Long Lost, стр. 40
Fiona rocked on her feet, wishing she could think of any other way out. “If I tell you, you can’t tell them about tonight, either.”
“I’m not promising. Not until I know what you’re doing.” Arden leaned forward on the cushions. “So tell, or I’m going up to wake Mom and Dad right now.”
“Okay. Okay.” Fiona swallowed, trying to sort her thoughts into two shareable and secret piles. “I found this book. . . .”
She gave Arden the short and simple version; the one where Fiona read The Lost One, figured out that it was set in Lost Lake, and began to uncover its missing ending with the help of a new friend. She left out the book’s strange movements, and the pocketknife, and the fact that she and Charlie were hoping more of its pages would inexplicably appear. The less Arden knew, the less she could tell.
“So,” said Arden, when she’d finished, “you’re going to sneak out of the house after dark, when you’re already in trouble, to break into a closed library?” She stared at Fiona. “That is the worst idea.”
“We’re not breaking in,” said Fiona.
“Seriously?” Arden gestured at the darkness outside the windows. “It’s not even safe, with the Searcher, or who knows what, waiting out there in this weird place.”
“The Searcher isn’t real,” said Fiona, before she could rethink the words.
Arden blinked. “You said it was.”
“No, I didn’t. I just said other people said it was,” Fiona answered impatiently. “I was just trying to scare you.”
Arden frowned. “Why?”
“Because! Because you made us move here. Because I wanted you to think that maybe there was something wrong with this place. Then you’d at least feel bad for dragging everybody else here along with you.”
“You think I don’t already feel bad?” Arden stood up. She gazed down at Fiona for a moment. “You’ve been messing up my room, haven’t you?” she asked softly. “So I’d be scared. So I’d think there was something wrong. Did you untie the knot in my lace too?”
Even in the dimness, Fiona couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes. She looked at the scarred hardwood floor, gray-blue as ice in the moonlight. The two of them might as well have been standing on a frozen lake.
“You just had to tie it again,” said Fiona, very quietly.
“I can’t believe . . .” Arden’s voice was quiet too. “Never mind,” she said, more clearly. “It doesn’t even matter. Just leave. Go out in the dark all by yourself. I’m not going to tell.” She stepped past Fiona, into the hallway.
“Arden.” Fiona still couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Arden again. “You know what? I hope the Searcher finds you.”
She turned and padded away, her footsteps nearly silent on the ancient wooden floor.
Chapter Twenty-One
The town of Lost Lake was quiet even in the middle of a sunny weekday. But now, as Fiona pedaled her bike through the deserted nighttime streets, its silence was almost paralyzing.
It was the kind of silence that comes when you step into a room and everyone in it goes still, so you know they’ve all been whispering about you. It was the kind of silence Fiona had felt inside the library the very first time she’d stepped through its doors. Now it had seeped out and blanketed the entire town.
She glanced around at the weathered buildings. A few lights glowed behind high windowpanes, but these lights just seemed to make more shadows. And every shadow was a place where something could hide.
Fiona shivered.
They were just shadows, she told herself. There was no Searcher. Even though her sister had wished for the Searcher to find her. Even though something had followed Margaret Chisholm through the narrow old streets of this town a hundred years ago. Even though something dark and tall and quiet had just billowed across the edge of her vision—
Fiona whipped around, nearly toppling her bike.
A flag hanging from a nearby porch furled and unfurled in the breeze.
Fiona swallowed.
She wouldn’t let Arden scare her.
Even though she had tried to scare Arden first.
Fiona pushed this thought aside, straightened her bike, and flew onward, toward the library.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” Charlie whispered, opening the front doors wide enough for Fiona to slip inside.
“My sister almost stopped me,” Fiona whispered back. “Sorry I’m late.”
Charlie closed the library doors behind her.
The darkness of the night outside was nothing compared to the moonless black inside the old house. It made every sound seem louder, sharper, the way a black stage curtain sets off a spotlight.
“Where are the light switches?” Fiona asked, groping for the wall.
“We can’t turn the lights on,” Charlie answered. “Someone outside could see. But I brought this.”
There was a click. Something purplish and about the size of a cauliflower flared to life in Charlie’s hands.
Fiona blinked into the cloud of light. “What is that?”
“A night-light.” Charlie held up a purple plastic octopus with eight glowing arms and a smiling head. “It lights a wider area than a flashlight does. I don’t use it anymore,” he added, a bit defensively. “And if you just click the button once, it doesn’t play any music.”
Fiona felt herself start to smile. “I wonder if anybody ever snuck into a library to solve a mystery with a glowing octopus before.”
The purplish light revealed Charlie smiling back. “I think the odds are low.”
Fiona looked around the huge central chamber. Armchairs and deserted desks formed shadowy hulks. Doorways to other, even darker, rooms gaped like open mouths. The size of this place, and of the task ahead of them, tumbled down on her all at once. “Ready?” she asked, in a voice that was far more fragile than she