“There is no other way,” said Milo.
“Then I’m sorry. I truly am. But if Shanks gets free it won’t be you he goes after. It’ll be me. It’ll be people from this town. Springton will go back to being his hunting ground.”
“Maybe we can help,” said Amber. “He’s trapped in a dollhouse – but how secure can that be? Those kids easily trashed two of the dollhouses kept at the school. He will eventually be found.”
“And I suppose you have a better way?”
“We’ll take the dollhouse away from here,” Milo said. “Destroy it, bury it, burn it, whatever.”
“Too risky. Sorry, but I’m not going to change my mind. My mom suggested I talk to you, and I’ve talked to you. If I had known you wanted to actually communicate with him, I’d never have agreed to it. If my mom had known that, I doubt she’d have even mentioned you to me. I can’t help you, and I won’t help you. I’m sorry about that, I really am. But I have to ask you to leave the library.”
Amber had no argument left, and so she found herself walking out into the sunshine with Glen and Milo at her heels.
“Huh,” she said. “I didn’t think she’d actually say no. I mean, I should have but I didn’t. We can’t make her tell us where she’s keeping Shanks, can we? I’m … I have no idea what to do now. What do we do?”
Glen shrugged. “How about we break into her house?”
Amber frowned. “Seriously?”
“Of course. This is life or death, right? You need to speak to this guy, so let’s search her place and find him, then get the hell out of here before her dad comes after us with his gun. Do we know where she lives?”
“Pine Street,” said Milo.
“There you go,” Glen said, clapping his hands. “That’s our plan, right?”
Amber looked at Milo.
“Sure,” said Milo. “That’s our plan.”
Pine Street was a picket-fence affair: neat lawns and trimmed hedges and not one oil stain on a single driveway. They found the Medina house without a problem, passed it and drove down to the corner. Amber and Glen walked back, rang the doorbell and waited. They chatted about nothing, but they did so loudly and with much false cheer. A neighbour walking her dog glanced at them. They smiled politely, and rang the doorbell again.
The door opened, and Milo let them in.
While they searched, Milo did his best to patch up the window he had broken. He left money on the table for the damage. The dollhouse wasn’t in any of the rooms. The attic was empty. The cellar was bare.
The dollhouse wasn’t there.
They got back to the Charger.
“Okay,” said Glen, “I’m out of ideas.”
“It’s in the library,” Amber said. “It is, isn’t it? Big old place like that probably has a hundred rooms that aren’t being used. I bet they have big old locks on the doors, too.”
“If the dollhouse is not where she lives,” said Milo, “then it’s probably where she works.”
Glen sounded grumpy in the back seat. “It’ll take ages to search that place.”
Milo started the car. “Then I guess we’ll have to do it at night.”
THE LIBRARY WAS CREEPY when it got dark.
The staff turned out the lights and locked up. Heather Medina was the last to leave. When the silence had settled and ten minutes had passed, Amber and the others emerged from the restroom where they’d been hiding. The occasional bright sweep of headlights from the street outside was the only illumination they were granted as they made their way through the maze of bookcases. Those lights sent shadows dancing and flitting from floor to wall to ceiling, and each one set Amber’s heart to drumming.
They split up, their task made easier when Glen found a set of keys lying in the office inbox. Locked doors swung open and revealed storage spaces, boxes of books and plaster busts gathering dust. They found desks piled on top of each other and a room full of broken chairs.
Finally, they found a door at the end of a dark and windowless corridor for which they had no key. Milo knelt and proceeded to pick the lock. It took a lot longer than Amber expected.
When the last tumbler slid into place, Milo pulled on the handle and pushed. The door opened to a small room with a single table at its centre, and upon that table was a dollhouse.
Amber stepped in. They were deep enough in the library that she felt confident in turning on a light. The single bulb brightened slowly, its radiance dimmed by dust.
The dollhouse was magnificent. Front opening, with two stories and an attic space. It was the kind of thing Amber would have loved as a little girl, if only her parents had paid more attention to her subtle hints. If only her parents hadn’t been planning to murder her from the day she was conceived.
She peered through the little windows, saw furniture. Beds and dressers. Downstairs, there was a hall with a staircase, and a kitchen.
“Can you see anything?” Glen whispered from beside her.
Something moved past the window and Amber recoiled sharply.
There was a moment, while she stood there, the hair on her neck prickling and every instinct urging her to run, when she genuinely considered just calling up her parents and imploring them to rethink their plans and let her come home. She was ready, in that moment, to forgive them, to carry on with her life as if nothing had happened.
The moment passed.
She cleared her throat. “Hello?” she said. She peered closer, but it was dark in there. “Are you there? Dacre Shanks, can you hear me?”
No answer. At least none that she could hear.
Glen hunkered down to look through the side windows. “Maybe he’s sleeping,” he said, then knocked heavily on the roof. “Hey, wake up in there!”
Milo took hold of Glen’s wrist. “Please don’t do that to the serial killer.”
Glen took his hand back. “What? He lives in a dollhouse. He’s the size of Thumbelina, for God’s sake. You think he scares me?”
“It’s not about whether or not he scares you,” said Milo, “it’s the principle of the thing. Wherever possible, you do not antagonise serial killers. That’s just a general rule of life.”
“I don’t think it applies to serial killers you could fit in your pocket.”
“Quiet,”
