“What’s going on down here?” a harsh voice demanded. I recognized Professor Atwood. “Why are you away from your station? It’s not your break time for another hour.”
Of course, there was no reply.
“Two students are missing.” Atwood’s voice moved closer to us. “They didn’t show up in homeroom. Theycannotfind their way down here. I want three of you to stand guard on the staircases, turn anyone back you see. If you find the students, you are to restrain them and wait for me.”
The door rattled as someone tugged on the handle. I grabbed the bolt and braced my foot against the frame, holding the door shut.
“Quick,” I whispered. “Pull us up.”
Andre grunted as he yanked on the chain. I winced as the dumbwaiter creaked and the chain scraped against the pulley. We jerked off the ground. Andre yanked again. Another jerk and we sailed upward.
“What’s that noise?” the voice demanded. “Is someone in the dumbwaiter?”
A thin shaft of light appeared along the edge beside our feet as Andre gave the rope another jerk. I caught a glimpse of Professor Atwood’s cruel eyes before he disappeared below the edge of the platform.
It’s dark in here. He couldn’t have seen you.
The dumbwaiter shuddered as we reached the top of the shaft. Andre shoved the brake into place. We pressed all over the platform and walls, searching for some way to exit the shaft. Finally, I found a small handle in the lower right corner. I lifted it and the door popped open. It was so small I had to get down on my knees to climb out. Andre had to angle his shoulders diagonally to squeeze through.
I scrambled to my feet, grabbing Andre’s arm. We were standing in a narrow corridor of bare, undressed stone, flanked with locked doors, a glass window in each one. My boots scuffed a dirt floor. The air was so cold our breath came out as puffs of steam.
I peered into one of the windows, but a layer of ice obscured the glass. All I could make out was a couple of shelves, upon which sat long containers like meat lockers. Cold smoke curled under the door.
“Is that… dry ice?” I asked. Andre nodded.
“I think I know what’s behind these doors.” I shuddered and grabbed Andre’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
Our feet pounded down the hall as the dumbwaiter groaned and cranked behind us. Professor Atwood yelled something down the corridor, but like fuck we were stopping for him. We rounded a corner and crashed into another Hispanic girl, wearing the uniform of the maintenance staff.
She grabbed my arm and dragged me into a dark corner, pushing us into a small tunnel, just as Atwood came around the corner. “Where did they go?” he demanded. “Did they look in the freezers?”
The girl, of course, didn’t answer, and we didn’t stick around to find out what Atwood did next. We followed the narrow tunnel down, down, down, until we finally emerged into the sunlight, crawling out from a small warren hidden beneath a towering oak near the tennis courts.
I threw my arms around Andre, trying to force my heart rate back to normal. “Fuck. Fuck.”
He nodded, his own breath coming out in ragged gasps.
I pulled away, for the first time in a long while taking a hard look at my friend. In the set of his jaw and the kindness in his eyes, I saw the risks he’d been taking all quarter, the time he’d spent learning the sign language Sadie and the other maintenance staff used to communicate, the truths about Derleth Academy he’d started to put together for himself.
And I saw something else. Strength. Defiance. Love. Exactly what we needed to win this. I wrapped my arms around him and dared a smile. “Congratulations, Lothario. I wish I could tell you more right now, but I can’t. What I can say is that you might have just discovered a way we can help your friend Sadie and everyone else at this godforsaken school.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
I stood outside Ayaz’s door, my hands in fists at my side, my blood practicallyboiling. I’d trusted them. I’d fuckingtrustedthem and they hadn’t told me the whole truth.
As Andre and I snuck back into the school and made our excuses to the teachers, feigning a make-out session in the quad that got out of hand (I was the gutter whore, so that was easy for them to believe) I turned over what I should do next. My palms burned – I knew what Iwantedto do. We walked into the atrium and two of the trash cans caught fire.
What I wanted was to burn the whole fucking place down. But they’d done that once before. Miskatonic Prep wouldn’t stay dead.
Andre placed a hand on my shoulder. His steady eyes calmed me, brought me back to center. I had to focus on what I’d set out to do – free my friends, free the edimmu. Although now I wasn’t doing it for the monarchs but for all the scholarship students who’d come before me, the voiceless who deserved a voice.
The mission hadn’t changed. That meant I had to keep up my friendship with the Kings, even though the thought of seeing them made me sick. And that brought me back to Ayaz’s closed door. Behind it were the three guys who flipped my life upside down and shown me that nothing was what it seemed. Now I had to throw myself in there like Daniel in the Lion’s Den and pretend everything was fine, because I needed them if I was going to make this happen.
Would that some angel would take pity on me and wire the lion’s jaws shut. Or maybe I’d just punch them. I hadn’t decided.
I sucked in a breath and knocked.
* * *
