Wisdom: Updated Edition, page 16
“Them who?” Peter asked.
“Mae and Daisy. Why are you going with them when they leave?”
“Because.” His eyes flashed to me for a moment, then he looked away from both of us.
“Mae and Daisy don’t need you,” Jack went on. “I know me and Bobby have a lot of crap in your old room, but we could clean it out. Well, we’re gonna move soon anyway, but that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” Peter asked.
“Why don’t you stay here?” Jack asked. “This isn’t your fight, the thing with Mae and Daisy. Neither of them are your responsibility.”
“Thanks.” Peter swallowed and stared down at the floor. “I mean, I appreciate it, Jack, I really do. Especially coming from you. But you know why I’m going with them.”
“Come on, Peter.” Jack gestured to himself and glanced back at me. “This thing between the three of us, it’s absurd. I didn’t realize how absurd it was until I saw you today. It’s over, you know? I’m with Alice, and you’re fine. We can just be… normal, again.”
“I think you’re being overly simplistic, Jack.”
Peter lifted his head to look at him, and for a moment, the two of them just held each other’s gaze. Finally, Jack nodded and looked away.
The French doors swung open, and Leif called from the other room, “Hello?”
Peter tensed. “Who is that?”
“It’s Leif,” Jack said, then muttered, “He practically lives here now.”
“Oh, he does not.” I stood up and went out to the dining room to greet him. “Hey, Leif.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to just barge in.” Snow clung to Leif’s hair, and he brushed it out with his hand.
“You didn’t barge in. You know it’s never a problem when you stop by,” I told him.
“Nope, no problem at all,” Jack said. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets as he came into the dining room, and Peter followed more slowly behind.
“Peter,” Leif said in surprise. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“It’s only temporary,” Peter said conversationally, but his eyes had hardened at the sight of Leif.
He’d spent some time with Leif when they’d both been part of the lycan pack, and as far as I know, they’d gotten along. Neither of them ever really talked about what happened there, but like Jack, I don’t think Peter fully trusted Leif or his intentions here.
“Really? Why is that?” Leif asked.
“We have to lay low. I don’t want to trouble the family here,” Peter answered vaguely.
“You’re in trouble again?” Leif asked. “If you need a place to hide out, I might know somewhere.”
“Really?” Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “You know a place here?”
Leif nodded. “I’ve had to hide out myself a time or two.”
“What have you needed to hide from, Leif?” Jack asked, his tone only pretending to be light.
Jack and Peter stood there, eyeing Leif up suspiciously as he offered them help. I’d never really seen them agree on something before, but much to my annoyance, they finally agree on distrusting Leif.
“Hey, guys, Leif is offering to help out.” I moved closer to him. “We really need help, so maybe we should just find out what he’s talking about before we get skeptical.”
“Where did you hide out?” Peter asked him.
“Underground,” Leif said.
“You mean like a clandestine-network underground? Or like six-feet-under underground?” Jack asked.
Leif pointed to the floor. “Actually under the ground. In tunnels.”
“In tunnels underground? Do you mean sewers?” Jack asked. “Are you proposing they live like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
“Not sewers, and I’m proposing they live where they want to live,” Leif corrected him. “I’m merely offering a place you can hideout.”
Peter exchanged a look with Jack, who only shrugged in return. Peter sighed and nodded.
“Let’s check it out,” Peter said finally. “We don’t have anything to lose at this point.”
We all left in the Jetta after a small argument. Jack wanted to take the DeLorean, but that would mean taking two cars since it only sat two people. Peter told him to be quiet and get in the Jetta, and to my surprise, he did.
I sat in the back with Jack while Leif gave Peter confusing directions to the entrance of the tunnel. Leif didn’t drive, so he knew where things were by foot — cut through lawns and back alleys. Eventually, Peter figured out that Leif was directing him to an area underneath a bridge that crossed the Mississippi River.
