Page 21

By morning, news had broken about Lucas Cruz’s death.

Tempest’s dad should have been at a job site that morning. After the good publicity about the family business earlier in the year, Secret Staircase Construction was booked solid and had started expanding the team to include trusted contractors. But instead of being on-site to manage one of their big jobs, Darius was waiting for Tempest in the kitchen when she came downstairs after getting a few hours of sleep.

“You’re lucky I let you sleep past sunrise.” He pushed a travel mug of coffee in front of her. “I would have woken you if you’d slept ten more minutes.”

Tempest breathed in the fragrant steam. This wasn’t the sweet jaggery coffee like her grandfather made. Jaggery coffee didn’t have much caffeine, but it was a warm, calming drink you could enjoy at any time of day. This mug, on the other hand, was filled with her papa’s strong, rocket-fuel coffee. And it was exactly what she needed.

“Three sips,” Darius said. “As soon as the caffeine hits your brain, we start walking up the hill. As we’re walking, you’re going to tell me everything. And I do mean everything . You didn’t wake me last night, so your penance is no holding back any detail, no matter how small.”

“I don’t keep secrets,” Tempest said as she took a sip. Not anymore. That hadn’t gone well. It was only once she and her family had gotten over keeping secrets from one another that they’d figured out what had happened to her mom and aunt. Tempest had been the one to figure it out, but she’d needed the help of all her friends and family to do it.

That’s why she’d told her grandparents everything last night. She was thankful her grandfather insisted on using his magic Rolodex of contacts to look into possible motives.

Tempest was useless when it came to contacts. She’d cut ties with most of the people from her former life and hadn’t gone back to social media after her spectacular fall from grace last year, even after her redemption this spring. She didn’t feel comfortable with either public persona: hero or supervillain. The online world was so binary, with people screaming at one another that she was either a villain who’d endangered countess lives, or a hero who’d single-handedly solved several baffling crimes without anyone’s help. Neither was true.

She tried to ignore the ridiculous stories and memes about her, but she couldn’t resist saving one viral video from her exploits at the Whispering Creek Theater that made her look like a badass. Sometimes, she missed her stage persona, the Tempest. But mostly, she was happier living in the real world.

With only a bare-bones cell phone devoid of social media apps, she didn’t have feeds of wildly inaccurate information to scroll through that morning. Instead, she picked up one of the newspapers on the kitchen table as she took a second sip of coffee. Her dad subscribed to two old-school print papers. Only the local one included news of Lucas’s murder, and it made the front page.

“Shouldn’t I read this before we walk?”

“Nah. I want to know what really happened, not what the press is reporting.” He set down his own mug of coffee and crossed his tree trunk–size arms. Darius Mendez was a man whom most people swooned over when he wasn’t attempting to look menacing, or shrank back from when he was. He’d accidentally scared off more than one guy who was interested in Tempest when she was younger. She didn’t mind; if that was all it took for someone to run the other way, she didn’t need them in her life.

Tempest’s height and propensity for muscles came from her dad. She was a few inches shorter than him, and her biceps were many inches smaller in diameter, though she was trying to keep up the muscle tone she’d developed when she had a rigorous stage routine. She used her mom’s surname, Raj, partly because she was carrying on the tradition of the famous Raj family of magicians, and partly because of the added layer of security. It was hard enough for someone who’d been as infamous as she’d been to retain some semblance of privacy, but the Fiddler’s Folly property was in her dad’s name and not easily connected to her.

She took another sip of coffee. Her grandfather was the chef of the family, but her dad knew how to make the best strong coffee in Hidden Creek.

“That’s your third sip,” her papa said. “Now we walk.”

“Grandpa Ash and Grannie Mor didn’t fill you in?” Tempest asked as they walked up the hill in the backyard.

“They did, and Ash told me he’s using that magic Rolodex of his to look into people who might know the dead actor or are connected to that library petition, but I want to hear your version. You should have woken me up last night.”

“It’s not like you could have done anything if I’d woken you.” She stepped over a gnarled tree root and thought about where to begin. It had become a tradition for them to climb the hill at sunrise if there were important things that needed to be said. Watching the day begin over rolling hills and the bay was both invigorating and a great way to say difficult things without having to look into each other’s eyes.

“Lucas Cruz,” said her dad. “His name was familiar. Didn’t you and Ivy go to school with him?”

“He was a year younger than us,” Tempest said as they left Fiddler’s Folly through the back gate. “And you’re not going to like hearing about what happened to him.”

“Of course I’m not going to like it. A man you went to school with trapped you in your library escape room and then was murdered. I get why you didn’t want to wake me, but Blackburn should have called me. I’m in charge of the renovations at Gray House, so I’m involved.”

“The day is still young. When they’re done gathering evidence from the crime scene, they’ll probably ask you about secret passageways.”

He flexed his forearms. “Why would they do that? A secret passageway was involved? There aren’t any at that house. Why are they looking for secret passageways?”

“You’re right. I should start at the beginning.” Tempest told him about the game Lucas was playing that he’d roped an unwitting Sanjay into, followed by being trapped in the escape room with Gideon, Ivy, Cameron, Kira, and Mrs. Hudson.

