Page 190 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Nineteen

Riva

I t’s hard to say how exactly I stumble on the hidden passage. Maybe it’s luck or random chance, but it feels almost like some higher power took pity on our troubles, finally, and showed me the way.

The night after Dominic was returned to us, I’m even more restless than usual. I prowl through room after room in the blanket of darkness, never making a sound.

I’ve been in all of those rooms before. I’ve scanned every inch of them. But Balthazar’s people use them too, and it’s always possible they’ll have left some hint of their work behind that I can use.

At least that’s what I’ve told myself night after night. By the time I slink into the sitting room that holds the bookcases, the idea is striking me as about as plausible as the possibility that Martians will beam down from outer space and rescue us.

And then I see the book on the floor.

It’s lying a few feet from the nearest bookcase, just beyond the edge of a table by one of the armchairs. Like maybe someone sat there reading it and set it down so idly it teetered off after they left.

I’d swear it wasn’t there when Dominic, Griffin, and I wandered in here after dinner. Dom and Griffin each took a book to pass the time, but they brought those back to their bedrooms.

Did one of the other guys come in even later? It’s hard for me to imagine any of them lingering in one of the common rooms alone, relaxing with a book.

I steal over and crouch down to pick up the book. The heft of it and the bland title— Theories on Geographic Migration —convince me that there’s no way any of us was reading this for fun.

So who was reading it? And does it matter why?

While I’m hunkered down like that, my gaze skims the darkness again—and catches on a crooked tile right where the dim strip of security light streaks through the far window.

In this room, along the two walls that aren’t covered by bookcases, the tiles creep right up from the floor to about knee height. The upper ones are maybe a foot squared, a yellowish tan with a typical intricate leaf-and-flower design painted across it.

They’ve always stood in a straight row, but now one cants just a smidge to the side like a slightly crooked tooth.

Weird.

With apprehension creeping over my skin, I stay close to the floor as I ease over. My slim fingers probe the edges of the tile.

It shifts—and swings around on a hidden hinge.

A square of thicker blackness gapes open on the other side. I reach my arm in, and my fingers encounter only smooth, cool walls falling away into the darkness.

It’s some kind of hidden passage. Leading where?

What am I even doing here if I don’t find out?

My hand rises to my chest, reaching for my now long-gone necklace and the reassurance it offered. I’d almost forgotten that one small thing Balthazar took from me in my anger over all his other crimes.

I might not be able to get it back, but I have to take every chance I come across that could point us to our freedom. I ease forward into the hole in the wall.

Like with the window in the western wing I squeezed through what feels like years ago, like the air ducts I wriggled through what must be centuries ago to investigate an old facility, I’m the only one who could investigate.

None of the guys could possibly contort their larger bodies to fit into this space.

After the first couple of feet, while I still have my hips outside, my groping hands mark a widening of the passage. Still not enough that anyone but me could fit through, but giving me enough space to be sure I won’t get stuck.

Not enough to turn around. If I hit a dead end, I’ll just have to count on my supernatural muscles to push me out backwards.

Or hope I can yell loud enough to summon Balthazar’s people to break me out.

I think of those options in an attempt at reassuring myself, but my lungs still constrict as I squirm farther into the passage. A thread of nausea winds through my gut.

I don’t like being clamped in like this. It reminds me too much of both the heavier shackles I’ve worn and the past times when even my guys saw me as an enemy.

The passage continues forward for only a short distance before it slants downward. I follow it, breathing shallowly, the thud of my pulse echoing in my head.

The minutes slip by with the rasp of my clothes against the surfaces around me. I can’t tell whether the sides of the passage are made of stone or plaster.

Then my reaching hand jars against a dead end just in front of me. My heart lurches in the split-second before I register the edge of another square imprint carved into the passage floor right before it.

I flick out my claws to pry the panel out and lean it on the narrow lip between the opening and the end of the passage. Ever so carefully, I lower myself into the space below—head-first by necessity.

I was on the first floor when I found the secret tunnel, so I must be in some kind of basement now. One we haven’t found any direct access to by conventional methods.

No windows let in any light. It’s as if I’m dropping into a pool of total blackness.

