“Master Hitchcock!” said the man in a tired, raspy voice. “And Master Yu. And Miss Solo.”

“How are you, Brack?” asked Charlie.

“Body and soul still together, young man,” said Brack, pushing himself into a better position. “And this charming young woman must be Miss Bailey.”

Cozette stared. “You know who I am?” she said. “I’ve only worked here a few weeks.”

“We need to get you out of here,” said Ty.

“Carefully,” said Brack. “I think I may have sprained an ankle.”

“Who did this to you?” said Charlie.

“I have an idea,” said Brack. “But I don’t have any evidence, of course. It was dark when I woke up here. The last thing I remember was sitting in my house.”

“With Theopolis!” said Charlie.

Brack blinked, surprised. “Why, yes. At least, that’s who he turned out to be. He was wearing a disguise.”

“A red beard,” said Annie.

“Somebody better explain what’s been going on,” said Ty. “And I mean now.”

“First things first,” said Brack. He lifted a shaking hand and pointed. “I believe there’s a men’s room in that direction. I could hear the pipes through the wall.”

Ty gently hoisted Brack to his feet and hunkered under one of the older man’s shoulders. Charlie and Annie supported him on the other side. Cozette raised her phone and a door loomed out of the darkness. While Ty helped Brack walk inside, the other three turned and gasped.

A hand reached out toward them. Icy white fingers. Annie screamed. Charlie couldn’t speak. Ty stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Cozette pointed. The clutching white fingers hadn’t moved. They could see the hand was attached to a bare white arm that led to a naked shoulder.

“Look out!” said Ty. As Cozette’s light traveled up the mysterious white shape, Ty saw another figure close behind.

Neither of the white shadows moved. “Who are you?” Ty demanded.

The four companions jumped as something moved behind them. It was Brack, who had opened the bathroom door and was grasping the side of the doorway for balance. “I’m afraid he can’t answer you,” he said. “None of them can.”

Cozette lifted her light. They saw more and more figures crowded in front of them.

All pale, all frozen in place, all silent.

“Statues,” said Charlie.

Brack nodded. “They are the great secret of the thirteenth floor,” he said. “A secret I thought was a rumor until I saw them just now with my own eyes.”

“Who are they?” asked Ty.

“The Twelve,” said Brack.

Charlie looked closer at the blurry, bluish shapes in the cellphone’s gleam. One of them brandished a sword. Another held a spear with three sharp prongs. A female figure wore an old-fashioned helmet and carried a shield.

I’ve seen them before, thought Charlie. He had a memory that held onto images like a computer hard drive. “Acute visual memory,” his teachers called it. Other people might call it a photographic memory.

Once Charlie saw a picture or a movie or a show, he never forgot it. For example, the photo he had seen in an old book at the library of some statues. The same statues he’d seen on a show on the History Channel.

“The Twelve Olympians,” said Charlie.

“You mean, like athletes?” asked Annie,

Ty rolled his eyes. “Like the Greek gods,” he said. “Clash of the Titans, The Immortals, Percy Jackson.”

“You read?” said Cozette in a quiet voice.

Ty ignored her. “That must be Ares,” he said, pointing at the statue with the sword.

“And Poseidon and Athena,” said Charlie. He saw a statue of a beautiful woman with long hair, holding a stone apple in her cold marble hand. “That one is Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty.”

“Yeah,” said Ty. “Some dude gave her that apple because she was the prettiest.”

“The Twelve,” said Brack. “These statues were a gift to the hotel many, many years ago. They were the handiwork of a famous Spanish sculptor, Ernesto Endriago.”

“One guy made them?” asked Cozette.

“One very talented guy, yes,” said Brack. “He sent them to the hotel as a gift. He came from a long line of magicians — he was the only sculptor, and a disappointment to his father. But these magnificent statues were delivered here and then forgotten. I knew they had been sent, but never saw them. It was a very busy time. Deliverymen must have put them on this floor by mistake.”

“Wow,” said Annie. “So, we’re like the first people to see them since Ernesto!”

“Where were they supposed to go?” asked Charlie.

“Endriago designed them to be installed on the roof,” said Brack. “The twelve gods of Greek mythology gazing down on humans from on high. Just as they once did from Mount Olympus.”

“Awesome,” said Tyler.

“Awesome indeed, but it wasn’t a good idea,” said Brack. “They’re far too valuable to be exposed to the elements.”

“Um, how valuable?” said Charlie.

“Endriago was killed in the Second World War,” Brack said. “These are the last — and the greatest — works from his hand. They must be priceless.”

Charlie wondered how much a single statue would cost. A million? A hundred million? That would pay for the hotel a thousand times over. Brack would be able to pay for the whole thing, and Theopolis would be out of his life forever.

Charlie was too busy thinking about dollar signs to notice the shadowy figure moving beyond the circle of light cast from Cozette’s phone. It moved from the statue of Apollo to Hermes, and then hid behind Hades, the lord of the dead. Then it smiled.