With Serena adding her light to theirs, Emrys was finally able to see the full extent of the vandalism. The mess was staggering. Two couches had been torn open and gutted, their fluffy innards strewn all over. The drawers of the wardrobe and dresser were overturned, clothing piled in heaps.
But books accounted for most of the mess. There were more than a hundred of them, spread out all over the floor with their spines cracked and pages bent.
“My dads would have a heart attack,” said Serena. She leaned over to read the spines. “Blake. Crowley. Alan Moore? I’m sensing a theme.”
“Mr. Van Stavern?” Emrys cried, urgency bringing more volume to his voice. “Anyone? Hello?”
Serena poked her head into the bathroom—nothing there, she indicated with a curt head movement—while Hazel shone her light into a little alcove where a bed lay empty, its mattress practically turned inside out.
“There’s nobody home,” said Serena, and Emrys thought she meant it to be good news. If Van Stavern had been out when this had happened, then the old man was probably safe. But Van Stavern almost never left his apartment. Why would he go out in the storm? Emrys tilted his light up at the ceiling, as if the man’s body might be stashed in the rafters. They were missing something; he felt it in the pit of his clenched stomach.
“Hey, check this out.” Hazel picked something up from the pile of books. “Is this a Ouija board?”
Emrys walked over for a closer look, and a floorboard creaked. Had their neighbor used a spirit board to pierce the veil between life and death? Maybe he’d lost someone he loved—a spouse, or a cherished sibling—and as he’d withdrawn from the world, retreating into his penthouse apartment, his sole comfort had been conversing with the dead. Seances!
He caught Serena giving him a judgmental look and tamped down his enthusiasm. He’d probably looked a little too gleeful as he’d crossed the room, particularly since the object in Hazel’s hands turned out to be wholly unremarkable.
“They sell those things at the toy store.” He frowned and retrieved the board’s matching planchette from the debris at Hazel’s feet. “No self-respecting spiritualist would use this. It’s plastic. Mass produced.” He kicked around in the piles of books. “So much for the Sorcerer of #701. There’s nothing here but a Rider-Waite tarot deck and a bunch of crystals and a cheap-looking gargoyle from a gardening store. It’s all kind of … cheesy.”
“Well, what did you honestly expect?” asked Serena. She turned her gaze from Emrys to Hazel. “Both of you. You didn’t think this old man is really a wizard?”
“No,” said Emrys, his shoulders drooping lower. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Weirder things have happened,” Hazel said, defiant in the face of Serena’s skepticism. “There’s evidence of witchcraft in New Rotterdam dating back hundreds of years.”
Emrys shook his head. “Serena’s right. Of course she is. Van Stavern is just an old man.” He sighed. “He’s probably lonely. People think he’s weird because he believes in New Age crystal healing or whatever.” He cast his tired eyes around the room. “And somebody came here and they … they tore his whole life apart.”
“The Whistler,” Hazel said with a shiver. “That’s who did this. Right? Were they looking for something? I swear I felt a chill as they passed Serena’s door. Like someone was stepping on my grave.” She nudged Emrys, trying to draw him out of his dark mood. “Maybe it was a rival warlock …”
“Or a mob enforcer,” Serena suggested. “Perhaps ol’ Alyx has a weakness for casinos.”
Emrys was no longer in the mood to speculate. Standing amidst the carnage of Alyx Van Stavern’s life, he felt a strange sort of kinship with the man—a lonely outsider who surrounded himself with occult-adjacent novelties. The sadness of that realization threatened to overwhelm him.
And in the silence of that moment … he heard something.
Hazel noticed his agitation immediately. “What is it?”
Emrys held up a finger. He wasn’t certain … he needed to be sure …
There. He heard it again. It was unmistakable.
“I hear someone breathing,” he whispered.
“What?” said Serena. “No way. Where?”
“Shh!” said Hazel. She hurried to the bathroom, checking behind its open door. Emrys pressed his ear to a wall.
“I don’t hear anything,” complained Serena, and as she paced, the floor groaned in protest. “Except this obnoxious floorboard! Is it loose or what?”
Her words jolted Emrys like an electric shock. “The floorboard?” Emrys said, looking down. “We don’t have floors like this in my apartment.”
Hazel bounced on the balls of her feet. “Our floors are vinyl. This one is made of planks. It’s like being in a log cabin. Or on a ship …”
Emrys leapt over a pile of books, skidding to a stop beside Serena. “Which one’s the creaky floorboard?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer, dropping to his knees and pressing his ear to the ground.
There it was. Ragged breathing. Someone was under the floor.
He looked up at Hazel, and he didn’t have to say a word. The horror of his discovery was written all over his face, and his friend immediately joined him on the ground.
“It’s loose,” she said, prying her fingers between two planks. “We need, like, a crowbar …”
“I forgot mine at home,” Serena said, but she crossed the room and tore an ornamental sword from the wall. Emrys pegged it for a Renaissance Faire souvenir. Not a real sword, but it would be sturdy enough to give them leverage.
Serena stabbed the sword between the planks—“Careful!” Emrys cried—and then she pushed down on it like a lever. The board popped free, the nails giving little resistance, as if this piece of floor had been removed and replaced many times before.
Emrys braced himself for his first glimpse of what was hidden below. He hadn’t stopped to wonder what he might see.
But he certainly hadn’t expected to find another book.
“What?” he said. “I don’t—I swear I heard—”
“What is it?” Hazel asked.
Emrys lowered his hands into the rift and brought the book out into the light. It was bound in dark leather, and it bore no title on its cover or spine. Its only identifying mark was the strange feature protruding from its front cover.
It appeared to be an eye.