Hooking my feet so that I won’t plummet right to the floor, however far down that is, I stretch my arms in every direction. My fingers brush a wall to my left.

They trail along it and bump over a light switch.

I hesitate for a few seconds, but there’s no sound in the stillness around me. Not a breath or a creak.

I’m going to take this gamble.

With a flick of the switch, a pale light floods the room I’m descending into.

I’m dangling only a few feet above a cement floor. The room holds no furnishings, only stacks of cardboard boxes that must have been here a while from the layer of dust on most of them.

But not all. My attention immediately latches on to the two at the top of their stacks that must have been recently opened. And opened regularly, I’d guess, since they don’t have so much of a streak of leftover dust on them.

Next to the light switch stands a door that must be the normal way of getting into this room. It’s firmly closed. No one bursts in at the sudden flare of light that might have shown under it.

I curl myself and jerk my feet free so I can flip onto the ground.

The first thing I check is the door. The handle doesn’t budge—locked.

Not a basic supply room, then.

Keeping my ears pricked for any sound of approach, I move to the boxes next. My fingers unfold the flaps on the first.

I find myself staring at a heap of folded clothing. Tentatively, I pull the top piece out and let it unfurl from my grasp.

It’s a dress—light and casual in blue cotton. Made for someone maybe a few inches taller than me.

A faint, clover-like scent drifts off it. The remnants of that someone’s perfume?

The next couple of articles—a blouse and another dress—look to be part of the same wardrobe. The next item I lift up is a band T-shirt that’s a very different fashion statement.

It’s bigger, too. I don’t think it’d fit the same person who wore the dresses and the blouse. The cargo shorts and scuffed jeans I unearth next give me distinctively masculine vibes too.

My mind darts back to the photograph I saw in the western wing. Balthazar with the woman and the little boy.

That was from a while ago, based on Balthazar’s and Toni’s more youthful appearances. The boy would have grown up.

But why would our captor be keeping pieces of clothing from his wife and son in a locked storage room… and opening the box up to check on them regularly?

My uneasiness grows as I dig farther. In the bottom of the box, I find a wooden jewelry box that holds a few necklaces, rings, and a bracelet that don’t look like something you’d just toss aside.

Unless the owner wasn’t able to wear them anymore.

Balthazar’s wife doesn’t need to approve of what he’s doing these days if she isn’t around to see it.

I swallow hard and return the clothes to the box in as close to their previous order and state as I can manage. After closing it up, I move on to the other recently opened container.

The second box only adds confidence to my suspicions. The books, the deck of cards, the grubby baseball, and the other objects inside all strike me as keepsakes. Memorabilia of times past.

That room in the western wing might simply be a larger version of the same idea. His son’s childhood bedroom, preserved like it’s in a museum.

How long has Balthazar lived in this villa? What did he do here while his family was with him?

A corner of what looks like a photograph pokes out from the largest of the books. I tug at the faux leather cover to free it and realize it’s a scrapbook.

More of the sweet clover smell drifts up when I ease the book open. Did Balthazar’s wife put this together?

The scrapbook appears to document their lives after the birth of their son. It starts with photos of the delicate-looking woman I saw before with an even more youthful Balthazar, her belly bulging with pregnancy.

Then there are a couple of pages of the couple with their newborn baby, and more as their son grows from toddler to child to teenager. Family trips, birthday parties, random candids…

My gaze snags on one birthday cake. I can just make out the lettering on the icing: Happy Birthday Peter!

Peter. Didn’t Andreas mention something about that name when we shared all our observations in the pool?

Ajax had heard it in Balthazar’s thoughts years ago, in a memory Drey peeked into. He thought our captor might have been thinking about a colleague.

But he wasn’t. Even in the facility, overseeing his work, he’d had his family on his mind.

Continuing through the scrapbook, I pause over a couple of pictures that might hold clues to Balthazar’s interests beyond his family. There’s one with a slightly older man who might be a colleague, but I don’t recognize his face.

In another, Balthazar and his wife are poised outside a building with a polished marble face. A stylized metal symbol like a wave arcing over a cloud is fixed to the wall next to the door, maybe some kind of company logo?