Amelia couldn’t believe her luck that Slayer Sloane had actually gone along with her idea. She’d come up with it mainly because sneaking around the old mansion looking for clues would make for an excellent scene for their movie.
Sloane had gone along with it for a different reason. Partly, she’d just been relieved that Amelia hadn’t wanted to do something dangerous. A bigger reason, however, was that it was exactly the sort of thing her mom would have suggested if she’d been here. Her mom had always been up for an adventure. Like the time she’d gotten some flapper dresses online and then insisted that she and Sloane wear them to Sauder Historic Village so they could wander around the 1920s section, eating too much ice cream and saying things like “This is the cat’s pajamas!”
Sloane had never told Mackenzie or Kylee or Mylie about that. Mac would have made fun of her, while Kylee and Mylie would have simply stared at her like she was the weirdest person ever. Then they all would have inched away from Sloane like her nerdiness was contagious and they didn’t want to catch it.
Her dad had taken Sloane back to Sauder Village after her mom died. They’d eaten ice cream cones too, but it hadn’t been the same no matter how many times they reassured each other that it was great.
Of course, deciding to go check out the Hoäl house and finding a way to do it were two different things. The mansion had recently been turned into a luxury spa where people could relax and get various parts of their body peeled off. Two seventh graders couldn’t just march inside and demand to see the scene of a long-ago crime.
However, the person who had actually set all of this in motion could and, in fact, had done just that. All that person had ended up with was wrinkly toes from soaking their feet too long and a sore face from having a layer of skin scrubbed off while the facialist enthused about how great it looked now that there was less skin cluttering it up.
That was zemblanity for you. You went in hoping to discover clues to an old crime so you could commit a new crime. Instead, you ended up paying hundreds of dollars to feel like a stewed tomato.
“Okay, I’m good with your plan,” Sloane told Amelia. “But before we figure out a way into the Hoäl house without an appointment, I want to find out where Dr. Barber lived. That way, once we’re at the Hoäl house, we’ll know what direction Thomas went. It will help us imagine what he might have been thinking and what he might have done.”
“Like getting into character!” Amelia enthused. So, they called Milton over at the Fulton County Historical Society to ask a question.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you until Monday,” Milton told Sloane. “Your teacher said I shouldn’t give you an unfair advantage over your classmates.”
“Come on, Milton. Wouldn’t Harry help a fellow Gryffindor?”
“You’re a Gryffindor?” the historian asked in surprise.
“Sure.” Sloane was actually Ravenclaw, but she figured that telling a tiny lie for the greater good was exactly the sort of thing a Ravenclaw would do. “Can you tell me where Dr. Barber lived back in 1887? He was the guy who stitched up Thomas Zimmerman.”
“Oh, that’s easy. He lived at 435 East Park Street. Why?”
“No reason.” Sloane hung up. To Amelia, she said, “That’s two houses down from here! I was right! The jewels have to still be between here and the Hoäl mansion! But how are we going to get in there to start our investigation?”
“I think I might know a way,” Amelia groaned, closing her eyes in pain.
There was a front desk armed by a lady with a very tight bun and very suspicious eyes who did not like children very much. She was so skinny and had such a huge jaw that she looked exactly like a marionette.
Amelia knew this because her mom had taken her and Ashley there for a spa day last winter break. Puppet Lady had glared at her like she thought Amelia might finger-paint the walls with jam or otherwise act like a toddler.
Honestly, it sort of made her want to finger-paint the walls with jam.
Still, that evening after the Miller-Poe family finished up another rousing round of golf, Amelia took one for the team. Not the Miller-Poe team. The Sloane-Amelia team.
“Say, Mom.” Amelia did the best she could to be heard as they gathered around the big, sparkling island in the big, sparkling kitchen.
“I can’t believe you got an ace on that back tee,” Aiden complained to Ashley, ignoring Amelia.
“Gave me a birdie,” Ashley said happily. “Sorry you ended up with a bogey.”
