“You okay?” Cyrus asked.
Startled, Diana twisted around, and then sat up. Still panting, she smiled and nodded. “What are you doing here?”
Cyrus shrugged. “Just looking around.”
Diana stood up and began wringing her hair out over her shoulder. “Well, be careful. Rupe has beefed up security. Acolytes are supposed to be in quarters, but especially you.”
“What? Why?”
Diana’s eyes widened. “You have to know. Rupe called a big meeting, Keepers and Explorers together.” She paused, and her voice softened. “He said that Phoenix is after you and that he already has your older brother. I’m really sorry.”
Cyrus swallowed and then nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say.
Diana stepped toward him. “Rupe even tried to put us on gun-ready — sidearms at all times. He thinks Maxi might try to drop in. Cecil put a stop to that, but a lot of people will still be carrying. I would if I were you. And not just because of Maxi. Some of the Keepers are possum-scared and some are hornet-mad. They’d throw anyone overboard if it kept Phoenix away.”
She rubbed her wound, thinking. “Keep a special eye on the guardsmen and groundskeepers. They’re all working off demotions or debts — by far the surliest.” She looked at Cyrus’s bare feet in the puddle she’d made, and then back up at his face. “I need to go, and so should you. I’m in on a few flights tonight.”
Cyrus watched Diana collect a small bundle of clothes along with a large, holstered revolver. She looked back at him when she reached a swinging locker room door.
“You’re not heading back to your room, are you?”
Cyrus shook his head.
Diana laughed. “You really are a Smith. You know, my dad knew yours. I’ve heard the stories.”
The door swung, and Diana Boone was gone.
Cyrus looked around. The room held what looked like another locker room door and then two big wooden doors set into arches on opposite ends. He hurried for the closer one and tugged it open on quiet hinges. Stone stairs led straight up, and he jogged them quickly while the door closed behind him. At the top, he followed a hallway around two corners and then paused. He’d reached a covered stone sky bridge lined with windows on both sides. Out one side, he could see the great lawn, the lit fountain, and a small group of men moving around with rifles. Out the other side, a half-moon hung between jutting statues on the high roofline of the main building, a chewed pearl stuck in some monstrous jaw.
Cyrus hurried across the bridge and banged into a locked door hidden in shadow.
“Darn it.” He turned around. Back to the water maze? The heavy keys were pressing against his hip. Digging them out quickly, he faced the door.
“Don’t worry,” Cyrus said quietly. Antigone was asleep and nowhere near, but he could still hear her worry in his head. “I’m not going to steal anything.”
Behind Cyrus, moonlight sprayed through the windows, but in front of him the door was in total shadow. He felt for a keyhole, but he couldn’t even find a knob.
Cyrus tucked the key ring into his mouth. Then he unwound Patricia and held her next to the door, her silver body pooling light on the dark wood. The keyhole was set exactly in the middle, but Patricia quickly ate her own tail and disappeared.
“C’mon.” Cyrus unwound Patricia again. Her emerald eyes stared at him. Her mouth opened, and her tail flicked up.
“Uh-uh,” Cyrus said. Before he could think, he popped the tip of his forefinger into her mouth. She hesitated, looking at him, and then she slid herself up past his first knuckle and wrapped her body tight around his fingers.
Cyrus laughed, spitting the keys down into his free palm. “I hope you come off just as easy.” He held his snaked hand up to the door and looked at the keyhole. It wasn’t small. He slid the gold key in easily and felt the metal change in his hand. He turned the key. Inside the door, a latch clicked. Cyrus pulled what was now a plain gold skeleton key out of the hole, glanced at it, dropped it into his pocket, and pushed open the door.
Holding Patricia up in front of him, Cyrus moved into a narrow arched hallway. Small doors pocked the walls. Stone faces, part bust, part gargoyle, looked down at him from the ceiling. Light glowed beneath one of the doors, and he could hear the low mumble of voices.
Cyrus hurried forward. Beside a large tapestry of a woman decapitating a unicorn, the hallway ended in a tight stone spiral stair. Up or down? Cyrus went down, moving in Patricia’s faint silver light.
At the bottom, he entered an undecorated hallway. The ceiling was higher and the hall was longer, but there were only two facing doors. Both were black riveted steel. One had been left open.
Listening to his drumming pulse, Cyrus stared at it. He could hear footsteps. He saw flashlights. Tugging his finger out of Patricia’s mouth, he jumped backward into the shadow of the spiral stairs.
Exhaling and biting his tongue, Cyrus leaned his head into the hallway. Two men, nothing but shapes behind their flashlights, stood at the open door.
“I don’t care,” one of them said. “He can’t make us open it. We checked the lock and that’s that. If Rupe wants to check the inside of a Burial, he can do it himself. I might be stuck as a watchman for the next two months, but I’m not the bloody Avengel.”
The other man spoke, but his voice was too low to make out, swallowed by whispering echoes. Cyrus slid forward.
“Can’t see the fuss of it all,” the first one said. “Double guards and Burial checking? Does he think old Rasputin’s gonna up and walk away? And what exactly am I gonna do if he does? Or Tamerlane? I’d like to see the two of us put that one back to bed.”
The black door boomed shut behind them, and flashlights flicked in both directions. “Who’s Rupe protecting anyhow? Skelton’s mutts? And for what? They’ll be twice the trouble he was — there being two of them — and it’s Billy’s own outlaw friends that have Rupe sweating.” The man snorted and then shivered loudly. “Truth? Run me into that nightmare Maxi, and I’d hand those two Smiths right over — with Parmesan, too, and an offer to grind the pepper. And Phoenix is worse than worse. Will you be dying for those two?”
“No, sir,” said the second man. “Leave the dying to Rupe.”
The men had turned and were walking away, voices fading with their footsteps.
Cyrus stepped into the dark hallway. When it was as silent as it was dark, he found Patricia’s head and popped his finger back in her mouth. She didn’t even seem surprised, sliding all the way up to the second knuckle. Holding his coiled silver light above his head, Cyrus moved slowly to the big black door. He slid his hand over the cold, rivet-puckered steel and found a single star-shaped keyhole beneath a heavy ring.
He looked around. Why not? Rupert had basically told him to test the keys. He breathed slowly, trying to quiet his pulse. His muscles were tightening — he felt just like he had before he’d climbed onto the roof of his school with a bucket of water balloons. Antigone would hate this. Dan would yell at him. He had no endgame at all. The principal would ask him exactly what he had been thinking, and there would be no answer. But still … he dug out his keys. The gold one was too big. The silver one slid in easily, became a starred shaft, and turned.
Beneath his hand, Cyrus felt a quiet series of shafts sliding and tumblers tumbling. And then, nothing. He removed the key, and the heavy iron ring on the door sighed when Cyrus lifted it. The door swung in. Cold breath crawled out of the darkness and into Cyrus’s lungs.