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“What exactly are we looking for?” Phil spoke up as he wrapped his arms around himself. “Besides to die of damp, of course.”
“We’re waiting for a sign-” Ben paused and frowned at the tunnel ahead of us. He half-turned to Hearth. “When we followed you to the Halls, did you ever come back here?”
Hearth shook his head. “No, why?”
Ben pointed at the tunnel ahead of us. “Because the moss has been disturbed since Millie and I were last here.”
We all studied where he pointed, and indeed there were footsteps in the muck. I frowned. “Who would want to come down here?”
“No doubt whoever dealt with the guards in the cemetery,” Hearth suggested.
My face fell. “So your dad?”
“Undoubtedly. Everyone else is too frightened to venture in here at the moment.”
Ben pursed his lips. “This may be a trap, but we have little choice but to follow them.”
We pressed forward and wound our way through a maze of other outlets. If I hadn’t been with the others I probably would have ended up joining the occupants who we regularly met along the route. In half an hour our slow walk had led us to a wider intersection. A faint whiff of fresh air came from somewhere ahead, but it was our right that caught our attention.
The tunnel opened into a large room, and within that room sat dozens of wooden crates large and small. Ben leaned his head in and inspected the area before he turned his head around and nodded at us. “I don’t see anything.”
Our group stepped inside, but I paused just inside the room and lifted my eyes to the ceiling above us. “Where do you think we are?”
“Somewhere to the west near the Totten,” Ben told me as he moved over to a pile of crates near the door. He pried open the top of one and peeked inside. A frown creased his lips before he turned to Impara. “Professor, you might want to take a look at these.”
Impara joined him at the pile and peered into the box. His eyebrows crashed down before he reached in and removed a vial which he studied for a moment. “That fool.”
A dark cloud settled on Ben’s brow. “Then these are all life sap?”
Impara nodded. “Undoubtedly.”
Hearth joined them and frowned at the contents. “There looks to be enough here to resurrect all the corpses in the city.”
“Or enough for the bodies in the catacombs,” Ben countered.
My curiosity was piqued by a group of long, low boxes that sat to one side of the room. I moved over and found that one had been opened, so I scooted the lid partially off and peeked inside. My eyes widened and I whipped my head around to the others.
“Ben!” I called out, and he quickly hurried over to me. I held up one of the items I had found. It was a playing card, but the face was blank.
Ben took the card with a frown on his lips. “Puck?”
I nodded and patted the box which had rectangular compartments, and each was filled to the brim with other blank cards. “This thing’s full of them, and I think the other boxes beneath it might be, too.”
He peeked into the container and drew out a few more. “Then we have discovered the source of the card trade.”
CHAPTERFORTY
“But why?”I wondered as I nodded at the card. “It’s a kid’s game. What’s he getting out of it?”
The professor opened a nearby door and his eyes lit up. “I believe it is this.”
We dropped the cards and hurried over. The door opened into a small room, and every inch of it was packed with paintings, jewelry boxes, and vases of all shapes and sizes.
I whistled. “Looks like we found the stolen goods.”
Phil peeked his head inside and whistled. “Wow. Is this guy trying to start a museum?”
“I would rather think he had more personal ideas for these items,” Ben mused as he studied an antique vase. “Some of these pieces are worth a small fortune.”
