There were some modern buildings nearby, squat white things that looked like large maintenance sheds. These made a good contrast for this ancient hole that had been carved into the bedrock. There were steps leading to the bottom, but these were blocked off with iron grates. Along the sides of the hole were offshoots that appeared to be manmade tunnels. These were large enough to walk through…or they would have been if they weren’t covered with more of those grates.
“What’s this place?” I asked.
Speedy shook his head. “No idea. Definitely not a must-see on the tourist list, though.”
He was right. The rest of the acropolis was flashy, in that old-timey ruins way. This was just a hole surrounded by a cheap iron guard rail to keep the tourists from toppling to their deaths. Which was fitting—the hole looked more like the entrance to a gigantic tomb than anything else. The grass around it was as high as any I’d seen on Rhodes, and there was zero litter.
Definitely not a must-see.
For tourists, that is. The beads were doing a fair bit of tugging. Whatever the ghost wanted to show us was at the bottom of that giant hole.
I heard rustling in the long grass, and managed to slam my hands down over the floating beads in time.
“Atlas, what is this?” I said, all bright and cheery. The beads had stopped moving, which was great because for a moment there it was oh God squirming magic beads in my hand and I’d much rather still be elbow-deep in that basket of snails at the Athens marketplace …
“These are the Nymphaia,” Atlas said. “There are two more on the other side of the road. Why—”
“Neat!” I said. “I want to check them out. They look cool.”
Above me, I heard Speedy groan quietly.
“This is not like the Acropolis at Athens,” Atlas said. “Public access is limited to certain areas. The Nymphaeum is fragile…look,” he said, gesturing towards the barred grates. “We cannot go down.”
“Cousin, you should know better,” Darling laughed, as she threw her legs over the guard rail. “What the client wants, the client gets.”
I took a step forward, all ready to go into my No, stop, it’s illegal! tirade, but Speedy yanked my hair, hard.
“We might get one chance at this,” he said quietly, his whiskers buzzing against my ear. “Our invisible friend is being very helpful right now, but if he leaves, we’re standing around with our thumbs up our butts until we arrange contact through Helen. As far as we know, this is Archimedes! Nobody is watching us; nobody cares about us. Let’s get in and out and gone.”
“Fine,” I snapped, as I swatted at him until he let go of my hair.
The koala hopped down from my shoulders and moved to the side of the pit, then barked at Darling to come help him. This turned into something of a production, with Speedy laughing as Atlas and Darling maneuvered the too-wiggly marsupial into the hole.
Mike and I took a few steps back from the pit, and I used Speedy’s distraction to catch him up in a whispered rush. “I have no idea how we’re going to do this,” I finished. “If we could count on the ghost’s help, the three of us could sneak back later, but…”
Mike nodded. “Let’s see what happens,” he replied. “Maybe the ghost just wants to show us something underground, and then we can leave.”
“Sure,” I said, as Atlas lowered Speedy into Darling’s arms using a contraption made from his belt and her bra. “Because it’ll be that easy.”
Mike and I hopped down into the hole. Atlas paced around the top, sneaking glances towards the maintenance shed.
“If you’re going to keep watch, sit down,” I said. “A tall lone man standing in a field sticks out.”
“He doesn’t know how to get into the Nymphaeum,” Darling said from behind me. “He doesn’t want to get dirt on his pretty clothes.”
Atlas shot her a look of pure hate before he swung his legs over the guard rail. He held on to the lowest rung a little too long, and I was sure he’d land badly and break something. I was wrong: he wobbled a bit, but he righted himself and set to work straightening his pants.
Meanwhile, I was trying to follow a set of levitating beads while still hiding them from the normals. I pretended to inspect the walls, shielding the beads from Atlas and Darling, and let the ghost lead me around the perimeter of the hole.
We stopped in front of one of the iron grates. Behind was a dark, cool tunnel. A little breeze came out of it, suggesting that it didn’t just dead-end at the wall that was barely visible in the afternoon sun.
The beads floated through the grate and pointed down the tunnel.
“Of course,” I sighed, tucking the beads back into the palm of my hand. I gave the grate an exploratory tug to see if it was locked. Yup.
“Allow me,” Darling said, as she pulled a thin metal strip from an inner pocket of her jacket. I stepped back and allowed the tomb robber to do what she did best—if we could get in and out before this backfired on OACET, I’d be tipping her out heavily at the end of the day.
“Tell me about this place,” I said to Atlas while his cousin worked the lock.
“This is one of the smaller Nymphaia,” he said. “Think of them as public water gardens. They were shrines to the nymphs, and were used for recreation.”
“Water parks? Amazing,” I said, as I ran my fingertips across the cut stone. “Were these caves first, and then they turned it into the Nympharium—”
“Nymphaia,” Speedy said.
“—Nymphaia, or did they cut the entire thing out of the bedrock?”
“It was cut,” Atlas said, picking his way across the stones. “You will notice a regularity to these caves. Most of the Nymphaia were natural grottos, but the Rhodes Nymphaia appear to have been created for the acropolis by tapping into an underground spring.
