“There!” Sybil pointed her finger straight up.
Florentia squinted in the direction Sybil’s finger indicated. “Isn’t that just… decorative molding?”
Sybil shook her head. “The cracks around the outside are rectangular. This molding was specifically placed here to disguise the entrance to the attic.”
Together, they stared at it in silence for a moment.
“How do we open it?” Florentia said at last.
Gracie twisted her lips in frustration. “There’s no ladder in sight, and no cord or knob on the door. Are we certain there’s something up there? There doesn’t appear to actually be any convenient way to—”
“I am the way.” Elizabeth withdrew her rapier’s two-foot blade from its casing and swung the sharp steel up and into the crack around the molding. A quarter of the way along, the sword clanged against metal. “Found a hinge. And where there’s a hinge…”
“There’s a way in,” Jacob finished with satisfaction.
Elizabeth continued testing the perimeter around the rectangular molding. She found two equidistant hinges on one of the long sides, and in the center of the other, what felt like a sturdy lock.
“It can’t be locked.” Desperation encroached on Sybil’s fleeting sense of hope. “Not from the inside.”
“Not unless there’s someone up there,” Gracie pointed out.
Elizabeth gave her sword a fierce jab. “I hope I’ve poked a dozen holes into them.”
“Sybil’s right,” said Jacob. “Even if there’s a lock, there must be some method to unlatch it from this side. How else should anyone get in?”
“Through the window,” Graham answered automatically.
Sybil made a face. “If it weren’t locked from the inside, too.”
Elizabeth dashed to the stairway, scooped up the door stop, and brought it back to Graham. “Here, I found a lock-picking tool.”
He took the large gray rock from her and hefted it in his hands.
Gracie looked nervous. “We’re going to break a window?”
“Why not?” Florentia shrugged. “LaChapelle broke Mme. Blanchet’s window. Turnabout is fair play.”
“And we’ve already broken in,” Elizabeth added. “Might as well make it official.”
Graham grinned and raced over to the open window through which he’d entered. He hoisted himself out backwards and disappeared upwards as if he were a marionette pulled by strings.
“How does he do that?” Sybil said in awe.
“Fearlessness,” answered Elizabeth.
“And he’s part cat,” added Jacob.
The faint tinkle of breaking glass sounded outside the window.
“Stand at attention, bluestocking patrol,” Elizabeth called out. “It’s after dark and all the shops are closed, but there are still pedestrians. If any passerby overheard the glass breaking, we might have only a matter of minutes before we’re found out.”
The reading circle exchanged alarmed glances.
Footsteps creaked overhead. When they reached the rectangular molding, the other Wynchesters and the reading circle stepped back to make extra space.
Another creak, directly overhead, followed by the dull clang of a large rock against metal.
With a whoosh and a spray of dust, the trap door opened. Graham’s head poked out upside-down.
