“Door number two,” reported Henry, stopping short at the end of the passageway. “Give me a minute.”
Henry busied himself with his phone again. We waited patiently for a few moments. The phone buzzed again, and Henry nodded. “All the Raptors are out. Let’s get inside. You’re up, Nicole.”
Wes prodded me gently, and I tore my gaze away from the names on the walls. The door into the clubhouse was much more ostentatious than the one in the sewer system. The Raptors’ insignia had been painted in black on the stone, but again, there was no obvious door handle to let us in.
I examined the edges of the passageway, then the Raptors’ emblem itself. I remembered the seal well. It was similar to the one inside the clubhouse, less detailed perhaps, but like the intricate crest in BRS’s headquarters, two polished rubies serves as the painted raptor’s eyes. Experimentally, I pressed down on them. To my satisfaction, they retracted, and the wall pivoted forward to reveal the warm glow of the Raptor’s inner sanctum.
“How did you know to do that?” whispered Henry as he poked his head through the trapdoor and looked around for lingering Raptors.
“Honestly, the Raptors aren’t all that original,” I said back in an equally quiet tone. “Once you figure out one door, you pretty much have them all figured out.”
Henry gave me an A-OK gesture then slipped through the trapdoor and into the clubhouse. “All clear,” he called.
I maneuvered through the hidden door next with Wes close behind me. As we emerged in the main hall of the clubhouse, a shudder ricocheted from my head to my toes. No matter how warm and inviting the golden glow of the lamps were, the Raptors’ headquarters gave me the creeps. A deep stairway opposite the mantle led upward to the Waverly library. The faint screech of the fire alarm echoed feebly from its dark ascent.
“Let’s get the charter and get out,” I said, shaking off the feeling that something was watching me. On this side of the trapdoor, the Raptors’ crest was displayed in all its glory above a noble mantle. This version was much larger, and the ruby eyes of the highly-detailed painted raptor bore into me as if the creature was sentient.
“Lead the way,” said Henry, gesturing for me to go ahead of him. “Wes, stay here and keep a look out. There’s no telling when that fire alarm will shut off. If you hear anyone coming down that main stairwell, give us a holler.”
“Will do.”
We left Wes near the exposed passageway, and I led Henry down the long corridor, peering cautiously into each open door. There were signs of the Raptors’ quick evacuation. In the dining room, remnants of a cafeteria meal littered the table. A heap of half-eaten mashed potatoes and the scraps of a piece of roast lay abandoned in a takeaway container. A few doors down, in one of the dorm-like rooms, the blankets on the bed had been disturbed as though one of the Raptors had been in the middle of a nap when the alarms went off. As Henry and I passed another door or two before we reached the library. Here, someone had left an immunology textbook out and open, an uncapped highlighter, and pages of handwritten notes strewn across the desktop.
“Wow,” said Henry, lingering in the doorway of the library as he beheld its contents. “Are the Raptors ever satisfied? They have a whole library full of rare books right above their heads, but that’s not enough, is it? They wanted more.”
I tipped my head in acknowledgement. “True scholars are never satisfied. Wisdom is always pursued but never truly caught.”
“Is that a quote from someone?”
“Not that I know of.”
I wandered into the Raptors’ library, aiming for the long, low table in the middle of the room. Beneath it, I knew there was another secret passageway, but it was what lay on top of the table that drew my attention. The Black Raptor Society’s charter was a voluminous tome bound in weathered leather. I flipped through its pages, searching gingerly for the signatures of the members from a certain year. On the page labeled 1981, I found what I was looking for.
“Is that it?” asked Henry, peering over my shoulder at the charter.
I pointed to a name scrawled in flamboyant script. “There she is. Catherine Lockwood.”
Henry’s nose wrinkled at the sight of her signature. “Is your father in here too?”
“He was,” I said. Near Catherine’s signature, there was a cluster of burn marks, as though someone had used the hot end of a cigarette to mar the ink beneath. I ran my fingers over the thick paper. “Catherine was determined to wipe him from the Raptors’ history.”
Henry eyed the burn marks. “Didn’t work out all that well for her, did it?”
I shook my head, still absentmindedly caressing the disfigured pages. Henry set a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“We should hurry,” he said softly. “Or your father won’t be the only Costello that Catherine tries to wipe from history.”
I picked up the charter, and with Henry’s help, deposited it into the nondescript black backpack that we had brought with us to carry it. Henry zipped up the bag, sealing the charter inside, then hoisted it onto his back and tightened the straps.
“Move out,” he said, clapping me on the back.
We had barely set foot outside the library’s door when the explosion hit.
With a earsplitting sound like a sonic boom, the dome of the Waverly library shattered, showering the quadrangle with construction debris and broken bits of stained glass. A plume of smoke and fire erupted from the roof of the building. The night was illuminated by the blaze, and a chorus of yelling and screaming crescendoed from a dull symphony to an outright roar.
Lauren ducked instinctively, shielding her head with her hands, even though she and Olivia were nowhere near the library. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “What the hell