“Interesting that they chose to do so,” he added. “Nymphaia were common, but not within an acropolis, not unless the site already had grottos. To choose to build one here, so far from the other temples…an unusual decision, to say the least. Maybe we will learn their reasons once more of the acropolis has been excavated.”
“Yeah,” I said, as Darling swung the gate open. “Maybe.”
I exchanged a glance with Mike.
Speedy, sitting on his shoulders, gave me the tiniest nod.
Darling led the way. The thief took out a flashlight, one of those small ones with enough wattage to light up the moon, and took us into the tunnels.
“If I remember correctly,” Atlas said, “there are holes cut through the bedrock which allow persons in one room of the Nymphaeum to speak with persons in another.”
He began to play the tour guide in earnest, showing us alcoves and niches which would have held small objects, and stones which still held traces of ancient art. I grunted at the right times, but mostly I waited for the beads to move.
We reached the end of the first tunnel. There was nowhere to go but take the only turn and go down, so we did, and we found ourselves in a cool, dark cave with a deep pool in front of us. The pool seemed clean enough if you didn’t want to swim; the spring that flowed into it kept the water moving, but the rocks were encrusted with algae. It was a fresh green mess.
“No wonder they don’t let the public back here,” Mike said.
“When this was first built, the spring would have flowed unobstructed and kept the pool clear,” Atlas said. “The earthquake likely changed the course of the water. They did some light renovations on these Nymphaia about twenty years ago to see if they could improve the flow of the water, as they wanted to open this area to the tourists. Sadly, they could not, and they have kept the Nymphaia closed. I believe this is the only one of the four where the water still moves.”
“Of course it is,” I sighed.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Atlas, Darling…could you tell me about this rock?” Mike called from the other side of the room. “It looks like someone carved it into a chair.”
I shot a quick peek at Mike’s rock—Mike�
�s decidedly not chair-like rock—and allowed the beads to swing free as the cousins moved to the other side of the grotto.
Gravity didn’t have time to take over before the beads snapped straight out, pointing over the water towards the far wall of the grotto.
“And of course they are,” I said, as I removed my boots.
Mike and Speedy are good. It took Darling at least a minute to notice the splashing noises, and by then I was already halfway across the pool.
“Just checking on some stuff, guys,” I said cheerily, as the cousins started to shout. “Thought I saw something shiny in those rocks.”
You know what’s disgusting? Algae. You know what contains diseases and microscopic parasites? Algae. You know what I’d rather have been wading through? You guessed it—anything but algae. I’d thought that basket of snails was slimy, but that was because I had not yet learned the true power of slime.
I fell. Twice. Me.
By the time I reached the other side, I was soaking wet, with green tendrils of algae hanging from me like I was a swamp monster. I was not in the best of moods, and this wasn’t helped by the discordant hooting that serves as koala laughter. I was convinced that somewhere nearby, a ghost was losing his shit over the spectacle he had created, and I decided that ectoplasmic heads would roll if this turned out to be a dead man’s idea of a practical joke.
I stomped around on the rocks to remove as much algae as I could, and then turned my back to the others: Atlas was flipping out, but Darling…
She was a sharp one. Atlas might think that I was a crazy rich girl playing archaeologist, but Darling knew something was up.
I began to run my hands over the wall, more to hide the motion of the beads than because I had any real reason to do so. The ghost resumed its tugging, directing me to a location somewhere further down the wall.
They stopped moving, and pointed up.
I inspected the wall. It looked the same as the rest of the rock face, the only difference being one of those small alcoves that Atlas claimed had been used for displaying art.
I poked around in this alcove. Carefully. I don’t exactly harbor a fear of bugs, but there’s a difference between Oh, look at that centipede, and Oh, look at that centipede running over my hand and crawling up the inside of my shirt…
Nothing.
Whatever the ghost expected me to find wasn’t here.
The beads began their tugging motion again, but this time it was frantic, and I was dragged a few feet down the bank before the pulling stopped. I heard Darling gasp: I was not looking forward to coming up with the lie that would explain all of this.
From behind me came the loud groan of stones sliding past each other.
Then, a slab of rock, wider than I was tall and twice as high, came loose from the wall and fell.
Forward.
Landing in the water.
Pushing a mighty tidal wave of chunky green liquid towards the four people standing on the far side of the pool.
And then I had four swamp monsters of my very own.
“Oops,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They forgave me when they saw the library.
That was what the ghost had wanted to show me, by the way—the lost library at Rhodes.
After the rush of green water, I turned to take stock of my surroundings (see: find a place to hide before Speedy got close enough to murder me). The hole where part of the wall used to be was definitely new.
The room behind it…
I couldn’t see much; there was almost zero natural light in the Nymphaeum, and what managed to trickle into the library barely lit the edges of what was in the room. My first impression was of an overstocked wine cellar. The walls were layered in shelves, and these were groaning under the weight of old parchment. A nearby table was covered in a mix of parchment and fabric, and I could make out the faint smell of ink over that of the algae.
“Thank God and all His little blue ghosts,” I whispered. “Answers.”
