Chapter Twenty-Nine Delaney

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Delaney

Now: Saturday, 8:37 p.m.

We're searching the house again. Second time's the charm? Willa won't stop rubbing that hideous stone around her neck. I know she thinks everyone forgot she was the one who insisted we concentrate outside instead. But I haven't. She's on my radar. As is Piper.

I'm putting it all together in my head. A trip none of us signed up for. Piper as the odd one out. How she didn't go skiing with us on the first day, leaving her alone in the house for hours. A mysterious injury she refuses to talk about. Doing whatever it was she did in the kitchen last night. Adding almond extract to something Declan might drink? And her bizarre obsession with murder. Piper Giambruno just makes sense by making no sense at all.

"It'll take longer, but we should all go together," Piper reminds us. We rally by the kitchen island, divvying up the flashlights again. "Safety in numbers."

Or so she can keep an eye on all of us.

"If Silva is hiding, we need protection. Weapons." Camille yanks a butcher knife from a block on the marble island and holds it menacingly above her head.

"Ahhh, not so fast. What if it's not Silva, and it's one of us?" Wyatt sweeps Camille's arm back down before she can do any real damage. "Then the killer has a freaking knife. Nah, no way."

It's the first time any of us has said the quiet part out loud. If we don't find Silva, there's only one answer left. Camille freezes, knife still in hand. Everyone fastidiously avoids eye contact.

"We'll just…be careful," Piper says finally.

Camille puts the knife back, and the discussion of weapons ends there.

We start at the top of the house this time, crowding onto the narrow landing. Piper makes a shushing gesture with a finger over her mouth, then points to the shuttered bathroom door.

"On three?" I whisper, and the group nods.

Liam lays one hand on the bathroom doorknob as the other brandishes a flashlight, ready to strike. I count him down, and he bursts inside, but the bathroom is empty. We repeat the process with the bedrooms, checking closets and under the beds. It's all clear.

Before, when we were searching for the phones, it felt like a race. Everyone was eager to discover something, anything that might help us get off this mountain.

Looking for Silva is different, though. Finding Silva also means facing her. We're all on edge.

"Ow! Get off my foot!" Wyatt gives Liam a push in the near dark.

"I didn't step on your damn foot." Liam shoves him back harder than necessary.

"Hey, cut it out," I hiss at their stupid boy antics, but too late to make a difference. Wyatt smacks Liam hard on the shoulder, and Liam hip-checks Wyatt harder.

"Stop it before you—" But Piper never gets the chance to finish. Wyatt's elbow connects with her ribs, sending her reeling into the built-in shelving across from the bathroom. Her back rams against the stacks of towels, and a panel gives way. Piper bounces back into Willa, who catches her before she falls.

"Are you okay?" Willa cries. Piper winces in response, then manages a breathless "I think so."

"Hey, look." Camille points to the shelving, now cracked open like a door. Willa shines her flashlight onto the narrow space as Camille pushes the panel with a tentative hand, revealing a spiral staircase.

No one dares speak, but a word passes psychically among us. Attic.

"Someone should…" Willa trails off.

Camille meets her suggestion with a harsh whisper. "I'm not going up there! You go."

Wind whistles overhead, and frigid stale air wafts down the pitch-black stairway.

"I'll do it." I square my shoulders and puff up my chest. "I need a flashlight." Wyatt hands me his with zero protest.

I'm careful on the stairs, which are so narrow that only two-thirds of my foot will fit on the treads. Remnants of a house built when people were shorter, smaller. And that's saying something, given I'm only five foot six.

I manage to keep my hand steady as I poke my head into the space above. My flashlight moves in a frenzy, desperate to light up every corner at once. But in the end, there's nothing. A few boxes, quilts in clear storage tubs, and assorted broken antiques.

"I don't think she's here," I call down to the group. When I emerge from the spooky hidden staircase, the faces of my companions are grim.

"What kind of house is this?" Camille's voice wobbles with unease.

"One with hidden panels and secret doors." Piper answers what was surely a rhetorical question. "We need to search more carefully," she concludes.

On the second floor, there's one tense moment like something out of a movie where we slip silently into the en suite bathroom off Eden's room, then whip back the shower curtain, breath tight in our throats and flashlights poised as weapons. But the bathtub is empty. No jump-scare boogeyman here. We press our hands and bodies against bookcases and mantels, but no more secret rooms reveal themselves.

"We already checked the garage," I announce as we reach the ground floor and check the pantry and bathroom in quick succession. "There's nowhere else to hide on this floor."

We all know what's left. The freezing basement looms.

