by Julia Nobel
Jonas grabbed at the back of his neck and rubbed it like he was trying to blot out a bad memory. “Pathetic. All his self-righteousness… He just didn’t have the stomach to do what needed to be done. He pretended he was on our side, and then he crippled us.”
Pride flickered in Emmy’s chest. Her dad had done something, something to stop them. “What did he do?”
Jonas stopped pacing and looked straight into Emmy’s eyes. “He stole something.”
Emmy licked her lips. The medallion in her pocket seemed to double in weight.
She could lie and say she didn’t know what he was talking about…or she could just hand the medallions over and be done with it. Maybe then he would let her go. Then again, he might not. If Jonas really wanted those medallions, they might be her best bargaining chip. If she could figure out why they were so important, maybe she could use it to her advantage.
“Why do you need that medallion?” Emmy said carefully. “Obviously you can get down here just fine without it. There must be hundreds of medallions like the one somebody sent me.”
“You know perfectly well that there was more than one medallion in that box,” said Jonas.
So, the medallion she used to get down here wasn’t the one he was looking for. That meant each medallion did something different. And Jonas must not have the complete set. “Are you missing one?”
“There was only one complete collection,” Jonas said. “It is passed from one Brother Loyola down to the next. Without it, we can’t access all the resources we have worked so hard to collect and preserve.”
Resources. That meant money. “Are you running out of cash? I thought you’d be rolling in it with all the illegal stuff you do. Can’t you just knock over a bank?”
Jonas’s mouth twitched. “We always have money coming in, but we use it just as quickly. Every time we expand our reach, we need new funds. When your father took the medallions, it meant we couldn’t get what we needed.”
Emmy was starting to see things more clearly. When her dad took the medallions, it was like he took their house keys. Only these keys were a lot more valuable. “There are rooms you can’t open. Rooms with money—like vaults.”
“Rooms with resources,” he corrected, “but yes, they are vaults. The monks at Blacehol Abbey built them to preserve their collection of art and antiquities. The last abbot of Blacehol passed that collection to the first Brother Loyola. When Catholics were being persecuted, the vaults were the perfect place for them to hide their valuables. Some of those valuables went unclaimed, and in times of great need, the Order has sold some of those objects to keep afloat.
“This is one of those times. We need to access our vaults, so we can continue to move forward.” Jonas started walking toward her. “You have something of mine.”
Emmy took a step back. “I don’t have anything of yours.”
“You’re not a very good actress. There’s only one way you could have gotten down here tonight.”
The sound of his footsteps ricocheted off the ceiling. One step. Two steps. Closer. Closer. Emmy needed to get out of here, but how? The only corridor she could navigate was blocked, and who knew where the other ones would take her? The Lane was a maze that she could get lost in for days, but Jonas probably knew it like the back of his hand. If Emmy was going to make a break for it, she needed a way to even the odds.
She glanced at the lanterns that hung between the archways. Maybe, just maybe, they could give her what she needed. “If I did have that box, and I gave it to you… Would you let me go?”
“Of course.” His answer came quick as lightening. Emmy swallowed. He was lying.
“You’re right,” Emmy said. “Somebody did send me a box. But it wasn’t complete—most of the spaces were empty.” She looked straight into Jonas’s eyes with her most blank expression. Please let this be a convincing lie. “I can give you what I have, though.”
Jonas closed his eyes and smiled. He believed her.
She pulled her bag off her shoulder and held it up to a lantern, so she could see inside it.
“You won’t regret this, young miss.”
She put her fingers on the bag’s zipper and took a deep breath. Then she grabbed a lantern off its hook and flung it at Jonas with all her might. The flame blew out, but the sound of shattering lantern glass and garbled yelling told her she’d hit her mark. She swung the bag over her shoulder and ran as fast as she could, zigzagging from corridor to corridor like she was running a soccer drill.
Jonas’s footsteps started echoing off the walls, and Emmy couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Her only hope was that her footsteps would be just as confusing.
She ran through countless archways and rooms. An exit. There has to be an exit. Finally, a set of long slippery steps appeared. They were so steep she used her hands for balance and clambered up them like a ladder. Footsteps banged on the stairs below. They were a long way down, but they were approaching fast. She could see a crack of light ahead. Just a little farther.
She reached the top. It was a trapdoor. She flung it open and hoisted herself through. She only had a few seconds before Jonas would catch up to her.
The cold air took her breath away. Wind whistled through stone that loomed around her like a fortress. Where was she? She looked around the little round room. There was no door.
An iron staircase wound its way upward, and Emmy jumped on it. The iron clattered and banged, telling Jonas exactly where she was, but she had no choice but to keep going up. The stairs climbed through the ceiling and onto a wrought-iron floor. Giant windows without glass let in blasts of icy wind. A huge bell hung down over a gaping hole that looked onto the room below. She looked around and her shoulders sagged. There was no door here, either. Jonas’s footsteps clanged on the iron stairs. She was trapped.
Jonas walked slowly up the last few steps, his face bloodied and burned. Emmy lifted her chin. She had aimed the lantern well. Jonas stepped toward her.
