2019.

Discovering that he had been the Crimson Wraith all along, Gracie was surprised, but immediately realized it made all the sense in the world. “That day at Sprang & Sons, you were checking up on me.”

“I was.” Kevin guided Gracie around the back of the Finn Mausoleum, where two brass angels stood on stone pedestals, trumpets pointed heavenward. 

“And you weren’t looking for a book on the Crimson Wraith for yourself. You wanted to point me toward it and see how I reacted.”

“I did.” He turned one of the angels to face its partner. 

“How did you know we had that book in stock?”

“You didn’t. I brought it there in my coat pocket.”

When he released it, the angel began slowly turning back toward its original position, and a section of the mausoleum wall opened inward in response.

Gracie looked from the secret door to Kevin and back. “So, this is it?”

“No turning back now.”

“Not for a million bucks. And for some of us, that’s actually a lot of money.”

Kevin smiled and led her inside before pushing the secret door back into place. For a moment, darkness enveloped them. Then, small electric lights gradually illuminated the stone walls with an amber glow. 

In front of Gracie, instead of the sarcophagus one might expect, she saw the gated entrance of a lift system. Kevin opened it and beckoned her with a gesture. Once they were both on board, he tapped its controls, and the small platform began lowering.

“So there’s a secret passage up into the house,” said Gracie.

Kevin nodded. “Finn Manor has a few hidden passages. Archibald Finn supplemented his family’s whaling fortune with just a tiny bit of smuggling. He built his home around a network of secret doorways and tunnels.”

“So, after I saw you in the parlor, you pressed a secret button behind a picture frame, slid down a pole, and jumped into your costume?”

“Not quite. I wanted you to see me before seeing the Crimson Wraith to throw you off the trail in case you weren’t ready for this, but I didn’t have time to get here from the parlor.”

“How did you pull it off, then?”

Danny called up to them from the tunnel below. “With help! That wasn’t him in the suit you met last time. It was me.”

“You heard my voice through the speaker in the mask,” said Kevin. “I watched you from the house, just like you watched me last night.

“Nice set-up,” said Gracie. “Very slick.”

“Thank you,” said Danny. “I’m proud of that one.”

“You’re proud?” said Grace.

“As my mechanic, Danny does more than car maintenance. He’s been responsible for bringing all our Crimson Wraith technology into the twenty-first century.”

Gracie said to Danny, “Dude, you’re like my age. How long ago did you sign on with the Scarlet Stranger here?”

“About ten years.”

“You were just a kid!”

“Smartest kid in his grade,” said Kevin. “Probably the smartest in Titan City.”

“Smart enough to catch the Crimson Wraith,” Danny added.

“You what?” said Gracie.

“My folks needed help,” he said, “and I didn’t figure anyone but the Crimson Wraith could give it to them.”

“I tend to notice when someone comes looking for me,” said Kevin. “In Danny’s case, it seemed like the right thing to let myself be found. And he’s been a huge help ever since.”

They arrived at a heavy metal door with no apparent handle. Kevin approached the security panel to its right, removed his glove and placed his right hand on the screen as he leaned into the retinal scanner and spoke words in Latin, “In Pace Requiescat.” 

Gracie recognized the phrase. She’d heard it while at Sprang & Sons. Howard, their regular customer with the sticker system for the books he read, had told her about it as he — without her asking — explained the plot of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado.

“…And at the end, when Monstressor has finally walls-up Fortunado,” said Howard, “he walks away to leave him there forever and ends by saying that Fortunado has not been disturbed for half a century. In Pace Requiescat! That means ‘Rest in Peace…’”

Rest in Peace. Perfect for someone who dresses up like a ghost. 

Kevin turned to her and said. “Welcome to the Crypt.” Then the door slid open to reveal the secret lair of the Crimson Wraith. 

The air was cool with the slight sweetness of older spaces, maybe still carrying the memory of prohibition era wine casks. The floor, the walls, and the columns leading up to the curved ceiling were all made of rough stone worn smooth over decades. 

Over the stairs leading up to the manor loomed a skull-shaped archway. Warm electric lights sat in the places where once candles or maybe oil lanterns had burned, giving the space a vaguely medieval feel, in spite of all of the technology it held.

A multi-monitor computer array appeared to be running several security programs at once. Some showed security camera footage from around Finn Manor. Others appeared to spy on Titan City street corners, some nice, others not-so-nice. A few of the screens showed sound waves indicating audio recordings. Gracie spotted the words “TITAN PD DISPATCH” over one of those.

There were work tables with tools ready to craft, maintain, and repair the equipment that aided the Crimson Wraith on his mission, which stood displayed at the ready. These included multiple iterations of his costume, with its cloak and mask, an arsenal of smoke pellets, flash bombs, grappling irons, a nest of flying drones that Gracie would learn were called “Haunts”, and gas canisters containing his Infernal Mist. 

And in the center of it all, beaming at them, stood Stephen. “So glad you were able to join us, Miss Chapel.” He raised a hand before she could correct him, “My apologies — Gracie.”

“So, what you said before about having been helped by the Crimson Wraith and now providing service?”

“It is mostly in the kitchen, yes,” Stephen said with a smirk.

“Don’t let him fool you,” said Kevin. “Without Stephen, there probably wouldn’t be a Crimson Wraith today.”

Gracie asked, “Because the Crimson Wraith can’t cook for himself?”

Stephen shook his head solemnly. “It is not his greatest gift.”

Her laughter resounded from the shadowed stone around them. 

There was no denying the gravity and wonder at standing in the space from which the Crimson Wraith for decades had embarked on his mission to defend the defenseless.

At last, Gracie knew what it was in Kevin’s eyes that she couldn’t quite place at their first meeting. It was this. There were depths and doorways behind his eyes — some open, some closed — and one, as it turned out, led straight to an underground crime-fighting lair.

Life had taught Gracie that, if she wanted to survive, she needed to sense out any threat to her safety. People who keep secrets — especially those who keep them well hidden — might be dangerous. But even at their first meeting, Gracie never felt any malice in Kevin. 

There was an ease in him. As the Crimson Wraith, he had watched. He had waited. He had given her space until she seemed in real peril. He had asked permission to help her. He had asked if this was something she wanted. 

After all of her twenty-three years of life, feeling that she didn’t belong anywhere — certainly not the home where she grew up — Gracie wondered if maybe she had finally found the place where she was meant to be.