The Marked Girl (6 page)

The man motioned for her to sit back down. “I'm so sorry, but Dr. Clark is running behind this morning. We just got a big shipment from Egypt.”

“Oh,” Liv said. “Do you know what time—”

“Hard to say,” the man interrupted. “Maybe you could visit the exhibits, and I'll call you when Dr. Clark is ready?” he suggested. A phone rang in the background, and the man's eyes twitched in the direction of the sound.

“Uh, sure,” Liv said. She held up the sword. “But what should I do with this?”

The man paused for a moment, thinking. The phone kept ringing, and he held out his hand. “We'll keep it here. Don't worry. Dr. Clark is eager to meet with you; she's having an extremely busy morning.”

Liv put the sword hilt in the man's outstretched fist.

“Sure, I understand. My number is—”

“I have it,” the man said, then shut the door again in Liv's face.

“O-kay,” she said to the closed door.

Liv found her way back to the visitors' portion of the museum and texted Shannon with an update. She ate at the museum grill before passing through several rooms, gazing over shiny rocks in the gems and minerals room and passing a hundred-year-old trolley in the Los Angeles exhibit. She checked her phone every two minutes as the day slid by.

At 4:47, Liv officially passed from irritated into fully pissed off. She had been hoping to spend the afternoon storyboarding ideas for her next short film project, but now those hours were lost. Liv pushed against the flow of exiting museum traffic, trying to make her way back to the Acquisitions Department one last time. She was going to tell the mousy man that Dr. Clark could just keep the freaking sword, and leave her out of it.

Liv turned in the general direction she thought would lead her back to the office. Every hallway she stepped into was less crowded than the one she'd just left. The voices of the crowd behind her began to filter out and then fade altogether.

After twenty minutes, Liv looked up to discover she was completely alone, in front of a doorway with a banner strung up over it. The banner featured an odd symbol, a small, dark circle with two lines drawing down from it like daggers. Liv stared at the mark for a moment, unable to look away. It seemed so familiar, and yet she couldn't place where she'd seen it before. The words below the mark read “
L
OST
L
ANGUAGES
E
XHIBIT,
J
ULY–
O
CT
.
”

Liv pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was empty—lost languages not having quite the same draw as velociraptor bones. Lining the walls of the room were long, glass
cases filled with yellowing books and pieces of parchment. The door at the far end of the room was propped open slightly by a small rock. Gold letters stretched across its metal surface, reading “
M
USEUM
A
RCHIVES
R
OOM—
P
ERMISSION
R
EQUIRED
.
”

Liv checked her watch—past five thirty now—and cursed under her breath.

Just as she turned to go, Liv saw a flash of blue from beyond the nearly closed door at the end of the room. She walked toward it, and through the crack between the door and the wall, she saw a dimly lit corridor. Walking quickly in the opposite direction down the hall was a tallish boy wearing a blue shirt—the uniform of the museum security guards.

Liv briefly thought to call out and ask for directions to the Acquisitions Department, but then the security guard turned to a door on his left. And Liv's mouth dropped open.

She knew that profile. It wasn't just familiar—it screamed out from her memory. Dark hair, square jaw, and blue, blue eyes. It was him. The boy from under the bridge. The sword boy himself, here in the flesh.

Momentarily stunned, Liv could do nothing but stare as the boy quickly slipped into a side door from the hallway. She hadn't expected to ever see him again, let alone here, in the back hallway of a public museum, dressed as a security guard. It was surreal enough to stop her in her tracks, but there was no mistake—it was the same boy.

“Wait!” Liv called out, finally finding her voice. But she was a moment too late, and the door slammed behind him.

Her mind raced. What was Sword Boy doing here? Had he been following her? Maybe to get the sword back? But if so, why had he waited two months? And what was with the uniform? Nothing made sense.

Without even thinking, Liv stepped into the hallway. She let go of the metal door, and it fell backward. It knocked aside the rock that had been propping it open and hit against the doorjamb with a small click. Liv reached out to try the handle, but it held firm. Locked.

“Of course,” she whispered.

There was nowhere to go except forward down the hallway, in the same direction as the sword boy / security guard / walking unsolved-mystery person. She had definitely entered an off-limits area, one that wasn't meant to be seen by paying guests. Unlike the cool marble corridors of the museum proper, this hallway was covered with old, scuffed linoleum. Fluorescent lights hung from metal cages in the ceiling. Instead of glass cases or displays, the walls of the hallway were lined with closed doors.

Liv reached the area of the hallway where the boy had turned. On her left-hand side was a scuffed-up wooden door with a glass pane located at eye level.

