The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [73]
An abrupt grinding emanated from the ceiling, along with a long plume of dust. I jerked my head up, half expecting to see the cracked plaster ceiling caving in on us. Instead, a telescoping ladder of wood and brass unfolded, spider legs feeling delicately for purchase against the floor. A small trapdoor slid ajar in the smooth plaster of the library ceiling, nearly twenty feet above my head.
“Place has more holes than an anthill,” Cal said. “What do you suppose is up there?”
I was already on the third rung of the ladder, the hidden room a draw I couldn’t ignore. “I don’t know, but I aim to find out.”
“No …,” Cal started, but then he sighed and held up his hands. “Just don’t get yourself lost in some dark hole where we can’t find you again.”
“Don’t you worry.” I flashed him a smile from above. “Escaping from dark holes is my specialty of late.” I’d been everywhere else in the house, and while it was remarkable, it also told me nothing useful. This had to be the spot where I’d find a clue to Conrad’s whereabouts, and Archibald’s. Deep down, I somehow knew this hidden room would hold the solution to how I’d find and free my brother and my father. It came on me quick as fear, but it was certainty instead. I had to figure out a way to find them. Because otherwise, I was out of brilliant ideas.
“Aoife, wait.” Dean fumbled in his jacket.
“You’re not talking me out of this,” I told him.
Dean found his lighter and tossed it to me. “Not trying to. Just, I wouldn’t want you all alone in the dark up there.”
I thanked him by tucking the lighter into the top of my boot for easy reach when I needed it. Then I grabbed the slender ladder and climbed higher.
The Forsaken Tomes
I CLIMBED INTO the dark, passing the trapdoor and feeling along on my hands and knees, across boards covered in a half-inch of dust and grime. This attic space was warm and close, cobwebbed by time and neglect, and I tried to touch as little as possible.
Fumbling the lighter from my boot, I clicked the spark wheel once, twice, and a flame shot into the shadow, warning the dark back with a hiss.
The hidden room at the top of the library was small and A-shaped, tucked where the gables of Graystone met the roof. A four-pane leaded window blacked out with oiled paper cast weak light into the space, which showed me the silhouette of an oil lamp. I removed the sooty globe and touched Dean’s lighter to the wick. The flame guttered for a moment and then caught, and I lifted the lamp to more carefully examine the room.
Books surrounded me, crowded in, piled on shelves, on the floor, on the single scarred table in the center of the space like miniature ruins. The volumes were nothing like the pristine texts in the library below—these were older, in disrepair, spines cracked where there were still spines to break, water stained and page-rumpled. Books with miles of use. Mrs. Fortune would call them “well loved.”
I’d completed one circular survey of the tiny room when the trapdoor snapped closed again and a pair of locks engaged.
“Aoife!” Cal’s shout penetrated the floor as I scrambled over to the door, nearly smashing the lamp and setting the entire room ablaze. I scrabbled at the edges of the door, but the seal was tight and the locks were brass, with only a smooth face on my side.
My heart started to pound, and the close warmth of the room became oppressive as I started throwing books onto the floor searching for a release amid the shelves and the thousands of battered tomes. Nothing. I was locked in. I stood and flashed the light frantically along the walls.
Finally the lamp’s flame caught a shine and I saw a dial set into the wall at chest height, behind a stack of almanacs from the previous century.
“Aoife!” The ladder clanked as someone heavy—Dean—mounted it and rattled the