They might as well have been speaking French as far as Amelia was concerned. She tried to speak up again, louder this time. “Um, Mom?”
“Better than a double bogey!” The Judge chuckled like he’d just made a very good joke.
“Mom?”
“Now, Ashley, Aiden had a very impressive duck hook on the ninth hole,” Amelia’s mom said. “You have to give him that.”
“HEY, EVERYBODY!” Amelia leaned forward with her arms splayed and smacked her hands against the quartz countertop. “I’ve got something I’d like to ask!”
Nonplussed, they all stared at her.
“Ahem,” Amelia cleared her throat. “Mom, Sloane and I were wondering if you’d take us to the Hoäl mansion tomorrow. For, um, facials. And pedicures.”
And possibly to pretend to blow up a safe so they could imagine what a person might think after having done so. That sort of thing.
Her mom blinked. “Why on earth do the two of you want facials and pedicures?”
Amelia would rather not explain, given that doing so would probably cause her mom to say no. Fortunately, she knew her family’s biggest weakness. “Er, so we can do research. And get information that no one else in the class will have. So that our presentation will be, um, the best.”
That resulted in an explosion of chatter that echoed through the vast kitchen.
Her mom snapped into competition mode, eyes glinting. “You really don’t think anyone else will check it out?”
The Judge nodded approvingly. “Are you doing a slideshow? If so, solid choice! Conservative but effective.”
“Ooh! I want to go too!” Ashley brightened up. “That ace chipped my nail polish.”
“Me too!” Aiden bobbed his head vigorously. “You wouldn’t believe what lacrosse has done to my feet. My calluses actually terrified the kids at the pool the other day.”
“What?” Amelia gasped in horror, not expecting this.
“Yes, the whole family should go!” Amanda Poe seemed to think this was a brilliant idea. “We can help you get all the right information! Make sure you don’t miss anything that might impress Mr. Roth!”
“No!” Amelia wilted down into her chair, suddenly wishing Sloane was here. The other girl would have known what to say to change their minds. Or, at the very least, sympathized with Amelia about how overbearing her family was. “That won’t be necessary!”
But apparently it was. Even the Judge was dragged along, though he protested that he didn’t want to get his calluses removed. However, Amelia’s mom said that his troll feet were ruining the hardwood floors.
So, to top everything else off, Amelia had that image to haunt her nightmares.
We’re on, Amelia texted Sloane.
You’re amazing! Sloane texted back.
Amelia stared at that message for a long time. Even after she put it away, she kept pulling her phone out again all evening long so she could look at it.
No one had ever told her she was amazing before.
In fact, no one from school had ever texted her at all.
Every time she looked at it, a happy glow welled up in Amelia’s chest. Not everyone thought she was some dumb yeti.
Sunday morning, the Miller-Poes picked up Sloane at her house on the way to the Hoäl mansion. When Sloane opened the door, David Osburn waved at Amelia as he polished the newly sanded foyer floor. Sloane tugged on her ponytail, which Amelia had noticed she did whenever she was nervous.
“Something wrong?” she asked as they walked toward the Miller-Poe family SUV.
“What? No! Everything’s great!” Sloane gave Amelia such a big, bug-eyed smile that Amelia took a step back. Sloane immediately tried to turn it into a normal smile but only managed a grimace. “My dad is fixing up the house.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Sloane cast a worried look over her shoulder.
In the car, the only word Sloane managed to get out was “hi” before the rest of the Miller-Poes talked over her for the rest of the drive down Burr Road to the spa. The Hoäl mansion sat at the end of the street, surrounded by leafy trees and, beyond them, farm fields that had yet to be plowed. It was the size of a small castle and made of red brick and stone with lots of windows. Arriving through the stone gateway, the Miller-Poes tumbled out of the car and stormed the front door like a gang of Vikings.
