On her numb hands, Olive hauled herself across the ground. “Don’t hurt them!” she begged. “Please! You can have anything! Just don’t hurt them!”
Aldous’s leonine face split with a smile. “But I already have everything I want,” he replied. “This house is mine. Elsewhere is mine. These disobedient beasts”—he twitched his hand and Horatio fell to the earth—“useless as they may be—are mine.”
“Please, stop!” Olive pleaded, dragging herself closer.
Rutherford made a move as if to jump in the way, but Aldous’s eyes flicked up, seeming to freeze the boy in place. “Would you care to be next?” he asked.
Rutherford didn’t answer.
Aldous looked down at the three twitching cats. “As a matter of fact…” he said softly, “I’m not quite sure that I do want them anymore. They’ve been far more trouble than they’re worth. I can always conjure a new familiar once I’ve reclaimed the house.” The smile twisted again, turning Aldous’s face from handsome to monstrous. “…So I may as well dispose of these.”
Olive turned toward Rutherford, gasping. No words found their way out of her open mouth. Rutherford was frowning intently, his eyes jerking from Olive to the cats to Aldous’s face.
“Let me show you how to destroy a familiar, Olive,” said Aldous, gliding closer to Leopold. “It’s much easier than you might think.” His hand made a graceful circle in the air. An instant later, another circle, this one made of strange, deep blue flames, appeared around Leopold’s weakly twitching body. Leopold’s fur began to smoke.
Frantically, Olive hauled herself across the brush. Her hands were numb; so numb that she barely felt the scratches that should have drawn blood, though no blood made its way through her painted skin; so numb that she hardly noticed it when her palm hit something hard—something plastic—which was just the right size to be grasped in her fist.
“Stop,” she commanded, raising the water pistol. “Or I’ll shoot.”
Aldous’s eyes left Leopold. They fixed on Olive’s hand, wrapped around the water pistol. In spite of the numbness, Olive could almost feel a pinprick of ice where his gaze landed. Aldous raised his hand, about to make the magical sign that would rip the pistol from her fist, just as Annabelle had once ripped away her flashlight. And as Aldous stepped closer, his yellowish eyes honed on Olive’s fist, Rutherford finally got his chance. With both water pistols raised, he leaped over the three fallen cats and squirted Aldous McMartin directly in the face.
Aldous halted. Behind him, the circle of blue flames disappeared, and the three writhing cats fell silent. For a moment, Aldous looked vaguely surprised, as though he’d heard someone far away calling his name. He brushed at his face with one hand. Then he paused again, and the vaguely surprised look became much less vague. His eyes traveled slowly down his arm to his hand.
Where five long, bony fingers had been, nothing remained but five pale smudges. His cheek, where he had rubbed it, was now only a blurry gap, revealing a splotch of the golden forest behind him.
“What have you…” he whispered. But before he could finish the question, Rutherford fired again, and Aldous’s words became only a gasp.
While Rutherford squirted both pistols, Horatio got unsteadily to his feet, followed a moment later by Harvey. The two cats threw themselves at Aldous, yowling, claws out, teeth bared. At last, Leopold pulled himself up onto his paws as well. With wisps of smoke still trailing from his fur, he charged into action, flying straight at Aldous’s chest. His furious hiss echoed away across the hillsides.
Olive lay in the bracken, pinned to the ground by pain. Her legs sizzled. Her hands refused to grasp the water pistol; she felt it slip out of her fingers once again. Holding herself up on her elbows, she watched the battle unfold.
Aldous’s streaked skin dripped. Each time he moved, his body blurred a bit more, like the tip of a melting icicle. The bracken below him grew smudged and muddy. The cats and Rutherford surrounded him, Rutherford still squirting both guns, the cats hissing and smearing and scratching at him with their paws.
