KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN.
Olive repeated Mrs. Dewey’s instructions to herself as she lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. The shadows of leafy branches danced and skittered across the plaster. What was the “malevolent presence” Mrs. Dewey had detected? Was it Ms. Teedlebaum? Was it Annabelle herself? Was it someone—or something—else? And how would simply keeping her eyes open let her uncover the truth?
Olive turned these questions over and over in her mind until they started to dissolve, crumbling apart like a cookie, or like a torn-up sheet of paper…
…And suddenly her eyelids were snapping open and she was staring up into the darkness, feeling as though she had been dropped into her bed from a hundred feet above.
How had she let herself fall asleep?
Bolting upright, she turned toward the alarm clock. It was already after 3:00 a.m. Whatever had been making noises in the hallway might have passed by long ago.
Olive glanced from the alarm clock to the door, which she had left open just an inch. Instead of a strip of hallway lit by the pale gray glow of the moon, a wavering band of blue light slipped through the gap in the door. As Olive stared, the light seemed to brighten, stretching across her floor all the way to the side of her bed. It touched the rumpled blankets, poking and prodding at Olive’s legs.
As quietly as she could, Olive climbed out of bed and let the beam of light lead her to the door. The hallway was empty. The lights weren’t on; no one carrying a magical lantern or a strange, blue-bulbed flashlight was passing by. And yet, a ribbon of blue light filled the corridor, unrolling itself like a carpet just wide enough for one person to walk on. It led from Olive’s bedroom door, past the paintings of Linden Street and the moonlit forest, and down into the darkness of the lower floor.
Olive blinked. She rubbed her eyes and looked again and blinked some more. The carpet of light didn’t go away. If anything, it seemed to grow brighter, becoming a pearly blue river of light that lapped at Olive’s toes.
Mrs. Dewey’s words—There isn’t much that double-chocolate chocolate chip cookies can’t illuminate—floated through Olive’s memory. There was something here for her to find, and this light was leading the way. She edged out into the hall. The ribbon of light tugged her forward, its beams falling from nowhere, leaving everything outside its stream in darkness. Olive waded in the light, following its path along the corridor and down the stairs.
In the entryway, the carpet of light zagged to the left, leading along the hall toward the kitchen. Olive passed the hollow doorways of the parlor and the dining room. The glowing pathway guided her through the darkness, turning again once it reached the kitchen and trickling beneath the basement door.
Great, muttered Olive’s brain. It would send me down there.
With a fortifying breath, she turned the knob of the basement door.
The carpet of light sliced through the blackness without lessening it. The basement’s dark, hidden corners remained dark and hidden as Olive edged down the chilly wooden steps, shifting her weight from board to board as slowly as she could.
The carpet of light stopped at the foot of the stairs. Olive reached the icy basement floor and paused, looking around, longing to reach for the light chain. The air was as black as spilled ink. Fragments of moonlight from the open doorway above only seemed to outline the darkness. She listened. The basement appeared to be empty, but from somewhere—somewhere distant and enclosed, somewhere that seemed to be beneath her feet—Olive caught the sound of voices.
Could her art teacher possibly be hiding underneath her house? Or could a living portrait with honey-colored eyes and soft, dark hair be lurking just a few steps away? And how odd had Olive’s life become that these two possibilities seemed equally likely?
She tiptoed across the cold stone floor to Leopold’s corner, following the sound. Behind her, the ribbon of blue light wavered slightly. A cold draft of air told her what she had already guessed: The trapdoor was standing open.
“She’s been up there,” said a voice—a low, whispering voice—from far beneath.
Olive inched along the wall beside the open trapdoor, trying not to think of the spiders and webs and sucked-dry bodies of bugs that might be scattered there, and lay down on the chilly basement floor, bringing her ears as close to the hole as she dared.
