April did go to bed. Not because he’d told her to but because she was sleepy and the storm had started to blow hard outside the window.
She hoped he was miserable. Cold and wet. Maybe the waves would crash up high enough to flood the cellars and take Gabriel Winterborne far away again.
April told herself that would suit her just fine. She didn’t need him anyway. So she pulled the velvet curtains tight around her bed and tucked the covers in around herself and closed her eyes.
She should have slept. She was exhausted, after all. She’d been trying so hard to trap Gabriel Winterborne that her bed should have felt like the best thing ever. But April didn’t sleep. Instead, she tossed. She turned. She counted sheep and got up to go to the bathroom. It wasn’t until she was on her way back that she noticed that her bed wasn’t the only one that was empty.
“Hey, Violet,” she said, inching toward the little girl who was standing at the windows.
Lightning crashed outside, sending bright white light through the glass and over Violet’s face. Her eyes looked even bigger as she stared out at the storm.
“Can’t you sleep?” April asked, and Violet shook her head. “Want me to go get Tim?” April asked, but Violet’s warm hand was slipping into April’s.
“I hate storms.”
They were the first words she’d ever spoken just to April, and for a moment, April stood there, unsure what to say.
Then the words “Me too” came from behind them.
Sadie rubbed her eyes and stumbled out of bed. She wore red pajamas with E = MC2 all over them and was wrapping a blanket around her shoulders as she walked toward the windows.
The rain was coming harder then, falling against the glass like waves, and April could feel Violet’s hand start to shake.
“Winterborne House is really old, right, Sadie?”
At first, Sadie looked confused, but April shot her eyes down at Violet and Sadie seemed to take the hint.
“Oh, yeah. It’s been here for forever.”
“It’s probably stood through lots of storms, right?”
“Totally,” Sadie went on. “Hurricanes and thunderstorms and earthquakes. Winterborne House isn’t going anywhere, and neither are we.” She dropped to the floor—her eyes at Violet’s level before looking up. “Right, April?”
But April was going someplace. Just as soon as she found her mother.
So she stayed quiet as Sadie and Violet piled pillows on the floor. She wordlessly helped drag blankets off of beds and arranged them in front of the big bay windows. No one seemed to notice April’s silence as they nestled together, lulled to sleep by the sounds of the storm.
In hindsight, April wasn’t sure which came first, the rain or the screaming.
One moment, she was sound asleep, and the next, she was bolting awake, tangled in a knot of limbs and pajamas while the wind crashed through the windows and rain streaked across the room, drenching the floor where they lay. April’s hair whipped around her face, clinging to her skin and blinding her. It was like they were in the middle of the storm and not their bedroom, but Violet was up on her knees, shaking and shouting, “Tiiiimmmmmm!”
“Shh, Violet. It’s—”
But that was when April saw the knife.
The room was dark except for the flashes of lightning that came through the windows—bursting with the boom of the thunder, reflecting off of a silver blade that floated through the darkness. The curtains around April’s bed billowed in the wind, and the knife slashed at them, cutting away the ropes of Sadie’s invention, sending them crashing to the floor.
And, through it all, Violet kept screaming. “No!”
“What’s happening?” Sadie pushed upright and sleepily reached for the glasses she wore when she didn’t want to mess with her contacts. But the wind and the rain were too hard and the glasses slipped from her hand. “Darn it,” Sadie exclaimed as she dropped back to the floor, feeling her way through the soggy blankets.
But April . . . April kept her eyes on the blade.
And the blade was taking a step closer to her.
There was shouting in the hallway. Doors banged open. Then a massive bolt of lightning struck—a blinding white light that came at the same time as the thunder—and the whole house seemed to shake. The hallway lights flickered on then off just as the door to their room burst open.
“Violet!” Tim shouted.
“What’s going on?” Colin asked, but the room was so dark April couldn’t even see him.
She could only feel the rush of air as someone ran past her in the darkness. She could only hear the crunch of the glass beneath feet and see a dark figure rushing for the broken window.
And then the flash of the knife was gone.
“What happened?” Ms. Nelson stood in the doorway, a candelabra in each hand—one burning bright with candles and the other dangling by her side like a sword. “Girls, what—”
April looked at the broken window, the scattered glass, and rain-soaked pillows and blankets. Then she looked at Violet, who muttered, “He was here.”
“Who?” Tim asked.
“The Sentinel,” Violet said, and everyone exhaled.
“Smithers, the generator?” Ms. Nelson called down the hallway.
April heard him call back, “It might take a few minutes to—”
But before he’d even finished, there was a clicking sound and the lights in the hallway flickered to life. Ms. Nelson reached for the switch, and light filled the disaster area formerly known as their bedroom.
Smithers swept in then. Literally. He had a broom and dustpan and started cleaning away the broken glass.
“Another window gone,” he said to no one in particular.
“The Sentinel broke it,” Violet said as Tim picked her up and carried her away from the broken glass, placing her on her bed.
Ms. Nelson knelt down in front of her. “No, sweetheart. It’s okay. These old windows just break sometimes if the temperature drops too quickly and the rain and wind are—”
“My bed!” Sadie cried as she rushed to where her velvet hangings were strewn across the floor. One of the ropes had run through the pulleys and gotten wrapped around the ceiling fan that was spinning in the wind. April’s own bed was a mess of blankets and pillows and bed curtains, everything twisted and broken and torn.
“I’m sorry, Sadie,” Ms. Nelson said. “The wind must have—”
“It wasn’t the wind,” Violet said, stronger now. “It was the Sentinel.”
“No, sweetheart.” Ms. Nelson ran a hand through Violet’s damp hair. “I know that must have been awfully scary, but the wind just pulled the curtains and they got tangled in the ropes and it caused a chain reaction. It wasn’t the Sentinel, sweetheart. I promise. The Sentinel isn’t real.”
But Violet just looked up at April, as if it was going to have to be their little secret.
Eventually, Smithers covered the window with plywood and the girls moved to another room—all three of them piled into the biggest bed that April had ever seen, but April lay in the darkness until the storm was just a rumble in the distance.
Ms. Nelson was right: the Sentinel wasn’t real. But there was another knife-wielding madman of April’s acquaintance.
And he had a lot of explaining to do.