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Hidden Creek’s police station was in an old Victorian house, like the rest of the buildings in the civic center. Every few years, a new city council member would propose modernizing the buildings, but the whole downtown area was part of the small town’s charm, so the plans to modernize were never approved.

Which is how Tempest came to be talking with Detective Blackburn in his office that looked more like the tiny study in a university professor’s home.

“I was informed that Ivy got the all clear,” he told her as he sat down.

“I heard.” But she appreciated him letting her know.

“Tell me exactly what happened at that house,” he said.

“Did you look at the video footage more carefully yet?” It seemed safer to start with facts, rather than disputing the reasons why it couldn’t be Harold Gray’s ghost. Even though she’d sworn it was his voice she’d heard.

“So far, the footage confirms what I saw the first time around.”

“Wait, do you mean nobody else—?”

“Tempest. Please just go over what you saw.”

She opened her mouth to ask about the video again, but decided against it. “Should I start when we arrived this evening?”

“For now.”

For now? She was hoping he’d be less formal, after having gone through so much together, but it was also strangely comforting to go over the horrible events in a more structured way.

“Lucas wasn’t on the floor of the living room when we arrived,” she began. “We were going to eat before the actors arrived for a rehearsal. Ivy and Cameron were already at the house when Gideon and I got there.”

“You came through the front door?”

“The door in the living room. Lucas wasn’t dead on the floor when we came inside. Kira and Mrs. Hudson both arrived after I did. Neither was supposed to be there. Kira was early for rehearsal, and Mrs. Hudson was just being nosy.”

“This was supposed to be a dinner party?”

“Cameron and Ivy got takeout.”

“From where?”

She gave him a raised eyebrow. The food was still there. He knew all this. Why was he asking? “The new Himalayan restaurant down the street. I forget the name, but there’s a menu stapled to a paper bag in the kitchen—no, the dining room. Food was out on the table when I got there, and after Kira arrived, we were starting to serve ourselves dinner when my cell phone buzzed. I had a text message. But it wasn’t just me. As I looked at it, I noticed everyone else had a message as well. Each of us got a single letter—from Lucas. We didn’t understand what was happening at first, but we realized that if we lined up the phones, they spelled a word. HELLO. ”

“Who suggested lining up the phones?”

“You mean if one of them was working with Lucas and already knew it would spell out a message?” She shook her head. “I don’t remember, but honestly, it didn’t seem like anyone knew. It was a group decision.” She thought back on the series of events. Her impression was that it was a group decision, but could it have been a force ? The technique was used all the time in magic, for a spectator to think they were making a choice of their own free will, but really the magician had forced their hand.

“So you all decided to line up the phones.”

“On the music stand, so we could see them. That’s when we heard someone calling for help.” She swallowed. “And a horrible scream.”

“What can you tell me about the voice?”

“Nothing I want to admit is real.”

“What does that mean?”

Tempest hesitated before answering. The voice she’d heard earlier tonight was Harold’s. She was sure of it. It wasn’t only the power of suggestion introduced by Mrs. Hudson. That meant it had to be a recording, didn’t it? It couldn’t have been his ghost. She refused to believe he was haunting Gray House. There was something else she’d seen that she couldn’t quite remember…

“The voice we heard was Harold Gray’s,” she said after twelve seconds of indecision.

Blackburn attempted to keep his face neutral, but Tempest detected a minor twitch in his left eye.

“That’s Cameron Gray’s great-uncle who used to own the house, who died earlier this year,” Tempest continued.

“I know who Harold Gray is. I’ve been hearing a lot about him tonight.”

“You have? Then why aren’t you pointing out that a dead man can’t call for help?”

“I assume it was a trick. Just like you do. You built games and puzzles into that library.”

“Obviously, I didn’t have anything to do with—”

He held up a hand. “I’m not saying you did. I’m more interested in who would have staged this game. The how will fall into place from there.”

Tempest nodded. That was one way to approach things. It simply happened to be the opposite of how her own mind worked.

“The call for help came from above us,” she said instead, “from the second floor. We were all so flustered by the sound that we knocked over the music stand. Our phones fell behind the table, but we left them so we could rush upstairs.”

“Which is why you were trapped without your phones.”

She nodded.

“Who knocked over the stand?”

Tempest didn’t answer right away. Memory was a funny thing, and she wanted to make sure she wasn’t misremembering what had happened. Manipulating both present perception and memory of past events were tools magicians used to create successful illusions. She wasn’t wrong about her memory here, but she couldn’t believe what that meant.

“Tempest.” Blackburn interrupted her thoughts.

“It was Ivy,” she admitted, “but Ivy couldn’t have been the one who didn’t want us to have our phones. She wouldn’t—”

“Go on with the series of events.”

“It wasn’t Ivy who did this to us,” Tempest reiterated.

Blackburn simply waited for her to continue. It was an effective technique, because she did.

“Mrs. Hudson was outside spying on us. She heard the scream as well, so she started banging on the front door. We let her in— I did. I don’t know why, only that I wasn’t thinking straight. None of us were. If you’d heard that scream… “We knew by then that something dangerous was going on.”

“But you didn’t find Lucas upstairs.”

“No. But that’s when he trapped us inside the escape room game. The door slammed shut, and the twisted escape games began.” She rubbed her bare arms as goose bumps appeared at the memory of blood on Ivy’s hand.

Blackburn’s eyes flickered with concern. He already knew the broad strokes of how they’d been trapped, from their frantic words at Gray House, but he hadn’t heard the details from Tempest as she relived it.

“It wasn’t a game this time. It wasn’t the literary escape room puzzles we’d set up, but all about poison. I don’t know if they were serious enough to be trying to kill us, but Ivy got sliced by a razor blade, and because of the notes in the room, we were worried it was poison.”

“And that’s why you thought the window was poisoned so you didn’t smash it to get out.”

“Exactly. We know the razor blade that cut Ivy doesn’t appear to have been poisoned, but what about the windows? There was something coating the glass.”

“They’re running more tests to be sure, but it looks like that note about poison on the windowpanes was just so you wouldn’t smash the windows and get out too soon.”

“It worked. It took us nearly an hour to get out of there. Sanjay and Milton were already waiting outside for rehearsal to begin.”

“What time were they supposed to arrive?”

“Eight o’clock?” She thought back to make sure that was right. “Yeah, eight.”

“Did you know Sanjay arrived early?”

She couldn’t read his expression. “You don’t seriously think Sanjay killed Lucas. Kira was the one who was suspiciously early. You know you can never predict how long it’ll take to drive here from San Francisco. Of course he’d give himself more time than necessary in case traffic was bad. I already know he went around to knock at the back door when nobody answered the front.”

Blackburn nodded. “Do you have any idea what someone would want to do in the house during that time?”

She stared at him. “A diversion?”

“You were trapped in there for quite some time. At least an hour?”

“There isn’t anything—” Tempest broke off as an idea came to her.

Blackburn straightened. “You know something?”

“Not exactly. But you said in the house . That made me think of something. Because it’s not simply a house anymore. It’s a library . Filled with thousands of old books.”

“You think this is about a valuable book?”

“Cataloging begins next week.” Tempest leaned back and looked at the imperfections in the old ceiling. “As soon as the summer stroll games are over, Cameron will be creating a list of all the books in Harold’s collection. If someone wanted to steal a valuable book, this is their last chance before anyone realizes it’s gone.”