Allegra Fairweather_ Paranormal Investigator - Janni Nell [89]
Another time I might have snooped at some of the labels but right now I had to focus on the task of finding Justina. Once again I swept my light around the cellar. My heart sank as I realized there were no obvious places to hide her.
“I don’t think she’s here, Casper.” I didn’t look at him. I was still raking my flashlight over the bottles. Had I missed something? Nope. I’d made a mistake. She wasn’t here. “Let’s go.”
Casper didn’t reply. At first I thought he had disappeared but then I realized I could hear him breathing. I could feel the warmth of his body too. Even though he wasn’t touching me.
What happened next was kind of weird. It wasn’t exactly telepathy—at least I don’t think it was—but I had the strongest feeling that Justina was in the cellar. Somewhere out of sight. Had Casper sent me a telepathic message? Surely he wouldn’t do that. The Powers-That-Be wouldn’t like it at all.
I moved deeper into the cellar, training my light on the dusty bottles. Beginning on the left, I made my way slowly along the walls. There were bottles dating back to the 1950s that must have been worth a lot. Sir Alastair would be very unhappy if anything happened to them. I had an impish desire to smash a few, but I resisted the impulse. The noise would give us away.
Behind the racks of bottles was stone—the same kind that formed the external walls of Maitland House. If Justina was down here, she must be hidden in some secret place, like a priest’s hole. So far I hadn’t found anything that resembled one.
Casper kept close to my heels, as though he expected trouble at any moment. I glanced nervously at the door above the stairs. Did Phillips know we were down here? I half expected the door to inch open but it remained firmly closed.
I kept moving around the cellar. So far I had found nothing. A big fat zero. Things weren’t looking good and I was running out of walls to search. That’s when my big toe started to itch. At the same moment something caught my eye. I paused and turned back.
At first this rack appeared much like all the others, but as I moved closer I noticed the age of the bottles. None had been produced before the year 2000, making them the least valuable in the collection. Was that significant? I trained my flashlight on the bottles, moving the beam slowly and carefully along the rows. Something metallic twinkled behind the rack.
That wasn’t unusual. All the racks had been bolted to the wall. So why had this one caught my eye? I bent forward to examine the thing that was twinkling.
A hinge.
It was an oldie but a goodie—a hinged rack doubling as a concealed door. I looked around for the lever that would open it. When I couldn’t see one, I felt along the racks. Maybe it was concealed on one of the rows beneath the bottles.
Casper moved to my side. He watched me for a while and then, as though bored, he stretched like a teenager preparing to put his arm around his girlfriend. I wasn’t as fortunate as that hypothetical girlfriend. Instead of putting his arm around me, Casper leaned against the wall. The stone beneath his hand moved and the rack swung slowly open.
“Oops,” said Casper.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Who me?”
“The Powers-That-Be will be furious,” I said.
“What? Because I leaned on a stone?”
I had no time to answer. Justina flew out of her prison, kicking and punching. I grabbed her.
“Easy,” I said. “It’s me. Allegra.”
She stopped fighting. “Allegra?” She sounded uncertain so I shone my flashlight on my face from above. Not below—I didn’t want to frighten her any more. “Phillips and Francois locked me in here.”
I stared into the small dark space. She must have been in there for at least an hour. I shuddered but I didn’t waste time expressing sympathy. I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the