It all seemed really weird to me, and I didn’t know why anyone would want a tree in their house, but then Mrs. Freely said, “When Felix Wrexhall moved to Tennessee from Georgia, he had this tree shipped from his family’s estate. He had lost everything back in Georgia except for his wife, Lucy. He brought her with him, and he wanted something to remind him of his old home.” She gave the tree another pat. “It’s definitely one of the most unique parts of a very special house, Michael.”
So that was the dark-haired kid’s name, Michael. I wondered if we might get name tags at some point. That might be helpful.
“What kind of tree is it?” Michael asked, and almost as one, the entire group turned to stare at him.
“It’s a live oak tree, honey,” Mrs. Freely said at last, and Michael rolled his skinny shoulders beneath his hot-pink T-shirt.
From the other side of the group, I heard Ruby make a choking sound that might have been a laugh.
Stepping away from the tree, Mrs. Freely signaled for the rest of us to follow her toward the back of the house.
“Mr. Matthew kept this place in great condition,” she went on as we trudged down a hallway behind her. “And everything in it reflects the varied interests of both Mr. Matthew and his father, Felix.”
She paused in front of a closed door with an old-fashioned crystal knob. At the top of the door, there was a little window made of stained glass, and light shone through it, making pretty rainbows on the hardwood. “For example, this room contains Mr. Matthew’s mother’s doll collection.”
“Of course there are creepy dolls,” Ruby said from the back of the group, and everyone giggled except me.
Mrs. Freely smiled, but it definitely looked forced. “These dolls are not creepy in the slightest, I promise you,” she said, then opened the door, revealing . . .
The creepiest dolls I had ever seen.
The room was small, but it had one huge bay window facing the back of the house, and because the ground sloped down so dramatically at that spot, it gave me a weird feeling like we were hovering over thin air. But I couldn’t really focus on that when I was surrounded by white porcelain faces on every side.
There were dolls in a glass-fronted cabinet, dolls perched on a burgundy velvet sofa, and, worst of all, one doll that was about the size of an actual kindergartner propped up in the corner, her arms outstretched, her painted red lips stretched in a wide smile.
I instinctively backed up, and bumped into Ruby.
“Sorry,” I murmured, going to move away, but she was staring at the dolls, shaking her head.
“We’re all gonna die in this house,” she said, and Susanna inched closer to both of us.
“I’m not dusting anything in here,” she whispered. “Not one single doll.”
Mrs. Freely was still talking about how Felix Wrexhall’s wife, Lucy, had collected the dolls from all over the world, and then the redheaded guy moved forward, touching the tall doll’s hand.
“Dalton!” Mrs. Freely snapped, and he jumped back, frowning at her.
“What? If we’re gonna have to dust them and, like, write them down in notebooks, we’ll have to touch them, right?” He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Might as well get used to it now.”
“I bet you’re pretty used to touching dolls,” Garrett said from the back of the room, and next to me, Ruby snorted.
Dalton glared back at Garrett, as did Michael, but Garrett just smiled back, tossing his hair out of his eyes with a flick of his head.
I noticed Ruby watching him and could’ve sworn her cheeks were sort of pink.
That was good. Maybe then Ruby would be distracted and not try to talk to me too much. I could still remember the look on her face when I’d caught her and Emma trying to sneak out. The way she’d rolled her eyes when I’d pointed out that climbing out the window and running through the neighborhood after midnight was bound to be a bad idea. A dangerous idea.
She turned her head back toward me, black hair swinging against her jaw, and I looked back at Mrs. Freely before she caught me staring. This summer would go a lot better if Ruby and I could pretend we didn’t know each other.
“All right, moving on!” Mrs. Freely trilled, ushering us back out into the hall.
We moved to another door, and Mrs. Freely opened it quickly, telling us it was just the hall bathroom. I caught a glimpse of pale green tile and an old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub, plus what looked to be a lot of plants, and then the door closed again and we were moving on.
