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The watch was silent. She looked down at its display. Still blank.
Coco’s lips were numb with fear. There had to be a way out of the basement. Seth was just hiding it from her. Tricks. Like his voice in the stairwell, like the corridor that seemed to go on forever. He was trying to distract her until morning.
She had to find Gretel’s bones before morning. She had to get back upstairs, to the second-floor corridor with the closets. She wished desperately for Ollie and Brian.
Okay, Coco told herself. First things first. You have to get out of the basement.
But Coco didn’t know how to get out of the basement. She was trying not to panic again. It felt like the walls and the ceiling were going to start sliding closer and closer together any second now, until she was in a coffin, until her tiny light was extinguished and she would never get to see the sun ever again.
Coco shoved back against the panic. He was just playing a game, the smiling man. Coco could play games too. She’d beaten him at chess, hadn’t she? You outsmarted that guy once, Coco told herself grimly. But now you’re going to have to outsmart him again, and maybe again. Enough times to find the bones, and Brian, and get all three of us home. The first step to outsmarting him was not to panic. He totally wanted her to panic.
No one, Coco knew, would really describe her as particularly smart. In class, when Coco got a good grade, teachers always gave her papers back with slightly puzzled compliments. It was part of being tiny. People would think you were eight. People would smile indulgently and ruffle her pink hair. But they didn’t really think, Hey, that’s a clever girl.
But Coco actually was smart. At least she thought she was. She was good at making plans. That was why she loved playing chess. Because you had to plan ahead. You had to try to think what the other person was thinking.
Now she had to try to think what the smiling man was thinking.
At chess tournaments, people when they saw her always went, Oh, great, I’m playing the tiny girl. Easy win.
Coco was pretty sure that was exactly what Seth had thought, seeing her. That was why he’d agreed to her chess challenge. Even why he’d separated her and Brian. Because he thought she couldn’t win on her own.
But she could, Coco thought. She could.
There had to be a way out of the basement. Because all this was Seth’s game. And where was the fun of playing a game when one side had no way to win?
Coco picked up the lamp, newly determined. First things first. The most obvious. Maybe the stairs were really there, but she just couldn’t see them. She went to the wall. She started to walk along it, holding her lamp in one hand, running her fingers along the rough plastered brick with the other.
Nothing.
Now what? How much oil was left in her oil lamp? What would happen when it gave out? She stared around herself, trying to think.
Saw something on the floor.
Frowned. Peered closer. It was—snow? She reached out and touched it. It was icy cold on her fingers. Snow? Water? Tracks? How could there be snow in here? Had Seth tracked it in somehow, in the dark?
Then suddenly Coco remembered standing in front of a mirror in a long hallway. Remembered looking back the way they’d come. Remembered seeing footprints. Ghostly, snowy footprints. Her heart began to pound.
A ghost skier might make wet footprints. Gabe. Gabe had been in the basement, on Ollie’s side of the mirror. Were these Gabe’s footprints? Was he with Ollie now? Had they found another way out of the basement? Coco strained to listen. Did she hear footsteps? Heavy footsteps, moving away from her? She thought she did. But she couldn’t be sure.
“Should I follow?” Coco whispered to the watch.
Silence. Then two beeps. As though the watch were doubtful. Reluctant. But a YES.
“Okay,” whispered Coco, trying to quiet her racing heart. Bending near to the floor, straining her eyes to find the tiny drips of snow and water, Coco began to wind her way through the maze of the basement.
15
OLLIE AND GABE and Gretel hurried through a labyrinth of boxes. Ollie’s lantern lit things in flashes as she hurried. SUMMER CLOTHES. WINTER CLOTHES. GIRL SHOES. They couldn’t run in a straight line, but had to stumble left and right, going around things.
The basement was huge. Neither Gretel nor Gabe could move very fast. Gabe was wearing ski boots. Gretel just stumbled a lot. They all made a lot of noise. Gabe’s ski boots clomped on the stone floor, and Ollie’s breathing sounded loud even to her own ears.
But then again, Ollie reasoned to herself grimly, she was carrying a giant lantern, so it wasn’t like they were hard to spot.
She risked a glance back, but she couldn’t see Mother Hemlock. Only hear her footsteps. Clack. Clack. The footsteps never seemed to hurry. But they never got any farther away either. Ollie thought of zombie movies, where the zombies wouldn’t run, but wouldn’t stop either. She fought off a shiver and tried to pull Gretel along faster.
“Oh, where are we going?” Gret
el whispered. “Where? Where is it safe? You said we’d be safe.”
