Live and Let Shop (9 page)

Ordinarily, I don’t think of myself as the bravest person in the world. I don’t like dark places. I don’t like scary movies. Weird stuff kind of creeps me out. As I stood there I thought,
Don’t do it, Rachel. Don’t go down there. Who knows what you will find.
I was giving myself smart advice. I knew what I should do is go back to my room and either forget the whole thing or get Pilar and see if we could sneak over to Brent and Alex’s room and get them to come with us. And maybe Mr. Quinn. And Mr. Torres from Tae Kwon Do. And
Mr. Elliot from gym. He was tough. Unlike, say, me.

But it was me I was dealing with, so there was no way I was going to forget it. Going to get Pilar would be smart, but I might be seen on the way out or back and then we’d be busted. You never knew where Mrs. Marquardt or one of the other resident faculty members was going to pop up. And if I told Mr. Quinn or somebody, they might not let me go with them and then I’d never know what was going on. That would be worse than any of the other options.

In the few seconds it took me to think all of this, the bookcase/secret passageway solved the problem for me, because the hissing sound started again, and it began to close. I jumped through the doorway and onto the top step of the stairway as the wall closed up behind me—as I said before, despite not exercising before I got to Blackthorn, I was always pretty quick on my feet.

When the wall closed behind me I thought I would freak, because it was pitch black. But right as I was about to scream, lights came on automatically and I swallowed the scream in my throat.

The stairway wasn’t like a stairway in an office building or hotel that twisted around and went back and
forth. This one went straight down. A long way straight down. All I could think of was a mine shaft or those steps that people have to walk down when a roller coaster breaks at the very top.

Well. What to do. I looked at the walls to either side of me. On my left there was a little red button with a sign above it that said “Exit.” That must get me out. And since I’d gone this far….

I started down the steps. After about ten minutes and what must have been the equivalent of ten or twelve flights of stairs, I finally reached the bottom. I found an archway that led through to a short hallway with a gray steel door at the end of it. I walked up to the door and listened. I couldn’t hear anything at all except the faint hum of the lights. Now I was a little bit scared. What if there was someone waiting for me on the other side? What if I went through the door and it locked and I couldn’t get back out? Maybe I should go back to my room. I looked over my shoulder at the long stairway and decided I didn’t really feel like climbing it so soon. So I tried the doorknob. Guess what? It wasn’t locked.

When I walked through the door, I knew in an instant that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. It took a while
for my mind to comprehend what I was seeing. For a minute I thought I had stepped into the freaking Batcave.

The room was huge. As large as an airplane hangar, maybe bigger. Considering that I had to be at least ten stories underground, if not more, that was amazing in itself. But it was what was in the room that really had me freaked.

On the wall immediately to my left was a bank of computers. To call them state of the art wouldn’t even do it, because the monitors and consoles weren’t like anything you could buy at Radio Shack. The monitors were built into the wall and all had lithium-liquid silicon screens. I considered myself something of a computer geek, but what I knew about these screens was that there were only supposed to be a couple of prototypes in the world. There were six separate workstations where the keyboards were all set up with the latest in infrared mouse technology and the disk ports were smaller than anything I’d seen, so they must not use CD, MP3, or even digital fiber-optic relays. I couldn’t believe it. Talk about me wanting Internet access in my room. This place practically
was
the Internet.

There was so much to see that I almost didn’t know where to look first. Across the aisle from the computer stations were what looked like a bunch of highly sophisticated fax machines. A couple of them had telephones attached to them and little signs that said stuff about satellite uplinks. Next to the aisle with the computers and the fax machines was another aisle with a long counter, that had all kinds of lab equipment on it, like microscopes and centrifuges and other stuff so high tech that I couldn’t even imagine what it was for.

On the wall to my right was a very large wooden fixture that held a huge variety of martial arts weapons. Swords, sais, staffs, ninja stars, and a variety of other mysterious things that looked deadly. It looked like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle had exploded on the wall. There was some serious stuff hanging there.

And that was only what I could see from the doorway. I walked farther into the room and tried to take it all in. In the middle of the room there was a large conference table with a four-sided video monitor in the middle. On the far side of the room were several vehicles parked along the wall near what looked like a big garage door. There were a couple of gray sedans. There were also
a Ferrari, a Harley-Davidson motor-cycle, and a panel van that said “Henderson’s Dry Cleaning. We Deliver” on the side of it.