Soon Aldous stopped trying to fight off his attackers. He raised his arms to protect his face, and his cuff wiped away the edge of his chin. Through the whirl of circling cats, Olive watched Aldous’s features disappear. The sharp line of his jaw dissolved into his shirt collar. The reddish waves of his hair ran down his shoulders, dripping like rain onto the ground. Horatio slashed with one paw, and Aldous’s yellow eyes vanished, first into a streak of paint, and then, with another paw-slash, into nothing.
Before she quite believed what she saw, all that remained of the young Aldous McMartin were a few smeared spots on the bracken, a mud-colored puddle where the dissolved paint had pooled, and a mess on each of the cats’ paws.
The cats stood, spattered with paint, breathing hard, in a tight and wordless circle. They glanced at one another, and then at themselves, checking for any lasting injuries.
“Ugh,” said Horatio at last. “I would like to wash myself.”
“Use your tongue,” said Harvey, who was busily taking his own advice.
“I am not going to use my tongue,” said Horatio.
Rutherford, panting and posing like a victorious knight in his paint-splotched pajamas, turned around to look at Olive. The pride on his face drained swiftly away.
“Olive?” he called.
But Olive couldn’t answer.
If she opened her mouth, all that would have come out was a scream. The red-hot pins and needles had traveled all the way to her shoulders. When she tried to bend her legs and get back to her feet, her knees sent shock waves of pain through the muscle and bone. She could barely keep her eyes open.
In a pin-pricked, burning blur, she saw her friends gather around her. She let out a stifled squeal as Rutherford raised her arm and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then came the funny sensation of being lifted, of having her legs hoisted and her pajama cuffs raised in someone’s teeth, and of floating along just above the brambly ground, until she was sliding back out of the painted hills and into the darkness of the house.
25
VOICES HISSED AND murmured around her like sounds made behind a locked door. Olive could hear them, but they seemed far off and unimportant. They had nothing to do with her.
“Where should we take her?” asked one voice.
“To her bedroom,” whispered another. “Lift, men!”
Olive felt her heels dragging along the hallway carpet. Rug-burn shot up her legs, mingling with the pricks of a million red-hot pins, but she couldn’t lift her feet. She couldn’t even lift her eyelids. Then, suddenly, she was falling backward, and something much squishier than the bracken of the painting was catching her. Tendrils of pain spiraled through her limbs. She squinted up through the darkness, trying to focus on the three pairs of bright green eyes and the single pair of smudgy lenses that floated above her.
“Maybe I should get my grandmother,” Rutherford proposed.
“This isn’t your grandmother’s sort of magic,” said Horatio.
“Should we wake her parents and take her to the hospital?”
“And explain this how?” Horatio demanded in a whisper. Everyone was quiet for a moment. “There is nothing a hospital can do for her,” said Horatio at last. “Doctors are not trained to treat injury by magical paints.”
Leopold’s voice spoke up. “She’s going to make it,” he said firmly, although Olive could hear the hint of fear under his words. “We got her out in time.”
Something warm and fuzzy pressed itself against Olive’s chest.
“I hear a heartbeat,” Horatio whispered. “Olive.”
Olive blinked. Horatio’s wide orange face hovered in the slit between her eyelids. “Olive, you must keep moving. You need to get the blood flowing.”
Olive tried to swat Horatio away, but she couldn’t even raise her hand. A zing of pain shot down her arm.
“That’s it, Agent Olive!” said a voice from somewhere near Olive’s feet—or where
her feet had been when she last remembered feeling them. “Target practice!” Harvey urged. “Try to kick me!” His paw prodded her ankle. “Come on!”
Weakly, Olive wiggled her foot. She had learned what frostbite felt like several years ago, while building a snow fort with bare hands, and she still remembered that burning, aching pain. Now she felt as though her whole body had been rolled in a snowbank. She sucked in a breath through her teeth.
“Is that the best you can do?” taunted Harvey.
Olive wiggled and winced again.
Harvey executed a barrel roll across her ankles. “A good agent thinks three steps ahead of the enemy,” he whispered. “Come on, Agent Olive, take aim, and—”
Olive booted Harvey off the end of the bed.
