CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR


When I had thought the subway was soulful, the tunnel was in it's own league.
I heard the coughs and shuffling from the Tunnel People beside me. It shouldn't
have surprised me. I belonged to the streets, but the Tunnel People was an
entirely different world.


I didn't belong there, but I felt their presence. They screamed loud and
clear in the stifling silence.


I felt the old, the dead, and those still living beside me.


And I was alone on my side of the tunnel, but I kept my light off and relied
on night vision instead.


Walls were thin. And breakable.


There was rarely a barrier that actually kept out what wanted to get through
it. I knew that and knew that wall could've been torn down if the Tunnel People
had been inspired enough.


I crept forward and felt each stairway that passed me by.


After I'd passed the fourth, I heard a voice that crooned beside me, "Come
on, little girl. Come on….do what Daddy wants."


I heard a choked gasp and I jumped before I remembered the wall.


A moment later, I heard muffled sniffling, but I forced my step ahead. I had
to.


And then the fifth and sixth stairway came across me before I felt a slight
easing in the air.


I'd come to the corner and turned left, my hand blindly holding me upright as
I progressed underneath the street, with the packed earth and cement that seemed
fragile in that moment.


I walked underneath and came upon a stairwell on my right.


I grasped the stairs and climbed upwards.


It was another hatchel, just like Melinda had shown me, and I pushed it
upright, climbed up, closed the hatchel, and turned on my flashlight.


I was in a similar tiny room from before with one stairwell that went
north.


I followed and I heard the world come back into it's rightful place.


I heard doors, cashiers ringing purchases, and a book's page turned as I
opened another door.


The last door. I saw Rufus jump from his perch at an employee table and reach
for his side.


"Melinda sent me." I said quickly. Urgently.


Rufus relaxed and blew out a ragged breath.


He lumbered back into his chair and picked up his book when he huffed, "That
girl is going to be the death of me. Get on." He motioned to the back exit. "You
ain't the first she's sent."


I stood still, startled at his acceptance.


"Get on." He said again and focused on the book before him. I saw that it
held a Crucifix on the front cover. And then I turned, slowly, for the back
door.


When I exited, I stood in the back alley.


Glory's Basket was right beside me, just across the alley. There were two
sets of dumpsters. Two garage barrels that had an ash ring around their tips.
And two closed doors that looked locked.


Glory's Basket had a bac kwall with no windows or fire exits. It was just the
two doors at street level and that was it.


I glanced around, but the rest of the alley was the bookstore.


It had plenty of windows and fire exits, but they were all bolted in
place.


The alley was starkly empty.


Anyone normal would've just left, feeling alone and decrepit.


I stayed and I looked to where the invisible would've been.


And there they were. One of the garbage barrels moved an inch and I saw a
hole that was covered.


I approached, pushed the barrel to the side, and unearthed a small hole
inside Glory's Basket.


Two girls were bundled underneath blankets. One held a guitar as cover and
the other scurried backwards, further inside the small hole.


I sighed inwardly and knelt at the opening.


They weren't dirty, but I saw their blackened hands. It was from warming
their hands over the fire.


The garbage bin was their warmth at night.


"I need a favor." I declared and showed them some of Kale's money.


They just watched me. There was no reaction on their dead faces.


"Look—I know you live here and I have to get inside there." I pointed behind
them. "I need you tell me what you know so that I can make that happen."


The closest one stood guard before the younger one. They were sisters. I saw
that at a second glance and they both shared the same mass of brown curls. Their
chocolate eyes matched, but the oldest and leader had lived the same life I had.
I saw myself in her eyes, so I said bluntly, "I've been where you are. I've
protected the same girl. And I know that you have no name, not right now, but
trust me—you will have a name. You'll remember your name, pretty soon. I've been
here. I'd gotten warmth from the same bin. And I know how much you could use
this money, but I need your help."


She glanced behind. The scurried one didn't say anything. She just shook in
place.


