The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(88)

“I know where Alice is,” George Marsh said.

The reserve that Albert Ellingham had possessed up to this point left him. He half stood, his fist tight around the rope, his face purpling and the capillaries in his eyes marbling. When he spoke, his voice was a low rumble.

“You just claimed,” Albert said, “that you knew nothing of what happened to Alice. That you were not involved in her direct kidnapping. That you looked for her.”

“And I eventually found her,” Marsh said.

“Is my daughter alive?”

For the first time in this conversation, George Marsh sat back. He loosened his tie and stretched out his legs as if this was again the relaxing afternoon sail he had been promised.

“I have to ask myself,” he said, “is this one of your games? You love games, Albert.”

“This is no game. You tell me where my daughter is or—”

“Or you let go of that rope and we’ll be blown to bits? Is that it? And if I tell you, you’re just going to let me go? Is that what happens? I tell you, and you wind that rope back up and we sail back to shore and then everything is fine and ginger-peachy?”

“We sail back. You get to live.”

“Where?” George Marsh put out his hands and shrugged. “In jail? You know what they would do to me in jail, Albert? A cop who kidnapped a kid? Your kid? I’d be beaten every day until I was made of pulp—probably by the other cops. If I even made it that far. There is no future for me on the shore.”

“If you tell me where Alice is, we could come to an understanding. I don’t care what happens to you if I get my daughter.”

“We’d have to come to one hell of an understanding. How would it work? You’d let me go free, promise me some money, maybe, and then I’d give you her location. No.” Marsh shook his head. “You could never risk it. You can’t let me go. As long as I know what happened to Alice, you need to keep control of me. And if you kill me, then you’ll never know.”

He leaned forward enough to slip out of his jacket. Albert Ellingham watched him, speechless, his face mottled in rage.

“To tell you the truth,” Marsh said, standing now, and rolling his sleeves, “I’m amazed it took you this long. I guess I’ve been waiting for the day when it all dropped, and the day is here. You’re right. It does feel better to tell you. I’m tired of it. And you must be too—all your dirty little secrets. I bet Mackenzie doesn’t even know them all. You, with your newspapers—all those payments you made, the stories you buried, the politicians you kept on a leash. The great Albert Ellingham . . .”

“I did no such—”

“And Alice. I know about Alice too. Is she the biggest secret of all?”

Marsh stood and finished pulling off his jacket, which he sat on the seat behind him. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a lighter.

“There’s no going back for either of us,” he said as he put his cigarette between his lips.

Less than a minute later, people nearby saw a bright flash and heard a boom that scattered birds into the night. The explosion tore the Wonderland and its occupants into pieces and flung them into the air. Bits and pieces of boat and human would be found for weeks to come, washed up on the shore all along Lake Champlain.





25


“WHY DO YOU WRITE BOOKS?”

Nate was sitting on the ground across from Stevie in the dark of the cupola. Both of them had tucked their knees into their chests and were huddled inside their coats. Quiet places, Stevie noted, were very noisy once you got used to them. The ear settles, and then every sound comes out. Every leaf that falls has a tender impact. Every surface the wind brushes has its own percussion. Everything that lives in the dark—and many things live in the dark—makes a tiny footfall. Owls call. Wood creaks. It’s a real racket.

“I don’t know,” Nate said. “I don’t know how to do anything else?”

“That’s not a reason.”

“I don’t know. I just do. Do I need a reason?”

“There are reasons for everything, even if we don’t know them,” Stevie said. “Motive.”

“Okay,” Nate said. “My motive is that I prefer dragons.”

“To what?”

“To the absence of dragons.”

Stevie looked at the Great House at the opposite end of the green. The windows glowed in the darkness, distorted rectangles like stretched-out eyes. The moon outlined the husk of the house; the portico shadowed the door completely, so it was a hulking creature that could see you, but did not allow you access. Outside, the spotlight on the Neptune statue landed on the points of his trident. Now, when it was shrouded and nearly invisible, Stevie saw the Great House for the first time. She saw what it was—a demented place, unwanted by the mountain. Mount Hatchet, that’s what they called it, because it was shaped like an ax. Mount Hatchet had not wanted to have its face blasted and its trees cut. It wanted nothing to do with this school, so it had eaten the family that made it. Eaten them in slow, careful bites until there was nothing left.

Her brain was going weird on her.

“What does the Pulsating Norb do?” she asked, trying to push down her thoughts.

“Nothing. It’s like a Jell-O wall. Well . . . you can put stuff in it and no one can see it.”