We parked next to the river and had to scale an icy embankment. Leif led us to a narrow hole in the cement wall of the underpass. He went in first, sliding through with ease, but Peter and Jack stood outside, staring at the jagged opening in the concrete.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” Jack asked, his words barely audible over the sound of the river rushing below us and the cars on the bridge above us.
“I don’t know. It’s a weird trap, if it is,” Peter said thoughtfully.
I scoffed. “Oh you guys are paranoid.” I pushed past them and crawled in through the hole. The concrete scraped against my back, but I kept going.
“Alice!” Jack yelled, but I had already slipped inside.
Beyond the entrance, the hall appeared to widen to about six or seven feet across. The tunnel had no light, other than what managed to come in through the hole. Thanks to being a vampire, I still could see, but not quite as well as I’d like.
The walls were brick lined with several rows of thick, black wires. The floor was filthy concrete, littered with leaves and dirt. When I stepped inside, vermin scattered, but beyond being small and fast, I couldn’t tell what kind it was.
“Well, this is cozy,” Jack said once he’d climbed inside. “I can totally see Peter living it up here.”
“This is just the entryway. I’ve got much more to show you.” Leif turned and walked onward.
Peter had just gotten in, and I followed Leif. Jack stayed right behind me, muttering things about rats and the smell, as we let Leif lead us through the twists and turns of the tunnel.
The brick walls eventually gave way to sandstone halls with arched ceilings. I ran my fingers along them, surprised to find that they’d been carved right from the earth. We climbed up a narrow set of stairs sculpted into the stone, and we finally made it to an area that seemed much more habitable.
The ceilings were vaulted brick, and the halls were wider up here, wide enough that a small stream ran down the center. Dim yellow lights were spaced out along the ceiling, the only lights we’d encountered since we entered the tunnels.
Leif hopped across the stream and motioned to an arched entrance into another room. “And here we are.”
“Cowabunga,” Jack said when he stepped over the stream.
He took my hand to help me cross, but he didn’t let go afterwards. I think part of him still expected this to be some kind of trap, although I’m not sure why. Leif had been nothing but kind to us so far.
We walked through the doorway into the next room. The domed ceiling was shockingly high, at least twenty feet above us. Three of the walls were the same brick as the tunnel, lined with a few dim lights and a couple electrical boxes, but the fourth was open, ending in a sharp cliff.
I walked to the edge to inspect the chasm between the precipice and the concrete wall on the far side. It was about half the size of a football field, but I couldn’t see the bottom. A few open-ended pipes jutted out from the wall, with water pouring like never ending waterfalls into the bottom. At least it smelled fresh and chlorinated, so I hoped it was clean here, and not the sewage from the tunnel.
“Wow. That’s an impressive drop,” Jack whistled, looking over the edge with me. He leaned farther forward, and his foot slipped on the moss that grew over the edge. I yanked him back from certain death, and he smiled sheepishly at me. “Thanks.”
“I’m not sure how Mae would feel about that.” Peter motioned to the bottomless pit at the edge of the room, then he turned around and took in the space. “But the rest of this seems good. It’s relatively clean and dry here, with electricity, and it’s certainly well-hidden.”
In one corner, some blankets were piled up, next to a stack of books and a few items of clothing. Peter stepped closer to inspect it, and he glanced back at Leif.
“You live here?” Peter asked him.
“Yes,” Leif admitted. “It’s quiet and safe. Nobody bothers me.”
“So, you’re inviting us into your home?” Peter asked.
“You could say that, I guess.” Leif turned away from Peter’s apologetic expression and his bare feet padded on the concrete as he went over to his slight living area. “It’s a nice place to hide out.”
“It is nice,” Peter agreed. “I am concerned about what Mae will think of a place without running water, and there’s that unguarded chasm.”
Leif nodded to the door. “The river is close for cleaning up, but it’s not that hard to leave if you need to do laundry or shower.”
