Turns out, coming back from the dead is exhausting.
There are interviews and exams. Questions and concerns. And paperwork. So much paperwork. Not to mention the makeover sequences, which aren’t nearly as fun as they look in the movies. Or maybe that was only true for Gabriel Winterborne.
“Do you think he’s okay?” Sadie said as they lay on their stomachs looking down at the man who sat at the big table in the center of the library’s main floor. Every few minutes, Smithers would bring in a new stack of papers Gabriel didn’t read or food Gabriel didn’t eat, but then the doorbell would ring again and Smithers would have to go turn someone else away.
The man in the cellar was gone, replaced by a shell that April no longer recognized. He didn’t even growl anymore.
“He growling yet?” Colin asked, dropping to lie beside Sadie. Tim and Violet joined April on her other side.
“No,” Sadie said. “And it’s weird. I miss the growling. And the beard.”
Violet giggled. “I liked the beard. It made him look like a pirate.”
“Right?” Sadie said. “The beard worked.”
“You do realize I can hear you?” he shouted, but didn’t look up. “This room echoes. For future reference.”
April didn’t know whether she should laugh or apologize.
“Master Gabriel.” Smithers reappeared at the door. “We’ve had a delivery, and—”
“I don’t want any more files,” Gabriel snapped. “So tell the police or the FBI or whoever else is digging around in my uncle’s dirty laundry that I don’t care how many skeletons they’ve turned up. I don’t need copies of every warrant or subpoena or—”
“But, sir . . .” Smithers trailed off as people started streaming through the library’s doors, carrying crates and wheeling dollies. Soon the room was full of boxes and Gabriel was looking around like it was the worst kind of Christmas morning.
Which was too much for five kids to resist. In a flash, they were all up and rushing down the stairs and toward the giant boxes. Well, everyone except April.
She stood perfectly still for a long time, staring. Because those boxes seemed . . . familiar. She remembered clinging to one just like them as she kicked against the current. She remembered men carrying them to Evert’s house in the middle of the night. April remembered . . .
The museum.
When Smithers put down the crowbar and pulled out the first of the paintings, April was hit by a wave of déjà vu. And regret. And a little bit of confusion mixed with smoke because April knew that painting. That painting was supposed to be a pile of ash.
“Hey, I know these!” Colin was saying, but he sounded as perplexed as April looked. “I thought they were in the museum that April burned up.”
“I didn’t burn it up on . . .” April started but trailed off when she saw Gabriel’s face go white as he drew a piece of paper from one of the crates. His hand shook. And then the paper fluttered to the ground.
A moment later, Sadie screamed as she plucked it off the floor and shouted, “Ms. Nelson!”
“What’s—” Colin started, but Sadie shushed him. And then she started to read.
Dear Gabriel,
Welcome home. I always knew you were alive. It just would have been nice if you’d bothered telling me before we both almost died, but, when it comes to you, I’m used to disappointment.
I was able to track these down. In case you were wondering, Evert had copies made, loaned those to the museum, then set it on fire to claim the insurance. Evidently, he had no idea we’d tagged the originals with GPS ages ago (not the sharpest knife in the drawer, your uncle).
Regardless, I thought I’d see them returned to you. Consider it my last act as the head of the Winterborne Foundation.
Good luck, G.
You’re going to need it.
—Izzy
P.S. Please tell April the fire wasn’t entirely her fault. The whole place was a powder keg before she ever broke in.
P.P.S. With my resignation you will, of course, become the legal guardian of the children.
April looked at the paper and then replayed the words over and over and over in her mind. Alive. Ms. Nelson was alive, and the guilt that had been weighing April down for days was lifted and she felt like she might float away.
“I told you she was alive!” Colin was shouting, and they were all dancing and screaming, but April wasn’t watching the kids. She was watching the man who stood at the windows, looking out at the sea.
April wasn’t sure what had made him so pale—word that Izzy was alive or that she wasn’t coming back. Or maybe it was just the fact that he was now responsible for the kids who were whooping and hollering and scattering straw and packing peanuts all over the library.
“She’ll come back,” April told him.
“No. If she wanted to be back, she would be. No one can make Izzy do something she doesn’t want to do. We always had that in common.”
“She’s just mad you stayed away. She’ll get over it.”
“Will she?” He looked at her like he honestly wanted an answer.
“Sure. Yeah. Of course.”
But his smile was forced. Even without the beard, he was still handsome, but he wasn’t her Gabriel. And she missed him.
“It’s backward.”
April heard the words, but she wasn’t paying attention. Not really. Not until she felt the tugging on her sleeve and turned to see Violet pointing at the fireplace, saying, “Look, April. It’s backward.”
Then April followed Violet’s finger. By that time, April was used to the sight of the Winterborne crest. It was in spoons and on plates, embroidered on towels and woven into carpets. April half expected to see it on the toilet paper sometimes, but Violet was right, whoever had made the fireplace in the library had made a mistake. The distinctive WB of the crest was, in fact, backward.
“Ooh, good eye, Vi,” Colin was saying, but April couldn’t take her gaze off of the indentation in the stone.
Her hand went to the key that she still wore around her neck out of habit. It didn’t burn anymore. Or call to her. But something in the little backward symbol drew her closer. And closer.
They’d been looking for a keyhole for weeks, but what if they were wrong? What if the key didn’t go in? What if it went on?
Before April even realized she was doing it, she was holding her key to the crest and placing it over the impression in the stone.
It fit. Exactly.
Everyone froze.
“Probably a coincidence, right?” April asked, but her heart was beating faster. Her breath was coming harder. And then she felt an oh-so-subtle click as she pressed the key into the impression. She wasn’t breathing at all when she was able to turn the key, spinning it around like the hands of a clock.
