Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)(20)

“What happened to your face?” he asks. He seems genuinely concerned for Duck, as if they were family.

“Ferguson.”

He frowns, then peers down at us.

“Who are they?”

“They need a place for the night,” Lucas replies. “Let us in.”

“We don’t have room for three more,” Malik argues.

“You know we do, Malik,” Lucas argues. “Let us in. I’m standing in sewage.”

“We will only be here until morning, and then we’ll be gone,” I promise.

“They got anything to contribute?”

I take off my pack and hand it up. Malik snatches it and unzips it, peering inside. He rifles through it like it’s his own, pulling out the last of the protein bars and the cans of soup, then takes out the package of bologna and smells it.

“One night,” he says sternly, then moves enough to let Duck finish his climb. We all follow until we find ourselves in what appears to be an ancient boiler room, not unlike the one we used to have in the basement of my apartment back in Brooklyn. Once we’re all out of the tunnel, Lucas closes the grate and then fastens a padlock to keep it shut. He hangs the key on a nail pounded into the nearest wall.

“You’re gone by eight,” Malik commands like it’s the law of the land. He snatches the bread for himself, then hurries up a flight of stairs and vanishes from view.

“Don’t mind him,” Lucas explains. “He’s sort of the mayor of this place, and he’s very protective.”

“Paranoid is what he is,” Duck says.

“He needs to be,” Sloan chastises.

“What is this place, exactly?” Bex asks.

Duck grins from ear to ear. “You’re going to love this.”

He hurries us up the stairs until we’re standing in a room with soaring ceilings and a hardwood floor. Before us is a monstrous curtain that must be forty feet tall. There’s ancient electrical work on the walls and huge black panels filled with tiny bulbs. Ropes, pulleys, and catwalks hang from a ceiling that soars to dizzying heights. Duck pulls back one end of the heavy curtain and urges us to step through. Once there, I find myself on a stage in a huge sloping room with hundreds of velvet chairs.

“It’s a theater,” I gasp.

I don’t know how old this building is, but it was built with a lot of care and craftsmanship. The balconies are carved with cherubs, and the walls are decorated in a glitzy art deco design. There is a pipe organ to the left that looks as if it sinks into the floor, and the ceiling—oh . . . it’s breathtaking. It shoots high above us, and it’s painted to look like an endless blue sky dotted by chubby clouds made of milk. Unfortunately it’s marred by water damage, and there’s a hole up there somewhere that’s allowing birds to nest. A few pigeons circle the room, spiraling around and around as if they are wheeling in a real sky.

“Welcome to the Royale,” Lucas says when he joins us.

“It’s incredible,” Bex says.

“Malik found it a while back. He’s been on his own for a couple years, so he cleaned it up. When Duck and I wandered into town a couple weeks back, he took us in.”

“He’s really not such a bad guy, just cranky,” Sloan says.

The boys give her a “look who’s talking” look.

She punches each one in the arm.

Lucas waves toward the seats. I was so overcome by the architecture, I didn’t notice that there are people sitting out there, maybe thirty of them, both men and women, some teens and small children.

“Who are they?” I ask, peering out at their faces.

“Coasters,” he says.

“Malik has been taking them in,” Duck says. I can hear the respect he has for the boy in every word.

We descend a small flight of stairs and walk up the sloped floor. All the way, faces stare out at me. There are people in this theater who are brown and white and red and yellow. There probably isn’t a better example of what America professes to be than in this room. Now they are refugees, unwanted in their own country.

“They all paid some guys to hide them in a truck and drive them across the borders. They were told they would be taken somewhere nice and put in a motel, but instead they got robbed and dumped in the middle of the desert in the pitch-dark. Every week there’s more. Malik and I go out and check from time to time, then bring them back here,” Lucas explains.

“How do you get them back here?” Bex asks.

“I’ve got a truck,” he says.

“You’ve got electricity, too,” Bex cheers, pointing to some lights glowing in the balconies and the back of the theater.

“We’ve got hot water,” Lucas says. “You could take a bath in one of the sinks.”

“If that is some kind of crack about how I look, I don’t even care,” I say with a laugh.

“Nothing wrong with the way you look,” he says.

I blush.

“Look who gets to be the hot one,” Bex whispers to me.

“Where should we sleep?” I ask.

“Find a spot. Anywhere, really,” Lucas says, then points to one of the balconies that overlooks the stage. “Except for there. That’s Malik’s. He keeps his prayer rug up there, so be cool and find somewhere else. The place is huge. There’s a couple rules. You can’t hang around outside, and when you go, you need to use the tunnels. This place is off the town’s radar at the moment. It has been closed for years, but when they shut it down they left the power and water on, which tells me someone still owns it and has plans for it someday. I have to assume it’s a big company that doesn’t care that it keeps getting bills, but there’s no point drawing attention if we don’t have to.”