“Morton—” she began.
Morton didn’t turn around. “This is my room,” he said softly. “It’s just the same. She kept everything just the same.”
Olive wrapped her hand around Morton’s baggy sleeve. “We have to keep looking, Morton. I don’t know how much longer Rutherford can keep her busy.”
Morton gave an absent nod. “You go,” he whispered, staring at the little iron bed. A small blue horse made out of corduroy was lying on the pillows. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
With a worried sigh, Olive turned to the door. “Stay with him,” she whispered to Leopold before sidling back out into the upstairs hall.
Olive edged along the wall, starfish-style. She could hear Rutherford’s voice still rambling in the distance. When her fingers hit the cold brass of the next doorknob, Olive opened the door, backed smoothly through it, and shut it again behind her.
For a moment, she practically glowed with pride. She had never done anything so gracefully and quietly in her whole life. Even Horatio would have been impressed. Blood was pounding through her body, but Olive’s mind felt surprisingly calm and clear. She could do this. Still smiling to herself, she took a look around.
She had backed into a bathroom. Like the living room and hallway, it was spotless and shiny. The tiles around the bathtub gleamed, the faucets didn’t drip, the mirror didn’t have a single fleck of toothpaste on it. Even the dish full of seashell-shaped soaps was so clean it looked new, as though it had never been touched at all.
There were no spectacles to be seen. Olive checked the drawers and the medicine cabinet, just to make sure. But they were all completely empty. This seemed odd at first, until Olive realized that Mrs. Nivens, being a painting, wouldn’t need to use a bathroom or anything in it. All of this was only for her nonexistent guests, like most of the bedrooms in the Dunwoodys’ house. The difference was that Mrs. Nivens obviously cleaned for her nonexistent guests.
Olive peeked back out into the hall.
“Coelacanth actually means ‘hollow spine,’ in Greek. But the spine of the coelacanth isn’t really hollow, it’s a sort of cartilage tube full of fluid.” These were the words Olive could hear Rutherford saying, although to Mrs. Nivens, they probably sounded something like this: “Butthespynovthesealacanthisntreallyhollowitzasordovcardilidgetoobfullovfluid.” Rutherford’s voice buzzed on as Olive slipped toward the third door. “Another interesting thing about the coelacanth is that it gives birth to live young. Well, technically, they’re ovoviviparous . . .”
She had just placed her hand on the knob when, behind her, someone let out a gasp.
Morton stood in the hall, the blue horse clutched in his arms. He shook his head emphatically and then broke into a run, hurrying toward her. Leopold bounded silently along beside him.
“You can’t go in there!” Morton whispered once he’d reached the doorway. “That’s Lucy’s room!”
“We have to check everywhere,” Olive argued under her breath. “Besides, where would she be more likely to hide things than her own bedroom?”
“No! She’ll be really mad!” Morton argued back, trying to pry Olive’s hands off the doorknob.
Maybe it was the painted slipperiness of Morton’s hands, or maybe Olive was stronger, but somehow Morton lost his grip and staggered backward into the hall. Suddenly fighting a one-sided battle, Olive staggered backward too, pulling the door open with a much-too-abrupt yank. The heavy door made a low rattling noise against the frame.
Olive held her breath. Morton gave her a horrified look over the head of the blue horse. Leopold froze, doing his best small stuffed panther impression.
Rutherford’s clear, rapid voice was still ringing up the stairs. “. . . Of course, by that time ichthyosaurs were extinct, making mosasaurs the dominant ocean predator. Most people aren’t aware of this, but ichthyosaurs bore live young, like the coelacanth, except the ichthyosaur also breathed air . . .”
Perhaps Mrs. Nivens hadn’t even heard them over the sound of Rutherford’s rambling. No footsteps hurried up the stairs; no one shouted, “Who’s there?” They were safe.
With Olive leading the way, Leopold marching after her, and Morton trailing reluctantly behind, they edged into Lucinda’s bedroom.
