Page 69 of Underground Prince

“This way, miss,” a man said once I entered. He was dressed in a black suit. Noise of a different type assaulted my senses, pots clanging against metal, shouts echoing through slats in upper shelves that held both clean and dirty plates, men and women in stained white uniforms jostling ingredients and leaping around their coworkers. Steam hit my face, my cheeks instantly dampening and my hair frizzing on contact.

I was in the kitchen?

The man didn’t wait for any of it to sink in and instead began walking down one of the very crowded rows where chefs were yelling and sous-chefs were shouting back. I was going to lose him if I didn’t pick up my pace—he was fast disappearing among all the white and shouts.

I hoped I was as invisible as possible as platters piled high with proteins, vegetables and grains arced in the air just shy of my nose and employees bounced around me, hands spread under plates as they transferred them from one location to the next.

I lost him. He had to be absorbed by this point, never to be found by me again, until I spotted his slick head among all the frazzled ones, waiting impatiently by a metal door that looked ominously like their fridge.

“Is Kai around?” I asked once I reached him. “Weird, but I haven’t been able to find him back here.”

“Inside,” he said, cranking down on the fridge’s lever.

Through a snort, I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going in there. I’m just going to turn around and locate Kai so I can strangle—oh.” I dropped my hand. “It’s not a fridge.”

On the outside it looked like one, with a clean stainless steel door, so giant it would take three of me side by side to meet its width. It reminded me of a butcher’s freezer when I saw it, but as soon as it opened, iced-over meat didn’t greet me. A descending stairway did.

I peered into it. “Does this go to Narnia?”

“Inside,” he repeated.

“I’m not sure I want to.” I was already backing up, picturing him slamming the door behind me and locking me in forever. “Kai may be finding this funny, wherever he is, but I’m—”

“Scarlet?”

A voice spoke in the darkness, not Kai but another polite face, this time coming from a woman who was coming up the stairs in a bright red traditional dress.

“Yes?” I held my hands close to my chest as I looked down at her.

“Come with me. Your seat is ready for you.”

“My seat.” I didn’t ask it as a question. It was more a vocalization so I could buy myself time to think this through. There must be a poker table in this dim sum butcher’s freezer.

“Yes.” She held out a hand, her arm a milky, flawless white underneath the single bulb. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

Oh, there was a shit-ton to be wary of, but as usual, my curiosity was getting in the way of strategy. I nodded thank you to the man who escorted me to this point, and followed the beautiful ruby lady down a spiral staircase, thinking maybe I was about to enter another dimension.

The cacophony of the kitchen was made soundless as soon as the man shut the door behind us, allowing a different noise to drift up the stairs and into my ears. It was comprised of low murmurs, and as we got closer, the familiar clicks and fwip sounds hit my ears. The stairs became hazier the further we descended, cigar smoke overtaking the metallic smell of the stairway, and a type of heavy atmosphere cloaked me as soon as the woman pulled back another red curtain and gestured for me to go in front of her.

The room was quiet, as if coated in velvet, subtle tones and movements coming from under a thick covering of stale air and smoke. Six tables were set up, with room to sit six to eight people at each and lit by an overhead green lampshade. The lighting was low, probably deliberate, and the carpeting below my feet was stained with years of wear and ash. The room was windowless, the ceiling lined with rusted black pipes that might or might not still be serving plumbing purposes. A small bar was set up in the corner, but otherwise the area was used for one thing only.

The Game.

“This way.” The red lady tapped my elbow and directed me to a table on the right where three men sat, and one woman. She pulled out a chair for me, and I automatically took it, resting my purse on my lap.

The woman sitting at the table was just in the midst of flipping over a card. “Next hand,” she said to me without shifting her attention.

“Oh, I’m not playing. I’ll just watch,” I said.

Not only did that statement have her noticing me, it had the rest of the table, too.

“No spectators,” she said.

“I’m waiting for someone. He’ll be sitting next to me and will sort this out. Kai? You know him?”

All faces remained expressionless.

“He’s the one who told me to come here. I guess to…” I frowned at the table. “Show me another poker lair. I don’t know. But he’ll be here.”

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