Chaos Choreography
Page 84
“Blood’s gone,” I said. I straightened, hearing footsteps on the stairs, and looked over in time to see Pax making an appearance. That was good. The less I had to explain later, the better off we were going to be. “Bodies are gone. Alice is gone. There has to be a hidden door. They can’t be teleporting. That takes a ridiculous amount of power. Someone would have noticed.”
“No, but perhaps they can be manipulating the stone, or using a dimensional rift,” said Dominic. “There are more ways to be secretive than I care to consider. The first bodies were found in a different underground room, were they not? How many such rooms does this establishment have?”
I paused. “I don’t know,” I admitted, after a moment’s thought. “One basement-level room is weird enough in California. Two . . . this place could be half belowground for all I know.” Belowground . . . I smiled.
Dominic nodded approvingly. Pax took a step back. Apparently, my smile wasn’t as reassuring as I’d always thought it was.
“You’ve put a piece in its place, and now you’re calm enough to tell me about it,” said Dominic. “Pray, do, and do not make me worry about you and your missing family.”
“She’s your family, too, remember; marriage has a lot to answer for,” I said. “We’re underground. This is earthquake country, and we’re underground. That’s not the sort of construction decision you make on a whim. Adrian built this place. Either he did a lot of excavation that would have looked weird to his network sponsors, or he built on top of something that already existed. Malena!”
Malena’s head appeared at the top of the basement door. From the angle, she was clinging to the wall again, hanging upside down. I didn’t know enough about chupacabra to know whether that was normal for her species, or whether it was something uniquely Malena.
“What?” she asked, shouting down the stairs rather than descending.
“We need to look for more underground rooms. There’s a chance Alice is in one of them.” I didn’t think she would be, but now that I was starting to put together the etchings and outline of a plan, I was going to see it through.
“Got it,” she said, and vanished again.
I turned back to the boys. “We’re going to check all the rooms that could share a wall, or even a corner, with this one. And then we’re going to go talk to some friends of my grandmother’s about colonialism.”
Pax looked baffled. Dominic, who was more accustomed to the way my brain worked, smiled, utterly content with this turn of events. I was in motion now. As anyone who’s ever worked with dancers could tell you, that was when I was at my most dangerous.
We didn’t find any traces of Alice—or any blood—nearby. We did find four more underground rooms, one of which was only accessible by going through a door hidden in the back of a janitor’s closet. Dominic and I had been forced to go into that one alone: both Malena and Pax had wrinkled their noses at the smell of the cleaning chemicals on the shelves, and refused to go any farther until we confirmed that something was actually down there.
Nothing was down there. Nothing but spiders and concrete and the faint scent of mold. Most of the underground rooms had been like that: perfectly squared corners, perfectly smooth walls, and wasted storage space. The ones that did have things stored in them seemed almost haphazard—folding chairs in the room where we’d found the bodies, a few pieces of old stage equipment in another, and some sad-looking costumes in a third. The stairs were an obstacle, sure, but given how over-packed all of the aboveground storage rooms were, I would have expected the crew to have been bleeding off more of the excess. So why weren’t they?
Dominic and I returned to ground level, where a quick glance at my phone confirmed that it was coming on one in the morning. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Dominic, no one knows your face. Go hail us a cab. That way, if Adrian has anyone watching the theater, he won’t see one of us doing it. We’re all going to ride back to the apartments, and then Dominic and I are going to go see some friends of my grandmother’s.”
“Nope,” said Malena.
I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I said, nope. Nuh-uh. Not going to happen. Because from where I’m standing, it sounds like you just said ‘hey, other half of the party, we’re officially in a horror movie now, so how about you two go off on your own, don’t worry, nothing bad will happen.’” She smiled tightly, and her teeth were sharp as rocks protruding from the desert floor. “My mama didn’t raise no fools. We ate them. I’m sticking with you.”
“No, but perhaps they can be manipulating the stone, or using a dimensional rift,” said Dominic. “There are more ways to be secretive than I care to consider. The first bodies were found in a different underground room, were they not? How many such rooms does this establishment have?”
I paused. “I don’t know,” I admitted, after a moment’s thought. “One basement-level room is weird enough in California. Two . . . this place could be half belowground for all I know.” Belowground . . . I smiled.
Dominic nodded approvingly. Pax took a step back. Apparently, my smile wasn’t as reassuring as I’d always thought it was.
“You’ve put a piece in its place, and now you’re calm enough to tell me about it,” said Dominic. “Pray, do, and do not make me worry about you and your missing family.”
“She’s your family, too, remember; marriage has a lot to answer for,” I said. “We’re underground. This is earthquake country, and we’re underground. That’s not the sort of construction decision you make on a whim. Adrian built this place. Either he did a lot of excavation that would have looked weird to his network sponsors, or he built on top of something that already existed. Malena!”
Malena’s head appeared at the top of the basement door. From the angle, she was clinging to the wall again, hanging upside down. I didn’t know enough about chupacabra to know whether that was normal for her species, or whether it was something uniquely Malena.
“What?” she asked, shouting down the stairs rather than descending.
“We need to look for more underground rooms. There’s a chance Alice is in one of them.” I didn’t think she would be, but now that I was starting to put together the etchings and outline of a plan, I was going to see it through.
“Got it,” she said, and vanished again.
I turned back to the boys. “We’re going to check all the rooms that could share a wall, or even a corner, with this one. And then we’re going to go talk to some friends of my grandmother’s about colonialism.”
Pax looked baffled. Dominic, who was more accustomed to the way my brain worked, smiled, utterly content with this turn of events. I was in motion now. As anyone who’s ever worked with dancers could tell you, that was when I was at my most dangerous.
We didn’t find any traces of Alice—or any blood—nearby. We did find four more underground rooms, one of which was only accessible by going through a door hidden in the back of a janitor’s closet. Dominic and I had been forced to go into that one alone: both Malena and Pax had wrinkled their noses at the smell of the cleaning chemicals on the shelves, and refused to go any farther until we confirmed that something was actually down there.
Nothing was down there. Nothing but spiders and concrete and the faint scent of mold. Most of the underground rooms had been like that: perfectly squared corners, perfectly smooth walls, and wasted storage space. The ones that did have things stored in them seemed almost haphazard—folding chairs in the room where we’d found the bodies, a few pieces of old stage equipment in another, and some sad-looking costumes in a third. The stairs were an obstacle, sure, but given how over-packed all of the aboveground storage rooms were, I would have expected the crew to have been bleeding off more of the excess. So why weren’t they?
Dominic and I returned to ground level, where a quick glance at my phone confirmed that it was coming on one in the morning. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Dominic, no one knows your face. Go hail us a cab. That way, if Adrian has anyone watching the theater, he won’t see one of us doing it. We’re all going to ride back to the apartments, and then Dominic and I are going to go see some friends of my grandmother’s.”
“Nope,” said Malena.
I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I said, nope. Nuh-uh. Not going to happen. Because from where I’m standing, it sounds like you just said ‘hey, other half of the party, we’re officially in a horror movie now, so how about you two go off on your own, don’t worry, nothing bad will happen.’” She smiled tightly, and her teeth were sharp as rocks protruding from the desert floor. “My mama didn’t raise no fools. We ate them. I’m sticking with you.”