“So. This is your family,” Sloane whispered as they stepped into the two-story foyer of the Hoäl House Day Spa and Retreat.
“Yup,” Amelia confirmed miserably.
“They talk a lot.”
“Yup.”
“And they don’t listen very much.”
“Nope.”
“Christmas must be fun.”
“ ’Bout like this, actually.”
They’d never once gotten Amelia anything she’d actually asked for. Only things that they thought would make her smarter, healthier, prettier, and more like them.
The puppet lady was at the front desk, looking every bit as scary as Amelia remembered. She took in the loudly talking Miller-Poes and hissed, “Quiet, please! This is a place of quiet reflection and relaxation! Not a—a—a hockey brawl.”
That brought Amelia’s parents and siblings up short. Amelia’s mom immediately glued on her extra-friendly businesswoman smile and proceeded to check them all in. As she did so, Sloane jerked her head toward some photographs on the wall in a way that said she wanted Amelia to look at them too. Without her family noticing.
As casually as she could, Amelia joined her. In the middle of the wall, there was a large picture of what the mansion looked like now: gorgeous and expensive. All around it, there were old photographs of what it looked like over the years. For most of them, that meant a falling-apart mess. Large letters above the new picture read If we can do this to a house, imagine what we could do to you!
Amelia did imagine it. She imagined scary spa workers taking power sanders and drills to her face and decided she’d rather not.
“What am I looking at?” she asked, squinting at the picture Sloane was pointing at. Unfortunately, she was too short to clearly see it.
“I think some of these pictures are of the house after the robbery!” Sloane whispered excitedly.
Amelia tried hopping up and down to catch glimpses of the picture. She was pretty sure Sloane was right, but it was kind of hard to tell when she could only look at it for about a millionth of a second. Then, inspired, Amelia lifted up her phone to snap a picture of it.
Using her fingers to zoom in on the picture while Sloane peered over her shoulder, Amelia realized that the other girl was definitely right. The black-and-white photograph showed the same room that had been in Notorious and Illustrious Citizens of Fulton County. Only in this picture, the wall panel to the right of the fireplace wasn’t in one piece anymore. Several police officers stood around, pointing at a gaping hole and the twisted remains of a door upon the floor.
“Here, let me take a picture of the one above it, too.” Using her own phone, Sloane took the picture and sent it to Amelia. “It’s the same one as in Notorious and Illustrious Citizens. The safe was hidden behind a wall panel. When Thomas blew apart the safe, he blew apart the fancy wall panel, too.”
Right about then, Amelia’s mom came over to them, so Sloane tucked away her phone. Puppet Lady gestured everyone toward the east wing of the house. “This way to your rooms. The gentlemen can change in here. The ladies, in here. The… children… in there.”
She said “children” the way another person might have said “rats” or “cockroaches.”
The rooms didn’t have regular doors with regular doorknobs on them. Instead, they were made to look like the rest of the wooden paneling in the hallway. You had to know where to push to release the catch.
“They’re like secret compartments,” Sloane observed.
Puppet Lady gave her an icy smile. “They’re original to the house. The millionaire who built this house had very unique tastes.”
Amelia didn’t say it aloud, but she couldn’t help but think that Jacob Hoäl hadn’t really built the house. He’d paid people like Thomas to do it.
“Sloane,” she whispered. “Didn’t one of the books say that Jacob used to build the secret compartments used by the magician in the circus?”
However, before Sloane could reply, the puppet lady shushed them so ferociously that even Slayer Sloane took a step backward.
Everyone went into the rooms Puppet Lady pointed at. She came to Amelia and Sloane’s room last of all. There were two leather chairs that looked very comfortable, each with a basin of water for the girls to stick their feet into.
Sloane looked into one in revulsion. Amelia joined her.
“Why are there fish in here?”
Little silvery fish darted about in that excited way fish do when they are about to get fed.
“It’s one of our luxury treatments.” Puppet Lady stuck her nose up into the air. “They eat the dead skin off your feet.”