At first, all Liv could see through the grimy glass pane were books. Rows and rows of books, arranged on overcrowded metal bookshelves that were set up haphazardly around the room. Some of the books looked old, with cracked leather bindings and yellowed covers. Others seemed to be held together just by rubber bands.

Liv couldn't see the boy. But in the far corner of the room, something was moving. A tall metal bookshelf seemed to be gliding across the room. Liv leaned closer to the windowpane to get a better look, almost smacking her forehead on the glass.

At the bottom of the metal unit, she could see a hand, pulling the bookshelf. The hand was attached to an arm, which disappeared . . . into a hole in the wall. No, not a hole, Liv realized. A tunnel. The mouth of the tunnel was rough and jagged, and only about three feet high. It obviously wasn't an official passageway—it didn't look like it belonged in the museum at all. The boy had crawled inside it, and was now dragging a bookshelf back to cover the hole. One book fell from the shelf and landed on the ground with a smacking noise, which made Liv jump.

The bookshelf was once again resting immobile against the wall and covering the tunnel as Liv pushed her way into the room and over to it. For a moment, she looked at the bookshelf, as if willing herself to see beyond it.

She was debating whether or not to call out again when she heard the muted sounds of voices coming from behind the bookshelf. Liv strained to listen, but couldn't make out what the voices were saying. She gripped the edges of the metal bookshelf and pulled with all her might. After finally budging it a few inches away from the wall, she stopped to listen again.

“. . . hear that?” The voice sounded young, like a teenage girl. Someone responded in a gruff voice that Liv couldn't make out.

The girl's voice continued. “. . . cannot keep going on like this . . .”

Liv leaned closer, but the voices were moving in the opposite direction, getting harder to hear. She could turn around right now, somehow find a way around the locked door and back to the main part of the museum and then home, leaving the sword and this whole incident behind her forever. But seeing the boy again felt like too big, too strange a coincidence to ignore. What if she left now and spent the rest of her life with unanswered questions about that night under the bridge and the white-clad sword switcher who'd somehow morphed into a museum security guard?

“Oh, hell,” she said under her breath, as she peered into the wall tunnel. “If Indiana Jones can do it . . .”

Positioning herself to the side of the bookshelf, Liv put her shoulder against it and pushed with all of her might. The shelf inched backward from the wall with a screeching groan. Liv stopped when there was just enough space between the bookshelf and the wall for her to slip through. She took a deep breath, crouched down, and stepped into the dark tunnel.

A
t first Liv saw only blackness and shadows, but as she inched farther into the tunnel, her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The walls around her were rough, and sharp edges of brick, cement, and metal pressed out on either side.

Liv took out her phone and pressed the 9 and 1 buttons, then left her thumb hovering over the glowing numbers. If following a potentially unbalanced—if admittedly hot—stranger boy down into the unlit bowels of a quiet museum turned out to be a huge mistake, she at least wanted to be prepared.

Liv slowly moved forward, almost convincing herself she was fully in control of the situation. After a few more steps, the tunnel opened up into what appeared to be an old hallway, one with smooth cement floors and actual, constructed walls, albeit ones that looked like they might crumble apart at any second. The hallway didn't seem to have working lights or doors. It stretched on into the darkness as far as Liv could see, and she took one turn after the next, following the distant sound of
voices as they moved away. After a few minutes, they became clear again.

“. . . know I heard something . . .”

“. . . please, just trust me . . .”

“. . . too dangerous . . . someone could get killed. . . .”

Liv stopped in her tracks. Although she couldn't see them, she could feel the hairs rising on her arms. Killed?

It hit her all at once, how dumb it was for her to come down here. Though she was in the exact same position she had been in moments earlier, everything suddenly looked different. Her flimsy sense of control slipped away completely like the unreliable companion it was, leaving her alone in an underground tunnel with a smartphone for a weapon.

What had she been thinking? Pretending to be all Indiana Jones–confident, when this could just as easily be a
Silence of the Lambs
situation?

Liv raised her phone's screen to shed light on the darkness in front of her and took a step backward. Her foot landed on something hard and pointy, and she winced when it cut through the bottom of one of her Chucks. A rock. The sound of the rock scraping against the cement floor issued a faint echo through the tunnel.

“There, I know I heard something that time,” the girl's voice said in a harsh whisper.

The male voice replied, but Liv couldn't make it out. She stopped in her tracks, straining to hear. At first there was nothing. Just the sound of her own breathing. But then, heavy footsteps echoed out in the hallway. They were heading in her
direction, and they were running.

Liv started moving backward quickly, away from the rapidly approaching footsteps. She brought her thumb down on the 1 on her phone, pressed send, and waited for the emergency call to go through . . .

The call didn't connect. She had zero bars.

Obviously.