A zing of pain shot upward from her toes. “Ow!” she groaned.
“Excellent shot, miss,” said Leopold.
“She’ll be all right,” said Horatio.
Olive knew that she should feel relieved. She knew that lying in her own bed, with the painted Aldous destroyed and all of her friends surrounding her, was a pretty good place to be. But something was missing. Something…Olive twitched her buzzing fingers. No. Someone.
“Morton!” she croaked.
“What about him?” asked Rutherford.
“He’s out there,” Olive panted. “On his own. With the painted Horatio.” Panic swelled in her chest like a growing fire as she realized just how long Morton had been out of sight, out of Elsewhere…“He’s going to run away!” she gasped.
“What are you talking about, Olive?” asked Horatio, from close to her side.
“He’s going to leave,” Olive managed, “and get lost or hurt and never come back!”
“We’ll find him, miss,” said Leopold. “Don’t worry.”
“Special forces are on the case,” Harvey added, leaping back onto the bed.
“Where did you see him last?” asked Rutherford.
“He was going downstairs. Following the other Horatio.”
“Stay here,” Horatio commanded. “Just keep moving your arms and legs. We’ll take care of this.”
The three cats zoomed out the door with Rutherford tiptoeing after. Olive heard their soft steps recede into the distance.
She stared up at the dark ceiling and tried twitching her fingers, one by one. They flared with little zapping burns. She stopped, feeling strangely exhausted. It was the middle of the night, after all, and she had been in and out of paintings, falling into pits, running through forests and hills and hallways. And her bed was so comfy…
But falling asleep was a terrible idea. Horatio had said to keep moving. And Morton and Horatio’s imposter were still somewhere in the house—or somewhere outside of it.
Olive kicked her feet nervously. She turned her head from side to side, which didn’t hurt too badly, and then started to lift herself up on her arms, which hurt a lot.
Olive dropped back on the pillows. She tried to listen to the sound of her blood moving through her body, imagining it flowing into the painted places, hissing and crackling and steaming like hot water hitting a sheet of ice. She could hear her heart beating in her ears, thump, thump, low and soft and steady.
Thump. Thump.
Then, from somewhere much farther away, she heard another thump.
Thump. Thump.
Olive turned her head to one side, craning toward the open bedroom door. The hallway lay beyond, glowing faintly with moonlight. It was empty.
But Olive heard it again.
Thump. Very soft. Soft, but clear.
Olive’s heart began to beat a bit faster. The other thump did not speed up. And then Olive realized what the thumping was.
Someone was climbing up the stairs.
“Rutherford?” Olive called, in a whisper.
But the steps were slow, unlike Rutherford’s.
Thump.
“Horatio? Leopold?”
But these steps came one at a time, unlike the cats’.
“Hello?” Olive whispered.
There was no answer.
Thump.
The step was very soft. And very close.
Biting her cheek to keep from screaming, Olive rocked onto one side. Her legs and arms roared with pain as she rolled across the bed and slipped over its edge. She hit the floor with a light smack. Gathering the last bit of strength in her limbs, Olive wormed her way underneath the bed and froze, barely breathing, with her eyes peeping out beneath the dust ruffle, staring at the open door.
A soft creak came from the hall. A shadow glided along the floor, just inside the open doorway.
A figure stepped into that shadow.
Olive’s eyes traveled up from the hem of the long, prim skirt, to the starched shirt cuffs, to the string of pearls, to the pretty, changeless, terrifying face.
Annabelle’s eyes flickered around the room. They took in Olive’s vanity, with its rows of pop bottles, Olive’s cluttered dresser, the twisted blankets on Olive’s bed. Olive held her breath. Every other worry and plan and idea fled from her brain. All she knew was that she was playing out her own worst fears backward—Annabelle was the one standing in her bedroom, and she was the one hiding under the bed.
Annabelle’s eyes skimmed the room again, resting for one long, awful second on the rumpled bed. Then Annabelle stepped out of the doorway and glided off along the hall.
