The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(57)

Nate swore under his breath but pulled himself away from the wall.

“Are you going?” he asked Stevie.

Stevie was not sure where she was. Moments ago, she had been in the tightness of the tunnel, in David’s arms, embraced by the earth, alone in the universe. Then, there was Ellie.

Nate shook Stevie’s arm.

“I’m not going if you’re not,” he said. “Tell me what you’re doing. I don’t understand anything right now.”

David looked at her. His hair was still tousled from where her hands had been. She had kissed the fine smoothness of his neck. . . .

The smell of the tunnel poisoned her memory.

David would be safe. Nate didn’t know why, of course.

“Yeah,” she said. “Go to your room.”

This felt entirely wrong, what she was doing for herself, but entirely right for Nate. Nate didn’t need this. Nate had been struggling enough with what happened to Hayes.

“Jesus Christ,” Nate said as he went past them, tripping on the hem of the robe as he went up the curve of the stairs.

Stevie gulped down some air. She started moving on autopilot, stumbling toward her room.

She heard the first arrivals about five minutes later. She had put in earbuds, but turned nothing on. Her heartbeat echoed back at her in her ears. There was another arrival. More voices in the common room, in the hall.

She turned on some music. Loud. She closed her eyes and put her head back against the wooden bed frame. When the knock came on Stevie’s door, she actually didn’t hear it at first. She had put the volume up too high. Pix eventually cracked the door.

“Stevie?” she said.

Stevie peeled her eyes open. The effort was tremendous, the light from the ceiling offensively bright.

“Stevie,” Pix said again. “Can you . . . stay in here for a few minutes? There’s something going on. Nothing to worry about. Security just has to look at something in the hallway.”

“Sure,” Stevie said. Her voice sounded sleepy.

“Sorry to disturb you. Go back to sleep.”

Stevie closed her eyes again and let movies play out on the backs of her eyelids. She summoned the feeling again, of David’s kiss and touch. There was so little time to savor it. The memory would fade, the sensation would be corrupted by whatever was coming.

This had all happened before. The same, but different.

Pix returned and told her to pack some things in a bag. “Take your time,” she said, but her face betrayed her shock. “There’s an issue in the house and we’re sleeping somewhere else tonight.”

Stevie got out of bed and began mechanically filling her backpack. Medicine, clothes, her computer and phone, everything shoved into the backpack until it squeaked a bit from the strain. She was about to close it when she had another thought. The tin. It would not fit. She pulled out a shirt that was taking up valuable space and put the tin in its place. Better safe than sorry.

There was a security officer blocking the view to the end of the hall. Nate was sitting at the table in the common room, and Janelle, still dressed as Wonder Woman, was grabbing at things in her room and packing her own bag. Pix stood at the table, her expression grim.

“Where’s David?” Stevie asked Pix.

“He’s over at the Great House. He found Ellie, Stevie. In a tunnel. She . . . wasn’t okay. She died.” Pix waited for Stevie to absorb this.

“Where are we going to go?” Nate asked.

“We’re setting up for the night in the yurt. They’re going to bring in beds, and we’ll hang dividers from the ceiling. It’ll be nice and cozy. We can talk.”

“Oh good,” Nate said, picking at the table surface with his fingernail.

“As soon as Janelle is ready, we can go. I’m going to get my things.”

“She must be tired of having her students die,” Nate said when Pix went upstairs. “Think of the paperwork.”

When Stevie did not reply, Nate nudged her hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

“How the hell is this happening? Didn’t we just do this? I thought she ran away, like she went off with circus people or something. Not that she was . . . under us.”

“She wasn’t really under us,” Stevie said. “She was kind of far away.”

“Oh, good.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“I know what you mean. I know that this place may suck. Two people are dead.”

“It’s not the school’s fault.”

“No, but . . . maybe? Maybe this place . . .”

“Are you saying this place is, like, cursed or something?”

Nate shook his head.

“I’m saying, two people have died, and that’s a lot more than the number who died at my last school. I know shit happens. Terrible shit happens. But this is weird terrible shit with tunnels and dry ice and people suffocating to death underground . . .”

Stevie pulled her shoulders closer into her body. Her mind drifted away. It went to David and his story of his mom and his sister, of the promises she had made, of the coldness of the case she wanted to solve and the coldness under the ground.

Janelle emerged in a pair of fleece pajama bottoms and a massive fuzzy sweater, a silver overnight bag on her shoulder. She walked over to Nate and Stevie and dropped an arm around each. There were tears at the edges of her eyes.