Sienna grits her teeth as she considers the typewriter.
“Whatwereyou thinking?” she asks again, touching the keys. Her hand stops, gaze dipping to the desk’s two drawers. She didn’t break into Arthur Fletch’s room looking for clues about the book, but now that she’s here...
She hooks her finger into the handle of the right desk drawer and tugs it open, hoping to discover—what? The ending of the book, finished and waiting to be found?—but there’s nothing but a stack of blank paper. Her heart sinks until she checks the left drawer, which holds a small leather notebook. She snatches it up, fingers shaking slightly as she flicks the pages, searching for answers.
Fletch’s handwriting is even worse than hers.
On one page, she’s able to make outJulia—Petrarch’s first name—but the two lines after are crossed out so viciously they can’t be salvaged. There are scribbles about places and times, references to earlier sections of the book, but none of the notes go past the pages she’s already read.
Sienna lets out a strangled sound as she puts the notebook back, and shuts the drawer, a little too hard. She shoves her hands into the pockets of the robe, startling as one hand brushes crumpled paper. Pulling it out, she smooths the page against the desk.
It’s a typewritten letter. Well, part of one, abandoned mid-sentence, but unlike Fletch’s illegible penmanship, this is readable.
Eleanor—
Forgive the delay. I know you’re impatient. God knows, everyone is. But the harder I try to find the end of our dear Julia, the more she pulls away. I feel like I’m chasing shadows, and I’m beginning to fear that I can’t
Sienna stares down at the half-finished letter. Was Arthur making excuses? Or had the master of mystery, the titan of twists, written himself into a corner even he couldn’t escape? Even without the slash and press of pen, there is a quiet desperation to the printed words, to the fact that they were abandoned, torn off the typewriter roll and crumpled, shoved into the pocket of his robe. How long ago did he write this? A month before his death? A week? A day?
Sienna’s gaze flicks to the window over the desk, the unbroken view of the sea, whitecaps churning with the waves, and for the first time, she wonders if it was indeed an accident. Or if there’s more to the story.
She swallows, feeling suddenly like a trespasser. She’s about to fold the paper and slip it back into the pocket when she notices something.
The capital G inGod knowsis out of line, its bottom curve sitting just below the other letters. Her attention flicks back to the typewriter. She grabs a sheet of blank paper from the drawer and feeds it onto the roller, then types the two words in all capitals—
GET OUT
To prove what she already knows.
Whoever wrote the note to scare Millie, they usedthistypewriter to do it. Which means that either Arthur Fletch’s ghost really is fucking with them, or someone else broke into this room before she did. Her mind instantly returns to Kenzo. Kenzo, who’s been nothing but nice since the moment they met. Kenzo, who didn’t have to tell her about finding the secret door. He also told her he couldn’t get in, because it was locked—but he could have picked it, like she did.
Sienna rubs her eyes, trying to work through her suspicions, one by one, the way she would a tricky plot. He still doesn’t strike her as the type to pull a silly prank. Butwasit just a silly prank? Or a subtle way to rile up the competition? To put them all on edge?
There’s certainly enough at stake.
Writers are a neurotic lot, easily thrown off their game. It’s why they like rituals, routines. A special mug. A specific pen. A white noise app. Some call them crutches, others tools, but the fact is, a bad day’s focus or a bad night’s sleep could mean the difference between winning and losing.
Sienna chews her lip and looks around. Whoever was up here—andsomeonewas—could have done more than type a message. They could have found something, taken it. But given the state of the room, it’s impossible to tell what’s been disturbed.
She pulls the sheet of paper free of the typewriter, unsure what to do with it. All this proves is that she’s not the only one who broke into Fletch’s room. A dry voice in her head points out that this is the kind of energy she should be putting intowriting.
And the voice is probably right.
Sienna peels the robe off and hangs it back on the hook as a second voice chimes in:The book that Fletch couldn’t even finish?She shakes her head, trying to banish that thought, but as she rounds the bed toward the steps, crossing a threadbare rug, the floorboards beneath it let out a different sound, more a squeak than a creak, the way a wall sounds different when you knock against it, depending on whether there’s empty space or a stud.
She toes back the rug to find a trapdoor. Her breath catches as she pulls it up, revealing a ladder running straight down into the dark.
How many secrets, she wonders, does Fletch’s house have?
She climbs down, pausing every few steps to listen, since she has no idea where the ladder leads. When she reaches the bottom, she sees a door, light seeping beneath the cracks. It’s small, little wider than she is, and she presses her ear to the wall until she’s sure that no one is there, then turns the little knob. The narrow passage leads, not onto a stretch of hall, but into a bedroom.
Millie’sbedroom.
Sienna freezes, shallow horror lapping at her skin. Because it’s one thing to sneak into a room through the door. It’s another to climb out of thewall. While the person behind it issleeping.
She shivers, foot hovering off the floor until she’s sure the room is empty.
Then she steps through and swings the hidden door shut. It disappears, pattern flush with the wall. She makes a mental note to revisit the dollhouse in the library and see if there are more passages burrowing through the house. The thought of someone climbing through the yellow wall into her room makes her queasy.