It was the neatest room Olive had ever seen. A white lace bedspread covered the bed, looking as clean and fresh as one giant snowflake. Matching white lace curtains hung over the windows, all of their frilly edges evenly spaced. Olive wondered if Mrs. Nivens straightened them with a ruler. The walls were bare, apart from two framed arrangements of dried flowers that looked as though they had been petrified by shock. A row of books with matching pale pink covers lined the bookshelves, surrounded by a collection of delicate porcelain ballerinas and blown glass roses and other things that would have to be dusted with a Q-tip.
And yet, in spite of its neatness, there was something horrible about this room. It was girlish and cold and still, like a rosebud embedded in ice: If it thawed, it would instantly decay. Olive tiptoed across the floor and touched the lacy bedspread with one fingertip. No wonder the room was so neat, she thought. It was a museum. No one slept here, ate stashes of hidden cookies here, had bad dreams here, and woke up to read books by the light of the bedside lamp. No one lived here at all. This room—this whole neat, perfect house—was one gigantic coffin.
Ready to bolt back out into the hall, Olive turned back toward Morton and Leopold. But Morton wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on a full-length, white-framed mirror that stood against the left-hand wall.
“This wasn’t here before,” he whispered.
Olive hurried to one side of the mirror and Morton darted to the other. Very carefully, trying to keep its legs from scraping against the polished hardwood floor, they slid the mirror to one side. Behind it, leaning against the spotless white wall, was a painting—a painting in a heavy gold frame.
Olive knew this painting well. It had once hung in her upstairs hall. She had noticed it on her very first visit to the old stone house, and she had known, even then, that there was something strange about it. It was the first painting she had ever explored with the magic spectacles. It was where she had met Morton, and been rescued by the cats, and been chased by a . . . a thing made from the ashes of Aldous McMartin. It was a painting of a dark, eerie forest, where a moonlit path disappeared into the bony lace of bare trees. The last time Olive had seen this painting, she had been burying it in her backyard, and the trapped image of Annabelle McMartin had scowled furiously up at her from the canvas. There were still traces of dirt clinging to the painting, stuck in the whorls of the frame.
But where Annabelle’s angry face should have been, there was nothing—nothing but the moonlight falling on leaf-strewn stones. Leopold and Morton hurried closer, peering over her shoulders as Olive knelt down in front of the painting.
“Oh, no,” Olive breathed.
Nonsensically, she grabbed the sides of the heavy frame and shook it, as though Annabelle might fall back into view like an ant that’s been hiding at the edge of an ant farm. Nothing happened. There was no trace of Annabelle anywhere. And if she wasn’t in there, it meant that Annabelle McMartin was somewhere . . . out here.
“Olive Dunwoody,” said a woman’s voice.
24
OLIVE WHIRLED AROUND. Of course, it’s very hard to whirl when you’re on all fours, so she sort of flopped from her knees into crab-walking position, with her back pressed against the painting. Morton turned as well, tripped on the trailing hem of the trench coat, and fell into Olive’s lap. Leopold hopped in front of the two of them and bared his teeth, hissing.
Annabelle McMartin glided gracefully through the doorway.
The last time Olive had seen Annabelle, her pretty face had been twisted with rage and her long brown hair had blown wildly in a cold wind. The Annabelle now standing in front of her looked like a different person. She looked like the young woman from the portrait again; the woman who had sweetly invited Olive to tea
and listened to all her secrets; the woman who had paddled Olive into the middle of a raging lake and left her there to drown.
Each painted strand of Annabelle’s hair had been smoothed and fastened in place. Her string of pearls had been straightened, and her frilly antique dress was gone, replaced by a prim skirt and blouse set of Mrs. Nivens’s. But her eyes were the same pools of honeycolored paint, and her mouth, when she smiled, had the same deceptive sweetness.
Olive felt her body freeze. She could almost hear tiny ice cubes clinking in her veins. Morton and Leopold didn’t move either.
“You brought your friends,” Annabelle went on, turning her tiny smile to Morton and Leopold in turn. “How nice of you, to get them mixed up in all of this again. Hello, Leopold.” The cat stiffened. “Hello, Morton. I wondered when I would see you again.”
Keeping her arm carefully hidden behind Morton, Olive groped for the flashlight that was wedged in her pocket. But before she could even wrap her shaking hand around it, the flashlight flew out from between her fingers, rolling past Annabelle’s feet in their little high heels and out into the hallway.