The kitchen was next. It was a huge room, way bigger than any kitchen I’d ever seen, and it had clearly already been cleaned. It still looked a little dingy in the bright yellow light coming in the windows—there was a big water stain on the ceiling, and the floorboards were discolored. But when I looked closer, I realized that was because there used to be a lot more stuff in this kitchen. A big island in the middle of the room, probably, a stove, maybe some kind of old-timey icebox. All that was gone now with only the big zinc sink left, but all in all, it didn’t seem so bad.
Past that was a swinging door to another hallway, this one lined with narrow tables that seemed like they were seconds from collapsing, there was so much stuff on them. Then Mrs. Freely moved us back to the front of the house, where she showed us two parlors on either side of the main foyer. One was crammed full of more furniture—sofas, several chairs, a giant wardrobe—but the other had no furniture at all, just a ton of pictures on the wall.
Mrs. Freely stopped there, gesturing around like she was on a game show, telling us what fabulous prizes we could win.
“The Wrexhalls collected a lot of art over the years, but these are the pieces that were most special to Felix and Mr. Matthew.” She pointed up at a painting looming on the far wall. In it, a man with hair so blond it was nearly white stood on the front steps of Live Oak House. He was wearing a pale cream suit, one hand in his pocket, the other resting on top of a silver-headed cane. There was a spotted dog sitting at his feet, and it would’ve been a pretty portrait if the man in it hadn’t been glaring out at us like even though he was dead, he knew we were in his house.
“This is Felix Wrexhall,” Mrs. Freely said, and then she pointed across the room to another portrait. The man in it was blond, too, but he was standing inside Live Oak House, leaning against the massive tree trunk. He wasn’t smiling, either, and his eyes seemed sad somehow, but at least he didn’t seem to be angry.
“And that’s Mr. Matthew,” Mrs. Freely went on, “who was one hundred and three years old when he passed this year.”
I looked around at all the pictures on the walls. A lot of them were old black-and-white photographs, some of Live Oak House being built. There was also one of a younger Felix Wrexhall with a pretty, dark-haired lady who was wearing an enormous white hat, a baby swaddled in her arms. Then shots of Live Oak House over the years, plus a few paintings of the house and grounds, nothing that really caught my eye.
Mrs. Freely was still talking about all the art in here, how the most valuable pieces had already been taken out, but these were important for sentimental reasons. I reached down to scratch an itch behind my knee.
As I did, I noticed another framed photograph, this one lower down on the wall, right underneath the chair railing.
It was old, too, clearly from the late 1800s, and showed a family dressed all in white. A man, a woman, an older girl, maybe around fifteen or so, and two little girls, both with the same dark hair as their parents, giant bows holding it back from their faces.
Their identical faces.
CHAPTER 6
RUBY
I was just thinking that this little art history lesson might actually be worse than the room of Demon Dolls and wondering when we might have lunch when Olivia suddenly blurted out, “Who are they?”
She was standing near the edge of the group—no surprise there—pointing at a small
photograph near the window.
Rising up on my tiptoes, I looked over at it, and then immediately saw why that picture had caught her eye. “Ooh, creepy twins!” I said. “That’s what this house needs.”
Mrs. Freely shot me a look, then moved over to where Olivia was standing, bending her knees to look at the picture Olivia was pointing to. “Huh,” she said, leaning in closer. “No idea. It’s possible this was a photograph the family picked up somewhere along the way. Or they could be from Felix’s wife’s family.” She straightened up and nodded toward Felix’s portrait, then Matthew’s. “Probably not Wrexhalls, though. As you can see, that very blond hair was a family trait.”
Olivia nodded back, tugging at the end of her braid, her face red. Why was talking to other people so hard for her? You opened your mouth and words came out. Sometimes they were the wrong ones, but so what?
