The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(89)

“It’s a wall that hides things? You didn’t tell me that before.”

“Mainly it pulsates,” Nate said. “It looks like it’s breathing. I’m not putting the Pulsating Norb in.”

Stevie did not like the sound of this pulsating, breathing wall, not with this diseased house menacing her at the end of the lawn. Why had she come here? Why had she passed through the Sphinxes? Why had she come back after Hayes died? How much warning did you need?

Oh, it was coming. The rising beast in her chest, the thing with the fingers inside that squeezed her heart in broken rhythms, the thing that whispered troubles in her ear until everything fell apart. It was coming now, just as everything built to a head.

“I like it,” she lied.

“You don’t understand the Pulsating Norb. No one understands the Pulsating Norb.”

“I ship it.”

“Nobody ships the Pulsating Norb,” Nate said. “Do you want to wait inside?”

“No,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t move.”

That was true at least. If she turned to stone, gripped her phone tight, held on to the reality of Nate and Larry and Fenton and Hunter, she could ride the beast. She had to. She had the answer.

“Why did you call it a Norb?” she said, trying to keep herself talking.

“It was a typo when I was typing the word ‘orb’ and I kept it. Seriously, Stevie, it’s cold. Janelle and Vi . . .”

“What if I solved it?” she said. “What if I really did it?”

Nate paused for a moment.

“Then it would be a big deal,” he said.

“I’m scared.”

To Nate’s credit, he did not ask why she was scared, and he did not tell her not to be scared. Maybe he understood how terrifying it is to do the thing you meant to do. Maybe he could see the monsters in the night. “So why do you do it?” he asked. “Why mysteries?”

This, Stevie had thought about.

“With mysteries,” she said, “with crime, you get all this information—everything matters. The location. The time. The weather. The building. The ground. Every single thing that floats by. Every object in the room. Everything everyone says. It’s a lot of stuff. And you have to look at it all and find the pattern, find the thing that stands out, figure out the thing that means something. Is there a piece of thread stuck in the fence? Did someone hear a noise? Is there a fingerprint under the table? And there could be thousands of fingerprints—so which one means something? You take everything in the world and you figure out what matters. That’s what it is. And then you make things right.”

“So you want to find out the answers and I want to make up the answers,” he said. “I think we just saved a ton of money on therapy.”

“Also I want to wear the exam gloves,” Stevie said.

“We all want that.” Nate smiled a bit.

“It’s funny when you smile,” she said. “It’s like a rainbow on a cloudy day.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again.”

Stevie’s phone clattered on the cement. The sound was so shocking that she recoiled for a second. Larry’s name came up, and she snatched it.

“Hey,” she said.

“Stevie,” Larry said with a strangely level voice. “What made you call me?”

“A bad feeling,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to . . .”

Larry went quiet.

“Hello?” Stevie said. “What’s happening?”

“Stevie . . . the house was on fire. It was a bad one, Stevie. They think she left the gas on and lit a cigarette. They found a body on the first floor. It was your professor, Dr. Fenton.”

Stevie felt herself on the verge of a laugh. It wasn’t funny, but the laugh wanted to burble up.

“They found someone else on the stairs. She has a nephew . . .”

The laugh was maybe the urge to vomit.

“Is he . . .”

“I don’t know his condition. Stevie, you knew something was wrong. . . .”

Nate was leaning forward. He could tell that something was not right.

“She was being weird on the phone.”

“Was there someone else there? What did she sound like?”

Not now . . . The kid is there. The kid is there!

“Stevie?”

Things were getting dark. It was night, of course, but now more night was coming and Stevie felt that it was time to lean back and lay flat on the ground. Nate slid over, and he was asking if she was okay, but she couldn’t hear him properly.

She noticed, now that she was on her back and the other lights in the world were dimming, just one point of light above her head. A pinpoint, blue, shining down. It was encased in a shiny black eye that reminded her of the cow eye she had dissected with Mudge. What was that point where it all connects and you just can’t see . . . ?

She could have sworn the little blue eye of Edward King’s security camera in the cupola ceiling winked at her.

It saw all.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


WHEN I WRITE A BOOK, I OFTEN FEEL LIKE A LONE WEIRDO, MAKING things up and chattering away to herself. I feel this way because it is a fairly accurate representation of what is going on. BUT! We are never really alone! Books happen because of friends and family, because of publishers, editors, agents, publicists, marketing folks, booksellers, librarians . . . so many people help make and shape a book, and then get that book to readers.