Miss Scratton, you remember that we couldn’t go inside Fairfax Hall last term because of the break-in over there?” said Sarah. We were standing next to Miss Scratton’s desk after her history class, trying to appear innocently enthusiastic. “Well, we were wondering whether we could go again and see the house properly this time.”

“Why?” Miss Scratton’s brow creased in a faint frown.

“We’re…um…really interested in history,” said Helen.

“Local history,” I added.

“Indeed. I hadn’t noticed that you were particularly interested in any of your school subjects, Helen.”

Helen looked embarrassed. She was constantly getting into trouble for daydreaming in class and forgetting to hand in assignments. Miss Scratton gave us a piercing stare, then seemed to relent.

“I admire your curiosity. However, I’m afraid we won’t be able to go on any visits at the moment. The weather is too bad for that.” Miss Scratton glanced out of the window, where the snow had started to fall again. “It’s almost as though we are shut off from the outside world,” she added quietly, “cloistered here within the walls of the Abbey, like in the old days.”

She turned her gaze back to us, and as she did so, my heart jumped with a strange sense of recognition. I’ve seen her before somewhere, I thought. Where? Where could it have been? My mind flashed back to that night down in the crypt. Was it there that I had seen her, among the baying women of the coven? I couldn’t believe that. I didn’t want to believe that. Yet there was something familiar about her, so strict, so disciplined, so self-contained….

“Now I really must get ready for my next class,” she said. “Good afternoon, girls.”

Miss Scratton swept out, her black academic gown billowing around her.

“Well, it was worth trying,” said Sarah. “She wasn’t going along with the idea, though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We don’t want to traipse around with a whole lot of sightseers anyway. We need to sneak in when the hall is shut and nobody’s there.”

“I could go,” Helen suggested. “I thought myself over there once before. I’ll go and see if I can find the Book.”

“You can’t go on your own,” said Sarah. “What if you got into some kind of trouble and couldn’t get back? We’ve got to stick together.”

“Tonight then,” I whispered. “We’ll go tonight.”

The Abbey might be shut off by the snow, but that wouldn’t stop us. We had other ways of getting there.

It was freezing cold. The sky over our heads was brilliant black, studded with stars. Sarah and Helen stood in the hushed stable yard, wearing their thickest sweaters and looking at me apprehensively.

“Ready?” asked Helen.

“Yes, let’s go for it,” I said, trying not to show that I was nervous.

“Well, if you’re sure,” she replied. “I’ve never done this before, but I think it will work. Okay, let’s try.”

She stood between us, winding an arm around each of our waists, then closed her eyes and muttered to herself. I braced myself for what was to come. For a split second I seemed to see Helen standing on the top of a bleak hill, raising her arms up to the sky, her gossamer hair blowing in the wind. Then the wind seemed to be inside me, a shrieking, turbulent force that would tear me to pieces. I heard Helen’s thought echoing in my mind: Hold on, hold on….

I seemed to be blown off my feet, and the stable yard slipped away from underneath me. The gables and turrets of the Abbey began to spin, and the stars flashed crimson and purple and gold. I was in a tunnel of light and sound, traveling faster than thought itself as we hurtled down the wind. The breath was being squeezed out of my lungs. I heard Helen calling, Don’t let go…. I clung to her until I felt I could hold on no longer; then the three of us suddenly landed with a crash on a polished wooden floor.

“That was…amazing,” Sarah said, gasping for breath.

“That was insane,” I groaned.

“But we made it,” said Helen. “We’re in Fairfax Hall.”

She stood up and pulled a flashlight out of her pocket, then helped us to our feet. I was still breathless and stunned as I looked around in wonder. We were in an elegant pillared room furnished with silk-covered sofas and little tables with spindly gold legs. Fairfax Hall. I could hardly take it in. One minute I had been in the stable yard, and now I was actually inside the hall, inside Sebastian’s home.

Helen beckoned us to follow her, and we left the elegant sitting room and found ourselves in a shadowy corridor.

“If anyone finds us we’ll be in spectacular trouble,” Sarah said. “I’ve never actually broken into a museum before.”

“There’s no point in turning back now,” Helen replied. “Follow me.”

“Where are we going, Helen?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

“Miss Scratton told me that the house is arranged exactly as it was in the old days, when Sebastian’s family lived here. And there’s a library full of old books. It seems kind of obvious, but we might as well start there. Do you know what this Book looks like, Evie?”

“All I know is that it was given to Agnes by Sebastian after he had found it in a bazaar in Morocco. In her journal she described it as old and shabby, with a green leather cover.”