And the first one had to make a choice.


She made it when she said, cautiously, "What do you need?"


"I need to get in there—or I need to get something in there."


"The metal detectors." She clarified.


"Yes."


"How you going to know that I just don't take off with whatever you need in
there?"


The girl was smart.


I was smarter.


"Because you live here. And because I'll give you a hundred when I pick up my
blade."


She thought and then said, with a strong chin tilted upwards, "Fine. What do
you need?"


"I know that you know a way to get in there." I started.


She nodded. "They come out for smoke breaks, but they're not out for long.
They go right back in after a few puffs."


"It locks from the outside."


I nodded and murmured, "Okay. When that door is about to close, I need you to
shoot this blade inside. I'll pick it up. I should be able to open the door,
right? I'll drop the money off when I get my blade."


"You can't get inside. They'll see you."


"I know." I knew exactly how I was going to get inside. "I just need my blade
in there. I can get in another way."


Turns out: I went through the front door.


I walked past the drug lieutenants, past the bedazzled tourists, and right
underneath the angel's wings.


As I walked underneath her feet, I glanced up and there were the wings. They
were fully formed and emblazoned for anyone, who looked, to see. So many must've
passed underneath and never thought to look up.


They would've just seen a beautiful woman, but she was more.


She wasn't a woman. And she wasn't a human.


I don't know who I would end up meeting when I found Munsinger's hiding
place. He must've left it where only I could find it, but Marcus had found it
somehow. Or—he might've gotten it out of Munsinger when he had interrogated
him.


I had no doubt someone was there. In this world—a mere stroll in and out
wasn't heard of. It never happened.


Everything was watched. Everything was heard. And everything was already
known.


Melinda had been right. There was a doorway that extended over an entire
hallway before a person even entered the museum. In that hallway were mounted
candles and praying mats. Candles lined the entire wall, nearly half of them
were lit, and people knelt before them, offering their prayers.


And then I came upon the museum's frontdesk.


It was polished, sleek, and anything but what that church had once stood
for.


I saw glimpses of paintings, statutes, everything in between that was art.
There were rooms upon rooms with walls that stood on their own. The first floor
was amaze to itself, I could only imagine the basement.


I didn't know where the mazes had been enacted, but I knew the basement's
were usually a myriad of turns, twists, and dead-ends.


I passed by the frontdesk and followed the second hallway as it veered to the
right and around the building, to the back end. I saw one of the exit doors and
studied the floor around it. Sure enough, my blade had slid along the floor. I
found it in a corner and immediately tucked it away. I opened the door, just
slightly, and dropped a wad of money.


I knew it would be picked up by the right person.


I would've made sure no one else waited as I waited to get paid. And I knew
the girl would do the same.


When I went back to the front of the museum, I saw a far door that stood out
among the rest. While the museum's doors were polished black, of an almost
plastic material, this door was wood, faded, and as I walked closer—the bolts
were rusted over.


I pushed open the door and a winding stairwell unfolded beneath me.


The walls were granite. I trailed a finger beside me as I descended the
stairs.


I kept going and went further still until I finally touched the bottom. It
wasn't the bottom, but it was the beginning of the bottom.


I glanced around. A small room stood to my right with a door half-opened. A
counter was placed in front of me. Knicknacks, candles, hats, gloves, boots,
coats, even blankets were piled high on the counter.


They were there for those who needed them.


It was a miracle that the counter wasn't bare.


As I stepped closer, my eyes caught sight of a wall with a painted phoenix on
it.


'…out of the ashes, a phoenix shall rise. And that phoenix is life reborn…for
a better world shall embrace the phoenix's wingspan…and we shall inhabit that
better world.'


I saw the cinnamon twigs in the fire beneath it.


The phoenix looked towards the right…and so I went to the right.


Munsinger would've found the spot where I would search.


The basement was wall after wall with a turn here, then there, behind you,
before you, and around the corner.


