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“Sabotage?” Ivy scratched a pink fingernail over the jagged grooves cut into the casters. “Why would someone do this on purpose? It has to be a fluke.”

They’d dumped all the books from the noir and hard-boiled detectives section onto the floor so they could lift the bookcase and properly examine the damage.

Tempest attempted to spin the wobbly wheels, but only got a half-spun squeak in return. “This isn’t a fluke. The wheels were fine when we built this.”

“But who could even have done it?” Ivy’s eyes swept over the books strewn across the floor and over to the other bookshelves in the room filled with classic mysteries.

Tempest knew exactly what her friend was thinking. Ivy Youngblood had been her best friend since childhood, when they’d bonded over their shared love of mysteries. Ivy was the most well-read person she knew, and Ivy firmly believed that the solution to any real-life mystery could be found in the pages of a classic mystery novel or short story. Ivy intimately knew the twisty plots of the golden age “Queens of Crime”—Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham—but her favorite author was John Dickson Carr, the master of the locked-room mystery, and Tempest suspected Ivy not-so-secretly wished to be as clever as Carr’s most famous sleuth, Dr. Fell.

“Someone invisible,” said Tempest.

Ivy snapped her gaze back to Tempest.

“Enid is officially in charge of the Gray House Library as it gets up and running,” Tempest continued, “and last week, her own library was ransacked by an invisible intruder.” She didn’t like the connection.

“Anyone could have wrecked these casters,” Gideon said. “We’ve had the house unlocked during the day while we’ve been working on it. A bunch of subcontractors were coming and going. I doubt we’d have noticed if someone else slipped in.”

“A bunch of people don’t want this library to open.” Tempest looked toward the front windows. “One person in particular.”

“Mrs. Hudson?” Ivy asked. “You think she snuck over here to wreck the sliding bookcase?”

Tempest shrugged. “There was also the water damage last week that we wasted a bunch of time looking for the source of. That could have been done on purpose as well.”

The front door handle turned, and the door squeaked open. In walked the new owner of the house, Harold’s grandnephew, Cameron Gray. Fair-haired with gray eyes that matched his name, those eyes grew wide as he took in the sight of his once-beautiful living room.

“I know Uncle Harold always said these books contained lives of their own,” he said, “but will someone please tell me how they flipped that bookcase upside down?”

“Didn’t you notice it’s the bookcase that was holding noir novels with brooding detectives?” Ivy asked with a straight face. “Unfortunately, they found our drawing room décor too cozy and comfortable. They needed some extra drama.”

Cameron grinned. “I’m glad they’ve broken free, but will they be back in place by tonight?”

“As soon as we fix this bookcase,” Tempest said. “It won’t take long.”

“We just need to get a new set of casters.” Ivy straightened a stack of books they’d removed.

“And what is that ?” Cameron’s eyes fell to the Agatha Christie bust now resting in between two piles of books.

“A broken Agatha Christie head,” Tempest said as she lifted the half-melted terror from the floor.

“We’ll toss it onto the junk pile,” Gideon added.

Ivy rolled her eyes. “You two are ridiculous. It’s not broken. Only a little melted. That hole on top is obviously for flowers. It’s a vase.”

“No way,” said Gideon.

Tempest turned the bust in her hands. Huh. Ivy was right. The edges were smooth. “No doubt meant for flowers from a poison garden.”

Agatha Christie had been Harold Gray’s favorite author, and she was well known for using poison expertly in her books. Harold’s interest in poison was close enough to an obsession that before Secret Staircase Construction began work on the house, they’d hired a local botanist to look through the backyard garden to make sure there was nothing poisonous. Harold found their concern amusing, but he hadn’t objected.

The botanist told them the most poisonous thing in Harold’s garden was oleander, a surprisingly common plant for home gardens. Most people didn’t even realize it was poisonous. They hadn’t renovated the garden area yet, but they wanted to remove the oleander before the library officially opened.

Ivy squinted as a bright flash of light shone across her face. Less than a second later, the blinding light was gone.

