Chapter 9 - THE GARDEN UNDER THE CITY
The ladder ended in damp stone and cold air thick with the smell of old earth.
Roman’s voice reached her once through the grate before it settled nearly shut.
“Left wall,” he called. “Count seven arches.”
Then the metal scraped fully into place overhead, and the sound cut off.
Fay stood at the bottom with Owen beside her in almost total darkness until an emergency lantern clipped to the ladder frame blinked on automatically. Soft yellow light spread across a low tunnel lined with old brick and roots that had forced their way through cracks over decades.
Owen touched his split lip and looked at her.
“Well,” he said, because he was her brother and humor was apparently genetic, “this is somehow not the strangest family conversation we’ve had this year.”
Fay laughed once, almost choking on it, then pulled him into a hug hard enough to make him grunt.
“You idiot,” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better.”
She pulled back and touched his cheek gently.
“Did they hurt Mom?”
“No. They moved her before Brandon’s guys got there.” His face darkened. “I tried to leave the motel and got stupid.”
“You got brave.”
“Same thing, apparently.”
She squeezed his hand once and then looked down the tunnel.
Left wall.
Seven arches.
They began walking.
The passage curved through old foundation stone and opened, arch by arch, into what had once been a subterranean propagation house. Dead benches. rusted watering rigs. Empty clay pots broken underfoot. Yet beneath the decay the place still held structure, like a skeleton remembering what garden it used to be.
At the seventh arch, Fay stopped.
Set into the wall was a mosaic of ceramic tile—cracked white roses winding around a black iris bloom in the center.
The Black Iris.
Her father had brought her here once.
No, not once—twice. The second time when she was eleven. She remembered being bored, wandering, touching this very tile because one black flower among white ones seemed like the sort of thing a child noticed.
“Fay?”
She stepped closer.
The iris petals formed a subtle depression. She pressed it.
Nothing happened.
Then she looked lower. The rose stems weren’t just decorative—they were directional, spiraling inward toward a seam in the stone at floor level.
“Owen, help me.”
They crouched and cleared dirt and old root fragments away from the base of the wall. Hidden there was a narrow brass keyhole.
Fay’s breath caught.
She had no key.
Then she remembered.
Her father’s shears.
The green handle cap had concealed the card—but the shears themselves were still above with Griffin.
Unless Simon designed them to be the key too.
She swore softly.
“What?” Owen asked.
“I need my shears.”
Owen stared.
“The gardening ones?”
“Yes.”
He blinked once.
“Of course you do.”
They looked at each other. Above them waited Brandon, Malcolm, Griffin, and a probable gunfight. Behind them was no better answer.
Then Owen frowned.
“Hold on.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out something wrapped in a handkerchief.
Green metal glinted.
Fay stared.
“My shears.”
Owen looked modestly proud for a man tied to a chair an hour ago.
“I stole them back from a guy when they shoved me in the van. Figured if I was getting kidnapped, I might as well make myself useful.”
She could have kissed him.
Instead she grabbed the shears, turned the lower hinge, and saw what she somehow should have guessed: the pivot pin unscrewed to form a narrow brass key.
Her father, she thought in disbelief. Of course.
She slid the key into the floor-level lock.
The mechanism clicked.
Stone shifted inward and then aside with a groan of ancient weight.
A hidden chamber opened beyond the mosaic wall.
Inside stood a single iron desk, a dead lantern, and a long rectangular chest sealed in black lacquer. A black iris had been painted across its lid.
Fay stepped toward it with Owen right behind.
“Do you think it’s money?” he whispered.
“In our family?” she whispered back. “No chance.”
The chest opened with no lock.
Inside lay a stack of oilskin-wrapped books, a flash drive, and a thick envelope addressed in unmistakable handwriting.
FOR FAY, IF YOU COME WITHOUT FEAR.
IF YOU COME AFRAID, READ THIS TWICE.
Her hands started shaking.
She opened the envelope first.
Owen leaned close.
The letter inside was short.
Petal,
If you found the winter roses, then June kept her word and I ran out of time.
Do not give the black books to Malcolm Hales.
Do not trust Brandon Cole under any circumstances.
Do not trust Griffin Hales unless he is willing to lose what the second ledger offers him.
There are two ledgers.
One black.
One white.
The black tells you who bought the city.
The white tells you who truly owns the Hales crown.
If Griffin wants revenge more than truth, he is no safer than Malcolm.
If Brandon gets either ledger, Owen dies and then you.
Bring only the white ledger to the top.
Hide the black one first.
I’m sorry I let you grow up hating a ghost.
Dad.
Fay’s vision blurred.
Owen whispered, “He’s alive.”
She swallowed hard.
Or had been, at least when this was written.
Below the letter rested two books unlike the others—one bound in black leather, one in white.
Two ledgers.
Fay barely had time to process it before footsteps sounded in the tunnel behind them.
Not above.
Below.
She spun.
A shape emerged from the dark archway opposite the ladder tunnel—a man moving quickly, one hand braced to the wall as if injured.
Lantern light hit his face.
Fay’s breath left her body.
Older.
Bearded.
Gaunter.
But unmistakable.
“Dad?” she whispered.
Simon Lawson stopped three feet away and looked at her like a man seeing a miracle and a wound at the same time.
“Hello, petal,” he said.
Then he looked at Owen and gave a tired smile.
“And you got tall.”
For one impossible heartbeat, everything in the tunnel disappeared except the fact that the dead had just answered back.
Then Simon’s expression changed abruptly.
May you like
“Close the chest,” he said. “We don’t have enough time.”
Because somewhere above them, metal rang out like the start of gunfire.