No one could've gone in and gotten out without a trail left behind.


I understood why the museum left the basement as it was.


Too many toddlers would've been lost. Too many women would've been fraught
with fear for their children. The men would've been distraught and the museum
would've fallen prey to lawsuits.


The walls were made of granite. They touched from ceiling to floor and their
removal would've damaged the building's infrastructure.


I noted, with marvel, how sturdy the walls were. How smooth they felt
underneath my finger's glide…and then I came upon a unicorn statue. A maiden sat
underneath it with the unicorn's head resting on her lap. The horn pointed down
another hallway and so I followed.


As I walked along, I noticed that above me was sketched an eagle. It's wing
spread from wall to wall and the body stretched the entire hallway. It was
almost cartoonish in the sketch, but I saw that it was an eagle.


Munsinger often talked about the meanings of such creatures.


Eagles stood for courage. They were the carriers of prayers in the skies.


Just as the Virgin Mary tamed the Unicorn to lay its horn in her lap.


All of these were remnants of a mythical world.


Munsinger had chosen the phoenix for me. The unicorn and eagle his
choice.


I almost felt him behind me, telling me that I was on the right path.


Candles lighted the hallways, lit at the feet.


From them, I saw the shadows arise. They formed their own portrait—one that
moved beside me. It was the image of a wolf.


I almost heard Munsinger laugh now.


He would talk about how the wolves led starving tribes out from the mountains
to fed. They hadn't been the creature to fear, but the creature to follow.


I followed. The wolf walked beside me until the next turn materialized.


I stood there, at the apex of the hallways. I just left one, but stood
uncertain as I saw three more open before me.


The wolf had vanished.


I waited and peered into each hallway.


I couldn't see anything. Candles were at the far ends of all three with
nothing on their walls. There were no statues along the way.


I remembered the eagle and looked up.


There was a pelican. Her neck arched down with one of her young in her beak.
The smallest pelican stretched down the first hallway and that was how I
went.


I couldn't remember the significance of the pelican, but Munsinger must've
picked it for a reason.


I walked down the first hallway, saw a pink sun in the distance of an
adjoining hallway and proceeded towards it.


When I came to the end of that hallway, there it was.


It was if a courtyard had just opened before me. In the middle of the area
stood a fountain, or—at closer inspection, I saw that it was merely a statue of
a fountain. The droplets stood frozen in place.


Across the water flew a dove. And that dove looked down.


I felt a tug at me and I knew that I needed to see what that dove saw.


So I approached the fountain and looked down. To my surprise, little pieces
of mirror were embedded in the fountain's water. They were placed all over the
solidified body of water and when I looked down, I saw my face.


I saw me.


And that was where Munsinger would've left the wedding invitation.


No one else kept my company in that maze. I knew that, but I felt someone
else was there.


Perhaps someone was. Nothing stood just for itself anymore, not in that
world. Everything stood for something else. Everything was a symbol with deeper
meaning. I just needed to know all the meanings and then, maybe, I could figure
out Marcus' true reason for placing the book where he had.


I reached to the cemented waters, took hold on the crust of one of their
waves, and lifted upward.


My arm muscles stretched, but the water lifted free and there they were,
nestled at the bottom.


The first was a large black book.


It was the Master. I knew it without looking through it. And then there was
an envelope.


Munsinger had written on it, 'For the one who seeks where her street's
treasures are held in an angelic's, all glory beholden, basket of womb. For you,
Maya, if you shall have felt the winds blow to these corners of all three worlds
each person inhabits. The mind, the body, and the soul.'


He had been here once. He had found this place, lifted the waters, and placed
this treasure for me.


He had probably wept as he had done.


I felt a tear come to the corner of my eye.


I wanted to believe that Munsinger was there. I felt the magic that he
believed in. I felt like I had finally walked among a hallway of his mind. He
didn't believe in the two-dimensional world. Nothing was right and wrong, black
and white. That was boring for Munsinger.