Mr. Kim had his very own secret hideout! What the heck was going on here? Who was this guy and what was he doing with all this stuff underneath a school for kids? There didn’t seem to be any cameras or hidden microphones or anything, so it didn’t look like this was a way of spying on the students. Or was it? Could this be how Mr. Kim always seemed to know what was going on? I walked all around the room looking at everything, up and down each aisle and in each cubicle and nook and cranny, and I didn’t see any closed-circuit camera monitors. I’d never noticed any cameras around the school either, come to think of it.

Also, this place had an “official” feel to it, almost like it was set up for a specific purpose that had only a little to do with the school and a lot to do with something else. Time to intensify my search. Whatever this place was, it was no ordinary boarding school. It was a setup or a front for something. I didn’t know what yet, but I was sure I was right.

I went back to the computers and sat down at one
that had the desktop page showing. It wasn’t password locked, probably because no one expected anyone else to use it. Mr. Chapman would have freaked at the thought. I clicked on Internet Explorer and got into a search engine. I typed in “Mr. Jonathon Kim” and “Blackthorn Academy.” I got one match, and it was for the school’s website. A great place to learn and grow and blah, blah, blah.

I typed in just “Jonathon Kim” and got fourteen matches. One was the school’s website again, and none of the others were the Mr. Kim I was looking for.

I typed in “Book of Seraphim” and got a bunch of listings, but the one that caught my eye was an AP story that said: “Valuable Book Stolen from Washington D.C. Gallery.” Holy guacamole! Apparently the night after we’d visited the gallery, it had been broken into by someone sophisticated enough to bypass the alarms and steal the book. The story said it was the only item taken, probably because it was the most valuable. The police had no leads yet. Okay,
this
was news. Wow. Shows you the total news-blackout state here at Blackthorn Academy.

Things were starting to come together. The FBI agents must have come to see Mr. Kim because we had
been at the gallery the day before a priceless artifact was stolen. That’s why I’d heard the one agent say the word “Seraphim.” Did they think someone from the school had something to do with it? All I knew was
I
didn’t do it, although I’m sure Judge Kerrigan would pin it on me if she could. It didn’t seem likely that anyone here had anything to do with the theft. Maybe the FBI was just being thorough and wanted to know if the students had noticed anybody casing the joint. That must be it. Sure.

Then I typed in “Mithras,” and I have to say that I got more than I bargained for. There were about thirty sites devoted to Mithras. I clicked one of them and read through some of the postings, giving myself a quick education. The upshot of what I learned was that Mithras is an ancient god, prominent in several Middle Eastern cultures. In most religions he was considered to be a God of Darkness and the Afterlife. Mithras was banished to the underworld for sacrificing a bull, which was the symbol of life. He frequently returned to try to take over the world, and he was said to be able to change from bull to human form at will. Hey! Just like the guy in the weird dream I had. What a coincidence. Of all the freaky things for my subconscious mind to come up with. And again,
that word “Mithras” started to nag at me. I didn’t know jack about ancient mythology, but that word still seemed familiar somehow.

I also read that Mithras became very popular with the soldiers of the Roman army just about the time that the Roman Empire was declining. Many of the soldiers formed their own cults and built temples to Mithras. They had all these weird ceremonies where they purified themselves and made sacrifices, believing that Mithras would make them invincible and restore the empire to its past glory. This spread through the legions of the Roman army very rapidly for a short time, but then the empire fell and the cult sort of died out. Now all that was left were a few temples and some artifacts from archaeological digs in the Middle East.

All of the stuff about being invincible and purifying and sacrifices sure sounded like a guy thing. But what did it have to do with Mr. Kim and why would the FBI be asking him about it? He was a headmaster at a boarding school, not some low-rent James Bond.

Okay. I’m not really as dense as that. Really. Mr. Kim somehow taught all of his students to become cops, judges, or FBI agents. He was a major martial arts butt
kicker. He had a mini-Pentagon underneath his office. So there was clearly more going on with Mr. Kim than him being a simple headmaster at a school for misguided youth. And all that was leaving out the fact that Mr. Kim was also buddies with Jackie Chan. Let’s not forget that.

I needed Pilar’s powers of concentration to help me muddle through all this. But she would probably have to see it to believe it. My mind was spinning so much that I almost missed the best clue. Down at the bottom of the screen was an e-mail message that had been reduced but not closed. Mr. Kim must have been in a hurry and probably thought he closed it.

