The rusted door breathed out dust, rainwater and one tiny sob that sounded horribly like Holly’s mum.
Holly lunged towards it, but Mr Tafadar caught her blazer sleeve. “No hero-diving into unknown railway cupboards before breakfast,” he said, trying for teacher voice and landing somewhere near terrified supply teacher.
Behind them, Tickford Station was still shouting secrets through every speaker. Jayden and the loud boys had stopped being funny for once. Even Bea looked less sharp, like someone had turned her volume down.
Orla stared at Holly. “I don’t remember you properly,” she said, “but I know I’d follow you into a cursed cupboard, which is honestly worrying for my personal brand.”
Holly almost laughed. Almost.
Mara Vale, who usually sat with the nerds and corrected Mr Tafadar’s compass drawings, knelt beside a cracked portable radio. Its plastic casing was split like a grin. “The frequency is still underneath the others,” she whispered. “Like a fraction hiding inside a fraction.”
“Mara,” said Tamsin, “please don’t make the haunted radio worse.”
“Too late,” Mara said, and tuned it.
The static thinned. A girl’s voice came through, shaking so hard it seemed to rattle the screws.
“Mara, it’s me. It’s tomorrow-you. Don’t trust Leo. Don’t give him the map. If he says he can stop the countdown, he’s lying. If he smiles, run.”
The station went silent.
Then Leo Marr walked in through the maintenance tunnel, hair wet with rain, school tie loose, looking like he had missed the memo that everyone else was busy experiencing supernatural trauma. He was one of the popular boys: loud, annoying, unfairly charming, and always able to make detention sound like a VIP area.
“Awkward timing?” Leo said.
No one laughed.
In his left hand he carried a folded street map of Tickford. His right sleeve was rolled to the elbow. Beneath his skin, black lines pulsed in the exact pattern now glowing across the radio dial: loops, angles, signal towers, one route ending at Tickford Academy.
Holly lifted the Bone Key. “Leo. Why have you got the creepy maths tattoo?”
“It’s not a tattoo,” he said. His smile flickered. “It arrived when the radios opened. And this map keeps changing.”
“Show us,” said Orla.
Holly turned to her, sharp with fear. Don’t trust the girl who remembers first.
Orla noticed. Hurt crossed her face before she hid it with a shrug. “What? I’m nosy, not evil.”
Leo spread the map across a bench. The ink crawled by itself, drawing Tickford Academy’s corridors, then the maths block, then Room 12, where 9C had caused emotional damage to graph paper for years.
Thirteen.
The word boomed from Mr Tafadar’s whistle.
Every radio in the city joined in.
“Thirteen minutes until correction.”
“Absolutely not,” Mr Tafadar said. “Registration is in thirteen minutes. I refuse to be corrected before I’ve had tea.”
⁂
They ran.
Through wet streets, past buses blaring “twelve”, past a bakery radio chanting “eleven”, past the two mean girls from 9B filming themselves until their phone screamed “ten” and they dropped it into a puddle.
By the time they burst into Room 12, the class was already there: popular boys wide-eyed, nerds armed with calculators, super nice girls holding hands, Bea pretending not to protect Tamsin with her whole body.
The board had written its own question.
Solve for the betrayer.
Mara’s cracked radio hissed. “Nine.”
Leo stepped beside Holly. “The map says the key goes under your desk.”
“Convenient,” Bea snapped. “The suspicious boy suggests the suspicious furniture.”
Orla moved slowly to Holly’s desk and touched the underside. Her face changed.
“Holly,” she whispered, “I remember.”
The room held its breath.
Orla pulled free a second Bone Key, black as burnt chalk.
The radios counted, “Eight.”
And Leo’s hidden lines flared straight towards Orla’s hand.
