It wasn’t a hallway, and it wasn’t a corridor. It certainly didn’t feel like the rest of the house. It was more like a cave or a tunnel that sloped down into the earth. The floor was cold and hard against her feet, and she kept one hand on the damp stone wall as she inched toward a light that flickered in the distance.
With every step, the air got colder and damper, and a part of April was afraid that a wave might wash up and carry her out to sea. But she kept walking anyway.
Water dripped from the ceiling, a steady plop, plop, plop that echoed, and April wished she’d brought Mr. Winterborne some soup. It was the kind of place where you could only hope to be warm on the inside.
When the tunnel opened into a big cavernous space, April stopped. A fire burned in a stone fireplace on the far side of the room, and she watched the flickering light dance over the tall, arching ceiling. More tunnels branched off, stretching out to who knew where, and April turned slowly, taking everything in.
Until she heard the words that stopped her. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
The light was so dim that it took her a second to find him in the shadows, sitting on an overturned crate, the pillowcase beside him. The voice sounded like Winterborne House looked: smooth and elegant, rich and cultured. It sounded like the voice of a movie star. But the body it came from looked like something that had been carried in by the sea and tossed up on the rocks below. Battered. Bruised. And just barely hanging together as he leaned into the light.
“Uh . . . thank you?” April said when she couldn’t think of anything else. He was gnawing on a chicken leg, and when he was finished, he tossed the bone onto the fire, sending sparks up like fireflies. Then he dug back into the bag, pulled out a piece of bread, and bit into it like it might be the last thing he’d ever eat.
“Don’t thank me,” he said with his mouth full. “A dog is smarter than I thought you were.”
When he bit another hunk out of the bread and chased it with another chicken leg, April wanted to tell him that it would take one to know one, but she didn’t want to tempt her luck. He might decide to bite her next if she wasn’t careful, so instead she asked, “What is this place?”
He held his hands out wide. “It’s Winterborne House, the illustrious home of my illustrious family. Don’t you recognize a mansion when you see one?”
Maybe it was the look in his eyes or his long greasy hair and ragged beard, the black coat that was fraying at the edges, or the fingerless gloves that held the precious food, but for the first time April wondered if maybe Smithers and Ms. Nelson had locked him down here because it was better for the world to think him dead than to know for a fact that he was crazy.
But when he saw the look on her face, he laughed. And it was the most sane sound she’d ever heard him make.
“We’re in the cellars, April. They run all under the house. They’ve been blocked off for decades.”
Then the wind blew again, too hard to call it a draft, and April shivered.
“For good reason,” he said, digging into the pillowcase again and pulling out an apple.
April looked at the madman who sounded like a professor or a politician or . . . a billionaire.
“Why are you here?”
Apple juice ran down his chin, and she thought he might choke on the apple’s core, but he just brought the tattered sleeve of his filthy coat up and wiped his face.
“The same reason you’re here. There’s a price on my head. Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t know. Thanks to dear Uncle Evert, the whole world knows. But if you’ve come to collect your thirty pieces of silver, you should know”—he made a show of patting his pockets—“I must have left my checkbook in my other coat.”
April rolled her eyes. “I mean, why are you here? This is your house, right? You’re a billionaire! Don’t you have a bedroom with silk sheets and . . . you know . . . a shower upstairs?”
For a long time he was too silent. Too still. “I’m not here, April. I’m nowhere.”
“Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
But then the strangest thing happened: he smiled. His eyes twinkled, and he was handsome, almost charming, as he said, “I know.”
April didn’t mean to step closer. Her body just did that sometimes, move without her permission. Because even filthy and smelly as he was, Gabriel Winterborne was like a magnet, drawing trouble to him, and April had been told by at least six different foster mothers that Trouble was her middle name.
“But you’re not dead.” It seemed like a fairly important point, but he just shook his head.
“The Winterbornes died, April. Everybody knows that.” He couldn’t face her when he said it, April noticed. He acted busy, rummaging in the pillowcase, pulling out the soap and the razor, the cheese and the scissors. And when he said, “Thank you for the food,” it was almost like it was hard to admit that she’d actually helped. That the big bad billionaire had needed the little girl who wore her entire net worth around her neck.
