Mr. Smith took a step toward the Grand Staircase, the hem of his nightshirt swaying as he moved.
"Do try to get some sleep, Cammie. And good night.
Walking back upstairs that night, I thought of Mr. Smith's words and the way Mr.
Solomon had gripped my hand at the Tower of London and pulled me through the dark.
As I started up the old circular staircase that leads to the junior suites, cool air landed on my arms, and I looked out through the old wavy glass. It reminded me of the cold wind in London, the rippling waves of the Thames as if flowed below.
I remember how lost Mr. Solomon had seemed as he hugged me on the bridge - how very strange and foreign the gesture had felt.
Where do men like Joe Solomon go when they fall? I asked myself. I wondered if there would be any help for him, waiting on the shore.
I took another step, but as I moved up the spiral stairs, something outsides caught my eye.
Something made me stop and stare out across the grounds.
Lights from the mansion's windows streaked through the darkness, pebbling the dark, cloudy sky. And that was when I saw them - the birds that were sweeping out into the open air and then back again, stretching their wings.
For a moment, I stood still, listening to the howling wind and the faint cooing of the birds, and my teacher's words that had been playing over and over in my mind for weeks.
"Follow the pigeons."
Chapter Twenty
"It's there!" My voice was cracking, and the words came in short gasps as if I were out of shape. Out of time. "Mr. Smith was right. He isn't crazy!"
I heard my roommates' footsteps on the stairs behind me, as Bex asked, "Cam what are you talking about?"
"The pigeons!" I'm sure I must have looked like an insane person. And technically, I have been hit on the head a lot, so my roommates had good reason to look at each other as if all that brain trauma was bound to catch up with me eventually.
"Cam," Liz said slowly, her eyes still puffy from sleep. "Where are we going?"
Something was alive in me then. Maybe fear. Maybe dread. But mostly, I think it was hope as I climbed the stairs, higher and higher. When we reached the landing, I felt the cold air that seeped through the seams in the stone, and in that second my heart stopped. I stood, frozen by the cold stone beneath my fingers and a hope that I didn't dare sat, as I traced rough carving of the bird in flight, and pushed.
The five largest stones receded, revealing a small compartment and a rusty lever.
"Cammie!" Liz exclaimed. "No. You're not supposed to leave the mansion! What are you doing?"
But she was too late, because the door was already swinging open, a rush of freezing wind was blowing against my face and across my bare legs, but I didn't feel the chill.
I just turned to look at my best friends, who stood in the light of the doorway, and said,
"I'm following the pigeons."
We'd been here before, of course. Just a few months ago we'd sat on the dusty, overturned crates that were the last relics of the Gallagher Academy's once-proud covert carrier pigeon breeding program. We'd sat there for hours, looking out onto the lights of Roseville, talking about the people who were after Macey. After me. But now, the space looked totally different.
"What . . ." Liz started, looking around. "What is all this?"
Chalkboards lined the inner wall of the rampart, far away from the glassless windows that over looked the grounds. The crates were stacked neatly to one side. A lone chair sat in the center of floor, facing the blackboards, as if someone had spent hours in that place, trying to solve an impossible equation.
"This must be what Mr. Solomon wanted us to find." I stepped closer to the blackboards that had Mr. Solomon's words scrawled over every inch. "He risked everything - just to tell me to find this," I said.
"Cammie . . ." Bex started. "You know as well as I do he was talking crazy. He wasn't Joe Solomon."
"But we're here," I snapped back. "It's not crazy if we're here."
"What does it say?" Liz's voice was soft, her eyes focused as she stepped slowly closer to the board, and I knew she wasn't talking to us; her mind was lost in code, tying to see through the chaos.