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I swallowed the lump in my throat. “We wouldn’t have come if we didn’t have a choice. Please, we mean you no harm.”
“I’m a ghost,” the man sneered. “I cannot be harmed. My fear is for you.”
“You’re… trying to protect us?” Lucas asked.
“Of course!” the ghost yelled. “I haunt this stairwell, scaring students away so that no one will meet the same fate as me.”
Talia stepped forward. “You’re Cooper Gates, aren’t you? I’ve heard of you. You died down here twenty years ago.”
Cooper glanced between us all, looking uncertain. “It seems much longer to me.”
“I’m Talia, and these are my friends Lucas, Nadine, Grant, and Miles. You don’t have to scare us anymore. The stairwell vanished, and we’re trapped. We have nowhere to go. Frightening us accomplishes nothing at this point. We may have a way out, but we need you to stop terrifying us.”
Cooper paused for a few beats, but he must’ve agreed with Talia, because the hollowness in his features seemed to fill in, and his skin grew more vibrant. Though he was still transparent, he appeared more human. The fear coursing through my veins settled.
“I’m sorry I had to frighten you.” Cooper’s voice became even, sounding like it would’ve when he was alive. “It’s the only thing that keeps people away. I wish someone had scared me away when I entered.”
“What happened to you?” Talia asked curiously.
Cooper dropped his gaze. “The stairwell was supposed to be a shortcut to class, you know? But I was a freshman and naive. The entrance closed while I was inside. I was trapped, and I starved to death. A month passed before the entrance appeared again, and by then… no one dared to come looking for me, fearing the same would happen to them. Now, I do my best to keep people away. My empathic powers aren’t what they were when I was alive, but it’s usually enough. You five were not so lucky.”
“We’ll get out of here,” Talia assured him. “There’s a special wand somewhere in the stairwell we can use.”
Cooper furrowed his brow. “I’ve never seen a wand down here.”
“Are you certain?” I asked. “A witness told us my grandfather hid it down here.”
“Then perhaps it was before my time,” Cooper said. “You’re welcome to look around.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard,” Lucas said. “The stairwell isn't very big.”
Cooper gave a harrowed, bitter laugh, though I didn’t understand why.
“Let’s start at the lower level,” I suggested. I started down the stairs, and my friends followed. I kept my eyes on the stone bricks along the wall, watching for one that might be out of place and could fit a wand behind it. Grant stomped on the stairs, checking to see if any of them might be hollow underneath. Lucas inspected the railing, looking for anything that might jiggle out of place.
We were all so preoccupied in searching for the Wand on the staircase that we didn’t notice the shift in the air until we reached the bottom of the stairs. A warm breeze passed by my skin, and I gasped when I lifted my gaze. Lucas stiffened beside me, and I realized why Cooper had been laughing.
“These stairs seem pretty solid—” Grant started, but Talia cut him off by grabbing his sleeve. Grant looked up and cried, “Hallelujah! A way out!”
My guts twisted. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
Ahead of us stood an arched doorway, similar to the one we’d entered. But instead of the school hallway that should’ve been there, a dark forest stretched in front of us.
“This isn’t right.” I took a cautious step toward the door. “There should be snow on the ground.”
I peered into the forest. The air brushing across my skin was warm like on a summer night. It felt nothing like February.
“The moon cycle’s wrong, too,” Lucas observed. A full moon loomed over the trees, but it should’ve been a new moon.
“What is this?” I wondered. “A fae illusion?”
“It’s real,” Cooper said, appearing before me. I jumped, but my heart quickly settled. “I’m sure you’ve heard the story of how the Vanishing Stairwell came to be.”
Lucas nodded. “Some students tried creating a space-bending spell in their room, but it spread to the stairwell and clashed with the school’s space-bending spell.”
“The stairwell wasn’t the only part of campus it affected, though,” Cooper explained. “The students collapsed space. A piece of the forest just outside these walls was more or less… sucked into the stairwell.”
Grant stepped into the forest, gazing around in wonder. “It’s a pocket universe! Like our stash, but bigger!”
