“A hidden passage!” Raven cries.
“Surprisingly common in Sibylline,” Atticus says.
Fresh air fills the room, and the temperature drops even more. The tunnel ahead is dark, and even the candlelight can’t penetrate it.
I take Atticus’s lantern and lead the way.
The passage is just like the others, with the same carved sigils, but the pattern is more frequent, more compact, the characters resembling the stars gathered at the center of a galaxy, the markings dense and jumbled, piling on top of one another until they’re almost unreadable. The air here buzzes with magic. I can almost taste it. Powerful magic was once at work in this place, and the lingering effects are still tangible.
After about fifty paces, the tunnel opens into a large, circular room, with high ceilings made of the same gray stone as the floors and walls. Patches of moss grow in cracks, and there’s a faint sound of dripping water. The walls here are thicker, too, the stones seemingly heavier. The smell of stagnant water and wet stone caresses my face. Every brick is marked with the same Akkadian sigils. Binding spells.
Making our way to the middle of the room, we find a large metal structure about the size of a small garage. Its iron bars are woven into a lattice cube. It has one door, and it hangs open.
“It’s…a cage,” says Atticus, slack-jawed.
There’s something on the floor inside the cage. Bleached white, covered in rags, a toothy grin.
A skeleton.
23
Raven
There was everything.
—Henry James,The Turn of the Screw
“Jesus Christ,” Atticusblurts out.
“I don’t think that’s him,” Dorian jokes.
I shush them both. I’ve never seen a real skeleton before. It isn’t anything like the plastic models I recall from high school science class. The bones are yellowed and rotted, and clumps of hair still dangle from the skull. Here and there, hints of flesh cling to the bone.
“You guys, it’s real,” I tell them. “A real dead body.”
It takes a second for it to sink in. This isn’t some Halloween decoration. This isn’t a prank.
Someone died down here.
Atticus moves as if to scream, but Dorian clamps his hand over his mouth. Atticus stares at him with panicked eyes, his voice muffled. He tries to jerk away, but Dorian holds him tight.
“Don’t,” Dorian says, shaking his head. Atticus’s nostrils flare as he breathes hard against his glove. “I know, I’m freaked out, too, but people can’t know we’re down here.”
Once he’s sure that Atticus won’t scream, Dorian lowers his hand. Atticus still looks terrified, but he swallows it down. Dorian turns to me, eyes hard. “This is a bad idea. We need to leave. Now.”
He pulls Atticus toward the door. But I don’t follow. We need answers, and I know where to look for them.
I pull out the book from my bag.
The Life’s Work of Adelina Ward.
I stare at the cover as if it might spring open and devour us whole.
“Raven, what are you doing?” Dorian asks. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Maybe the book will tell us something about what happened here.” I open it to the first page. Just to see. Just to read. The script is delicate, if a little hurried. Some letters are smeared, and the pages are thick and sometimes tattered. I’m transfixed by it.
“We can read it later, let’s just go!” Atticus hisses through his teeth. I ignore him. He doesn’t see the potential here.