Tempest sprinted to the front window. She reached it in time to see binoculars disappearing from a window across the street. Beige curtains fluttered shut.

“Our spy is back.”

The woman spying on them from across the street wasn’t actually a spy. Well, probably. But her frequent use of binoculars certainly made it feel like it.

“What does Mrs. Hudson hope to see?” Ivy asked as she joined Tempest at the window.

“Gathering more evidence to use against me, I expect,” Cameron answered, his voice in between anger and resignation.

“But we’re not doing anything wrong.” Tempest abandoned the window, anger welling inside her. “The library games were approved for the summer stroll, and we haven’t begun the bigger renovations to make the second floor one big room for the library.”

Why was it that one negative person could ruin something that was otherwise going so well? Tempest was all too aware life wasn’t fair—the deaths of two people she loved dearly and the sabotage of her career had already taught her that—but why couldn’t she get a break? This job at Gray House was supposed to be the one without drama. Tempest pushed past Ivy and Cameron to head across the street.

This was a residential street, but not straight or narrow. The town’s layout was as quirky as its residents. Eighty percent of it was on a steep hillside, and a long-ago earthquake had caused the land to shift, and the creek moved underground—giving Hidden Creek its name.

Structural engineers made sure each house that was built would be structurally sound if there was another earthquake. That meant leaving plenty of room for vegetation so rainwater would flow down the hillside naturally, and building a lot of retaining walls. Therefore, the houses of Hidden Creek weren’t as close to one another as they were in nearby cities. There were no houses behind or close to Gray House on either side, but Mrs. Hudson’s house sat almost directly across the street.

The official architectural term for Harold Gray’s home for the last sixty years of his life was provincial revival , but the unique design was referred to more casually as a “storybook” or “fairy-tale” style of house. The cozy style of architecture was briefly popular in Northern California in the 1920s, but here in Hidden Creek, it was the only house like it that Tempest had seen. Mrs. Hudson’s home was a more standard bungalow, much like Tempest’s house had been before her parents had renovated it into the labyrinth it was now.

“Where are you going?” Cameron asked Tempest. “You’re in the middle of figuring out what to do about my wrecked bookcase.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.” Tempest gripped the door knob. “It’s time we had a proper conversation with your neighbor—to make sure nothing else like this happens again.”

Cameron’s eyes bulged, but it was Ivy who spoke. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Tempest raised an eyebrow. It was a skill she excelled at. It looked fierce, and it triggered whatever chemical it was in the body that made her feel fierce as well. “We’ve been tiptoeing around that woman for months. You haven’t done anything wrong. None of us have. You can stay here, but I’m going to talk with her.”

And, ideally, persuade the woman to confess.

Tempest didn’t exactly plan to intimidate Mrs. Hudson. But her height and muscular frame, which she got from her dad, couldn’t hurt. Her stage shows had always been physical, with illusions that involved acrobatics to pull them off. Pirouettes, leaps, and flips all contributed to her misdirecting the audience and telling heartfelt stories with more music and movement than dialogue. Her strength came in handy with construction work, but that was only her secondary role. She was the storyteller for Secret Staircase Construction, translating her theatrical skills into creating magical elements like the library games scripts and accompanying interior design.

“I’m with Ivy on this.” Gideon took her hand in his to stop her. “I don’t think this is such a good idea, Tempest.”

She looked down at her strong hand in his warm, calloused one. The late spring and early summer had been so busy that she and Gideon had barely seen each other even when working on overlapping job sites. He hadn’t been scared off by the multiple murder investigations Tempest had roped him into, which was a good sign for both friendship and the possibility of something more. And her hand felt so right in his. She didn’t mind the permanent calluses. Still, she found herself pulling away. She was always pulling away. Life was safer that way.

“We have to do something .” She twisted the doorknob, but Cameron stepped forward and blocked it with his foot.

He shrank back as she raised her eyebrow even higher and added a hand on her ample hip.

“What?” She turned back to face them as she swung open the creaking door. “Why are all three of you so opposed? What’s the worst that can happen?”