The Faculty Club Part 30

"Thank G.o.d. At least someone's been paying attention."

"We have to beat them another way."

His smile dropped; he let out a low growl.

It was time to tell them what I'd been thinking about, ever since my trip back from New York. The final piece of the puzzle. Their Achilles' heel. The piece that had been right in our faces the whole time. We just hadn't seen it.

"Something's been bothering me," I said. "Remember what Isabella told us? Possession is a temporary state, right? You do the ritual, magic happens, and then bam, it's over. Right?"

Miles closed his eyes. He didn't say anything.

Sarah nodded. "Right."

"So how are they maintaining this for the entire life of the victim's body--until they're ready to skip to their next generation of hosts? We're talking sixty years . . . How do they do it?"

"I don't know," Miles snapped. "What am I, Grand Poohbah?"

"Miles, listen. What did I see, when I was in the tunnel over the ceremony? Remember? There were dancers, right? And drummers? And the priest with the crazy eyes? And behind them, what did I see?"

He tried to remember, then shook his head.

It had been there, right in front of us, all along. Sarah's eyes lit up.

"Behind the dancers?" she asked.

I nodded.

"And behind the priest, on the altar?"

"Right . . ."

"A machine. You said you saw a machine."

"That's right--"

"A machine, or something like that, in the dark, twisting and moving like the dancers were. That's what you said."

I nodded. Her eyes were bright, alive.

Miles didn't say anything. He just nodded slightly.

"Isabella didn't say anything about a machine, did she?"

He shook his head no.

"Of course she wouldn't," I continued. "It's totally out of character with the ritual . . ."

Sarah smiled, remembering my exchange with Isabella.

" 'What if someone were using voodoo . . .'" she recited.

" '. . . someone from outside the culture . . .

" 'In a way it was never intended,'" Miles finished.

I nodded.

"What if the machine . . ."

". . . was some kind of extension of the ritual . . ."

"Prolonging it . . ."

"Sustaining it . . ."

Miles shook his head as the idea unfolded.

"It's an addition."

"A mechanization."

"a.s.sembly-line voodoo," I said, smiling.

"Then it stands to reason," Miles continued, "that if the machine is prolonging a temporary state--possession--indefinitely, then if we . . ."

". . . destroyed the machine . . ."

". . . we'd end the possession . . ."

". . . and then . . ."

". . . what then?" Miles asked. "Are the victims--what did Izzy call them?--the horses . . . are they still in there, somewhere?"

"Would they come back?"

" 'When the G.o.d dismounts, the priest is himself again, weary maybe, dazed,' but . . ."

". . . but this is so much longer . . . not minutes but decades . . ."

"If you cut them off too long, do they die?" Miles asked.

"Don't we owe it to them to find out?" Sarah replied.

Miles laughed harshly.

"Owe them? What do we owe Nigel . . . Daphne . . . John? Those people used Jeremy. And when he had nothing left to offer them, they dropped him without a second thought."

"So what?" I said. "So they deserve to die?"

"No. And they don't deserve you risking your life to save them, either. Or me." He laughed. "Would they do it for us?"

"No," I said softly.

"It's not just Nigel, Daphne, and John," Sarah said. "It's everyone who came before or after. A new group of students every year."

"People we don't know," Miles said. "People who would slit each others' throats for an A."

Sarah leaned toward us.

"It doesn't matter if they'd do it for you. It doesn't matter why us. Us is all there is." She looked at Miles and me matter-of-factly. "I'm going. Whether you two do or not."

I met her stare and nodded.

"I'm in," I said.

We looked at Miles.

"Even if your theory is correct," he said, "you're talking about walking right into the sanctum sanctorum."

"That's right."

"You could be walking to your death."

"Maybe not," I said. "Think about it. They only need to do the ceremony once per initiate, right? The machine does the rest. They already did Nigel. Maybe the others too. So there's a good chance no one's even down there now."

He didn't argue.

"Miles, you know about this stuff. You were the one who cracked the voodoo puzzle. I don't think we can do this without you."

He scratched his beard. He mumbled something that sounded like what a cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k.

"Get in, smash the machine, get out?" he asked.

I nodded.

He closed his eyes.

"Can we set the place on fire, for fun?"

"Sure we can."

At long last, he sighed.

"Why not?"

Sarah let out a cry and hugged the big man.

32.

I found the lever, more like a clutch, somewhere in the upper bowels of the fireplace. The room was perfectly silent in the middle of the night. My cheek was pressed against the marble, while my hand groped around inside the mantel. I heard it before I saw it--releasing the clutch led to the popping open of a tall panel by the desk. Sarah clapped her hands. "Perfecto," I heard Miles say, his voice echoing into a larger place.

Just this morning, we were sitting in Sal's, trying to think of a door they wouldn't be watching. We had a map--the one Chance and I had concocted with the help of the late Frank Shepard. We knew where we had to go and what we had to do, which was why Miles's leather satchel now contained a crowbar instead of postmodern gibberish. We just needed a starting point, a way down into the tunnels. Preferably one they wouldn't be guarding with a team of a.s.sa.s.sins. Which meant, strangely enough, that the best door for us would be one we didn't know existed.

Where to start? There was the hatch under my bed, extra handy if you were inclined to murder me in my sleep. Not to mention it was the first place I'd think of, if I were dumb enough to go after them (which apparently I was). No thanks. There was the elevator in the old house on Morland Street, but I'd been blindfolded, and anyway it was a natural second choice. There was Humpty Dumpty's library pa.s.sage--but we didn't have his keys. There was the plant manager's office--wired with a burglar alarm. There was the sewer by Nigel's house. They sure as h.e.l.l were aware I knew about that. I thought of the Puppet Man, coming toward me on his gangly spider legs, that long silver fang in hand.

There had to be a better way.

I've said it before--the brain is an amazing thing. Sometimes it tries to help you, even if you're too stupid to notice. I found myself struggling to ignore a sudden, pointless memory: leaving Bernini's office for the first time, walking away down that old hallway.

Stop it, I told myself: focus on the problem.

What did Bernini say, seemingly to himself, as I'd walked away?

V&D perhaps?

And what next . . .

That other voice, unexpected, much, much colder--a voice I now a.s.signed to the priest with the twisted, yellow-eyed stare.

We'll see, he'd said.

Where had he come from? No one else had been in Bernini's office with us. No one had pa.s.sed me in the hall.

It was suddenly clear.

There was another door in Bernini's room. Well hidden and, as far as they knew, totally unknown to us.

I had a less pleasant memory: my last visit to Bernini's office. His cool termination of my services. The way he let me get all the way to his door before he called my name and asked for his key back.

But that was perfect, wasn't it?

He had his key back.

A door I didn't know about, in a room without a key.

I thanked G.o.d for the a.n.a.l-retentive, type-A, worst-case-scenario worldview of young lawyers, as I pulled my copy of Crime and Punishment off my bookshelf, opened it to the middle, and let the spare key to Bernini's office fall into my hand.

Perfecto.

Beyond the hidden door was a staircase that spiraled within a tall shaft. We took it down: Miles, then Sarah, then me, the air cooling as we wound downward. At one point, there was an indentation in the wall, the size of a stone. I peeked in and saw a tiny view of the city, through two small holes at the far end of the nook. I realized that we were inside the turret of the law school's west corner; I was looking out through the eyes of a gargoyle. The staircase continued down below ground level and eventually let us out into a cellar, which threaded us into the tunnels.