For what felt like a long time, Auggie struggled to get air in his lungs. Then, gasping, he got onto his knees, then onto his feet. The hallway seemed even darker—a thick shroud of shadows had dropped over everything except Theo, who was occasionally illuminated by the Maglite on a backswing when he launched a volley of blows at their attacker. The other man, for his part, was barely more than an impression—a lighter patch of darkness like a graphite smear.

  Auggie staggered toward them. He couldn’t tell if Theo was hurt, not with the light changing so quickly, but it wasn’t a good sign that the fight had gone on this long. Theo was slowly giving ground, retreating as the attacker slashed at him with a knife. Auggie’s foot clipped something, and he stumbled. He recovered, glanced automatically at what had gotten in his way, and bent to grab the ghost radio. If Theo or their attacker had heard him, neither of them gave any sign. Theo was still retreating, and in the rare moments when light flashed on his face, Auggie saw fury written there. Their attacker kept pressing him, driving Theo back step by step. A worm turned in Auggie’s gut. Sooner or later, Theo would run out of room, and what would happen then?

  Auggie wasn’t going to wait to find out. He ran toward the two men, his steps light. Their attacker seemed to hear him at the last moment, and he tried to turn, but by then Auggie was too close. He brought the ghost radio crashing down on the man’s head.

  The man grunted and stumbled, and the radio clattered across the floor. The man swiped at Auggie with the knife, but the slash went wide. Theo darted in, shouting wordlessly, but the man pivoted and drew the knife through the air, and Theo pulled back.

  For a moment, the man wavered, as though he might fall. He stumbled back toward the wall. Then, as the light shifted again, Auggie saw the rusting iron staircase, and he realized the man was trying to escape.

  “Auggie,” Theo snapped. “Get back here.”

  “He’s going up the stairs.”

  “Auggie!”

  Auggie dropped back, hands clenched uselessly at his sides. A moment later, Theo moved between him and their attacker. Theo nudged Auggie back, but the man who had attacked them was doing something that Auggie didn’t understand, and Auggie inched forward to see what was happening. With an exasperated grunt, Theo elbowed Auggie back again.

  But not before Auggie had seen what was happening.

  “He’s pulling down the stairs.”

  “What—”

  “Theo, move!”

  Auggie half-dragged, half-tackled Theo. Something vast shifted in the darkness, and a moment later, a tremendous crash ran through the cell block. A cloud of dust billowed up, filling the air with the tang of rust, and Auggie coughed and pulled his shirt over his mouth. He and Theo got to their feet. Theo had somehow kept hold of the Maglite, and when he played the beam around them, the cloud of dust glowed neon.

  Their attacker was gone, and a twenty-foot section of the staircase now lay across the hall, the metal warped in places by the force of the impact.

  “What the fuck,” Theo asked, “is going on?”

  Auggie opened his mouth. Then he turned, and he kept turning until he had made a full circle. “Orlando and the others,” he said, clutching Theo’s arm in the darkness. “They’re gone.”

  4

  “Where are they?” Theo asked, because Auggie was right: Orlando, Starry, and Dramon were gone. “Where’d they go?”

  Auggie glanced around. In the beam from Theo’s flashlight, he looked washed out and tired, and he was hugging himself. “I don’t think they went anywhere. Not on their own, I mean. Someone else was here. After you shoved me out of the way, I tried to stand, and someone pushed me back down. Whoever it was, I think they took Orlando and the others.”

  “Without us noticing?” Theo asked.

  Auggie shook his head. “I lost my phone and the EMF, and it was so hard to see anything—everyone kept moving their flashlights. I think I heard somebody scream, but I was disoriented, and then I was worried about you.”

  The sediment of fear in his face made Theo let out a breath and roll his shoulders. Then he pulled Auggie into a hug. Auggie pressed his face hard into Theo’s chest. He was still for a moment, and then he shuddered. Just once.

  “Ok?”

  Auggie nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  Another nod. Auggie pulled back and examined Theo. “Did he cut you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh my God. You don’t think so.”

