"I'm gonna burn this place to the ground," Blaise declared quietly, and stared challengingly at the others.

  Seth lifted his amulet to shine light on the creepy room as he considered what Blaise said. He hated fire. He hated the dreams he had of the mansion burning. Thankfully they weren't often anymore, but they still scared him. He wanted to be that confident guy that wasn't bothered by stuff.

  Saben was able to keep his head in a crisis, and even when things had gone completely to shit, Saben could get up and keep going, and keep Seth going too. Seth wanted to be like that.

  So what would Saben do? That was easy. He'd burn it to the ground and not think twice.

  Seth found the idea of the black fabric going up in flames, the whole inn a raging inferno, terrifying. But this wouldn't be like the mansion fire. He wasn't going to be inside it. He wouldn't be setting it either. Blaise would want to.

  It was just that little bit of distance. He wanted to be more than a scared kid, more than a sandbag or victim, so he would use that little bit of distance and try to act like his brother.

  If by burning this place all the misery caused to himself, Saben, and Blaise went up in smoke, then that would be awesome. This was a strike back. This would be saving future victims. Firming his resolve, he answered.

  "Yeah," Seth said quietly. "I like that idea." After he said it he was surprised to find he meant it.

  Owen vehemently shook his head. "We can't do that. There are people sleeping upstairs. I won't be burning up innocent people because they're sleeping in the wrong place." He spoke just as quietly as Seth.

  He was right. And now that Owen said it, Seth was surprised the fact that arson was wrong never crossed his mind. When had his moral compass gone so far askew?

  Trapping random people in a burning building wasn't something Saben would do, or Seth could do. Destroying this place would be satisfying, but not at that cost. And there would be consequences. Seth realized he was so focused on overcoming being afraid, he wasn't thinking straight.

  "I want this place gone," Blaise insisted. "We burn it to ash."

  "We could wait until after breakfast then," Duvessa said. "The pies were yummy. I want to see what they cook next. And it'll be no trouble for people to evacuate in the morning."

  "Someone is going to see us burning the place down when everyone is up and wandering around," Booth pointed out. "Then we get busted and the fire gets put out."

  "So we think this through," Seth said. The key ring he held rattled as he lowered his amulet. "We want to destroy this place. So what happens if we light those, well they're not curtains, but the black fabric things on fire? We light them and they start to burn. This room fills with smoke and we leave. There's no wood in here, and the ceiling is stone. Once those burn, then what? The smoke goes up the stairs and lets everyone know there's a fire?"

  "The stairs could burn," Blaise said. "That could light the rest of the inn."

  "What if the stairs light up while we're still on them?" Owen asked. "We need to get through that skinny door and the spiral stairs are really tight. Fire is fast. I don't want to be trapped down here."

  "Yeah, that's risky," Seth agreed, suppressing a shudder. There was no way he was doing that. "So, lighting it from down here is a bad idea. So, say we light it from one of our rooms instead? After breakfast tomorrow? What happens then?" Not that he'd be doing that one either.

  "Whoever lights it has to get outside," Duvessa said. "But everyone else could be outside already."

  "And hopefully none of the other guests are sleeping in tomorrow," Owen said darkly.

  "And no one sees us set the fire, or we all get blamed," Booth added.

  Seth agreed. "There's lots of risks. But say we succeed. The inn burns, and we don't get caught. What then?"

  "I don't care. This place would be gone," Blaise said.

  Seth could see the appeal of that kind of thinking. Things wouldn't end there though.

  "I imagine the town would put out the fire," Duvessa said, tapping her lip. The motion sent weird shadows through the room since she was holding a lightstone in that hand. "The whole inn probably won't burn."

  "There would be all the burnt pieces on top of this room. Nobody would find it for weeks," Owen said.

  "And if they did find this room, what is there to find?" Seth asked. "It's just an empty storage room." As much as he hated that this wasn't going to work, he was also relieved. Fire wasn't the way.

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  "But it's not just a storage room," Blaise argued. "They did things here!"

  "And they can do those things somewhere else," Seth said. "We haven't found the artifact they're using. If they're even using one. Burning this place down would hide what they've been doing. It helps them more than it does us."

  Blaise turned away and with a muttered curse she punched the stone wall. Then she cradled her fist and cursed some more.

  "We need to think about what we want to have happen," Seth said. "We want these people stopped. We want the powers returned." He dragged the toe of his boot across the marks on the floor. "What's the best way to get that? Should we confront the innkeeper? Make him confess?"

  Booth chuckled darkly and his accent thickened. "We drag him out of bed, give 'im a bit o' a beating, and tell 'im to own up? Say he does? 'Yup, right-o young sirs! I been messing wit' the clients 'ere.' Then what?"

  "We turn him over to the authorities," Owen said.

  "Like they'd do anything," Booth said bitterly.

  "Someone has to," Blaise said, turning back around.

  "Who is the authority here?" Seth said. "Thurstan, right? Booth's right that he won't do anything. We ourselves can't take it any higher. And if we could, say we managed to talk to the Count, are we sure that Thurstan is as high as it goes?"

