Inside the Shadow City (14 page)

“Why not?” Kiki answered. “At least there weren't any neighbors around to complain about the noise.”

Like delinquents set loose in a deserted amusement park, the Irregulars fanned out in every direction to explore the ballroom. Luz and Oona performed a mad jig around the forgotten shoe, the beams of light from their hats casting crazy spotlights about the room. DeeDee was opening bottles behind the bar, smelling their contents and taking samples for later study, while Betty examined the costumes of the women on the ceiling. Only Kiki seemed unimpressed.

“This is a dead end,” she noted with disappointment as we stood watching the others.

“No exits to above,” I agreed. “But it's still pretty amazing.”

“It's not what we came here to find,” she said. “Let's go,” she called out to the others.

The Irregulars began to slowly regroup, but DeeDee was hesitant to leave.

“Just a few more minutes?” she pleaded, holding up a miniature test tube that she had filled with a fuchsia liquid. “There's some interesting stuff in these bottles.”

“We're not down here on a field trip, DeeDee,” Kiki said hotly. “If you want to play scientist once we've finished making our map, go right ahead. But in case you've forgotten, we're here to find all the entrances and take control of the Shadow City. Now, what do you say we go do it?”

Without further discussion, Kiki stomped out of the room. The rest of us followed silently as she headed
down a tunnel that my compass informed me snaked to the south.

• • •

Though I tried not to show it, I dreaded leaving the cheerful dance hall. Even with the rats vanquished, I hadn't been able to shake the sensation that we were not alone. The feeling slithered over my skin and bored itself into my brain. Every time I paused to plot our path on the map, I could feel the darkness trailing close behind me. Somehow I knew that if I spun around, I would catch a glimpse of the people who had spent their lives in the gloom. In my imagination, I could see the spotlight of my miner's hat capturing a set of hardened eyes, a featureless face, or the twirl of a ghostly dress. I tried not to make too much of the images that flashed through my mind, but there was one thing I knew for certain. At least some of the people who had called the Shadow City home had never left. They were still down there, waiting for someone to stop by for a visit.

My excitement at exploring the Shadow City had turned to fear. Whenever Kiki rounded a corner or stepped through a door, I held my breath. And every time we opened a door to find nothing but a brick wall or packed earth, I sighed with relief. But while we found many dead ends, there were far more doors that swung open and beckoned us into the darkness they had long guarded. As I nervously stepped out of the tunnel and into one of the Shadow City's gloomy chambers, I saw Kiki watching me out of the corner of her eye. Her nose twitched, and I wondered if she could smell my terror.

Within four hours, we had discovered three saloons, a gambling parlor, a room crammed with barrels of gunpowder, and an elegant boudoir furnished with a wardrobe packed with delicately ruffled dresses tailored to fit a monstrously large woman. In the back of the wardrobe, hidden behind all the lace and tulle, was an escape tunnel that circled back to another part of the city. What function that particular chamber had served was anyone's guess, but there seemed to be at least one room devoted to every kind of mischief. With the exception of sunlight, everything a hard-living villain might have needed or desired could be found in the Shadow City. It was a carnival for criminals.

Hidden in the darkness seventy feet below the surface, the people of the Shadow City must have believed that their fun would never end. But before the night was over, the Irregulars would discover the terrible price they had paid for their pleasure.

• • •

In the early-morning hours, Betty called our attention to a door that was padlocked from the outside and marked with a hastily painted red cross. Above the cross, the word MERCY had been scrawled in an unsteady hand. As usual, Oona insisted on being the first inside. She picked the lock and aimed her light into the room.

“I think I know what happened to the people who used to hang out down here,” she said, her voice lacking any of its usual sarcasm.

The room was crammed with so many teetering bunk beds that it resembled a giant set of monkey bars. To our
horror, none of the beds were empty. Each held at least one skeleton, some of them three or more. Leg bones dangled between wooden slats. A long blond braid, miraculously preserved, clung to the skull of a woman dressed in the bright red costume of a dance hall girl. Her fleshless arm reached out to us.