"Did you look in the ski room last time you searched?" Piper asks me and Liam as we pause at the top of the stairs.

"Of course we did," I snap on instinct, but Liam is quick to correct me.

"No. Neither of us wanted to see that. Or smell it. And we were searching for the devices, not Silva…. Why would either one be in the ski room?"

"I don't know," Piper says, leading us in a slow creep down, step by step. "A dead-body room sounds like a great place to hide something you don't want found."

"What a weird thing to say," I point out. Piper sure does think like a killer. Have the others noticed?

"No one was there when we moved Eden," Willa says defensively. But then after a moment she follows up, much quieter. "At least I don't think. It was dark, and the room is long and narrow…."

In the basement, we leave no shelf or door unchecked. We press and open and press and open again, hoping to find another clever misdirect for a secret space, like the linen shelf that hid the attic. But finally there's only one door, one room left to search.

The ski room.

"I told you we should have brought weapons," Camille hisses.

We wait a comically long beat. No one wants to go inside. It's the only place Silva could be. Process of elimination.

"You think she's in there, just chilling with dead bodies?" Wyatt puts the mental image into all our heads. Our demonic teacher crouched over dead, rotting flesh. Lying in wait.

"If she is, it's six against one. We'll be fine." Piper's voice shakes, even as she positions herself in front to grab at the door handle with her left hand. Everyone holds their breath. The handle turns with a loud snick. The smell hits our nasal passages immediately. I gag. The cold tempers it, but it's an unmistakable earthen rot.

Camille, Wyatt, and I shine our flashlights in tandem into the room. First onto Eden's body, nearest the door, then to the right, onto Declan nearby. Lividity has turned parts of them a deep purple, nearing black.

We move inside tentatively, like the room is haunted. Which I suppose it is, in a way. No one wants to move further into the room, deep enough for the beams to reach.

"We know you're in here!" Willa shouts into the black, her voice wobbly. It's rather childish, if you ask me, but then the others join in.

"It's six against one." Cam parrots Piper from a moment ago. "And I'm really, really strong. Stronger than both the boys put together."

"Hey." Wyatt pretends at offense.

We fall silent. Wait.

There's nothing. No scuttling in the dark. No heavy breathing.

"This is stupid," Piper says, stepping past Eden's body, moving over to Declan's. My Boy Scout boyfriend trails close behind while the rest of us lurk by the door. Piper gets up on her tiptoes, swaying forward, like she's trying to see something on the other side of Declan.

"I need light," she says. Wyatt and I helpfully provide a spotlight. Declan is on his side, slumped over face-first. Piper reaches her left hand around his back, probing for something.

"Can you help me turn him over?"

Liam stiffens, but nods regardless.

"What is she doing?" Wyatt says low under his breath.

Three hands strong now, Liam and Piper rock Declan over onto his back. We gasp. Half his face is a mottled red. The fronts of his arms as well. The blood shifted where he lay. God, I hate dead bodies.

"I knew it!" Piper hisses, startling us out of the moment. We don't understand until she holds a rectangular black object aloft. Light glints off the reflective face.

"Was that under his body ?" You can hear the nausea in Camille's tone. I feel vomit rising in my throat as well.

"Are all our phones under there?" Willa eases forward to inspect for herself. She breaks the invisible barrier, and we join the disgusting device raid.

Wyatt holds his iPhone gingerly between two fingers. "Ughhh, now we have to burn them. Dead bodies, like, leak and shit, don't they?"

"Ew," I scold. I do not want to think about…fluids on my phone. "Don't turn them on yet," I instruct the group. "If they'll turn on at all. Cold can ruin the batteries. We'll take them upstairs to the living room."

"There's no signal, though," know-it-all Willa reminds me.

"I know." I can't keep the annoyance at bay. "But the storm won't last forever. If one of the newer iPhones will turn on, we can try an SOS text again once the clouds clear. And we should check them anyway. Silva wanted our phones for a reason, remember? We can check stuff that's downloaded to our phones.Archived."

I take great satisfaction in seeing Willa blanch. I shine my flashlight over the rest of the ski room. The beam catches on a lump in the corner. I suck in a breath.

"Wait, guys, what is that?" Piper sees it too.

It should be obvious from here. Deep down we know. But we're masochists. A little too used to death at this point. We move closer to confirm.

Ten feet. Six feet. Four.

There, behind the tower of plastic storage bins, well hidden unless you stood at just the right angle. A booted foot, a discarded glove, ski-suited legs akimbo. And a substance, dark and congealed but now unmistakable, spread beneath her head.

It's Silva, dead on the floor.