Chapter Twenty-eight
The manor is dark. Pockets of light illuminate spots on the wall no bigger than dinner plates.
The candles blow out as I pass, leaving the path behind me in utter darkness and pushing me onward.
There is only the next step, and the next.
I don’t know my destination, but the softest whisper of music pulls at me.
The tempo is slow and dreamy, picking me up and sweeping me forward.
Onward.
No turning back now.
A dead-end block me from the music, and when my feet stop, so too does the playing. Instead, there’s a single tone. One key is pressed down repeatedly, like a reminder to keep going. Only by moving will my song be played out to completion.
Onward.
But how?
I touch the wall. As my fingertips graze the crumbling paper, the wall peels away, revealing a door.
I’m not surprised, and I’m not afraid. This is a house of secrets. A house of liars.
I tap the wall in time with the hammer striking the chord. Rap…Rap…Rap. The door swings wide, and I’m where I knew I’d be. Ephraim’s office. The old man sits in his chair. His face is a whirl of unfinished oil paint: pink, peach, and ochre.
I circle around behind him to the shelves. Books, trinkets, and that scroll each stand proudly on display for all time. The letters on the scroll keep shifting around. Two words flit into being. As one appears, the other fades, ink dancing across the parchment as it forms.
Muniments. Requiem. Muniments. Requiem.
I leave the eternal dance and drag my feet across the thickening carpet, feeling the pile grow beneath my feet. Like weeds, it climbs between my toes and tries to hold me in place.
At the window, the maze awaits, but as I watch, it falls as flat as a collapsed house of cards, revealing the glass woman and the fairytale cottage.
As above. So below. Balance. Dark and light. Secrets and puzzles.
“Jules, you need to wake up.”
Am I asleep? I’m tired. I should sleep.
“Wake up. Come on, Jules.”
I try to turn around to see who is calling me.
“Get up!”
Eric? Why would Eric be here? If Eric’s here. I’m in trouble. I need to move. I need to get up.
“Wake up!”
I shoot upright and am halfway across the double bed before I can see straight.
My dream-addled mind expects the cool wall of my bedroom in the Tower to be pressed against my back.
My fear expects the grab of my father’s fist. As the duck egg blue walls filter in, my memory floods with a summary.
Not the Tower. The compound. My room. Dax and Aiden are gone.
I’m alone. There’s a stranger here. No, it’s Ben. Ben is here.
“What the—”
He raises a finger to his lips, immediately shutting me up and drawing attention to the spike of fear radiating through his wide eyes and tight mouth. Something is wrong. “Shh. We need to move. Now! They’re here. They’re in the apartment.”
He leads me to the hidden panel in the wall behind my bed and nods for me to go first. I grab my phone, but Ben shakes his head.
Still, there’s no way I’m leaving it. I press the off button and white-knuckle grip it.
He sighs and grabs my shoes, hurrying me along with a scowl and another nod.
I crawl into the space and slide back to let him inside too.
He crawls in backwards in a practised semi-crouch and slides the panel into position almost silently, just as I hear the handle twist on my bedroom door.
Ben freezes. His gaze slides to meet mine, and I read the warning in them. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t make a sound.
I’m reminded of that night stuck in my closet with Dax.
Is nowhere safe? Can I not have one sanctuary?
The invasion of privacy, the desecration of my space by people who want to hurt me; it eats at me.
I’m so sick of having nothing and being treated like I’m nothing.
This space was supposed to be safe, but the guys are gone less than a week and someone has breached security.
How? How did they get past the patrols, the walls, the gates, the cameras?
Through the wall, we hear the muffled voice of a man. “Miss Girard?”
He sounds harmless. Like he’s just checking in on me. Though why he’d need to do that in the middle of the night, makes no sense. Is he security?
I do my best to ask silently, with furrowed brows and a tilt of my head in the direction of the room. Ben shakes his head. Either he’s not sure or I’m wrong.
Heavy boots clunk, making their way closer.
Ben’s hands flatten against the panel, his arms strain, and I realise he’s pushing against it.
Doing so makes it impossible to see the cracks delineating the secret door and, I imagine, will defend against a breach should our intruder already know about this tunnel.
Though how long we’ll hold someone off, crouched like this, I don’t know.
In the room we hear a whoosh of movement and three soft thumps. Two pillows and the duvet hit the floor. He growls out a far less gentle, “FUCK!” and things go quiet for a long moment.
