He shrugged. “There is. It’s not, however, the best point of access.” He glanced up at the sky. “We need to get in and out as quickly as possible, Ms. Lane.”

I understood that. In very little time it would be dawn, and the streets in Dublin began bustling with people as early as daybreak. It would hardly do to come popping out of a manhole right in front of them, or worse, inches from a car’s front bumper.

I stood over the open hole in the street and peered down into the darkness. “Rats?” I asked, a bit sadly.

“Undoubtedly.”

“Right.” I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Shades?”

“Not enough to feed on down there. They prefer the streets. Take my hand and I’ll lower you down, Ms. Lane.”

“How will we get back up?” I worried.

“I have a different route in mind for our return trip.”

“Does it involve stairs?” I asked hopefully.

“No.”

“Of course not. How silly of me. And for our return adventure,” I said, in my best game-show-announcer voice, “we will be scaling the side of Mount Everest, hiking boots to be provided by our trusty sponsor, Barrons Books and Baubles.”

“Amusing, Ms. Lane.” Barrons could not have looked more unamused. “Now move.”

I took his outthrust hand, let him dangle me over the edge and drop me down. Destination: a darker, even scarier Dublin, deep underground.

SIXTEEN

It turned out not to be so scary after all.

In fact, not nearly as scary as upside had been lately.

Down there, in the dreary, dirty sewers beneath the city, I realized how drastically my world had changed, and in such a small amount of time.

How could a beady-eyed, twitchy-nosed rat—or even a few hundred—compare to the Gray Man? What consequence raw sewage and stench next to one’s likely fate at the hands of the Many-Mouthed-Thing? What significance ruined shoes or nails torn scrabbling over rocks in collapsing parts of the city’s underbelly, when measured against the brazen theft I was about to commit? Against a man who’d taken out twenty-seven people in a single night just because they were in the way of his bright and shining future, no less.

We turned one way, then the next, through empty tunnels with unobstructed walkways, into ones fouled by slow-moving sludge. We sloped down deeper into the earth, veered up, and descended again.

“What is that?” I pointed to a wide stream of fast-moving water, visible beyond an iron grill mounted in the wall. We’d passed many such grills, though smaller and set lower into the walls. Most were affixed in sunken spots, with large pools of black water collected around them, but I’d seen nothing like this. This looked like a river.

It was. “The River Poddle,” Barrons said. “It runs underground. You can see where it meets the River Liffey through another such grill at the Millennium Bridge. In the late eighteenth century, two rebel leaders escaped Dublin castle by following the sewer system to it. One can navigate the city fairly well, if one knows where things connect.”

“And you do,” I said.

“I do,” he agreed.

“Is there anything you don’t know?” Ancient artifacts, how to freeze obscenely large bank accounts, the seedy subculture of the city, not to mention the exact layout of its dark, dirty underbelly.

“Not much.” I could discern no arrogance in his reply; it was simply fact.

“How did you learn it all?”

“When did you become such a chatterbox, Ms. Lane?”

I shut up. I told you pride is my special little challenge. He didn’t want to hear me? Fine, I didn’t want to waste my breath on him, anyway. “Where were you born?” I asked.

Barrons stopped short, turned around and looked at me, as if bewildered by my sudden spate of talkativeness.

I raised my hands, bewildered too. “I don’t know why I asked that. I had every intention of shutting up but then I started thinking about how I know nothing about you. I don’t know where you were born, whether you have parents, siblings, a wife, children, or even exactly what it is you do.”

“You know all you need to know about me, Ms. Lane. As I do about you. Now move. We’ve precious little time.”

A dozen yards later, he motioned me up the rungs of a steel ladder bolted into the wall and, at the top of it, I became instantly, deeply nauseated.

There was one extremely potent OOP—dead ahead.

“Beyond that, Barrons,” I said apologetically. “I guess we’re kind of screwed, huh?”

“That” was what looked like a bulkhead door. You know, the kind they use on bank vaults that are several feet thick, made of virtually impenetrable alloys, and open with that big spinning wheel thing like on submarine doors. It was just too bad “the handle” wasn’t on our side. “Don’t suppose you have a convenient stash of explosives on you somewhere?” I joked. I was tired and afraid and I was getting a little slap-happy, or maybe it was just the general, ever-increasing absurdity of my life that was making it difficult for me to take anything too seriously.

Barrons eyed the massive door a moment, then closed his eyes.

I could actually see the internal analysis he was performing. His eyes moved rapidly beneath closed lids, as if scanning the blueprints of Dublin’s sanitation system as they flashed across his retinas, Terminator-style, while he targeted our exact position, and searched for a point of entry. His eyes flew open. “You’re sure it’s beyond that door?”

I nodded. “Absolutely. I could puke right here.”

“Try to restrain yourself, Ms. Lane.” He turned and began walking away. “Remain here.”

I stiffened. “Where are you going?” A single flashlight suddenly seemed grossly inadequate company.

“He’s counting on natural barriers to protect it,” Barrons tossed over his shoulder. “I’m a strong swimmer.”

I watched his flashlight bob as he hurried down a tunnel to my left and disappeared around a corner, then there was nothing but blackness and I was alone in it, with only two batteries standing between myself and a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. I hate the dark. I didn’t used to, but I sure do now.

It felt like hours, although according to my watch, it was only seven and a half minutes later that a dripping-wet Barrons opened the bulkhead door.