“Where is she, Arthur?”
“Shhh!” Arthur put a finger to Grayson’s lips. With his other hand, he pointed to the ceiling. “Not so loud, she’s up there with Lottie. I can only hope your au pair really does spend every night with earplugs in her ears and a sleep mask on her face.”
“What have you—” I broke off. It was useless to ask him questions. I knew better than that.
A deep, angry growl escaped my throat. I was a jaguar, and I crouched to spring, ready to tear Arthur to pieces with my sharp claws and my huge fangs. Even as I leaped, I saw the surprise in his eyes. He hadn’t expected that, but he reacted at lightning speed. I bounced off an invisible wall that he had set up at the entrance to the staircase with a blink of his eyes. It was like the energy field that Henry had placed between us and Senator Tod the other day.
As I ran into it again, some kind of electric shock threw me a few yards back.
Arthur laughed, and for a moment he was no longer Grayson but entirely himself. “Give up, Liv,” he said as he ran upstairs. “You’re not good enough to outwit me.”
I hissed.
No, no, and no again. I wouldn’t allow myself even to think of failing. I mustn’t let his imagination determine what I did. He had only as much power over me as I would grant him. As long as I believed that his energy fields were impenetrable, they would be. And he’d already disappeared at the top of the stairs. Who was to say whether he could set up another energy field there?
I didn’t stop to try out the invisible wall in front of me. I strained all my muscles and sprang. This time it felt as if I were running into rubber, and for a moment I thought I would be thrown back again, but then it was like plunging into a thick, viscous mass that took my breath away. Half jaguar, half human, I struck out with my arms. My lungs were burning, but I wouldn’t stop—I must do it, I must save Mia! With a slight plop like suction, the wall let me through, and I landed on the first step of the stairs. Gasping, I filled my lungs with air before scrambling to my feet and running on up the stairs as fast as I could go.
Lottie’s bedroom door was open, and Lottie herself was lying in bed, wearing her flowered sleep mask. Her arm was dangling over the side of the bed and down to the floor, where Buttercup was sleeping curled up on a blanket. The scene would look something like this in reality, too, but I hoped that in real life Buttercup would wake and rouse the whole house.
In Mia’s dream, Lottie and the dog were both snoring peacefully, while Mia made her way past them, not exactly quietly, and Arthur—back in the form of Grayson—almost trod on Buttercup’s tail.
I was about to follow them, but once again I came up against an invisible wall.
“Sorry, no cats allowed in,” said Arthur, although I wasn’t a jaguar now, I was myself again. Obviously he had just been waiting for me to appear. “However, you’re welcome to watch what happens to your sister. We’ve nearly reached that part of the show.”
“Mia!” I shouted—no, I screeched it, for Mia was walking purposefully toward the window. “Don’t listen to him. He’s lying to you. You mustn’t do as he says. You must wake up! It’s a trap!”
Arthur cupped a hand behind his ear. “Sorry, Liv, I’m afraid no one can hear you. And I’ve never learned to lip-read, but I assume you’re shouting ‘Don’t do it, Mia,’ or something like that.” He laughed again, and in defiance of all reason, I threw myself against the invisible wall that seemed to swallow up my voice, only to fail once more. Maybe I’d wake from the dream when the pain was bad enough.
“Look, there it is. The secret room.” Arthur went over to Mia. His voice was gentle again. “You only have to climb through the window and you’ll be in it.”
Sure enough, if you looked through the window you didn’t see the night sky above the roof of the house next door, but another dimly lit room with unplastered brick walls, containing old chests of drawers that looked as if they had all kinds of secret compartments in them.
“Wow, crazy!” said Mia, and she couldn’t disguise the enthusiasm in her voice. “To think I never noticed it before!”
Arthur-Grayson shrugged his shoulders and cast me a mischievous look over his shoulder. “I expect the blinds were always down.”
“Hmm, yes,” said Mia, who obviously didn’t take logic seriously in her dreams. Although I knew it was no use, I shouted her name again.
Arthur shook his head. “Liv, lots of people have survived jumping out of third-floor windows,” he said gently. “Well, maybe not lots, but I’m sure that one or two have.…”