Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

The shelves swung forward slowly, revealing a second space. Behind the pantry was a secret room, with crude brick walls and a dirt floor. The room stretched back into a dark tunnel. I stepped inside.

“Is that one of the Tunnels?” Liv looked into the darkness behind me.

“I think this is a Mortal tunnel.” I glanced at Liv from the shadows of the tunnel. She looked safe and small inside the pantry, surrounded by Amma’s old rainbows caught in a jar.

I realized where I was standing. “I’ve seen pictures of hidden rooms and tunnels like these. Runaway slaves used them to leave houses at night without being seen.”

“Are you saying—?”

I nodded. “Ethan Carter Wate, or someone in his family, was part of the Underground Railroad.”

10.09

Temporis Porta

Who is Ethan Carter Wate again, exactly?” Liv asked.

“My great-great-great-great-uncle. He fought in the Civil War, then deserted because he didn’t believe it was right.”

“I remember now. Dr. Ashcroft told me the story of Ethan and Genevieve and the locket.”

For a moment, I felt guilty that Liv was here instead of Lena. Ethan and Genevieve were more than a story to me and Lena. She would’ve felt the weight of this moment.

Liv ran her hand along the wall. “And you think this could be part of the Underground Railroad?”

“You’d be surprised how many old houses in the South have a room like this.”

“If that’s true, then where does this tunnel go?” Now she was right next to me. I took an old lantern down from a nail that had been hammered between the crumbling bricks of the wall. I turned the key, and the lantern filled with light.

“How can there still be oil in there? This thing has to be a hundred and fifty years old.”

A rickety wooden bench lined one of the walls. The remains of what looked like an army-issue canteen, some kind of canvas sack, and a wool blanket were stacked neatly beneath it. They were all coated with a thick layer of dust.

“Come on. Let’s see where it leads.” I held the lantern out in front of me. All I could see was the twisting tunnel and an occasional patch of brick built into the dirt.

“Waywards. You think you can go wherever you want.” She reached up with one hand and touched the ceiling over our heads. Brown dirt rained down, and she ducked, coughing.

“Are you scared?” I nudged her with my shoulder.

Liv leaned back and yanked on the twisted loop of rope. The false door behind us closed with a sharp bang, and it was dark. “Are you?”

The tunnel dead-ended. I wouldn’t have seen the trapdoor over our heads if Liv hadn’t noticed a slice of light above us. The door hadn’t been opened in a long time, because when we pushed our way up, whole shovelfuls of dirt caved into the tunnel—and all over us.

“Where are we? Can you see?” Liv called up from below. I couldn’t get a solid foothold in the side of the dirt wall, but I managed to haul myself aboveground.

“We’re in a field on the other side of Route 9. I can see my house from here. I think this used to be my family’s field before they built the road.”

“So Wate’s Landing must have been a safe house. It would have been easy enough to sneak food into that tunnel right from the pantry.” Liv was looking at me, but I could tell she was a thousand miles away.

“Then at night, when it was safe, you ended up out here.” I let myself fall back down to the ground, pulling the trapdoor back into place. “I wonder if Ethan Carter Wate knew. If he was part of it.” After seeing him in the visions, it felt like something he would do.

“I wonder if Genevieve knew,” Liv said.

“How much do you know about Genevieve?”

“I read the files.” Of course she did.

“Maybe they did it together.”