“Can’t turn down that offer,” he mused, easing away. He pulled on his shorts but left them unbuttoned. “This is as dressed as I’m willing to get.”

“You’re groggy after a nap,” she observed.

“Baby, I’m groggy after all the sex you’re forcing me to have. Dehydrated, too.”

“Poor Silas,” she crooned, as she got out of bed. “You need shoes. This is an inside-outside thing.”

He shot her a sleepy smile as he shoved his feet into his boots. “I like seeing you excited. It’s cute.”

“Tell me I’m cute later. I want to hear that I’m smart and not crazy now.”

“Well?” She prodded Silas in his bare, romance novel–cover abs.

He scratched the back of his head and squinted three stories up at the cardboard she’d put in two windows. Between them was a single octagonal window. “Could be decorative.”

“It could be,” she agreed. “But it’s not in the closet of the front bedroom. I paced it off in the hallway. I think there’s about ten feet unaccounted for.”

“Too big for ducting and mechanicals,” he observed.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Maybe it’s a passageway that connects the rooms? I’ve seen them in old houses with rooms that used to be nurseries.”

“That’s a possibility,” Maggie agreed.

“Well, what are we doing down here then? Let’s go find us a secret passage.”

It took them twenty minutes of careful, dusty searching before Silas found a seam in the back of the smaller bedroom’s closet. Their eyes met as he depressed a nearly hidden switch along the molding. There was a distinct click from inside the wall, and then one of the panels sprung toward them.

“Do you want a camera for this?” Silas asked, when she reached for the doorway.

She shook her head. “Not until we know for sure there aren’t any corpses or creepy ceramic doll collections inside. Some things shouldn’t be commemorated.”

“All right. Then let’s do this.” He grinned.

He hooked his fingers in the opening and tugged. The hinges gave a haunted house–style creak as the door swung open.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, poking his head in after Maggie stepped over the threshold. She shined a flashlight over the walls.

It was a small room. Barely bigger than ten-feet square, it smelled stale. There was a thick layer of dust covering every surface. One entire wall was buried under shelves of books and thick scrapbooks. There was a wingback chair covered in gold silk in the corner. Next to it was a small table that held a pipe and heavy ashtray. The other wall was covered in framed sepia-toned photos and newspaper clippings.

A thick black curtain hung on the front wall, exactly over where the window in question should be.

Silas distracted her by sneezing three times in rapid succession.