Free The Initiation by Ridley Pearson Page B

this, Moria: What information is contained in this family Bible of yours?”
    â€œI . . . ah . . . have never heard of it before.” I hated to sound so stupid and, more than that, did not want to appear ignorant, especially of things having to do with my own family. “Dr. Curmudgeon said family records and stuff like that.”
    â€œClever nickname. Yes, typically, lineage,” Sherlock said. “Birth dates. Who begot whom. A family tree of sorts if not literally. Perhaps cause of death?” he inquired to himself. “Hmm. Intriguing. It has a role here at Baskerville since its very presence here must be of some significance.”
    â€œWhat is it?” I could perceive a veil of discouragement.
    â€œPlainly, not enough, Moria. Sorely lacking, we might say. Hmm? There’s something there.” Heshot his arm out in front of himself, fully extended, and rubbed his fingers together as if feeling grit in the air. Only a frost of mist remained, wafting like dissipating smoke. “Yet . . . nothing. As ephemeral as a ghost. There, but not there.” His dark eyes darted about. “More data points are needed. Perhaps the Bible and the clues are related, perhaps not. The timing would suggest the former, but one can be fooled by coincidence. You and I require two things, Moria. They are . . . ?”
    He’d put me on the spot. I wanted so badly to prove myself his equal. “For one, what it is that’s been left for James. This note he got.”
    â€œBrava!”
    I bit back a grin of satisfaction. “Let’s see . . .”
    â€œGet on with it! Haven’t got all day!”
    â€œShh! I’m thinking!” I felt hurried, disrupted, unsettled. I resented his interruption. “I’ve lost it,” I conceded. “You shouldn’t have hurried me, Lock. That wasn’t fair.”
    â€œWhosoever it is who must yet venture into the prescribed location in order to leave said clue for James to find.”
    It was so obvious, I felt the idiot and tried to talk my way out of my mistake. The person behind it in the first place. “Unless it was put there last night, or the night before,” I said.
    Sherlock slapped the desk. This time, I did go over backward, right onto my head.
    â€œOf course!” He jumped over the fallen chair and straddled me from above, feet on either side of me. He looked about nine feet tall from where I lay on the floor. “Moria,” he declared loudly, “you’re brilliant!”

CHAPTER 9
BONES AND RIBS

    T HANKFULLY, I RECEIVED A POSTCARD FROM Father that afternoon, putting to rest my concern over his silence and resetting the waiting period before my anxiety would begin to creep back in. The image on the front of the card was the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, but the postmark carried the zip code of Atlantic City, New Jersey, a contradiction I found curious if not intriguing. I congratulated myself on the fact that not everyone would have bothered to study the postmark; I am frightfully smart.
    Nearing the end of mandatory study hall inthe school library, I saw James react when he felt a hole burning in his back pocket. The red envelope wasn’t there! He stabbed his hand into the pocket for a second time to the same result, an overwhelming sense of panic and loss taking hold. He would never admit it to Sherlock Holmes, but he’d spent some of the study hall looking over the same brochure containing the campus map. He’d used the library—a first for him—to read up on the design of the school buildings, along with Baskerville’s vast art collection, trying to make sense of the reference to ribs in the note. For him, it all came back to the note:
    Aloft in the . . . center? no . . . middle of the seven ribs . . . he? no . . . you will find it, but only by night.
    He thought that was right. He would have exactly fifteen minutes between the end of evening study hall and the first