“That isn’t going to work this time,” said Annabelle sweetly, lowering her hand. “I’m better prepared for your tricks. And, obviously, you haven’t come up with anything new.” She laughed, a light, gentle laugh. “In fact, you’ve done almost exactly what we wanted you to do. You used the book, estranged your friends, dug up the painting, brought us the spectacles. If you had jumped off of the roof last night, it would have been a bit easier, but . . . Oh, well.” Annabelle sighed lightly, as though a batch of cookies she’d been baking had gotten a little too brown. “We can handle it this way too, I suppose.” She took a step closer, her eyes traveling from Olive to Morton and Leopold. “Three birds with one stone, as they say.”
“It’s two birds,” blurted Morton.
Annabelle’s smile widened. “Well, aren’t you irritating,” she told Morton, her inflection the same as if she’d said Well, aren’t you precious. “I can see why your sister wanted to get rid of you.”
Morton hopped out of Olive’s lap. He squared his shoulders, squeezing the blue horse tightly in his arms. “She did not,” he said loudly. “You made her do bad things. Lucy loved us. You made her do it.” He stomped his foot, and the fedora on his round head tipped rakishly over one ear.
“Let’s ask her about that, shall we?” Annabelle, still smiling, made a little sign in the air with one hand. There was the sound of a door slamming, followed by footsteps clicking quickly up the stairs.
“Yes, Annabelle?” panted Mrs. Nivens, hurrying through the bedroom doorway. She halted suddenly, as if she’d hit an invisible wall. Her eyes flicked from Olive, still leaning against the painting, to the large black cat positioned protectively before her, to the small, tufty-haired, trench-coated boy clutching a blue corduroy horse.
“Morton,” she gasped. Her hands flew up to her chest, clutching handfuls of her neatly ironed blouse. Olive would have worried about Mrs. Nivens’s heart, but she reminded herself that Mrs. Nivens didn’t have one—not anymore.
“Lucy?” Morton whispered. He stepped closer to her, staring up. A small frown creased his broad white forehead. “You look so . . . different.”
Mrs. Nivens’s glassy eyes were wide. A smile trembled on her lips, jerking them sideways as she spoke. “And you look exactly the same, Morton.”
Watching her, Olive wondered if Mrs. Nivens was about to cry. But of course she couldn’t cry. Not real tears, anyway. Only one thing seemed certain: For the moment, Mrs. Nivens had forgotten about everyone else in the room. As subtly as she could, Olive nudged Leopold with her foot and then nodded toward the hall, where the flashlight lay. Leopold edged slowly toward Morton’s side. Olive tried to shift onto her knees, getting ready to run, if necessary, but Annabelle’s eyes honed in on her, their painted pools wary and bright. Olive froze.
“Was it you?” Morton was asking, his voice still not much more than a whisper. “Was it? Did you really ask the Old Man to take me away?”
“I told him not to hurt you,” said Mrs. Nivens, sidestepping the question. “And he didn’t. See?” Mrs. Nivens crouched in front of Morton, bringing their faces level. For a second, Olive could almost picture the Lucinda Nivens of eighty years ago, kneeling down to speak eye to eye with her little brother. “You get to live forever. Just like me.”
Morton shook his head. He shook it harder and harder, until his face became a blur. “No,” he said, stopping. “I’m just stuck. I’m stuck being nine forever.” He glared up at his sister. “But at least I’m not stuck being an ugly old lady.”
“Morton!” gasped Mrs. Nivens.
“What? Are you going to tell on me?” taunted Morton. “It was always Morton, the bad boy and Lucinda, the good girl. But you were just pretending. You were tricking them.” Morton choked, the anger in his voice suddenly trickling away. “What did he do with them?” he asked softly. “Where are Mama and Papa?”
Mrs. Nivens shook her head. “Morton . . .” she began, “. . . I don’t know.”
“Yes you do,” argued Morton. “What did he do to them?”
“He—he put them someplace safe. Like you. He didn’t hurt them. I asked him not to hurt them—”
“You’re so STUPID!” yelled Morton, his body quaking with fury. “Why should he do what you said? Where are they? WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?”
“Morton, I honestly don’t know. Honestly,” said Mrs. Nivens, a pleading note slipping into her voice. “Annabelle,” she ventured, “do you know?”
