The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(20)

Dottie’s room? Dottie was a sneak too. Did Dottie leave her window propped? She sometimes talked about liking to have it open a bit, how it reminded her of home, with the open window by the fire escape.

She crept over to room three and looked at the window of the dark room. There was a tiny, tiny gap, only as wide as Francis’s finger, but it was enough. She got a stick and levered it up, ever so carefully, then pushed it, working slow and silent. Then she hoisted herself inside and closed it, inch by precious inch. She was inside Dottie’s room, which, while technically like her own, was so much shabbier. There were no fur throws, no special furniture, no skis, no trunks of extra clothes, no radio or phonograph. Just what the school provided, and books. Piles of books. Neat, and all over.

Francis went to the door, and seeing no one, stepped out into the hallway and . . .

“Francis Crane!”

The overhead light came on, and Miss Nelson stood there, looking flushed and furious.

Francis Crane, the flour princess of Fifth Avenue and future outlaw, was busted cold just footsteps from her door. She opened her mouth to speak, though she was not sure what she would say. Something would come out. Miss Nelson, though she was in charge, was generally passive. She would say she was sorry and . . .

Miss Nelson was not passive tonight. Her rounded features looked sharper, and there was something in her face that suggested she knew exactly where Francis had been.

“In here,” Miss Nelson said coldly, pointing to the common room. Behind her, a figure appeared. A man in overalls and a flat cap, holding a shotgun.

Francis forgot to look surprised at this, and Miss Nelson’s eyes grew narrow. Francis had given it all away. She did as she was told, going into the common room, where one lamp was lit. The man with the shotgun went to the front window to look out.

“You will sit there,” Miss Nelson said, pointing to the couch. “And you will not move. At all. You will sleep there.”

She turned to the man by the door.

“She doesn’t move from that spot,” Miss Nelson said.





6


THE GREAT HOUSE WOULD NEVER FAIL TO IMPRESS STEVIE. THIS WAS exactly the effect it was intended to have. It was Albert Ellingham’s palace, designed by several of the most famous architects and designers of the era, to be a showstopper. The wood was rosewood, imported from India. The pink marble, the Austrian crystal, the Scottish stained glass . . . everything in sight had been brought from some corner of the world for the express purpose of being part of this room, just to be seen, to be admired by Albert Ellingham and all he chose to invite.

Right next to the front door, there was a head of steel-colored closely cropped hair, and under it was Larry, as dependable as a grandfather clock, sitting at his large wooden desk. He was staring grimly into an Ellingham mug.

“Hey, Larry,” Stevie said. “What’s wrong with your coffee?”

“Some jackass bought pumpkin-flavored K-Cups for the machine. If I wanted to ruin my day like that I’d go ahead and eat a candle.”

“Not a PSL fan?”

“A what?”

The door to the small security room behind him was tipped open. This had originally been one of the Ellingham receiving parlors. When Stevie had last seen it, it had some desks and a few monitors. Now the furniture had been removed on two walls and replaced by narrow control desks that faced walls of large mounted screens, stacked two high, showing every angle of Ellingham Academy, with the views switching every ten seconds or so.

“That looks . . . complete,” she said.

“Let me give you the tour,” he replied, standing up. “Come in.”

Stevie followed cautiously. If Larry was showing her the security system, it was for a reason. He took a seat and typed something on a keyboard. Stevie’s name came up on one of the screens, then he began to see her morning’s journey told in reverse. There she was at the Great House door. There she was approaching the Great House. There she was walking down a pathway, alone. She stopped to stare at one of the cameras. She was scowling at it. There she was leaving breakfast. There was a close-up of Nate, Janelle, and Stevie going in to breakfast. . . .

“How is it doing this?” she said. “Facial recognition?”

“Sometimes it gets it wrong, and it’s not very useful at night, but overall, it’s not bad. There are also sensors in different locations that can read your ID at six feet. They call them ‘listening posts.’ There are over eight hundred of them.”

He hit return and her images were cleared.

“Here’s the thing,” Larry said. “People don’t tend to change their behavior without reason. But make people see why they should . . .”

“Point made,” Stevie said. “I get it. You see it all.”

Larry did the thing where he pointed two fingers toward his own eyes and then to her.

“And you leave any further inquiries to the appropriate authorities. Not that there will be any further inquiries.”

“Appropriate,” Stevie said. “Authorities. Yes.”

“Good. They’re waiting for you upstairs. You know the office.”

Stevie backed into the main hall, then headed up the grand, sweeping staircase. On the landing, there was the painting of the Ellingham family, done by their friend Leonard Holmes Nair. You couldn’t just walk by the painting. It demanded to be seen. It wasn’t overly large, maybe four feet high, which was nothing in proportion to the space. It was the color that gripped you first—the blue and yellow that swirled through the sky and slipped into the figures of the family. The bodies were almost an afterthought; the faces were the focus, and they blended in with the moon and the trees. It was like the landscape and the skyline were absorbing them, pulling them apart from each other and away from the world.