There is only one thing in all the world that Arla truly values. And I will take it from her.
“Yahav!”my voice rings out.
For a second, I don’t know if it’s worked. Maybe the key only appears for one master. But suddenly, it is before me, suspended in the air, a dull gold so close my eyes can barely focus on it. I pluck it from the air. It is real and cold to the touch inside my sweating palm.
That’s when I hear the crash above, the metal table we braced against the entrance to the club overturning, the splintering wood of the basement door as it’s blown open.
There’s no more time to lose. I shove the key deep into my own bra as I saw Arla do and sprint past Cadence and Levi, pulling at them. “Come on! The tunnel. We’ll find a way out.”
Darkness drops with all the grace of a guillotine in the tunnel, a heavy chop that divides us from the world above. Levi was able to force the padlock open by digging the adze in between the shackle and the body, then prying up. But the axe seems little protection against the past and the damp and the scuttle of vermin, the wail of lost souls. It’s nighttime in Seattle, and the streetlamps filter down in piss-thin, discolored runnels through the vault lights in the sidewalk overhead. The flashlight apps on our phones keep us moving in the right direction, but they shine in dull, hazy circles, pitiful contenders against our subterranean reality.
Cadence stumbles behind me, weakened by the fight for her life earlier in the day, but she’s familiar with this underworld andpushes on. Levi is new to this place, though he’s seen other areaways, and does his level best to keep up. My eyes skate smoothly over the shadows, picking out details they can’t see without more light.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Levi asks me as we navigate the dark and debris.
“I think so,” I reply. “These basements interconnect through the tunnels if not through doors. If we can find our way up through a different building, we can get to the street.”
We round the corner, and finally I recognize the first opening I skated through before, a busted-out window on a building at the end of the block. “Through here,” I tell them.
A few disparate noises, the reverberations of long-forgotten mishaps or echoes of underbelly species, give us all paroxysms of fear. But we’re lucky we don’t have to dig our way forward, fingernails crusted with a century’s worth of dirt and grime, tetanus lurking everywhere.
I hear a clang far behind us and wonder if Arla is in pursuit. Her eyes can easily carve out the dark, her mind carve out the fear. Can she smell Cadence’s blood and Levi’s sweat, the lingering traces of my lilac perfume wafting through the miasma of shit and mold?
We make quick work of what I now see are boxes and crates, a maze of forgotten things I ran into before, and come to the far wall with a tall brick portal. Passing through, I veer right when I did before and find the next wall with the closed door, still hanging open from my last excursion down here, much faster than I did then. I turn left and keep as straight a path as I can, recalling my encounter with the dove, until we reach the vacant windows at the front of the building that once would have looked out onto the street.
We move into the areaway beyond and cross two more building fronts—a boarded-up general store and the remnants of an illegal bar—and that’s when I remember the rickety wooden staircase I spotted that led up to the pub behind Medusa. I point it outand steer us toward the corner where it waits, the unremarkable door above resolutely closed but still a relief.
“It’s locked,” Cadence informs me as we near it.
“Can you break it open like the others?” I ask Levi, who’s still got the axe from Medusa’s cooler.
“I can try,” he offers. “But it’s likely to make whoever is on the other side think they’re starring in a horror movie.”
“What if no one’s behind it?” I put to him.
He shrugs. “Is that a risk you’re willing to take?”
“Maybe just pry it like you did before. Don’t use the blade.”
“Okay,” he says, moving toward it. “But we’ll be hard-pressed to convince police we don’t mean harm if we break and enter with an axe.”
He has a point. “Wait! Let me think.”
“The key,” Cadence reminds us as defeat is washing over me.
“But it only works on the chamber,” I reply.
She shakes her head. “You hold the key to the Fathom, Jude. That means you can use the powers of the full circle like Arla could. Do you understand? Brennan’s telekinesis.”
I shake my head. “But if that works, why didn’t Arla use telekinesis before, why keep keys at all?”
Cadence practically rolls her eyes. “For one, Arla’s a showman; she likes the drama of a lock and key. She’s not bothering with telekinesis unless it adds to the performance. For two, she probably didn’t even think of it. Telekinesis was not her first affinity, remember? I doubt she’s considered everything it can do. Brennan certainly wasn’t using it to pick locks. Besides, we’re all pretty programmed to use our magic as sparingly and secretly as possible. Haven’t you ever lit a candle or a cigarette with a match instead of your mind? Are you telling me you’ve never used your hands to flip a light switch?”
She,also, has a point.
“Okay, fine. I’ll try it, but no promises. I’m not a catalyst.”
It takes several long moments of me feeling my way into the door and the lock energetically before I manage to turn themechanism. But when at last it slides audibly open, I practically cheer.