  But a quick examination didn’t turn up anything more serious than a couple of scratches on the flashlight, where the knife had gouged the Maglite and stripped away the paint to expose shiny stainless steel.

  “Just so we’re both clear,” Auggie said when he finished, “that was fucking amazing. You’re fucking amazing.”

  “It was luck, Auggie. There’s too much luck in knife fights. That’s one reason why they’re so stupid.”

  “So, remember how annoying I’ve been today? You know, with the teasing and everything?”

  Theo waited for it.

  “And, um, remember how awesome you were in a knife fight? Only you didn’t have a knife, you had this junky old flashlight?”

  Theo tried not to sigh.

  “I apologize,” Auggie said. “Totally. Profusely. Abjectly. I will never, ever tease you again.”

  “Are you done?”

  “No. Also, I want to have your babies.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “I do. I want your seed. I’m filing an official request for your seed.”

  “Uh huh.” Theo considered his boyfriend, who was twenty-two and had seen more than most people did in their whole lifetime, and who right then wore a smile that was shaking like foil in a hot summer wind. “I want to get you to the offices—”

  “Good idea; they have carpet, and you can really plow me.”

  Theo ran his hand lightly over Auggie’s crew cut. He held Auggie’s gaze until Auggie looked away.

  “I’m ok,” Auggie whispered, turning into Theo’s hand. “Just, the after-freak-out freak-out, if that makes sense.” He swallowed, and in a stronger voice said, “We need to find Orlando.”

  “I’ll find them after I get you somewhere safe.”

  But the door that connected to the offices at the front of the Workhouse was locked, and after a few minutes of testing it, Theo shook his head. “I don’t know. I can try, but it’s going to take a lot of time, if I can do it at all.”

  Auggie snorted, and he sounded more like Auggie. “It’s a prison, Theo, no matter what they called this place. Even if we’re literally watching it crumble into dust, it’s not going to be easy to get out of here without a key. And I wouldn’t let you go looking for Orlando without me, anyway. The only reason I didn’t say anything earlier is I didn’t want to damage your fragile ego.”

  “What was all that about no more teasing?”

  “I changed my mind.” Auggie held out his hand for the spare flashlight that Theo had tucked into his back pocket, and when Theo passed it over, he turned it on. “It was boring.”

  On the way back to where they’d been attacked, Theo tried to make sense of the day’s events. Not Auggie—public or semipublic things like this, especially when Auggie was doing anything with social media, tended to bring out the, er, more excitable side of his boyfriend, and Theo was getting used to that. But he didn’t understand anything else that had happened. Why would someone kill their tour guide? And why do it in the middle of an overnight tour, while the Workhouse was locked? And why attack them? It seemed like something off one of those teen shows on the CW, where all the teens were played by unambiguously post-pubertal twentysomethings, and the plots were loosely cobbled together machinations to get the “teens” as close to naked as was allowed on TV and then into compromising positions. Why, for example, would you suddenly start making out when you were hiding under a desk from a serial killer?

  That was usually the point when Auggie started saying things like, “Don’t you have any grading to do?” or “Maybe now would be a good time to do your PT exercises,” or once, memorably, “Theo, he’s hot; please just let me watch him take his shirt off.”

  As they were climbing over the fallen length of stairs, the rusted steel leaving red-brown prints on Theo’s hands and jeans, Auggie let out a triumphant cry. He jogged across the rubble, crouched, and held up something that glinted in the light. His phone, Theo realized after a moment. Then he took another look.

  “Where is Dawn’s body?”

  Auggie straightened up slowly. Even with ten yards between them, Theo could see the tension in Auggie’s fingers as he clutched his phone and the flashlight, and his whole body was rigid.

  Neither of them spoke for a moment, and in the silence, keeping company with the faint whistle of air moving through the enormous stone halls of the Workhouse, Theo heard something else: the faint screech of metal. When he aimed the beam of his flashlight up, and in the thin gossamer of the expanding light, he could see the remains of the steel staircase swaying slightly.

