The Ghost in the Glass House by Carey Wallace

the sharp edge she landed on opened a long, shallow cut from the ball of her foot to the arch. She jerked back from the sting of salt, and turned the sole up to find a thin line of bright red. Where the blood met water on her skin, it blossomed and faded to rose.
    â€œI cut my foot,” Clare called back.
    â€œSo did I,” Denby retorted. “It’s salt water. They use it to clean wounds.”
    â€œYou learn that in the war?” Teddy asked.
    The sting of the wound pushed Clare on toward the ledge. But it also made her clumsy. A few rocks before she reached the cave, her foot turned. She tried to right herself with another step, but only reeled. The sea and the sharp rocks swung sickeningly around her, and her mind filled with fear of the phantom pain of a fall on her shin, her knees, her side.
    A steady arm caught her around the waist. “You all right?” Bram asked.
    Clare listed against him, then straightened, surprised by the heat that seeped from his arm through her thin dress.
    She nodded.
    â€œHere,” Bram said, and pointed to the wide, flat plane of a nearby rock.
    Clare stepped where he pointed. He stepped along with her and found his footing on a narrower spot, his arm still around her waist.
    â€œHere,” he said again, and pointed to another rock. When they reached that one: “There.”
    A few steps later, they’d gained the ledge.
    â€œThat’s one way to get a girl to hold your hand,” Teddy observed.
    Instantly, Bram released her. Bridget gave Clare a hard look. Up ahead, Denby’s voice rang out. “Come on,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
    â€œThank you,” Clare told Bram.
    Bridget and Teddy disappeared after Denby, but Bram waited as Clare dropped her shoes on the stone. She made an attempt to wipe the blood from her sole, but it only smeared. After a minute, she gave up and slipped the shoes on.
    â€œGo ahead,” Bram said, nodding into the dark.
    Clare’s foot was ginger from the cut, but she stiffened her back against the pain. Around them, the sun flashed and twisted on the curved walls.
    This time, she didn’t falter when the passage narrowed and grew dim. But when the blind turns let them out into the hidden cavern, she stopped short.
    An entire suite of furniture had appeared on the waxy white rock in the center of the room: a baby-blue couch with flourishes of cherry wood, a leather armchair with tufts of horsehair spilling from a cut in one flank, a red loveseat with a high arched back, a green velvet ottoman with long gold fringe that fell all the way from the seat to the stone two feet below. There was even a low table in the center, bearing an assortment of mismatched oil lamps whose unsteady light turned strange among the fingers of rock in the high corners of the cave.
    Bridget had already taken up a corner of the red loveseat, pulled her feet up, leaned back into the curve, and arranged her skirt in a half-moon sweep. She glanced away pointedly when Clare appeared.
    Teddy, beside the loveseat, shook his head and laughed. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
    â€œWhat do you think?” Bram asked, beside Clare.
    The eagerness in his eyes made it hard for Clare to hold his gaze.
    â€œHow did you get this all down here?” she asked.
    â€œYou threw it all down the hill?” Teddy said.
    â€œWhere did it come from?” Bridget broke in.
    â€œOur places,” Denby said, with an unconvincing attempt at nonchalance.
    â€œNo one noticed?” Clare asked as she and Bram came up.
    â€œWe carried it down,” Bram explained. “Except for the blue couch. Denby made a pulley for that.”
    â€œA pulley?” Bridget repeated.
    Denby nodded. “A simple one. I lashed it with rope and we let it out around one of the boulders.”
    â€œI carried the red one down by myself,” Bram told Clare.
    â€œIt’s so
comfortable
,” Bridget said, and gave a