“There aren’t any people anywhere around here,” I pointed out. “It’d be impossible for Daisy to get into trouble here.”
Peter continued looking around the space as he mulled it over. “It does meet our most basic needs, even if it is not ideal. We can’t stay at the house with Ezra for longer than another day or two, and this would work as a place to hide out and regroup until we can find something more permanent.”
“What exactly is an ideal place for raising a child vampire?” I asked.
Peter shook his head grimly. “The most important thing, I suppose, is that it’s secluded, and this certainly is.”
“You think you can sell Mae on this?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know that she’ll have much of a choice,” Peter said. “We have to find somewhere to live, and this is the best we’ve come up with so far.”
Peter and Jack started talking about what they could do to make it homier down here. Peter was handy with tools and woodworking, and Jack liked to pretend he was, so he enthusiastically joined in the planning.
I checked the room out, admiring the surprising detail in the architecture of the cavern. It was strange to think that a hundred years ago, people put more detail in building their sewers and utility tunnels than they do in building most homes anymore.
Leif’s pile of belongings looked sad in the corner. It consisted almost entirely of things we had given him. The comforters he had spread out were actually a Christmas gift from Milo. I’d worried the blankets were a horrible gift since we didn’t know if Leif even had anywhere to live, but Milo reasoned he needed them all the more, and he’d been right.
The books had most likely come from Milo or Ezra. A thick copy of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky was stacked on top of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. A few other Russian books were in the stack, and that made To Kill a Mockingbird sitting next to it stand out.
Before I’d even picked it up, I knew it was the same copy that I’d just finished reading. I flipped through the dog-eared pages, and a makeshift bookmark slipped out. I snatched it before it fell to the ground, and my breath caught in my throat.
Leif had been using a picture of Milo and me as his bookmark. It’d been taken on New Years Eve of this past year, and we both had on too much silver glitter. Milo had stuck it on the fridge because he loved the way his cheekbones looked in it, but it had gone missing a few days ago. I’d assumed it had fallen off and slipped under the fridge or the stove, but here it was. Leif had taken it.
“What do you think?” Leif asked from behind me, and I shoved the picture back in the book.
“Um, of what?” I turned to face him, forcing a smile so I didn’t look as flummoxed by his picture thieving as I really felt.
“The cave.” Leif smiled faded from bemused to concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I smiled wider. “Yeah. I was just, um, admiring your books.” I pointed to his pile of Russian literature with the copy of Mockingbird.
“I’m going through a Russian phase,” Leif said, then gestured to the book in my hand. “I decided to check it out after I saw you reading it.”
“Oh. Well… it’s a good book.” I handed it to him. Part of me wanted to take the picture bookmark, but I really didn’t think he’d do anything bad with it. It just felt weird that he’d stolen it.
“Ezra knows I have the books,” Leif explained, misreading my reaction. “He lent them all to me.”
“Ezra has a really big library.” I nodded my head more quickly than I needed to. “He has a lot of really good books, and he loves to share them. He’s really… good like that.”
“Yes, he is.” Leif paused. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Thankfully, I didn’t have to answer that question again. A bat flew over ahead, distracting us all momentarily, and after that, Peter decided we should go. He’d already made a lot of plans of what he wanted to do with the space so Mae wouldn’t freak out, and he had to get started on them.
Leif stayed behind when we left, and I took Jack’s hand as soon as we stepped out into the tunnel. I’d never felt weird about anything Leif did before. As soon as I’d met him in the forest of Finland, I had liked him, even though he was a member of the brutal lycan pack.
But something about stealing a picture. It felt different in a weird way. Maybe it was because Milo was in the photo, too.
I understood a bit more about the way Jack felt now. I knew that whatever connection I had with Leif, it was harmless. But when it came to my little brother, I felt more protective. What exactly did Leif want with Milo?