Everything held layers. Everything was more than what it seemed.


Slowly, with a deep breath, I opened the envelope and pulled out his wedding
invitation. It was simple, white for the background, gold lettering for the
words, and it held a simple heart on the front cover.


I remembered what Marcus had written. '…where your heart lies in the
document for a beginning. A chapter is closed for a chapter to open..'


It was supposed to have been Munsinger's new beginning, not his ending.


It was his chapter that should've opened, but instead—his chapter had
closed.


I got that now.


I wiped another tear away, tucked the invitation back into the envelope,
returned the waters back to their place and then turned back. The invitation was
placed, carefully, among the pages of the Master.


The book stood for Gray, but the envelope stood for his father.


As I bypassed the pelican, I saw that it had switched. The young, that had
first been in it's beak, now stood as if newly birthed behind it.


It was the direction of the viewer. When you turned down one hallway, the
newly birthed pelican was hidden by the granite and the pattern of the
portrait.


It was remarkable, really.


When I came upon the next hallway, the wolf picked up it's old stance and
followed me back as I first came.


As I passed underneath the eagle, even though it flew behind me, I swear that
his eyes watched me tread the opposite direction.


The unicorn didn't look up from the maiden's lap, but the maiden—or as
Munsinger had told me—the Virgin Mary smiled to me.


And then the phoenix was there again.


It watched me as I approached and I was back at the beginning again.


The basement was alive. It held life like none I'd ever felt before. It was
of old life, of lives that lived many years ago and thought differently than the
world I lived among.


That's what Munsinger loved. He wanted to bring remnants from that world back
because so many were cold. He wanted to breathe warmth into the cold hearts,
into the hearts that had ceased feeling.


As mine had—at times.


Munsinger was gone. This time, he wasn't just a figment of my imagination. I
really did feel beside me. He really had walked beside the entire way. And he
had loved every moment as I saw each marker that he knew would stand for
him.


The phoenix was new birth. The unicorn laid down for the mother of that new
birth. The eagle carried the prayers. The wolf led the lost to survival. And the
pelican supposedly killed it's young to born another.


Munsinger was agnostic, but he believed in something. And I think he believed
in what I wanted to believe in. A better world, plain and simple.


I had walked so many miles, in so many worlds, and I found myself in a
structure of an angel's.


It was pure and it stood for purity, but it was encircled by the world it
hoped to replace.


I closed my eyes and stood there. I held the Master in my hands. It was my
way to find my nephew, but I took that moment to say goodbye.


Munsinger would remain behind as I would leave. When I felt him go, I let out
a choked breath, a gasp for air, and then I wiped my tears away. I strode
forward. However, this time, as I bypassed the front mantel of knickknacks and
treasures, I saw a cross in the small room. The door was fully open now and I
couldn't stop myself from pausing in the doorway.


However, as I did, I heard from behind me, "She told me you wouldn't be able
to resist."


I whirled and saw Chance, Tray's brother.


He leaned in the corner with a handgun.


He lifted it up and murmured, "It's a G19. One of their compact models, but
since I wear a handy badge—I get to keep my gun. You don't."


I knew my blade was within reach. And I stood in my only escape route.


Chance gestured me to enter, "Come on. We're not on opposite sides here. I
just want to talk to you."


I stayed in place and asked, coolly, as my tears dried on my cheeks, "How'd
you know?"


"Seriously?"


"Seriously."


"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."


"So tell me and I'll judge." I countered.


Chance's eyes fell to the book and he nodded, "Is that it?"


"Is that what?"


"You're going to play that game? I thought we'd progressed further than that,
Maya."


"You thought wrong." I murmured, steadfastly.


He had the same plush lips, chiseled cheekbones, and hazel eyes of his
brother's.


"Tray's my half-brother."


It was as if he'd heard my thought out-loud.


"Really?"


