𝓓𝓸 𝓸𝓻 𝓓𝓲𝓮 ❣︎ 𝓔𝓶𝓫𝓮𝓻 𝓐𝓭𝓭𝓪𝓶𝓼

𝓢𝓔𝓡𝓘𝓔𝓢 𝓞𝓝𝓔 ❣︎ 21

Here they are. The Gates family. They scrub up well for psychopaths.

She looked to the far left of the portrait, where a tall bow wearing a shirt and tie was. He had shoulder length hair, and blue eyes.

There's Garret.

"His father drunk himself to an early death..."

Ember turned to the far right, where a man with long hair as well, pulled back into a bun, was painted. He was wearing the same as his son.

His outcast-hating father, Ansel.

"His mother hung herself in the backyard..."

The mother had a red dress on and a sort of dejected look. She had an arm around her son and the last girl in the picture...

And you must be Laurel, Ember thought, as she saw the last of the Gates'. She had long, blonde hair, a half smile on her face, and a purple dress with a white collar and cuffs on.

"Even his little sister didn't escape. She was orphaned, sent overseas, and ended up drowning."

They're all long gone. So the question is, why did Goody lead me here?

Ember recited it in her head as she headed out of the living room and into another one, which turned out to be a small library. Books and shelves lined one wall and a table stood opposite them. Cobwebs and dead spiders littered the floor and ceiling, but no one but Enid cared.

Ember cared least. She stepped over an old broom on the floor and went to a bookshelf, pulling out all the books halfway to see what was on their cover. She was trying to see a link, a secret passage, a- an anything that would help her solve the case.

"Seen enough?" Tyler asked her about a minute later, once she had checked along a whole shelf.

"Of your face," Ember retorted, suddenly seeing it; two matching emblems on two of the shelf dividers, that none of the others had.

Slowly, she reached up to touch it. It was a button.

She couldn't not press it.

And so she did, and, after some gears shifting, and some wheels whirring, the whole bookshelf slid back and into the one on the left-

Revealing a small room with a big painting of Joseph Crackstone in it, smirking evilly. Mouldy and dried-wax-dripping candles were in stands on either side of the picture, and about ten hundred more broken, used or bad ones were littered underneath it. Along with a little pot of small, dark purple flowers, of course.

Enid squealed. "Who doesn't have a spooky built-in altar in their family library?" She was almost crying by now.

"Ours is in the dining room," Wednesday answered without missing a beat. "Ember's used to be in the lounge."

Tyler looked at them as though they had lost their minds.

"More seating for year-long Dia de los Muertos," Ember sighed.

Enid gave another whimper. Tyler, again, looked as though the two girls (both of which he had considered dating at one point or another) needed to be put in an insane asylum.

Ember, however, took her chance to walk into the altar, firstly keeping eye contact with painted Joseph Crackstone, but then her gaze wavering as she saw something, either painted in red or blood, below the left candle stand.

BLOOD
WILL
RAIN

And then, on the other side, below the right candle stand...