Liv sucked in her breath and picked up her pace. She kept her eyes on the darkness in front of her as the running footsteps got louder and louder. The light from her phone bounced wildly along the tunnel walls, and Liv couldn't make out where she was going. Her foot hit a bump in the floor, and she pitched forward.

A hand reached out and grabbed Liv's arm from behind, jerking her backward. Just as she started to scream, another hand clapped against her mouth, trapping her cry against her throat, unheard.

Liv tried not to panic.

That was one of the first things she'd picked up in her self-defense class, which she'd taken at a community center when she was fourteen and had been placed in a particularly unsatisfactory home along with two handsy sixteen-year-old boys. To panic is to waste valuable time. It's far better to stop, wait to catch your breath, and then strike your assailant in the place they're most vulnerable.

Liv counted to three, then bit down hard on the fingers that were clamped over her mouth.

“Ow! You bit me!”

Liv whirled around, arms up in defense mode, and found
herself facing a tallish figure. She swung her phone's screen around to light him up and saw it was him, of course. The boy from under the bridge. He winced in the bluish light, and put his finger up to his mouth, sucking on the space where Liv had bit into his skin.

“You grabbed me!”

“Only to stop you from screaming,” he said in his strange, unplaceable accent. “Who are you? What are you doing down here?”

“Um . . .” Liv's hand shook as she tried to think of a single good answer, and the light from her phone bounced around the walls of the tunnel. The boy tracked the light to her face, and his eyes widened in surprise.

“You,” he said. “You are the girl from the night we . . . but how did you come to be here? Did you follow me?”

“No. I mean, technically, yes,” Liv replied, feeling flustered. “But I only followed you to see why you were following me.”

The boy blinked. “What?”

Liv shook her head. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I believe I asked you first.”

“What are you, twelve?” Liv took a deep breath. “Let's start over. A couple months ago, I was shooting my movie when I saw you and some other kids in pajamas down by the river. You acted sketch as hell, somehow switched swords with me, and ran away, so again I ask, what are you doing
here
?”

The boy's eyes widened. They looked almost black in the tunnel, and remained fixed and intensely focused on her. He grabbed Liv's arm.

“You have my sword?”

“Are you sure it's yours? You didn't steal it from anywhere?” She looked around the tunnel, wondering what other rooms in the museum it might connect to. “Like, say, from a museum? Are you some kind of security guard grifter who peddles stolen swords on the side?”

“A . . . what?”

Liv grimaced. “I don't think I could say it again.”

The boy shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “I did not steal the sword. You did.”

Liv pulled her arm free.

“I didn't steal it. You left it behind. And I was just delivering it to the museum, where it probably belongs.”

“It is here?” The boy asked, his eyes lighting up in the darkness. “Where?”

Liv realized she wasn't likely to get any satisfactory answers out of this strange boy. Talking to him was like trying to have a conversation with the staticky, disembodied voice that took orders at the Fatburger drive-through. Frustrating and near impossible. Now what she wanted most was to get out of this cold, dirty tunnel that she regretted walking into in the first place. And she certainly no longer cared what became of that stupid sword. It was officially time to bail.

“Tell you what,” Liv said, summoning courage. “I'll tell you where the sword is if you tell me the fastest way out of here.”

The boy seemed to consider her for a moment, then nodded. He looked behind him once, into the blackness of the tunnel, and Liv wondered if the girl he had been talking to was still back
there, listening. Was it the same girl from under the bridge? Then the boy turned again toward Liv.

“We have a deal.”

And then he bowed. Actually, truly, bent at the waist and bowed.

“Uh . . .”

The boy didn't wait for a better response. He started off in the direction Liv had come from without turning around to see if she was following him. They walked in silence for a few moments, Liv following the careful bobbing of his dark head as it ducked beneath low-hanging sections of the ceiling.

The boy came to an abrupt stop, turned right, and put his hands up against the wall. Through the dimness, Liv could just make out the outlines of a wooden panel—one she hadn't seen on the way in. The boy grabbed the edges of the panel with both hands and pulled, yanking it free. Behind the panel there was another hallway, also dark and abandoned. He stepped through the opening and then put his hand back for Liv.

“This isn't the way we came in,” Liv said.

“It is the fastest way out.”

Liv hesitated a moment, then reached out for the boy's hand and clasped it. His palm was warm and she felt strength in his rough, callused fingers. Liv looked up from his hand and saw that he was watching her, his eyes slightly narrowed. He gave a light shake of his head—like he was trying to clear it of something—and pulled her into the second tunnel after him. When she was through, the boy let go of her hand, and Liv let it fall back to her side. She felt strangely conscious of it then, of its
weight and feel, of the sweatiness of her palm. She balled it into a fist and continued walking.

