Page 38 of If Anything Happens To Me

“We can pick up Fitch on the way,” Matt said.

“We don’t have time,” Iris said. “Please, let’s go to the ghost signs now. I appreciate how much you’re helping me, Matt, but I have to do this my way. It’s my sister. I got her into this, and I need to get her out right away, before he does something worse.”

“What about the blue van we saw?” I asked. “You sure you want to go back there?”

“If it gets me closer to Hayley, I’ll do anything,” she said.

So we worked out a plan: Matt would drop us in downtown New London, and he would head to Black Hall to pick up Fitch. Then he’d return to New London to meet me and Iris near the ghost signs.

There was a lot to be said for following the rules. When life is so unpredictable, and you start losing the things—and people—you love most, obeying the rules provides a certain stability and safety factor.

Ever since finding Iris, the rules had been saying I should call Detective Tyrone, take Iris to the ER. But this time I was one hundred percent following my gut. Hearing what the kidnapper had said about the police, knowing that he was capable of carrying through with violence, convinced me that Iris was right. The police hadn’t found any clues about what had happened to Eloise, and already Iris, Matt, and I were unspooling Iris’s story—which would lead us to her sister, and to answers about mine.

As Matt drove us back to New London, I felt my strength and confidence building. Instead of just sitting around being sad, feeling helpless, waiting for the authorities to solve these crimes, we were on our own trail to find the truth.

We pulled onto the service road and stopped in front of the Sibylline sisters’ ghost sign. Matt and I gazed at each other. He looked at my hand, as if he wanted to touch it. And he did, just lightly.

“I’ll hurry,” he said. “It’ll take me about half an hour to drive from here to Black Hall and back.”

“Great,” I said, getting out of the car. “See you then.”

He took off, and Iris and I began walking. She glanced at the dusty blue van as we passed it. Her posture stiffened, but she didn’t say anything this time. There was no turning back.

The cobblestones were uneven—they had probably been there for over a hundred years—and I nearly twisted my ankle. There were a few back doors in the crumbling wall. I tried to open some, but they were nailed shut, as if they hadn’t been used in a long time. A walkway angled up the slight hill from dockside toward the street, and we took it.

Most of the old maritime establishments had given way to more modern businesses. Instead of sailmakers and chandleries, we found a florist, a jewelry shop, a coffee bar, and a bookstore. The only name I recognized from one of the ghost signs was the Barquentine Pub,ESTABLISHED IN 1850in small print below it.

Iris and I entered the pub. Along the walls were port-and-starboard ship lanterns, glowing red and green. There was a wooden plaque adorned with sailors’ knots—bowline, sheepshank, monkey’s fist, square knot, clove hitch, and Turk’s head—like the bracelet Matt had given me. The wall was also covered with black-and-white photos of other venerable seaside buildings, including a beach pavilion in Black Hall, a row of shingled cottages, and the Miramar—an old Victorian hotel in Silver Bay. That hotel had always seemed so romantic to me, the corridors and cupola filled with a hundred years’ worth of stories.

The pub was empty, but then again, it was between lunch and dinner. Iris hovered near the front window—she was keeping watch, which let me know that in spite of what she had said, she was still worried about the blue van.

“Hello!” I called out, walking farther into the restaurant. “Anybody here?”

A door in the back swung open, and a girl in a waitress uniform stepped through. She was about sixteen, with long black hair in two braids. I didn’t know her—she definitely didn’t go to Black Hall High.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s kind of a weird question.”

She gave a half smile. “My favorite kind.”

“It has to do with the fading signs behind this building,” I said.

“Those signs have been there for nearly a hundred years,” she said proudly. “This restaurant’s been in my family for generations, and my parents run it now. The town council always wants the businesses here to paint that wall, make it look new, but we’ll never do that. It’s part of the waterfront’s heritage. I’m Sirena, by the way.”

“I’m Oli,” I said. “That’s Iris.” I gestured toward the front of the pub where Iris still stood looking out the window.

“So, what’s your weird question?” Sirena asked.

“It’s about the painting of the three women,” Iris called from up front. “TheSibylline Sisters: Oracles, 1944.”

Sirena laughed. “Of course. People always come in here to ask about that sign. Then they stay for a chowder or a plate of calamari. You want to order, by the way?”

“Uh, we don’t have time,” I said, because I could see Iris getting impatient and agitated. “We’d just like to find out whatever you can tell us about that sign.”

Sirena nodded. “I know all about it because of my friend Minerva Morelock. In Greek mythology, sibyls—oracles—were mediums. They made predictions and gave advice.”

“We don’t need a definition of oracles,” I said, knowing I sounded a little short but not caring too much. “We need to know who the women in the painting were.”

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