“Perhaps it was Miss Whitfield who took the chronicle,” said Charlotte, sitting on the new sofa next to Toby.
“I don’t think so. Why would she have come to our room if she already had it?” said Hannah. She, like me, was perched on one of the armchairs, while Darcy paced up and down the room (a little too close to the bookshelves for my liking).
“There is something a bit fishy about her, though, if you ask me.… She knew the old legends about the chronicle, and she knew you were the one who’d been using it,” Charlotte mused.
“But not until it was too late; I’m sure the chronicle was already gone by the time she came to our room.”
“But she must be wrapped up in all this somehow,” Darcy muttered. “From what you’ve told us, it doesn’t sound like she doubted the chronicle’s powers for a second.”
“No.” I put my chin in my hands. “She even warned us about them. And then there’s that old photo…”
“Perhaps all the women in her family just look really, really similar?” Hannah suggested.
“No. I think it was her in the picture.” I had no idea how I knew this, but a prickling sensation in my stomach told me I was right.
“It’s a bit creepy, but kind of cool,” said Toby. Darcy, on the other hand, sniffed skeptically. “What are you saying, Emma? That Miss Whitfield is this mysterious faun you’re always telling us about?”
I shrugged. That thought hadn’t occurred to me before. Was it possible? Might the faun be a woman?
“I think we need to tackle this one thing at a time,” said Charlotte, “and the most important thing is to get the book back before whoever took it does something even worse. So: What do we know so far?”
“Well, it went missing yesterday, at some point during the day. In the morning, before I went to class, it was still there. And by late last night it was gone,” I summed up.
“And after dinner I was in our room all evening, doing my homework,” Hannah added. “So it must have been gone before I got there.”
I shook my head. “You were asleep when I came in, remember?”
“Yes. But I would have noticed if—”
“Either way, that doesn’t narrow it down very much,” Toby broke in. “Not enough to give us an idea of who the thief might have been, anyway. But it must have been somebody who already knew how the book worked. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had you wandering around naked in a shower of sugar mice a few hours later.”
“We were not naked,” Darcy said haughtily.
“Well, anyway, I wouldn’t have started writing in the book straightaway if I’d happened to find it,” said Toby, “and I’m sure it took you a little while to figure out how it worked, too, Emma?”
He was right, of course. “But apart from us—and Miss Whitfield, evidently—nobody even knows the book exists. I haven’t told anyone, anyway.”
“Me neither,” said Charlotte, planting a soft kiss on Toby’s cheek. “Not even you.”
Hannah cleared her throat.
At that moment, several books slid to the floor with a crash right by Darcy’s feet. “Sorry,” he muttered and bent down to pick them up. My heart skipped a beat. Damn it! I couldn’t go on like this. Although I’d vowed never to write in the chronicle again, I was going to have to do something about Darcy and the books I’d said he should choke on. Hannah, meanwhile, had gone bright red.
“Um—Hannah?” I said. “Are you okay?”
She looked at the floor. “I might—I might have accidentally told someone how the chronicle works,” she said flatly. “I don’t know what I was thinking—it was quite a while ago, and I thought he must have forgotten by now, but … now that I think about it, maybe—”
“Who?” we cried in chorus.
Hannah blushed even deeper. “Frederick,” she whispered. “Do you remember how he asked me to dance at the ball? He was so funny and nice and—well, we got to talking about all the old myths and legends that have sprung up around Stolzenburg. I didn’t mean to give anything away, but he asked me where I thought those stories came from.” Hannah’s face was so red it looked as if it was about to explode. “And I said somebody makes them up and writes them down and then they come true. But I didn’t mention the book and I definitely didn’t say you had it, Emma, I swear. I honestly don’t know how he figured it out.”
“Frederick!” Darcy and Toby exchanged a glance.
