My body shakes.
Rafe slides his hands into his pockets and strolls toward Isabel.
Five minutes later, I stand at the doors of the Vandenberg manor, knocker in hand. But before I can do anything with it, the doors swing open. Jude appears, glancing over his shoulder, looking very much like a man on a mission. Until he catches sight of me and stops dead.
“Rafe just hurt Twig. I think his arm is broken.”
Jude’s brow furrows. “What?”
I open my mouth to elaborate when the items in his hands distract me. The compass, or at least, two halves of the compass, along with a brittle scrap of paper. “What is that?”
“I took it apart, and this was inside.”
He hands me the scrap.
It’s fragile in my fingers, like it might crumble if I breathe too hard. On it, someone has written a string of numbers, one stacked over the other. Six digits per line, grouped in pairs, each followed by a symbol. The first ends in N, the second in W.
“These are coordinates,” I whisper.
Old-fashioned coordinates. The kind you’d find on an explorer’s map from long ago. Degrees. Minutes. Seconds.
I flip the scrap over.
A short phrase has been scrawled on the back.
Beneath the highest point.
“I plugged them in.” Jude shows me a map on his phone with a pin dropped in the hills.
A gasp tumbles from my lips.
Because I know that location.
It’s the ruins of St. Fortuna’s.
39
THE SECRET DOOR
We park at the cemetery and walk the rest of the way, the blue dot on Jude’s phone tracking our movement. Clouds have gathered on the horizon. Wind begins to stir. It’s almost as if the weather can sense my mood—on edge, wound tight, my insides a snarl. I can’t stop thinking about Twig, or how easily that wheel could have rolled over something more vital than his arm.
Beside me, Jude walks with his mouth set, his jaw tense, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket. He has fixed his attention straight ahead, because heaven forbid it lands on me.
I want to shout at him.
Your cousin did this!
He threatened me by hurting Twig. He manipulated Lainey, who had no control over that trailer. I can’t stop picturing Mrs. Calloway and Kate ontheir hands and knees, frantically calling his name. His legs thrashing as he cried out in pain. Rafe did that. Rafe’s responsible for that. And yet, Jude’s acting likeI’mthe leper, likeI’vedone something wrong. Like he couldn’t stand being in that car with me for one more second.
Well, fine.
If my presence is such a horrible thing to bear, I won’t subject him to the misery. I lengthen my stride. Mercy Bogaard’s dress billows around my ankles as I weave between sunken gravestones, their epitaphs long faded. There must besomethinghere worth discovering. Why else would the scrap of paper be hidden inside a compass that was hidden inside a Bible?
A blanket of fallen leaves surrounds the skeletal remains of St. Fortuna’s. Honeysuckle crawls up broken archways. Moss creeps over fallen stone. Virginia creeper snakes around blackened support beams that protrude from the earth like a ribcage—blood-red veins over scorched bone.
I step over a crumbled wall, into the footprint of the former chapel. Beneath my boots, faint mosaic flooring peeks through layers of dirt and debris.
Birdsong fills the quiet.