Now, I want to go on record here that just because I tend to be a smart aleck sometimes and I have had a few unfortunate misunderstandings with the law, I’m not really a bad person. I know you shouldn’t read other people’s e-mail. It’s probably a felony or something. Unless, of course, it was an emergency and someone’s life could be saved by the information in the e-mail, like Mr. Kim’s—right?

I clicked on the e-mail and it expanded to fill the screen in front of me. It explained very little, but as I would soon find out, it also explained a lot. The e-mail read:

Aha! Somebody named Sam had stolen the
Book of Seraphim
! And he somehow knew Mr. Kim. And he wanted to brag about stealing the book. Maybe Mr. Kim had once been a cop and he’d busted this Sam guy, so when Mr. Rith got out of the big house, he wanted to make a big theft and rub Mr. Kim’s nose in it. Sort of like how Lex Luthor is always taunting Superman.

So Mr. Kim must have taken off to find this guy and get the book back. Now it all sort of made sense. I looked over to where the cars were parked and noticed there was
one missing. Or at least there was a space that could hold a car or truck. So Mr. Kim must have come down here, gotten the e-mail, and taken off after this bad guy Sam. All by himself. With no backup. Had he never seen the
Lethal Weapon
movies? Didn’t he know what a bad idea it was to take off after a criminal with no backup?

What was I going to do with this information? I didn’t think it would be a good idea to let any of the teachers know that I’d been snooping around in Mr. Kim’s office and had found the Fortress of Solitude. On the other hand, I had to tell someone or I was going to explode.

I looked at my watch. I’d been gone an hour. I needed to find a way to get Pilar down here.

I printed out a copy of the e-mail, then headed back up the stairs to Mr. Kim’s office. I was huffing and puffing quite a bit when I got to the top of the stairs, so I paused for a minute, making sure I couldn’t hear anyone on the other side. No sounds. I pushed the little red button, and as the bookcase swung out of the wall, I stepped back into Mr. Kim’s office.

It took me a few seconds to realize what was wrong. I knew that I had left the light on in Mr. Kim’s office—but now the lights were off. I stood there, frozen in the
dark, not sure what to do. Maybe someone had just seen the light on and come in to turn it off. Or maybe someone was lurking in the darkness right now, waiting to murder me in some horrible fashion. I was completely freaked out. I had to get out of there.

There was little, if any, light coming in through the blinds, and the office was cloaked in darkness. I started toward the door. Luckily Mr. Kim wasn’t big on office furnishings, so I didn’t have to worry about tripping over anything. I reached to grab the doorknob, and that was when I felt a hand go over my mouth and an arm come around to pin me from behind. The arms were strong, and they pulled me around so that our backs were to the wall beside the door. I tried to scream and struggle, but I couldn’t get any air. I kicked back with my legs and worked one of my arms free and pulled at the hand that covered my mouth.

A voice hissed in my ear. “Quiet. Mrs. Marquardt is in her office with the door open.” The voice sounded familiar. I stopped fighting. “I’m going to let go. Be quiet or we’ll be caught. Okay?” The arm around me relaxed a little, and I nodded. The hand moved away from my mouth. I sucked in a huge breath of air.

“Who—” I started. But whoever it was shushed me. I could see the dark form move around me and grab the doorknob. The door opened ever so slightly, and when it did a small sliver of light came in and illuminated Brent’s face peering into the hall. He closed the door silently.

“Brent, what are you doing here?” I said. My heart rate slowly started returning to normal.

“Shhh. She’s still there. I saw you leave the girls’ wing and you looked like you were up to something, so I followed you.”

“So it was you. I
knew
I heard someone behind me,” I said.

“I followed you into Mr. Kim’s office, but when I got here you had vanished. Where did you go?”

“I’ll explain later. Why’d you turn the lights off?”

“I didn’t want to attract attention. I was going to go back to my room, but when I opened the door to check the hallway, I spotted Mrs. Marquardt and had to wait. Then you came out of the wall. What’s going on?” He sounded concerned.

Suddenly we heard Mrs. Marquardt’s door close. We kept quiet as her footsteps headed down the hall. When we were sure it was safe, Brent flipped on the light.

“I’ve got big news. Can you get Alex and meet me in our room in fifteen minutes?” I said.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s against the rules,” he said.

“Against the rules?”

“Yep.”

Getting information out of this guy wasn’t easy. I mean, I’d known him only a short time and he always seemed kind of quiet, but come on, talk already.

“What rules?”

“The rules against boys being in the girls’ wing,” he said.

Oh. Those rules. Hmm. Where could we meet after hours and not be seen?