“I do,” I murmured, and sighed. The penny had just dropped. Toward the end of my date with Frederick, in my drunken state, I must have let something slip while I was blathering away to myself. I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said, but it must have been enough for Frederick to go off and wheedle a bit more information out of Hannah—and that had given him everything he needed. Now he’d realized Darcy and I were onto him, he’d decided to use what he knew. Damn it! “It was me,” I said. “It was my fault.”
Then I told the others about my encounter with Frederick in the girls’ corridor; I’d assumed he was on his way to see Helena, but now I realized he’d been coming from the direction of my bedroom. And all the while Hannah had been fast asleep, having nodded off over her homework. Damn it!
Darcy clenched his fists. “Come on then! Let’s go and get the bastard! Anyone know where he might be this morning?”
But no one had any idea where Frederick might be, so we decided to split up. Charlotte and Toby would search the grounds and talk to Miss Whitfield again, Darcy would drive down to the village and pay Frederick’s parents another visit, and Hannah and I would search the castle. If any of us found Frederick, we’d text the others to tell them. Our plan was soon complete, and a few minutes later we set off.
Hannah and I started with the common rooms, then worked our way through the dining hall, the kitchens, the conservatory, and every single corridor of the main building. We moved on to the west wing, passing through the de Winter portrait gallery into the ornate ballroom, where dust sheets had already been draped over the furniture to keep it clean until next year. We searched the secret tunnels last—and then we went back to the beginning and started all over again.
We carried on searching all day, but none of us found any sign of Frederick or the chronicle or even the slightest clue as to where either of them might be. Even Helena von Stein seemed to have vanished without a trace. And Miss Whitfield stubbornly refused to open the door of her cottage, no matter how many times we rang her doorbell or knocked on her living room window. We could see her through the glass, sitting in a rocking chair, reading a novel by Eleanor Morland. She was utterly engrossed, as if nothing and nobody else in the world existed. It was very frustrating.
Despite these setbacks, we kept up the search until late into the evening. Then we reassembled in the west wing library, exhausted and dispirited, and sat around the fire staring into the flames. Charlotte and Toby had raided the larder and returned with some bread, fruit, and a bowl of custard, which we devoured with relish (we’d all missed dinner) while sitting in front of the TV. There was an item on the news about Stolzenburg.
Until a few hours ago, the school had been crawling with journalists and camera crews eager to report on our “meteorological phenomenon.” One of the TV news reporters was now putting forward an unlikely explanation involving a cargo plane with a broken hatch. The sequence of events that had allegedly caused the shower of sugar mice was improbable to say the least, and was being hotly debated on the Internet. But we knew what was really behind it. Unfortunately, that didn’t help us at all right now.
Hannah was the first to succumb to fatigue; at half past nine she nodded off on the rug in front of the fire. When a crackling log woke her up again a few minutes later, she bid us good night and headed to bed. A little while later Charlotte yawned and did the same, and Toby offered to walk her back to her room.
I was exhausted, too, of course, after hours of wandering round and round the castle without getting any closer to our goal. But at the same time I felt I couldn’t—or shouldn’t—let my
self fall asleep right now. I was genuinely afraid to close my eyes. Last time I had, I’d woken up to find myself inches away from the edge of a turret roof. Who knew what Frederick had in store for us next? No—I didn’t dare go to bed.
The same thought seemed to have occurred to Darcy, because he made no move to leave the library, either. We watched in silence as the fire burned down, and we pushed Miss Whitfield’s sofa closer to the embers to warm our feet.
“Do you really think Miss Whitfield could be a hundred-year-old mythical creature?” said Darcy quietly. My eyes were burning now from the effort of keeping them open.
“I have no idea,” I said, leaning back against the sofa cushions. It was almost midnight, and apart from the usual rustles and creaks of the ancient building, the library was completely silent. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Me neither.” He stretched out his long legs and linked his hands behind his head. “I’m shattered. Perhaps we should go and make ourselves a strong coffee.… The thing is, though, we can’t stay awake forever. Sooner or later we’re going to have to sleep.”