“Take one more step, and I’ll scream!” she yelled. “We’re not underneath the school anymore. Someone will hear me up here!”
Jonas laughed. “Not out here, love. Haven’t you figured out where we are?”
She’d never been in here before. There was nothing in this little round room except the massive bell. It hung between them, its thick rope dangling down through the hole and touching the floor of the room below.
Her insides deflated. “We’re in the belfry of the round-tower church.”
“Very good.” Jonas pointed to the closest building. “Even the teachers’ housing is too far away to hear us. I’m sorry it had to come to this, but you’ve given me no choice. That box is the best hope we have to carve out our future.” He took a knife out of his pocket. “Hand it over, or I’ll have to take it one way or another. You’d be amazed by what I can pass off as an accident.”
Accident. That’s what Jack had called it when Brynn left him in the forest all night. That’s what Jonas had said about her dad’s friend being seriously hurt. That’s what everyone called it when Malcolm fell off the chapter house roof. But none of those things were accidents, and neither was this.
Emmy crouched down and fumbled in the dark for the bag’s zipper. The moonlight, which shone straight onto Jonas’s battered face, didn’t reach to the floor.
Jonas held the knife higher and reached with his other hand. “Pass the box slowly.”
She pulled it out of her bag. It was strange to think she’d never see it again. She’d spent so long keeping it away from the Order. She wasn’t about to give that up now.
Emmy reached back and hurled it out the giant window.
“No!” Jonas screamed. He lunged his arms out the next window, but the box was already swallowed up by darkness. It belonged to the North Sea now.
Jonas smashed his hand against the wall and screamed again. He looked back at Emmy, his mo
uth twisted into a snarl. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that.”
Emmy could barely breathe. There was nobody to rescue her, nobody to ask for help. She was alone. And she was out of ideas. “There will be a lot of questions. Questions about the Order. Someone will figure out it was you.”
Blood was dripping down Jonas’s face and splotching onto the iron floor. “I’ll have plenty of time to sort that out. No one even knows we’re up here.”
Emmy’s heart stopped. That was it. That was the answer. If only she could make it happen. “You’re right.” Emmy took two steps back. “No one knows we’re here.”
Suddenly she sprang forward, leapt over the hole, and wrapped her hands around the rope. It tightened. And the bell started to ring.
The sound was deafening. Jonas clamped his hands over his ears and looked straight at the teachers’ housing. Lights were starting to turn on.
He growled and lunged for her. She slackened her grip and slid down into the next room, her bag banging against her back. He couldn’t reach her here. There was shouting outside the teachers’ dorms. Just a few more minutes and she’d be safe.
The rope jolted. Jonas was furiously sawing through it. If she stayed where she was, the rope would break, and she’d crash twenty feet down onto the stone floor. If she slid down to the ground, where could she go? She twisted her body and looked all around. There had to be a way out.
Finally, she saw a crack of light, a dim outline that didn’t fit with the stones around it. It reached all the way down to the floor. The outline of a door.
The rope jolted again. Jonas had almost cut through it. She slid down the rope, jumping the last few feet and hurling herself at the crack. The stones swung open and she flew into a new room. She heard Jonas thundering down the iron steps and she ran into the darkness, as far from his footsteps as possible. A light flashed into her eyes. Arms wrapped around her, and she screamed.
CHAPTER 22
The Other Side of the Door
“Emmy—”
“Get your hands off me!”
“Emmy, it’s all right. What’s going on?”
The blinding light flickered off and a new light flooded the room. Emmy was in the chapel of the round-tower church, and it wasn’t Jonas holding her. It was Barlowe. Madam Boyd stood in the entryway with her hand on an old light switch. Jack and Lola were standing behind her.
Emmy pointed at the door that led to the tower. “It’s Jonas. He attacked me.”
Barlowe let go of her and tore into the belfry.
Madam Boyd walked toward her, the sound of her cane echoing off the floor. “Emmy, what are you talking about?” Her lips had gone white.
Emmy looked at Jack and Lola. “It wasn’t Larraby, it was Jonas the whole time.”
Lola swore, and her mother didn’t bother to admonish her.
“When you didn’t meet us back at the square, we went to get help,” Lola said. “Mum got Barlowe, and when we told him the direction you took, he figured out where you’d come out of the tunnels.”
“Emmy, what were you saying about Jonas?” Madam Boyd’s voice cracked.
“He attacked me,” Emmy said, “at the top of the tower. I rang the bell and found the hidden door, and he—” Emmy stopped. Why hadn’t Jonas come through the door yet? He was right behind her.
Barlowe came back through the tower door. “There’s nobody in the belfry.”
No. That couldn’t be right. He couldn’t have escaped. “He must have gone back into the tunnels.” She ran back into the belfry and searched the stone floor. Where was the trapdoor? “It was right here, the entrance to the tunnels was right here!” But there was no handle, no latch, and all the stones looked the same. There was no light in the tunnels to show an outline. Emmy stumbled back into the church. Jonas was gone. She grabbed the back of one of the benches. The church was starting to spin.
