Chapter 5: Stair B

The scraping stopped.

"That's the bench," I whispered. "The big bench by the ice machine."

"In front of your door," Six said.

Somebody had watched us at that ice machine.

I'd forgotten that the people in this house could look up too.

Five's fingers dug into my arm.

"Honey, I can't see the stairs."

"Nineteen steps," I said. "Rail on the right."

We found the staircase by walking into it.

Around us the house was full of breathing and bumping and swearing.

Eighteen was crying somewhere to my left.

"Everybody say your number when you hit somebody," Three called out. "Three! Sorry, that was me."

"Twenty-Nine," the whale snapped. "Get off my robe."

I put Five's hand on the rail and my hand over hers, and Six came up behind her with his arms out.

We climbed one step at a time in the pitch dark.

At nineteen, the floor went flat.

I felt my way along the wall of the balcony hall, past one door and then another.

The ice machine hummed in the dark ahead.

My shins hit the bench.

It was solid oak and nearly as long as I was, shoved flat against the housekeeping door.

"Six."

He moved me aside by the shoulders, gently, and I heard him crouch.

The bench groaned up off the carpet and thumped down somewhere to the right.

I put both hands on the steel plate and pushed.

The door swung open without a sound.

Green light spilled out over our feet.

The film crew had pulled every exit sign out of the villas to keep them pretty, but nobody films a service hall.