“What happened?” I heard someone ask.

“They were locked inside to die,” I muttered to myself.

“Someone murdered them?” whispered Betty.

“No, I don't think so. Not so many at once. They must have died from a plague. I think they were locked in this room so they couldn't spread the disease.”

Luz made a dash for the exit.

“Don't worry,” DeeDee assured her. “There's no danger now. Whatever killed them would have died with them.”

“There was a plague in New York?” asked Oona.

“Sure, lots of them,” I replied. “Cholera, smallpox, yellow fever. You hardly hear about them anymore, but they killed thousands of people in New York. All of the parks downtown are crammed with bodies. So many people died, there wasn't anywhere else to bury them. The whole city is one big graveyard.”

“So this is why the Shadow City was deserted,” Kiki said thoughtfully.

“Anyone who escaped would have never come back,” I said. “But it looks like a lot of them never made it out.”

We closed the door and tried to erase the horrible image from our memories. But no matter how desperately we wanted to forget, the Shadow City wouldn't allow it. Before our first adventure in the tunnels came to its
unexpected and unfortunate end, we came across dozens of doors with the same red cross. We chose not to open them, but instead passed silently by. There was no point in disturbing the dead to check for exits. After all, the rooms had been chosen because there was no way out.

• • •

The discovery of the plague that had swept through the Shadow City left us all feeling homesick for the world above. Though Kiki kept pushing us forward, none of us had much heart left for adventure. Fortunately, we had to summon the courage to face only one more locked door that first night. We found it in a forlorn branch of the Shadow City—a wooden door with the image of a fierce-looking rabbit painted on its exterior. Kiki jiggled the handle. The door wouldn't open, and there was no lock to pick.

“Maybe it's time to go home,” DeeDee offered with a yawn. With the exception of Kiki, we were all exhausted.

“Not yet. This is important,” Kiki insisted, staring intently at the door. “It's barricaded from the inside.”

“So?” asked Oona.

Kiki didn't appreciate the challenge. “Don't be stupid. If it's barricaded from the inside, it means that the last people in there got out some other way.”

“Or died in there,” Oona shot back. “Haven't you seen enough dead people tonight?”

Sensing that things were about to get ugly, I decided to step in.

“Look, Oona, there's no red cross on the door, and if there's an exit, we need to note it on the map,” I tried to
explain, though I, too, would have preferred to start for home.

“You'll have to blow the door open,” Kiki instructed DeeDee.

Happy to have the opportunity to try out her explosives, a reenergized DeeDee reached into her knapsack and carefully took out two small test tubes. The liquid inside one of the tubes was a hot pink not known to nature; the other tube contained a gloopy substance the color of rotten lemons.

“Stand back,” she told us with evident glee.

“Wait!” cried Luz in alarm. “We have to check for mains first.”

Luz and I carefully compared my map of the Shadow City with the NYCMap. According to my calculations, we were beneath Pearl Street just south of Chinatown. The NYCMap showed no dangerous pipes in the vicinity.

“We're good to go,” I informed DeeDee, feeling like the hero of an action movie.

We all stood at a distance while DeeDee uncorked the two test tubes and attached them at their mouths, leaving only a thin layer of paper to separate the two liquids. With remarkable speed and precision, she duct-taped the two vials to the door just below the knob and then sprinted in our direction.

“The blast shouldn't be too powerful,” she said when she reached us, panting softly, “but the last thing I need is a splinter the size of a wooden stake. So get ready. As soon as the layer between the two test tubes dissolves, you're going to hear a big bang.”

Sure enough, within ten seconds the vials exploded,
leaving a cloud of blue smoke and a gaping hole the shape of a shark bite where the lock had once been. Kiki smiled triumphantly as the door swung open.

Inside were three dark chambers. I had secretly feared that they, too, would be stacked with corpses, but the first room featured little more than a soiled mattress, a couple of chamber pots, and a pair of men's overalls hanging from a nail in the wall. The second room, however, was in utter disarray. A chair had been smashed against a wall and shards of glass littered the floor. A large black stain coated one of the dingy plaster walls.

