The fluorescents clicked off, leaving only the glow from his office lamp. It made the basement look even more like a Gothic fever dream than it already did. A maze of stone corridors leading nowhere—she’d no idea why the college built it like that. No rooms. No doors save for the one Bernie just left through. A really inappropriate place for an office, in other words, though her fantasy-obsessed preteen self would have loved it down here.
She laughed under her breath. Her fantasy-obsessed preteen self would not be impressed by anything else about her life.
Well, never mind that. She settled in to read about a scholar seduced by the devil.
The book was interesting. Bernie’s couch was comfortable—too comfortable. At some point she drifted off, dreaming of a bald demon in a black duster offering her whatever she wanted in exchange for her soul.
She was eleven again, bouncing on her toes, the answer falling from her lips.Magic. I want to do magic. And go on an adventure.
He sneered.Wouldn’t you rather have a working computer?
When she woke with a start, she thought for a second that the indignity of dreaming about Hartgrave hadsnapped her out of it. But then came the thud of the stairwell door closing. Footsteps, heading her way in the dark. Someone else was in the basement.
Bernie? Surely not, considering his strict out-by-five regimen. And not the cleaning staff, in at seven on Mondays. Why would anyone be here at whatever-the-heck-o’clock on a Friday night?
She bolted upright. Her book clattered to the floor. The footfalls paused.
Emily took a single second to consider whether she should keep standing there, perhaps with a wave and a smile. She scurried behind the couch instead.
That hid her just in time to avoid the unsettling mystery visitor—a man, best guess based on the sound of those footsteps. He stepped into Bernie’s office and stood there for a moment before bending down, a dark shape just visible through the gap under the couch. Could he hear her pounding heart?
He picked up the book, dropped it on the couch with a muffled thump, switched off Bernie’s lamp and strode out, heading down the main hallway—farther into the basement.
She leaned against the back of the couch, shaky with adrenaline. Time to tiptoe the heck out of there.
Then a stray thought that could only be from whatever part of her brain was still eleven:Don’t you want to know what he’s doing?
Well—true, it was a mystery why anyone would wander around the basement at all, let alone this late. Nothing to see down here in the dark. And you couldn’t pass through to anywhere else with just the one way in or out.
Still: She was not, in fact, eleven. She waited for the footsteps to fade and snuck out from behind the couch, intending to leave like a rational adult.
Deep in the basement came a sound that was unmistakably a door closing.
A door she thought didn’t exist.
What on earth?
She stood in the hallway, glancing at the perfectly normal stairwell door, the one she ought to be leaving through. Then she looked in the direction of the sound.
Her internal struggle was brief. She strode in the rational, adult direction, flipped on the overhead lights, and turned on her heel to find the unexpected door because …adventure, damn it.
She didn’t have any evidence that her quarry was dangerous—picking up a fallen book seemed like a good sign, somehow—but she rummaged in her desk drawers for something she could use to defend herself if this turned out to be a really bad idea. Wielding her three-hole punch like a not-very-threatening club, she set off.
If turning the basement into offices was the architectural equivalent of swimming upstream, using it for intrigue meant being swept along for the ride. Dark corners, menacing shadows, piles of boxes stored by the college that someone could lurk behind.
But she picked her way around the entire level and found no sign of a door—or the man. Was there something she missed, or did the guy manage to double back and leave without her hearing it?
The clock in Bernie’s office said it was just past eleven, but she went around again with equaldetermination if not enthusiasm. Her third circuit was a last-ditch effort and, feeling ridiculous, she stopped halfway through to rest her forehead on the wall. She could have sworn the sound came from somewhere in this vicinity, and yet … nothing.
She stepped back—and gasped.
There.
Only the doorknob set it apart from the wall, and even that was virtually invisible thanks to the dim light. If she hadn’t leaned against the thing, she’d never have noticed.
What was behind this door? Did anyone else know about it besides her and the mystery man?
She reached out to open it, then hesitated. If something happened to her, no one would have any idea where she’d gone. Not even Bernie.
