“Where’s Piotrek going?”

“To get rid of the car,” Claudia says.

We follow her through an old tunnel. There’s a shrine inside locked behind an elaborate iron grate. A couple of wooden pews sit across the way, and I realize this isn’t a tunnel so much as an old city gate. Three people stand in front of the shrine, gazing through the grate at a painting of a crowned Virgin Mary. An old woman sells candles nearby. To my surprise, Claudia buys a candle from her, lights it, and sets it beside several others before rejoining us.

“Now we go,” she says, flashing me something in her hand: a key.

Here in the medieval city center, buildings run together like long row houses. There are windows everywhere, two and three stories high. And I wonder with some paranoia who could be watching us even now.

We pass an old church with Gothic windows and a roof covered with two huge crests in brightly colored tiles that make it look like it was made out of Legos.

“What’s that?” I say.

“If you want a tour, hire a guide,” Claudia snaps.

The early afternoon sky lends the peeling plaster of the buildings a dingy cast despite their clean bisque and yellow hues. Claudia stops in front of an old door at the end of the street. The entire side of the building is covered in graffiti, like something from the inner city more than anything historic.

She lets us in and walks us down the hall to an unremarkable entrance that I am sure leads to the basement. She opens it with another key, and it does indeed reveal a narrow flight of stairs ending in a single door.

“This place is creepy,” I murmur as she flips on the single bulb overhead. “Who lives here?”

“We do,” she says.

At the bottom of the stairs, I notice some kind of symbol etched in the chipped paint of the frame: two rectangles sharing a bottom line like twin towers and the earth between them.

“What’s this?” I say as she unlocks the door. “Nine-eleven?” She glances back at me as she flips on the lights, setting a half dozen bulbs ablaze in a crystal chandelier shaped like a flying ship.

She hesitates, glancing at Luka.

“I’m going to find the restroom,” he says on cue. She points him down the hallway.

After he’s disappeared, she turns toward me. “You’re playing a dangerous game, bringing him here.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.”

Does she know? Can she tell what he is?

“Commoners have no place in our world,” she says.

I relax a little. “Then why did you just let him into your flat?”