Chapter Sixteen
“The promise I made to my parents,” Bobby said, his voice low and gravelly, “the promise to rid this city of the evil that took their lives, may finally be within reach.” He crouched low on the bars that surrounded the roof above Olivia’s penthouse, surveying the city lights of downtown Minneapolis.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, pushing Violet off me. She’d nearly had me pinned, but I had put my hands flat and pushed up, practically doing a handstand, and used my legs to kick her back.
“Are we gonna do this or are you gonna goof off with that nerd?” Violet asked. She hadn’t even fallen back when I kicked her, and she stood off to the side, glaring down at me.
“Can’t we do both?” I asked as I straightened up.
“Alice, you’re not even trying tonight,” Violet said and her stance relaxed. “You shouldn’t have brought him with you. He’s just a distraction.”
“No, he’s not the problem.” I shook my head and brushed dirt from the roof off my jeans. “And even if he was, that’s good. I need to learn to fight with distractions.”
“I guess,” Violet muttered.
She hadn’t been happy that I’d brought Bobby with me to train, but after we’d run into Jonathan the other night, I knew that Bobby needed to work on his defensive fighting. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really feeling it either.
“What are you going on about?” I asked Bobby as I walked over to him. He had one leg resting on the bar as he leaned over, and if Milo caught him doing that, he’d probably freak out and kill us both, but I didn’t say anything.
“I’m Batman,” Bobby repeated in that same gravelly voice.
I rolled my eyes and leaned on the bar next to him. “Oh, you’re a dork.”
“Don’t you ever feel like a superhero up here?” Bobby asked, his voice back to normal.
“Nope.”
“Not even a little bit?” Bobby stepped down off the bar, probably tired of crouching, and pulled his Member’s Only Jacket tighter to him. “Or how about a superhero with hypothermia?”
“I like the cold,” I reminded him.
“So neither of you are gonna practice at all?” Violet put her hands on her hips. She wore a tank top and yoga pants to train, and her pale arms had a bluish tint from the icy wind.
“Guess not.” I turned to face her, leaning my back on the bar. “Where did you say Olivia was again?”
“I don’t know.” Violet shrugged. “She just left and said she’d be back in a few days. But she doesn’t tell me much. I don’t think she likes me.”
“She left you alone in her penthouse and her club,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she likes you.”
“Since we’re not training, do you think it’d be okay if we went inside?” Bobby asked through chattering teeth. He wore a knit cap, which kept his hair pinned back out of his eyes for his change, but the narrow scarf around his neck didn’t do anything for him.
“Yeah, come on,” Violet said and went over to the door that led to Olivia’s place. She trudged down the steps, and Bobby scampered ahead of me, eager to get out of the cold.
“You still need to do combat training eventually,” I told him as he pushed past Violet to get into the warmth of the apartment.
“I know. And next time I’ll wear a cape!” Bobby declared. He ran inside, rubbing his hands together. Olivia kept the place at about sixty degrees year-round, but after the roof, it had to feel positively balmy to him.
“You’re gonna wear a cape?” Violet laughed, raising an eyebrow. “Oh yeah. Combat training is so gonna work for you.”
“I’ll take it off to fight,” Bobby said. “I just wanna survey Gotham with my cape flapping in the wind.”
“Okay, I’m ignoring you now,” Violet said and turned to me. “Hey, you have a car, right?”
I grinned broadly. “Oh, it’s more than a car.”
Peter was back and using his Audi to run around, Milo had the Jetta for school, Ezra was using the Lexus to do lord only knows what, and Jack wouldn’t let me drive the DeLorean. Which meant I finally got to take the bright red Lamborghini out on my own.
“Excellent. I don’t have a car, and we’re low on blood.” Violet walked towards her bedroom. “Just let me change real quick, and we can run to the blood bank.”
“It’s only a two-seater,” Bobby said, but Violet ignored him as she went into her room and shut the door behind her, so he turned back to me. “There’s only room for two.”
