I read it over a couple of times and then neatly replaced it in the box, which I put away in the wardrobe. On trying to close it, I discovered (to my dismay) that I had broken the latch. I could close the door, but it didn’t click tidily into place.

My only comfort was that no one ever seemed to spend any time here, and maybe Laura would never get around to noticing.

As I turned to leave, behind me I heard a slow creeeeak.

The wardrobe door had opened.

I stepped back, shut it, and started toward the door to the hall.

Creeeeeeeeeak.

How aggravating. And even more so because it was my fault.

I went back and spent a minute inspecting the damage I’d done. It was much worse than I’d thought: the latch on the right-side door hung pathetically by one screw on a splinter of wood that had cracked away from the body of the door.

Oh, great.

I reached up to try to hold the wood in place, but it wouldn’t stay long enough for me to close the door.

So I looked around helplessly for something I could use to put it back into place.

I walked over to the small desk. Maybe there was tape or glue in the drawers? I searched through them, but all I found were some desiccated rubber erasers and the caps to three pens. I reached my hand back into the drawer—and something touched my fingers.

My first thought was spider! but when I crouched down to peer inside, I could see that it wasn’t a spider. I reached in and moved my hand around, jogging the underside of the drawer above it.

Something hit the bottom of the drawer with a muffled whomp. I reached in and grabbed it. It was a journal, a thin book with a lavender-and-pink swirled design on it. In the corner was a small monogram: LAC.

Lily Anne Copeland. This was her journal.

Suddenly I looked around again. Was this really Lily’s bedroom? It didn’t look like the kind of bedroom a teen girl would live in, in a house this grand. Agatha’s room was about fifty times more posh. And Lily had been the heir, like Agatha now was—or was supposed to be. Didn’t she rate a nicer space?

Then I looked again at the bed. I lifted the skirt higher, revealing a white metal frame underneath. The whole thing was on wheels—a hospital bed.

I swallowed hard.

So this wasn’t actually Lily’s bedroom—it was the sickroom.

Which meant she’d probably died in here.

The feeling that came over me was hard to describe—a sense of being in a place where I wasn’t wanted and didn’t belong. A feeling of being too hot and too cold at the same time.