With a sigh, I rolled out of bed and groped my way to the door of my room. It was almost a full moon, and quite light here on the second floor, but by now I was so used to this house that I could have found my way to the bathroom with my eyes closed—and even without stepping on the creaking floorboard in the corridor that Ernest had been meaning to replace for ages. It made a rude noise if you put too much weight on it, “Like Aunt Gertrude when she’s had bean soup,” Mia always said, and she liked to tread on it on purpose. I made an elegant detour around the floorboard; after all, I didn’t want to wake anyone. But just as I was putting my hand out to the bathroom door handle, I heard the toilet flush inside the room. My reflex action was to turn and run away, but I didn’t because it occurred to me that this was the real world and I was in no danger of meeting Senator Tod or anyone like him. Apart from the fact that I felt sure the Senator didn’t bother to wash his hands very thoroughly. Rather impatiently, I stepped from one bare foot to the other, until at last the bathroom door swung open and Grayson came out, bare-chested as usual (whatever the temperature outside) and in only his pajama bottoms. But who was I to complain? Anyway, I didn’t have my contact lenses in or my glasses on at this time of day, and my view of him was rather blurred.
“You awake too?” I said in friendly tones, and Grayson let out a small squeak of alarm. He was obviously still half asleep, and hadn’t seen me. Now he was trying to squint at me through his half-closed eyes.
“Liv! What a fright you gave me!”
“Sorry.”
“I was just dreaming about you.”
“How sweet of you.”
He sighed. “No, it wasn’t a nice dream. More of a horrible nightmare. I made a terrible mess of my oral biology exam! When they told me I’d failed, I woke up in a fright. My heart’s still thumping like mad.”
Because you didn’t know anything about anti-diet-butter, you poor little sensitive plant! Whereas I met Arthur and Senator Tod tonight, and do you hear me complaining?
“How about you?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you awake?”
“Oh. Full moon,” I said. “And I need the bathroom.”
“You’re wearing my old T-shirt.” By now Grayson’s eyes must be accustomed to the moonlight. “You were wearing it in my dream as well.”
Uh-oh … dangerous ground. I held my breath for a moment.
“But you also had a tail in my dream,” Grayson went on thoughtfully.
“A tail?” I repeated, trying to sound as disapproving as Emily. I could have sworn that Grayson was blushing. Although you couldn’t really see in this dim light.
“A leopard’s tail,” he said.
No, damn it, a jaguar’s tail! “How peculiar!” I shook my head. “I wonder what Freud would have to say about that? Was there a squirrel in your dream as well?”
Grayson didn’t reply. Then he said quietly, “You’re not doing that anymore, are you, Liv?”
I swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“The dreams, the doors … You and Henry aren’t still exploring that corridor, are you? Isn’t all that over?” He sounded so serious and anxious that I couldn’t lie to him. I really don’t know what I’d have told him if an Aunt-Gertrude-after-bean-soup noise hadn’t echoed down the corridor just then. Someone had trodden on the loose floorboard. It was Mia, unlike me looking neat and cute in the pleated white nightdress that Aunt Gertrude had given me for Christmas three years ago. I’d never worn it, but Mia loved it because she felt like a boarding-school girl from a Victorian adventure story in it, and Lottie loved it, too, because she thought it made Mia look like an angel. She used to iron every pleat and frill devotedly.
“I’m going into the bathroom first,” I said as Mia came closer. She didn’t say anything, just went past us toward the stairs, looking fixedly ahead of her.
“Hey!” I said a little louder. No reaction.
Where was she going? To the toilet on the first floor? Or to help herself to one of the remaining jam buns, although Grayson had staked his claim to those in advance.
“Mia?” Something seemed wrong with her.
“She’s sleepwalking,” whispered Grayson. “It’s supposed to happen when the moon is full.”
He was right, of course—she was sleepwalking. I’d done it, too, as a child. Swaying slightly but as if she knew where she was going, Mia went downstairs. Grayson and I followed her.
“Should we wake her?” I whispered.
“Better not. Or she might fall down the stairs.”
Once at the bottom of the stairs, Mia stopped and stared at nothing for a while. Then she went straight to the front door of the house.
“Now I think we really had better wake her,” said Grayson. Mia was already pressing the door handle down.
I put an arm around her shoulders. “Mia, darling, it’s seventeen degrees outside—it’s not a great idea going for a walk barefoot.”
Mia was looking my way, but her eyes seemed to go straight through me.
“Creepy,” I said.
Grayson snapped his fingers right in front of Mia’s nose a couple of times, but she didn’t even bat her eyelashes.
Nothing about her strangely empty expression changed, but at least she let me lead her up the stairs again. I kept on her right, Grayson on her left, and between us, we steered the little Victorian-boarding-school girl back to her room. When Mia was finally in bed again and I had covered her up, her eyelids, wide open until then, closed at once, and she murmured, “I know you, Mr. Holmes. You will solve this case.”
“You can be sure of that, Watson,” I whispered, and laid my head beside hers, just for a moment.
“I’d better go and lock the front door just in case she goes down again.” Grayson was yawning.
“Thanks.” Obeying an impulse, I snuggled under the covers beside my sister. I was just too tired to go back to my room. Even too tired to need to go to the bathroom. “You’re really nice, Grayson.”
“Don’t push, Sherlock,” muttered Mia, and Grayson said, “You’re really nice yourself.” But maybe I was just dreaming that bit.