Page 8 of Broken Bird (The Last Picks #4)
For a moment, I thought I’d done something wrong. Every light in the house was off—not just the reading lamp, but all the holiday lights, the plug-in nightlights (this was, after all, a Class V haunted mansion), even the digital clocks. The power had gone out, a part of my brain told me.
I made my way into the hall. In the absence of the background hum of appliances, the wind and the waves seemed even louder. Even the whisper of my steps sounded enormous. My eyes were still adjusting to the dark, and all I could make out, in the faint ambient light that filtered through the windows, was the grand staircase. I shuffled toward it and prayed Fox hadn’t left any of their art supplies in the middle of the hall.
Power outages weren’t uncommon on the coast, especially in the winter. This time of year was famous for big storms, and all it took was one section of the power lines to go down. It would have been nice to get a generator installed for occasions like this, but since my current income was in the red, that didn’t seem like a possibility anytime soon.
As I approached the stairs, a sound made me look over my shoulder. A footfall. It was unmistakable in the house’s silence. And then, like a trick of the eye, I made out the figure. They were barely more than a shape in the shadows.
“Pippi?” I said.
The figure didn’t answer. They didn’t do anything. But my brain, which had been trying to pick up any clues it could in the pitch black, already knew. It knew in a way that didn’t have to do with reasons that could be put into words—it was instinct, or intuition, a realization that came from some deeper part of myself. It screamed at me that this wasn’t Pippi, and it wasn’t Bobby, and it wasn’t any of the Last Picks. It was someone else. And they weren’t here for some friendly caroling.
Option one: the safe room. But immediately I decided that wouldn’t work. It could only be accessed through the den, and the intruder stood between me and the doorway. Option two: the hidden observation chamber. Another no; it could only be accessed through the billiard room, and the intruder was blocking my path. My only real options were to run upstairs or to run toward the living room. If I circled around through the living room to the kitchen, I could slip out the back, get clear of the house, and call 911.
All of that flashed through my mind in an instant. I took an automatic step.
And that was the wrong thing to do.
Even in the dark, I sensed when the intruder shifted their weight.
I sprinted toward the living room. Behind me, the slap of rubber soles against the parquet told me the intruder was coming after me. Fortunately, the pocket doors to the living room were already open. I jinked right, cutting toward the dining room. Then I cut right again, catching the door to the butler’s pantry with my shoulder. I stumbled into even deeper darkness, the smell of spices, something floral, and a hint of Pine-Sol. Then I had an idea. I braced the door with my body and reached out, searching blindly with one hand. The butler’s pantry had shelving along three walls. If I could tip over one set of shelves, I could barricade this door and buy myself some time.
When I barked my knuckles against the side of the shelves, I barely felt the sting. I groped along the wood, found the edge, and pulled.
Nothing. The shelves wouldn’t move.
The intruder crashed into the door, and the force of the impact drove me back a step. I scrambled to brace myself. I grabbed for the shelves again, found them, and tried to rock them from side to side.
No movement at all.
The intruder threw themselves at the door again. The door shivered, and I felt myself lose a few inches.
Panic was lighting up my brain. It was an old house. These weren’t IKEA shelves. They weren’t particleboard and laminate veneer. They were real wood. They were heavy. And they were—I was starting to suspect—built in.
I reached out once more, praying I’d been wrong. I barked my knuckles again, and this time, something moved. Something small. I felt, rather than heard, a tiny click. And then the section of shelves closest to me swung away from the wall to reveal a hidden doorway.
Another crash sent me sliding across the floorboards. I gave up on the door, threw myself into the secret passage, and yanked the hidden-door-slash-shelves closed behind me. I felt the latch catch, and when I relaxed my grip, the hidden door stayed shut.
From the butler’s pantry came the sound of the door crashing open, the hard hammer of steps, which slowed and then picked up again. I could picture the intruder’s confusion, their hesitation, and then their race to see if I’d made it out of the house. I slumped against the wall behind me, my heart beating so fast I thought I was going to be sick. Then the sound of the footsteps came back more slowly. The steps moved into the butler’s pantry and stopped.
I could almost feel them on the opposite side of the hidden door. They were silent, but I knew they were there. Knew it in a way that made me clutch my jeans, bunching the denim in my hands, trying to keep myself motionless, trying to keep from making any noise at all. A single step came. And then another, slower. They were hesitating, considering possibilities.
Since I had no idea how I’d opened the secret door, I had no idea how easy it might be for the intruder to stumble across the same mechanism. I didn’t particularly like the idea of being alone in a secret passage with a murderer (I’ve done that before, thanks), so I forced myself to uncurl my fingers, take a deep breath, and begin examining the space around me.
