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between the gate and the parking lot and one hanging from the front of the
barn, the purpose of which Ana had not been able to figure out. The halls of
the buildings remained lighted, but anyone who needed to negotiate the paths
after that time was expected to use one of the wild assortment of flashlights
that were kept near the outer doors.
Ana took her own, pencil-sized flashlight with her as she let herself out of
the sleeping building.
She ducked into the shadows away from the door to allow her eyes to adjust to
the darkness. The night was clear and cold not as cold as when she had first
come to Change a month ago but still with the crisp, dry temperature drop of
the desert. A waning moon lay near the surrounding hills, casting enough light
to give shape to the buildings now that her eyes were adapting, and enabling
the side of her vision to pick out the white stones that edged the walkways.
The sky was black from one horizon to the other with no city lights to dilute
the hard brightness of the stars. In the distance, coyotes were chattering
their eerie call at the moon, and one of the bats that lived among the eaves
of the barn darted overhead.
Other than that, there was no sound, no movement.
Ana was wearing the thick Ecuadorian socks she had bought that first day in
Sedona, which had the combined virtues of complete silence on the gravel and
the innocent evocation of someone who couldn't be bothered to put on her boots
just for a brief nocturnal stroll. She also wore the dark blue sweat pants and
sweatshirt she habitually slept in, and her hair was uncombed from the pillow.
The small flashlight in the pocket of her sweats was a natural thing for
anyone to take on a restless night excursion, and she carried nothing else
except one crumpled tissue.
She stepped away from the dormitory and onto the path, winced as her heel
came down on a sharp rock, then walked quickly across to the hub building. The
austere planting of cactuses and shrubs looked alarmingly like men standing by
the path. The boojum tree loomed large and pale, although she was expecting
it, and it took some effort not to turn and check on the still figures as she
went past them.
Inside the building, she scurried across the dimly lit foyer, feeling as
exposed as a rabbit in headlights, and went through both sets of swinging
doors into the meditation hall. There she paused, catching her breath. The
room was pitch black, with only the faintest light coming from right up at the
top, where the moonlight on the translucent dome showed as a vague glow. She
stood listening for a couple of minutes, and nearly leapt out of her skin when
a small rustle and crackle came out of the dark not twenty feet away.
Dry-mouthed and with pounding heart, she strained to hear, and when it came
again she nearly laughed aloud in relief: It was the last coals in the
suspended fireplace, collapsing in on themselves. She snapped on the
flashlight, playing it around and above to confirm that she was alone, and
then went forward to investigate.
The night she had come here looking for Jason she had approached the great
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central stem of the structure that supported the fireplace and Steven's
platform. She had pounded on it with her fist in anger, hoping for a loud echo
to jolt Steven from his trance, but the dull thud it gave indicated a heavy
degree of insulation inside the pipe. What she had only dimly noted at the
time, but which had returned to niggle at her, was that despite the
insulation, the pipe had felt warm.
The fireplace above it could conceivably have sent its heat down along the
base. It was, in fact, the most logical explanation. However, Ana had seen the
original plans for this structure, submitted to the county planning
department, and she was quite certain that there had been a partial basement
included in the drawings. Heat could travel down from an overhead fire, yes,
but heat more naturally traveled upward. Was there just a central heating
boiler down beneath the meditation hall? Or was there something else?
An alchemical laboratory, perhaps?
Ana left the meditation hall and went back through the main foyer and into
the school offices. She had been around the school long enough to know the
handful of places where a door to the basement might be hidden. It was not in
any of them: not in the back of the storage closet in Teresa's office, not in
the men's rest room, not in the cluttered depths of the janitorial closet. She
rather doubted that the entrance would involve ripping up the carpeting or
rotating an entire wall with a secret switch, but she found herself pushing at
the spines of the books on Teresa's shelves, just in case the switch was
hidden there. She made herself stop that pointless exercise: It was nearly
three o'clock, and Change with its combination of rural demands and
long-distance workers began to stir by five. She had no time to waste, and it
did not seem that the entrance was here.
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