Ashley Mullins found the third note taped under the keg, and she still could not read it. Not the words. The words were plain enough. But the note talked about a sister who left the house in the spring of some year Ashley had never heard, and a punishment nobody ever named. Ashley wanted one thing: to drag whoever wrote these notes into her next party and tear the mask off in front of every rival sister on campus. She could not do that until she knew which secret they wanted dug up. And she didn't know. That was the problem. She was the party girl. She had never cared about the house's old history, and now the history was the only thing that mattered. She found Ms. Barbara Rhodes in the front parlor, straightening a frame that was already straight. Rhodes ran the house and sat on the Greek life board. She was the one person who knew every year this place had ever had. "Someone's leaving notes," Ashley said. She held it out. "This one's about a sister. Spring, some year. A punishment. What punishment?" Rhodes read it in two seconds. She set it face-down on the mantel. "Girls leave," she said. "Happens every year. This is nothing." "It's the third one." "Then it's the third nothing." She smiled with no warmth. "Don't go digging up ghosts, Ashley. Keep the music down and keep it off the board's desk. That's all I need from you." Ashley watched her walk off. Rhodes knew. She had read it and known exactly what it meant, and she had buried it face-down on the mantel. Ashley stood there, stuck. Then a voice behind her, quick and choppy. "She's lying. I mean—I think she's lying. I don't know." It was Hannah Trell. Hannah lived on the hall upstairs. Her sisters called her the sleepwalker, the one who imagined things. She stood in a wrinkled sweatshirt, hugging her cracked camera to her chest like it might run off. "How would you know?" Ashley said. Hannah's hands shook. "Because I saw something. Months ago. The back door. Everyone said I was sleeping." She turned the camera over. "I wasn't sleeping. I took pictures." She pressed a button. On the little cracked screen was a photo. A back hallway. Two figures. Something heavy between them being dragged across the floor. Ashley leaned in. "Who is that?" "I can't tell. The faces are dark." Hannah's voice dropped. "But look at the wall behind them." Ashley looked. On the wall hung a plaque of names. Old sisters. One name was circled in marker. It was the same name from every note. Ashley's stomach went cold. The notes weren't about an old scandal. They were about something that happened here, recently, and Hannah had a picture of it. Suddenly the person leaving notes wasn't her only problem. Now there was a photo, and whoever was in it would want it gone.

The circled name in Hannah's photo was a smear. Ashley had stared at it for an hour. The plaque sat too far back, the print too small. She had one lead left. A clean copy of that same plaque lived in the library archive. But the archive stayed locked, and only staff carried keys. Ashley needed the name read clearly, and she had no way in. She found Hannah on the quad, hunched on the fountain's lip, turning her cracked camera over in both hands. "I tried zooming in," Hannah said. "It just blurs. I mean, maybe a better screen—no. It's gone. The name's gone." "There's a clean one," Ashley said. "In the archive. Same plaque. We just can't get to it." "Then we're stuck." Hannah pressed the camera to her chest. Erika sat down on Ashley's other side without asking. She was the one sister who always looked ironed, even now, scrolling her phone with a tight jaw. Ashley braced for a lecture. Erika didn't give one. "That van again," Erika said. She held the screen out. Her notes app showed a column of dates, times, block locations. "Same plates. Parked behind the library wing. Three mornings this week." She kept her voice flat. "I've logged every sighting. Nobody believes me." "A van," Ashley said. "Behind the library." "Rusty. Abandoned-looking. But someone uses it." Erika met her eyes. "The library's archive is in that wing. The same files everyone keeps circling." Ashley stood. "Show me." They crossed to the library's brick back lot. The van sat where Erika said, tires flat, one window cracked. Ashley tried the door. It swung open. Inside, the air smelled of mildew and old paper. Hannah pointed under the front seat. A shoe box. Ashley dragged it out and lifted the lid. Notebooks. Four of them, each labeled with a stranger's name. Chemistry notes. Research. All stolen, all hidden here. But no plaque. No archive file. Ashley's stomach dropped. She had come for a name and found someone else's crime. Then Erika lifted a folded sheet wedged against the box. A printout. The archive's own record, carried out of the locked room by whoever cached this van. The plaque photo filled the top, sharp and clean. Below it, the name. Ashley read it. Her breath caught. It was the name from every anonymous note. The name circled in Hannah's blurry photo. Now she could say it out loud and no one could call it a guess. "That's him," Hannah whispered. "That's who was in the hall." Erika stared at the notebooks, then the printout. "Whoever took these," she said slowly, "had keys to the archive. Free run of the locked wing." Her hand tightened on her phone. "And he knows this van is his secret." Ashley folded the printout and slid it into her jeans. She had the name. But she had also walked into the tormentor's hiding place. If he came back, he would know someone had opened the box.