“Do you still feel panicky?”
“You kissed me because I was having a panic attack?”
“Yeah. Did it work?”
I kicked him hard in the shin.
“Are you sure it’s not that time of the month?” Diesel asked.
I smacked the heel of my hand against my forehead. “Unh! Men.”
He grabbed my wrist and tugged me along a narrow tunnel. At least, I’m pretty sure it was narrow, because I had my eyes closed, but every now and then my arm brushed against the side. After what seemed like an hour but might have been minutes, Diesel stopped and I could sense the flashlight on me.
“You can open your eyes now,” he said. “We’re at the end of the tunnel. We’re going up.”
Praise the Lord.
Diesel climbed the ladder first. He shoved the overhead door open, and light flooded into the tunnel. I was so relieved, I almost burst into tears. I scrambled up the ladder after him and found myself inside what had to be the Sphinx. I’m not sure exactly what I’d expected, but it wasn’t what I found. I’d hoped it would be like Cleopatra’s barge, but it looked more like the Alpha Delta taproom.
One of the walls contained a fresco depicting St. Peter holding the keys to heaven. Odd for an Egyptian-themed temple, and in direct contrast to the opposing wall, which featured a poster of Jane Fonda as Barbarella.
“I like this fresco,” I said to Diesel. “It doesn’t completely belong in the room, but it’s very handsome.” I ran my hand across it and felt the energy. “And it’s empowered.”
Diesel moved next to me. “Can you isolate the part that’s empowered?”
I traced the fresco with my fingertip. “It’s the key.” I looked more closely. The Lovey Key was embedded into the fresco.
Diesel saw it, too. “Obviously, Wulf or Hatchet has passed through here, and the key must have attached itself on contact.”
I scanned the room. “How did they get in? You couldn’t open either door.”
“They probably came the same way we did.”
“A chubby guy in full Renaissance regalia and a man who looks like a vampire just walk into a frat house and let themselves into the dungeon under the taproom?”
“It’s a fraternity. You’d be surprised how often that happens. I know. I belonged to a fraternity.” He pressed the key and—whoosh—part of the wall swung out. “Damn,” Diesel said. “Am I good, or what? This is a secret door.”
The door opened onto a narrow winding staircase positioned between the outside wall and the inside wall. I followed Diesel into the staircase, and when we were halfway down, the door closed with a click. I retraced my steps and pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t open. I couldn’t find a handle, a switch, a button. No way to open the door.
“We’re locked in,” I said to Diesel.
“That’s kind of a bummer, because there’s no way out down here, and I have no bars on my cell phone.”
I joined Diesel at the bottom of the stairs and flicked my flashlight around the room. We were in a sort of grotto. Stone walls, moldy ceiling, a dark, seemingly endless pool of water.
“How did it come to this?” I asked Diesel. “Everything was going right for me. I had a little house, a job I liked, even a cat. And then you came along, and now I’m going to die.”
“We might not die,” Diesel said.
“How so?”
Diesel had his flashlight trained to writing on the wall. Love is a leap of faith.
“I hate these messages,” I said. “I hate them, hate them, hate them! I don’t want to see another message for the entire rest of my life.”
There was a moment of mutual silence where I suspect we were thinking the same thing . . . that the rest of our lives could be ten or fifteen minutes, depending on how fast the air got used up in here.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pitch a fit.”