Mariana tutted, “Okay, let’s go. But if we get caught and thrown in witch jail, I’m blaming everything on you.”
The old wooden floor groaned as they crossed the room, and Mariana’s invisible hand turned the knob. She pulled open the bedroom door and stepped into the dark hallway. They tiptoed along a worn rug past Mrs. Ranulf’s room. A floorboard made a loud squeak just outside her door, and Fiona froze, holding her breath. She waited until she was sure no one stirred, and Mariana’s light footsteps continued ahead of her.
The hallway opened up onto the swooping staircase. In the center of the second-floor landing, Mariana pulled open a white door into a narrow stairwell leading up to the attic. The walls seemed to be of unfinished wood, and it smelled of damp wool and mothballs. Mariana’s nervous breathing filled the small the space as they climbed. At the top of the stairwell, a door blocked their path. Fiona bumped into Mariana’s back, nearly losing her balance and toppling back down.
“Careful. I’m right here,” Mariana whispered, turning the doorknob. It opened into darkness. “I can’t see anything.”
“Edge in a little bit.” She half expected to find Munroe and Tobias in the center of a candlelit circle, naked and drinking blood from chalices.
“Did you ever memorize the light spell?”
“I think so.” Fiona chanted the spell, hovering close to her friend in the doorway. A glowing orb flickered into existence. Its pulsing light illuminated a dusty attic, nearly the length of a ballroom. The low ceiling sloped down at the edges, so that only a very small person could stand up straight near the walls. In the stale air, dust motes hung in the glow around the orb.
Footsteps creaked up the old stairs below. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Fiona?” whispered Alan’s voice.
She exhaled as he stepped into the room with them, shutting the door behind him. “Looks like an ordinary attic.”
Fiona surveyed the space. Yellowed muslin hung over the windows that faced out into the garden. Instead of a proper floor, long beams spanned the length of the room, intersected every few feet by joists. The spaces between revealed the plaster ceiling of the second-floor bedrooms. Laid across this framing were planks of varying sizes forming small paths around the attic.
Near where they stood, the boards joined together in a sort of pallet, and on top of these boards, dusty fabric-covered furniture and boxes were haphazardly arranged.
Fiona tiptoed forward, pausing to wipe away a cobweb caught in her eyelashes. “Well, Munroe wasn’t lying about the floor.”
A pathway of floorboards led to a white wall at the far end of the attic. Muslin-draped furniture surrounded an unpainted wooden door in its center.
She pointed, forgetting no one could see her hand. “I think we should look behind the door.”
“Could be an old maid’s quarters,” said Alan. “One of my ancestors died in a fire in 1899. She was a chambermaid and got trapped in her room on the top floor.”
Fiona stepped over the creaky boards to the right until she reached a whitewashed crib carved with images of animals. Peering over the crib’s edge, she grimaced at the sight of a black doll with bulging white eyes. It grinned up at her. She held it up. “What is this thing?”
A shock of gray wool stood out from its round head, and a red bowtie nestled under its chin.
“It’s a golliwog,” said Alan from her side. “Racist children’s toys from a hundred years ago.”
She frowned. “Charming.”
A board rattled as Alan shuffled away, and she peered into an open box of moldering teddy bears to the right of the crib. Next to the box, a miniature merry-go-round lay on its side along with a wheeled dog on a pull string. At the other end of the attic, someone jostled the doorknob to the maid’s quarters.
“It’s locked,” Mariana’s voice called out.
An invisible hand pulled a sheet from a six-foot-tall piece of furniture. “What the hell is that?” asked Alan.
Fiona moved along a plank toward the white wall to get a closer look. The sheet had concealed a glass case resting on a dark wood stand. Within the case, a blank-eyed sailor puppet sat on a small wooden stool, his pasty face bisected by a red-lipped grin. The plaque above it read Jolly Jasper. A candy-striped lever jutted from the side.
“This isn’t really the kind of sinister thing we’re looking for,” said Mariana. “I mean, it’s creepy, but…”
A plank clattered as Fiona moved closer to Jolly Jasper. It’ll be a miracle if no one hears us, but at least no one can see us. Where the path of planks ended, she had to step on the joists to get to the puppet.
“There’s a lever,” said Alan. “A lever got us into the secret room in Mather.”
“Try it,” whispered Fiona.
An unseen hand depressed it. As soon as it did, Jasper’s mechanical body emitted a loud, mirthless cackle, jerking forward and backward.
Crap.
Someone jumped back, bumping into Fiona, who lost her balance.