“I’m sorry?” he asked, shocked and confused. He seemed to think I was flirting with him.
“No, go change into something comfortable and come back.”
“What for?” He got up and went to the door.
“We’re going on a snack run.”
When he returned—in jeans and a sweatshirt—I had changed into a version of the same thing and I had the flashlight in my hand, my empty backpack on my back, and the panel in the floor of the closet already open. I had folded up the ladder and leaned it against the wall for easier access. Lance had his coat with him. I took it from his hands and tossed it on my bed.
“You don’t need this.”
“You still have this in here?” He put a hand on the ladder.
“We’ll get to that later. Here’s something I left out earlier today: remember how all those Chicago books talked about tunnels during Prohibition?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. I opened the closet door wide and flicked my head toward it. He walked over and peered down then looked at me and said, “Seriously?” I nodded. He nodded back, impressed.
I warned him to watch his grip and footing, since it was easy to slip, and to take his time and then, together, we made our way down with that lone flashlight guiding us. I would have to get another of those. I led him down my usual path, pointing out the turn that would have led to the Vault.
“I have a secret too,” he said then, a little nervous.
“Oh?”
“I know that one—behind the fire wall, right?” he asked. I couldn’t disguise my surprise; my feet even stopped walking for a moment to look at him and consider this. “I found it when I was doing some work for Lucian one day, but I didn’t get very far and had to go back. We’re not the only ones who know about this. You know the Outfit—”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We should just watch it, is all.” He looked nervous now, recalling whatever had gone on when he was down here last.
“Did they see you then?”
“No, I ran, just booked it. You?”
“I hid.”
“Bold choice,” he said, with respect.
“Only choice,” I said, trying not to let on just how terrified I had been.
“Well, for the record, if it happens tonight, I’m running.”
“It was right around here actually.” I pointed as we approached that crumbling room.
“Me too. What’s the deal in there?” We both looked through the exposed wall beams.
“I’ll tell you later, so you don’t start running before we feed you.”
“Good call.”
We walked along together through the warm, musty passages. I could see Lance studying our surroundings, trying to figure out where we were in relation to the buildings on the block. He rolled up his sleeves and then unzipped his hooded sweatshirt and took it off altogether. He had his new cuff on his wrist—it looked nice, like it belonged there, even though I wouldn’t have guessed he would have been the kind of guy to wear something so rock ’n’ roll.
I shed my sweatshirt too—it was particularly warm down here today. We heard the first strains of very faint music as we reached that doorway into the pantry. We listened first, facing each other with our ears against that rotating panel that would be the way in, just in case we could hear any signs of rustling inside. We exchanged looks that said It’s a go, and I pushed slowly through the creaky, nearly stuck doorway, Lance following.
Footsteps stomped above and the roar and glass clinking of the bar came to life at the top of that staircase.
Lance pointed. “So that’s the place? Where we just were?”
“That’s right. Let’s make them sorry they didn’t let us in. Stock up.”
The shelves lining the space were piled high, and since I hadn’t fully investigated last time, I was pleasantly surprised—there was more here than I would have guessed. the majority of nourishment did, naturally, come in alcohol form, and the general nutritional value of everything else wasn’t much higher than that, but Lance and I moved through, filling up our arms with chips and jars of salsa and packs of pita bread. It wasn’t the fanciest place in town and they seemed to have a small menu limited to greasy staples, most of which needed to be microwaved. the freezer was chock-full of bulk quantities of mozzarella sticks, onion rings, fries, but we didn’t see any sort of appliance for heating these things. Still, the fridge held a few minor treasures and we took a tub of hummus, a block of cheddar cheese, and some Diet coke. We would make do. We debated heartily over whether to leave some cash behind in exchange for what we took, and though we were irked at having been denied entry upstairs, we decided we could use the good karma so Lance made a small donation—wedging ten dollars under a bag of chips—just to be nice.
We wanted to head back up with our contraband, but we were too famished. We decided we needed a snack before facing that climb, so we set up a picnic on the outer banks of that dark hallway, in a spot where we could still catch the last of the light from the grand concourse of the tunnel. We ate frantically, silently for several minutes, but once we began to feel sated, we slowed our pace enough to talk again. Now that I had finally started to tell someone what was going on here, I couldn’t stop. I wanted to unload more secrets every opportunity I had. It freed me to be able to share all of this with someone. I felt less lonely and less scared. So, I told Lance of the next place he needed to see, the passageway up to Aurelia’s office. I told him about the induction I’d witnessed perched up on that catwalk. After I’d been talking for what felt like ages, he had to interrupt me midsentence,
“Before you go on, I’m curious. You asked me earlier why I trust what you’re telling me. But why do you trust me?”
I thought back to earlier in the day, to Neil’s death, to Dante’s distance. But it hadn’t been desperation that had gotten me to open up to him; there was more. I tried to put it into words. “I guess because I feel like we’re alike.”
