Free All My Secrets by Sophie McKenzie

confused. What is he thinking? Is he still mad at me?
    ‘I just wanted to help find Samuel and then, when I was in the wood, I thought I saw him coming this way,’ I gabble, eager to explain why I ventured onto the rock. ‘The same
thing happened earlier on the way here. That is, I think I saw something . . . someone . . . in the trees. Miss Bunnock said it was a trick of the light, but it kind of freaked me out.’
    ‘It
was
probably the light,’ Kit says. ‘Look.’
    I follow his gaze out to sea where the water is calm and the sun, almost at the horizon, is a pure disc of gold. Its light shimmers across the water like a gleaming sheet of yellow silk.
    ‘Oh wow, it’s beautiful,’ I say, transfixed.
    As the sun slowly sets, the tips of the rocks rising up from the sea gleam like needles of bright light. Kit and I stand, side by side, as the sky shifts around us: pearly pinks and soft oranges
weaving in and out of the burnished gold.
    ‘It’s amazing,’ I breathe.
    ‘You can see why the place is called Lightsea.’ Kit turns to me, his eyes glowing. ‘Evie . . .?’
    I wait for him to carry on, but his jaw clenches and he frowns.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘We should go back to the house before it gets dark.’
    I’m certain that isn’t what he’d been going to say, but I don’t know how to explain that so I just nod, then follow Kit off the rock.
    We walk through the trees and back to the house in silence. I have no idea where Josh and Pepper have got to or if Samuel has been found. To be honest, I don’t give either thought much
consideration. The way Kit looked at me as he moved closer keeps whirling around my head. It was as if he’d been about to kiss me then thought better of it.
    Nobody is outside the house as we let ourselves in and hurry to the library. Anna is curled up on one of the sofas. She’s alone, a large leather-bound book in her lap. Her eyes light up as
she sees Kit.
    ‘Hi there,’ she says.
    ‘Hi, Anna,’ Kit says. ‘Where is everyone?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Anna blushes, a shy smile on her lips. ‘I think Mrs Moncrieff must still be upstairs. I haven’t seen anyone else since I came out of the kitchen.
Where’ve you been?’
    ‘Just looking around,’ Kit says vaguely. He wanders over to the bookshelves. Anna watches him for a moment, then turns to me. She holds up her book. The title is embossed across the
front:
The Haunting of Lightsea
.
    ‘I’ve been reading about the house being haunted,’ she says. ‘Apparently, the legends about ghosts began when it was an insane asylum, but this book reckons most of the
people here weren’t even mentally ill, just different, the sort of people who, with a bit of care and the right meds, would be totally fine today.’
    Kit turns around from the bookshelf he’s examining. ‘That happened a lot in the old days.’
    ‘Does it say anything about the hauntings?’ I ask.
    ‘Yeah, it does actually.’ Anna tucks her hair behind her ears. She holds out the book to me. ‘It was written just after the original Mr Lomax took over the island and set up
the Lightsea Institute instead of the old insane asylum that had been here since Victorian times. The old stories said that it’s the island that draws the ghosts, like some portal between
this life and the next – but the scientists who examined the claims said it was all just a trick of the light. There’s a photocopy of a slightly more recent newspaper cutting in the
back though, about something from fourteen or fifteen years ago, before the Mr Lomax who’s here now took over. Take a look.’
    I sit down by the empty fireplace and open the book. It’s heavy and smells of damp. The photocopy of the newspaper article is tucked inside the front cover. I glance at it idly, then
gasp.
    The article features a blurry photograph of a woman in a red wool hat and a long dark coat. The collar of the coat is turned up and the hat pulled down so low that it’s impossible to see
her