“Later, hopefully—once I’ve come up with a plan.” I sighed. “None of this makes any sense. This whole time I’ve been thinking that if the faun did exist, it must be Frederick. And if not him, I’d have been more inclined to think that you—” I stopped myself. “But Miss Whitfield? I’d never ever have suspected her. You’d have thought new information would help us make sense of things, but the more I find out the more confused I get. Or am I missing something?”
Darcy turned to face me. “So it wouldn’t surprise you if I suddenly turned into an enchanted beast with hooves and horns?” His lips twitched in amusement.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course it would. Now stop making fun of me.”
At once he was serious again. “I’m not making fun of you, Emma, I promise,” he said. “But the fact that we’re sitting here, seriously contemplating the possibility that somebody in this castle might not actually be human … If I was going to make fun of anyone, it would be myself. Because I’m so scared of a magic book that I can’t even go to sleep. Like a kid who’s scared of monsters under the bed.”
“Except that monsters under the bed are imaginary. Whereas you and I waking up on top of the west wing tower this morning was very real.”
“Life-threateningly so.”
“I wish I’d never found that stupid book!”
“No, don’t say that! It’s still the best clue we have about what happened to Gina.”
“I don’t know.… It’s not as if her poems have brought us any closer to finding her. She wished she was dead—she wished for the end of the world. That could mean anything. The consequences of what gets written in the book are completely unpredictable.”
Darcy stared into the embers for a while. Their reddish-orange glow made his face look softer than usual. He, too, looked exhausted—the shadows under his eyes were even darker than before. But then, all at once, his face lit up. “Dead, or the end of the world,” he muttered, then leaped to his feet. “That’s it!” he cried. “That’s it!”
“What?” I stood up, too. Darcy looked as though he was heading toward the bookshelves again, so I stepped hurriedly into his path and blocked his way. “What do you mean?”
“It’s so obvious! If the book has the power to make it rain pink mice over Stolzenburg, then surely it must have had the power to send my sister to the end of the world!” He beamed at me.
“Um—there is no end of the world? The world is round…” Were we seriously having this conversation?
“But there’s a pub in Edinburgh, for example, called the World’s End.”
“You think Gina could be in Scotland? But then why has she never made contact?”
“Who knows? But it doesn’t matter. There must be loads of places called the World’s End. We just need to do a bit of Googling.”
“Okay,” I said. There was something to be said for the idea. It was a glimmer of hope. A possibility, even if just one among many. Another possibility was that Gina was nowhere: not at the end of the world or anywhere else. And Darcy knew that, too—I could see he was trying to curb his euphoria. He breathed deeply, evenly, and moved toward the window.
“Tomorrow,” he said, with his back to me. “We’ll look into it tomorrow. I still have to be prepared for the worst.”
But his shoulders were shaking with excitement. Without thinking, I went over to him, took his hand, and squeezed it. “We’ll find her,” I said.
Darcy turned to me. He stared down at our joined hands for a moment. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve helped me so much the past few days. Without you I’d still be sitting there sorting through Gina’s toys.” He looked into my eyes. “I know you can’t stand me, Emma. I know you’re not doing this for me. But I still feel like we could be friends, or something like friends, when all this is over. Thank you.”
I looked at his eyebrows, which I’d always thought had such a snooty, superior arch to them, and the long, straight nose he’d wrinkled in disdain when we’d first met. But now, as I looked into that proud face, I no longer felt any resentment toward Darcy de Winter. I knew him well enough now to know that behind his mask there was more than just an arrogant rich kid. There was a brother who was desperate to find his beloved twin sister. A good friend who was eager to protect those he cared about, and who’d helped me out of a jam more than once.
