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“Let me get this straight,” said the police officer who’d arrived quickly. “There’s no body, no blood, a fake prop gun, and the ‘dead man’ you saw was an actor in a murder mystery play?” He looked expectantly at the group.

“Well, when you say it like that,” said Enid, “it sounds like a joke.”

“Sanjay wouldn’t play a joke like this,” Tempest snapped.

“When someone is shot,” said the officer, “there’s blood. It’s not like an old black-and-white movie where they fall down clutching their chest without even a bullet hole in their clothing.”

“But there was a bullet hole,” Ivy whispered.

The officer’s expression softened as he looked around at their freaked-out faces. “Look. I can tell you’re all really shaken. But what you’re describing is impossible. There’s no blood here.” He pointed at the cream-colored carpet. “And no bullet hole.”

“I hate to say it,” said Milton. “but I was the one who fired the gun. He was standing, so the bullet would be somewhere in the wall.”

“No bullet could be fired from this toy gun,” the officer said. “I’m afraid your friends are playing a joke in very poor taste.”

“It’s not a joke,” Tempest insisted. “Sanjay wouldn’t—”

“If it’s not a joke,” the officer cut in, “your missing friend is the main suspect.”

That shut Tempest up.

The officer took a cursory look around the living room, but without finding a body, blood, or a bullet hole, he departed shortly thereafter.

As the door creaked shut behind the officer, Tempest grimaced. How could she have failed to see the obvious? “We never heard the front door open and close.”

“Um, are you trying to say the police officer was a figment of our collective imaginations?” Milton asked.

“Before that.” She pulled the front door open. It creaked once more as they all heard the police car driving away. “It was also bolted from the inside when we opened it for that officer. Lucas didn’t leave through the front door.”

She thought back on when they’d all gone into the kitchen and the body had disappeared. No creak. Swinging the door closed as silently as she could, Tempest still heard a loud creaking that included a squeak, followed by a satisfying click .

“This door makes noise. It both makes a click when it closes and creaks when it swings open and closed.”

“Oh, of course,” said Ivy. “I should have thought of that.”

“What?” Milton asked. “What should you have thought of? What are you of course –ing?”

“ Lucas and Sanjay didn’t leave the house ,” Tempest explained. “We had the back door in our sights the whole time, and the front door never opened.”

Tempest ran to the sliding bookcase she’d fixed that afternoon and slid it open.

Nothing. Only a second bookcase behind it, with a clue the guests would find during the interactive portion of the evening. There wasn’t room for Lucas or Sanjay to be hiding in that spot. What was she thinking? The problem was she wasn’t thinking. She was freaked out, which was a problem if they were going to figure this out.

“ They’re hiding in the house ,” Ivy said.

“Where could they—” Tempest thought aloud, then bounded up the stairs. Unlike the front door, the stairs were completely silent. Anyone could have gone up the stairs without being detected.

“I’m going to kill Lucas when we find him,” Kira muttered as she followed Tempest up the stairs. The others were close behind.

“Enid, Cameron,” said Tempest as she reached the second-floor landing. “You two stay here.”

“Is there something to search here?” Enid ran her fingertips over the wallpaper. “A well-hidden door?”

Tempest shook her head. “From here, you can see both upstairs and downstairs. You two are the lookouts—in case they’re on the move. The rest of us will search.”

Exposed wooden beams adorned the ceilings of each room, even when not structurally necessary, but the steeply pitched roof didn’t leave room for many hiding spots inside. Neither did the fact that most of the nooks and crannies had been filled with books. Books, books, books. And Lucas hadn’t shrunk down to fit between the covers of a book.

Their search through the storybook house felt more and more like they were in a dark fairy tale. One with a ticking clock.

Tempest bumped her head on the small table in the library escape room game, causing the book resting on the table to fall to the floor. The Corpse in the Waxworks by John Dickson Carr. One of their escape room clues.

She rubbed the sore spot on her head. Why did she feel such urgency? She knew the answer. Sanjay wouldn’t be part of such a distasteful joke. Not willingly.

“They’re not upstairs hiding in Cameron’s soon-to-be apartment,” Ivy said, poking her head through the door.

“And none of the windows were open,” Milton added from behind her.

“The attic is too high to get down safely,” Tempest said. “But I checked the windows in the second-floor rooms as well. Locked from the inside.”

“Find anything?” Enid’s voice called.

“Might as well regroup downstairs,” Tempest said, hating to admit defeat. She gave one last glance at the library escape room before following the others downstairs. They didn’t need to search the garage, since it was detached from the house, but for good measure, they took a look. Stacks upon stacks of books were piled into semiorganized towers, leaving only narrow aisles and nowhere for anyone to hide. In the living room, Tempest peeked inside the steamer trunk, lifted the removable cushions of the love seat, and looked underneath every piece of furniture.

“I don’t understand.” Cameron sank into his uncle’s old armchair. “I’d swear Lucas was dead.”

Tempest stood in front of the hearth and surveyed the room’s bookshelf-lined walls. “And they both vanished.”

“The officer was right that there wasn’t blood.” Ivy bit her nails. “Maybe they escaped out a window?”

Enid drummed her fingernails nervously on a book she clutched in her hands. “I didn’t see blood oozing from the hole in his shirt either. Maybe it really was a joke.” Enid’s voice shook, belying her words. “We’re all well versed enough in detective fiction to realize that people at the scene of a crime are terrible eyewitnesses.”

Before Tempest could see what book she was holding, Enid tucked it into a hidden pocket of her skirt.

