I scurry off right as the dinner bell chimes. I glance behind my shoulder as I’m nearly to the door to see the men following the duke into the formal dining room. Their matching masks and black suits give the whole thing the effect of a twisted funeral procession.

Lena and Maxine aren’t far behind me. We’re shepherded downstairs by a stern white-haired butler.

Only the male staff will serve at dinner. It’s modern that the duke had women serving during the welcome reception, but for the formal meal, strict tradition will be observed.

A group of tall, masked footmen pass us on the stairs.

We gather with the other hired help and one by one are handed envelopes with a few bills from the housekeeper. She barks something in French, and most of the others head for the door.

“She said we’re dismissed,” Maxine says.

“What now?” Lena asks in a whisper.

I’d hoped we’d be allowed to linger for the rest of the night, find a pot to scrub or a vent to listen through. It seems like a childish plan, now.

But I can’t leave Oliver alone with Finn. He may have said I can trust him, but I don’t. I also can’t go without answers. The magic buzzing in my veins tells me there is information to be found here.

“C’mon,” I whisper, and jerk my head to Lena and Maxine, urging them to follow me down the dark hallway opposite the brightly lit kitchens.

With the party still in full swing upstairs, downstairs is in chaos. No one pays any mind to us as we walk away.

From her pinafore pocket, Lena pulls out Finn’s pencil drawing of the house layout and studies it. “There’s the other staircase….”

Maxine looks over her shoulder and nods. “It goes up the east wing of the house. If it reaches to the service quarters, we should find an alternate staircase over here.” She pokes the corner of the map.

We wind through another narrow hallway, which houses a few doors I assume open to staff rooms. It isn’t grim in the basement, it’s just plain. The whitewashed stone walls make everything feel cold and stark.

We round another corner and we find it, the service staircase we were looking for. It’s narrow and made of plain wood, so different from the sweeping red-carpeted staircases in the manor house above-ground.

But the stairs don’t just go up, they also go down. I thought we were in the deepest recesses of the house, but I must have been wrong.

Maybe it’s just a hunch, or maybe it’s too many years spent reading novels about castles with secret passageways, but I start to climb down.

Maxine and Lena look on with confusion. “I need to know where it goes,” I say.