The voice that spoke next was deep and gravelly: Leopold. “I simply can’t believe that she would—”
“You can’t believe it? After the way she manipulated you?” the other, whispering voice interrupted. Now Olive recognized it. It was Horatio’s. “Is your memory that short?”
They must be near the foot of the ladder under the trapdoor, Olive realized. Their voices were close by, but muted and echoing, like sounds made inside of a deep well. She craned over the hole.
A third voice was speaking. At first, Olive couldn’t make out what it said, but then she caught the words double agent spoken in a crisp British accent. So Harvey was down there too.
She’s been up there. Did Horatio mean Annabelle? She had certainly manipulated Leopold—and Horatio, and Harvey—in her time. But double agent? There was nothing double about Annabelle. Her agenda was perfectly clear. Could he mean Ms. Teedlebaum? No, that wouldn’t make sense…Ms. Teedlebaum had never even seen the cats, as far as Olive knew. But who else could they be talking about?
Horatio’s irritated whisper trailed up through the hole again. “…What would it take to make you believe…”
“Simply don’t see why she would—” Leopold’s voice ended with another incomprehensible mutter.
“I can assure you that she has been up there.” Harvey was speaking again. “I observed her myself, from my base of operations. Much as it saddens me to think that one of our own has become a traitor to the cause, it would not be the first time…”
“No,” said Leopold’s voice, soft but clear. “No.”
The word echoed in Olive’s head. No.
“You refuse to believe us?” said Horatio’s voice. “I’ll show you.”
There was some softer, lower mumbling. The ladder gave a faint creak. Olive squirmed away from the trapdoor and pressed herself tight against the basement wall, futilely attempting not to think about the things with many legs that might be crawling from the stones into her hair. She held her breath and kept still.
Horatio and Leopold climbed one after the other through the open trapdoor. Neither one seemed to notice the carpet of pale blue light still glowing on the staircase. Olive pushed her shoulder blades against the gravestones of the wall, trying not to move, not even to blink. The two cats padded silently across the basement floor toward the stairs. Then Horatio halted. He turned to stare into the shadows, right where Olive was sitting. Leopold’s eyes swiveled in the same direction. Olive held as still as she had ever held in her life. She pretended that her skin had turned to plastic and that she couldn’t feel the cold against her back, or the itchy grittiness under her palms, or the air that was starting to burn in her lungs. She stared straight back at the cats.
“Does she think that we can’t see her?” Leopold asked Horatio.
“That would be my guess,” said Horatio dryly. “Take a breath, Olive. You look like you’re about to give yourself brain damage.”
Olive took a gulp of air.
“Ordinarily, I would reprimand you for eavesdropping,” Horatio went on, “but as it happens, this is rather convenient. Come with us, Olive. I have something to show both of you.”
Wavering to her feet, Olive followed the two cats up the rickety staircase. Neither of them paid any notice to the ribbon of light, sometimes trotting on its blue path, sometimes darting off of it, as though they didn’t see it at all—and of course, Olive realized, this was because they couldn’t see it. Horatio led the way up the stairs, now and then glancing back to check on the other two. Leopold stayed behind him, right in front of Olive, but he did not turn around. He didn’t speak either.
“What about Harvey?” Olive asked as they stepped through the basement door. “Isn’t he coming?”
“Harvey does not require convincing,” said Horatio, with a short, hard glance at Leopold.
The pathway of light crossed the kitchen and trailed into the hall, just as it had when Olive followed it to the basement. Olive veered away from the path and dug a flashlight from the kitchen drawers, just in case. “You two can see in the dark, but I need some help,” she explained.
Horatio gave an irritated huff before turning and leading the way forward.
They continued along the glowing ribbon of light. Horatio climbed the stairs and turned to the right, trotting past Olive’s bedroom. Olive noticed that the light no longer ended at her bedroom door. Instead, it continued down the hall, lengthening as she tiptoed along its width, almost as though it too, were following Horatio’s silent footsteps.
