The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(59)

And don’t come looking for death and murder, Stevie, because you’ll find it.

She was definitely not warm enough in her vinyl coat, even with the heavy Ellingham fleece underneath. Her jeans were too thin. She had no scarf, so the cold tickled the back of her neck.

Ellie, wrapped in garbage bags, underground.

She could still smell it.

It. Her. It.

A few people trickled out of the Great House, still in costume.

Of course Ellie was dead.

Of course she’d been found on Halloween. Sealed in a tunnel.

It was distilled Ellingham, pure as one of the streams that ran down the mountain.

It would have been dark for Ellie. Absolutely dark. She wouldn’t have known where she was. She would have had to feel along those walls, going back and forth, looking for a way out. How long? For hours? Days? Crying. Probably hyperventilating. Stevie thought of the depths of her own panic—the world-ending feeling of nothing. Ellie would have panicked. She would have gone back and forth and back and forth and screamed. Banged. Scratched and clawed. The thirst and the hunger and the confusion would have set in. . . .

No. She had to keep these thoughts out. Paint over them with gloss and let them harden. She had a job to do now: find David, who had found Ellie.

The Ellingham library was quietly buzzing. Several security officers were there, talking to the local police. There were no police cars parked out on the oval—they must have taken the service road and parked out back to keep people from freaking out. Despite the activity, the library felt like an empty cathedral. It had that strange architectural property of trapping any wind that came in through the door and spinning it up in a soft vortex that had nowhere to go. The higher you went, air whistled through the elaborate wrought iron of the circular steps and balcony guards, and loose pages trembled, as if alive. The noise of the conversations below swirled all the way to the ceiling, smashing against the books. Stevie looked straight up, noticing for the first time the constellations painted on the blue ceiling. The stars were inside, closer.

Larry had a quiet word with one of the security people.

“He’s upstairs in one of the reading rooms,” he said to Stevie. “With a counselor. Let me see what’s going on.”

Stevie watched Larry wend his way up to the second floor and disappear into the stacks. He reappeared on the balcony a few minutes later and waved Stevie up. The iron rail of the staircase was cold, and each of her footsteps reverberated as she climbed. It seemed like the library didn’t like this interruption of its peaceful routine.

“You can go and talk to him,” Larry said in a low voice. “The counselor said that would be helpful for both of you. But you remember what I said.”

He guided her to the end of a wide aisle between the geography and geology sections, a row of green-spined books that concluded in one of the library’s somber wooden doors with the gold painted lettering. The counselor was waiting by the door. Stevie recognized her from before, when Hayes died and Ellingham deployed therapists in all directions.

The reading room was a small spot, separated from the rest of the second floor by walls that were half-paneled in frosted glass. The original furnishings had been replaced with a gray love seat and four fuzzy beanbags and an equally fuzzy rug, just in case any of the other six hundred cozy reading nooks at Ellingham didn’t satisfy.

David had avoided all of these options and was sitting on the floor against the wall, once again wearing the two-thousand-dollar coat. His knees were partially bent and he was staring at his shoes. The counselor was hovering next to him on the arm of the love seat. She got up and came over to speak to Larry and Stevie in the doorway.

“Would you like to come in?” she said to Stevie, in that professionally calm way that therapists have.

Stevie stepped into the room cautiously, and David looked up. He was pale, his face all raw edges.

“Hey,” Stevie said.

“Hey.”

There was a dry crackle in his voice, but otherwise, nothing gave a hint about what had just happened.

The counselor backed out and shut the door quietly. Stevie found that she did not quite know what to do with herself. Her arms felt gangly and useless at her sides. She wasn’t sure if she did want to sit, but standing was getting weird. She considered perching on the arm of the love seat as the counselor had, but that was strange and clinical.

After an awkward moment, she slipped down the wall and sat next to him. There was warmth radiating off his body. The room felt humid. Considering all that had transpired between them that night, there was no reason to be uncomfortable. And yet, Stevie felt twitchy in her skin.

“They’re setting up a place for us to stay in the yurt tonight,” she said.

“Like camp,” he said. “Sadness camp.”

He clenched and unclenched his hand several times on his knee, then suddenly reached for Stevie’s and held it.

“Okay,” he said, coughing out a humorless laugh. “You told me not to go down there. I should have listened to you. If you say not to sneak in somewhere . . .”

Stevie could only concentrate on the feeling in her hand, the warmth of his palm against her skin, the message it conveyed. It was a need. A need for her strength. The sensation rippled up her arm and was transmitted to the rest of her body in a wave.

“She knew,” David said. “About me. She was the only one before you.”