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

“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.