Page 84 of Bleed the Shadows

Neo stopped outside a closed door with a plaque on the wall that read Chess Room.

“You have a fucking chess room?” Bram asked.

“No one uses it anymore,” Drago said.

“How come?” Remy asked.

“Who the fuck knows,” Neo said. “Computers, cell phones, social media. It’s a different world, but the school used to be big into the game.”

I’d never thought about it before but it made sense now. The frats at Aventine were named for chess pieces: the Kings, the Knights, the Saints, the Rooks.

The Queens had their own house too. Remy had once had a thing for one of them, a bratva princess with blonde hair down to her ass and a Russian accent that had made me laugh.

We stepped into a room that screamed old money: wood paneled walls, carved tables, plush chairs, more art. The walls were lined with bookcases and leather-bound books reached all the way to the ceiling.

A dusty bar stood at one end of the room, half-full bottles of liquor lining the shelf behind it.

Remy whistled. “This is what you fuckers do at school?”

“Like I said, we don’t use it anymore.” Neo walked across the room and turned on one of the table lamps that sat next to a leather chair.

“Yeah, but somebody did.” I looked at Maeve, who was taking it all in right along with me.

“Chess is a game of strategy,” Drago said. “It’s a lot like what our families do in real life.”

“I’m sure it’s a fun game,” Bram said. “But we don’t play chess.”

“Speak for yourself,” Remy said.

“We’re not here to play.” Drago walked to one of the bookshelves and studied the spines, then removed one of the books. He reached into the space left by it and a beep sounded from inside the walls in the moment before the bookcase popped out by eighteen inches.

Drago slid it to the side, over the bookcase next to it.

Neo threw him the ring of keys and Drago used one of them to open a door that had been hidden behind the bookcase.

Maeve’s eyes were wide as Drago disappeared down a staircase.

Neo followed. “You coming?”

52

MAEVE

I feltlike Alice stepping through the looking glass as I followed the Kings and Bram down the spiral staircase to the dark underground room. Remy and Poe took up position behind me, and I realized it was something the Butchers always did: surrounding me like I was a VIP and they were my private security detail.

It was dark until Neo flipped on the lights when he reached the bottom of the staircase, and I didn’t know what I’d expected — maybe something like the tunnels — but it wasn’t… this.

Thisbeing a large well-furnished room with several long tables, upholstered chairs, and lamps with glass shades, like we were in an upscale library instead of some kind of underground records room.

Patterned rugs — obviously antiques — were layered over the concrete floor. Shelves lined the walls, but these shelves didn’t contain books: they contained cardboard boxes, the kind I’d seen in police records rooms in crime dramas on TV and in the movies.

Drago walked to a thermostat on the wall and turned it on. A few seconds later I felt warm air seep in from a vent in the concrete frame of the room.

I looked around, taking it all in. “What is this place?”

“Records room,” Neo said.

“This is where Aventine keeps its records?” Remy sounded skeptical.