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

“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.”

“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.”