“I'd bet you anything that's blood,” said Oona, taking a closer look. “If somebody died here, it wasn't a plague that got him.”

The final chamber was filled with crates stamped with the word
cargo
. Kiki reached into the straw packing that lined one of the crates and pulled out a tarnished silver teapot and matching creamer. Another crate held moth-eaten cashmere shawls in every imaginable plaid.

“Ladies, we've found ourselves a thieves' den,” said Kiki.

“Look, there's an exit!” Betty cried, pointing to a ladder on the side of the room that led to an opening in the ceiling.

“Why don't you check it out, Ananka?” Kiki casually suggested as she continued to root through crates. “But try to be careful. There's no telling what's up there.”

She could have spared me the warning. The last thing I wanted to do was crawl into a dark space by myself. Unfortunately, I couldn't decline the offer. Kiki Strike had noticed my nervousness and had decided to test me. So
despite my misgivings, I mounted the ladder and climbed through the opening in the ceiling. Surrounded by a circular wall of crumbling earth, I realized I was at the bottom of a deep hole. I counted sixty rungs before the top of my head hit a wooden trapdoor. I took a deep breath and reluctantly raised the trapdoor an inch. Looking through the crack, I saw a spacious, dimly lit room that clearly belonged to the twenty-first century. We had found our first exit to the world above.

A pale green light issued from a digital display on one wall. Icy air streamed down and froze my nostrils. I listened carefully for any sound of activity. Once I was certain that the room was empty, I raised the trapdoor a bit farther. What I saw delivered such a shock that I nearly tumbled headfirst from the ladder. Hundreds of large animals were suspended from the ceiling, their glossy fur gleaming in the light. Having nearly been consumed by rats earlier in the evening, I was in no mood to come face-to-face with any more members of the animal kingdom.

“What'd you find?” someone called up from below. The question brought me to my senses. The animals hanging from above were minks, and though I'd read that minks can be surprisingly ferocious, these hadn't been able to attack anyone for quite some time.

“It looks like a cold storage room for furs,” I shouted down to the others.

I climbed into the room, and Kiki followed close behind. Inside, it was the dead of winter, and though I stood shivering in the cold, Kiki showed no sign of discomfort. She marched around the perimeter of the room, examining the merchandise.

“Verushka has a picture of my mother wearing a coat just like this,” Kiki said as she lifted a gleaming coat off the rack. I was thinking of my own mother's threadbare overcoat, when alarms began to ring throughout the building.

“That was dumb,” Kiki said, showing no trace of panic. Spying my terrified expression, she offered a superior smirk.

“Don't be such an old lady, Ananka. It's not like we don't have an escape route. And I'm sure no one knows about that trapdoor. Look how well disguised it is. We won't even need to block the entrance.”

“I think we should go,” I practically pleaded. The police could arrive at any moment.

“What's the hurry?” Kiki lingered longer than she had to before finally placing the mink back on the rack. “Okay, then,” she said as if humoring a whiny child. “If you
insist
.”

We climbed down to the thieves' den to discover Luz rummaging through one of the crates and shoving fistfuls of silver forks into her pockets. Kiki's sense of humor evaporated, and she reached into Luz's uniform and pulled out the purloined silverware.

“What are you doing?” complained Luz. “Where else am I going to get this much silver? Besides, it's ours.”

“Yeah,
ours,
not
yours,
Luz. Do you have to be so greedy? When we've finished the map, you guys can come back for the silver. But if we stop to hunt for treasure in every room, it will take us forever to find all the entrances to the Shadow City. We can't slow down now.”

“Oh come on, Kiki, I need some silver for one of my
inventions. And I'm just taking a few extra forks for my mom.”

“I don't care if you're making silver bullets to defend the city from werewolves,” said Kiki. “The forks are staying here. It's time to go home.”

Luz threw down the silverware she still held in her hand. But as Kiki turned her back, I saw Luz pick up two fish knives and shove them into her pocket. I gave her a smile and decided to say nothing.