I close the library door behind me, remembering our encounter on the road. Bracing myself for whatever she’s come to say.
“I’m . . . sorry to hear about what happened.” Eliza steps forward to offer me the oversize bag hanging heavily from her shoulder. “These are for you.”
I take it and glance inside warily. The clasp is practically popping open to reveal stacks of plump purple velvet sacks tied with gold ribbon.
It’s layers and layers of Tempests.
“These are the last ones,” Eliza says. “On the road, when I saw you . . . You said you needed them.”
I gape at her, remembering what else I said on that road. “These must have cost a fortune,” I finally say.
Eliza shrugs. “I traded for them. My mother sent me some earrings to make up for her missing the tournament and everything.” She picks at her fingernails. “They were huge and hideous, and I never would have worn them anyway.”
I close my gaping mouth. “Why . . .” I start. Why would you do this for me, after everything I did to you, and we did to each other? I close the clasp of the bag, heavy with Tempests, and stop myself from throwing my arms around Eliza: this girl who is the most unsolvable riddle of all. “Thank you,” I say instead, hoping it sounds as genuine as I feel.
She turns to leave without another word, and I hesitate. “Do you want to come back tomorrow?” I blurt. “George and Beas will be here at nine. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
“You know, it really doesn’t come easily, wanting to help you,” she says. She looks up at the chandelier, and the light falls in diamonds across her small nose, her perfect skin. “But I want to help Sterling, and I want to help William. And I think, right now, you might all be tied together.”
“So is that a yes?” I say.
She smiles and pulls the door shut behind her.
When dawn breaks the next morning, I wake to a strange, unsettling sense of cold air seeping into my room and a sharp rap on the front door. The kind of sound that conveys urgency and the weight of bad news.
I’m instantly awake, and I leap out of bed to crack open my door. Poke my head out into the hallway and strain to hear the hushed exchange between the police chief and Dr. Cliffton.
“Stefen—” I hear.
“I’m sorry, Malcolm, we don’t know how he did it,” the police chief says.
“What do you mean, gone?” Will’s voice. Furious.
“Somehow he managed to slip every lock we have.”
I close the door to lean my weight against it and then turn, slowly, as I become faintly aware of a new sound. A sound coming from my window, which was closed when I finally fell asleep last night.
And now is not.
I hadn’t imagined the stream of air I’d felt on my face when I woke. My mouth goes as dry as bones. There’s folded paper stashed into the open gap of the sill, fluttering with each gust of wind.
I’m over to it in two bounding steps. I can already tell it’s Stefen’s handwriting. I recognize it from his letter. My hands shake violently as I unfold the pages.
You’ll find what you need here. Maybe it could help Matilda.
Get the Stone and finish it. Before I change my mind.
The pages behind it appear to be maps. Four in all. Sterling, Corrander, Sheffield, and Charlton. One for each of the Sisters.
I clutch them against my chest, my mind and heart racing. Glance around my room, shuddering when I think of him being here last night while I lay sleeping and unprotected. He’d had the opportunity to do and take whatever he wanted, from any of us. Why didn’t he?
But then my eye catches Eliza’s satchel at the foot of my wardrobe. It’s thrown open. I kneel beside it. It had been bursting with Tempests before.
Now there’s barely a single row left.
I picture Stefen stooping to fill his pockets with the Tempests. Enough for him to whip through the Sisters last night, all the way through Charlton, and then disappear forever.
I clutch the maps he left in one hand and feel for the weight of the Stone with the other. It is still safely hidden under my nightgown. The Helena Stone: the thing Stefen was searching so intently for and never found.
But if I already have the one thing Stefen wanted, I think, my fingers tightening around it—?then what are these maps for?
At nine sharp, we gather in Dr. Cliffton’s library for one final search party. Me, George, Beas, and Will.
George tries to hide a look of surprise when Eliza slips in just after nine, wearing reading glasses, her hair pulled back in a tight knot. She sits down next to Beas and opens her notebook with a freshly sharpened pencil. I pour her a cup of coffee, and we get started.
“There are two questions we need to answer,” I say, standing to address them. “One: Why would Stefen leave this series of maps, and two: Why would he go to such great lengths to get this Stone?” I look around the room and take some semblance of comfort in our steaming coffees, the steeled resolve, the togetherness in figuring out what we will do next.
“Let’s start with the obvious question. Why don’t we just follow the maps he left and start digging?” Beas asks.
“Well, for one, Beas darling, we don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Eliza says. “And it could be a trap.”
“Or it could be something that helps us.” I watch as Will clears his throat. “And helps my mother.”
“We’re going to do every last thing to help her,” George assures Will. “I just think we should have some idea of what we’re looking for first.”
“Any idea what we could find there?” I ask. Every face looks back at me blankly. The clock in the corner ticks out a minute of silence.
“We’ll come back to it. Let’s talk about the Stone, then,” I say, fishing it from behind my blouse. The four of them examine it, glinting between my fingers.
“Maybe it’s some incredibly valuable gem?” Beas asks. “Stefen wanted it because it’s worth a lot of money?”
Eliza rolls her eyes. “It’s not exactly a diamond, is it?” she says skeptically. “No gemstone that I recognize, anyway. It almost looks like glass. Where did you get it?”
“Her mother gave it to her,” Will says.
“Well—?actually,” I say, “I found it. Hidden in my mother’s Shakespeare book.”
“And where did she get it?” Eliza asks.
“I don’t know.” I hesitate. “But I think it has something to do with Shakespeare, now more than ever. Not only because of where I found it.” I spread out my notes in front of them. “But because Stefen called it the Helena Stone.”
I turn to Dr. Cliffton’s chalkboard to catch Eliza up to speed. “We’ve found other connections that trace back to Shakespeare, too.” I hand her my evidence. “Every last Disappearance is in his pages.”
“And seven years are mysteriously missing from his career, which has inspired all sorts of theories,” Beas says. “One of which is that he traveled Europe and Africa looking for something of great value.”