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That was something.
I’d never visited Belvedere Castle before. There were a great many touristy places in Manhattan I hadn’t had the opportunity to explore because their hours were mostly limited to daytime, or their overabundance of visitors. I didn’t like being surrounded by people. It made me uneasy and tested the boundaries of my control too much. I probably could have come to these places after hours—breaking in wouldn’t be difficult—but I tended to respect the laws and limitations. Plus, what would there be to see in an old castle when it was closed? It wasn’t like they kept anything valuable or important on hand.
Valuable.
The word nagged at me, but I ignored it, seeing no relevance to our current situation. “You been here before?” I asked, not caring which one of them answered.
“School field trip when I was a kid,” Desmond said.
“Anything we need to know about it? Secret passages?”
He laughed. “Not so much. But there’s only one stairway, and it’s narrow as hell. Like, claustrophobic narrow.” He stared at me meaningfully, knowing how I felt about enclosed spaces.
“Great.”
“Which also means if anyone is coming down, we’re pretty screwed about hiding.”
“Double great.”
“Perhaps you can call up your Spider-Man and have him scale the walls,” Holden suggested, not showing any sign of whether or not he was being serious.
He had to be kidding.
Right?
“I assume Peter Parker is busy tonight,” I replied.
“Then I guess the teeny-tiny stairwell will have to do.”
I wondered how hard it would be to climb the walls. I didn’t relish the idea of getting stuck on the stairs with any of the necro’s men coming down. It would turn into a stone-walled shooting gallery pretty quick, and with us stuck in the middle, I didn’t see it ending well.
Desmond, apparently seeing how uneasy I was, added, “The rock face isn’t ideal for climbing.”
“Not ideal isn’t the same thing as impossible,” I countered.
“We’re not scaling the walls.”
“Buzzkill.”
Holden glanced at his watch. “Thirty-five minutes.”
“Do we want to stick it out here or go around, see if maybe there’s a better access point?” I hazarded a quick glance behind me to be sure we were still alone. I didn’t like how exposed the path was. We were quite close to a major road, and several of the other park paths branched off nearby. If I could have something at my back, I’d feel more secure.
Hard to find a protected corner in the middle of a park, though.
I settled for leaning against a tree. Sutherland was close by, staring up into the night sky like a stargazer, except there were no stars to see. The purple-orange smoke and cloud cover was as dense as ever. The smoke was actually becoming so bad the air had a permanent hazy quality to it that made every breath feel thick and unclean.
“I think this is our best bet. There’s nothing around the other sides that will give us access, and if we’re quick and quiet when we get in there, we shouldn’t have to worry too much about getting stuck on the stairs.”
I grimaced. Unless one of us learned to fly in the next half hour, there was no getting around the shitty access issues.
“Have you seen the Pleiades?” Sutherland asked, his voice dreamy. “Seven sisters. Seven? Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
“What’s he talking about?” Holden stopped clock-watching and got up from his crouch, moving towards Sutherland. “You can’t see the Pleiades from here.”
“I can see lots of things from here.”
“Like what?” Holden’s gaze darted back at me, his eyes asking more questions than I could possibly dream of answering. When Alice fell into Wonderland and the Mad Hatter told her, We’re all mad here, I imagine this was the world Lewis Carroll was writing about. But Sutherland took the cake for madness.
