But how?
I touch the wall. As my fingertips graze the crumbling paper, the wall peels away, revealing a door.
I’m not surprised, and I’m not afraid. This is a house of secrets. Ahouse of liars.
I tap the wall in time with the hammer striking the chord. Rap…Rap…Rap. The door swings wide, and I’m where I knew I’d be. Ephraim’s office. The old man sits in his chair. His face is a whirl of unfinished oil paint: pink, peach, and ochre.
I circle around behind him to the shelves. Books, trinkets, and that scroll each stand proudly on display for all time. The letters on the scroll keep shifting around. Two words flit into being. As one appears, the other fades, ink dancing across the parchment as it forms.
Muniments. Requiem. Muniments. Requiem.
I leave the eternal dance and drag my feet across the thickening carpet, feeling the pile grow beneath my feet. Like weeds, it climbs between my toes and tries to hold me in place.
At the window, the maze awaits, but as I watch, it falls as flat as a collapsed house of cards, revealing the glass woman and the fairytale cottage.
As above. So below. Balance. Dark and light. Secrets and puzzles.
“Jules, you need to wake up.”
Am I asleep? I’m tired. I should sleep.
“Wake up. Come on, Jules.”
I try to turn around to see who is calling me.
“Get up!”
Eric? Why would Eric be here? If Eric’s here. I’m in trouble. I need to move. I need to get up.
“Wake up!”
I shoot upright and am halfway across the double bed before I can see straight. My dream-addled mind expects the cool wall of my bedroom in the Tower to be pressed against my back. My fear expects the grab of my father’s fist. As the duck egg blue walls filter in, my memory floods with a summary. Not the Tower.The compound. My room.Dax and Aiden are gone.I’m alone.There’s a stranger here. No, it’s Ben. Ben is here.
“What the—”
He raises a finger to his lips, immediately shutting me up and drawing attention to the spike of fear radiating through his wide eyes and tight mouth. Something is wrong. “Shh. We need to move. Now! They’re here. They’re in the apartment.”
He leads me to the hidden panel in the wall behind my bed and nods for me to go first. I grab my phone, but Ben shakes his head. Still, there’s no way I’m leaving it. I press the off button and white-knuckle grip it. He sighs and grabs my shoes, hurrying me along with a scowl and another nod. I crawl into the space and slide back to let him inside too. He crawls in backwards in a practised semi-crouch and slides the panel into position almost silently, just as I hear the handle twist on my bedroom door.
Ben freezes. His gaze slides to meet mine, and I read the warning in them.Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t make a sound.
I’m reminded of that night stuck in my closet with Dax. Is nowhere safe? Can I not have one sanctuary? The invasion of privacy, the desecration of my space by people who want to hurt me; it eats at me. I’m so sick of having nothing and being treated like I’m nothing. This space was supposed to be safe, but the guys are gone less than a week and someone has breached security.
How? How did they get past the patrols, the walls, the gates, the cameras?
Through the wall, we hear the muffled voice of a man. “Miss Girard?”
He sounds harmless. Like he’s just checking in on me. Though why he’d need to do that in the middle of the night, makes no sense. Is he security?
I do my best to ask silently, with furrowed brows and a tilt of my head in the direction of the room. Ben shakes his head. Either he’s not sure or I’m wrong.
Heavy bootsclunk, making their way closer. Ben’s hands flatten against the panel, his arms strain, and I realise he’s pushing against it. Doing so makes it impossible to see the cracks delineating thesecret door and, I imagine, will defend against a breach should our intruder already know about this tunnel. Though how long we’ll hold someone off, crouched like this, I don’t know.
In the room we hear a whoosh of movement and three soft thumps. Two pillows and the duvet hit the floor. He growls out a far less gentle,“FUCK!”and things go quiet for a long moment.
“She’s not here. Yes, I’m in her fucking room. The light-blue one.
Where? The mirror? Okay, hang on…”
