Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(12)

At the count of one hundred, Sebastian opened his eyes and surveyed the empty sitting room. He listened carefully for the sound of movement overhead. Nothing. The rain beat against the windows, but he heard no creaking footsteps. He smiled and gulped back the remainder of the closest glass of champagne.

“Here I come!” he shouted.

He began in the house, and he found Theo first, which was not a surprise. She was crouching in one of the understairs cupboards. Sebastian and Theo were best friends, so she likely put herself close by to join him. Yash was next, having somewhat half-heartedly pressed himself under the bed in Noel’s room. No one else turned up in this first review of the house.

The team of seekers was now three. They donned their yellow slickers and stepped out into the rain, which had intensified a good bit. The drops drove themselves into the ground. Visibility was poor, and the rain made a deafening noise as it hit the hoods of the ponchos.

“I’ll do a sweep of the front garden and then head to the folly,” Sebastian said. “Theo, take the gardens around the orangery and head back round the house. Yash, go from the other side. Start with the tennis courts.”

It would be over an hour before the next person was found. This was Angela. Theo found her lurking around the stables. Just before one in the morning, Yash found Peter hiding under a bench in the back garden. By this point, the rain had become violent. The ground was saturated, so muddy that it sucked in running feet. The lightning got closer. But the Nine continued, running and yelling in their ponchos, flashes of torchlight cutting through the dark. Sebastian held court in the folly, waving a bottle of champagne and drunkenly yelling encouragement over the onslaught of the storm.

It was almost one thirty when Peter caught Sooz, who had pressed herself in between some tall hedges along the inner edge of the walled garden. Two o’clock approached, and three of the Nine were still unaccounted for. The search took on a frenzied quality. The searchers taunted the hiders with their calls. They flashed their lights into the shadows, poked under benches with sticks, stood sentry in front of doors and ends of pathways. They tried pincer movements to force them out of hiding. There was one tremendous boom, and the lights in Merryweather went out all at once.

Now it was very dark indeed.

Yash ran up to Sebastian at the folly.

“We should pack it in,” he said. “That was too close.”

“One last pass!”

This final push produced a result. They located Julian, who had ambitiously gotten on top of a pergola and clung to the vines for hours in the rain. He might never have been found, except that he sneezed when Angela was walking underneath.

“Back to the castle!” Sebastian yelled. “Official time-out! Drinkies! Gather the troops!”

The call echoed out around the grounds, through the rain, and one by one the Nine returned to the house, dripping wet and with a tremendous thirst. They knocked their way through the dark house by torchlight, laughing and falling. Sebastian produced some candles and lit them, and Peter stoked the fire and added more logs. The sitting room felt smaller with the cloak of darkness over it.

“Where are Rosie and Noel?” Theo asked. “Didn’t they come in?”

The names Rosie and Noel were yelled in the direction of the stairs and out the front door, but there was no reply.

“Seems they are committed to the game,” Sebastian said. “Admirable.”

“I think they’re committed to something,” Sooz replied. “Maybe not the game.”

“Don’t diminish their achievement. Now. I know what we need.”

Sebastian dropped to the floor and began crawling toward the dark side of the room. He started this trip holding a candle, but Yash plucked it from his hand as he went past.

“What are you doing?” Angela said.

“The good stuff . . . is . . . down here. The whisky. Not just any whisky. The 1936. We must have it.”

Sebastian continued his creep across the floor until his head made contact with a cabinet against the wall. He rolled onto his back and jammed his hand down the front of his trousers to retrieve the keys, writhing like an inverted insect trying to gain purchase and right itself.

“I think I just witnessed the end of the family line,” Yash said, wincing as Sebastian triumphantly yanked the keys from his waistband.

He jangled the keys and began stabbing at the wooden door of the cabinet in an attempt to find the lock.

“We don’t need it,” Theo said.

“How dare you!” he said. “Where is your resolve? We didn’t win the war with that kind of attitude.”

Thud, thud, thud. Scrape.

“Let me bring you some light, mate,” Yash said.

“I don’t need light! I am an artist! Stay back!”

Thud, thud. Jangle. Thud. The battle of the cabinet was now a performance. A struggle for the ages.

“Once more unto the breach!” Sebastian cried, audibly scratching the wood. “Dear friends, once more . . . or close up this cabinet with our English dead.”

“And we’ve reached the misquoting Shakespeare part of the evening,” Julian said.

“Silence! In peace there’s . . . something, something . . . but when the blast of empty glasses blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger! Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood . . . Disguise fair nature with . . . something. What do we disguise fair nature with? A wig?”