“Sure. If you don’t mind, I’m going to stay right here while you look around and keep an ear out in case anyone comes looking for me. Yell if things get hairy.”
Nodding, Felipe slid into the gloom and pulled his gun from its holster. Distantly, he could hear Oliver and Ansley talking, but by the time he rounded the corner of the long hall, they were gone. The door to the hidden passage stood beside the shaft for a freight elevator. Felipe jimmied the gate open and looked up to see the platform far above his head. Oliver had been right. At nearly every floor stood an opening where someone could transfer from the hall to the elevator. Felipe was tempted to call it down and ride up to the top floor with Oliver and Ansley, but in the dead of night, someone would surely hear it.
Felipe turned his attention to the other hallway on the far side of the elevator and frowned. The floorplan Oliver and Joe had cobbled together showed this half of the basement taking up a sizable area, but there were only two halls. Running his hands along the walls, Felipe confirmed they were solid stone. Secret doors would be far harder to hide with these materials, but Felipe wouldn’t put it past the doctor. He trained his gun on the shadows as he crept down the second hallway. From where he stood, the hall looked like a dead end, but Felipe was certain there had to be something there. His attention flitted between the emotions, or lack of, coming across the tether and the shadows roiling ahead. This far from Joe or Oliver, he felt every change in the air or shift in the pipes overhead keenly. The light around the bend at the end of the hall buzzed and blinked, the coils an angry red, making Felipe’s vision flash like lightning, but beyond it, another steel door stood waiting.
Felipe tried the handle knowing it would be locked. For a moment, he considered calling Joe back to check for traps, but he was too far away. Pulling a wire from his bag, Felipe bent it and slipped it under the door. He slowly fed it up the door frame, wiggling it for any sign of wires or an alarm, but it hit nothing. As he set up his picks, Felipe checked that Oliver was still fine on the other end of the tether and received a pang of annoyance. A small smile crossed his lips as he quickly unlocked the door and slipped inside. Feeling along the wall, he hit the light switch and sucked in a breath at the familiar sight.
It was a morgue.
***
OLIVER FOLLOWED ANSLEYdown the passage. He felt they should have gone slower or stopped more to listen as Felipe often did, but Ansley made straight for the elevator. He stared at it for a long moment, as if contemplating whether the racket would be worth it, before trying the door beside it. The lock rattled as he tugged, but Ansley merely pulled a vial of water from his pocket and poured it into his palm. The air around Oliver grew hotter again as the puddle condensed into slush. Shoving it against the lock, Ansley squinted at it, as if feeling the tumblers inside it. Ice crunched inside the lock, tinking against the metal as it burrowed deeper. He poured another palmful of water into his hand and coalesced it into a handle. A moment later, the door swung open beneath Ansley’s wet hand. Water dripped onto the linoleum as Oliver held the lantern aloft to peer inside. The passage leisurely sloped upwards with narrow steps on one side and a flat ramp on the other.
Ansley stared into the tight staircase dubiously. “And you’re sure this goes all the way up to Yates’s office?”
“Positive.”
“You had better be.”
Stepping in behind Ansley, Oliver blinked in the glare of the lantern light. The ramps leading up seemed endless as they hit the first landing and turned to head for the second floor. A gate at the far end of the tunnel marked where the elevator could pick up a passenger, but the hidden doors running along either wall were less obvious. Every once in a while, Oliver smelled a whiff of iodine-tinged air or caught a sound he thought might be human. Holding the nearly shuttered lantern against the third floor wall, he felt along the plaster until his fingers brushed a gap. He wished he could open the lantern fully to see the mechanism, but he couldn’t take the risk of someone seeing the lights seeping through the cracks if they looked into the darkened room.
By the time Oliver and Ansley reached the fourth floor, Oliver’s calves and thighs ached from the odd angle of the stairs. The only noise in the tight corridor was Ansley’s breathing, which grew louder with each floor, though Oliver didn’t know if it was from climbing or the exertion of his magic. Ice work in May couldn’t have been easy even for an adept icemancer. While Ansley rarely talked about it, Oliver knew it was a sore spot for him that his magic never came easily. They were halfway down the penultimate floor when Oliver thought he heard a whisper of sound and stopped. He wasn’t certain if it was a voice or the creak of a floorboard or the rub of fabric, but the second he paused, it stopped. He had just caught up to Ansley when he heard it again, the swish of clothing rubbing together and a murmured phrase. Grabbing Ansley’s arm, Oliver put a finger to his lips and pointed toward the noise. Ansley rolled his eyes and listened, but the sound had stopped again.
“You’re hearing things again,” Ansley hissed.
The words had barely left his lips when a light flicked on in the treatment room beside them, the light spilling dimly into the hallway around the false panel. Oliver held Ansley’s gaze as the hushed voices within grew clearer. His heart pounded in his ears. He didn’t know whether they should keep going or return to Felipe, but before Oliver could decide, Ansley set off for the next landing without a word. As they reached the final two flights of stairs, this time of a far more standard height and tread, Oliver held his breath and wished he could warn Felipe that people were moving about. For a moment, he considered trying Morse Code on the tether, but he didn’t know if Felipe knew it or if he could keep the letters from getting muddled with panic. Hopefully, it was nothing more than an orderly sneaking away for a nap or cigarette break.