“Okay, fine. Can you get Alex and meet us in the rec room? In fifteen minutes?” I remembered Pilar saying that hardly anyone used it.

Brent nodded. He opened the door slightly to check the hall. It was clear. We moved out of the office quickly and split up to head off to our rooms.

Pilar was still at her desk with her nose buried in her Criminal Justice text. She wasn’t crazy about leaving her
books, but she eventually relented and fifteen minutes later we were all in the rec room.

“You are not going to believe what I’ve just seen,” I said.

“It wouldn’t by any chance be the answers to Friday’s Cultures quiz, would it?” Pilar said.

“No. Listen, I have to swear you all to secrecy about this. I’ve done something I probably shouldn’t have, but I had a good reason.”

Suddenly there was a hint of suspicion in their eyes. I was a little hurt at first, but then I remembered that they were here at Blackthorn on a slightly different agenda from me. The last thing they probably wanted or needed was someone that was going to get them into trouble.

“What is it now?” Alex asked, adding “crackpot” under his breath. I shot him my best hairy eyeball. He was unfazed.
Stay on point, Rachel. Don’t let Alex goad you into an argument,
I told myself.

“Something weird
is
going on, and I have proof.” I handed Pilar the copy of the e-mail. Alex and Brent read it over her shoulder.

Pilar looked at me, puzzled. “Where did you get this?”

“If I told you that Mr. Kim has an enormous secret hideaway about ten stories below his office, filled with supercomputers, martial arts weapons, mad-scientist laboratory equipment, and a bunch of other high-tech gear, would you believe me?”

“Yeah. Right. Seriously, where did you get this?” Alex asked.

“No, it’s true,” said Brent. “At least some of it. I saw her go into Mr. Kim’s office and disappear. She must have gone somewhere,” he said. I gave him a grateful look. He shrugged.

“Look, you don’t have to believe it until you see it, but listen to this. I found out that the
Book of Seraphim
was stolen. That must be what the agents were talking to Mr. Kim about. Then some guy named Sam e-mails Mr. Kim that he has the book. And now Mr. Kim has been gone for almost four days. Something is definitely up. What if he’s in trouble?”

The thought of Mr. Kim in trouble clearly bothered Pilar. “Why do you say that?” she asked. Her voice was tighter.

“Because he looked very upset in the hallway that morning, and Mr. Kim doesn’t get upset. Plus this e-mail
says ‘old friend’ and ‘don’t come after me because it will end badly.’ That’s a threat. Somebody would have to be a pretty bad hombre to threaten Mr. Kim like that.”

Pilar continued to stare at the e-mail. She was quiet for several minutes. I could tell she was perplexed. Alex was still muttering “nutcase” and “squirrelly” under his breath, but I was doing a good job of ignoring him. So far.

“Didn’t you say that you saw the word ‘MITHRAS’ written on the pad of paper in Mr. Kim’s office?” she asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Because this signature, ‘Sam Rith,’ is an anagram for Mithras.”

“A what-o-gram?”

“Anagram.”

“Isn’t that something someone delivers to your door?”

“No. That’s a telegram. An anagram is when you mix up the letters of a word to make a different word. Sam Rith is an anagram of Mithras. What do you suppose that means?” She looked up at me.

“I don’t know, but I read some stuff about Mithras on the Internet. He was this ancient god that was popular
with the Roman army right before the end of the Roman Empire. They had all kinds of weird ceremonies and rituals, and it all sounded creepy and totally testosterone-driven.”

“Hmm. I wonder what the connection is between the book and Mithras.” She said it like it was a math problem she really wanted to study. It infuriated me.

“Pilar, I don’t have a clue. But the main thing right now is where is Mr. Kim and what do we do about this?”

“We could tell a teacher or Mrs. Marquardt,” Alex said.

“We could. But how can we be sure they don’t already know this and aren’t doing anything about it?” It occurred to me that if I told someone I’d been prowling around places I shouldn’t, I might get thrown out of here just like I wanted. But then that stupid judge would send me straight to Juvie. Aarrrgh.

“We don’t, I guess,” Pilar said.

“Besides, this place of Mr. Kim’s seems very secret, like he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Maybe we need to keep this to ourselves,” I said.

Nobody had any other ideas.

“Well, we can’t do anything tonight. I’ll get out of
Kitchen Duty tomorrow afternoon so that I can show you what I found. Then we’ll decide what to do. Agreed?”

They were quiet for a minute. Then they all said, “Agreed.”