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I wasn't much for dark, confined spaces. I could feel my chest tightening as claustrophobia took hold. The dim light that glowed beneath us didn't do much to diminish the lingering sense of doom.
After a few seconds, we hit the bottom floor. The platform stopped with a jerk, revealing the end of a long concrete halway.
"Basement," Paige said, "ladies' accessories and hosiery."
We folowed her off the lift and into the halway, which was cold and silent but for the steady hum of machinery we couldn't see. The air was warm but smeled musty, like the same air had been recycled since the silo had been built. The wals were the glossy, pale green of hospitals and antiquated DMV offices, and they were broken intermittently by more closed utility doors.
Paige pointed at them in turn as we walked to the other end of the hal. "These are al living quarters. When the silo was operational, it was staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There were at least two men here at al times - and they were always guys back then."
"Heaven forbid the ladies should accidentaly launch a PMS-driven missile," I snarked.
"Precisely," Paige dryly agreed. "We're strong enough to birth children but hardly trustworthy when national security's on the line."
"Is the missile stil stored here?" Ethan asked.
"No. It was removed when the silo was decommissioned. But the tube remains. And that's what's helpful for us."
The halway ended in a giant sliding concrete door. Paige pushed it sideways along its tracks.
"This is the silo," she quietly said, and led us inside.
The room was enormous, a concrete circle with cavernous holes in the middle of the floor. Panels with thousands of smal,sharp-cornered buttons lined consoles along the wals beside brightly colored warnings not to touch the buttons without authorization.
I had to curl my fingers into fists to keep from pressing them just to see what might happen.
And the gaping concrete hole where a missile had once stood? Big enough that I had trouble wrapping my mind around the scale of it. I stood at the railing that bound the gap and looked down. The shaft was wel lit, and it was lined with steel supports I assumed would have supported the missile.
"The silo itself is one hundred and three feet tal," Paige said, her voice echoing in the vastness of the room.
"And we're roughly thirty feet down," Ethan said, "which means there's seventy more feet of hole below us."
"Correct. The concrete is three feet thick on al sides. Quite impenetrable."
"It boggles the mind," Ethan said, staring down into the abyss.
She pointed to a metal staircase across the room. "There are floors above and below. They hold tanks and more operational controls."
"And the Maleficium?"
She walked to the railing and pointed down into the silo. "It's at the very bottom on a pedestal, ironicaly or otherwise. You can just see it."
I looked down. Sure enough, I could see its red leather cover.
It didn't glow or vibrate or give off a weird vibe. It just sat there, minding its own business, holding within it the power to destroy a city and a friendship.
"It's the most secure point in the facility - six concrete doors to get through, assuming you could find your way down there.
This place is a maze."
Difficult to maneuver unless you could fly straight down the silo and nab it. Thank God sorcerers didn't actualy use broomsticks, although the thought of Malory in pointy black witch's shoes riding a push broom did a lot to perk up my mood.
"You've done a masterful job making it difficult to get to," Ethan said.
"It's not just to keep people out," she said. "It's to keep the evil in. The world used to be a much harsher place. The sorcerers who created the Maleficium thought they were creatively solving a problem - lock evil away and everything's just hunky-dory. As it turns out, a magical book is pretty porous."
"Evil seepage?" I wondered.
"Yep," Paige said. "The mechanism isn't perfect. It's just the best mechanism we have, though, so it's worth protecting."
"Point made," Ethan said.
My stomach picked that moment to rumble impolitely. In the cavernous space of a missile silo, it wasn't exactly a quiet sound.
Ethan shook his head. Paige smiled. "Let's head back upstairs, and I'l start getting a real meal together. You two can explore the property a bit, get the lay of the land. It's a big acreage - a square mile in al, and it's bounded by the roads on al four sides, so if you reach gravel, you've gone too far."
Ethan nodded. "Thank you. Having a feel for the place might come in handy."
Undoubtedly, I thought. The question was, when?
The platform carried us to the surface again. Paige made her good-byes, puled on her cap, and relocked the door as we stepped outside. The wind had picked up and the air was brisker. I zipped up my jacket.
Paige walked back toward the house, a lonely silhouette in the dark emptiness.
"I wonder if she's being punished - sent out here al alone by the Order," I said. "They have a history of punishing their members." Or in Catcher's case, kicking them out altogether.
Ethan put his hands on his hips and scanned the empty field.
"Like this is an island of misfit witches?"
"Something like that, yeah."
"Paige seems to take her job seriously. She doesn't seem like the punished type. Unfortunately, even if she was faking it, I'm not sure we'd know. I'm beginning to doubt there's a single sorcerer or sorceress in existence capable of teling the entire truth about anything."
"Bitter much?"
"With good cause," he said. "Catcher was in denial. Simon was an idiot. Malory is addicted to something that has the potential to destroy her, and Paige has been stationed out here alone. Neither the Order nor its representatives inspire confidence at the moment."
He gestured toward a line of trees on the other side of the field.
"There's not a lot of visibility over there, and I find that makes me uncomfortable. Let's take a look."
As we walked toward the stand of trees, the sound of moving water grew louder, and the crunch of spent cornstalks gave way to the crunch of dead leaves.
The trees, maybe fifty yards deep on each side, lined a smal, rocky creek that flowed into the distance. The trees were old and gnarled, their crabby black branches reaching for the moon-bright sky.
Winter was steps away, and if the sudden biting cold was any sign, it wasn't going to be a nice one. The air had become frosty enough to suck the air from your lungs and bring tears to your eyes.