“She’s not here. Yes, I’m in her fucking room. The light-blue one.
Where? The mirror? Okay, hang on…”
Six stomps. The mirror creaks as it opens, letting him into my closet and bathroom beyond.
“Rich people are weird as fuck,” he mumbles. The sound of his grumbling fades out as he checks out my bathroom.
Ben rounds on me. “We’ll go to the cottage, but we can’t move until he’s left the room. There’s a chance he’ll hear us on the stairs.”
“Okay,” is all I manage to say before the boot thumps are back.
“No, she’s not taking a piss either. I’ll have to check the other rooms, but I don’t want to alert their little spy kid.
Yeah, well, he’s sleeping here tonight. I watched them both on the cameras.
Do you think there’s a chance she’s with him?
” He laughs darkly at the reply. “Yeah, I guess fucking two men would be enough for anyone.” Another laugh.
“I can’t exactly walk into Dax’s room. What’ll my excuse be?
I just wanted to sniff the boss’s bedsheets?
Fuck that.” A long silence. “Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me that before?
Hang on, I need to hurry this up. I’ve already been in here too long.
Nah, worst-case scenario, I’ll alert them that she’s missing.
It’ll give me a good excuse to tear through the other rooms. Okay… Hang on.”
He stomps away. The mirror squeaks again.
“They know about the cupboard door?” Ben mumbles to himself and then realises what that means for us. “He’ll be checking Dax’s room. We go now!”
Ben stands up and reaches for my hand in the dark.
He pulls me to the edge of the stairs and slowly steps down, introducing me to the first step.
From there, we rush as silently as possible, down, and around, and down and around, in between the walls.
There are places where we duck and others where we have to walk sideways to navigate the narrowest of the paths down.
When we finally hit the bottom, four floors below, we’re in the concrete tunnel under the main building.
Ben releases my hand and taps on the wall before flicking a switch.
The tunnel lights up with a dull blue-green glow from old, caged emergency lights that are spaced every few feet along the wall.
From here I can see a wall at the end, though I know the tunnel zigzags along the way as it leads us to the maze.
“Let’s move fast. We’ll turn the lights out at the other end to make it slower for anyone to follow.”
“Are we safe in the cottage? Is there another way out of there?”
“Yes, to both questions. The maze is as good a hiding place as any, but there is a second exit from our side. Plus, nobody on the current staff roster knows about the cottage. Though Sylvie might. Not that she’s ever gone down there, so who knows?”
“Are we both thinking this is an inside job, then? I mean, he’s obviously on staff.”
“Yeah, and whoever was on the phone knew about the mirror and the cupboard doors. The mirror would likely be known to most people. That’s not a secret, but the cupboard is only known to the Trevainne family, Dax and Tom, Aiden, me, and Frank. None of the UACT crew knows of it.
“So that’s it? Our suspect pool? It’s one of the people Dax trusts the most?”
“It looks like it, unless I’m forgetting someone.”
“There’s me too,” I add.
Ben rolls his eyes. “Are you telling me you sent that man after yourself?
“No, but you only just showed me those paths, and suddenly someone else knows about them? What if they have me tracked or are listening through my phone or…”
Ben looks at my hands. “Is your phone off?”
My phone is white-knuckle gripped but switched off. “Yeah.”
“Give it to me.”
“What?”
“We’re going to test your theory. Give me your phone.” I hand it over reluctantly.
“Passcode?”
“I don’t have one.”
Ben raises a solo brow. “We’ll discuss that later. Wait here for me.” Ben runs back along the tunnel in the dark. I see him light up when my phone boots up, flaring the ceiling in a streak of blue light and a distant burst of the brand’s jingle. Within a few minutes, he’s back. Without the phone.
“What did you do?”
“Silenced it and left it at the other end. If you’re being tracked, they’ll make their way to its location.”
“Do you think they’ll find the tunnel?”
“No. That spot is roughly under the grand staircase in the main foyer. So, we’ll see him looking around for where you might be hiding.
In the meantime, we need to alert Cas. Here—” Ben hands me his phone while he opens the cottage door.
I press the button. The phone lights up with a passcode screen.
He doesn’t even look at me as he narrates. “6794312.”
“You could have unlocked it for me, but you didn’t. Did you want me to know your code?”
“If it helps to keep you safe, yes. If anything happens to me, take it and call for help. You’ll remember that number, won’t you?”
“Somehow, I think you already know I will.”