“They do what now?” Sloane demanded, skittering backward against the wall.
“Don’t be so childish, child.” Puppet Lady sneered. “It’s organic, biodegradable, and all natural.”
Way to get eaten alive, Amelia finished in her mind, also backing up.
“Your parents have paid for this; now let the fish snack on your feet.” Puppet Lady marched out through the hidden panel and slammed it shut afterward.
The fish looked a lot like anchovies.
Anchovies that had ordered a people pizza and were pleased that it had just been delivered.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sloane said. Amelia nodded her head vigorously in agreement. They wriggled into the robes that had been left for them. Sloane’s fit her pretty well, but Amelia was so short that hers dragged on the floor. She had to roll up the sleeves into fat doughnuts around her wrist to keep them from flopping over her hands by several inches. Her slippers were too big also, so she bent to adjust them on her feet.
That was when Amelia noticed the floor.
“Sloane.” She tugged at the other girl’s arm. “Look!”
The floor was actually a mosaic made out of different types of wood stained all sorts of colors. Together, they formed a circle sliced up like a pie, alternating red-stained wood and gold-stained wood. All around the edges, it was scalloped.
It looked exactly like what a circus tent would look like if you were standing underneath it.
“Those are elephants along the edges.” Now it was Sloane’s turn to point.
“Thomas had to have been the one to do that woodwork, just like you thought!” Amelia said excitedly. “After all, he was the one who was circus obsessed, not Jacob! I bet Jacob didn’t even care what things looked like as long as they were fancy and expensive!”
Sloane, however, deflated a bit rather than sharing Amelia’s excitement. “I’m not sure how that gets us any closer to the missing jewels, though. I mean, we already knew that Thomas worked at the house.”
Fortunately, Amelia had plenty of experience persisting in the face of potential failure. So, she explained, “Don’t you see? If these rooms look like secret compartments, then I bet there are real secret compartments, too!”
“And Thomas could have hidden the jewels in one, thinking he’d come back to get them once Dr. Barber had taken care of his injures,” Sloane said slowly. Warming to the idea, she added, “But Dr. Barber gave him that sleeping syrup stuff that made him pass out, and by the time he woke up, the police were all over the mansion, and he couldn’t go back to it!”
“Let’s see if we can find this room.” Amelia held up her phone to show the picture from the front lobby. “Let’s start there and imagine we’re Thomas. Maybe if we can retrace how he got out of the house, we can figure out where he might have stuffed the jewels along the way.”
Amelia got out an elastic band and used it to fix her phone to her forehead. That made Sloane do a double take.
“What are you doing?” the other girl demanded.
“Filming what we’re doing, of course.” Amelia thought that was pretty obvious.
“That’s fine, once we’ve found the right room. Until then, we’re undercover. It’s going to be hard enough to wander around the spa without people asking questions without a phone strapped to your head. Like some, I dunno, social media unicorn.”
“Someday, I bet we’ll all be social media unicorns and walk around with phones on our foreheads,” Amelia grumbled, but for now she supposed Sloane had a point. Instead, they both wrapped towels around their heads and spread some sort of goo on their faces.
It was just as well that she listened to the other girl. As soon as they stepped out into the hallway they smacked right into Mr. Roth.
And Milton.
And Belinda.
And Principal Stuckey.
Amelia actually knocked Milton over so that the librarian had to catch him in her arms to keep him from falling down.
Yup, he was definitely Hufflepuff, not Gryffindor. Even if he was wearing a scarlet robe with a gold crest on it.
Belinda helped the historian back to his feet as Mr. Roth looked pained.
“What are you doing here?” everyone asked at the same time.
An awkward pause immediately followed.
Then Mr. Roth cleared his throat and said, “Principal Stuckey suggested that I bring Ms. Gomez and Mr. Unserios here for a refreshing spa day to thank them for all that they’ve done to help the school with this project.”
