Read Online Angel of the Battlefield by Ann Hood - Free Book Online Page A

believe him until her plan failed. So he followed her out of the apartment and down the stairs.
    â€œHere’s my surprise,” she told him as they stood in front of the door on the first landing. “I didn’t lock the door when we left the other night. So we can walk right down the stairs.”
    â€œNumber three,” Felix said. “The dumbwaiter.”
    â€œOh, please.”
    Maisie opened the door. “Ta-da!” she said, and then bounded into the Dining Room.
    â€œThis is
so
not going to work,” Felix muttered. The sound of a vacuum cleaner made him stop walking. “Listen,” he said.
    Maisie paused. “It’s just the cleaners. There was a big fund-raiser here last night.”
    She made her way through the Dining Room, still set for dinner, and into the Grand Ballroom. Tiptoeing across the marble floor, she didn’t bother to glance at the fancy rooms she passed as she approached the Grand Staircase. But Felix did. He glimpsed the gold trim and ornate moldings in the Ladies’ Drawing Room, the medieval tapestries and imported fireplaces in the Cigar Room, the chandelier made in Belgium hanging in Ariane Pickworth’s study. He couldn’t explain it, but it was as if everything in the house was watching them.
    Maisie sprinted up the Grand Staircase, but Felix stopped along the way to stare at the photograph of Great-Aunt Maisie with Great-Uncle Thorne at its edge.
What did they know?
he wondered, and as he thought it, a shiver crept up his arms.
    Slowly, he climbed the rest of the stairs, feeling with each step he took that the very house was alive.
    In the hallway, Maisie waited for him, pacing. Just like the Woman in Pink had done, she touched the fancy wall, and it opened noiselessly, revealing the hidden staircase.
Would the magic of seeing that staircase appear like that ever fade?
Felix thought as he gasped again.
    When she reached The Treasure Chest, Maisie unhooked the rope and held it up for Felix to enter.
    â€œNo, no,” he said. “You should go in first, do exactly what you did the other night, and then I’ll come in.”
    â€œTime is passing here, bro,” Maisie said impatiently.
    â€œFine,” he said, and walked in.
    Maisie went right to the desk and picked up the scroll. She closed her eyes and waited.
    Felix stared at her. “We did something to make it start up,” he said. “Or we did lots of things.”
    She opened her eyes. “All I remember is that it smelled like fireworks, there were loud popping sounds, and then the next thing I knew, I was lifted off the floor.” She held the scroll out to him. “Here. You hold it.”
    Felix pulled it away from her.
    Nothing.
    â€œActually,” he said, “it was unrolled.”
    Carefully, he unrolled the paper, revealing the list of names in neat rows, written in ink that had long since faded, the letters all curlicues and loops and swirls.
    He closed his eyes. The vacuum cleaner grew louder.
    â€œNothing,” he said. “It’s not the paper. It’s . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s something we said. Like an incantation.”
    Maisie stamped her foot. “Come on, ghost or whatever you are,” she said.
    â€œI think the cleaners are getting closer,” Felix said. “We better get out of here.”
    â€œPhinneas Pickworth, are you listening?” she said.
    Nothing.
    Maybe Felix was right. Maybe they had to recreate that night exactly. The sound of the vacuum grew louder. Maisie sighed.
    â€œOkay,” she said reluctantly. “Where’s your list?”

    Even though she thought it was ridiculous, Maisie did everything Felix told her to later that night after Mom went to sleep. She put on the exact clothes she’d worn that night—her flannel pajama bottoms and Mets fleece vest—even though the cold snap they’d had that night was gone and the heat had come back. Felix found