Anton glanced between us. “It’s okay.” He seemed to sense my need. “You two should talk.”
Lacy began tapping her foot as fast as a hummingbird in flight. She didn’t seem eager to come with me, so I gently nudged her with my elbow.
“We were heading back to the ballroom because it’s Anton’s turn. He’s being questioned by Charlie’s new deputy.” Lacy’s tone was sharp, which told me she was either angry or afraid—or both.
“I’m fine,” Anton reassured her. “Go. You two talk.”
This didn’t sound like a man with something to hide, which relieved me.
Lacy hesitated only another second before motioning for me to lead the way. I took us past the library and the solarium to a door in the wall. Opening it, we found a narrow stairwell that must’ve been some kind of servant’s back staircase. It seemed a promising place to talk alone.
I started up it, realizing a few steps in that I was already losing my breath. The stairs were steep, and there was no visible landing, the narrow hallway just leading up and up. We must’ve traveled three stories by the time two doors were visible off the top step.
I opened the door directly in front of us, and there was… nothing. Just thin strips of wooden boards.
“That’s weird,” I said. “Why would there be a door that goes nowhere?”
Lacy felt along one of the boards and tried to peer through a crack. “Looks like there’s stained glass behind here.”
“So a window that doesn’t face outdoors?”
Lacy shrugged, but fear was pinching her brows. “My parents took me to a house like this in California years ago, remember?”
I recalled a postcard from the place. It had hung on a giant peg board in my room where I kept all of my favorite things in middle school. Obviously, the house hadn’t been a fave, but Lacy always was.
“The Winchester House,” Lacy continued. “The tour guide said it was filled with spooky secrets. Stairs leading nowhere, rooms that are still being discovered ninety years after it was built. The owner had it constructed after losing her husband and infant daughter.”
“A grief house?”
Lacy nodded. “Some people think Mrs. Winchester designed it specifically to commune with her dead loved ones.”
I didn’t scare easily, but a shiver ran up my spine at those words. I tried to make light of my fear. “You think the originalMrs. Finch built this so that dead pageant queens would have a place to haunt from the other side?”
Lacy didn’t laugh and instead looked over her shoulder at the steep stairs behind us. “Maybe we should?—”
I knew she was about to suggest we go back down and join the others, so I cut her off. “We need to talk.”
I opened the door to the left and was happy to see that it led to an actual room. I let Lacy step inside first and closed the door behind us, realizing only as the latch clicked closed that we’d been sunk into absolute darkness. There were no windows, and I couldn’t feel a light switch anywhere along the wall.
I pulled out my phone and flipped on the light beam, so we could get a vague sense of the space.
“I don’t like this,” Lacy mumbled, turning back to the door and wriggling the handle that didn’t give way. “Nope, I don’t like thisat all.”
“Don’t freak out,” I said, trying the handle for myself. It twisted back and forth, but no latch clicked to open it. I released the door handle and held up my phone to check for a signal that didn’t exist.
“What?” Lacy asked, her eyes widening.
“I can’t call out,” I said, lowering my voice and typing out a text to Charlie that I hoped didn’t sound too frantic. The phone was sending and sending and sending… before it failed completely.
“Shit,” Lacy said, followed by a series of other expletives. Then, she leaned against the wall and sank to the floor, repeating the first word over and over.
I walked around the room, holding up my phone in one corner and the next. Still nothing. “Someone will notice we’re missing and come looking for us,” I tried with a conviction I did not feel.
In the meantime, I shone my phone around the room until it landed on a large wooden chest, overflowing with what appeared to be lace, tulle, and other fabrics.
Lacy went toward it and tugged at a bunch of material. “Old pageant dresses?” She held up a light purple get-up with seed pearls running across the bodice. “This one looks like it’s from the 1940s.”
“Looks like it,” I said, recalling the times she would dress up in Aunt DeeDee’s pageant costumes and twirl around the loft as if she were on the runway. I refused to wear them, but I would occasionally let Lacy braid and twist my hair into all kinds of elaborate up-dos.