And then the floor began to move.
It was like one of Sadie’s inventions had gone rogue and multiplied and maybe been dosed with some kind of radioactive tonic, because the stones near the fireplace were cascading, dropping, click click click down into the floor—like dominoes—forming a spiral staircase that descended into darkness. Except . . . it wasn’t dark. Not for long.
Flash.
Flint brushed against steel and the smell of gas was strong as lights flickered on one after the other, filling the space with a warm yellow glow.
“Violet! You found it!” Colin blurted as they all looked at Gabriel’s stunned face.
“Stay here,” Gabriel said, before stepping onto the first stone step. A moment later, he stopped. And spun. And stared down at the five kids who were following him. “I thought I said stay there?”
“Oh, you did,” Colin told him. “We just didn’t listen.”
And after that, no one spoke again. No one dared. They just walked down and down and down, through cobwebs and dust, footsteps echoing on stone, until the air turned fresher and colder and April half expected to come out in the sea.
But it wasn’t the sea. And it wasn’t the cellar. It was more like a cave. Or a church. Or both.
“Helloooo!” Colin shouted, and the sound echoed, but he looked disappointed. “This isn’t much of a treasure if you ask me. But don’t tell Evil Uncle Evert that if you visit him. Tell him you found a mountain of gold or diamonds. Or something better than . . .”
He pointed at the massive room full of mats and targets, dummies and ropes suspended from the ceiling. It was like what Gabriel had tried to make in the cellar, except bigger and better and older.
“What is this place?” Sadie craned her head back and looked around. “Some kind of gym?”
“Then why keep it locked up down here all secret-like?” Colin asked as he picked up a wooden sword and whacked the head off an old dummy.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said, but something in his tone made April think he had his suspicions.
“Why was Evert willing to kill to find it?” Tim asked.
“I don’t know!” Gabriel said again. “I don’t . . .”
But he trailed off when Violet threw open the doors of a huge armoire, revealing a black hat. And several swords. And an honest-to-goodness cape—but not the superhero kind. The antique kind. It reminded April of the clothes in the museum, but also of the docent’s story and the Sentinel’s statue. And the whispers of a dozen kids who had grown up hearing that, once upon a time, the Sentinel had been real.
“Gabriel . . .” April started slowly. “If this is the secret your father and grandfather were keeping from Evert . . .”
“No.” He was already shaking his head, like it couldn’t possibly be true.
But April was nodding right back. “Think about it! They made you learn how to use a sword. They called it the family legacy, right? Isn’t that what Evert was rambling about? He said there was the Winterborne fortune and then there was this.” She threw her arms out wide. “Evert thought it was some kind of treasure because Evert’s a greedy moron, but what if it wasn’t? What if it’s more than that?”
“What if it’s what?” Sadie asked, and she didn’t like not knowing the answer for once in her life. She didn’t like it one bit.
But it was Violet who picked up the hat and said, “It’s the Sentinel.”
“The Sentinel’s a myth,” Gabriel snapped. “A legend.”
“No.” April shook her head and tossed a sword—which should have been dangerous, but Gabriel caught it and held it like a second limb. “It’s a Winterborne.”
Eventually, Colin stopped climbing on the ropes and Sadie and Violet stopped playing with the capes and everyone made their way upstairs. Smithers brought out the sparkling cider and set up an old record player in the library, and April watched her friends singing and dancing because Isabella Nelson was alive and Evert Winterborne was in jail. Kids like them weren’t very used to victories, so they made the most out of this one.
But Gabriel didn’t dance. Or sing. Or eat or drink. He just drifted back to the windows, Ms. Nelson’s letter tucked in his pocket, right over his heart.
April told herself she shouldn’t bother him. But there was something she needed to tell him even more.
“I never did say thank you. For saving me.”
“Well, one might say that makes us even.” Gabriel glared down at her, but there was a twinkle in his eye. “Just don’t do it again.”
“Okay. I’m pretty sure I’m ahead anyway. I mean, I did pull you out of the water—”
“Which I wouldn’t have been in without you.”
“And nursed you back to health—”
“Which wouldn’t have been necessary if you hadn’t gotten me stabbed.”
“And I was instrumental in making sure Evert will probably die in prison,” April teased. Then grew serious. “But I owe you for the museum, so I guess we’ll call it even.”
She didn’t expect him to laugh or smile back. He was still Gabriel Winterborne, after all. But she wasn’t ready for him to look so confused as he said, “What about the museum?”
“You know, when you carried me out of the fire?” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “So I guess that means I owed you first, but . . .” She trailed off when she saw his expression. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“April, I wasn’t at the museum.”
She thought she’d misunderstood him. But he must have misunderstood her. “I know you weren’t there during the day. I’m talking about that night. I would have died, you know? I was too busy looking for the key and the smoke was so thick, but then you were there and you found my key and carried me . . . What?”
“April, I haven’t been to the museum in fifteen years. Whoever carried you out of the fire, it wasn’t me.”
There were so few things that April knew for certain. Not her birthday or her mother’s name or how she’d ended up with a key that unlocked the Winterborne family’s greatest secret. But she’d known that Gabriel Winterborne had been there—that Gabriel had saved her. April had been so certain. But April had been wrong.
“If it wasn’t you, who was it?”
Gabriel looked back at the windows that had become a mirror with the fall of night. Her friends were still dancing on the other side of the room, but Gabriel didn’t smile or laugh. He just stared into the darkness and said, “That is a very good question.”
No one noticed the breath that fogged the glass. No one heard the low laugh that filled the air. Not a single resident of Winterborne House saw the figure who was running along the cliffs, blending into the shadows and the night, disappearing into the darkness like the wind.