Page 10 of Written in Red

The Scholar couldn’t possibly have known how vast those mysteries truly were. Everything about Mercury’s life was a mystery. Everything. And those mysteries were dangerous.

The mystery of why he had been led to Aventine, a place that shattered things, was tied to all the others. The truthfulness of the Scholar’s pronouncement hadn’t left his thoughts. It refused to.

Mercury set the chair near the high window in the entrapment room, attempting to keep his thoughts focused on the mundane task of preparing this very room. But its unique ability to hold ghosts only brought to mind the reason he needed it. Because his dangerous secrets were coming to life and bringing to Aventine people and ghosts capable of shattering him.

Focus, Mercury. Focus.

The entrapment room had two beds inside and now a chair. There were blankets folded on the ends of the two beds. “Utilitarian” was the best that could be said for the furniture in any of the tunnel rooms. But that was all that was needed.

“Is this how food would be given to the people in here?”

Mercury turned at the sound of the Cream Canary’s voice. She hovered just beyond the door, motioning at a pass-through in the wall this room shared with the tunnel.

“Don’t come inside this room,” Mercury warned her, crossing to the door.

“You wouldn’t close me in.” The Cream Canary didn’t seem worried.

“Of course I wouldn’t.” Mercury picked up the lantern. “But I don’t like the idea of any of the ghosts being inside.” He stepped out into the tunnel.

“We don’t overly like the idea, either.”

He walked at the Cream Canary’s side back toward the main tunnel.

“Your new wardrobe really does make you look like a servant.” The ghost motioned to Mercury’s working-class clothing. “I wouldn’t have recognized you if I hadn’t already known who you were.”

“That is the hope,” he said. “We won’t know when bounty hunters arrive, so they will have the element of surprise. But they won’t know who I am, which tips things back in our favor.”

They reached the tunnel crossroads. Granny Grey met them there.

“All the tunnel rooms are ready now,” she said. “Are you?”

“Ready to defend Aventine and everyone here? More than ready.” Though he made the declaration confidently, he was secretly glad they had avoided the necessity thus far.

They continued on toward the start of the tunnel, where it met the dungeon.

“They are coming, Mercury Raine.” Granny Grey’s voice took on a tone of warning. “The people chasing down a bounty. But also the ghosts I’ve told you of from the time of our first meeting. The ghosts who know your secrets. Secrets those seeking the bounty could use against you.”

“They will collide here?” he asked.

“They will.”

This was the storm she’d spoken of those months ago. A place of rending. The secrets of his past. The dangers of his present. They would converge here and tear everything apart.

“If I cannot escape this storm,” he said to Granny, “promise me you will do all you can to make certain Tacey does.”

A quiet sadness touched Granny’s ghostly face. “Her life has become entwined in secrets since coming here. And she has no home to return to, no family she dares trust. Should you be destroyed by this storm, she no doubt will be as well.”

He refused to accept that. “I will see to it that she has what she needs to survive without me. More than survive, live.”

“And how do you mean to do that?” Granny asked.

He stopped at the base of the stairs leading from the dungeon up into the house itself. He looked back at the elderly ghost. “I am Mercury Raine. I have a talent for doing the impossible.”

5

Behind a row of blue books on a shelf in the corner of the library sat a well-hidden door to a well-disguised safe. Even if a person were to remove all the books and look directly at the space behind, it would appear to be nothing but a wall. Aventine, indeed, had many secrets. Until the Scholar had told him of the history connected to this place “near Palatine Knoll,” Mercury had assumed he knew all of those secrets.

Mercury slid a decidedly odd-shaped key into what looked like a knot in the wood shelf the blue books usually sat on. Turning it opened the safe. He’d discovered the key more than a year after arriving at Aventine Manor. He’d needed another six months to sort out where the keyhole was. He’d been both surprised and pleased to discover that it opened a safe. Only now, though, was he actually putting something in it.