Olive lay under the bed, brain clicking, heart thundering.
What should she do? Where was Annabelle going, and what was she after? Should Olive confront her on her own? And with what? Should she scream for help, waking her parents, putting them in danger too, and bringing this whole teetering tower of fragile secrets crashing down?
There were no more sounds from the hallway.
Olive squirmed forward on her prickling palms and hauled herself out from under the bed. She crawled to the doorway. Moonlight painted the hall in shades of gray, leaving deep shadows at either end. Annabelle had vanished into the darkness.
Still crawling, breathing through her teeth, Olive dragged herself down the hallway to the bathroom. She groped along the counter for the box of matches. At least she’d have one weapon against Annabelle…however weak it was.
Olive climbed like a wobbly monkey up the handles of the bathroom drawers until she was standing on both feet. Her legs still felt like they were asleep, but at least the pain had lessened. Olive staggered out of the bathroom and down the dark hall to the lavender room.
The door’s black mouth hung open, the antique furniture and Annabelle’s empty portrait frame glittering like teeth inside. The room was empty.
Olive edged down the hall, checking each room for Annabelle, just as she’d done every day for weeks. It had been frightening even in the middle of the afternoon, with daylight streaming through the windows. She had never imagined doing it in the black of night, all alone, with her body half paralyzed, knowing that Annabelle was already there.
She stumbled to the door of the blue room. It was empty too. Olive slid along the wall, clutching the matches even tighter as she passed the painting of the Scottish hills, where a small blurry patch had appeared in the foreground. But as Olive glanced at the canvas, she felt a draft of cold night air thread its way through her pajamas. For a moment, she thought the wind had come from the painting, just as it had before…But without Aldous inside it, controlling the elements of Elsewhere, that couldn’t be. No—the breeze came from the pink bedroom, through the very last doorway in the long, dark hall.
Olive lunged through the door, holding her matches ready.
Annabelle wasn’t there.
The windows had been pulled wide open. Their lacy curtains rippled in the chilly breeze. Filtering through the lace, a distant streetlamp scattered its glow across the room, catching on something that had not been there before.
Standing in the center of the bedroom, its drop cloth pooled around its wooden legs, was Aldous’s easel. Aldous’s empty easel. The portrait of Aldous McMartin was gon
e.
26
“SO ALDOUS AND Annabelle are together again,” said a voice in the darkness behind her.
Olive whirled around and almost toppled off her feet. Rutherford stood behind her, armed with his squirt guns.
“Rutherford!” Olive gasped. “You scared me!”
“I apologize,” said Rutherford, with a little bow. “That was not my intention.”
Olive nearly smiled. In fact, she nearly said something like, That’s all right, or I’m so glad to see you, or Thanks for coming to find me, but she stopped herself in the nick of time. She was still angry at Rutherford, after all—even if it was suddenly very difficult to remember just what she was angry about. She worked her face into a frown. “How did you—”
But Rutherford hurried on without meeting her eyes. “She must have heard you coming. I think she likes having the element of surprise on her side. She’s probably taking the portrait someplace safe, reformulating her plans.”
“But how did you know she was here?” Olive demanded. “How did you know about Aldous’s portrait?”
Rutherford jiggled on his feet for a moment. “I’ll explain later,” he said. “We still haven’t found Morton, or the false Horatio. We could call him The-fake-io. Or Horati-faux. Get it?”
“No,” growled Olive.
“I suppose we should get back to searching,” said Rutherford.
Olive wobble-stomped past him before he could confuse her any more. She was able to make it to the head of the stairs by leaning on the banister and making lots of little aggravated grunting noises. Gripping the railing tightly, she struggled down the first three steps in the time it would usually have taken her to get down the stairs, out the front door, and all the way to the edge of Linden Street. Rutherford stayed beside her, bouncing with obvious impatience.
“That’s it,” he urged in a whisper. “Just ten more steps to go. That’s only a little more than three times as many as you’ve already done.”