Page 57 of Castle of the Cursed
“I know where to go!” I say, hurrying ahead at a quick clip. Since it’s daytime, and we’re wearing shoes, it should be easier to navigate the mirror room’s minefield of a floor.
I’m eager to see if I’m right about the tower’s location, but Felipe might as well be wading through water, moving slow enough to absorb every square foot of la Sombra. He stops walking altogether when we reach the grand hall with the exoskeleton ceiling. Cutting to the center of the space, he rotates to take it all in.
“There are no photographs of the inside of la Sombra,” he says as he admires the crest hanging over the fireplace. “I had no idea what to expect.”
“What do you think so far?”
He doesn’t answer me.
As we approach the gargoyle-flanked grand staircase, Felipe looks up in awe and wordlessly starts to climb.
“Not there,” I say. “Those are the bedrooms. There’s only one cool space there, and I’ll take you after we find the tower.”
He joins me back on the ground floor, and I show him the dining hall, along with the sunny kitchen. “We can leave the basket here if you want,” I offer.
“Nah, we’ll find a better spot to eat,” he says, looking less impressed with this room than the others. “The kitchens were probably on a lower level, originally,” he says, frowning at the modern appliances. “The staff would come up to serve the meals. This must have been remodeled in the past century.”
He makes a good point. The windows here aren’t stained glass but clear, which is why it’s so much more luminous than any other part of the castle. Not to mention the tiled walls and stainless-steel appliances all point to recent modifications.
“There’s that refrigerator you mentioned,” he says, grinning.
Terror grips my gut that he’s going to open it and find bags of blood, so I say, “Why don’t we take a break? We can sit in the dining hall and dig into the food—”
“No, no, no, we’re going to picnic in the tower,” insists Felipe, and I’m relieved when he shoots out of the kitchen.
We stride past the bookshelf that’s an entrance to the secret wing with the dungeon. But I’m not taking him there, nor to the purple room. No trap- or trick doors. It’s bad enough that I let him into the castle.
“There are two paths,” says Felipe as we approach the bifurcating corridor.
“I’ve been down the right wing three times, and the tower isn’t there. But I haven’t seen all of the left. I think that has to be it.”
Felipe looks at the other passage like he longs to check out both wings, but he doesn’t argue and follows me down the narrow path. “Whoa,” he says when we arrive at the mirror room.
“We need to be careful—” I start to say, but the debris on the floor is gone. Someone must have swept it because the ground is glossy and spotless. Sebastián?
Felipe is still absorbing the chandelier, walking under it slowly, his chin tilted up. But the falling fixture creeps me out, and I walk a little faster, eager to try the door at the other end of the chamber.
It opens to a round stairwell with spiraling steps embedded into the wall. “It has to be the tower,” I say when Felipe joins me.
We climb in silence, our breathing labored. When we reach the top, there’s a small landing with a single door.
I try pulling it open, but it’s heavy, so I have to use both hands. Once it swings out, I realize why—the door is as tall as the ceiling, and on its other side is a soaring bookshelf packed with texts.
The library is in the tower, I realize.
Actually, the library is the tower. A rolling ladder orbits the room, which is lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves brimming with books. A thick band of stained glass circles the top of the space, a buffer between the shelves and the ceiling, letting in sunrays and spotlighting the dust floating in the air.
“The ceiling is flat,” says Felipe. “But the tower is pointy.” He looks at me with excitement brightening his eyes. “Maybe there’s a way up. I’ve read that castles like this one were built with secret rooms and passages.”
He really has done his research.
We survey the book spines around us and pull out texts at random to see if they open trick doors, taking turns using the ladder to reach the higher levels. “What’s that?” he asks me, and I come over to see where he’s pointing: a solitary book is shelved face out.
No, not a book.
A tablet.
I reach up and try to pry it off the wood, but it’s been affixed there. “It doesn’t come out,” I say.
