Page 34 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A Bird in a New Room

Birdie can’t calm down. The terror of the minister’s visit clings to her like the fog clinging to the world outside.

Ephemeral but inescapable. He’s going to come back, and he’s going to move the House of Quiet, taking away Birdie’s chance to find information.

Worse than those future worries is the new fear that Magpie might have left the house, but not the bog.

Magpie is both dead and alive at the same time, in the house, in the bog, out in the world.

But nowhere Birdie can reach her right now.

And the only person Birdie knows for sure she can trust is the one person in the house who has tried to kill her. Arrow hasn’t come back in from her conversation with River yet, so Birdie does the only thing she knows how to: She gets to work cleaning.

The tasks help calm her body so her mind can function again. She scrubs a bathroom floor and picks a mystery that doesn’t feel as dire as the mystery of Magpie’s fate.

How did the drawing get into her room?

Birdie doesn’t take a lot of time to examine her own feelings.

They’ve never mattered in the past. But that drawing feels personal in a way few things ever have.

Maybe because her collection of her friend’s art is her only real possession.

She has no evidence of Magpie except her own memories.

At least with her friend, left behind forever, she had something to keep.

It doesn’t make sense that the minister would bring his third-floor resident along on a journey. In the entire six months Birdie was at the house, her friend never left that locked room.

And Birdie is certain it wasn’t the minister himself who left her the drawing. It was a warning, not a threat. So if it wasn’t the minister, and the odds are very slim that he brought her friend along, that means somehow, impossibly… her friend has been here the whole time .

It’s not Nimbus. Sky is obviously eliminated as well.

River knew others in the house, which means she’s been out and about the past few years.

Or at least, she said she knew them. Did any ofthe others ever confirm it?

Regardless, there’s nothing about River that screams “locked in the empty third floor of a grand country manor for months on end, if not longer.”

She could easily imagine Dawn’s or Lake’s families locking them up to keep them out of sight. But she would have felt Dawn through the door, no matter how thick it was.

So either her mysterious friend is Lake, who did give Birdie a drawing the other day, even if it wasn’t in the same style…

or Forest. One of their only suspects for the traitor in the house.

Maybe it makes sense. After she left the minister, he unlocked that door and sent his secret weapon ahead.

But why would her friend agree to it? Why would Forest?

She pauses. The floor is scoured as clean as it’s ever been.

Birdie moves on to the tub. Scrubbing circles with her hands, chasing circles in her mind.

Warning or threat, wherever it came from, the drawing is a reminder of what it cost her to be here.

She abandoned her only friend in the world, and for what?

For what?

Birdie wipes her eyes against her shoulder. They’re burning, from tears or from fumes; it doesn’t matter.

Arrow rushes through the door, mud clinging to the hem of her soaked skirt.

“Get out!” Birdie snaps. All her hard work in here, undone. Whatever else they’re up to, they still have to be maids, even if Arrow can’t seem to remember it.

But Arrow doesn’t move. “Have you seen Lake? She didn’t come to breakfast. I went to find her, but I can’t. She’s nowhere.”

Birdie drops her cleaning supplies and rushes out into the hallway. “Lake?” she calls. “Lake!”

“I already checked her bedroom, the study, and the greenhouse.”

“Check all the bedrooms and closets. She might have wandered into the wrong one.” Birdie splits from Arrow and does a frantic search of every space the small girl could possibly fit into. When they meet back in the hallway, Arrow shakes her head.

“Is the door in the pantry unlocked?” Birdie asks.

The blood drains from Arrow’s face. “Lake could have slipped by while I was still outside. Oh no, Birdie, what if she’s out there alone?” Gone is the girl holding a knife and pretending she could ever use it. Arrow’s devastated, as desperate and afraid as Birdie.

Birdie sprints into the kitchen. River, Forest, and Dawn are sitting at the table, all giving her a curious look. Birdie pounds on Cook’s bedroom door. They need everyone. It opens at last to reveal a disheveled Cook.

“What is it?” Cook asks.

“Lake’s missing. We can’t find her anywhere.”

The others stand as Cook rushes past them and into the pantry, then reappears, walking like she’s been struck in the head and is about to collapse. “Unlocked,” she says. “I always forget to lock that one.”

“We’ll divide into pairs,” Arrow says from the kitchen entrance, keeping watch on the hallway as though Lake might wander by.

“I’ll show you how to walk out there. You have to make sure every single step you take is safe before you move.

And we have to go quickly. The longer she’s out there, the less likely… ” Arrow can’t finish the sentence.

“No,” Cook says. “The House Wife can find her.”

