Tobin had counted the little glowing shells twice already.
They were lined up from the waterline along the pier, each one no bigger than a pebble and shining soft green-blue in the foggy evening light. At first, Tobin thought someone had dropped them by mistake. But the shells did not wander. They made a careful trail, one after another, all the way to the very end of the pier.
Mira, with her blue raincoat and sea-salt curls, skipped two steps ahead. “They’re pointing,” she whispered, bending low. “Look. Every shell faces the same way.”
Tobin leaned over the rail. At the end of the line, the last shell pointed straight at a narrow stairway tucked into the pier’s end. It was the old hidden stairway that no one in Lantern Quay had opened in years. A locked wooden door blocked it, gray with salt and stuck tight in its frame.
Nell stood beside them, hugging her yellow apron. “No one uses that stairway,” she said softly. “It’s been shut since before I helped in the tea room.”
Tobin liked things to make sense. A tidy path should lead to a tidy answer. But this path led to a locked door that looked as if it wanted to keep its secret.
He looked at the glowing shells, then at the door, then at Mira’s eager face. Should he treat the shell trail like something to sort out and stop, or follow it closer and see what waited behind that old lock?
What happens next?
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