“It’s fine!” Morrie panted. “I’ve got everything under control—argh!”
CLATTER! CRASH!
“What happened?” I surged forward, my hands in front of my face to feel for obstacles as I fought my way through centuries of spiderwebs to reach Morrie.
“I caught Grimalkin’s tail, but she scratched me and I sort of… fell through the wall. It must’ve been thin here—hang on a second…” There were a few more clatters and thumps, and then a warm hand circled my wrist. Morrie pulled me close as a frigid draft screamed past us. “Mina, there’s a tunnel behind the wall.”
“What?”
“A tunnel. It’s where the draft’s coming in. There was a small hole in the corner, just big enough for a little cat to fit in and… well, looky here.” Morrie swung the beam into the mouth of the tunnel.
“Morrie,what?”
“Go on. Guess.”
“I hope you’re not mocking the visually impaired, because I’m not in the mood. Tell me what you see.”
“It’s all the small stuff that’s gone missing from the shop over the last couple of weeks. Your sparkly pen. Your hair clips. A couple of your mother’s expensive baubles. It looks like you’re not the only one who loves sparkles.”
“Oh, Grimalkin.” I couldn’t help but grin. I loved that crazy cat.
“This is wild.” Morrie held up the treasures under the light. Glitter sparkled as my mother’s baubles and several of my favorite bobby pins came into view. “We have a real-life cat burglar in our midst. It makes me wonder if Grimalkin was the one who took the presents.”
“Meow?” Grimalkin batted at Morrie’s arm, as if to say, ‘hands off my treasure.’
“That’s impossible.” I rubbed Grimalkin between the ears until she purred.
Morrie shone the flashlight back into the hole. “Maybe, but I think we might have another idea of how our burglar entered the shop. In the corner of the panel is a board that’s nearly rotted away, where Grimalkin was squeezing through. Now I’ve broken the whole thing, I can see it’s a door fitted on a spring. You can open it from the inside and out. This has probably been here for centuries and we never knew about it.”
“That’s so cool.” I shoved my pilfered belongings into my pocket and gripped his shoulder. “Help me in. We’ve got to see where it leads.”
Good old Morrie. It never occurred to him to question if it was a good idea for us to explore a dark and possibly dangerous tunnel without telling anyone else what we were doing (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). He fitted my hand into the crook of his arm and steadied me as I felt for each step with my feet. “I’m stooping because the ceiling’s low,” he said. “But you should be fine to stand up straight.”
“Thanks, Morrie.” We shuffled down the passage, the thin beam of light from both our phones illuminating stone walls slick with damp. Above our heads, the cold air rushed in from a vent that must connect with the street above, judging by the tiny grey shaft of light it cast on the ground.
“Watch your head,” Morrie said, just as my forehead smacked into a low arch.
“Thanks for the warning,” I muttered, rubbing my head.
Water dribbled down the brick walls, and my boots crunched on ice formed between the stones.What a miserable place.
“This stone looks old,” Morrie said. “This tunnel could have been part of a drainage system for the village, or a secret passage for smugglers, or it could be connected somehow to the time-traveling room.”
Another of Nevermore Bookshop’s uncanny secrets.
It didn’t take long until we reached the other end of the tunnel. My foot kicked something on the floor. I picked it up and felt it in my hands. It was a stainless steel dish – the kind you’d give a dog for water or food.
“There’s stairs here,” Morrie led me up narrow stone steps. The wall on one side of us turned from stone to wood, and I had the sense we were moving between the walls of a house.
There was a click as Morrie popped open another door. We stepped out into a bright room. I blinked, and in a few moments my eyes had adjusted enough to make out the space.
We were in a bedroom – small with a low ceiling, but comfortable. The walls were painted pastel yellow and covered with posters of cats and puppies and pop stars. An overflowing suitcase at the end of the bed spilled clothes across the floor, and a stack of books on the nightstand showed the room’s inhabitants had a thing for YA vampire fiction.
But that wasn’t the most extraordinary thing about the room. On every surface were stacked bright colored boxes and parcels tied with bows. Gifts of all shapes and sizes, many of them opened and the contents raided. I picked up a gift tag and flipped it over to read the message written in a child’s loopy handwriting.
DEAR ANIMALS OF ARGLETON. I HOPE YOU FIND SAFE HOMES FOR CHRISTMAS. LOVE ARTHUR.
The presents from our Christmas tree. We’d found them. But who had taken them—