"Yeah." He studied me, like he had at Rack's. He measured me, but he let
nothing by like he had before. He tried playing a game with me when we met at
the coffee bar, but this time—he knew better. He knew I hadn't asked to meet
him. I just used him to find Lily and she'd been the one whose information I
needed.


And Lily had handed it over, succinctly and with minimal persuasion.


"How'd you know I'd be here?" I asked.


Chance shook his head and ran a hand through his sandy-brown hair. He wore a
black jacket over blue jeans with his glock for an accessory.


He held the handgun like I might've worn a bracelet. Loosely and as a second
skin.


"I want Mallon. I want in on the case."


"I believe the case is Jace's."


Interesting. Jace had been Chance's undercover. Now they competed against
each other. My guess: Jace already won, but Chance was drooling for another bite
at the Galverson Empire.


"Where's Lily?" I asked.


Chance laughed now. He scratched his ear and looked around the room, "She's
not here, if that's what you're thinking. And she ain't coming either. So don't
think to go that route. I learned once. I won't mistake twice."


"What do you want, Chance?"


"I told you before." He murmured. "Tray is my half-brother. My mom was
married to our dad before he ever married Tray's mother. I lived, on and off,
with Tray, but I was mostly out of the house before Tray started school."


And he knew.


I remembered what Jace had confessed before.


Tray was really Galverson's son, from an affair with Tray's mother.


Chance and Tray weren't actually related. They had different fathers, but I
had thought it was the same mother.


I learned differently now.


I followed the family tree backwards.


Sal Galverson slept around.


Lily was his legitimate daughter while Marcus had been his illegitimate
son.


He had another of those in the shadows, without even knowing—but I saw that
his brother knew about it.


"I know about Tray." I said clearly. And I watched.


Chance jerked his head in my direction. His eyes seared me, pierced to see
what I thought underneath, but he saw nothing.


"You know…" He gestured to the cross. "That's the Cross of the Tau. It's
supposed to stand for resurrection…and life…and blood sacrifice. The monks—when
they spread out their arms, their robes was a walking symbol of the Tau cross.
It's remarkable, really, how much history and little things like this—they just
speak to us."


It stood for something better.


"Lily told me that you're fascinated with this stuff. She told me all about
you, Maya, how…" He glanced at me, but I wasn't running. I gritted my teeth, but
I listened when he continued, "you believe in this stuff because you have to or
you'd waste away to nothing. She said that you 'have' to believe in it. You need
a better world, or something that gives you hope, because…nothing makes sense to
you otherwise. You're one of those people that can't see reality for what
reality is."


"Really?" I drawled with my teeth on edge.


He continued, "You're not like other girls. You don't really care about boys,
or wearing the right clothes, or being rich. You care about this stuff—but it's
useless. My baby brother isn't even my brother. How's that for reality? Am I
supposed to just cut him out? He's Sal Galverson's son and yet—"


Chance continued, but I stopped listening when I realized--


"This whole thing is about family, Maya." Petrie murmured. "You don't get
that. Lanser doesn't get it, but it's all about family. My end.
Marcus…"


Marcus hadn't been trying for Taryn. Marcus didn't care one bit about Taryn.
He'd been trying to take his brother.


But why? For what reason?


Marcus didn't care about any brother. He loved two women: myself and Lily,
his sister. That's all he loved, in fact. Petrie had loved Ben. Marcus
hadn't.


Marcus wanted me to find the book.


It's all about family.


He loves two women.


"Chance!" I barked out.


Startled, he stopped, abruptly in mid-sentence.


I grasped his arm, "How did you know that I would be here? How?!"


"I got an anonymous tip."


That didn't make any sense.


"What? Who? You follow just any tip?"


"No." Chance bit out. He wasn't sharing any more, so I said quickly, "He
wants Lily, like he wants me. He loves Lily….Marcus sent you that anonymous tip.
He's going to use you to find her!"


Like I had.