Chapter Forty-Four
Ethan
Ethan insisted on being the first one through the trapdoor. It should go without saying that Maggie disagreed.
“Is this because you’re a man?”
“No.”
“It’s sexism, isn’t it? And the patriarchy. And—”
“It’s because I’m taller and it’s my flashlight and, most of all, the first person through the creepy trapdoor should always
be the person who knows seven different ways to kill a man with an ink pen.”
“Oh.” For once, she looked defeated. “I only know three.”
“Ha! There. I get to go first. Now hold this.”
“Do you even have an ink pen?”
But he was already handing the phone to Maggie, who pointed the light toward the top of the ladder. The hatch was solid metal
and cold to the touch. At first, it barely budged, inching up slowly as something scraped against it overhead. Ethan could
feel the weight shifting, changing. But whatever was up there was heavy and the angle wasn’t doing Ethan any favors.
“I would have been in already,” Maggie said from down below.
“Something’s blocking the door,” Ethan shot back and pushed harder and then, suddenly, the door opened with a bang as it flipped
over and landed hard on the ground, and for a moment, the two of them froze, not sure who might come running from the racket.
A long, quiet moment later, Ethan peeked out and looked around.
Night had fallen, but moonlight filtered down through snow-covered glass, and after being underground for so long, even that
seemed bright to Ethan. It was colder, too, and he couldn’t help but feel the chill as he climbed out of the tunnel and hunched
over on a dirty floor, listening to the sound of the wind and the too-heavy pounding of his heart until he was sure they were
alone.
There was a broken table lying on its side, trowels and shattered pots and a bag of potting soil that must have fallen on
the trapdoor when the table collapsed, blocking it shut.
“Some of us are still down here, you know!” Maggie’s impatient voice echoed up from down below. “Oh, the heck with this...”
He heard her on the ladder, and a moment later her head popped through, wide-eyed and almost giddy. That’s what Child Maggie
must have looked like, high on too many cookies and Eleanor Ashley novels, filling up notebooks and spying on neighbors. He
wanted to go back in time and be her very best friend.
“It’s the greenhouse!” Maggie’s voice was full of wonder as he helped her off the ladder. Their breath fogged in the air,
and snow blew through holes in the glass.
“Not a very good one,” Ethan said as she aimed the light on row after row of blackened plants that stood dead and covered
with a fine layer of snow like trees too long after Christmas.
“Maybe I’m showing my ignorance, but aren’t greenhouses supposed to be... not freezing?” He shivered and put his hands
in his pockets as Maggie turned the cell phone’s flashlight on the broken panes of glass that were somehow darker than the
others.
“What’s that?”
He rubbed a finger across the glass, and it came away black and gritty. “Soot.” He turned to look at Maggie, and at the same
time they both said, “Fire.”
It was pitch-black and freezing, but, suddenly, something went on high alert inside of Ethan. There was a bag of fertilizer
ten feet from where the flames had licked along the floor and across a shelf covered with chemicals. He could track the way
the fire had shot up the glass walls and made them shatter with the heat.
“Maggie...” he started, but she was making her way down the long row of tables, looking at the blackened plants, brushing
snow off nameplates as she passed them.
“Henbane. Foxglove. Catha edulis. Oleander.” One was in a cage. “Ricinus communis.” One had a red ribbon tied around the base
like it might be the worst gift ever. “Nightshade.” She looked up at him. “Ethan...” He’d never heard Maggie’s voice sound
like it sounded then, trembling and uncertain and afraid. “These are all poisonous. This is a poison garden.”
Ethan couldn’t keep from grinning, biting back a laugh. “Leave it to Eleanor...”
But Maggie wasn’t smiling, wasn’t beaming. Instead, she was shaking her head. “Do you know...” Her voice broke. She swallowed
hard. “Do you know what happens when poisonous plants burn?”
Her hand trembled. The light shook. And then he got it—
“They turn into poisonous smoke.”
There was only one door, and Ethan rushed to it and pushed. It shifted a little, but only an inch.
“It’s jammed.” He took a small step back and lowered his shoulder, took the door at something between a lunge and a run, but
it still didn’t budge and all he got for his trouble was a sharp pain in his bad shoulder. But Ethan had suddenly forgotten
to care. He reared back and kicked. Nothing.
Maggie was standing behind him. “Maybe they locked it after the fire... Maybe...” She pressed against the glass, aiming
the light and trying to see outside.
“Maggie—”
“There’s got to be a lock or a latch or—”
“Maggie.”
She stopped and looked up at him, but he was pointing through the glass, at the crowbar that was wedged between the doorknob
and the ground.
“Maybe Eleanor or James put that there after the fire? Maybe they didn’t want anyone to come in because it was dangerous?
Maybe...” But as her voice trailed off she looked up at him, a gentle pleading in her eyes. It was like, just once, she
wanted a man to tell her she was paranoid and wrong and crazy.
But she wasn’t. She never had been.
“Or maybe someone set a fire and blocked the door and without that secret passageway Eleanor Ashley would already be dead?”