“I don’t want to hear any more.” She looked at Owen. “We can go now.”
“Good idea,” he said. “Because the walls are starting to close in on us.”
She shuddered. “I know what you mean. This lobby has a very claustrophobic vibe. The whole house does.”
“No,” Owen said. “I mean the walls areclosing in.”
Sebastian growled.
Alice glanced around, bewildered. The lobby did seem a bit smaller than it had a few minutes ago. The ceiling was lower. Was it just her imagination, or were the antique sofa, lamps, and end tables a few inches closer?
And then she heard the muffled rumble of hidden gears.
“Oh, I see,” she whispered.
“Fuck,” Kelbrook rasped. “What’s happening?”
“The walls are moving,” Twitchell said, his voice rising with panic. “So is the ceiling. We’ll be crushed if we don’t get out of this room.”
“The basement,” Kelbrook said. He lurched toward the stairs. “There’s an exit into the tunnels. Rose showed it to me years ago.”
“It might be locked,” Twitchell said. “Odds are better on the roof. There’s a fire escape ladder. I saw it that first night when I—”
He abruptly stopped talking, evidently concluding this was not a good time to mention that he had pushed Travis Poole off the roof.
“The basement hole-in-the-wall door is open,” Kelbrook said, heading for the stairs. “I checked earlier today.”
Twitchell did not waste any time asking questions. He rushed to follow Kelbrook to the narrow staircase.
Alice looked at Owen and waited for his judgment. His eyes burned with a savage light. He shook his head.
“Bad plan,” he said.
“I agree. Too obvious. Remember what Rose Ash said. ‘Ignore the obvious. It will lead to your death.’ ”
“She’s a murderer,” Owen said. “We can’t believe anything she says.”
“In this case, I think we can. Call it another calculated risk.”
Twitchell and Kelbrook were already pounding down the steps to the basement. A moment later she heard the stairwell door open and close.
Muffled gears continued to grind. She looked up. The ceiling was several inches lower.
“We really do need to get out of this lobby,” she said. “What about the hidden passageways?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Owen said. “I saw what looked like an entrance to them when I got the chairs out of the pantry.”
“I knew you had spotted something of interest while you were in there.”
“Let’s go.”
They started across the rapidly downsizing lobby, but directly in front of them a large section of the floor dropped away with only the squeak of hinges.
Alice shrieked and scrambled backward. She crashed into Owen. He wrapped a hand around her upper arm and pulled her farther away from the pit that stretched the width of the lobby. Sebastian wriggled free of her grasp and vaulted up onto her shoulder. He growled.
“There goes the option of escaping through the hidden hallways,” Owen said.
Alice stared into the abyss revealed by the missing floor. There was no way to get across the opening to reach the pantry.
