“What did Dr. Quinn say?”

“That she would consider it when she saw it. But she looks like she considers broken bottles to be part of your complete breakfast.”

“I think you worry too much,” Stevie said.

“Of course I worry too much,” Nate said. “But I’m usually right. The people who worry are always right. That’s how that works.”

Stevie decided not to contradict him on that one.

Hayes, Maris, and Dash were already waiting by the far wing of the art barn, where the construction equipment and the Dumpsters were, out by the maintenance road. They were also dressed in black—Hayes in something formfitting, Dash in something artistically loose and flowing, and Maris in dark leggings and an oversized fuzzy sweater, with a tight black hat on her head. She even wore a musky, smoky perfume to match the occasion.

“Okay,” Hayes said, switching on his flashlight. “Let’s go.”

They entered the woods—the ring of true wilderness that enveloped Ellingham Academy, the place where the trees were not orderly and no statues bloomed. At least, they entered the bit of it by the maintenance road. Stevie had a good sense of where the tunnel ran and where the opening should be, but the opening was going to be flush with the ground. Hayes seemed to have a very clear sense of where he was going.

“How did you find this?” Maris asked.

“The tunneling is the best part,” Hayes said with a smile. “This one opened in the spring. They didn’t want anyone to know.”

“But you knew?”

“I saw,” he said, grinning and shining his flashlight under his chin.

He led them about thirty yards from the road, into a tight cluster of trees. Then he stopped and started stomping at the ground. There was the heavy thunk of thick metal.

“Light,” he said.

Maris shone a flashlight down as he scraped off an inch or so of loose dirt.

“They covered it up,” he said, bending down. “And it looks like they put a lock on it. It wasn’t locked before. That’s going to be a problem.”

“Let me see,” Stevie said, kneeling on the ground beside him. The ground was spongy and cold beneath her knees.

“Just a standard padlock,” she said, peering at the end. “Can you shine a light?”

Maris shone her flashlight down on the lock. Stevie went into her bag and fished around for a while until she found two paper clips at the bottom. She straightened them and inserted them into the lock. One she used as a tension wrench, and with the other, she manipulated the pins. It was all about slow, careful movement—feeling every millimeter. Locks are tiny, and their pins are tinier still, and the movement needed to lift one is barely a flinch.

Luckily, she had picked padlocks like this many times. It was a good, cheap hobby to practice while watching mysteries, and it seemed like the kind of skill she should have.

It popped open.

“Whoa,” Hayes said. “How the hell did you learn to do that?”

Stevie simply smiled, got up, and dusted off her hands.

“Nice one,” Maris added approvingly. Finally, there was something Stevie could do that Maris could not.

Dash was texting, and Nate stood in stunned silence.

Hayes pulled open the doors, revealing a pitch-black hole in the ground. Stevie shone her flashlight down on a dozen or so bare concrete steps, leading into more darkness.

“That’s not ominous-looking at all,” Nate said.

Stevie made her way to the front and squatted down, shining her light into the hole. The space in front of her was a violent, velvety dark. Anything could have been there. A million spiders. Someone with a knife. Or worse—just a lot of dark tunnel.

She counted the steps and felt around with her foot to assure herself she had reached the last one before shining her light up. The million spiders, if present, were well hidden, and there was no one with a knife. The tunnel was made of brick and concrete and was in fairly good condition, aside from a few upsetting jags and cracks that were probably caused by years of snow and ice. There was an overwhelming smell of earth and age and stagnant air. The tunnel felt tighter than she thought it would be, snugly fitting two people across. It made sense, of course. It’s not easy to build a secret underground tunnel. You needed it to be just big enough to get your boxes of booze, or sneak around with your friends while playing one of the Ellingham’s famous games. The brick made it feel like they were inside a horizontal chimney.

Stevie got light-headed for a moment and ran her hand over the walls. They almost felt wet, and she traced the patterns of the mortar with her fingers. This was history, real history, opening up for her. It was almost too much to take in. She ignored the effort going on around her, as Dash pulled a tripod out of his bag and opened it up, and Maris and Hayes tipped their heads together to read the Truly Devious letter off his phone and work out where to stand.

Nate slid up alongside Stevie and broke into her reverie.

“Why do you know how to pick locks?” he asked.

“Because there are a lot of tutorials online.”

“That’s how,” he said. “Why?”

“Who doesn’t want to know how to pick a lock? It only took a few hours. Buy a lock for five bucks . . .”

“Still not why.”

“Because they do it on TV,” Stevie finally said. “It seems like a good thing to know. I like detectives, okay? We all have our hobbies.”

“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Nate said.

Stevie stared into the dark. She shone her light into it, but there was no end in sight. Just more dark.

“Are they sure about the structural integrity?” Nate asked. “Should we really be in here? It feels like an elevator shaft on the Titanic.”

“It’s fine,” Stevie said. Because it probably was. Most things are.

Stevie swept her light around, steering it away from a terrifying crack in the side, and then aimed it squarely forward.

“I’m going to the end,” she said.

“Seriously?” Nate said.

“This is what I came here for. My dragons are down there.”

“Stevie, I wouldn’t . . .”

“You’re not me,” Stevie said. “If I die, avenge me.”

She was joking, but not totally. She had to go, and it also felt like a possible mistake.

Some mistakes you have to make.

The distance, she knew, was about four hundred feet. Four hundred feet of dark tunnel may not sound like a lot of dark tunnel, but it is, in fact, a lot of dark tunnel. But she was going in, like people who crawled into pockets of pyramids sealed for thousands of years with no idea what was ahead of them went in. There were buried mysteries, and sometimes, you must go into the earth.

She wondered if she would panic. To her surprise, though, her heartbeat was slow, steady as she took each step into the velvety nothingness of the tunnel. Soon, there would be a door at the end. She reached her arm out in front of her to find it, and eventually she felt the heavy wood at her fingertips.

Her heart literally skipped a beat and sent a glug of confused blood popping.

The door was made of thick pieces of wood belted together with iron, that small, sliding window looking like something from a medieval jail. There was no knob on this door, no lock. Originally, this door would have been opened from the other side, so if it was locked on that side, that was the end of her exploring.