Page 13 of Haunting the Deep

Her bottom lip trembles. I try not to notice it.

“I only wanted to know if you found my boot hook. Mum will be mad if I lost it. It is the only one we packed to take to America,” Ada says with a wavering voice.

To America?How does she not know where she is? I examine her old-fashioned clothes more carefully. I swallow. “How…are you getting to America?”

She wipes at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “TheTitanic.Papa says it is the largest ship in the world.”

My head spins. “And you’re here because you’re looking for your boot hook?” My voice is less confident than it was a few seconds ago, and my thoughts drift to the hooked metal rod I found in my shoulder bag yesterday. With a shaky hand, I reach into my bag and dig it out.

Ada takes it and disappears. I wish I could disappear, too.

Ilie awake in my four-poster bed, which is carved with black-eyed Susans. My phone sits next to me, and I stare at the armoire. I haven’t checked to see if Abigail’s letters are in the hidden compartment. The possibility that they’re there makes me feel like some part of Elijah is still around. And lying here in the dark, I can almost believe that he could blink in.

He would look serious, like he always looked. I would tell him about my dad and about my dream. He would listen and offer advice that I would refuse to take. And every once in a while I would catch him watching me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.

I twist the empty vase on my nightstand, the one he used to put a freshly cut black-eyed Susan in every day.

A text lights up my phone: 12:27 a.m.

Susannah:Here.

I grab my flashlight and pull open my bedroom door. My black fluffy slippers mute my footsteps in the hallway, and I’m careful to step around the creaky boards. I head down the carpeted stairs and pause. This is the first time I’ve ever snuck around my dad.

I tiptoe down the hall, into the kitchen, and stop. Mary, Alice, and Susannah stand on my patio, peering through the window.

“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t do this at my house,” Alice whispers as I open the door. “My parents wouldn’t even notice.”

I put my finger to my lips and Alice rolls her eyes. They follow me silently to the library. I turn on the flashlight, illuminating the floor-to-ceiling dark wood bookshelves.

“Okay, I need your word you won’t say anything about what I’m about to show you,” I whisper.

They all nod without hesitation.

I weave around a reading table piled with books and stop at the old fireplace. I guess if there’s one thing I can count on these girls for, it’s secrecy. I reach into a niche in the brick, grab an iron hook, and pull. The wall paneling to the left of the fireplace pops open to reveal a door. Mary squeals quietly and clamps her hand over her mouth. Susannah smiles.

Alice runs her fingers over the paneling and pushes the door open. “Are you kidding me? You have a secret passageway?” She and the others step through it.

I follow them into the narrow brick hallway, shutting the door behind us and taking a lantern off the wall. I turn the little knob. Flame shoots up inside the old glass, and the bricks glow a warm red.

“I’ll go first,” I say at normal volume, and hand the flashlight to Susannah. “You want to bring up the rear?”

“Sure thing.”

“The steps are steep and twisty,” I say. “So no one trip or everyone will go down.”

The stairs groan under our feet all the way up into my grandmother’s secret study. I haven’t been here since everything happened. I can almost see Elijah, with his furrowed brow, bending over a stack of old journals—his black wavy hair falling on his cheeks and a pencil lodged between his teeth while he tries to hold three books at once. It was his study, too.

“This is like something out of an old British manor,” Mary says, and runs her fingers along the exposed wooden beams on the sloped walls.

“When did you find this?” Susannah studies the heavy desk piled with papers.

“Not long after I moved in, maybe a day or two. This is where my grandmother kept all those records about the Witch Trials you guys were surprised I knew about.”

Alice wipes the dust off an antique candleholder that’s perched on a stack of books. “This is definitely worth traveling over here in the middle of the night for.”

I open the leather trunk near the wall and take out a cloth-wrapped bundle. The Descendants join me on a faded rug. I pull back the folds of white linen to reveal a well-worn leather book with silver accents.

“You’ve got to be shitting me. Tell me that’s not a spell book.” Alice is practically giddy.