We parked Henry’s pickup truck a few blocks away, along the curb closest to the drain that would allow us access to Waverly’s underbelly. We ran into a slight problem with the equipment to remove the cover from the manhole, but Henry’s quick thinking and Wes’s brute strength kicked in just in time. As the gaping hole in the ground beckoned, I tried to clear my mind of everything that could go wrong. What if the Raptors were already on to us? I could picture Flynn ordering her cohorts to close up the manhole, trapping us in the sewer system forever.
As a precursor to our trip underground, I’d gone to the lengths of dousing borrowed handkerchiefs with Natasha’s expensive perfume to cover our mouths and noses with, but no amount of Chanel Number Five could deflect the steaming smell of the sewers beneath the Waverly campus. My eyes watered as we lowered ourselves inside, and when my rubber work boots—also courtesy of my mother—slipped against the unmentionables below, I fought the express urge to vomit. This was what my life had come to, shuffling through excrement in the middle of the night.
We hiked in silence with only the monotonous drip of water to accompany our thoughts. I went through the plan again in my head. Henry had recruited his inside source to cause a diversion. All we had to do was wait for the all-clear, sneak inside the clubhouse, grab the charter, and get out. It sounded too easy, and when it came to the Black Raptor Society, nothing was ever that easy.
“This way,” said Henry, consulting the map of the sewer system that he had downloaded onto his phone as he led us down another cramped corridor. Naturally, the map didn’t include the secret passageways that had been carved out by the original Raptors, but Holden had given us directions as to where they were located. With Wes’s gun pressed to his temple, he hadn’t had much of a choice.
Henry’s phone vibrated. He checked his text messages. “Everything’s going according to plan so far,” he reported. “The diversion is set. Everyone’s evacuating the library, including the Raptors. Shit—”
“What?” asked Wes and I in unison.
Henry’s shoulders tensed then relaxed again as another text message came through. “Never mind. Everything’s fine. There was a possibility of meeting some Raptors in the passageways, but apparently none of them will deign to use the ones that lead to the sewers.”
“But of course,” I quipped. “They would get their designer shoes dirty.”
Both Henry and Wes chuckled. I smiled, happy to ease some of the stress that weighed so heavily on our shoulders right now. It didn’t last long though. I slipped, bracing myself against the wall to avoid falling in the puddles of questionable material below.
“Ugh,” I groaned, as my hand came away from the wall covered in grime. I wiped it on my coat, hoping that if we made it out of the sewers alive, I wouldn’t come down with some kind of mysterious disease.
“Don’t worry, Nicole,” said Henry, shining his flashlight ahead. “We’re almost out of here. If Hastings didn’t mislead us, the entrance to the passageway should be right about here.”
We paused at a kink in the wall, where a line of the bricks that made up the sewer system had sunken a little further in than the others. There was no sign of a secret passageway.
“That rat bastard,” muttered Henry. He squinted at his phone, double-checking Holden’s directions. Wes peered at the map over Henry’s shoulder. “I swear I’m going to kill him.”
I aimed my flashlight at the impression in the wall. It was the only flaw in the construction of the sewage system, as if someone had intentionally lined the bricks up at an odd angle.
“Before you contemplate murder, you should know that the Raptors love puzzles and games,” I said, still sweeping the beam of my flashlight across the strange line in the bricks. A strange gleam caught my eye, and I moved closer to the wall, noticing some kind of metal locking contraption between the bricks. “I thought you would have figured that out by now, Henry. Did either one of you happen to bring a knife?”
Wes produced a switchblade from his boot and handed it over. “What for?”
I flicked open the knife. “See how the mortar is missing between this line of bricks and the next? Also, everywhere else, the bricks are staggered. Here, they’re in a straight line. Not exact standard building grade. Shine the flashlight there, would you?”
As Wes held the light steady, I wedged the knife into the space between the bricks. With some wiggling, the lock mechanism sprang free, and I tugged on the facade that hid the secret door. It swung forward easily, revealing a clean stone corridor, set higher in the wall than the rest of the sewage system.
“Damn,” said Henry, hoisting himself up into the passageway. “Nice job, Nicole.”
Wes boosted me up after Henry then climbed in himself. “I have never been so attracted to you,” he whispered in my ear.
I elbowed him, grinning. “Save it for after we get the charter, Casanova.”
The passageway was blessedly short, but there was no mistaking it for property of the Raptors. Although the members of the society might not have used it to get out to the sewage system, there were enough paired initials etched into the stone walls to know that this was a popular getaway for young Raptors in love. I wondered if my father had ever been down here. If I
