They headed once more toward the entrance hall but were a few yards from reaching it when suddenly a door ahead flung open. Caleb stopped abruptly, catching Amelia’s arm to keep her still, and they waited for someone to leap out and accuse them of shenanigans. No one appeared, however, and after a minute the door swung shut again without any human intervention, its latch clicking back into place with a contemptuoustsk.
“Well, that’s not spooky,” Caleb murmured. They turned back to the entrance hall, and he sighed. “Butthatis.”
With some frustration, they considered the drawing room in which they now stood. Maniacally floral wallpaper in shades of mauve and pink would have disoriented them had not the sudden relocation already done so. Candlelight drifted with grief-colored ghosts that reached out indistinct hands toward them, gasping, weeping, starved for humanity.
“This is nonsense,” Amelia declared in strident tones. “I cannot be wasting my time in such fashion. Students are in peril from Vanity Tunnicliffe and need me to save them.”
“Us,” Caleb corrected her.
“That’s what I said.” Snapping the locket shut, she jammed it into her skirt pocket, then marched for the door. Throwing it ajar, she stepped through.
Darkness swallowed her whole.
—
“Damn,” Amelia muttered,since there was no one around to hear her bad language. The darkness pressed against her like an old eiderdown quilt, hot, suffocating, and smelling faintly of mold. Reaching through it, she discovered bare wooden walls close by on either side of her.
“Secret passageway!” she spoke aloud, trying to diminish the oppressive pitch-black silence with her voice. She did not know whether to prioritize aggravation or a relief that she was still inside the living world. Panic, however, made a vociferous argument that it should take precedence.You’re going to be trapped in this house forever,it screamed along her nerves.You’ll become one of the nameless ghosts, begging to be heard, eternally misunderstood.
“Rubbish,” Amelia chided herself coolly. Did panic not appreciate that she was Professor Amelia Tarrant? Certainly,this current snafu was a challenge—how exactly did one find a concealed exit in complete darkness?—but she’d faced worse over the years. She’d been dragged by magic into a funereal urn; stuck in a haunted castle tower when its ancient stairs collapsed; and forced to search the basement of Miss Honeychurch’s Kitchenware Museum for an enchanted egg cup. This now represented nothing more than a time-consuming diversion.
“Amelia!”Caleb’s voice, faint but heartwarming, echoed from a distance. Immediately, panic breathed a sigh of relief. Amelia’s perception of the world reoriented until Caleb became its north, and she turned, making her way slowly toward him.
“Caleb!” she called, her fingers trailing over the walls as she went, feeling for any suggestion of an exit.The spiders will all be above me,she assured herself.
The spiders will all be above me!her brain echoed, but in the opposite tone. She picked up speed.
“Amelia!” Caleb shouted again. A rhythmic knocking followed, like a heartbeat, calm and steady, to guide her. Closing her eyes, Amelia focused on it, her own heartbeat in synchronicity. Closer and closer…
“Meely,” Caleb seemed to murmur into her ear. She felt him near, his smiling golden spirit encompassing her. The now-familiar flutters stirred within her stomach in recognition and welcome.
“Caleb!”
“I can hear you,” he replied from behind layers of magic. “Sing something, and I’ll find you.”
She laughed. “Certainly not!”
“Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,”he chanted, and Amelia rolled her eyes. It was a nursery rhyme they’d used like private codethroughout their childhood, and which she’d abandoned for the sake of dignity in adolescence. Still, every now and again Caleb would sing a line or two just to tease her—for example, from the audience while she was trying to give a serious presentation. He was a nuisance, a pest.
“Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?”she sang in response.
“Stop there!” His tone was so serious, Amelia halted at once. “Don’t move!”
“Caleb…” she began warily.
CRASH!
Alarmed, Amelia leaped back as one of the walls shuddered. What the—
CRASH!Suddenly a section of the wall slammed open, sending light bursting into the passageway. Dust rained down like shattered darkness. The house groaned so dreadfully that it felt for a moment like it might collapse entirely. Amelia cowered, hands over her head to protect her from the terrifying possibility of falling arachnids. Caleb walked through the space where a secret door had stood before he’d kicked it open so forcefully that its latch had broken and its edge splintered. He looked like an angel: radiant with golden lamplight, furious at the darkness in which he’d found her. Without a word, he picked her up like a sack of flour, sparing no consideration whatsoever for her self-locomotive capabilities, and carried her out to a painfully bright room. Amelia squinted, her eyes burning as they tried to adjust to the sudden change.
“Did you have to break open the door?” she asked.
“Yes.” Caleb set her on her feet, and half a second later she was being hugged to within an inch of her life. Sighing, she relaxed against his body, allowing him the comfort of comforting her.
“Din, din, don. Din, din, don,”he whispered, completing the rhyme. Amelia lifted her face toward him, this man who was her sun, and he smiled. Unthinkingly, instinctively, she kissed that smile. He welcomed her without hesitation or complication, just a deep need to reconnect. The kiss was soft, warm. It went on for a few seconds or forever…In some ways, Amelia felt they had been kissing like this since the moment they met. Finally, with her calm restored, she laid her head against his shoulder again.
“Please stop disappearing on me,” he said in a conversational tone. “It does uncomfortable things to my blood pressure.”