Annabelle gave a sigh. Leopold took advantage of her momentarily closed eyes to slip closer to the doorway. “Really, Lucinda,” Annabelle said, “you would have to be much less sentimental to even hope to become one of us.”
“I’m sorry, Annabelle,” said Mrs. Nivens, getting swiftly to her feet and backing away from Morton.
There was a sudden loud yowl as Leopold flew through the air, kicked backward by Annabelle’s high heel. He landed next to Olive, in front of the painting.
“You know I don’t like to fight a lady—” the cat huffed, getting back to his feet and baring his claws.
“Fight me?” Annabelle interrupted him with a laugh. “Once we’ve taken care of these two, I will deal with you, Leopold. Now stand aside.” Annabelle muttered something and made a sweeping motion with her arm.
Dragged by an invisible leash, Leopold slid backward across the floor and smacked into the opposite wall. There he stuck, hissing and growling, as though his fur had been Velcro-ed to the plaster.
“Now, take out the spectacles, Lucinda.”
Obediently, Mrs. Nivens pulled the spectacles out of her skirt pocket. Faint daylight leaking through the lace curtains glinted softly on their lenses. Olive’s heart gave a desperate leap before flopping back into its place again. Even if she could get the spectacles away from Mrs. Nivens, there was no way she could physically overpower both women. She chewed the inside of her cheek so hard she could taste blood.
“What are you going to do?” Mrs. Nivens asked in a very small voice, glancing at Annabelle.
“Only what they did to me,” said Annabelle. “We’re going to put the two of them in this painting. Then we’re going to destroy it before they manage to get out and annoy us further.”
“Destroy it?” Mrs. Nivens repeated.
“Yes,” Annabelle said lightly. “We’re going to burn it.”
Morton let out a squeak and backed quickly toward Olive. She pulled him down beside her, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and pressing her back against the painting to stay as far from Annabelle as possible. She shot a look at Leopold, who was writhing and hissing wildly against the wall.
“You can’t do that,” said Olive, trying to sound angry rather than terrified, and not quite succeeding.
Annabelle’s prettily arched eyebrows went up. “Olive, dear,” she said sweetly, “you got yourself into this.” She turned to Lucinda. “Put on the spectacles.”
/>
Mrs. Nivens hesitated. “Why does he have to go in?” she whispered, tilting her head toward Morton, who was huddled tight against Olive’s shoulder. “Couldn’t we just put him back in some other painting?”
“No, we couldn’t,” said Annabelle. “So much sentiment, Lucinda. Do you want to be part of our family, or not? Do you want me to teach you, or not?” Her voice was losing its sweetness. “Are you loyal to us . . . or not?”
Mrs. Nivens wavered, glancing at Morton. “But what has he done? It’s all Olive’s fault. Why does Morton have to be punished too?”
“Because I said so,” said Annabelle, very low, stepping closer to Mrs. Nivens. They were almost exactly the same height, but something about Annabelle’s voice or her way of moving made her seem twice as large as Mrs. Nivens. “Give me the spectacles, if you’re too weak to do this.” In the next second, she had tugged them out of Mrs. Nivens’s unresisting hand.
Annabelle crossed the room so quickly that Olive couldn’t even squirm out of the way. Before she knew it, Annabelle was crouching in front of her, with her brown eyes glowing behind the spectacles’ lenses, and her cold, painted hand pressed against Olive’s chest.
The moment Annabelle touched her, Olive felt the canvas behind her back turn to jelly. Her spine began to sink inward. The cool night breeze of the painted forest slipped through the fabric of her shirt. Beside her, Morton was being shoved backward too, fighting to pull himself upright again.
“Morton!” Olive yelled. “Grab on to the frame!”
Morton’s fingers, lost inside the trench coat sleeves, scrabbled at the heavy gold frame. Olive braced him with one arm and reached out for the frame’s other side, clamping her hand around it. Across the room, Leopold hissed and struggled helplessly.
“Help!” Morton shouted. “Lucy, help!”
But Mrs. Nivens didn’t move. She stood still, several steps behind Annabelle, looking more than ever like something carved out of butter and unable to move on its own.