Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,54

of those people probably stayed in this building, in this room, back before the school was opened and Minerva was a guesthouse. Stevie flipped through, stopping on one of her favorites: an image of a guest list from a party in 1929. She had no idea who these people were, but she loved reading the names: Gus Swenson, the Billbody twins, Esther Neil and Buck Randolph, the Davis sisters (Greta and Flo), Bernard Hendish, Lady Isobella de Isla, Dr. Frank Dodds, Frankie Sullivan, the VanWarners, “Telegraph” McMurray and Lorna Darvish . . .

The list went on and on. They had come to have their champagne here, to dance under the stars. Actors, writers, artists, socialites. And then, Dottie Epstein lived here. Stevie had read about Dottie—one of the brightest in her school. Strong-willed. Brilliant. A tough Lower East Side girl who could steal apples and quote Virgil. Stevie reached down for her phone to look at Dottie’s picture for perhaps the thousandth time. She had a head of brown curls, apple cheeks, and a gap between her front teeth. She was the often-forgotten victim because she was not rich. She did not own a school. She was just a smart girl trying to make something of herself at Ellingham Academy. She read mysteries. She had gone to the observatory to read, leaving a book behind.

Stevie set her phone on her stomach and stared up at the ceiling for a long time. The case needed solving for all of them, but maybe Dottie most of all. Dottie, who loved mysteries. Tomorrow night, she would go into the tunnel that had been blocked since 1938. Truly, this was something no one else who looked into the case in recent decades had done. She was literally going to be on new ground. Dottie had passed through that tunnel. She had died in or near or because of it. The tunnel marked the place where Dottie crossed over from life to death.

Stevie fell asleep in this position, phone on her stomach, thinking about Dottie and the tunnel. A pulse of light brought her back to consciousness.

Stevie blinked, confused. Her brain tried to work out the source of the light for a split second. Car headlights?

No.

Still mostly asleep, she pushed herself up on one arm.

The light, or something made of light, was on the wall. It filled the space next to the fireplace. Blobs of color. Letters, words.

It was all a scramble in her brain until she realized the blobs were a message made of cutout letters:

In another flash, the message was gone.

13

STEVIE WAS OUT OF BED IN A SECOND, DROPPING ROUGHLY TO THE floor. Her eyes were throbbing slightly, reacting to the sudden wakefulness, the shift from dark to light.

The words were tumbling in her head as she crawled to the window. When she reached it, she huddled beneath it for a moment, her body shaking from the adrenaline. Was there someone there? Would she pop up and be face-to-face? The window was open about six inches. Would someone reach in?

Only one way to find out.

She pushed herself to her knees with one quick movement. Outside was dark and still. She clutched the window, unsure whether or not to slam it down or open it farther to look out. Her grip on the frame tightened.

Another idea: she pulled her heaviest book on criminology from the shelf, the one she had scored at a library sale for three dollars, the one that was her prize possession. She stuck it out the window and let it drop.

No one screamed. She heard the book land in the grass with a thud. She slid over to the closet and pulled out the tactical flashlight that the school had provided and switched it on and scanned the area. Nothing. Just darkness and more darkness and the slight rustling sounds of the night.

She closed and locked the window, pulled the curtains, and tucked her head into her knees. What had it said? Riddle, riddle, on the wall, murder something something something . . .

And then it hit.

Panic attacks are mean little freaks.

First came the speed. Then came clamping in the throat, the lightness in her head, the feeling of blind acceleration into confusion. Then comes the strange wind that blew into her mind, knocking everything over and turning everything into a mockery of reality. Every avenue was blocked off. Every option meant doom. Nothing made any sense. It felt like hands were around her neck. Stevie gulped hard, proving to