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Mrs. Hudson knelt over Lucas’s body and shook her head. “This man is dead.”

Tempest pulled Mrs. Hudson away from the body. “There’s no way he’s faking it this time.” She felt ill. Lucas’s face was battered. This wasn’t a peaceful death. She stumbled away from him, bumping into Sanjay’s magic show trunk. “Someone really killed him this time.”

“Oh God,” Cameron whispered. “He’s really dead.”

Tempest stared at Lucas’s prone form. Something was wrong. Of course it was very wrong in that he was dead. But something beyond that. Something about the way he was splayed out on the floor with his beaten-up body and a bullet hole in his chest.

She took in her surroundings. Something was off. Was anything in a different place? Or had something been removed or added? The furniture was all there, even the twelve folding chairs from Storage Solutions. The fireplace was the same except for the missing poker that they’d taken upstairs. The floor was carpeted, so there weren’t any dirty footprints leaving marks on a hardwood floor like a clue in the books that surrounded them in this house. What was it that was different?

“His partner must have killed him while we were escaping from that room,” Ivy murmured.

But who was his partner?

“I’d like to report a murder,” Gideon was saying into his phone. He was the only one who kept his head enough to retrieve his phone from the dining room and call 9-1-1. “We also need an ambulance for someone who might have been poisoned.”

Pounding fists sounded at the front door. Both Ivy and Cameron yelped. Tempest didn’t balk. She was used to holding in her reactions on stage.

“That’s too early for the police to be here,” she said.

“Hello?” a familiar voice called through the door.

“We can hear you inside,” another voice added from outside. “Are we rehearsing or not?”

“It’s Sanjay and Milton,” Ivy said, glancing at the grandfather clock. “We were in there so long they’re here to start the dress rehearsal.”

“Or,” said Mrs. Hudson, “one of them arrived early and killed this poor man.”

Everyone objected at once, while Tempest opened the door to let the two men inside.

“Is that—” Milton broke off.

Sanjay swore in Punjabi and muttered, “I’m never doing anyone a favor. Ever. Again.”

This time, the police took them seriously.

So did the two medical technicians who arrived in the ambulance and checked out the injury on Ivy’s hand. They didn’t see obvious signs of poison, but they strongly suggested Ivy let them take her to the hospital.

Ivy struggled to get out of the blanket they’d wrapped around her. “But I have to give a statement.”

“That’ll keep.” Tempest wrapped the blanket back around her. She and Ivy were at the back of the ambulance while the others were gathered on the driveway, speaking to the officer who’d arrived almost as quickly as the ambulance.

“Really,” Tempest added as she eyed Ivy’s pale face and bandaged hand. “Go get checked out at the hospital.”

“But—”

“Ivy. Do you really want to be like one of the characters in your beloved classic mystery novels who does something that makes you throw the book across the room?”

“This is hardly the same thing as following a shadowy figure into a dark basement while a killer is on the loose.”

“You’re right,” said Tempest. “It’s worse. A man is dead, his killer wrote notes about poison , and you got sliced by one of his traps.”

Ivy shivered. Tempest hoped it was only because it was a mildly chilly night. She didn’t know what she’d do if anything happened to Ivy.

“Fine,” Ivy consented.

Tempest softened her voice. “I can go with you if you—”

They were interrupted by a squeal of tires as a dark sedan pulled up behind the two police cars.

“You’re needed here,” Ivy said as Detective Blackburn stepped out of the car. “He’ll trust what you tell him.”

Tempest had known the detective for six years. He was a good man, and a fair one. He’d been the detective who caught the case when her mom had vanished under mysterious circumstances, and he’d been the one who helped her finally solve the case this past year. His full head of hair had turned white prematurely, and Tempest suspected her mom’s unsolved case was responsible. Her mom’s case was definitely one of the reasons he retired earlier than he should have, and she was glad he was now reinstated.

“You sure?” Tempest asked Ivy.

“I’m sure.” Ivy nodded at the ambulance technician, and he got her inside.

“Was that Ivy?” The detective’s gaze followed the ambulance as it pulled away.

Tempest nodded. “Just a precaution. She seems fine, but there’s a chance she was poisoned.”