“My treat.” Principal Stuckey beamed. “My husband gave me quite a nice gift certificate here, but I’m allergic to nail polish.”
“I’ve never had a pedicure before!” Milton chirped happily. Beneath his robe, he still had on a button-down shirt and bow tie.
Off they went to get that pedicure, while Amelia and Sloane looked at each other uncertainly.
Was it just bad luck that they kept running into those guys? Or was there something more than luck going on here? Could Mr. Roth, Principal Stuckey, Milton, or Belinda be following them?
Amelia thought again about the joke she and Sloane had made yesterday. “You don’t think they could really be using us to find the missing jewels, do you?”
“I dunno. It’s been a crazy couple of days. I mean, take this place. What a house of horrors. It’s like something out of Doctor Who! Hidden panels, women who have obviously been transformed into puppets by some sort of witchcraft, and now getting fed to the fishies. I don’t think we can rule out that we’re being used by a pack of murderous, scheming adults. On the bright side, maybe we’ll luck out and run into the ghost of Thomas Zimmerman. At least he’d be able to tell us what he did with the jewels.”
Amelia snickered. “You know, you never talk about stuff like that at school. Just sports.”
“Oh. Well.” Sloane hesitated, her normal cool missing. “I like science fiction. But only nerds like things like that.”
“Not Slayer Sloane.”
“Yeah, not Slayer Sloane.” For a moment, Sloane looked like she didn’t even know who that was. Then she straightened up, thinned out her lips, and said, “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
They didn’t know where Jacob’s study was, obviously, but the newspaper article they’d read had mentioned that the study was on the first floor. They just had to open doors until they found a room that looked like the picture out in the front lobby.
The first hidden panel they figured out how to open revealed a woman clutching the armrests of her chair for dear life. A very determined-looking man wielded what might have been a floor sander as he buffed the calluses from the bottom of her feet.
They both stopped what they were doing to look at Amelia and Sloane as though the two girls were the horrific part of the scene.
“Oops. Thought this was the bathroom.” Amelia slammed the panel shut. To Sloane, she said, “Your turn to open one.”
The room Sloane opened up had a man getting his ear and nostril hair plucked, while the room after that had a woman getting stones laid on her back like it was the seventeenth century and she’d just been accused of witchcraft.
Sloane had been right about this being a house of horrors. Adults spent their money on the weirdest stuff.
Finally, they found the right room. It seemed to be the puppet lady’s office but was still recognizable as the room from the picture out in the front lobby.
“Wow,” Amelia breathed as she took the towel off her head and used it to wipe the goo from her face. “This is where it all happened. The start of the Hoäl curse.”
“The Hoäl curse?” Taking off her disguise too, Sloane gave Amelia a look. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.” Amelia switched her camera on and started filming.
Sloane rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. She was probably too awestruck by the room to bother. This one didn’t just have a wooden floor, it had wood-paneled walls as well. Except they weren’t boring square or rectangular panels with lines in between like out in the hallway. These were divided into sections by slender columns made to look like trees. Stylized branches spread out in even patterns to form the tops and bottoms of each panel.
Amelia went over to inspect the spot where the safe had once been, to the right of a fancy marble fireplace. No one must have known how to piece all of that complicated woodwork back together again, so they’d just turned it into a bunch of shelves instead. There were books on it with names like The Stingy Spa Owner’s Guide to Success: Feed Your Pets and Make a Mint!
Amelia had known those fish were a scam.
Meanwhile, Sloane spotted something that interested her on the opposite side of the fireplace. Whatever it was, it made her cry out “Amelia!” Then, rather than waiting for her to come over, Sloane grabbed Amelia and dragged her to the wall. Hopping up and down excitedly, she pointed at it. “Look! Look!”
So, of course Amelia looked.
Carved into the trunks of the trees were various circus performers and animals.
