Page 68 of Foresyth Conservatory
“No magick locks?” I teased.
“No, you don’t learn that until third year,” he said under his breath, fiddling with the lock. I could tell he was joking when a sly smile broke out on his lips.
“Where are we going?” The question came out sharper than I intended. I was tired of being led through secret corridors and shown hidden spots around Foresyth. If Aspen had any intention of killing me, this would have been the perfect opportunity. My father instilled in me the belief that no one could be trusted; that everyone was dangerous. But something deep inside—something I couldn’t rationalize, something instinctual—whispered that this time, he was being honest.
“If you want to see something real, then follow me,” he said and took my hand again. The thought of Sequoia seeing me with Aspen was enough to make my stomach twist. And yet, I found my hand instinctively curling into his. “No one else knows this place,” he said, leading me down the steps. “And no one else has a key.”
When we reached the bottom of the staircase, swallowed up by the subterranean darkness, the glow of a flame appeared. Aspen turned to me, his face cast in an orange hue. He was holding a match, perpetually burning without the flame consuming the wood.
“That’s a cool trick,” I said.
He scoffed and turned back to the room. In the dim glow, the room seemed to be a storage closet. Old furniture and mildewing books were stacked across every direction.
“This is it?” I asked. “Rotting furniture is your version of real?”
“Ye of little faith,” he said, pulling me to one end of the room. A bookshelf was stacked with rotting books from floor to ceiling. “Hold on tight to your dictionary,” he said, pulling down one of the books. The shelf started to shake and began to approach us. It swiveled open on a top hinge like a circular doorway. It led to an even darker room.
“Damn.”
“I get a snide remark at fire magick but a hidden doorway impresses you?” Aspen said. I pushed him away, tracing my own path through the doorway. It reminded me of the false shelves in my father’s bookshop—the ones that promised shelves of hidden tomes, yet led, in my imagination, to Babylonian vaults and cursed Alexandrian cities. I used to pretend every book I touched had teeth. The bite, I hoped, would jar me awake into a life I actually wanted.
“It’s a tunnel,” I said, staring out into the seeming never-ending darkness.
“Yes,” Aspen said from behind me, his flame burning brighter, the orb seemed to grow in size to the proportion of space. “The school is full of them, connecting hidden rooms and workshops.” I distantly wondered if there was a tunnel connecting to the lab.
“You can get into any room in the House through them.” He winked, taking a large step through the door to guide us further into the tunnel. We walked single file for a few longmoments in silence. We had already passed several diverts away from the main tunnel. This had to be an incredibly intricate system. We passed one sharp right turn that had several collapsed metal and wooden barricades in front of it. My grip on his hand tightened reflexively, and I was surprised when he returned my pressure.
“What’s that?”
“Very old magick. I wouldn’t go down those pathways if you can help it. They used to be warded when the House’s magick was stronger, but they haven’t been for a while. Whatever is down there, you don’t want to be near it.” Aspen spoke in a steady voice as if recounting a reading.
“Here, we’re almost here,” he said, leading me further down a turn. We passed several of those barricaded tunnel paths and I ignored the shiver running along my arms every time we passed one.
Old magick. Something was definitely there, magick or not. But the heat of Aspen’s palm was a welcoming signal to follow.
I spotted a splotch of light up ahead. A skylight. Golden rays of sunset filtered through a grate and poured onto my feet.
“This leads outside,” I said, looking up. A stray mockingbird flew overhead.
“The kiln has to be so many feet away from the House, and it needs an exhaust,” he said. He unlocked the door with another set of keys and pushed it open, his muscles taut with strain under the weight. If Aspen struggled to open the door, I couldn’t even imagine how well my attempt could go. Note bene: don’t get locked in.
“You took me down a basement, through a hidden doorway, then a tunnel system, and now you think I’m going to go through this tetanus-ridden iron door with you?”
He grinned from ear to ear. “Of course you will, Alice. Don’t you want to see where the rabbit hole leads?” Curiosity was one of my worst traits. I sighed, stepping through the door, following the glow of light on the other side.
At first, I was blinded by a sharp white light. I covered my eyes, looking away. But they adjusted in a few seconds, and I realized I was looking at what looked like a giant oven.
A kiln.
Metal pipes spanned the width of the space, all leading to the central cylinder. The place smelled of scorched sand and steam, of charred cedar, and wet ash. It was the mineral tang of something half-alive and half-alchemical, like the breath of the earth itself held captive. And at its core there was an impossibly white light. My eyes adjusted to the brightness, but I still couldn’t look at it.
“You’ll need to wear glasses if you’re going to stare directly,” Aspen said.
I turned my gaze back to him. He had extinguished the flame in his finger and was now rounding a wooden table at the opposite side of the room. Various tools, long pipes, some strange bulbs, and torches littered the top of the table.
His workshop. He had taken me to his workshop.
My eyes snapped back up to the kiln. Relief washed over me—too small to fit a body. Unless, of course, he planned to dismember me first.