“Though I must admit”—he leveled her with a glare—“I would have preferred it if you’d forgotten the salt.”
She might have blushed if she hadn’t been so desperate.
“I can get you more food,” she told him. “And clothes. And anything else you need.”
“I don’t need anything. Now go back to bed. It’s late—or early. Smithers will start looking for you eventually, and, trust me, you don’t want Smithers looking for you.” For a split second she saw him as the little boy he must have been once. “And don’t come back here. Ever again.”
“Ms. Nelson is suspicious!” April blurted. “She knows someone’s been sneaking around. She’s smart, you know.”
A sad smile crossed his face. “Oh, I know.”
It hurt him to hear the woman’s name, so she didn’t say it again. She just warned, “Someone will catch you if you keep sneaking around.”
“So?” He was rising to his feet. “As you’ve said, it is my house.”
“But you’re dead,” she reminded him, and the scary glare morphed into a mischievous gleam.
“I am indeed.”
“So you need me. To get you food and stuff. Even dead men have to eat, it looks like.”
“And why would you help me?” he snapped. “Money? Evert will give you five million, but maybe you think I’ll give you six to hold your tongue?”
“I don’t want your money!”
His laugh was colder than the wind. “Everyone wants my money.”
“I need your help!”
It was the honest truth, but he looked at her like she was playing a joke on him—a mean one.
“I can’t help you, April. I can’t help anyone.”
“No. You can help me,” she said. Before she even realized what she was doing, she was reaching for her key, but the chain was tangled in her hair, so April jerked. She felt the chain break, but she didn’t care. She just held up her key and pleaded, “I have this! And I need you to help me find out what it opens.”
For a moment, he stood perfectly still, staring at April and the small key in her hand as if both of them were figments of his imagination. His mouth was agape, and his breath came harder, and it felt like, in that moment, the room went from cold to hot.
April was definitely getting warmer.
“My mom left this for me. That’s the Winterborne crest, right?” She pointed at the part of the key that had matched the tiny box at the museum. “So it came from here, didn’t it? I bet she was a maid or something. I bet she left me something here—in this house—and I need you to help me find it.”
For a second, April felt strong and sure. But then Gabriel Winterborne laughed at her.
“Have you seen Winterborne House? Really seen it? Because I grew up here. This was my playground and schoolroom and home, and there are rooms I’ve never set foot in.”
“But this key opens something, and with your help—”
“Go to bed, April. Just . . . forget I’m here. Forget I even exist. The world almost has, and the sooner the job is done, the better.”
He actually sounded like he meant it. Like he believed it. But April didn’t have time to feel sorry for anyone. April had a full-time job just taking care of herself. And if he wanted to sleep on the floor and eat scraps and not wash his hair, then that was his business.
Finding her mother was April’s.
“You’re going to help me find my mother,” April said as if she, the twelve-year-old orphan, had the power to make the grown-up billionaire do exactly what she wanted him to do. “You’re going to help me, or I’m going to tell the world that Gabriel Winterborne is alive and well and . . . smells.”
She watched him listen to her words and register her threat. She even saw him recoil a little bit at the smelly part. He was one of the richest men in the world, but in that moment, he was a man who had absolutely nothing left to lose.
It was a look April totally knew when she saw it.
She wanted to argue. She wanted to plead. She was even willing to beg, but he was too fast and too strong, and the next thing she knew, he was swooping down and picking her up, tossing her over his shoulder like she weighed no more than that pillowcase.
“I’ll do it!” She banged against his back and yelled louder. “I’ll put it on the internet! I’ll call the newspapers! I’ll take pictures and video and tell everyone you’re crazy and living in the basement—”
“Cellars.”
She stopped banging. “I won’t even do it for the money. I’ll tell the world that you’re down here just because you’re mean.”
“I believe you, April.” He sounded almost impressed.
“I’ll do it!” she shouted into the void. “I’ll tell. I’ll—”
But before April could finish, the fireplace was opening again and she was being dropped unceremoniously onto the floor. The cellar seemed a million miles away, even though the cold wind still blew through the open passage.
“There’s a storm coming. Now go to bed and forget you know me. Forget you saw me. Forget I’m alive.” He looked back into the darkness. “Forget I was ever alive at all.”