You had to look hard to spot them, but they were there: a roaring lion, a clown juggling, a seal balancing a ball on its nose, the ringmaster in his suit. The trapeze artist, the elephant, the magician—every conceivable circus act.
Thomas had carved these. He had to have. He’d wanted to be a clown—someone who would delight the world. Make them laugh and forget about their troubles for a while. Instead, he’d gotten stuck in a job he hated.
Amelia could relate to that all too well. She was stuck living a life that didn’t seem to fit her, either. She too was full of strange and sometimes—she was willing to admit—not great ideas.
She reached her fingers forward to press the clown, to feel the ridges of the wood against her fingertips.
Instead, the shape gave slightly beneath them.
Amelia yelped and jumped back. “Sloane! The clown moved! The clown moved!”
“What clown? Where?” Now Sloane jumped back and looked around wildly. As though expecting to see an ax-wielding maniac spring out at them from somewhere.
“This clown, here.” Amelia pushed down on the clown again. It visibly moved downward by half an inch but nothing else happened. “I can feel a spring beneath it, I think. Like something is supposed to happen when you press it, but nothing does.”
Sloane was far stronger than Amelia, having built up her muscles playing volleyball and softball. She shoved at the clown with all of her might, but nothing happened.
“It’s supposed to do something, I’m sure of it,” Amelia said, worried that Sloane might think it was just a bit of loose paneling.
However, the other girl had far more imagination than Amelia once would have given her credit for. “I think you’re right. And I think it is doing something. But I think—maybe—you’re supposed to press down on one of the other circus performers too. Like, this undoes one of the panel’s latches, but you need to push down on another one as well.”
“Do you think this could be it?” Amelia asked excitedly. “Do you?”
“It’s definitely a secret panel. So, yeah.” Sloane chewed her lip. “Thomas knew it was here because he made it. When he got hurt, he probably decided to stuff the jewels in here long enough to go get stitched up by Dr. Barber.”
“Only, Dr. Barber gave him that sleeping-syrup stuff that made him pass out for a really long time,” Amelia said. “By the time he woke up, there were cops all over the place.”
“He couldn’t get the jewels back because of that. So, he hopped on the first train to Chicago to… I dunno. Either escape or beg his old friend Jacob to forgive him, I guess.” Sloane ran her hand over the panel. “The question is, which of these other performers do we need to press down to open up the compartment?”
“That’s easy. We just try all of them.” Even as Amelia said it, she realized it wouldn’t really be that easy after all. There were dozens of circus performers carved into the trunks, boughs, and leaves of the trees. You had to have a bit of an imagination to spot them, too, or you’d never even realize they were there.
Out in the hallway, voices moved toward the office.
“I’m so very sorry that you soiled your robe by dropping your tea on it when some short, hairy person walked in on you unannounced. Let me just…” The puppet lady’s voice trailed off as she slid the office panel open and stepped into the room.
Only to jerk to a halt as she spotted the two intruders.
The spa owner was followed by the man who’d been getting his nose hairs plucked, his fluffy white robe no longer white nor fluffy.
They froze and regarded the girls like they were piles of stinky gym socks.
“What are you two doing in here?” Puppet Lady demanded.
“Secret compartment,” Amelia squeaked.
Sloane sprang into action, shoving their towels into the puppet lady’s startled hands. “Our towels need washing too! Thanks! Bye!”
With that, Sloane pushed both Puppet Lady and Nose Hair Man out of the room, slid the door panel shut, and twisted the old-fashioned lock into place.
She turned to Amelia with wild, frantic eyes. “I can’t believe I just did that. Is that a crime? I think it might be a crime. I’m going to go to jail with Nanna Tia.”
“You are an absolutely brilliant, brave heroine and the poets will sing of your exploits all through time!” Amelia exclaimed, grabbing Sloane by the hand and dragging her back to the secret compartment while the two people on the other side of the door pounded on it, demanding that they open up.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Sloane wasn’t just twisting her hair around her fingers; she was gnawing on it, too. That couldn’t be a good sign, but she said, “Okay, if my dad is going to have to pick me up at the police station, then it better be worth it. Let’s get this thing open.”
