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“What about the gear?” Jeremy pleaded. “The cameras! The—”
“No time for that,” Kara yelled. “Follow me! Quick!”
She didn’t even stop to look back. Out in the hallway, everything was still pure darkness. She ran forward by memory, her eyes working hard to discern shape from shadow until she came upon the grand staircase.
Down she went. Through the door, and onto the second floor. Rather than continue downward, she turned and ran for the elevator. She pressed the button… and when the doors didn’t open right away she began pounding the wall with her fist.
“What is it?” asked Jeremy. He was just catching up to her. Logan was further behind him, the beautiful Venetian mirror tucked under one arm. “What are you—”
DING!
The elevator doors shuddered as they slowly parted. It seemed like they took forever to open. Kara rushed inside, then whirled around to look at the panel.
“There,” she said, pointing. “Do you see it?”
Logan and Jeremy followed her finger. “What, the keyholes?”
“The bottom keyhole,” said Kara. “Not the maintenance one, the one that looks different.” She tapped it with a fingernail. “The one that looks original to the hotel.”
The two men edged their way inside as the doors came together. There was a heart-stopping moment as it looked like they might close on the mirror, but then Logan pulled the frame in at the last second.
“Be careful!”
He smirked at her — the same charming smile he always threw her way. If things weren’t so frantic Kara would’ve stuck her tongue out at him.
“If you’re right,” Logan said, “and this thing does go down to the bottom level… how are we getting there? Looks like we’ll need a key.”
Jeremy was already kneeling before the keyhole, exploring it with his fingers. He wore a troubled expression.
“I’m not sure I can pick this,” he said.
But Kara’s arms were folded in what appeared to be triumph. She looked ecstatic.
“You have the key?” Jeremy asked incredulously.
“No,” said Kara. “But I know where it is.”
She returned to the elevator covered in sweat, having run through most of the Averoigne’s first floor. Jonathan had been in the kitchen, scrubbing out one of the walk-ins. It had taken way longer than she wanted to find him.
When Kara asked for the other skeleton key on his keyring — the longer one — the old janitor had smiled and given it to her. Maybe he knew what it was for. Maybe not. None of it mattered. All that mattered was getting back.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the key into Logan’s hand. He inserted it deftly and turned it as she caught her breath. There was a loud ‘click’, somewhere deep in the elevator’s guts, and then the car began rolling downward from the lobby level.
“I’ll be damned,” swore Jeremy.
The little car shook violently as it descended. Dust sifted in from above. For half a second it actually stopped — caught up on something, apparently — and then the whole thing lurched downward a good foot. Kara lost her legs, and once again Logan caught her. He smiled again, and she even half-smiled back. Somehow they’d come full circle.
When the elevator doors finally creaked open they were greeted with utter darkness. Logan and Jeremy clicked on a pair of flashlights, illuminating a dug-out cellar filled with a whole century’s worth of junk and cobwebs.
The floor wasn’t a floor at all. It was dirt.
“This is it!” Kara cried excitedly. “It
has to be!”
There wasn’t a lot of room. To the left lay crates and wooden boxes, all filled with God-knew what. They looked old though. If the hotel had once used the cellar for storage, it had stopped a very long time ago.
“Over here,” said Logan. “There’s another room.”
