Page 68 of Sirens
Maggie’s heart dropped into her guts at the sound of Darby’s sharp inhale. Now that McGarvey tasted blood in the water, it was all over but the handcuffs.
“Wolfhounds?” Darby’s voice broke in an octave that might have been amusing under different circumstances. “I mean, in this economy?”
Resigned, Maggie braced herself against the side of the cupboard to crawl out from under the counter, but paused when she noticed a raised knot in the wood that sank under the pressure of her palm. Leaning in closer, she examined the darker border of the cabinet’s trim.
Running her fingertip over the wood, Maggie stopped at the knothole and lightly pressed it again. Though stiff, she felt the definite resistance of some sort of pneumatic mechanism behind it. When it reached the limit of whatever mechanism controlled it, she heard a discreet but distinct click.
Which was when she noticed that what she was seeing wasn’t a decorative inlay at all.
It was adoor.
A door that might, perhaps, connect with a crawlspace that in some way connected with a passage that led to Sirens’ basement?
“For the last time,” McGarvey began, the dark thrill of cornered prey honing his words to a fine edge. “Where. Is. She?”
With a heady rush of adrenaline, Maggie placed her full palm against the wooden door panel and gave a ginger push. To her amazement, it swung smoothly and silently inward, revealing a dust-laden tunnel crawlspace that extended at least the length of the bar before it snaked away into gloomy darkness.
“Is this new?” Darby asked, giving the bar’s pass-through door the tiniest tap with the back of her heel.
That was her cue.
Quickly crossing herself before pushing the trapdoor inward with one hand, Maggie planted the other inside the passage and wriggled through. She eased the panel shut behind her just in time to hear Darby’s startled squawk followed by the line cook’s outraged exclamation as McGarvey apparently pushed his way behind the bar.
Fumbling in her pocket for her phone, Maggie switched on the flashlight app and aimed the beam down the tunnel. The light shone weakly, illuminating a faint trail in the thick layer of dust.
Once again, chills rose on her arms and climbed her neck.
Someone else had been in here.
Recently.
She gulped down a breath and began to crawl, her skirt catching on rough splinters of wood as she moved deeper into darkness. Grit crunched beneath her knees as the air grew cool and damp. She reached out her hands, touching the damp dirt walls of the passage until she came to a split in the tunnel.
Playing her phone’s pale beam over the walls, she sucked in a little gasp.
There, on one side of the split, was a mermaid. On the other was an anchor.
Ariadne’s Anchor.
Vee’s words returned to echo in her head like a haunting invitation.
So if Ariadne’s myth truly had been an apt metaphor for the most expensive item on Madame Katz’s menu, then who had been the monster in the maze? Townsend? Stewart?
Maggie sat back on her heels and peered down each tunnel, contemplating which path to take.
Aiming her phone down at the passage’s floor, she noticed the trail broke toward the anchor side.
So would she.
Adrenaline electrifying her veins, she’d braced against the base of the wall to get a picture of both motifs when her fingers brushed across something…warm.
And furry.
Maggie sucked in a gasp that came with a lungful of moldy air and dust that promptly sent her into a coughing/sneezing fit with exorcism-quality racking retches.
She yelped and jerked her hand back, dropping her phone in the process. The light flickered uncertainly for a moment before stabilizing, casting eerie shadows on the walls of the tunnel before the somethingmoved.
And she shrieked. The echo of her terrified wail bounced off the dank tunnel walls, startling something overhead. With a flapping sound, a bat—or maybe several bats—took to panicked flight around the darkness.