Mrs. Freely shooed us out of that room and up the stairs. They were wide enough that we could practically all fit side by side, but we still formed a line, and I looked down at the gold and blue paisley carpet lining the steps as Mrs. Freely said, “On the second floor, we’ll find the ballroom, two other parlors, three bedrooms, and one more bathroom.”
“All of them filled with cursed objects,” I added, and Garrett, who was right beside me, laughed. I looked at him from the corner of my eye, feeling pleased with myself. I liked making people laugh, even if it did earn me another look from Mrs. Freely.
Then I glanced back at Garrett and he winked at me.
That was . . . a thing that happened.
I turned away quickly, feeling my face go hot. We looked into the ballroom, but there wasn’t much to see. It was huge and . . . grand, I guess? Mirrors, a dark wooden floor, some chairs shoved against walls. The parlors seemed a lot like the ones downstairs, too, plenty of furniture and knickknacks, and I wondered how we were supposed to catalog all this stuff. Which reminded me of something.
Mrs. Freely had stopped in front of one of the bedrooms, and I raised my hand.
“Mrs. Freely? You know how we’ll be listing all the stuff in the rooms?”
She folded her hands in front of her. “Yes, Ruby.”
“Okay, but. Like. Every item?” I asked. “Let’s say there’s a fake plant in one room, and I notice one of the plastic leaves has fallen off. Do I write, ‘creepy blue room, one fake plant, one fake plant leaf’?”
“No, Ruby. Just note the whole items in the room. A team of people will be coming at the end of the summer to do a more official itemization, so—”
“So why are we doing this?”
That was from Dalton, the redheaded guy.
Again, Mrs. Freely smiled that smile that was more like baring her teeth. “Because having a sense of what objects are in what rooms will make it easier for the experts to do their jobs.” Her grin broadened and actually started looking a little more genuine. “Think about that! It’s almost like you’re all part of their team, too!”
“I did not sign up for that,” I said, and the smile fell from Mrs. Freely’s face.
“None of you signed up for this,” she reminded me. “You were assigned to it as a result of your own actions.”
That was fair, so I shrugged and looked over toward Olivia Willingham again. Seriously, what could she have done to get in here?
Mrs. Freely opened the door behind her then, waving us to follow her in. It was a pretty big bedroom, way bigger than mine at home, with windows looking out the front of the house. I could see the van we’d ridden in parked on the little road down the hill. It was even hotter up here than it had been downstairs, though, so I hoped we wouldn’t be hanging out in here much longer. I was starting to sweat in weird places.
The bedroom was painted a pale pink, with yellowed lace curtains in the windows and lots of heavy, dark furniture. There was a smaller door in one of the walls, and I wondered if that led to a closet or something. Maybe one of those fancy old dressing rooms some houses had. Still, it was so small, a grown person would have to duck to get inside, which didn’t seem to make much sense. Maybe it was a storage space or something. I edged closer to it until I was nearly leaning against that little door, wanting to be in the back of the group.
Mrs. Freely stood near the dresser, all of us reflected in the mirror behind her, but sort of dim and misshapen, the glass old and wavy. “This was Mrs. Wrexhall’s bedroom,” Mrs. Freely told us, “Felix’s wife, Mr. Matthew’s mother. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for a husband and wife to have separate bedrooms.”
We all sort of fidgeted at that, and I felt an urge to start giggling even though I wasn’t really sure why. But Olivia was pink again, and I didn’t think it was from the heat.
Clearing her throat, Mrs. Freely went on, “There really isn’t much in this room, but I think it’s one of the prettiest in the house, so I wanted to be sure you saw it. As you can see, it has a lovely view, and—”
The soft tinkling of a music box started up somewhere nearby, playing some sad-sounding tune, and I nearly stamped my foot.
“Oh, come on,” I said, and Mrs. Freely stopped talking, looking at me with raised eyebrows.
“Something wrong, Ruby?”
I stared back at her for a second, then waved one hand. “Creepy music boxes? Were the dolls not enough?”
