“It was color-coded.”
“Of course it was.”
“There should’ve been a lavender tab for emotional emergencies.”
Linda’s mouth trembled, but the tears didn’t fall.
She looked at the inscription again.
“Somehow, she fell through time,” Linda whispered.
Bree turned to her.
Linda pressed one hand to her chest. “I know what it sounds like. I know missing persons cases don’t end with medieval effigies. I know all of that.”
“I know too,” Bree said.
Linda looked at the stone lady.
“But that’s my girl.”
The words opened something in the chapel.
Nothing moved. No choir of angels, no beam of sunlight, because England in November did not have a strong grasp of theatrical timing. But Bree felt it.
Not proof, exactly. Something older and less interested in being believed.
From outside came a muffled thump. Then Gaz screamed. Not shouted. Screamed.
It was high, pure, and carried through hundreds of years of masonry like a soprano discovering her range.
Bree jumped so hard she nearly dropped the brochure. Linda grabbed her arm. Maureen, the guide, froze with one hand lifted toward the effigy.
Deck’s voice came from the passage. “Gaz?”
“A rat!” Gaz shrieked from the tower. “There was a rat the size of a raccoon!”
Deck appeared in the chapel doorway, rain on his dark hair, mouth pressed flat in heroic restraint. “It was not the size of a raccoon.”
“It had shoulders!”
“I don’t think rats have shoulders.”
“This one did! It looked at me like it knew things!”
Bree said, “I cannot believe Amelia missed this.”
Linda made a sound dangerously close to laughter.
A moment later, Gaz stumbled into view beyond the chapel door, muddy to one knee, cream jumper ruined, hair damp and standing up in blond tufts. He clutched one hand to his chest like a Victorian widow whose smelling salts had failed.
“I found a corner,” he said defensively.
Bree blinked. “You found a corner?”
“I was looking in it.”
“Gaz, the castle is made of corners.”