It was a narrow cavity—too small to be called a room. A passageway, perhaps. Or—
I turned to face the wall opposite the secret door. If my spatial reasoning was intact, then the dining room was on the other side of this wall. I didn’t want to risk using my phone, in case the light gave away the secret door, so I ran my hands over the wall. It didn’t take me long to find the peephole. The slider was stiff, but I shimmied it free and looked out onto the dining room.
Well, that answered one question. This little cubby where I’d found myself was a mirror to an identical space attached to the billiard room. I thought of them as observation rooms—Nathaniel Blackwood, the original owner of the house, had apparently been a bit of a voyeur. He’d certainly given himself plenty of opportunities to spy on his guests.
Rapid footsteps moved on the other side of the wall—the intruder was retracing their path through the dining room, then the living room, returning to the front of the house. It seemed safe enough to take a few quiet steps of my own, so to confirm my suspicions, I padded along in the dark, one hand on the wall to guide myself, until I came to a second set of peepholes. When I looked through them, I had a perfect view of the living room, and I caught a hint of movement that was all I could make out in the dark.
Now the only question was how to get out of here.
My face heated as I realized the obvious solution. I took out my phone, unlocked it, and called 911. I reported the intruder in a whisper, and the dispatcher—tonight, it was Jaklin Ruiz—told me to stay where I was and “don’t do anything that could get you killed” (which I didn’t think was the most helpful advice).
I probably would have stayed where I was, nice and safe inside my hidey-hole, except I heard the front door open, the hinges protesting, and then Bobby called out, “Dash?”
The sudden stillness in the house suggested a coiled violence.
I pressed up against the peepholes and shouted as loudly as I could, “Bobby, someone broke into the house! Watch out!”
Several things happened at once: a door slammed, footsteps raced off into the distance, and Bobby yelled, “Dash? Where are you? Talk to me!”
“In here!”
(Admittedly, not the most productive thing I could have said.)
The sound of running came toward me. I fumbled to turn on my phone’s flashlight and made my way back to the secret door. On this side, it had a standard handle that turned easily. I inched the door open, but only empty darkness met me on the other side. No intruder. Nothing.
Bobby barreled into the butler’s pantry. He was carrying one of Hemlock House’s antique lamps like he meant to do some serious bashing, and his gaze spun immediately to me (and, more importantly, my phone, which was the only source of light).
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“Get back in there and stay there.”
Before I could respond, he was off again, charging through the swinging door that connected to the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of marble and stainless steel, and then the door swung shut.
Instead of doing what Bobby had very sensibly suggested, I channeled my inner idiot and decided not to scurry back into my hiding place. I went after Bobby. I passed through the kitchen, where the windows let in the night’s weak light (still better than nothing), and then into the servants’ dining room. The back door stood open, and there was no sign of Bobby.
I opened the cellar door. Cold air rose to meet me, with the scent of stone and dusty wood and the old furnace. I decided maybe Bobby had been right about that whole “stay there” thing. Maybe I should have listened to him. And then, because abundant stupidity is my stock in trade, I forced myself to start down the stairs.
You might be asking yourself why. You might be wondering, Dash, haven’t you ever seen any horror movies?
The answer is yes. Of course I have. I’ve seen all of them.
My phone’s little flashlight only showed me a fraction of the cellar: the foundation of the house giving way to the cellar’s stone walls, and then the dark expanse at the bottom, the outline of shelves, the glimmer of glass—Indira’s jars of preserves, safely stored down here.
No one jumped out at me. No one rushed out from between the shelves. Of course not, I told myself and ran an arm over my face. Whoever had broken into the house they were gone now. They’d run out the back door. And Bobby was making sure they were gone.
All of which sounded perfectly sane and logical, and which didn’t help at all. Because I knew all about horror movies. I’ve seen all of them, remember?
Somehow, I made it to the breaker box without a) having a heart attack, or b) soiling myself. When I reached to open the box, I noticed the panel door was already ajar. That’s what a part of me had expected—the outage hadn’t been an accident.
I flipped the main breaker on, and the house came alive again. Appliances kicked to life. The furnace made a long buzzing noise. I shut the panel door and made my way back upstairs.
I turned on every light as I made my way through the main floor. Every freaking light. Not just the Christmas trees. Not just the fairy lights strung overhead. Every. Single. Light. It was the only rational course of action.
When I got back to the den, I stopped in the doorway and stared. Maybe a part of me knew what I’d find. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel surprised. Didn’t feel anything, really, except a numbness that was spreading quickly and comfortably through me.
The manuscript was gone. Someone had taken it.