“Are you feeling all right?” Tempest asked.

Enid smoothed her dress and looked at her hands. “There’s a school of thought that says you should always trust your gut. That it’s an instinctive survival mechanism. That even before your conscious, rational brain can process a piece of information from your surrounding environment, your brain knows something is wrong. It knows the truth.”

“The lizard brain,” said Kira. “Sure.”

“I’ve always fought against that,” Enid said softly, still looking at her hands. “I never believe my eyes. We know eyewitness testimony is reliably wrong. We can’t trust what we see.”

“What did you see, Enid?” Tempest asked softly.

A sad smile spread across Enid’s lips, and she looked up at Tempest. “It’s not what I saw today. It’s what I saw when—” She broke off, her eyes glazing over again.

“What did you see?” Tempest’s voice was nearly a whisper.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” Cameron said softly. “What did you see?”

Enid shook her head. “In the classic detective novels I love, there are clues hidden in plain sight, but we just can’t see them. If witnesses are convinced they’ve seen a ghost or a miraculous event, they haven’t really seen what they think they have. It’s simply the culprit temporarily outsmarting the detective. There’s always a rational explanation at the end. I’ve always been so sure that’s how the world worked.”

She paused and looked around the room at each of them. Tempest stood closest to her. Cameron sat in Harold’s old armchair and Ivy on the nearby futon. Milton and Kira stood together near the sliding bookcase.

“What if…” Enid said finally. “What if I was wrong? What if it’s not a living person who did this? You know what happened at my library last week. My invisible intruder. I’ve tried to tell myself it was just a prank and it doesn’t matter, but nobody has been able to explain the lamps the invisible man knocked over, the fact that my motion sensor raven cawed at him, and the books I found turned upside down. And now this?”

Ivy crossed her arms and scowled. “Are you really saying a ghost made Sanjay and Lucas vanish? Enid, you run the Locked Room Library! A place where rationality prevails, even if it takes a while to figure out what really happened. You love those books.”

“I do,” Enid agreed. “They’re what I wish the world were really like. Rational explanations. Justice at the end. But real life isn’t like that. We don’t get a neatly tied bow at the end.”

“Enid,” Tempest said. “ What did you see? ”

With a shaking hand, Enid removed a slim paperback from the pocket of her skirt. The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White.

“Never heard of that book,” Milton said. “Any good?”

“Where have I heard that title?” Kira asked, but she looked as if she were asking herself.

Cameron swallowed hard. “Oh no… You don’t really think… do you?”

Enid met his gaze. “It was one of your uncle’s favorites.”

“I know.” Cameron looked pale once again. He blinked and looked up at the rest of them. “It’s the book that Hitchcock’s film The Lady Vanishes is based on. Harold always loved a good vanishing.”

“Let me get this straight,” Kira said. “You two believe that because Cameron’s uncle Harold loved old books and films about vanishings, he’s come back from the dead to haunt his house, kidnap Sanjay and Lucas, and hide both of them somewhere so ingenious that we can’t find them?”

“ Or worse ,” said Enid. “Can’t you feel something off about our surroundings?”

“Are you sure we can’t get you something to drink?” Milton asked. “A glass of wine would take the edge off.”

Enid shook her head firmly.

“Enid,” Tempest said softly. “The house feels creepy and mysterious on purpose . Because we fixed it up for the library escape room game and murder mystery party.”

“I’ve been to my share of murder mystery parties,” Enid said. She walked across the room and slipped the book back in place on the shelf. “There’s something else going on here.”

“I need a drink,” Milton said, a bottle poised above his glass.

“No!” Enid grabbed the bottle out of his hand.

“Poison,” Cameron whispered. “Harold loved books with poisons. As long as they were done right, like Agatha Christie’s poisonings.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Enid said, “but I’m getting out of here. Harold! If you’re listening, I really did enjoy knowing you in life, and I hope you’re at peace now, but I hope we don’t meet again.”

Enid slammed the bottle onto the bureau and pushed past Ivy. Milton and Kira followed.

“I, um…” Milton fidgeted in the doorway. “I suppose I’ll be off as well. Good luck with… uh, whatever this is.”

“It’s been an interesting evening, Cameron,” said Kira. “If this isn’t actually a ghostly invasion and our missing actors come clean and repent, I’ll see you tomorrow night for one last chance at a dress rehearsal.”

The front door squeaked once more as Enid, Kira, and Milton departed.

Tempest took The Wheel Spins off the shelf. There was a rational explanation at the end of the story. Why was Enid so shaken? What had she seen?

“What do you think Enid is keeping from us?” Ivy asked.

“I can’t imagine she’s involved,” Cameron said. “But why was she acting so strangely? She was so convincing she almost had me convinced Uncle Harold is haunting—”

A rap on the front door made him break off.

Cameron looked through the front window and gasped.

“Who is it?” Ivy whisper-screamed. “Why did you react like that?”

“I can’t see them.” Cameron swallowed hard as the knock sounded again.

“What do you mean you can’t see them ?” Tempest asked. How could he not? If there was an invisible man on the porch, she was going to scream. She nudged Cameron aside to look through the window. “What the…”

“Who is it?” Ivy clasped her hand over her mouth after she spoke.

“I don’t know,” Tempest whispered.

It was true. The person’s face was obscured by a huge bouquet of roses. The delivery person reached up and knocked on the door once more. His hands gave him away. She knew those hands. Half of her worry vanished. But she had a hell of a lot more questions.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” said Tempest, “but the person at the door can tell us.”

She flung open the door.