Madam Boyd grabbed her arm. “I think you’d better sit down.”
Emmy pulled her backpack off her shoulders and sank onto the bench. There was no way to prove what had happened. Nothing to back up her story. She sat with her head in her hands until more teachers started pouring into the church.
“Who the devil broke into the tower?”
“What’s all this racket?”
“Why is someone ringing the tower bell at four o’clock in the bloody morning?”
Emmy wrapped her arms around her middle and started to shake. There were so many people, so many questions.
Madam Boyd put a gentle hand on Emmy’s shoulder and looked at her with anxious eyes. “I think Master Barlowe and I can deal with this on our own.”
The other teachers filed out, muttering to each other about pranks and late-night hijinks.
“All right, why don’t you start at the beginning,” Madam Boyd said.
It took a long time for Emmy to get through the story. The only thing she left out was the medallions. Jonas would have killed her to get them, and she wasn’t about to tell anyone else that they existed. She was vague about how they got down into the tunnels, but nobody asked her for more details. They didn’t interrupt her or ask any questions, though Madam Boyd pressed her lips tight together when Emmy talked about Jonas’s knife. When Emmy finally stopped talking, nobody said a word.
She closed her eyes. Her hands burned from the rope, and her shoulders ached from carrying her bag all night. She just wanted this to be over.
“That’s quite a story,” Master Barlowe finally said. “Filled with very serious accusations.”
Emmy’s lip wobbled. They didn’t believe her. They probably all thought she was a liar, just trying to get out of being caught pulling a prank.
Master Barlowe’s face was like stone. He kept staring at Emmy, like he was trying to read her mind. “We all know that there are students who will say anything to get out of trouble.”
A knot clenched inside Emmy’s gut. She was going to be punished. Maybe even expelled.
“But we also know that you are not one of those students.”
Hot tears stung Emmy’s eyes. They believed her. It was going to be okay.
Madam Boyd stood up and leaned on her cane. “We should be able to pass this all off as a prank that went wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Lola asked. “Aren’t we going to expose the Order?”
“Not this time. They’re just too strong. The Order has a lot of connections. Besides, the board won’t allow the school’s reputation to get dragged through the mud.”
“But they can’t just let Jonas keep working here after all he’s done,” Lola said.
“I doubt we’ll find him now,” Barlowe said. “The Lane stretches on for miles, and Jonas knows if he stuck around he’d be facing serious charges. I’m sure he’s long gone.”
The knot in Emmy’s stomach loosened a little. Jonas was gone. And it didn’t sound like he was coming back. Then she frowned. Barlowe called the tunnels “the Lane.” She’d only heard Order members call it that.
“What about Larraby?” Jack asked. “He might not be Brother Loyola, but he’s part of the Order, too.”
Madam Boyd smiled grimly. “Jameson Larraby has been teaching at this school for years, and he’s extremely friendly with the board. It’s Emmy’s word against his, and I think we all know whose word those old snobs would take seriously.”
Lola threw herself back on the bench and huffed, but she didn’t protest. Boyd was right. They all knew no one would believe Emmy.
“I think Emmy should be checked out at the medical center,” Madam Boyd said. “Then we’ll call her mother and—”
“No!” Emmy jumped to her feet. “You can’t tell my mom!”
“Emmy, I am responsible for what happens to you at school,” Madam Boyd said. “It would be inexcusable for me not to tell her when you have been in such danger.”
“But she’ll blab!” Emmy wasn’t just worried about her mom freaking out. She was worried about what her mom might say to the countless reporters who would take her phone call in a heartbeat. “My mom will never stay quiet about the Order. They’ll come after her.”
Madam Boyd pursed her lips. “I’ll consider it. In the meantime, you need to get to the medical center.”
“I’ll take her,” Barlowe said quickly.
“Good. I’ll take the others back to the house.”
Madam Boyd ushered Jack and Lola to the door.
Emmy stood up and threw her backpack over her aching shoulders. She just wanted to get some sleep. She walked toward the door, but Master Barlowe wasn’t following her.
“Aren’t we going to the medical center?”
“In a minute. We should probably finish our conversation first.”
Emmy shivered. There was no heat in the church, and the wind sliced through every crack in the stone walls. “Did you want to ask me something else?”
Barlowe stood up. “You had a medallion, right? That’s how you got down onto the Lane?”
Emmy didn’t say anything. He had called it “the Lane” again.
“My guess is you have an entire box filled with them.”
Something started pulsing in Emmy’s neck. “How did you know that?”
“I’ll explain everything, but first I’d like you to tell me what happened to that box.”
“I threw it out the window,” Emmy said, “into the sea.”
Barlowe gripped a church pew and closed his eyes.
“Their destruction is not what I would have wanted.”
Why wouldn’t he want the medallions destroyed? Unless…but he couldn’t be. Images started flashing in Emmy’s mind. Barlowe trying to get her to leave Latin Society. Barlowe annoyed when she had found a book about the school’s founding. Barlowe looking flustered when she said her father’s name. Barlowe. Barlowe.