“When we got out,” she concluded, “Lucas’s body was on the floor of the living room. Whatever he was up to finally caught up with him, because he was dead this time. And now Blackburn thinks Sanjay is the main suspect, because he’s on video as having disappeared around the back of the house during the time Lucas was murdered.”

“Sanjay can take care of himself. I’m more concerned that a psycho trapped you in the library’s escape room. Sounds like you don’t even know if it was Lucas or his killer who did that. I get that you didn’t have your phones, but why didn’t you just break a window to get out?”

“Um…” Her grandparents must have left that part out. Or had she and her friends even told them about the poison last night? She couldn’t remember.

“Tempest.”

“There may have been poison on the windows and in a few books. I don’t think there really was! But the clues left for us made it seem like there was poison. We think it was just so someone could keep us out of the way for a little while.”

Darius swore and kicked a pebble. It went surprisingly far and came to a rest at the stone wishing well.

“Does the newspaper say how Lucas was killed?” Tempest reached the well and looked over the edge. They hadn’t heard a gunshot last night. Was it because the walls of the century-old house were thick? Or with his battered face, were they wrong about what had killed him?

“The press isn’t reporting it.” He handed Tempest a penny.

She tossed it over the edge. The mossy stones were cool under her fingertips, and the penny splashing into the pool of water brought her back to her childhood. If only tossing a penny over the edge would magically give her the answers.

They continued the short walk up the rest of the hill in silence, leaves crunching underfoot. The sun had already risen, but the new day was just waking up, filled with so much promise. Tempest took a deep breath and looked out across the bay. There was very little fog today, and she could see clearly for miles.

“So it’s not about a rare book?” Darius asked. “I know it’s irrational, but since we’ve been surrounded by books in that house, I feel like anything that happens there has to be connected to those books.”

Tempest finished off the last of her coffee and faced her dad. “I get that sense, too, but there’s something else going on we’re missing. The killer turned the whole thing into a game . Why trap us in that room? Why pretend there was poison? We were only trapped for about an hour. Why go to all the effort for such a small amount of time?”

“You’re holding something back.”

Tempest smiled at her papa, in spite of what she was about to tell him. Last year, she would have found it infuriating that he could tell she wasn’t telling him something. But now? She loved that she had people in her life whom she could trust so completely, even if it meant they could read her mind.

“You’re really not going to like this next bit.” She took a breath. “Between the game, the poison, and the voice we heard, Mrs. Hudson is convinced it’s Harold Gray’s ghost that was messing with us.”

Darius barked out a laugh. “I knew there was something off about that woman.”

“There’s a bigger problem than Mrs. Hudson’s imagination.” Tempest looked down at her ruby-red sneakers damp from the morning dew. Was she really going to admit this to her dad? “The thing is… I’m not entirely certain she was wrong. I could have sworn it was his voice—”

The ring of a phone sounded.

Darius answered, and his expression grew graver with every passing moment. He barely spoke, leaving Tempest to wonder who he was talking with and what it was about.

“City council’s tabling the vote about the library,” he said after he hung up.

“They can’t do that. Can they?”

“Now that there’s been a murder at Gray House,” Darius said, “we’re lucky they didn’t scrap the whole library project.”

He kissed the top of Tempest’s head, causing her to smile in spite of the situation. Her papa was one of the few people tall enough to do that. He gave her a quick squeeze before he looked at his cell phone once more.

“I missed a dozen texts while we were talking.” He shook his head. “It’s that secret garden job. The landscapers are there, and they need me to get over there. It’s a good thing they’re such fans of Ash’s cooking, or they’d have quit by now.”

It was an ambitious project with a walled garden and multiple portions of the stone wall that opened secret entrances. Gideon had been in charge of the stonemasonry for the project, which was now complete. The inside was another story. Curved tracks snaked through the garden, with a small custom train car set up to be a dining car for two. Miraculously, the train tracks and newly constructed train car were relatively easy, though costly, to manufacture and install. It was the landscaping around the train that was proving more difficult. The client’s vision to have the landscaping re-create the garden from one of their favorite books was proving challenging in Northern California’s climate.

“What’s the deal with the landscapers?” Tempest asked.

“The team is great. It’s the client who needs an intervention.” He paused. “But it can wait. If you need—”

“I’m fine. Go take care of the clients.”

Her dad was equally adept at charming people and intimidating them, even though he wasn’t aware of either quality. Darius simply thought he was a fair, straightforward guy. When people listened to him, he thought it was because they were being reasonable. It never occurred to him that they were either enamored or intimidated as well.

Darius Mendez also hadn’t been interested in another woman in the six years since Tempest’s mom had died, which made him all the more attractive to people. Now that they knew what had really happened to Emma Raj, Tempest wondered if he would finally move forward—and how she would react when he did.

“Sure you’ll be all right?” he asked.

“Always.” She watched him hurry down the hillside. She wasn’t worried about him. He’d tackle the problem and have the project neatly wrapped up in a bow in no time. It was time for her to do the same thing.