irritation—before finally settling into a wry grin. “Looks like you found me, mate.”

  And she bolts.

  24

  Chasing Bees

  I dart after Bee, the seams of my slacks loosening to the point where I can barely feel them swishing around my knees. Sana’s footsteps pound across the roof overhead.

  The ladies move aside to let me through, allowing me a glimpse of the boxes along the edge of the room. Now that I’m closer, I re
cognize those symbols. Sana was right; it’s food, and medicine. Was Bee stealing from these people too?

  I can figure that out later. Right now I can’t lose her. Cass’s coin led me to Bee, so Bee must be my path to Cass.

  I burst out into the street, gripping the strap of Sev’s have-sack tightly at my side.

  “That way!” Sana calls, dropping the last few feet from a ladder and pointing behind me.

  I take off running, arms and legs pumping as hard as they can to catch up. Too bad the suit doesn’t make me stronger or faster, but at least it doesn’t get in the way. Sana won’t be so fortunate—her draped tool belt and coveralls will slow her down significantly. Artificers aren’t trained for active missions like this. These types of missions are for the Maid Service, like Rahki.

  Rahki, who made me promise not to do exactly what I’m doing.

  Bee rounds a crumbling corner, and my right pant leg stiffens around my knee, bracing it to help me make the same turn behind her. The change of direction feels almost effortless. But she’s still fast—faster than I am, for sure.

  She ducks under the fallen supports of another building and disappears into the rubble.

  “Be careful,” Sana shouts from farther back. As if I need to be reminded.

  I slip into the ruined structure, and pick my way through destroyed cinder blocks and bent rebar. The abandoned building is oddly silent, as if it’s holding its breath. Bee is nowhere to be seen. She can’t have gotten far, though.

  Then I feel it. The slight, almost imperceptible crackle of a door binding. There’s something else too . . . something very, very close, and very warm.

  The fabric of my coattails lengthens and curls around in front of me. I watch in awe as one of the coattails reaches into my pocket and retrieves my Mom’s pearl topscrew. The cloth dangles the key in front of me as if encouraging me to take it.

  Huh. That’s . . . weird. The key looks different—shinier—and when I hold it, heat radiates off its pearlescent material. My gaze is instantly drawn to the one standing corner of wall. I hurry around the rubble, and there it is. A door.

  The shimmer of the key fades as it cools in my hand. Dad said Mom’s key could conceal, but he also said there was more than one side to its magic. The key can reveal, too. The warmth I felt when I found the Nightvine . . . The key has been doing this all along.

  I reach to open the door that Bee went through, but then pause. This could be a trap. I should wait for Sana. But if I do, I might end up losing my chance to find Cass.

  I turn the knob and step through.

  • • •

  As soon as I cross the threshold, my sense of gravity shifts, and I quickly realize that this side of the door isn’t upright. It’s a hole, and I’m tumbling through it.

  The fabric along my sleeves stretches as I fall, but before it can finish whatever it’s doing, I splash into a pool of cold liquid.

  I look up and catch sight of a shadow on a rope ladder, scampering up into the circle of light above me. The place I’ve fallen into is a shallow stone well in the ground, and Bee is already climbing out.

  The water slides off my jacket like rain from a raincoat as I grip the rope rungs and climb after her. “I just want to talk,” I yell. Well, talk and strangle her for what she did at the garden party, but she probably won’t stop if I’m threatening her.

  Bee clambers out of sight over the edge. It’s no wonder she, Nico, and Cass are all buddy-buddy. All three of them know how to be both irritating and winsome at the same time.

  Bright sunlight attacks my eyes as I pull myself out of the well. A bed of lush, tall grass and satiny, bulb-shaped flowers—tulips—spread away from me in rows of white, red, yellow, and pink.

  I shake the water loose from the have-sack and check the time on my watch. Position of the sun, the breezy cool temperature . . . if I were to guess, I’d put us in the Netherlands. I glance back at the door built into the underside of the well’s roof. A return trip will be difficult—I’d have to climb upside down to go back through. Who on earth would build a door there? The answer’s obvious, of course—someone who doesn’t want it to be found.

  In the distance, Bee sprints across the field toward a pond surrounded by cattails and reeds. I race after her, kicking up tulips, as she disappears under an arbor on the edge of the pond. Yep, this is definitely a trap. I can’t afford not to follow her, and she knows it.

  As that realization hits, I sense another change in the Beshaped Suit. The fabric thickens, hardens, almost like it’s . . . armor?

  “Calm down,” I tell it. “I don’t think she wants to hurt me.” But the fabric remains leather-tough as if it knows something I don’t.

  I hurry through the reeds to a windmill at the edge of the small pond, and burst through the door, emerging into deep darkness. Again I fall, only, the drop is shorter this time. I land in a crouch on something soft and squeaky. A bed?