  "That's bad. It sounds like we can't do anything," Owen said.

  "I can," Duvessa said confidently. "I can take it higher. At least, Nana can. She can do something here."

  "All right, say we do that," Seth said. "Say we get the two guards down here and show them what's going on. What then?"

  "They'd believe us," Owen said. "It's here." He waved at the marks on the floor and the hooks in the ceiling.

  "Nana isn't going to let this go," Duvessa said. "We can trust her."

  "I can tell Brand, too. If he knows, and tells the rest of my family, things will happen." Blaise looked up at the ceiling. "This place will burn, even if it isn't me that does it."

  "That doesn't mean we do nothing," Seth said. "There's a reason this room was built. It isn't new."

  "Smuggling, probably," Booth said.

  Seth gestured at the narrow spiral stairs. "There's no way people move cargo up and down those stairs. Maybe a crate or two at a time, but not whole wagon loads. They didn't move cargo through here."

  "Some other purpose then?" Duvessa suggested. "Secret rituals? Magic experiments?"

  "Why not use a room in the regular basement for that? No, I think Booth is right, and this was used for smuggling, but not for cargo. I think they used this to get to somewhere else unseen. I think he's right that there's another door here somewhere," Seth said.

  "Another secret door!" Duvessa said excitedly and clapped her hands.

  "Shush!" Hissed Booth and Seth.

  "Oh, right. Sorry," Duvessa said, her voice whisper soft again. "I'll search this wall."

  "I don't like those hooks in the ceiling," Owen said. "Y'all fine if I mess them up some?"

  "Do it," Blaise said. "What am I looking for to find a door?"

  "Lines on the floor or ceiling where the door swings are the easiest thing to spot, but they'll be faint. You can also look for seams, or listen to the sound the wall makes when you tap it. I don't suggest tapping down here, though. We don't want company," Booth said. "Sometimes just feeling it is enough to notice a difference, but that's a lot harder."

  Booth, Blaise, and Duvessa each took a wall and pulled the black drapes out of the way. Booth made more light stones as the ones he'd already made faded. Owen cast Soften Stone on the ceiling blocks the hooks were drilled into, and then wiggled each hook to loosen it without pulling it out entirely.

  "I reckon the best I can do is give the next poor soul in here a fighting chance," Owen explained.

  Seth examined the wall with the staircase, but decided the chances of the secret door being there were small. Rather than double up on a wall one of the others was searching, he instead looked through the keys on the enormous key ring.

  Most of the keys were normal iron keys, the kind used to lock doors or trunks. A handful were sigil keys, like the one Booth had used to open the secret door upstairs. Seth took the sigil keys one by one and touched them to each of the walls to no effect.

  Another small batch were ornate keys, made of silver or brass. As he was looking through those he noticed a pecular iron key mixed into that group. What was unusual about that key was it had symbols embossed into the blade. If he hadn't been looking closely, he'd have never noticed them.

  Seth figured this was a disguised sigil key, as he thought the tiny symbols were actually sigils. He looked closer and recognized the first symbol near the bow. It was the same symbol as the one inside the second bead of his bracelet.

  He stared at the key and wondered what the meaning of the symbol was. The connection was clear to him though. And now he had physical proof of Benjamin's involvement. Slipping the key off the ring was not as simple or as quick as he would have liked, but he got it done.

  "Any luck?" Seth asked the others quietly.

  Duvessa sighed and slumped. "No. I was hoping to be the one to find it too."

  "I didn't find anything either," Booth said. "There might not be anything here."

  Seth handed the ring of keys to Booth. "You'll need to get these back. Before we head up, I want to try this one." He touched the iron key along each of the walls. When he touched it to the far corner, a jagged door opened.

  "I swear I looked there," Blaise said.

  "It makes sense that these would be magically locked too," Booth said. "We probably should've tried the keys first, then."

  "I want to look first! Please don't be a dead end, please don't be a dead end," Duvessa chanted softly as she stepped through the door. "It's not a dead end! It's long and straight, and I can't see anything after that. We should follow it."

  "Do we put the curtains back like they were, or do we want them to know we were here?" Owen asked.

  "Put them back," Blaise said, smoothing out the curtain beside her. "I want them shocked and surprised when the hammer comes down on them."

  "Do we get your babysitters now, Duvessa, or after we search that tunnel?" Booth asked.

  "Now would probably be better," Seth said. "They can see this with us."

  There was a faint thump from up the stairs.

  "Someone's coming!" Booth hissed. He grabbed Blaise, dragging her with him. "Into the tunnel! Fast! Lights out!"

  They all scrambled into the tunnel and Seth pulled the curtain across before closing and locking the door. Once it was shut he put out his amulet light. Booth grabbed Duvessa's lightstone and both hers and his winked out.

  "How are we going to sneak away in pitch darkness?" Duvessa asked.

  "Shush, I can hear them," Seth said. "There's more than one person."