  “This whole place is falling apart,” Theo said. “I want to get away from here before the rest of that comes down.”

  “Somebody moved her body,” Auggie said.

  “Auggie, we’ve got to get away from here.”

  “Why would they move her body?”

  “Auggie.”

  Auggie nodded. He pocketed his phone and bent to recover something else—the ghost radio, Theo saw as he got closer. Then Auggie pointed, and when Theo shook his head, Auggie stabbed the beam of his flashlight back toward the fallen stairs. Something glinted there, something that wasn’t the rusted steel of the stairs, and when Theo investigated, he saw that it was the knife their attacker had been using: a fixed, five-inch blade with a crossguard and a textured, non-slip grip.

  “Should you be touching that? What about fingerprints?”

  “I’d rather have a weapon than fingerprints.”

  “Not exactly a pocketknife,” Auggie said, leaning in for a closer look. “Not something you just happen to be carrying.”

  “Maybe. A lot of guys might keep something like this in their truck.”

  Theo heard his mistake a moment too late.

  “Not guys in California,” Auggie said.

  No, Theo told himself. Leave it. “How did you see it?”

  “Did you hear what I said about California? That was bait, Theo.”

  Theo pointed the knife at him.

  “Oh,” Auggie said. “Um, Fer used to make me play I-spy for, like, hours. He started delivering newspapers when he was fifteen, and sometimes our mom wasn’t home or couldn’t watch me.” Even in the weak illumination from the flashlights, Theo could see Auggie’s cheeks color. “So, he had to take me with him. God, it must have been so annoying to have to drag a little kid around like that.”

  Theo didn’t say anything.

  It took a moment, and then Auggie drew in an outraged breath. “Theo!”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You were thinking it!”

  Theo shrugged, and he dodged when Auggie threw a chunk of plaster at him. Turning the beam of his flashlight deeper into the cell block, Theo said, “Come on. Let’s start looking.”

  For the first hundred feet, it seemed hopeless. The Workhouse was filthy—dilapidated, with dust and debris everywhere—but it saw steady traffic from tourists and paranormal investigators, which meant all that dust and debris was worthless when it came to trying to find footprints.

  Then Auggie grabbed Theo’s arm. Theo’s heart surged in his chest, and he spun the beam of his flashlight. It took him a moment to realize they weren’t under attack. Auggie was pointing at something, and when the beam of his flashlight steadied, silver flashed behind a pile of water-spotted plaster.

  “His chips,” Theo said, the Doritos bag crinkling as he lifted it. “Empty.”

  “He hadn’t finished eating them.” When Theo cocked his head, Auggie didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Um, I might have been, you know, keeping track.” In a rush, Auggie continued, “That’s weird, right? I mean, there should still be chips.”

  Theo considered the empty bag.

  “It’s not like he was chowing down as someone kidnapped him,” Auggie insisted.

  “I don’t know, Auggie. Maybe they spilled somewhere else.”

  “I would have seen them.”

  “Or smelled them.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re like a bloodhound. When I was trying to save that bag of Cool Ranch so I wouldn’t have to go to the store again that weekend, you ferreted them out from behind the canned vegetables.”

  “I ferreted them out? Rude, Theo. And—and maliciously misrepresenting the facts.”

  “They definitely came this way,” Theo said as he stood. “Good eye.”

  “The corner of the bag was poking out. I couldn’t help seeing it.”

  “The corner of the bag was definitely not poking out. You knocked over the cans because you were jonesing so bad.”

  Auggie let out a deeply offended noise.

  Theo started walking again.

  “Excuse me,” Auggie said as he jogged after Theo. “Excuse me, Theo. Excuse me. Do you have something to say for yourself? Or are we just going to pretend those ‘smelled them’ and ‘bloodhound’ and ‘ferreting’ comments never happened?”

  “Sure,” Theo said. “Let’s do that.”