After a few minutes, Liv saw an opening far up ahead and what looked like the late afternoon light filtering in. Finally, they reached a grate in the worn concrete wall, about two feet high and two feet wide and located just a few inches off the ground. The boy reached down to loosen the edges of the grate and ply it away from the wall.

“Out you go,” he said.

“Wait,” Liv protested. “Are you serious? Where does this even lead?”

“To a side alley, east of the museum. Turn left and walk true, and you will eventually find the main thoroughfare. It is the fastest way out.”

Liv was about to duck to go through the grate when the boy reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder.

“The sword?”

“Last I saw it, it was in the Acquisitions Department. It's probably still there.”

Relief washed over his face. “Thank you,” he said.

“Sure, uh, anytime,” Liv responded. “You're kind of a weirdo, and possibly a criminal, but I guess I'm sorry I bit you.”

For the first time, Liv saw the boy smile. It was a nice smile, a slightly uneven one that turned up on the right side of his face more than the left. It made him look younger. “I will heal.”

Liv dropped down lower to the ground but turned back toward the boy once more.

“I'm Liv, by the way.”

The boy paused before responding. “Cedric.”

“Well . . . 'bye, Cedric. Enjoy your sword.”

“Good-bye, Liv.”

With that, he turned and started walking back through the tunnel. Liv hesitated, stopped by the strange urge to call something out after him that would make him turn around. Instead, she watched Cedric disappear around a slight curve in the tunnel before ducking her head through the grate and crawling into the alley beyond.

It was still light out, but the sun had fallen behind the museum wall, casting shadows over the narrow space. On the opposite side of the alley was a brick wall separating Liv from a small park. Down at the far end to her left, she could just barely make out a few cars driving by on Exposition Boulevard. Liv started walking. After a few moments, she thought she heard footsteps treading behind her. She turned around, expecting to see Cedric, but saw only the brick walls of the alley and an overturned recycling bin. She turned back and hastened her steps.

There it was again. Definite footsteps.

“Cedric?” Liv called out.

No response. It sounded as though the footsteps were getting closer. Liv whipped her head around, trying to see who was following her, and ran smack into something solid and large. She bounced back and nearly fell to the ground. The solid figure—a man—reached an arm out and steadied her.

“Sorry,” Liv gasped. “I thought there was . . . something.”

The man stared at Liv. He was more than six feet tall,
dressed in simple jeans and a T-shirt. Dark, thinning hair curled around his ears and dropped to the edges of his shoulders. For a moment, his face betrayed no expression. Then he smiled.

Or no,
smiled
wasn't exactly the word for it. His lips curled up, exposing his teeth, and the skin crinkled around his eyes. But there was no warmth there. It was the approximation of a smile, like something you'd see on a Halloween mask. The man was still holding on to Liv's arm.

“Um, I think I should go—”

Liv tried to wriggle her arm free, but the man just gripped tighter.

“Where you headed, little girl?” he asked. Liv shivered at the hollowness in his voice. A familiar warning sign went off in the back of her head. Danger.

Many people felt it at some time or another, when they passed homeless men muttering to themselves on the street, or a group of teenage boys walking by with their pants hanging low. But Liv knew the most dangerous people were often the ones you didn't expect. Signs of hunger, mental instability, or bad fashion choices weren't the things to watch out for. It was a certain tone of voice, a calculated attempt at humanity. An emptiness.

Liv twisted her arm free with a violent yank, sprinted around the man, and took off running down the alley toward the main street. Her heart burned against her chest. The man was close behind her; she could feel it. She could hear him gaining on her.

And then, without warning, something landed squarely against Liv's back, knocking her to the ground.

Liv struggled to breathe, but she couldn't find air. She squirmed and rolled around until she was facing up, and saw the face of the man leering down at her. He had her pinned to the ground by the arms and was smiling that awful smile. She knew how to get through this—she just had to find the most vulnerable point and strike it. The man's throat was defenseless, and the hand pinning her left arm to the ground was loosening. If she could just free her hand, she could jam her fingers into the skin there. . . .

Liv prepared to swing up her left arm, but then froze when she saw the man's face. His smile stretched wider and his eyes . . . his eyes changed colors, turning from dark brown to black. It was as if the pupils completely dilated and spread, overtaking first the irises, and then the whites of his eyes. Pooling slowly outward, like ink spilled in a glass of milk.

After a moment, the man's eyes were completely black. His smile stretched, opening wider than any mouth should. And his teeth—there was something wrong with his teeth. There were . . . more of them than there should be.

Liv blinked rapidly, trying to clear up this image that was so obviously wrong. It didn't work. She wondered if she had a concussion. The man leaned in, his teeth getting closer and closer to her face.