The Night Villa (35 page)

I
don’t scream at first. I have this feeling that if I start screaming I may never stop. But then, what choice do I have? My only chance of living is if Elgin and Lyros hear me and come for me.

“Just sit yourself down, and think.” It’s Odette’s voice, calm and authoritative. Even if it’s only in my head, I trust it.

I step backward until I feel the stone wall against my shoulder blades and then slide down to the ground, wrapping my arms around my knees and hugging myself into a tight ball so that I don’t accidentally touch the bones. I have a feeling
that
would really get me screaming.

“She can’t do you any harm,” Odette’s voice says. “She’s dead.”

“Well, so are you,” I think to myself. At least I’m pretty sure I don’t say it aloud. “And you’ve apparently developed the ability to speak to me now.”

I hear a low chuckle that should alarm me for my sanity even further, but instead it makes me smile. “The bit of me that’s in your head is more real than any of those old bones, but honey, we don’t have time for a me-ta-fizz-i-cal discussion right now.” She says
metaphysical
just like she would in life, drawing out each syllable. “You gotta think about what just happened. You gotta think about Agnes. I mean, who’d have thought it! A face like an angel!”

“So you didn’t suspect anything, either?”

“I’m not psychic, honey, just smart—though that girl sure played her part to the hilt. Truth be told, I always did think there was something a little off-kilter about her, but I put that down to her being raised up a minister’s daughter in a small town. Didn’t know she was adopted and spent her babyhood in an orphanage. I don’t expect she got held much at all. Now that’s a big emptiness to carry around.”

I think back to the morning of the shooting and picture Agnes in my office: her chewed nails and ragged cuticles, the dark circles under her eyes. I’d put it all down to nerves over her presentation and worry about Dale Henry, but what if she’d been sleepless and nervous because she knew something was going to happen at the interview? I remember how closely she watched my phone as it flashed its series of coded Pythagorean numbers.

“What if Ely’s message wasn’t for me?” I say. Aloud this time. “What if it was for Agnes?”

“You think?” Odette replies with a low chuckle.

“But that would mean Agnes belonged to the Tetraktys.”

“Think about it: Agnes grows up a God-fearing Baptist but then tosses it aside to study pagan mystery rites. She was looking for something to replace her childhood religion. Why would she stop at studying some crazy old cult when she could belong to a new one?”

“Then she’s been the one all along? The one sending Ely the scans of Phineas’s journals. She’s the Tetraktys member inside the Papyrus Project, not Lyros. How could I be so stupid?”

“Don’t feel so bad, honey. She had everybody fooled—although I think Elgin was starting to cotton on to her.”

I consider this, recalling Elgin’s interest in Agnes, which I had thought was of a different nature altogether. Elgin had watched his sister fall under the influence of a cult; had he recognized the same signs in Agnes? Was he just worried about her, or did he suspect that she was working with the Tetraktys?

“And what will he think when Agnes tells him I’m lost? Will he believe her?”

There’s a silence inside my head, whether because Odette—or whatever her voice represents—has deserted me or because she simply has no answer. Will Agnes just leave with Ely, taking the scroll with them? Or will she try to convince Elgin and Lyros that I got lost? She could easily say that I fell into that bottomless pit we passed. She could drop my bag into it and Elgin and Lyros will waste their time looking for me there. They’ll never come this far.

“Elgin won’t buy it,” I hear Odette’s voice say. “He doesn’t trust Agnes. He’ll keep looking for you.”

“But he doesn’t know how to follow the path we took. No one but Agnes and Ely knows it.” I feel despair creeping into my mind, like the blackness that surrounds me. At the thought of Ely, I begin to cry. I’ve been so focused on Agnes that I haven’t let myself think of his betrayal. How can he care so little for me that he’d leave me to die?