Behind me came a splash, followed by another; I turned to see Mike and Darling rolling oversized stones into the pool, forming a connecting path to the bridge that the ghost had made when it had pushed out the wall. Atlas was splitting his time between yelling at them for damaging a priceless ancient site, and yelling at them for working too slowly.
“Ms. Blackwell!” he called to me. “You cannot enter the room—you’ll contaminate it!”
Atlas was absolutely right. I don’t know too much about archaeology and forensics and whatnot, but I do know that swamp water is incompatible with pretty much anything you’d like to keep clean.
Well, damn. How to manage this?
There were footsteps as the four of them pounded across the new bridge, and Darling’s flashlight illuminated the library.
We all gasped. Even Speedy.
Ghosts aren’t big into physical possessions. They’ve got no need for them, really. But if they decide to keep something, they preserve it. The room was pristine; I didn’t even see any dust.
The scope of the place was smaller than I had guessed at first glance. It was about the size of a very large Starbucks, the rock ceiling of the manmade cave lower than was comfortable. I’d say it was almost cozy except for the floor, which was the most beautiful mosaic mural I had ever seen.
It held the night sky.
The room had been split into hemispheres, and the summer constellations chased those of winter across the floor. The master artisan who created it had depicted Leo in stunning golds, the Twins in whites and bloody reds… I lost track of the rest, as my mind would need hours to study how the images of scales and fish and crabs and water were both entwined and separate.
Around this was a border made of math.
I don’t know how else to describe it. Numbers and symbols surrounded the art. The two aspects of the mural were separated by a border of blues and golds, and yet all of it was part of the same design.
I glanced at Speedy. From his usual perch on Mike’s shoulders, he could see the entire mural. The art didn’t catch his interest at all; he was craning his neck to see the mathematics on the far side of the table.
“Formulae,” he said. “It looks like an early version of Apollonius of Perga’s description of epicycles.”
“Which are…”
“How the planets move,” Speedy said with a sigh.
“Hah!” I shouted aloud. “There’s got to be something here about the Mechanism!”
“Mister, ah…Speedy?” Atlas said. “Can you make out what’s on the table?”
“Yeah,” Speedy replied. “I’ll have to look at it, but I’m pretty sure it’s a copy of Archimedes’ lost Catoptrica.”
My heart jumped at the mention of Archimedes, and Mike and I exchanged wild grins.
“The Catoptrica…” Atlas whispered, then began waving and pushing us back away from the doorway. “We cannot go into that room. This is priceless—this is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery! We need a team—”
“Yeah,” I said. “You should definitely go call someone and let them know what you’ve found.”
He paused. “I didn’t find—”
“Sure you did!” I said. “You and your cousin can take the credit.”
“Ms. Blackwell, I couldn’t—”
“Yes, you can,” I said, and this time I slapped my open palm against his chest for good measure. Hopefully that would shut him up long enough for me to get it through his brain that I didn’t want any responsibility for this stuff. “This is a hell of an opportunity for you—for both of you. Like, maybe a career-defining opportunity?”
Darling froze as she realized what I was offering. Legitimacy. A way to get out of the black market and compete in the same international marketplaces as her cousin. Maybe even with her cousin, if she was willing to take that chance.
Atlas wasn’t quite so quick. “I did none of the legwork, Ms. Blackwell. This discovery is yours—”
“We. Don’t. Want. It,” I said, bang
ing on his (smooth hard broad yum!) chest with each word. “You can have it. Why don’t you and your cousin go topside where the reception is better, and make a phone call to whoever you know at whatever museums are on Rhodes, okay?”
“Come,” Mike said. Speedy scurried down from his shoulders, as Mike took Atlas’ arm to guide him back over the bridge. “The faster we make that call, the faster we can come back down here.”
The two of them disappeared down the tunnel, Atlas busy fussing with his phone to check if the water had ruined it.
Which left Darling, her bright brown eyes moving between Speedy and me.
“Strip,” she said, as she began removing her clothing.
“Say again?” I asked.
Darling peeled that astonishing jacket over her head, followed by a remarkably dry blouse, and… Wow. There were some outstanding genes in the Petrakis family. Darling was in much better shape than her cousin. I could have grated aged Parmesan cheese on her six-pack.
“Animal,” she said to Speedy. “Come here.”
To my absolute shock, Speedy walked over to Darling and allowed her to wrap him in her blouse. He flicked his ears, one at a time, so she could dry them off with a sleeve.
“You heard the woman,” Speedy told me, as Darling picked him up like a stray cat caught in a towel. “Strip.”
Oh. Right. We were a mess. Anyone would be able to tell we’d have entered the room by the trail of pond water. Getting rid of our clothing took care of most of that; shaking out our hair and tying it into rough ponytails took care of the rest.
Nymphaia are fairly chilly, by the way. Or at least this particular one was; I haven’t run around in my underwear in enough of them to make an informed judgment about the rest.
As I stepped out of my pants, the beads around my wrist swung loose, reminding me that we weren’t alone.
With us living humans wearing nothing but our skivvies.
Yup.
I reached out to take Speedy, but Darling stepped away.
“The animal will stay with me,” she said. “You know what you are here to find, no?”
“No,” I said. “I need his help.”
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