Breathtaking. Stupidly breathtaking.
And when his feet stalled and his lips fell open, my stomach dropped and I was back in Hades House, thighs wrapped around his neck.
Then I tried to talk to him—to ask him about the code of Hades—and he ran.
Exactly what my ego needed.
Whatever,fine. Message received! Orfeo’s nothing more than a very beautiful parachute holding back this race car.
Finally, Bowen comes speed-walking out of the shadows, trench coat flapping around him and hair plastered to his forehead. His typical professorial look.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he calls, darting past us. “Come, come.” He waves us on to follow him. “Keep abreast, children.”
We all trade a look of mild concern before breaking into a simultaneous jog to keep up with him. He leads us down the narrow stone path that snakes from one building to another, taking us past moss-covered statues of saints and a variety of rosebushes. When I trip over a crack in the pavement, I hear Thien and Laila break into a nervous giggle behind me. Overhead, a full moon acts as our only light source.
Bowen leads us to an arched wooden door.
“We are entering the chapel.” He gives us a stern look. “Act like you’ve been in the Lord’s house before.”
Then, he pulls a skeleton key from his pocket and unlocks the door with a resoundingclick.
Inside, the air smells like moisture and incense. The only light is the ghoulish flickering of the red tabernacle light and sanctum candles, lit at the feet of more statues: men with bloody hands, little girls with awe-filled eyes. In the near total darkness, my secret sense—the one that lets me control my energy when I’m decoupled—flares.
My fingers tingle. My heart begins to beat faster. It feels like the moments leading up to when I decouple, but without the sick-excited stomach feeling.
I guess what I’m sensing is…
Energy. There’s a lot of energy here.
I follow my classmates, single file, through another door to the left of the altar. Bowen opens this one with no ceremony and waves us into the tiny, pitch-black space.
Anxiety drips off all of us like sweat.
Suddenly, a light flares from Bowen’s waist, a solid beam of blue-white light illuminating our feet. “Feel free to use your phones as flashlights. We will be entering the catacombs shortly. But first…” He clears his throat and bows his head. “To the souls we meet upon this path, may you guide and protect us…”
I look around at my classmates. They look terrified. And I can’t tell if Bowen is joking, because my fingers have gone from buzzing to full-on trembling.
“Fide nemini. Amen,” Bowen concludes.
Then, he descends the steps.
All around us the air sags with trapped fear. Oppressive and heavy. The steps creak under our weight, and when we reach the bottom, the sound of our shoes on the wet stone floor echoes.
“Bright light,” Bowen warns. And then there’s awhoooooshas two gas lamps on either side of us roar to life.
In the weak, orange light, my classmates look like painted masks, faces cast in harsh shadows and frozen in their half-rendered fear.
“Quickly,” Bowen whispers. We point our phones’ lights ahead and follow him through the narrow, winding tunnel. The only noise that accompanies us is the steadydrip, drip, dripof moisture from the ceiling. The tunnel expands and contracts. Sometimes we have to duck down in order to fit; other times it widens enough that Janet and Ray can stand on either side of me.
Eventually we reach another iron gate, which interrupts our path and will require us all to hunch significantly to pass through.
Janet points her light up toward the keystone overtop of the gate, which is imprinted with a phrase in Latin.
“In nomine sancti,” she reads. “Desine.”
Bowen chuckles. “In the name of the holy, stop.” He slips past me and around Janet to unlock the gate. “Won’t be heeding that, will we?”
We step in one at a time. Beyond the gate, the air feels heavier and the buzzing and tingling in my hands is now accompanied by a pressure in my chest.