But Mrs. Freely just frowned at me, and then I realized that the other kids in the group were all watching me with weird looks on their faces, too. Susanna was scowling, while Dalton and Michael looked confused. I couldn’t see Wesley’s face, but even Garrett was watching me with his head tipped slightly to one side.
And it’s not like the music was faint. I could hear it like someone was holding a music box right next to me.
“Seriously,” I said, looking around. “None of you hear that?”
Taking a deep breath, Mrs. Freely put her hands on her hips. “Ruby,” she said. “We have a lot of days to get through together in this house, so if you could keep the silliness to a minimum, I’d appreciate that.”
I gaped at her. “Okay, one, I never keep silliness to a minimum, but two, I’m not being silly right now! I hear a music box!”
Mrs. Freely just kept staring me down, and the other kids had clearly gotten bored with this whole thing. Dalton and Michael were edging toward the door, and Susanna was still shooting me a dirty look while Garrett was nudging the floorboard with his toe.
I looked over at Wesley, but once again, all I could see was hair.
The music box was still plinking away like something out of a bad horror movie as Mrs. Freely said, “Anyway, let’s move on.” Then I looked over at Olivia.
She wasn’t pink anymore. She was pale, and she was looking at the little door right behind me.
“You hear it, don’t you?” I asked her, and she jumped a little, her gaze shooting up to meet mine.
“I don’t hear anything,” she said, but as she hurried out of the room to follow the others, I knew she was lying.
CHAPTER 7
OLIVIA
I climbed into the van later that afternoon, a juice box in one hand. It was kiwi-strawberry, usually my favorite, but it tasted too sweet, making me feel kind of sick to my stomach, and I fiddled with the yellow plastic straw as I sat by the window, waiting to get out of there and go home.
But Wednesday we’d be back, and we’d be in those rooms alone, not in one big group. The thought made my stomach hurt even more than the sugary juice had.
Ruby Kaye got into the van, her black hair sticking to her cheeks, and she was as sweaty as I was. I really hoped the fans would be working when we came back on Wednesday.
On the way out there, Ruby had sat in the back of the van, but she plopped next to me, her eyes focused on my face.
Talking to Ruby was not high on my list of favorite things, but there was no ignoring that stare. “What?” I finally asked.
“You total
ly heard the music box,” she said, and I shifted in my seat, uneasy.
When we’d been in Mrs. Wrexhall’s old bedroom, I had definitely thought I’d heard . . . something. And yes, that something had sounded an awful lot like an old-fashioned music box, and okay, maybe it had seemed weird to me when Ruby pointed it out and no one else had seemed to hear it, but it’s not like that meant anything.
My bag was still shoved under the seat, and I reached for it, tugging out the extra juice box I’d grabbed at the rec center. “Want it?” I offered, trying to change the subject. Ruby nodded, taking the juice box and stabbing the straw into the top. She slurped the whole box until it started collapsing in on itself with an obnoxious noise.
Her juice box empty, Ruby lowered it with a sigh and then looked over at me. “Now can we talk about the music box?” she asked, and when she tossed the empty box on the seat next to her, I frowned, picking it up and putting it in the front pocket of my backpack.
“It’s no big deal,” I told her. “Maybe we were closer to where it was playing than anyone else was, so nobody else heard it.”
Ruby pulled a strand of her hair over her lips, thinking about that. “We were close to that little door,” she said. “Maybe there was a music box in whatever room that door leads to.”
“Probably,” I said, turning my face to the window.
“Just, you know, a music box, starting up in a room for no reason.”
I ignored her. This had been a long enough day without having to talk to Ruby, and I wasn’t sure what she was trying to say about the house, but I knew I didn’t want to listen.
She must have picked up on that, because she gave a long sigh. “So what did you do to get Camp Chrysalis duty, anyway?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied, resting my heels on the edge of the seat.