The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(56)

“What the hell is . . .”

She heard him figure it out.

“Back up,” she said gently. “Back up, back up. This is how we help her.”

“Stevie . . .” There was a lightness in his voice. It was almost giddy.

“Turn around,” Stevie said, moving him back, foot by foot. “I need you to turn around.”

Now she was echoing Larry’s words to her. Turn around. Don’t look, because if you look it stays with you forever.

“We can’t leave her,” he said.

“We’re getting help. Turn. Come on.”

She had to maneuver him back into the main artery of the tunnel. Her adrenaline had taken over. Somehow, she knew how to do this, how to grab David’s hand and lead him back to the end.

When they reached the ladder, Nate was hanging over the opening, his wizard hood drooping around his neck.

“Up,” Stevie said. “Move, move.”

Nate backed up, and she and David scrambled out. When David got up, he staggered into the hallway and bent over, half gagging.

“What’s going on?” Nate said. “What’s down there?”

Stevie shook her head, partially because she could not find the words and partially to hold down the feeling of sickness.

“What is happening?” Nate said again.

“Ellie,” Stevie replied. “Ellie is down there.”

“Ellie is down there? Hiding? I have to call for help!”

Stevie shook her head, and Nate got the message and fell back against the wall.

Stevie pulled her phone from her pocket. David lurched along the wall and reached for it, pushing it down.

“Don’t. No, I have to call,” David said, pulling out his phone. “Both of you should go in your rooms. Put some headphones on. That’s where you’ve been. Play something loud. Go.”

“What?” Stevie said.

“You can’t have been down there, Stevie. You get it? Nate, you get it? She wasn’t there. I went down there alone. Just me.”

“What, we’re lying now?” Nate said. “To cops?”

“You know what it means if Stevie was down there. I’ll be okay. She won’t be. All we’re doing is reporting. That’s all.”

There was an urgency in David that was entirely unfamiliar, a high flush to his cheeks and a rasp in his voice. Nate turned gray, as gray as the wizard robe he was still wearing.

“Just go in your rooms and shut the door,” David said again, his voice pleading. “That’s all you have to do.”

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.