“So what now?” he said.

Above them, there was a grinding noise. A pair of hands gripped the sides of the hatch and pulled it back.

Then a face appeared.

“Germaine?” Stevie said.

22

“HEY,” GERMAINE SAID. “DID YOU GUYS BLOW THIS UP? I THOUGHT I saw something blow up.”

Germaine Batt was dressed head to toe in winter gear—ski pants and jacket, goggles, a massive hat, plus walking poles to help her get through the snow. She pulled back the goggles, revealing a raw red mark around her eyes where they had been. She also didn’t seem that shocked about any potential explosion she may have witnessed.

“I can’t believe I’m looking at you and how much I love you,” David yelled up.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he yelled.

“Do you have a rope?” she called down.

“No,” David said. “We didn’t plan to fall into this hole.”

“Okay. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” he yelled. “But can you keep the hatch propped open? We’re kind of paranoid about being stuck in holes in the ground.”

Germaine took off her backpack and used it as a wedge.

“Germaine,” David said, turning to Stevie in wonder.

“Germaine,” she repeated.

Snow poured down into the hole, but Stevie and David sat under it anyway, refusing to give up their square of sky. They squeezed together in the foil blanket. The cold was penetrating now. Her feet and hands were numb. Her skin was starting to burn all over, and she was getting tired from the effort of trying to be warm.

“What if she doesn’t come back?” David said.

“She’ll come back,” Stevie said, pushing herself into his side. “She’s Germaine. Fire and flood cannot stop her.”

Germaine did come back.

She returned with some sheeting that had been on the ground where the paintballs went off on Janelle’s machine. She tied these into a few knots, then tied them together. She looped the other end around the statue. Germaine dropped the sheet rope down. David gave it a test tug and nodded.

“You want to go first?” he asked Stevie. “I’ll spot you.”

Stevie had never climbed anything like this before. Her hands were numb with cold, and her feet slipped several times on the knots. But her determination to get out gave her the arm strength to keep pulling herself upward. The few times she lost footing, she felt David hold her up from underneath. Germaine helped pull her up into the deep snow above. She crawled out of the earth like she was coming out of her own grave. After being in the dark underground grotto, the bright whiteness of it nearly blinded her. The cold was so pure and numbing. David climbed up next, Germaine and Stevie pulling him out as he reached the top. They trudged back to the Great House. There was no worry now about anyone yelling at them. They were far beyond those kinds of cares. Pix regarded them with a weary acceptance as they dragged their snowy, wet selves in through the front door.

“You’re back,” she said. “And you have . . . Germaine?”

“Hey,” Germaine replied.

Pix shook her head.

“Get warm,” she said, pointing them to the fireplace. “I give up.”

It’s a funny thing about being cold—sometimes it doesn’t hit you until you start to get warm again. As soon as Stevie was in front of the fire, she started to shake almost uncontrollably. Her feet and hands burned.

“H-h-how are you here too?” Stevie said through chattering teeth.

“You guys n-n-never turned up on the coach that day,” Germaine said. “I f-f-figured something was up. I took the c-c-coach back when they were doing the next pickup. I told the guy I forgot something. Then I s-s-stayed. It was really easy. I wrote to my parents and said I was staying.”

“You c-c-can do that?” Stevie asked.

“My parents t-t-trust me.”

Stevie and David looked at her blankly.

“What’s that l-l-like?” David asked.

Germaine shrugged.

The rest of the group came out to see the stragglers from the snow and were surprised to find Germaine Batt had joined their number. They had a lot of questions, but none of the three were up to answering them yet. They were covered in dust, still coughing. The ringing was getting less loud, but it had not stopped entirely.

And then, it arrived.

Anxiety does not ask your permission. Anxiety does not come when expected. It’s very rude. It barges in at the strangest moments, stopping all activity, focusing everything on itself. It sucks the air out of your lungs and scrambles the world. Her vision went spotty around the edges. The ringing in her ears swelled again. Her knees buckled.

“Stevie?” someone said. She really didn’t know who.

She stumbled away from them all. The Great House was turning into a hideous parody of itself. The fireplace was like a terrible maw of fire. Her friends’ faces made no sense. Everything was rushing. She was on a current she could not control.

“Where’s your medicine?” Janelle said, kneeling next to her.

Her medicine was in a hole in the ground, having been dumped out to carry bricks. She was going to ride this one with no help.

She stared at the grand staircase sweeping up in front of her. Anxiety, her therapist had told her many times, never killed anyone. It felt like death, but it was an illusion. A terrible illusion that inhabited your body and tried to make it its puppet. It told you nothing mattered because everything was made of fear.

“Fuck it,” she mumbled, barely able to make the words.

For no reason that she could think of, she started for the steps.

“Hey, wait,” Janelle said, holding her arm. “Maybe you should sit down.”

“Steps,” she said. The word popped out of her mouth like a strange bubble.

“Steps,” Janelle repeated. “Okay. Fine. Nate, get her arm. We’ll help you.”

Where do you look for something that’s never really there . . . Together, between her two friends, Stevie climbed the staircase.

The Ellinghams waited for her on the landing. Always on a staircase, but never on a stair. That’s where they were. She needed to look for something and hold on to it—something she could wrap her head around. Any rope would do. The Ellinghams. That’s why she was here. Albert. Iris. Alice. She repeated their names to herself over and over. Leonard Holmes Nair had preserved them here, in this bizarre painting, the one he had altered to include the dome, the pool of moonlight stretching over . . .

Where do you look for someone who could be anywhere?

The question popped up in the corner of her mind, distracting her for a moment.

The kid is there, Fenton had said on the phone. The kid is there. If George Marsh had committed the crime, what if he brought her back? What if he buried her out of guilt? What if Alice had been in the tunnel, and . . .

She looked at the painting again, forcing her eyes to focus. The pool of light, the moonbeam, it stretched over the point where the tunnel would have been. And the form of the light—it was vaguely in the shape of . . .

“Hey,” David said. He had joined them and was sitting in front of her. “It’s okay. It’s just panic.”

“Shut up,” she said. She could not articulate what was happening in her head, this massive word problem that was assembling itself in some part of her brain. Alice had been buried here. Alice was here. The kid was here. Alice had been found.

Point by point, things began to line up. Suddenly, it all made sense. All of it. The facts, which before had been falling from the sky like snow and evaporating in her memory, all sprang forth, solid, and put themselves in line. The tunnel. The excavation. Hayes in the tunnel . . . Fenton . . .

“It all makes sense,” she said to David. She could feel her eyes widening.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Your phone!” she said. “Give it to me.”

“Why?”

“Please.”

There must have been something in her tone. Though he looked confused, he pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her. She scrolled through until she found what she needed.

There it was—the one discordant note.

Of course, it wasn’t an accident that it ended like this. She had done the work, reading things for years. She had gotten herself to Ellingham. She had made herself a detective and put herself on this path. She had summoned this moment through work and falling down holes and running into the dark. It was time to gather the suspects, like they did at the end of every mystery.

“Get everyone,” she said to him. “Everyone in the building.”

“Why?” he asked. “What is going on? Are you okay?”

She looked up at him, her panic gone, her vision clear, the world starting to settle back into position.

“It’s time to solve some murders,” she said.

November 10, 1938

ANARCHISTS SUSPECTED IN EXPLOSION DEATH OF ALBERT ELLINGHAM

New York Times