The Last 384 Hours

10

I'd never gotten a chance to peak into all the rooms of the Charleston Mansion, but I knew that there was one room no one was ever meant to enter. Not even William, nor the helpers.

Mrs Charleston was responsible for keeping it clean, and if she wasn't available for the job, President Charleston would handle it himself. That's what one of the helpers had told me.

He'd only make an exception if he was meeting someone really important and needed to speak to them privately. Other than that, the room was out of bounds.

And with that little piece of information, I'd gathered that there was something in there that he didn't want the world to know about. Something dark and incriminating. Something that could send his precious, aristocratic reputation tumbling.

The entire house was silent, and I hoped that its inhabitants were counting sheep. A silver glow poured through the large glass windows of the mansion, spraying angular light on the walls of each room we perambulated past. President Charleston's office was a few steps ahead, across the family room. It took us a while to get there though, because my being half-dead didn't allow me to move with the perfect, silent grace of a ghost.

As I silently ambled down the vast passageway, I kept on fighting the bubbling feeling erupting in my stomach. The feeling that alerted me that I was a half-dead being and I was about to raid President Charleston's study with a ghost, and that a couple of rooms away, William was there as human as can be, sleeping. I willed myself into thinking nothing of it. I wasn't here for William, I was here for revenge. And Nicholas was helping me, the least I could do was stick to the plan.

We came face to face with a long, oak door with a flashy gold doorknob. This was the door we'd been looking for. Next to me, Nicholas' hand brushed against mine—an awakening gesture—and I knew I was wasting time. "Come on. This is it," I said and pulled his freezing hand into mine. A surge of iciness washed over my body from head to toe, and I became numb as I was drawn into the room behind the oak door.

As soon as we were through, the bubbling subsided, and the numbness in my chest amplified. The office was huge, the size of an entire living room. The moonlight was slipping through the blinds, making it easier to spot the lamp sitting at the corner of the mahogany desk in the center of the room. Instantly, I bolted to its side and flicked it on.

A tangerine glow exploded from the lamp and lit up the office like the sun of a little world. Behind me there stood a tall, wide, black, L-shaped bookshelf, bustling with books as thick as encyclopaedias. Across the room there stood another bookshelf, identical to the one behind me.

"Are there any other rooms I can look in; his bedroom, maybe?" Nicholas was behind me, eyeing the bookshelf. His back was turned to me, and the tone of his voice was unreadable. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"There's a small study upstairs on the east wing, but he hardly goes there." My eyes flitted around the desk. There were six drawers in total. I wouldn't be searching for long.

"I'll search there," Nicholas informed me, and before I could protest he had already disappeared through the door.

With a sigh, I began pulling drawers and scanning documents. I came across house magazines, addresses, bills, bank statements, and files of all the families President Charleston's wife had sold houses to. I found nothing incriminating.

But I didn't give up. I ran my hands underneath his desk, I checked for little objects underneath his lamp, on the windowsill, on top of his massive books and above the bookshelves. After that thorough search, I was convinced that maybe I was just wasting my time, and that this was a stupid idea.