“I don’t like it,” Brian said abruptly. “Why should we lie to Ollie’s dad?”
“Do you want to explain it to him?” asked Mr. Voland coolly.
“We could try,” said Brian, stubborn. “Maybe he’d listen.”
“Or maybe—” began Mr. Voland, but just then, Ollie’s dad interrupted them.
He and Ms. Zintner were putting armloads of firewood by the fireplace. He called across the room, “Ollie-pop, can you three go upstairs and nab all your warm clothes and the blankets off your beds? We’re going to have to sleep near the fireplace tonight. It’s the only proper heat source, with the heaters not working.”
They all went tense. No one wanted to go back up the stairs. But Ollie’s dad had already bounced outside to pick up another armload of firewood without waiting for an answer.
“What do we do?” Ollie asked.
“There is a good deal we don’t know,” said Mr. Voland. “But certainly we must neither be foolhardy nor give in to panic. We do need coats and blankets.
Clean socks and phone chargers. Better we go upstairs now than after nightfall.”
The three of them nodded reluctant agreement. Ollie stared across the lobby, toward the staircase. It disappeared upward into thick blackness. Why is it so dark up there? Ollie wondered. Much too dark. It can’t be that close to sunset yet.
“Let’s go now,” Mr. Voland said. “The sooner the better. Don’t worry, I’ll come with you.” He gave the kids a sudden, warm smile. Ollie found herself feeling better. “I advise you to hold hands,” said Mr. Voland as they headed for the stairs. “And,” he added under his breath, almost too low for the kids to hear, “whatever you see, don’t let go.”
* * *
—
The rattling closet was quiet as they passed it. There were no strange shadows on the floor, and no dark figure at the end of the corridor. The four of them held hands, and they walked quickly.
And walked.
And walked.
The corridor never seemed to get any shorter.
It was Brian who whispered first, tugging on their hands, “Guys. Guys, shouldn’t we have gotten to the rooms by now?”
They all halted. “It’s true, we have been walking a long time,” said Mr. Voland doubtfully. “But—”
He looked around him. The light was a deep charcoal-gray. It was not perfectly dark, but not far from it either. The only illumination came from the fading, snow-filled daylight in the big windows at either end of the long hall.
Suddenly Coco asked, “Are anyone’s feet wet?”
“How could they be?” asked Brian reasonably. “None of us has been outside.”
“Then,” Coco said in a small voice, “who made the footprints?”
Ollie looked down the hall and saw what Coco had—that a line of wet footprints followed them.
“Are you three sure no one has tracked in snow?” asked Mr. Voland.
“No!” Brian snapped. His voice cracked with anxiety and impatience. “If we said we didn’t, we didn’t. None of us has been outside.”
Ollie’s eye kept tracking the line of wet footprints.
They stopped right next to her.
Ollie looked up. A big mirror hung across from them. In the dark hall, their reflections were only shadowy outlines.
There were five outlines.