Rain spattered thirteen-year-old Sloane Osburn’s face as she climbed through the attic window. The wooden frame still felt soft from last night’s downpour. The clouds had taken a break for a while, but now they were rested and ready to go again, right when Sloane needed clear, calm weather to keep from plummeting to her death. Sloane slid carefully on her bottom down the wet, sloping roof of the three-story mansion and toward a probably spattery death below.
Definitely toward a bone-cracking, skull-splitting drop to the ground.
I knew it, Sloane thought glumly as she dug her nails into the cracks between the slate shingles. I knew it.
She’d known no good would come of spending a long weekend away from home.
Even if it meant getting to stay in a hundred-year-old mansion that had once belonged to a bootlegging gangster.
And solving a mystery that would bring more subscribers to the YouTube channel she shared with her friend Amelia.
No, Sloane had known that spending a night anywhere other than her bed back in Wauseon would lead to bad luck somehow. Sleepovers always had that effect on her, stealing important parts of her life. As if a thief lurked in the night, waiting for Sloane to turn her back so it could pounce and snatch away whatever was most precious to her.
She’d been worried that meant her dad.
Turns out, it meant her life.
“Careful! Careful!” Amelia called from the oval-shaped attic window out of which Sloane had just escaped.
“That’s not helping, Amelia!” Sloane clenched her teeth as the wind smacked her long black ponytail into her eyes, blinding her. Then it playfully changed directions and pushed at her back as though this was all a fun game.
At least the roof’s broken, mossy shingles snagged her shorts, slowing her downward slide.
A bit.
A very little bit.
Hopefully enough of a bit.
“Sloane!” Amelia squeaked in terror, gripping the splintered frame around the attic window. “Sloane, don’t die!”
Sloane’s shorts tore free from the old, crumbling slate tiles. Instantly, she picked up speed on the slick rooftop, causing her to race faster and faster toward the abyss beyond the rain gutter. Just as she thought she was going to have to send Amelia a note from the afterlife saying, Whoops! Sorry! her right foot hit the gutter’s metal trough and sunk down into the soggy mess of old leaves still stuck there from last autumn.
Whew! Sloane’s left foot joined her right foot in the gunk. Her knees bent, allowing her bottom to come to a gentle stop. Before Sloane could sigh in relief, she made the mistake of looking down.
It was a long way to the ground.
Three stories, to be exact.
Long enough to make her very, very grateful for the rain gutter. Even if it was now filling her shoes up with water.
Soggy socks and ruined shoes were still better than ending up as a soggy, ruined mess yourself.
Sloane turned back around to find Amelia still peering anxiously out the window, her red curls bushing out around a 1920s-style flapper headband made of sequins and feathers. Calling up to her friend, Sloane said, “I survived!”
“Oh, good!” Amelia’s very freckled face relaxed.
Then, that face disappeared with a shriek as Amelia was yanked backward, into the attic.
“Amelia!” Sloane cried, twisting around to try to crawl back up the slick shingles to help her friend. “Amelia, don’t you dare die, either!”
Barking covered whatever Amelia might have yelled back. Inside the murky gloom of the attic, Amelia and her attacker merged together into a misshapen beast with too many elbows and twirling backs—as well as the teeth and tail of a very frightened bloodhound.
“OW!” someone screamed. Whether it was Amelia or their pursuer, Sloane didn’t know.
She just knew that she’d been right.
“AMELIA!” she shrieked again.
But her friend didn’t answer her.
Instead, a dog jumped out of the window.
To hurtle straight toward Sloane.
With enough speed to knock them both over the side of the building onto the patio stones three stories below.
When they did, Sloane’s shoes wouldn’t be the only soggy mess.