“You just plagiarized my reason. That’s the best you can do?”
“I can’t describe it, it’s just an instinct. And I generally trust those. When I don’t is when I get into trouble.” Lucian’s face flashed across my mind.
“You just think I’m not smooth enough to be a double agent, right?”
“Not necess—”
“Because you’re right, I’d be terrible.”
“Smoothness is overrated—even if it takes a little while to fully realize that sometimes.” We both laughed.
When we finished eating, we packed our leftovers and our emptied containers and discarded chip bags into my backpack to bring back upstairs—the last thing we needed was someone, or a pack of rats, to find this and make it even less pleasant to come down here. I had promised to show Lance one more thing before we climbed back up and I took him there now.
Together we pulled back the velvet covering over the photos.
“Whoa,” he gasped, taking them all in. And that was all he could manage. We pawed through looking for his. When I came across Lucian’s, I noticed that he looked slightly less gnarled and decayed than last time. His eyes had been restored to their gray-blue; you could tell it was him and not some horrific anonymous burned corpse. I kept looking through others, until Lance piped up, finding his and kneeling down before it, studying it.
“I held up okay,” he said to it.
But I barely heard him. I located Dante’s portrait and my heart stopped for just a moment. I leaned in closer to be sure and held out a hand to touch the new impurities that had crept onto his features. It sent a chill running through me. His smile dipped down a bit at the corners now and his eyes had dimmed—you would have to know him as well as I did to detect that. Much more noticeable, however, were those few fiery pockmarks that had surfaced; that was the way it had started with Aurelia’s photo when it had turned.
“We’ve got to do something about Dante,” I said, still staring at the picture. My voice came out flat, drained of all life. Lance got up and came
over to look, standing just behind me. “They’re getting to him. It’s starting.”
“We will. I promise,” he said, his voice heavy, like mine, with concern, processing all of it.
We covered them all again and quietly, slowly made our way back up to my room. We made a plan to meet again tomorrow night like this so that I could acquaint him with the winding passageways up above my closet.
“Night,” he said, as he was leaving my room. He rubbed at his eyes, underneath his glasses, weary after our long day. I looked at that scar. We were so much alike—I wondered about that now. “We’ll figure all this out.” He sighed. I just nodded.
The book was on my pillow when I got into bed, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered reading it at all. My entire body ached for rest. I hadn’t even fully understood how I had made it back up that ladder from the tunnels. It had to have been the combined force of having finally eaten something and having Lance there. It was just a relief to not be alone.
I had changed into my scrubs, lain down in bed, and placed it next to me, propping it up with one tired hand. I flipped through and found the page with today’s date and new words:
You are to be commended for your fire today, for your aggressiveness, and for your fearlessness in the face of horror. Don‘t be afraid of your rage. It is a safer feeling than that of fear right now; it is a greater motivator. But you would do even better to convert fear to shrewd, calculated action—that will serve you best of all. To be daring is good, but you need to be stealthy now as well. You need to filter all emotion down to an essence that can be tucked away, undetectable by others.
I got a shiver at that, this power I was supposed to have but just didn’t feel. But it went on:
You must maintain the general illusion that you know nothing of what is going on there and that you are oblivious to anything and everything that seems even the least bit out of the ordinary. To those watching you, you should appear to work hard, take orders, and complete assignments with your usual care and quality. Secretly, you will continue your physical training with vigor and your information gathering with a sharp eye. When the time is right, you will assume a role of action, no longer concerned with maintaining appearances. You will know when that time has come and you will rise to battle and aim to conquer.
I turned the page and the writing got larger, displaying a new urgency.
You have reached a turning point in your evolution. You cannot go back, which is to say, most simply, that you cannot escape. Your duties and responsibilities would only follow you now, but along with them comes the opportunity for greatness in your ascension. I tell you this now as I deliver a harsh fact, but one you are entitled to know and must guard with supreme secrecy:
Haven, you will breathe your last mortal breath on May 27.
The book slipped out of my hand for a moment and I bolted up in bed. I had lost the page, but my fast fingers found it again so that I could read that line over and over. I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t, and I looked at it until the words and the curves of those letters didn’t even look like a language I understood. I forced down the swirling nausea in my stomach, the beating of my heart against the cage of my ribs, and my mind racing to calculate the time between now and then: just three months. Three months. No.
I was sick of being told in the vaguest of terms that something was going to happen to me—and now this, this of all things—and not being told how to prevent it. I was sick of trusting in my supposed strength and I was sick of following these orders as though they would somehow amount to my becoming someone special enough to stave off all that was expected to come barreling my way. Why was this happening to me? When would this awful book give me actual answers? And again, as I read on, it anticipated my anger and arguments, which made me more angry and argumentative.