  Auggie squawked his wordless outrage, and Theo had to keep the smile tucked away.

  Ten feet later, though, Auggie hissed, and Theo glanced over his shoulder. Auggie was crouching, pointing at something on the floor. Theo backtracked and frowned.

  “Are those Doritos? Wait, did you actually smell them?”

  Auggie met Theo’s eyes. Then, calmly, he flipped Theo off. Then he said, “Theo, I think Orlando did this.”

  “He dropped some chips?”

  “Yeah, you know. To show us which way they went.”

  Theo frowned and shifted his weight.

  “Come on,” Auggie said, rising from the crouch. “I bet we’ll see some more in a few feet.”

  It was closer to five yards, but Auggie was right: another pile of broken chips lay in the center of the hallway.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Theo muttered. “He’s leaving us a trail of Scooby snacks?”

  In answer, Auggie caught his arm and hurried him down the hall.

  The trail led them to where Theo should have realized it would go: the chained-off staircase that led down to the Hole. When Theo directed the flashlight at the steps, he spotted more Doritos.

  “God damn it,” he said under his breath. Then he gave his boyfriend a look. “I don’t suppose—”

  Auggie shook his head. He was biting his lip, staring down into the darkness, and he was taking quick breaths through his nose.

  “There are at least two of them,” Theo said. “We’ll need every advantage we can get. Look around; I want you to carry a couple of good chunks of plaster or, even better, pieces of plastic. Stone or metal would be ideal, but I don’t think we’ll get that lucky. We’ll go down and get a sense of the layout. Then, when I’m ready, I’m going to have you use those pieces of plaster to distract them. After that, you run, and you keep running until I come find you.”

  Auggie was still biting his lip so hard that the flesh was white. Then, with what looked like effort, he brought his shoulders down, drew in a deep breath, and smiled. “Or, we could remember it’s the twenty-first century and come up with an even better plan.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Auggie told him.

  And it was a very good plan.

  Theo told Auggie so, and because he knew what it did to Auggie, he told him a couple more times as well.

  5

  With their flashlights turned off, they navigated the steps in the dark. The stone was rough and damp under Auggie’s hand, but it steadied him, and it helped orient him in the darkness. He’d tried the handrail first, but the steel had been pitted under layers of paint, and it felt slick—when Auggie raised his hand, sniffing the residue on his palm, it had smelled rancid. On each step, Auggie was careful to lower his weight slowly; his Jordans had good soles, but even the tiniest noise, like the scuff of sneaker on stone, seemed enormous in the darkness. The Phantom Cam swung on its strap around his neck. His heart pounded in his chest, and sweat prickled between his shoulder blades.

  Theo’s here, he told himself. He’s right next to you.

  Only he couldn’t hear Theo, couldn’t see him, couldn’t even smell him. A cold draft stirred in the void below them, and it made the inside of Auggie’s mouth taste like a latrine. He thought of what Dawn had said about people who had spent years down here in the dark, decades. The total lack of light had a strange kind of weight, a crushing mass that bore down on Auggie. People who died underground, he thought, his breathing quickening despite his best efforts to control it, usually suffocated.

  A warm hand settled at the small of his back. Auggie flinched. Then he realized it was Theo. He chewed his lip to keep from making a noise, and he blinked his eyes rapidly. But after that, it was easier to breathe.

  When they reached the bottom of the steps, Auggie was surprised to see a faint glow ahead. At first, his brain tried to convince him it was a trick, but then he realized he could make out the rough outline of an intersection. Then, as his eyes continued to adjust, he could distinguish the recessed archways and the heavy steel doors that studded both sides of the hall. The latrine smell was worse, mixed with something metallic and the foulness of old wood smoke. Theo stepped down next to him and started along the corridor, and Auggie trailed after him. He kept one hand along the wall: the pebbled texture of stone, and then the scaliness of the steel, the corroded ridges of bars and bolts. He thought the metal might have chimed under his touch, and he drew his hand back before the sound could grow.

 

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