Long Lost, стр. 36
Ms. Miranda’s eyebrows drew closer together. “There’s no one on the library staff who works on the third floor. It’s just archives,” she said. “What did she look like?”
“She was tall. Like . . . taller than you. She had curly gray hair. White skin. Big shoulders. She was wearing a long dress.”
Charlie gave Fiona a poke in the back. Fiona ignored it, because Ms. Miranda and her eyebrows were still staring straight at her.
“I don’t know who that would be.” Ms. Miranda turned to Mr. Owens, who was sorting books at the other end of the desk. “Do you, James?”
“She definitely worked here,” Fiona pushed on. “She knew all about the library. She told me what rooms I couldn’t go in.”
Charlie gave her another annoying poke. “I know who it was,” he hissed into her ear. “It’s all right,” he added loudly, grabbing Fiona’s arm. “We’ll figure things out ourselves.”
Before Fiona could argue, he steered her around the corner of the new arrivals shelf.
“I know who it was,” Charlie whispered again, once they were hidden from view.
“So?” Fiona whispered back. “Just knowing who—”
“Really tall,” Charlie interrupted. “Big shoulders. Long dress.”
“Long dress,” Fiona repeated. “What?”
Charlie stared at her. “Mrs. Rawlins.”
Fiona let out a breath through her nose. “Mrs. Rawlins must have died a long time ago.”
“Exactly.”
“This woman wasn’t a ghost. She wasn’t even like a ghost. She was solid. She talked to me. She was a real person.”
“She was a real person.” Charlie’s eyes glowed like stained glass lamps. “She’s part of a story without an ending. So she’s stuck here too.”
Fiona took another exasperated nose-breath. “Let’s just sneak up to the third floor,” she whispered. “If she stops us, you’ll see that she’s real, and if she doesn’t, we can visit Evelyn’s room. Come on.”
The third-floor hallway was even more hushed and dim than on Fiona’s first visit. The rainy day outside the windows sent only a faint gray haze through the windows, and the dampness in the air seemed to muffle every sound.
They stopped before the last door in the hallway. Gently Fiona turned the knob.
At first glance, Evelyn’s bedroom looked just as it had before. Fiona and Charlie stood on the threshold, gazing around at the lace curtains, the cluttered vanity, the books and treasures still waiting for an owner who had never come back.
Fiona’s eyes drifted across the empty bed.
“Charlie,” she breathed. “Look.”
Lying on the silk covers, its cover tinted a deeper shade of green by the dimness, was a book.
The Lost One.
Chapter Nineteen
Fiona and Charlie raced to the bed.
Fiona snatched up the book, gripping it tight. “But—I left this on my bed just a couple of hours ago.”
“Like I said, it’s cursed,” said Charlie. “It can’t leave this place for long. But it wants someone to find it.”
Fiona dragged her eyes away from the book long enough to stare back at him. “You really believe that?”
“The book chose us,” said Charlie, as confidently as if he was giving an answer in math class. “We both keep finding it, or it keeps finding us. We’ve both seen Pixie. We found the knife. Why wouldn’t I believe it?”
Fiona flipped through the book’s familiar pages, trying to think of a logical reply. Halfway through, she stopped, her breath catching.
“Charlie.” She held up the open book. “There are new pages.”
It was impossible. Books didn’t just write themselves. Of course, they didn’t usually move themselves from room to room in rambling old libraries or around whispery old towns, either.
“Let’s read it,” said Charlie logically.
They leaned over the open book.
Afterward, no matter who asked, Pearl was never able to answer questions about what she had been doing in the water at night.
As the days passed, the grand brick house grew quieter and quieter. Where once lively music had poured from a gramophone and songs had chimed from a grand piano, there were now closed lids and locked doors. Where staff had bustled upstairs and down, chatting in the kitchen, whistling in the yard, there were bowed heads and whispers and worried looks.
And where there had been the noise of two girls running, laughing, followed by a barking dog, there was nothing at all.
Meanwhile, outside the grand brick house, the search went on. The sheriff and deputies and an army of hired help combed the town. They knocked at farmhouse doors, examined tumbledown barns and rocky caves, tromped the far reaches of the woods behind a pack of leashed bloodhounds. But there was no trace of Hazel.
Until, at last, there was.
Fiona reached the bottom of the page. She could read faster than almost everyone she knew, and she was used to having to stop and wait for school partners to catch up. But when she glanced over at Charlie, she found him already looking back at her.
“You’re done?” she asked.
“I finished a few seconds ago,” said Charlie. “You can turn the page.”
Fiona did. She read even faster now, wanting to know what happened next, and wanting to know it just before Charlie.
Though quiet had filled all the chambers of the grand brick house, nowhere was that quiet so complete as at the end of the third floor.
Hazel’s bedroom was empty, of course. Pearl remained shut in the room next door, emerging more and more rarely. Mrs. Rawlins and Mrs. Fisher checked on her nearly every hour, bringing trays and tea, freshening bedding, and changing clothes.
For days, this routine persisted, until its abnormality had almost become normality. And then, one sunless afternoon, Mrs. Rawlins withdrew from the third-floor bedroom with an untouched tea tray in her arms and a haunted expression on her broad face. She hurried down the corridor so fast that Pixie, who had been sprawled listlessly on the floor outside Hazel’s room, raised his head with a curious woof.
Mrs. Rawlins tapped at the door of the study, where the man and lady of the house were closed