“This isn’t it.” I motion for her to hand me her phone, and I consult her compass. “This isn’t forty-eight degrees, fifty-three minutes, five-point-seven-five seconds north latitude, two degrees, twenty minutes, one second east longitude.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re not here.” Angela would not have chosen a well-lit hub of the authorized catacombs tour. A wall of skulls glares at me while I contradict my patient friend.

Chang looks at me with surprise. “It’s as good as we’re going to get. I don’t know of any ways farther east from here.”

The compass spins all the way around, then settles to point southwest. I show it to Chang. “Is this correct? Are we facing this direction right now?”

She shakes her head. “No, we’re too far down; the mineral rock around us throws off the compass’s magnet. What were you expecting to be here? The buried treasure?” she adds, showing her chin dimple.

A dank smell beckons from deeper in the tunnel to our left—decay and something else. Sweat breaks out on my forehead despite the goose bumps covering my skin as I wrestle with the impulse to believe her. If she says we can’t go any farther, it must be true. She pioneered this place.

This is ridiculous.

This is all I’ve got.

Polished tour arrows direct me along a new, declining dirt path, and Chang follows behind. She doesn’t even protest; instead she wordlessly allows me to take point. Skulls, skulls, bones, skull shelves, bone shelf, skull wall, skull wall. I become numb to the sight, no longer retching from fear at each new mosaic.

A tapering entrance, shoulder width at its widest, interrupts the macabre decor—one of several pitch-black passages veering to the right or left into avenues not recommended by the plaques. I slow down to focus on my sister—the way she charmed everyone in the room, her aura, her energy—and indulge her lifelong desire that we be mentally connected.

“Shayna?” Chang touches my arm. “There’s nothing down there.” She nods to the gap in the solid rock beside me. I ignore her and lean closer. Angela’s presence always seemed warm to me, until it was cold. I try to recall what that felt like. I concentrate on any sense of my sister calling back to me, a gut feeling that returns my plea with Here I am. I am waiting. Adrenaline kicks ever-present claustrophobia from my back, while herculean strength drives me forward, deeper into my pit of hell. I slide into the black, tapered crack.