On the catwalk at the top of the steps, Oliver grabbed Ansley’s sleeve and kept him in the thick shadows of the eaves as he waited to see if anyone emerged from the rooms below. When no one came, Ansley wrenched out of his grip and headed for the ornate door at the far end of the catwalk. Oliver stared into the hovering elevator as Ansley fashioned another ice key. He hoped they wouldn’t have to get into that death trap; its lack of solid walls didn’t fill him with confidence. Before he could shine his light into it, Ansley rammed the ice key into the lock and shouldered into Dr. Yates’s quarters. Oliver darted in behind him and quietly shut the door. Wincing as the electric lights blared to life, Oliver squinted at the orderly hall of nearly identical wooden doors. If he didn’t already hate the Institute for the Betterment of the Soul on principle, he would have after dealing with so many uncannily similar halls and doors.
“What are you looking for?” Oliver whispered to Ansley as he opened and shut the first door without a word before moving to the next.
“Papers, a records room. I want to look in his office if we have time, but if I can get my hands on invoices and bills, I’ll have what I need for my case.”
Ansley had already moved on to the third door before Oliver could even peek inside. “Why don’t you keep looking for that while I look in here? If either of us hears anything, we come looking for the other.”
“Fine with me,” Ansley replied without looking back.
Oliver sighed and pushed open the first door to find what looked like a utility closet filled with medical equipment. Unlike the machines downstairs, these were more portable, newer, and better quality. Probably custom built, Oliver wagered. These might be what Dr. Yates used on his niece or brought to his richest clients on house calls. The look of quality and showmanship superseded sense with so many physicians. On the other wall, a locked cabinet contained alcohols, anesthetics, sedatives, and any compound a doctor could routinely need. Moving to the next room, Oliver wasn’t surprised to find what looked like an operating theater. He checked the wooden cabinets and wastebasket for anything that might be considered evidence, but the room had been swept clean. He was about to leave when his eyes caught on a grey spot on the otherwise white walls. It didn’t look like blood, but as he touched it, more paint flaked off to reveal the metal beneath. Oliver frowned and raised his lamp to reveal more spots higher up where the paint had chipped away. Why would someone line an operating room with lead? Even the interior of the door had been plated, as had the other door on the far wall.
Crossing the room, Oliver opened the door to reveal a recovery room with nothing more than a bed and a small nightstand screwed to the floor. The walls of the room were once again windowless and lined with sheets of lead. Oliver tried to shake off the dizzying sensation that came over him the longer he stood in the room as he opened the nightstand. Inside were a few young lady’s magazines and the most current bound collection ofHarper’s Young People. The poor girl, Oliver thought. Kneeling to look under the bed, Oliver nearly fell forward but caught himself, his head spinning. The walls pressed in, and the overwhelming push of the room made him nauseous. He had to get out. His vision tilted as he straightened and stumbled out of the miniature ward and into the safety of the hall. Shutting the door, Oliver leaned against the cool plaster of the hall and caught his breath. A headache bloomed behind his eyes, but the oppressive, buzz against his skin was gone. Oliver knew he was overly sensitive to most things, but that was horrible. He couldn’t imagine being trapped in a room like that.
When his senses cleared enough that he could walk, Oliver caught up to Ansley farther down the hall. The door to the main office he had seen Jenkins and Mrs. Bellamy use stood propped open with Ansley’s bag, but Oliver found Ansley in a storeroom digging through a filing cabinet. Several other drawers stood open, and papers were scattered at Ansley’s feet. Oliver grimaced at the mess they would leave if they had to make a quick exit. Someone would know for sure they had been there and might blame a patient or worker for it. While Oliver closed drawers and inspected what Ansley had pulled out, the other man barely stirred from the crate of paper he perched on. He paged through a file of invoices, crammed it back into the drawer, and took the next. Oliver’s brain fuzzed as he stared at the copies of expense sheets, invoices, receipts, and checks from donors, none of which seemed damning without context. Stacking them into a pile, he left them beside Ansley.
Closer to the door were cabinets carefully inscribed with the alphabet that Oliver immediately recognized as patient files. He opened the top drawer and thumbed through the names. Pulling out a file at random, he skimmed over the man’s history of “deviant” behaviors, all of which Oliver and most of the Paranormal Society enjoyed without a qualm. The lengthy treatment history and clinical observations below it made Oliver’s stomach clench. He dropped the file back in place. He couldn’t think about what was going on, or he would be sick. He needed to focus and keep his ears open because Ansley was obviously preoccupied.
