Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

“Seems like good policy,” Cal said.

“What about you?” Andie said, slipping her hand inside her pocket and letting it rest against the cool metallic surface of the Star Phone. “Since you don’t share their philosophy.”

Zawadi gave her a sharp glance in the mirror. “Dr. Corwin loved you dearly, and he guided you to the device. That’s enough for me. If you’re intent on keeping it—”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll assist as best I can, as long as it involves helping James. I agree that, for now, using the Star Phone to find the Enneagon is our best chance to secure his release.”

“And if he’s dead?”

“Then none of this is my concern.”

Zawadi parked the sedan in front of a prosciutteria with plate glass windows, revealing cheese wheels and cured meats hanging from wooden beams. She turned in her seat and said, “You’re certain about this path? Even with the threat to your lives it poses?”

“The Ascendants have my mentor and my mother,” Andie said. “It’s the only way I see to help them.”

Cal looked Zawadi in the eye. “The Ascendants stole my life, and I’m committed to exposing the truth and getting it back. Besides, I have a feeling we’re in danger no matter what we choose.”

Zawadi coolly met his gaze. “I have a feeling you’re right.” She opened the door. “Follow quickly and don’t make a sound.”

After easing the doors shut, Andie and Cal stayed close to Zawadi as she hurried down a winding street, her feet a whisper on the worn paving stones. Beside her, Andie felt like a rhinoceros crashing through a glass house, and began to understand how Zawadi had arrived on the terrace unseen.

Halfway down the street, Zawadi ducked into an alley so tight Andie thought she could spread her arms and touch the buildings on either side. Thirty feet down, Zawadi used a key to unlock a door that proved to be the rear entrance to a courtyard filled with pungent flowering vines, alabaster statues, and a gurgling fountain. The depths of the courtyard were shrouded in darkness, and its high brick walls felt as quiet as a tomb.

Zawadi approached one of the statues and stepped hard on the base, causing it to depress and then swivel on some type of track. She shone a penlight into the darkness, revealing a stone walkway six feet beneath the surface of the street. The walkway hugged an algae-covered wall as it ran alongside a sluice of dark water.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Zawadi said, waving them forward.

“Make sure of that,” Cal muttered. He lowered his body into the opening, hung on to the lip of the hole, and dropped down to the walkway. Andie followed close behind. Once Zawadi joined them and resealed the passage, she led the way alongside the subterranean channel.

The walkway was slippery in places, as if a boat had come through and sloshed the sides. The feeble illumination from the penlight barely pierced the gloom, and Andie had to force herself to remain calm and not jump at shadows.

“Modern-day Bologna sits atop miles of waterways,” Zawadi said, illuminating the ribbed ceiling and the stagnant green water in the canal.

“But it’s inland,” Andie said.

“In the Middle Ages, the city built a sophisticated network of canals and locks to facilitate trade. This allowed large ships to come and go on the nearby rivers, greatly enhancing Bologna’s wealth and status.”

“What happened to it all?”

“You’re looking at it. The canals are still here. As time went by, streets and new buildings were built right on top of them.”

“An underground Venice right under everyone’s feet,” Cal said, looking nervously behind them. “Creepy.”

The mention of the floating city, along with the slimy floor of the walkway and the steady plop of water, gave Andie flashbacks to their dank Venetian prison. With a shudder, she pressed forward until Zawadi stopped at an intersection of canals, reached up, and pushed against a block of stone on the ceiling that looked like any other to Andie.

A trapdoor hinged open above them. Zawadi leaped up to grab the edge of the opening and pulled herself through. “There are easier ways to get to where we’re going,” she said, peering down at them, “though not as safe. After our escape from Venice, the Ascendants might suspect we’re in Bologna.”

Zawadi stuck a hand down. Andie declined the offer and pulled herself up, though not as gracefully. Cal had an even harder time. They emerged in a concrete room with a musty odor and piles of wooden crates stacked along the walls.

Zawadi consulted her watch. “We’re right on time. Come.”

Still using the penlight, she led the way to a door that opened onto a cement hallway. After navigating a few twists and turns through the basement corridor, they took a flight of stairs to a wooden door two floors above. Zawadi unlocked the door and entered a hallway. Andie gasped at the thousands of hand-painted coats of arms covering the walls and high concave ceiling, each a unique display of symbols, colors, and heraldic beasts.

“This is the Archiginnasio?” Cal whispered.

“Yes.”

On their left, a closed iron gate protected a room full of wooden cabinets with glass doors. Shelves and shelves of ancient manuscripts were tucked behind the glass, but Zawadi ignored the gate and started down the hallway.

“We’re not going to the library?” Andie asked.

“The meeting is at the Anatomical Theater, an early medical school used for dissection. Now it’s a museum.”

As their footsteps echoed in the wide hallway, Andie noticed the other woman seemed a shade more at ease.

Not far down the hallway, Zawadi opened a door and shepherded them into a room made from wood the color of a light-roast coffee bean. Rows of tiered pews surrounded a marble-topped table in the center of the room, and a succession of carved wooden scholars gazed down from alcoves recessed into the walls beneath the coffered ceiling.

Across the room, two gruesome, skinless human carvings supported the canopy above the lecturer’s