“I’ve got this.” Amelia snatched a letter opener off the desk and attacked the panel with it, wedging the tip of the blade into the crack running along the tree trunk. “This happens to my locker all the time. I’ll just force it open!”
“Uh, how about if we go with the less drastic option of figuring out what else we need to press down?” Diving forward, Sloane wrenched the letter opener out of her hands.
“Because there isn’t time!”
“Amelia?” her mother’s voice barked from the other side of the door. “Open up this instant!”
“Oh no.” Amelia clasped her hands to her head.
“We’ve got to keep thinking like Thomas.” Sloane closely inspected the carvings, doing a remarkable job of ignoring all of the chaos clamoring against the other side of the office door. No wonder the other kids called her Slayer. “He and Jacob Hoäl ran off to the circus together, right? He wanted to become a clown and Jacob wanted to become—what, exactly?”
“Amelia, you need to open the door right away and come out here to apologize to Mrs. Popanz!” the Judge shouted through the door.
“She probably doesn’t know how!” Ashley shouted.
“Don’t worry, Amelia! We’ll talk you through it!” Aiden cried.
Now Amelia was tugging at her own hair.
“Jacob just managed the circus,” she said over the sound of her siblings explaining how to open a door. “What does a circus manager look like?”
“Maybe this guy?” Sloane pointed at the ringmaster in his high boots and tall hat.
“Try it!” But when they did, it didn’t budge even a little bit.
An old-fashioned key scratched at the outside of the lock, while others jangled on a key ring. Through the wood, Puppet Lady muttered, “No, it’s not that one. I think it’s this—no, it’s not that one, either.”
“Maybe he wanted to be a magician! No—maybe the lion tamer? No…” Now Sloane was just randomly jabbing at the figures hidden in the trees. Or even anything that looked remotely like a figure, given that some of them could be terribly hard to pick out. In fact, that figure over there looked like he was practically fading away. Like he was trying to creep behind a tree and slip away from the rest of them…
“That one!” Amelia gasped, pointing. “The clown was Thomas, and that’s Jacob! Creeping off and leaving the circus behind.”
The key turned in the old-fashioned lock with a heavy CLUNK. The door itself fell open, and a large number of very angry and excited people tumbled through it.
Ignoring them all, Sloane pushed at the retreating figure.
The wood wiggled beneath her fingers.
Within the wall, something groaned like it had rusted.
“What do the two of you think you’re doing?” Amanda Poe demanded over the chorus of her husband, daughter, and stepson, all of whom were offering their opinions about what Amelia and Sloane were doing.
Meanwhile, Mr. Roth looked like he was considering retirement.
Principal Stuckey looked pained.
Milton looked confused.
The puppet lady looked like she was thinking about cutting out the fish and just eating Amelia and Sloane herself.
Nose Hair Man looked about like what you would expect someone to look like if they’d been having their nostril hairs plucked.
Only Belinda looked respectfully approving. “Working together to fight the system? Righteous, man.”
Amelia and Sloane still had the figures pressed down and could feel something inside the wall grinding away, trying to open.
Rather than answering her mother, Amelia banged her fist against the panel to pop it open.
Sometimes she had to do that with her locker, too.
Serendipitously, the door finally sprang open.
Less luckily, the door knocked Amelia to the floor as it did so.
Everyone else in the room rushed forward to get a good look. Only her mom and dad paused long enough to bend down and give her a hand up.
By the time she got to her feet, everyone else was gasping in shock—and disappointment.
Disappointment?
What was there to be disappointed about? There had to be a whole heap of jewels inside the secret compartment!
Pushing her way forward as Sloane detached herself from the group, Amelia finally saw what everyone else saw:
Nothing but dust.
And an old-fashioned, peaked clown hat.
Zemblanity.