“How?” Birdie demands. The House Wife seems about as useful as the decorative vases in the foyer.

Cook bustles past without answering.

“I’ll check on Nimbus,” Dawn says, running out. Forest follows. Birdie doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but she knows it will be helpful.

No , she thinks with a sinking heart. She doesn’t know that. Not for certain.

Arrow waves a hand to get Birdie’s attention.

Birdie frowns. Arrow widens her eyes. And then Birdie realizes what Arrow’s communicating.

She nods tightly. This wasn’t the plan, but…

it’s the same thing. They might not get another opportunity.

It feels awful using Lake’s actual peril for their advantage, but what choice do they have?

“ What? ” River demands. “I know you two are plotting something.” But she doesn’t sound angry. She sounds sad.

“We need to find Lake,” Arrow says. “Will you go out with me? I promise I’ll keep you safe.” She seems tentative and unsure. What happened between them earlier? Hopefully Arrow didn’t give away any information she shouldn’t have.

River’s eyes pool with emotion, but then she cuts it off. “Of course I’ll help,” she snaps. “And maybe I’m the one who will keep you safe. You don’t know.”

Before they can go outside, the House Wife drifts into the kitchen, blocking the doorway. She takes them in with a sweep of her eyes, and then turns toward the rest of the house. “The others are too noisy.”

“What?” Birdie asks. There’s no noise at all.

“They’re too noisy,” the House Wife says again. “They need to gather where I can hear them all in the same place. Then I can find the lost one.”

“I’m going to look outside,” Arrow says.

The House Wife holds up a hand. Her voice is sharp for once. “Get them all together so I can hear the one who’s missing.”

Arrow and Birdie share one last glance. “Right. Come on, Birdie. Let’s gather everyone while the House Wife waits in here. It might take a few minutes. We’re not sure where Forest went.”

As soon as they hit the hallway, Birdie sprints, turning at the foyer and going straight back to the House Wife’s room. The door isn’t even locked. At last, at last.

Birdie takes it all in with a panicked glance.

It’s a bedroom decorated entirely in red, not as richly furnished as the others, but it’s too pristine.

It looks like the bed hasn’t been slept in at all.

Birdie touches the quilt there and finds a layer of dust. The whole space is chilly, too.

No fire in the fireplace and no evidence that any has been lit in ages.

There are some papers on a desk. Birdie grabs them and shoves them into the bodice of her dress. She’ll look at them later.

There’s a door on the side of the room. None of the other bedrooms have closets. She doubts this one does, either. Could it be the mysterious missing staircase? Birdie holds her breath as she rushes over, turns the doorknob, and—

—

Birdie’s in the hall. She blinks, confused. The House Wife is standing in front of her, staring.

She must have heard the House Wife coming back and made it into the hallway just in time. But. No. That’s not right, because—

“Why are you here?” the House Wife asks.

“I was looking…I was looking for…”

“For Lake,” Arrow interrupts, rushing toward them.

“We found her. She was on the third floor, halfway up the tower stairs. She was playing a game of find-me-quick. By herself. Without telling anyone. My fault. I must not have locked the stair doors. I won’t make the mistake again, so sorry.

But now that everyone’s safe, we should get back to work. ”

Arrow clumsily curtsies to the House Wife, then grabs Birdie’s arm and drags her down the hall. Birdie trips over her own feet while her thoughts trip over themselves.

Arrow pulls her into Sky’s now empty room. “Well?” she demands. “What did you find? And why were you standing frozen inthe hallway?”

“I don’t—I can’t—I don’t know what I found.”

“You mean you don’t understand what you found?”

“No, I mean I don’t know. I was in her room and then I was in the hallway, and—” Birdie puts a hand to her racing heart. Something crinkles. The papers! She pulls them out of her bodice and hands them to Arrow.

“This is it? Everything? You were in there for several minutes.” Arrow frowns down at the papers.

“What?” Birdie’s heart starts racing. “No, that’s not right.

That can’t be right. I remember going into the room and finding those sheets, and then I was in the hallway.

There’s nothing in between.” Birdie turns, eyes narrowed.

She tries to take a step toward the door to go back to the House Wife’s room, but she can’t .

It’s like an invisible figure is standing in her way.

As soon as she gives up on getting back to that room, though, she can move again.

“Someone did something to me,” Birdie whispers.

“The House Wife?” Arrow suggests. “She was with me the whole time. She’s the one who found Lake.

But it was just the two of us looking. Everyone else was in the kitchen.

” Arrow bites her lip. “Any of them could have left, though. We wouldn’t have seen them.

So I don’t know for certain where River was,or… ”

“Or Forest,” Birdie finishes for her.