True, Darcy had his flaws: He’d kicked us out of the library, he’d come between Toby and Charlotte, he’d made me fall in the fountain and told me I was a naïve little kid. He could be grumpy and antisocial at times. But I’d been proud and rude to him, too, and I’d formed a judgment about him without even getting to know him. Not to mention the chaos I’d caused with my experiments in the chronicle …
I took a deep breath. “It’s not that I can’t stand you,” I said. “Actually, I guess I … quite like you. Sort of.” Why was this so difficult? Why was it so hard for me to admit I’d been wrong about him? “I mean, not just sort of. I’m sorry for the way I treated you. And all the things I said to you at the ruins that day.”
Darcy shook his head. “I deserved it. I insulted you and then tried to kiss you. I deserved all those things you said.”
“I don’t know about that.” I suddenly became aware that our faces were very close together and that we were still holding hands. Now Darcy took hold of my other hand.
“When I said it was all water under the bridge, I … I lied,” he murmured. “The last thing I want to do is to offend you again, so I won’t try to do what I did that day in the woods. But…” He cleared his throat. “My feelings haven’t changed.”
“Really?” I whispered. “Because mine have.” Until that moment I hadn’t realized it. I hadn’t been able to admit it to myself. But now I knew. My feelings for Frederick had been nothing more than an infatuation: Darcy was the one I liked being around, the one who was important to me, the one I’d fallen in love with. I stood on tiptoe so that our noses were almost touching. My heart started to beat faster.
Darcy smiled. “Oh, I see,” he murmured, and his lips moved closer to mine.
I was about to close my eyes and let it happen … but before I could find out whether his lips really were as soft as they looked, I spotted something moving out of the corner of my eye. The moment burst like a bubble. I turned, pressed my face to the window, and saw a figure running toward the castle.
It was Princess von Stein. “That’s—that’s Helena!” I said falteringly. “She must have been out in the woods.”
I heard Darcy let out his breath. Now he, too, was peering out into the darkness. “You’re right,” he said, tugging at my arm. “And I bet she knows where Frederick is. Come on.”
* * *
“Leave me alone!” Helena hissed when we caught up with her on the main staircase. Her hair was a mess, her clothes disheveled. “What do you want? I’ve just been in the conservatory, reading.”
She tried to
push past us, but I blocked her way. Darcy grabbed her by the wrist.
“We saw you coming out of the woods,” I said. “Where have you really been?”
“Nowhere.” She tried to wriggle out of Darcy’s grasp, but he held firm.
“Where … is … Frederick?” said Darcy through gritted teeth, emphasizing every word.
“Let go of me right now or I will scream this whole—”
“And where’s the book?” I broke in. “What have you and Frederick done with it?”
Helena blinked. “You know about that weird diary thing?”
“Of course,” I retorted. “Who do you think Frederick stole it from?”
Suddenly, Helena stopped trying to wriggle free and hung her head, something I’d never seen her do before. Suddenly, she didn’t seem to care if we saw her that way. The fear and exhaustion of this surreal day must finally have caught up with her. “I’m worried about Frederick,” she whispered. “I think he’s losing it. He turned up at our secret meeting place last night with that book, and he hasn’t let it out of his sight since. He keeps reading bits of it, scribbling in it, muttering weird things to himself.”
She sighed. “And then this morning he suddenly announced that it was too dangerous in the castle and we had to go and hide. But he wouldn’t tell me why or where. I went to the cave with him—you know, Darcy, the cave on the riverbank where you and Vera used to go. That seemed to calm him down for a while, but then he started going on and on about the book again, and I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I left.”
“So he’s still there?” Darcy breathed. “He’s there right now?”
Helena shook her head.
“What cave?” I chimed in. “I know the grounds like the back of my hand and I’ve never heard anything about a cave…”
“My sister, Vera, found it. You can only see it from the water. Vera and Darcy spent a lot of time there four years ago, didn’t you, Darcy?” said Helena, trying to wrench her arm free again. “Jesus, Darcy! Would you please let go of me! I won’t run off, I promise. And you’re hurting me.”
The Forgotten Book Page 22