Artemis and I stood at the entrance to the Hillcroft coal mine with an axe, a flashlight, and a human head in a bag.
“Do you remember the way?” Artemis asked.
“Kind of but not really,” I replied.
“You’re never going to find it again,” Ludwig said, voice muffled. “Give up and let me out of here. I might get lucky and get eaten by a bear.”
I punched down on top of the bag. Ludwig yelped.
Artemis grimaced. “If we’re going to get lost, let’s do it quickly. We lost the people from the school, but I don’t think they’ll stay lost for long.”
Getting out of the high school was just a matter of driving the Chevelle back at the hole in the fence and watching anotherwave of people jump out of our way. They hadn’t been able to keep up through town, and I was banking on having lost them long before the mine turnoff.
This time, we entered the mine through the main entrance. There were no fans around this time, no camera truck, no police cruisers. But there were ghosts. The most I’d seen in one place since the parade. They made way for us as we approached. Our steps echoed into the darkness, and water dripped from somewhere overhead. A few of the ghosts trailed behind us. Miners, all of them.
Artemis stepped around them. They watched her as much as they did me, and they were careful to keep from brushing against my bag.
“Hey,” I said to Artemis. “I don’t want to freak you out, but there are a lot of ghosts around us right now.”
She only paused for a second. “I know. They feel cold. Like I might walk into a wall of ice.”
Ludwig let out a low chuckle. “So many things neither of you know. And even Bach didn’t tell you.”
I pulled back the flap of my messenger bag. It was still Tad Thompson’s head in there, cloaked in shadow, but Ludwig’s eyes glowed out of the darkness like red Christmas lights.
“What kind of things?”
“Answers have a price.”
I threw the flap back over him again. “Keep moving,” I saidto Artemis. “Follow the cold. I think the miners know where we’re going.”
They made pathways for us, watching as we went. When Artemis’s steps got shaky, I put a hand on her back to steady her.
“So, Zora,” Ludwig said, “how does it feel to have something Artemis doesn’t? Bet it feels good. You can’t have the money, or the clothes, or the looks, the reputation, the status, the house, thefriends—but you can see the dead. Does that ease the jealousy at all?”
“Don’t listen to him,” I said to Artemis. “I’m not jealous of you.”
Ludwig let out a keening laugh that echoed down the tunnel. I gritted my teeth.
“Artemis,” he said, still giggling, “how areyoufeeling, knowing that you’re one of the few things keeping your dirtbag cousins from drowning? That theyuseyou? They make you look bad just by existing, and you’re expected to help them? Youhaveto help them, because you don’t have the tools to do this by yourself?”
“Shut up!” Artemis snapped at him.
“And now both of you know there’s more out there, and the answers are slipping through your fingers faster than you can ask the questions. Who is Bach? Who am I? Who was Hildegard? Why were we here? What is this town? You’ll neverfind the truth without me. I know all the questions and all the answers. The dead might help you find my entrance, but you’ll never really get out of here. Without the answers, you’ll be lost in the dark forever. Lost like your mothers.”
The farther we went, the louder he got.
“When you die, you’ll be stuck down here, too. No light. No air. And a century from now, when new teenagers come to see if the legends are true, you’ll ask for their help, and they’ll run screaming. They’ll tell everything they saw, and no one will believe them, but they’ll use it to bring tourists. They’ll hold ghost tours here. You’ll be the main attraction. And you’ll plead and beg to be let out, but no one will listen. You’ll be trapped in hell together, and no one will ever know the truth.”
“Here,” Artemis said, voice shaky.
We had turned a corner and come to a short ledge, and past the ledge, the flashlight beam spilled into a wide, dark area. The light revealed the cave in sharper relief than the camera viewfinder had before, but there was the deep chasm that cut the area in half, and there was the old, short bridge where Ludwig had stood when we first saw him.
Except now the space was full of ghosts.
Miners and children. Facing us, watching us, clearing the way to the bridge, where an impenetrable darkness waited. We stepped past them, up to the bridge, where the chasm yawned beneath us.
I opened my bag. Artemis shined the light inside. Ludwig flinched as I reached in and pulled his head out. Already he looked pallid, except for the bottom of his neck, which was a dark purple blue. He blinked at me and bared his teeth.