“Come on then,” Helen said. “Let’s find the library.”

We followed Helen farther into the shrouded house. The flashlight picked out glimpses of ghostly white statues and gilt-framed paintings. I felt as though the darkness were alive, as though the walls could see us passing by. Sebastian lived here, I kept saying to myself; he knew these pictures; he walked in these corridors; he ran in and out of these rooms when he was a child. This expensive, antique furniture was as familiar to him as my simple cottage home was to me. As I crept along like a thief, I actually felt happy. I was in Sebastian’s home. For that one moment it was enough. Then I seemed to hear a voice echoing in the silent house. You grow weary, Evie…the road is too hard…there is someone else….

I turned around, startled, but Sarah hurried me forward as Helen pushed open some carved double doors.

“Wow,” breathed Sarah. “Look at this.”

We peered into a vast, cavernous room, heavy with darkness. I glimpsed tall bookcases and leather sofas and two huge writing desks. It was incredibly still, as though the whole room drowsed in an enchanted slumber, waiting for someone to open the books and breathe life back into their dusty pages. We stepped into the room and Helen swept her flashlight over the bookshelves. There were novels and books of poetry and French plays; there were books about law and history; books about fishing and gardening; books about everything that had ever interested the Fairfax family. My heart sank. How would we have enough time to search through all of them? It was an impossible task.

“We’ll never find it here,” I said, then stood transfixed as Helen shone the light onto a pair of portraits hanging above the fireplace. Sir Edward Fairfax, Lady Rosalind Fairfax, the printed labels said. They stared out at us, caught in time, comfortable and serene, not yet knowing that they would lose their darling son in scandalous circumstances—a rumored suicide, the body never found. Sir Edward was florid and dull-looking, the typical country squire with his dogs and horses, but Lady Rosalind was beautiful. Her eyes, blue as cornflowers, brimming with restless life, were Sebastian’s eyes looking down and calling to me—calling me to help him before it was too late.

He walks in the living air…a young man with brown eyes…he is there by your side….

“Stop!”

I would understand…I will never blame you….

“What is it, Evie?” said Helen.

“Voices—in my head…no, Sebastian, no, it’s not like that! There’s no one else. You’ve got to believe me!”

I snatched the flashlight from Helen’s hand and stumbled out of the library and ran toward the softly carpeted staircase. The others ran after me. Forcing my legs to work I climbed higher and higher, not knowing where I was going, driven on by the voice in my head. I ache for you…long for your touch…you choose another….

“No, I only want you, Sebastian,” I sobbed under my breath. “I only ever wanted you.”

Sebastian was near; I was sure of it. This had been his home, and now perhaps it was his hiding place. I kicked myself for not coming here earlier to look for him and ran crazily from room to room, throwing open doors that revealed glimpses of empty, elegant bedrooms. “Where are you? Where are you?” I cried in anguish. But the house refused to reveal its secrets. It was all old-fashioned and lifeless and dead, a museum, not a home. There was no sign of any inhabitants, past or present.

“It’s no good,” I said, dropping wearily onto a low chair. “He’s not here.”

Then we heard it: a faint stirring sound, coming from over our heads.

“What’s that?” asked Helen, looking up in alarm.

We froze. Silence. Then another low, muffled noise.

“It’s coming from up there,” Sarah murmured.

“I’m going to look.”

“No, Evie, wait—”

But I didn’t listen. I wasn’t afraid anymore. At the end of the broad landing there was another set of stairs that turned and twisted higher. I ran up them, and a strange pulse of inexplicable joy seemed to tug under my ribs. When I got to the top of the steps, I saw that I had reached the servants’ floor. A plain corridor ran the length of the house, with low doors stretching out in a uniform row.

The first door I opened led into a bare room with sloping ceilings, furnished with an iron bedstead and a plain white jug on a stand. The beam of the flashlight lit up a printed museum notice on the wall: An Example of a Maid’s Bedroom, circa 1875. Another dead end.

I marched to the next door and flung it open. There was a display of old photographs of the hall and its many servants. Annie May, Laundry Maid, 1895–1914, John Hall, Butler, 1906–1925… The next few doors were locked. I ran impatiently to the last door in the row. As I turned the handle a tingling sensation shot up my arm, like a hit of electricity. I could hear the sound of my own heart beating, and then it came again, that other sound, the echo of a muffled groan. I pushed the door open and shone the flashlight into the room.

It was completely empty, except for one thing.