Page 107

He squeezes my hand, then starts up the stairs. The steps narrow as we climb, turning tighter with each rotation. It feels endless, like we’ve gone up multiple floors.

My legs are already aching when the air starts to grow warmer.

Somewhere above us, a door opens and then slams closed again.

We stop at the top of the landing, a wall separating us from what I can only assume is Henry Mayfair’s study. And beyond it, voices.

“We are running out of time, Giles.” Tillie is pacing, frantic. I can hear each step she takes across the room. “Our guests are searching. Every day that passes one of us finds one or both of them snooping around the house. In the archives, in the halls at night. We have to find it.”

Theo turns toward me, eyes wide.

Giles sighs in that put-upon way of his. “We have searched this study more times than I can count. If the orrery were hidden in here, we would have found it long before two random professors started snooping around.”

“They think we’re looking for the orrery,” I mouth to Theo.

“Victoria tore this place apart before she died,” Tillie fires back. “You know she did. She was obsessed. She had to have known it was hidden somewhere in this room.”

I release a breath and whisper, “Victoria’s research is starting to feel a little less genealogical.”

“That thing drove her to do what she did to Henry⁠—”

A beat. A shaky breath.

“—and to Peter. We still have no idea who came for her or why. Then they just show up out of nowhere like this. Peter’s old lawyer, of all people. Who knows what Peter told him all those years ago. No one in this house is safe as long as it’s still somewhere within these walls.”

Theo’s fingers tighten around mine.

Giles lowers his tone. “We don’t know for certain that she killed Henry.”

“Don’t you dare pretend,” Tillie snaps. “You know too much of what happened before and after to convince yourself or anyone else you don’t know without the shadow of a doubt that it was her.”

Theo mouths, “Holy fucking shit.”

Giles continues, still maddeningly calm. “Tillie, even if all of this is true, tearing this study apart again will accomplish nothing. Let the past stay buried.”

“Not when those two are downstairs digging it all up again!” She slams something—a book against a desk? A drawer? Something hollow rattles. “If they get their hands on it, everything we have done to keep this family from tearing one another apart over the years will completely unravel. Why do you think Henry kept it hidden in the first place? Mrs. Mayfair does not need to deal with the legacy dispute turned battle royale that will ensue if that thing sees the light of day.”

Their footsteps move closer to where we are on the other side of the wall.

Much closer.

They’re standing right on the other side.

It is at that exact moment that the edge of the step I’m standing on crumbles away and my foot smacks down loudly onto the one below it.

Giles murmurs, “Tillie, the bookshelf—did you hear that?”

We do not hesitate. Theo pulls me by my hand as quickly and quietly as possible back down the stairs.

Stumbling, scrambling back down the spiral steps as fast as the cramped space allows. The stone echoes each of our footfalls throughout the stairway.

Their muffled voices fade the further we descend, and we finally reach the bottom landing, practically diving back through the hidden door before either of us even breathes again.

Theo leans in close, whispering, “We need to get out of here before they figure out what’s on the other side of that wall.”

“There’s no way they figure out how to get through whatever hidden door that is,” I whisper back. “It’s been four years since Henry died. If they haven’t by now, they⁠—”

A loud groan comes from somewhere far above us.