You are no doubt wondering more than ever who I am and why I am telling you this yet not giving you any tangible help. I won‘t hide myself forever but I will tell you this much now: I am not present in body there with you. I am not someone you pass in the hallways or spend your days with. I am with you only in spirit and through these words. But you and I will meet at some point, and in many ways, we already have. I will offer you the guidance you need to battle these demons, though I cannot take up arms beside you. But take heart, I know you better than anyone does. And I know you are acquiring the skills you need.
In many ways, we’ve already met? I thought.
But for the time being, keep your head down, blend in, and give them no reason to question you. Many lives are at stake, with you as their hope. Be strong, winged one.
That was it, the last of this heinous, haunting missive. Involuntarily, my hand pushed the book off the bed, sending it crashing to the floor. That date would not leave my head though. It danced and taunted me. Above my heart, that scar flared to a fiery beast and the two on my back, usually so benign, enflamed like dry kindling.
I curled up in a ball, closing my eyes, trying to make it all disappear, burying my head in my arms. My eyes squeezed so tight I saw bursts of light. My breathing echoed in my head and ricocheted around my body. If my eyes had not been pinched shut so strongly for so long, minutes and hours marching by, I wouldn’t possibly have dozed for even a moment. But finally at some point, I felt myself drifting. My body had no choice. My aching bones and muscles and speeding mind had never cried out for rest so desperately.
But there was no peace: as soon as I slept, I dreamt. That same nightmare came to me, the members of the Outfit decaying as they grew nearer to me, trudging down that hallway. But this time, they were led by Lucian, who flickered between the withering subject of the photo and the beautiful creature I had once fallen so instantly in love with.
The next morning, I would have been comforted to have found that Neil Marlinson’s death was all over the news, that no one was buying the official statement that it had been a heart attack. But the poor man hardly got a footnote in most of the stories. Everyone was too busy writing volumes on the success of Capone and the celebration over its three-star status. One blog did manage to make greater mention of Neil than the party, and that one—by a writer whose name I recognized from our delivery yesterday—I printed along with the others and placed in the stack for Aurelia, putting it third from the top. I thought little actions like that were a fair way to quench my newfound thirst for acting on what infuriated me while still appearing to be simply doing my job.
It didn’t concern any of the hotel’s guests either, or at least, not for long. There had been some interest, but Aurelia had been so skilled at expressing regret while diffusing the whole thing in a “these things happen” and “our staff rushed to his aid and did everything right” sort of way that her spin soon made it seem not the least bit newsworthy. Instead, it crossed over into the realm of folklore, entertainment. As I walked through the lobby that morning to Aurelia’s office for our usual meeting, I was even stopped by a trio of guests queued up near Capone waiting to get in for breakfast.
“Excuse me, miss?” the woman had called over to me.
“Good morning,” I said to the group. “Can I help you?”
“Is it true?” one of her male companions piped up.
“Was it the ghost of Al Capone who killed that guy?” the other man asked, eyes wild with excitement.
“Is this place really haunted?”
It took me a moment to formulate an answer—and stifle the shudder that came as a reflex—but then I smiled. “We should be so lucky,” I said, permitting myself that bit of boldness. She just gave me a nervous grin, not understanding in the least. “Have a good day.”
As I walked away, I heard the woman say, with glee: “I knew it!”
But I had woken up determined to somehow not look shaken and fragile today, despite what I had read last night. My mind went in directions that made no sense to me now—it had been overloaded with images and information that were all so much out of its realm of understanding that it was short-circuiting and processing things
in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I found myself thinking again of that painting at the Art Institute. The one that felt so familiar that it was like unlocking a memory of my own. When I had looked at it, I could feel myself as a child lying at the bottom of that hill on the side of the road. It gave me chills thinking that I could end up the same way now, my body and soul discarded, left for dead after facing down the forces at work against me here. But there was something strong, powerful in the girl in that painting. An underlying sense that she hadn’t gone gently. Nor would I. This would be a fight.
In Aurelia’s office that morning, I didn’t have the same dread. As I sat before her, handing her those printed press clippings, she didn’t impress me. I had a secret now, a deep one, and at least I knew she couldn’t really hurt me today.
As she paged through the printouts, I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Quite a lot of excitement yesterday. Both good and bad.”
“Yes, the party was quite a success, though it’s a shame about our sweet art enthusiast. These things happen, regrettably,” she said coolly and then went about her business dictating what needed to be done. My attention waned a bit as she droned on about the chocolates and notes to be sent out, some new artwork that one of the Outfit members was working on to replace the empty wall so the gallery could eventually reopen, and then the prom planning, which would now be our primary project. I had been preoccupied with all of these other swirling thoughts when something she said jerked me back into the present.
“ . . . so yours, Evanston High School, will be held on May 27. It will be the first of the five proms.”
I gasped. Hearing that date out loud, knowing its new importance to me, I felt it chiseled into my head, shattering me.
Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One Page 33