  A window nearby shows a clear night sky. I glance up, noticing the door built into the ceiling. This whole chase seems designed as a one-way trip—a series of portals meant to push us forward, but never back.

  Bee’s footsteps thud down the hall away from me.

  I quickly follow her to the first floor of this cabin, and end up in the kitchen. It’s quiet. Outside, an owl gives a long, tremulous trill.

  Now where’d she go?

  I trace my fingers along the wall as I search the room, but I find no doors, no veils, nothing. If there’s a crackle of binding in here, I can’t hear it over the noisy, archaic-looking refrigerator in the corner. Maybe she went outside?

  Think, Cam. What would Nico do? He’d hide his exit in plain sight, so that no one would ever think to look there. The refrigerator—that’s in plain sight, and it’s exactly the kind of thing Nico would use.

  I place a hand on the fridge door, and the key in my pocket warms. Sneaky, sneaky. I pull the latch and smile, inhaling the woodsy scent of rain and trees.

  The fridge takes me to a high platform built around a tree overlooking an endless forest. All of the limbs above me have been sawn off, leaving a giant, sharp spike of wood to rise above the rest of the canopy below. It’s still nighttime here, with a clear, star-strewn sky and warm air that’s tacky with humidity. Branches far below wave and rustle in the bright moonlight. A rain forest, somewhere in Central or South America maybe?

  To my right, a bamboo bridge dips toward a similar platform built around another limbless tree, and to the left, a cable drops into the moonlit forest below. A wheel mechanism with a triangular handle and a rope loop hangs over the platform.

  It’s a zip line. Nice.

  Bee wouldn’t have taken the bridge, because bridges go both ways. She must have taken the zip line. I peek over the platform’s edge at the rolling, dark thundercloud of trees below, and my heart leaps into my throat so fast that I almost gag. If I were to fall from this height . . .

  The ribbonlike material unfurls from my suit sleeves, only, this time it has time to finish the transformation. The strips bind together into a single sheet that hangs from each arm and joins together with my coattails behind me. Wings. My suit has wings. I’m going to owe Sev big-time for this when I get back.

  But right now feels like the wrong time to be learning to fly, so instead I loop the zip line rope around my waist and buckle it tight, then check the strap on the have-sack to make sure I won’t lose it.

  I grip the handle—no fluff, no feathers—and push off.

  Warm, humid wind whips against my body as I whizz down the cable. Beside me, a rainbow-colored bird keeps pace, wings reflecting moonlight.

  I drop into the treetop canopy. Branches flick and scrape my cheeks. My coattails reach around to protect me, knocking away the rogue branches as I cling to the zip line handle, gritting my teeth the whole way. I can barely make out where the cable leads now. The roots at the base of a tree have grown together to form an arch—a shadowy hole, ready to gobble me up.

  I pull up my knees, close my e
yes, and brace for disaster.

  There’s a splash as if through water, and my breath catches in my throat from the biting chill.

  I open my eyes to see snow-covered peaks. An incredible mountain range extends in all directions as I continue to whirr down the zip line, cheeks burning in the cold air. Sun, temp, terrain . . . We’re somewhere in the Himalayas, and this cable is stretched between a rocky outcropping and another mountain face.

  My collar grows a fur lining to protect my neck against the frigid air, and I can feel the same lining spread down my sleeves and legs, too.

  Up ahead, I spot her. At least I think it’s Bee—a tiny dot of a person hanging from a pulley like mine, about to enter another portal built into the cliff side. I lift my knees to my chest and charge through the air behind her. The suit’s fur collar continues to sprout—black and brown fur whipping around my chin and cheeks—while the rest of the suit compresses against my skin to make me more aerodynamic.

  I pass through the hole in the mountain after her, and the world goes black.

  The rigging yanks hard as the zip line stops, suddenly. My lungs ache from the cold mountain air mixing with the heavy warmth that surrounds me now as I hang in the stillness.

  The lining of my suit retracts, leaving my skin tingling with adrenaline. It’s so dark here. No sky, no outside elements, just . . . dark.

  A burst of cool wind hits my face. Is that . . . air-conditioning?

  I double-check to make sure the suit’s wings are still unfurled, then release the clip on the harness, ready to extend my arms and glide if I have to. It’s unnecessary, though—as soon as I release, my knees hit plush carpet below. My heart pulses like the final minutes of a fireworks show, making my stomach churn.

  When I’m finally sure that I’m not going to puke, I stand on wobbly legs, rubbing the numbness out of my knees and scanning the darkness for any sign of the girl I chased in here.

  A bright spotlight flips on, blinding me.

  I squint against the ache in my eyeballs. “Hello?”

  Boom, boom, boom.