further.
In a rush, the flames rebounded, roaring to the ceiling. The voice was gone, ripped from Cyrus like his own gut. Gulping, gasping for breath, Cyrus fell backward onto the stairs.
As the flames receded to their original height, the bearded man raised his head slowly, opened his eyes, and looked into Cyrus’s.
Crab-crawling frantically, Cyrus made it up around the first bend and out of sight. Coughing, still fighting for breath, he rolled onto his knees, scrambled to his feet, raced up the stairs, and tumbled out onto the steel floor. Then he crawled back to the keyhole, slid in the gold key with a shaking hand, and managed to twist before he dropped onto his face. The stairs rose slowly back up into the floor.
His hands were twitching. His stomach, knotted in fear, was loosening into nausea. His face, pressed against the icy steel floor, still dripped with sweat. Patricia stared at him from around his finger. She’d loosened her grip, but his finger was stinging. She might have bitten him.
“I’m sorry,” Cyrus mumbled. “I’ll listen to you next time.”
He forced himself up. He needed to get out. Now.
He managed to pull the big door closed quietly, and made sure that it had locked. Then he staggered for his little spiral stairs and the long trek home.
He stopped. Voices. Laughter rolled out of the stairwell. Flashlights.
No. Cyrus spun around. No, no, no.
He ran down the length of the hallway on boiled legs, rounded a corner, sprinted another length, and dead-ended at a door. Not locked. He didn’t need the keys. Dropping them into his pocket, he slipped carefully through onto a cold marble floor. Another hallway, this one with sconces on crowded walls, burning low enough that the paintings and maps were mere shapes in shadow. He popped the still-glowing Patricia off his finger and raised her to his neck.
Beneath his bare feet, the floor became rough with mosaic.
A final corner and he knew where he was. He had reached the main hallway — big leather boat, reptilian skin, fresco-mapped ceilings and mosaic-mapped floors, all sleeping in shadow. He slowed down. Two chatting watchmen disappeared through a distant door.
Cyrus could see the entrance to the Galleria. Another fifty yards and he would be at the dining hall. Through the dining hall and he would reach the kitchen.
Food. At the suggestion, his body roared to life with complaints. He needed something to settle his stomach and refill his veins, something to take the wobble out of his legs and the panic out of his mind. He needed something to make him stop shivering and shaking. Then he could start his trek back.
Battling to keep his breathing low and his feet from slapping, he jogged close to the wall around statues and tables and tusked skulls.
He reached the dining hall and ducked out of dimness, through swinging doors, and into black nothing. He had only ever seen the space from behind a heating grate, not well enough to pass through it blind, but he didn’t bother Patricia again. Pausing inside the doors, his wide eyes strained for the faintest dusting of light. His pulse thundered, his ears rang, and the dim outline of a door appeared in the distance.
A plane passed overhead.
Cyrus felt his way through a graveyard of tables, burdened with upside-down chairs, bumping and adjusting his course until he finally reached the kitchen door and pushed it open on tired hinges.
Fire Island was dormant. The wall of copper kettles, pots, and skillets was fully armored. Beyond the wall of windows, a swollen half-moon skunk-striped the black lake. Harbored boats rocked naked masts. Flashlights and colored wands bobbed around the airfield. A plane, twin engines whining, passed by the windows, eased itself away from the earth, and disappeared.
In the kitchen, only one small, elbowed lamp was lit beside a large pot — a copper vat — squatting on a low-flame burner near the windows. Spices, bottles, and a tub of molasses were scattered around it.
Cyrus rounded the island and approached the light. Steam was rising from the pot, and so was a smell to melt his heart. Barbecue sauce. It had to be. And stronger than most. Cyrus’s mouth was suddenly liquid. Dan had tried to barbecue at first, but only ever with bottles of store sauce, and not for a while. Meat was expensive. This simmering joy was different. This would be sauce like his father’s had been — or better.
Inhaling slowly, Cyrus rose onto his toes and examined the thick brown surface inside the pot. A slow bubble grew and burst, releasing spiced breath from the depths. He couldn’t resist. Cyrus tapped the side of the pot, testing for heat, and then dipped his finger. Hot. Perfect. He raised it to his mouth.
A hairy fist clamped onto his wrist and spun him around. Big Ben Sterling loomed above him.
“What thief is this?” the cook asked.
“I–I’m sorry,” Cyrus stammered. “I — You said—”
“Cyrus Smith, is it?” The cook scratched his unnetted beard. The very tip was tied tight with a small pink ribbon. Sterling grinned. “Ben did tell you to help yourself, didn’t he? Well, not to this.” He looked at the pot. “This needs testing, and that’s a job for the vice-cook.”
Grabbing a rag, he swabbed Cyrus’s finger clean.
“I’m sorry,” Cyrus said again. “It smells really good.”
“That it does, lad,” Sterling said. “But smell is only the beginning.” Releasing Cyrus’s wrist, he stepped back, and his thin metal legs were invisible in the darkness. He looked like a huge man levitating on his knees. The bells were missing from his ears. “Now tell me why Cyrus Smith is out wandering the night’s middle while the Keepers are all in a beer froth about his safety?”
Another plane rattled the windows. Cyrus looked back over his shoulder, watching its wing lights disappear. He felt dizzy, and his legs were weak.
“I just …” He paused. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Sterling tugged on his beard and lowered his brows. “And you look to have had a fright, too. Well, frights are easy things to find in Ashtown.” He slapped Cyrus on the shoulder and winked. “Lad, if it’s your brother you’re frettin’ about, Rupert Greeves is the bloodiest of bloodhounds. He gets his man, don’t you worry about that.” He nodded out the window. “He’ll be running planes till the sun rises, no matter who’s complaining. You rest easy. He’ll find what’s there to be found.”
“What are they looking for?” Cyrus asked. “What can you see from a plane at night?”
“Oh, they’re not looking out the windows,” Sterling said. “Rupert will have his hunters out.”
“Hunters?” Cyrus looked out the window. “Hunters, like people, or like … things?”
Sterling laughed. “Things. The planes just follow along like horses behind the hounds. Hold on now, lad.”
The cook bounced slowly toward a pantry and returned with a cloth napkin. He held it out to Cyrus. A hunk of cold chicken sat in its center, coated with a skin of spiced molasses.
Laughter wandered into the kitchen. Sterling slapped the chicken into Cyrus’s hand, grabbed his shoulders, and pointed him toward the dining hall.
“Get on now, quick. I don’t want to be explaining you to the watchmen, not in the mood they’re in. Back through the dining hall, and quietly, too.”
Cyrus hurried to the door. The laughter was growing louder. “Thanks,” he whispered, and the legless cook saluted.
Thirty-two minutes later, a relieved Cyrus stepped into orange light and the sound of two breathing sleepers beside a tocking grandfather clock. He’d been lost and found and lost again, but he’d found his way in the end, and without getting caught. And he’d be able to do it again.
With chicken in his teeth and the sound of airplanes in his ears, he slid beneath his blankets. Sleep was waiting for him, soft and swift.
Cyrus flew in his dreams. He flew all the way back to the sea, back in time, back to a cold night on the north coast of California with the moon sliding low beneath broken clouds. He flew down beneath the cliffs, above thundering winter surf and into a red station wagon sitting on the sand. There he shivered with his sister and his brother while his mother stammered quick prayers in a language he didn’t understand. He watched distant rocks and the lights on the small boat when they disappeared forever. He watched his mother plunge into the midnight water and strike out into the surf. He heard Dan yelling, calling for her. Splashing. Searching.