Oliver flipped through the names, hoping to see ones he recognized from Joe’s story. Several folders in the first drawer had names but nothing inside. He thought they might have belonged to active patients on the ward, but when Oliver reached the drawer marked with J, he found Herman Judd’s file empty. Pulling the notepad from his bag, Oliver jotted down every name left behind on the empty folders. By the time he was finished, he had at least twenty people.Twentygone and potentially forgotten in a year. Dr. Yates had to know. There was no way he couldn’t know about twenty people dying within his clinic, or did he think that was the price you paid in medicine? Oliver wouldn’t have been surprised if he did.
Pulling open the top drawer again, Oliver double checked that Amelia Bellamy’s file wasn’t in there. The doctor probably kept it in his office, away from prying eyes. Oliver left Ansley to puzzle over his bills and invoices and crossed the empty office to Jenkins’s desk. He had seen Gale go into the head inspector’s office after hours many times, so he was certain Jenkins had an emergency set of keys hidden somewhere. The drawers gave away nothing, except a hidden box of cigarillos. Oliver was about to give up when his hand brushed the underside of the desk and hit the cold metal of a key.
Oliver pulled off the tape holding it in place and let himself into Dr. Yates’s office. He was about to turn on the light, but when his gaze landed on the massive window facing the street, he thought better of it. Keeping the lantern low, Oliver set it on the blotter only to have the light glare across the photographs in the corner of Dr. Yates’s desk. There stood a picture of a girl no more than twelve or thirteen, who Oliver assumed was a slightly younger Amelia. While her hair was perfectly curled and her dress pristine against the floral background, she stared back at the viewer with a defiant tilt of her head and a smirk on her lips. The other pictures were of a younger Mrs. Bellamy with a man’s hand on her shoulder, though the man had been cut from the picture, and the last was a grainy tintype of a young man who resembled Dr. Yates and Mrs. Bellamy around the eyes and chin.
Moving the light away from Dr. Yates’s family members, Oliver tried each drawer of the desk with little success. He should have skipped self-defense lessons in favor of lock picking, Oliver thought as he checked the boxes and nooks of the desk for a hidden key. Dr. Yates probably kept it on him in case Jenkins got nosey. Oliver was about to give up when he reached the last drawer. It opened a hair but caught on the latch. Holding his breath, Oliver carefully wiggled the drawer. Little by little it inched forward until it sprang free. Inside were more files and what looked like case notes. Oliver squinted at the clock on the far wall. Felipe said he didn’t want to stay more than half an hour, and Oliver didn’t have enough time to go through all of these. Setting the papers in neat rows across the end of the rug, Oliver pulled the spare Kodak from his bag, set the lantern close, and took a photograph. He did the same thing four more times until he had photographed every document in the drawer. The best case scenario was he documented evidence he could read later, and the worst case scenario was that he wasted four exposures on useless records or someone saw the flash. Either way, he saved time.
Carefully returning the documents to Yates’s desk, Oliver’s attention slipped over the books lining the walls. The collection was extensive and obviously expensive if the locked cabinets were any indication. Oliver stared at the books and thought about the thefts Gwen had mentioned. Hovering close to the glass, he tried to feel if any of the books were exuding magic. He couldn’t smell the magic behind the thick glass, but—something nudged at Oliver’s senses, like a magnet trying to push him away—he could feel it. Holding the lantern up, he unsuccessfully attempted to read the title through the glare. The book looked centuries old with its chunky leather binding and raised spine. As he continued moving from shelf to shelf with his eyes closed, Oliver found eight more books like it, though there were a few more he wasn’t certain about. Most didn’t have titles on their bindings, but the newer ones, the ones that had been rebound in matching leather and filagree, were obviously alchemical and occultist texts. Yates had at least been smart enough to keep them low or behind his desk where they wouldn’t be readily seen. Still, keeping them out in the open when they were the antithesis of what he espoused was strange. Did he take them out to warn others or did he think they were merely safer in his possession than other magical hands?
Oliver was about to return to Ansley to remind him of the time when he passed the ugly tapestry hanging at the far end of the room and his foot caught on the rug. Muffling a curse as he grabbed the armrest of the sofa, Oliver realized the rug had rumpled as if the sofa had been moved and hastily set back into place. But why? The only thing there was the tapestry. Carefully lifting the sofa, he pivoted it until he could see the entire length of the fabric. The massive tapestry of Eve cowering while Adam pointed at her in fear of god’s wrath hung to Oliver’s knees. Oliver met the snake’s beady, red eyes and wondered if Yates still believed himself to be god.
Running his hands over the tapestry, Oliver stopped when he hit the heavy wrought iron of a tie back. He stuffed the heavy curtain into it, but the wall beneath it looked like the same paneling running around the room. No, there was no reason to have a tie back unless there was something there. A smile crossed Oliver’s lips when he tapped his knuckle against the wood and it shifted. He probed along the grooves of the wooden panels until he hit a nearly invisible button. With a snick, the panel swung out and bounced off his shoulder. Oliver caught it and stepped back, expecting to find another hidden room, but as he raised the lantern, his heart pulsed loudly in his ears.
