Page 12 of Wicked Royals
“Do you want me to take you into the tunnels or not?” I asked, arching a brow. “All you have to do is say sorry, and then we cango.”
“Fine,” shemumbled.
All three girls flouncedoff.
While I waited for them, I rifled through my clutch to make sure I still had the stolen keycard. I found it tucked between two of my credit cards. When my friends headed back over to me, I pulled it out and held it up. “A deal’s a deal. Let’sgo.”
“Your security guys won’t follow us, will they?” Kate asked as we headed across theroom.
I glanced at her and shook my head. “They won’t know what we’re up to. The entrance is in one of the downstairs bathrooms, so they’ll just think we’re in there fixing our makeup or something. They only…ow!”
My sentence was cut off by another party guest slamming right into me. I whipped my head around to see who it was, and to my chagrin, I realized it was Logan Thorne. He obviously hadn’t been watching where he was going (though I wasn’t either, to be fair), and he’d bumped right into me and sloshed his drink all down mydress.
“Watch it, asshole,” Marissasnapped.
I loved her catty nature in moments like this. She knew how awful Logan was to me, so she didn’t bother pretending to be polite to him when she ran into him, even though most other girls fawned all over him due to his status as one of the hottest and most eligible young bachelors in thecity.
“My mistake. Sorry, Willow,” Logan said. He leaned down and started rubbing at my wet legs with a large white napkin, mopping up some of the scotch he’d spilled onme.
I hated that this thought even entered my mind, but it occurred to me that this was the first time he’d spoken directly to me in four years, and it made me realize how much I missed hisvoice.
I jerked away from his roaming hands. “You don’t need to do that,” I saidstiffly.
“In fact, you don’t need to go anywhere near her ever again,” Marissa added with a sneer. “Prick.”
I expected Logan to glare at us, but his expression was one of pure amusement. He stepped aside to let us pass. When I turned my head over my shoulder a second later, he was still smirking atme.
Rolling my eyes, I turned back to my friends and led them to the main downstairs bathroom. After locking the door, I stepped over to the enormous portrait on the far side of the room. There was a tiny slot on the left side of the intricate goldenframe.
“Okay, now it makes sense that there’s a giant painting of an old man in your bathroom,” Simone said with a teasing grin as I swiped my keycard in the slot. “I always thought that wasweird.”
The portrait creaked and groaned before swinging open to the right. My friends gasped as they peered into the darkness beyond. “Holy shit. I can’t believe it’s real,” Marissa saidbreathlessly.
“One of you should open the flashlight app on your phone,” I said as I stepped through the hole in the wall. Simone immediately did as Isaid.
“We need to be careful,” I went on. “There’s a bunch of steps right here, and they can get pretty slippery. Wait for me to get partway down, and then I’ll reach back up so one of you can grab my arm as you step down. We’ll keep going like that until we’re all linked up and safely on theground.”
Five minutes later, the four of us were standing in the main tunnel leading out of the VP’s mansion. Simone flashed her phone around, lighting up the rough gray brick walls and damp floor, which was littered with stones and leafy debris. “It’s way bigger than I pictured,” she said, eyeswide.
I nodded. “I know, right? You could get lost down here for days if you weren’tcareful.”
“I didn’t think it would be this dirty,” Marissa said, wrinkling hernose.
“Well, I warned you,” I said with a grin. “I think the tunnels that get used more often might be cleaner, but no one really comes down to this part, as far as Iknow.”
“I thought you said hardly anyone uses any of the tunnelsanymore?”
“That’s what I heard, but I assume the ones closer to the White House and Capitol still get used sometimes,” I replied. “Anyway, we need to go leftnow.”
We traipsed along the damp floor in silence, footsteps echoing loudly in the coolspace.
“Hey, check this out,” Simone said a few minutes later, trailing one hand over the wall. “There’s some sort of symbol carved into thestone.”
We gathered around to look. Someone had etched an arrow into the wall, pointing south-east. Above that was a triangle with an eye init.
“Weird. I never noticed that before,” I said, my forehead wrinkling withcuriosity.
“We should follow the arrow and see if we can find more of these symbols. Maybe that’s how you’re supposed to find the secret rooms andpassages.”