“Excuse me,” Milton called from the driveway, where he was gathered with Sanjay, Cameron, Kira, Mrs. Hudson, and one of the two officers who’d secured the crime scene inside. “Detective, I have pertinent information.”

He did? That was news to Tempest.

Mrs. Hudson frowned at Milton. “We all have important information.”

Blackburn walked over to them. “I’m going to speak with each of you in turn. As soon as my team clears the scene.”

“You heard that it’s not only that there might be someone inside,” Tempest asked, “but there also might be poison on some of the surfaces in the main library room on the second floor?”

Blackburn nodded, and the officer, whose name Tempest had forgotten, told him, “We’re at all possible exits until a hazmat team arrives to clear the interior.”

“I’d like to talk to each of you about what happened,” Blackburn said. “Separately. What you saw and—”

“I can do better than that,” said Mrs. Hudson.

“As can I,” Milton said.

“After the funny business last night,” Mrs. Hudson said to the detective, ignoring both Milton and the hand Blackburn raised to ask her to stop, “I installed a security camera this morning. It will have captured everything that happened today.” She eyed Tempest. “ Everything. ”

“A camera on the front of your house?” Detective Blackburn turned and looked across the street.

“It’s on my porch, but it captures this whole house as well. It won’t tell you what happened inside this cursed house I was trapped inside against my will, but it’ll show us exactly who came and went all day. Also whatever it picked up through the windows. I’ll happily share the footage.”

“With the possibility of a suspect at large,” said Blackburn, “if you’ll willingly share this video footage presently, that could help.”

She frowned at him. “I could do so if someone hadn’t stolen my phone.”

“Convenient,” Sanjay said through a cough.

“It’s digital footage,” she snapped. “Any phone will do.” She held out her hand with the palm up. Blackburn handed her his phone.

Mrs. Hudson logged into an online account and handed the phone back to the detective.

“What do you see?” Sanjay asked impatiently.

“Stay here,” Blackburn said to the group as a new team arrived. “Lyons, make sure everyone stays here.” He jogged over to the new arrivals.

“What did you have to say that was so important?” Tempest asked Milton.

“That’s for the detective’s ears.”

“No way,” whispered Kira. “You know who killed Lucas.”

“What?” Sanjay was so startled he dropped his hat onto the concrete.

“I knew it,” Milton said as he observed Sanjay’s fumble. “I hoped I was wrong, but—”

“Knew what?” Tempest didn’t like the smug look on Milton’s face as he watched Sanjay pick up his beloved bowler hat. “Sanjay didn’t kill anyone.”

“Yet Sanjay,” said Milton, “was coming around the side of the house when I arrived. Like he’d already been inside.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Sanjay scowled at Milton before turning to Tempest. “The house was locked when I got here, and nobody answered the door. So I did what any sensible person would do—I tried the back door. I get it that I was off camera, but obviously, I didn’t kill him.”

But to anyone who didn’t know him as well as Tempest did, what would it look like?

Blackburn and the crime scene crew kept them waiting for half an hour. When he returned, he wore a confounded expression. “We didn’t find anyone in the house. We’ll need to review this video footage more carefully, but from what we can tell watching at a sped-up pace, it looks like nobody besides all of you approached the house tonight.”

“Nobody else?” Tempest said.

“How is that possible?” Kira asked. “Someone got inside and killed Lucas. Or are you telling us he faked his death again ?”

“I can confirm that Mr. Cruz is dead,” Detective Blackburn said. But he left the other half of her question unanswered.

He didn’t need to say more. Tempest knew exactly what he’d left unsaid.

“If there’s nobody else inside the house,” Tempest said, “then he means it was one of us.”

“But we were together the whole time,” said Gideon. “I’d swear to it.”

“He’s right,” Kira added. “We were all in that tiny, claustrophobic room filled with poison.”

The second-floor library was actually quite spacious, but Kira wasn’t wrong that it had felt claustrophobic while they were trapped inside.

“Gideon and Kira are right,” Tempest said. “What you’re saying is impossible.”

“Unless,” said Mrs. Hudson, stepping away from the group and looking up at a light in the second-floor window, “it was Harold.”