“Never you mind, Sophie, some people just lose a piece of themselves along the way and when they fill it up with something else they give themselves up to it completely. There’s no room left for love or conscience. That’s not religion, it’s just hiding from all the emptiness. Don’t think about Ely; think about Elgin…. I know, you never thought to hear me say a word in Professor Romeo’s favor, but I’ve come to see things differently. He may not have been the bravest man on earth, but when he saw you were going for Dale he got himself up off that floor and went for him first. He made you come along on this trip because he was worried if you stayed home you’d just brood. He showed up at your hotel ’cause he was worried about you and he’s kept an eye on you ever since. He’s still looking for you, only you got to give him a little help.”

“But how?” I ask.

“Well, let’s think about this for a second. This pit you’ve gotten yourself in—what led you to it?”

“Night,” I answer. “The face of Night. This is the pit of Night…a trap….”

“But remember, Night always turns to Day eventually, so it makes sense that the pit of Night has a way into the Day—”

“You mean that there could be a tunnel inside this pit leading back to where the path marked by Day…”

I don’t hear a reply, but I don’t need one now. I get onto my knees and feel around the circumference of the pit, cringing when my hands come into contact with the bones, but moving them aside so that I can feel along the bottom where the stone wall joins the floor smoothly, except in one place where I feel a rock bulging from the surface…like a boulder that’s been laid over something. I run my hands over it, searching for crevices where it meets the smooth wall, something I can get my fingertips into, but the boulder fits so smoothly into the wall there’s no space for me to get a grip.

I sit back on my heels, gasping in the diminishing oxygen. Is that how I’m going to die in here? By suffocation? Or will there be enough air to sustain me so that I’ll have time to starve to death instead? I remember what Iusta said: her mistress had designed these traps to prolong her victims’ suffering. Which meant there were tunnels that let air in.

I force myself to stay perfectly still and concentrate on the air touching my face. It feels like a damp cloth lying over my mouth and nose, smothering me. I resist the temptation to claw at my own skin to get it off my face. Is that how I’ll die? Will future archaeologists find my mummified body, my skin torn to shreds by my own hands?

Hush.

It’s less a word than an expulsion of air, a mother comforting a fretting child. I turn my head a fraction toward the sound and feel the word tickling my forehead like cool fingertips pushing away my sweat-damp hair.

It’s coming from a place just inches above my head. I reach toward it gingerly, afraid of what I’ll find. My fingertips graze the smooth wall and then scratch against something rough that peels away in my hand. Iron bars framing a round hole. Frantically, I trace the circumference. It’s barely wider than my shoulders. I wonder if Calatoria deliberately had it made just big enough for escape and then barred it to taunt her victims, but it doesn’t matter. The iron bars have rusted through from the slow drip of an underground spring. They crumble in my hands, splintering under my fingernails and tearing my skin, but I don’t worry about that. I dig toward the air.

When I’ve cleared away as much of the bars as I can, I scramble into the hole. Shards of the corroded iron scrape at my belly as I pull myself in, but I ignore the pain. I ignore, too, the mean little voice breathing its metallic-smelling breath in my ear. This could lead nowhere, it hisses, you could be digging your own grave. Instead I listen to the softly sibilant whisper of clean air at the end of the tunnel. I concentrate on it so hard it seems to be crooning my name. Sophie. Sophie. Sssssophie.

It is calling my name. At first I think it’s Odette’s voice again, only fainter and weaker, but then I recognize it. It’s Elgin. It takes all the breath in my one and a half lungs to answer him, but it’s worth it to hear his reply moving down through the dark tunnel. I crawl forward as fast as I can, the walls of the tunnel so tight I have to keep my arms stretched out in front of me and claw myself upward and forward. There’s one bad moment when my fingers graze rock and I think the way’s blocked, but then I feel someone grasping both my hands and pulling me out.

Then I’m in the larger tunnel. It feels like a palace compared to what I’ve just crawled through. In the dim light of Elgin’s lantern I can make out the carved head of Day. I feel like kissing her. Instead I kiss Elgin, who’s still holding on to both my hands.