Moving faster now, Horatio and the ribbon of light raced past the lavender bedroom and the blue bedroom, making for the pink room. A prickly sense of foreboding moved from the tips of Olive’s fingers up the length of her arms.
“Are we going into the attic?” she asked. But the cats didn’t answer.
By the time she reached the painting of the ancient city, the light was already there, glowing in the surface of the canvas. Neither cat offered her his tail. Olive fumbled to put on the spectacles as Horatio gave Leopold a commanding nod, and the black cat leaped through the frame.
“After you, Olive,” Horatio murmured. “I insist.”
Olive plunged through the canvas with Horatio pressed watchfully against her leg, tripping over the bottom of the frame and almost falling face-first through the attic door. The cat raced up the steps into the shadows.
But for the glowing blue ribbon leading her up the stairs, the darkness in the attic was smothering. What little moonlight slipped through the small round window was all that kept the walls from disappearing into solid blackness. Olive flicked on the flashlight, slashing its beam across the room. She gave a little jump when she spotted another light shining back at her, but this turned out to be a reflection from the cluster of mirrors. Still, if Olive’s heart had been beating at high speed before, now it kicked up to a drum roll.
Both cats had darted away into the shadows. Olive hesitated at the top of the stairs, testing the darkness with the flashlight while the rivulet of magical blue light lapped at her bare feet. For a moment, the light seemed to condense, making itself brighter…and then it reached out one radiant blue beam that unrolled across the attic floor like a skein of silk.
Olive followed the path of light as it wound between the attic’s usual oddities—the miniature cannon, the skeletal hat racks—until it stopped beneath the ghostly shape of the cloth-draped easel. There, the light gave a final flare before sinking slowly into darkness.
The flashlight wavered in Olive’s hand. Her racing heart jerked to a halt.
Wait a minute…
The cloth that covered the painting had been moved. Olive was sure of it. Where before it had hung in even ripples all the way to the floor, now it looked slightly lopsided, as though someone had tossed it hurriedly into place. She ventured closer to the easel. Two paintbrushes, their bristles still damp, stuck out from behind the cloth, on the easel’s shelf. A smudge of brown paint stained the fabric—a smudge that Olive was positive hadn’t been there before.
Horatio and Leopold slipped out of the darkness and seated themselves in front of the easel.
“Olive,” Horatio commanded, “uncover the painting.”
Olive gripped the flashlight in her left fist. Her right hand shook as she reached out for the drop cloth. Then, with one quick motion, as though she were pulling off an especially large and bloody bandage, Olive ripped the cloth aside.
Aldous McMartin stared back at her from the easel.
Olive stopped breathing.
It was easy to recognize him. His face had burned itself into her brain when she’d found his photograph in the lavender room’s dresser months ago. Now, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted that very same photograph sitting on the easel’s shelf, removed from its old-fashioned folder and propped amid a collection of brushes and fresh splatters of paint.
With or without the photograph, she would have known that face: that rigid, carved-looking face, with its jutting cheekbones and square jaw and eyes that burned like fires in two deep, dark pits. A pair of arms, now complete, ran down to the long, bony hands that Olive had wrestled for the spellbook. The top of his head was missing, so he had no hair, and one of his shoulders was only a murky outline, but it was clear that this portrait was only a few hours—perhaps less—from completion. And, as Olive stood staring, unable to breathe, the portrait shifted. Aldous McMartin’s burning eyes locked with hers. His fingers, long and bony, twitched on the pages of the open scrapbook. And then he started to smile.
Olive yanked the spectacles off of her face with such force that their ribbon gouged into her neck. She nearly lost her grip on the flashlight, fumbling it so that its beam raced back and forth across the portrait, gleaming on the glossy streaks of fresh paint. Aldous’s eyes seemed to glimmer, as though he was watching her, even now.
“You see, Leopold?” said Horatio’s voice from the darkness behind her. “I told you that she was working against us.”