Once Tyler and Rocky had been taken away on stretchers by the EMTs, the hallway emptied quickly.

A half hour later, the last ones remaining were Charlie, Brack, and Mr. Yu, who frowned, examining the splintered door frame. “I can’t leave it like this,” he muttered. “What a terrible accident.”

“I don’t believe it was an accident at all,” said Brack. “Do you still have your flashlight, Charlie?”

Charlie nodded. He didn’t need to hear another word from the old magician. He turned on his light and stepped into the room. Back and forth, he swung the flashlight’s beam.

It was a single open room, a large hotel room with only ancient gods and spiderwebs for guests. He saw the statues. He saw the door to the bathroom that Brack and Tyler had both used. He saw a few pieces of old furniture. He saw an open space that was probably supposed to have been a closet but never had a door attached to it. The one thing that Charlie did not see in the glare of his flashlight: another door or window.

“Do you see what’s missing?” whispered Brack.

“Yeah,” said Charlie. “No way out.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Brack. “Something else.”

Charlie swung the light some more. What else was not there that should have been? Did Brack mean — no, it was impossible.

Charlie used the flashlight as a spotlight on each of the Twelve. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Hermes, Apollo, Athena, Hades, Artemis, Demeter, Hephestus, and…

Where was the beautiful woman holding the apple? He counted them a second time.

“Aphrodite is missing,” Charlie said. “But, Brack, how could that be? I saw Aphrodite when we first came in to get you.”

“I saw her too, Charlie,” he replied. “But someone got to her.”

Charlie shut his eyes. He tried to think back. When he first entered the room, he had seen all of the Twelve, even if he saw a few only out of the corner of his eye. He could count them all.

And then he pictured the second time he came back, with Ty and Cozette. He remembered how crowded it had felt, walking through the forest of frozen figures in the stuffy room. But, yes, he had counted then, too.

There had been twelve gods and goddesses of stone. He was sure of it. They sometimes seemed to twitch and blink in the moving beams of light from the flashlights and Cozette’s phone. The muscles in their fingers flexed, the veins in their necks pulsed. But there had been the Twelve.

Where was the goddess of beauty? She couldn’t walk out on her carved stone feet.

Or could she? Maybe that sculptor, Ernesto Endriago, was a magician after all. Maybe he possessed some genius skill for building stone figures that moved on their own.

But that still didn’t solve the bigger mystery. How did Ty’s attacker — and the goddess Aphrodite — leave the room while it was locked from the inside? And while Charlie and Cozette stood guard outside?

“My stupid ankle!” cried Brack. “If only I hadn’t hurt it, this wouldn’t have happened! The statue would still be here.”

“You don’t think it was alive too, do you?” whispered Charlie. But Brack didn’t answer. He just stared at the statues.

Mr. Yu was standing outside by the broken door frame. Charlie could hear him on his phone trying to get a carpenter and a locksmith to the hotel as quickly as possible.

Then he heard him talking to his wife, telling her that he would soon join her at the hospital.

“You don’t, do you?” repeated Charlie. “Think it was alive?”

A stone cold shiver ran down Charlie’s spine. The air in the dark room grew darker. He thought the statues were shuffling closer.

Brack smiled. “Magic can always be explained,” he said. “You’ve proven that before, Master Hitchcock, time and again. And this can be explained too. I know that you’ll solve this mystery, just as you have the others.”

I’m not so sure about that, thought Charlie. He looked into Brack’s eyes, and the feeling that the statues crowded in on him faded away. But his doubts remained. There was only one thing he was sure about. He couldn’t let his friends down.