He’s surprised, but it doesn’t keep him from kissing me back.

“Sophie—” he begins.

“You kept looking for me,” I say at the same time.

“Agnes said you fell into a chasm a ways back because you took the wrong turn,” he says, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around my shoulders. I wonder why and then realize I’m shaking. “We could see your bag hanging from a rock and even hear your walkie-talkie crackling down below, but I just couldn’t see you making that mistake. I mean, the tunnel was clearly marked by a poppy and you’d know that had to be a sign of death because of its Eleusinian connections and associations with sleep. I knew I covered that in my Ancient Religions seminar—”

“So basically you thought I couldn’t have taken the wrong path because you’re such a good teacher?”

Elgin looks down at me sheepishly. “Well, um, yes.” A look of genuine embarrassment crosses his face. Although it’s hard to tell in this light I could swear he’s blushing.

I start to laugh, but the laughter quickly turns into convulsive sobs. Elgin puts his arm around me and pats me awkwardly on the shoulder.

“I know, I know,” he says, “I’m an ass, but at least I’m the ass who came looking for you.”

“Did you tell Lyros and Agnes what you were doing?” I ask when I’m able to speak again.

“No. It seemed pointless to argue and I felt funny calling Agnes a liar, but, you know, it wouldn’t have been the first time I caught her in a lie. I’m pretty sure she cheated on an exam once. She’s so innocent-looking I kept thinking I must be wrong, but then I wasn’t. I’ve had an uneasy feeling about her since.”

Although I’m curious to know more, I suddenly realize that we can’t stand here talking about Agnes. “Well, you were right,” I say, heading back down the tunnel. “She and Ely sealed me in here after they got the scroll.”

“Ely was here?” He catches up to me at the fork of the two trees and turns me around, holding me at arm’s length. “You don’t sound surprised that he’s here in Italy.”

“No,” I say, trying not to look away, “I knew he was here. I’ve seen him twice. He told me that he was working with the FBI.”

“And you
believed
him?” I see the look of incredulity on his face and it makes me embarrassed and then angry.

“You told me there was a former Tetraktys member working with you and the FBI. I thought you meant Ely.”

He shakes his head. “No, I most certainly did not mean Ely. What else did he tell you?”

“That Lyros was the
magos
of the Tetraktys. You were acting suspicious of Lyros, too, and he had gone down to the tunnels right before Simon was hurt…. But that was Agnes, wasn’t it? She must have struck Simon in the tunnels and later changed his records in the hospital so they didn’t know he was a diabetic…. Did you know?”

“I’d begun to suspect—” Before he can finish what he’s going to say we hear a moan coming from below. “That sounds like Lyros,” he says.

We both hurry down the next tunnel, to the spot where it forks between the iris and the poppy. “This is where I left them,” Elgin says. “Lyros had set up a belay right here”—he points to a boulder—“but the rope’s gone.”

“Help,” a voice calls from the tunnel. “Is anyone there?”

I lean over the edge of the chasm and my flashlight catches the terrified face of John Lyros. He’s clinging to a rope that is snagged on one of the jagged outcroppings, but I immediately see that the rope is fraying on the sharp edge of the rock. John’s hands are torn and bloody—no doubt from trying to climb the razor-sharp rocks.

“I’m going to let down another rope,” Elgin tells John, “and set up another belay. We’ll have you out of there in a minute.”

Elgin goes to attach the rope, but I keep my flashlight trained on Lyros. I know what it feels like to be left alone in the dark.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I was trying to climb down to find you—Agnes was above watching the rope—when all of a sudden the rope came loose. I called for her, but she didn’t answer. I figured out then that she’d meant to leave me here. Apparently she also lied about where you were.”

“She sealed me in a pit farther up in the tunnel,” I say. “She and my ex-boyfriend, that is. They’ve taken a scroll that I think might be
The Golden Verses.
I’m afraid they’ve gotten away with it.”