To escape the dangers of wartime London, Millie has been sent away to Wickford Hall, but what lurks there is far more sinister than anything war might bring.
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THERE'S SOMETHING WICKED STALKING WICKFORD HALL...
As war rages on, Mildred Cunningham...
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The storage room was even more full than it appeared through the window. Against the back wall ran a long row of metal filing cabinets. In every other corner and crevice, stacks of cardboard file boxes, dust-covered and water-stained, towered over them. The room had to have years—maybe decades—of files.
As Millie stepped inside, her eyes widened as she scanned it all.
"Where... Where do we even start?" Millie asked, turning to him.
"Just pick a spot, any spot," Matthew said with a shrug. He closed the door behind her and headed straight for the cabinets. "Got to start somewhere."
Millie followed after him. They each claimed a cabinet, pulled open a drawer, and dug in. Millie flicked through the long line of folders while Matthew pulled a file and flipped through its pages, scowling in confusion as he looked over its contents.
"What am I looking for, exactly?"
"Anything about Petra Downey," Millie explained, pulling a file of her own, "or Miss Brodie, or deaths, or accidents, or... Anything suspicious, I guess."
"Anything suspicious, huh?" Matthew said, slotting away the folder. "Good luck with that. Somehow I doubt they're labelling things 'Death Cover Up' or 'Murder Most Foul.'" He chuckled.
Millie ignored him. For some reason, Matthew seemed more upbeat than usual—almost jovial. She dismissed it as nerves. Some people acted strange under the influence of adrenaline. She did her best to refocus on the drawer's contents, hoping that either of them was able to find something, anything they could take to the authorities to bolster her story. So far, it didn't seem likely. The open drawer in front of her was full of long lists of names. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be graduation rosters... For the school and the monastery.
"Why are the Order's records mixed with the school files?" Millie wondered, tilting her head to inspect a class photo from a few years prior. Girls pictured in black and white, standing in rows in front of Wickford. They looked to be nuns-in-training, still dressed in their grey pinafores and white mantles.
"Does it matter?" Matthew muttered, sounding disinterested. He was busy reading through another file, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. He then sighed and tossed the file back in the drawer before slamming it shut with a clang and a curse.
"I suppose not," Millie muttered and gave up on the graduation lists. Matthew had already moved on to a new cabinet. Millie did the same, shifting over one and pulling open a new drawer. A sigh escaped her as she took a look at its contents. It was just pages and pages of numbers. Financial information, it looked like. Even more useless than the last—
"Found something."
Millie whipped her head around.
Matthew held a file aloft. His previous playfulness had fallen away, and his expression turned grim.
