“Tut, tut, tut!” Arthur-Grayson shook his head disapprovingly. “Pictures can’t speak. But it’s always nice to work with someone whose imagination is even livelier than mine.”
He put a broad gilt frame around me and hung me on the wall beside the door, all without leaving his station by the window. The whole thing had happened very quickly, and Mia hadn’t even glanced at me. In fact, she didn’t seem to have noticed me coming in.
“Hmm.” Arthur looked at me through Grayson’s caramel-colored eyes. “Very pretty. What shall we call it? Girl in Fear? Or no, I know: Girl, Defeated. Oil on canvas. Terrific.”
I am not a picture. Blood flows through my veins. This is only a dream, and I can be whatever I like. I am not a picture.
But I was a picture, defeated and unable to move, condemned to listen as Arthur turned back to Mia.
“Did you know that one floor higher in this house there’s a secret room?” he asked in flattering tones. “The previous owners of the house left some really strange things there. I can’t make heads or tails of them.”
Mia immediately looked fascinated. “Can I have a look?” she asked, moving as if to get out of bed.
“Careful,” said Grayson, pointing to her leg. “You’ll have to undo that first, or you’ll wake Liv.…”
“Oh yes, so I will.” Mia looked doubtfully at the sleeping Liv. “But I’m sure she’d really like to see that room as well. Why don’t we tell her about it?”
“We could,” said Arthur-Grayson, casting a brief, mocking glance at me. “But she looks exhausted. Maybe we’d better let her sleep and show her later. Then you’ll be the first to see all the clues.…”
Oh heavens. He’d really gotten to know Mia in her dreams.
“That’s true.” Mia began undoing the knots in the rope around her ankle, and I didn’t for a moment doubt that she was doing the same in reality, only with her blank, sleepwalking look, so that in effect she was blind. I had tied two reef knots, one above the other, but it took Mia only a couple of seconds to free herself.
Which meant that in real life we were no longer tied together, and I wouldn’t be woken by a rope pulling at my leg. Arthur could easily entice Mia upstairs.
Why in hell didn’t that alarm clock go off? My sense of time told me that far more than an hour had passed, but maybe I was wrong about that too?
I tried hypnotizing the clock face with my painted eyes, but that was a bad mistake, because Arthur noticed me looking at it. “Wait a minute, Mia,” he said. “You’d better turn the alarm off, or it will rouse the whole household.”
“Oh, okay.” Mia made her way back to the bed and picked up the alarm clock. Arthur gave me a mocking smile. He really had thought of everything.
“Come along,” Mia said impatiently to Arthur-Grayson. He stood there enjoying the expression on my face for a moment longer, then winked at me and followed Mia through the door and out into the corridor.
As I tried to free myself from his spell—I’m the only one with control over myself, I thought, I’m the only one who decides what I am, and I am not some damn oil painting—I was doing my utmost to persuade myself that they wouldn’t get far. After all, there were other people in the house, and surely one of them would hear if Mia, walking in her sleep, trod on the loose floorboard that sounded like Aunt Getrude after eating bean soup? Or Spot would get in her way. Or Florence would be going to the bathroom and see her.…
I was still trying with all my might to wake from the dream, and a wave of self-hatred broke over me. What kind of a sister was I? I’d gone far too long without taking this situation seriously. Grayson had warned me, but I hadn’t listened to him. Instead I’d wandered around the dream corridors, deciphering Senator Tod’s silly anagrams and practicing being a breath of air. I ought to have used my time more sensibly, damn it all, I ought to have practiced waking from a dream anytime I liked, I ought to have found out how to defend myself if someone tried turning me into an icicle or an oil painting.
I ought to have been prepared for Arthur.
Girl, Defeated. Oil on canvas, I heard him saying.
And then I suddenly realized that he had said that to me on purpose. He didn’t merely want to hurt me, no, his words had another purpose. The more I doubted myself, the safer it all was for him. He’d almost done it, at that. I was wasting my energy, wallowing in self-pity as I hung here helpless on the wall. But it all depended on me.
I had to concentrate on my anger—my incredible anger with Arthur and what he was planning to do to my little sister. It felt like a glowing red ball inside me, getting larger and larger the more I focused on Arthur and my own fury, and at almost the same moment, the gilt peeled away from the picture frame as it broke in two. I was free again.
I ran into the corridor, only to collide with Arthur standing at the foot of the stairs in the form of Grayson. It looked very much as if he was waiting for me there.
Mia was nowhere to be seen. I called her name, but there was no reply.