“Oh, April. What am I going to do with you?”
Gabriel Winterborne sounded the same, but he looked different. His hair was still long and his clothes were still ragged, but his eyes were clearer and he moved with purpose, which, April realized, wasn’t what you wanted in a knife-wielding madman.
She scrambled back but heard the scrape of the fireplace slamming closed behind her. There was nothing but the cold draft and the dripping water and the man she’d last seen with a knife at four a.m.
But the weird thing was that April still didn’t have the good sense to be afraid. Nope. She was way too busy being angry.
“You didn’t have to steal it.”
He cocked an eyebrow and actually grinned. “Steal what?”
“I came to you for help, and you broke into our room! You scared Violet! She’s just a little girl.”
“Oh, she’s a little girl?”
“Don’t try to deny it,” she snapped. “I saw you. I saw the knife.”
And just like that, his expression changed, like it had never occurred to him that he might actually get caught.
So April added for good measure, “I know you took my key. Don’t tell me it was the wind or whatever. The wind didn’t break that window—”
“It’s an old house, April. Old houses are drafty,” he said, but he couldn’t look her in the eye.
“I suppose the bed hangings ripped themselves?”
He glared. “Is that why you decided to turn on me?”
“I didn’t turn on you! You broke into my room and stole my key and . . . I know what goes bump in the night.” She looked him up and down. “And I know where he lives.”
He slumped against the wall and whispered, “So do I, April. So do I.”
April had seen him dirty and hungry and tired and bleeding, but she’d never seen him look like that—like he’d just skipped to the last chapter and found out he wasn’t ever going to get a happy ending. She might have even felt sorry for him, except . . .
“I want my key,” she said again, because he might have been a knife-wielding madman, but without that key, April wasn’t anything at all.
But he just shook his head. “Get out.”
“I’m not leaving without my mother’s key! I’m—”
“You’re going to leave.” He pushed away from the wall. “You’re going to walk away, and I’m going to board up this entrance, and you will never come back here again. You will never bring . . . her . . . back here, do you hear me? As far as Isabella Nelson is concerned, I’m a dead man. And I’m going to stay that way if it kills me.”
Then she was upside down again, slung over his shoulder as the fireplace slid open. A split second later, she was falling back onto the floor, as if the last fourteen hours hadn’t happened at all.
But they had happened.
April reached for her key, but it was still missing, and the stones weren’t laughing anymore.
Smithers must not have been doing a very good job of dusting, because her throat burned and her eyes watered. April wanted to wipe the tears away, even though she absolutely was not crying. She was just walking and thinking and making a plan, because she’d wasted enough time already.
She’d get her key back. She had to. But in the meantime, she’d start looking for the lock. She’d start right then—that very moment. She’d start on the first floor and work her way up. Room by room. Wall by wall. Shelf by shelf.
April had made it twelve years without any help from anyone, and the thing that made her maddest was that she’d let herself forget it. Well, she wasn’t going to forget it ever again.
So April got to work.
She looked in stuffy rooms with cold fireplaces and the kind of furniture you should never put your feet on. And she searched in bathrooms with soft towels and soap that smelled like flowers. She spent twenty minutes poking an old piano and five trying to open a cabinet that held nothing but dusty board games and about a dozen decks of cards.
April searched and scoured and hunted until she reached a wide corridor that ran along the back of the house, and then April had to stop. And look. And think. Because parts of the wall were lighter than other parts, and something just seemed . . . off about the space.
“Don’t mind that,” came a voice from behind her, and April turned to find Colin there, studying her as she studied the wall.
“What?” April asked.
“Those spots on the wall. You’re not imagining them. That’s where the paintings were.”
“What paintings?” April asked, even though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.
“The ones that burned up in the museum. You heard about the museum, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” April muttered. “I heard about that.”
Suddenly, April’s skin felt too hot—like she was back in the fire. Because Colin wasn’t just looking at her—he was seeing her, and April didn’t like it one bit. And when he asked, “You okay, April?” she honestly didn’t know what to say, because he’d known when the Fake Fiancée was lying, but he hadn’t known when April was telling the truth.
Or maybe he just hadn’t cared.
“I’m—”
“There you are!” Sadie’s voice came echoing down the hallway. “Where were you? We looked everywhere!”
“Just wandering around,” April blurted, sounding a little too defensive.
“Well, now that we’ve found you, we can start!”
“Start what?”
“Movie night!” Sadie looped her arm with April’s and started down the hall. “That’s my big surprise. Gabriel Winterborne had a room turned into a theater!”
“He did?” April asked, because that didn’t sound like the man she knew at all. But she didn’t actually know Gabriel Winterborne, did she? And that was just part of the problem.
“The bad news is that the movies are really old, but that’s okay. A lot of them are classics now. Smithers let me make popcorn! And there’s candy and . . .” Sadie trailed off, and when she spoke again, the words were almost a whisper. “Are you okay? You aren’t embarrassed, are you? About . . . before?”
Well, April hadn’t been, but she was now, and that made her feel even worse than usual.
“It’s like Colin said. Gabriel’s just kind of a sore spot. Everything’s going to be okay, though. You’ll see. We’ll watch some movies and eat some popcorn, and it’ll be fun.”
And it probably would have been, except, at that moment, April saw something out the windows.
The mansion sat in a cove, rocky cliffs forming a kind of horseshoe on either side with the cold gray water stretching out to the horizon. The sun was getting low, so at first she thought her eyes might have been playing tricks on her. But, no. A door was swinging open. Except it wasn’t a door at all. It was more like a section of stones that moved. Just like the fireplace. And then someone emerged, hunching low and running fast, skirting over the edge of the cliffs.
“April?” Sadie’s voice was louder.
“Sorry,” April said. “I’ve got to . . . I’m not feeling very well. I think I’ll go to bed.” She started down the hall, but something made her stop, turn back. “Have fun with the movie.”
And then she was gone.