I drop down behind the wall just as he begins to turn in my direction. My lungs burn, but I hold my breath so that I don’t make a sound. Suddenly I can’t remember: Did I tuck the final, losing Star back into my pocket or is it lying uselessly on the floor of my room?
I must have hidden myself just in time. Stefen’s voice turns back in the other direction, away from where I’m crouching. I scoot closer to the wall, running my fingers soundlessly over it until I find a peephole.
I peer through it and will myself to come up with a plan for what to do next.
“Matilda,” Stefen says softly. “Malcolm.” His voice turns hard. “I’m going to ask you one more time, with an added incentive to cooperate.” He gestures to the Variants in his hand. They are slate-colored ones I don’t recognize. But I watch as Will freezes at the sight of them. “There’s no need to threaten anyone, Stefen,” Dr. Cliffton says. A faint glisten of sweat appears on his forehead. His glasses have ridden down the slope of his nose. “Now, I’m going to ask you to leave my property before I call the police.”
My fingers fumble in my pocket for the Star, and my heart sinks. I feel nothing but fabric. I want to scream.
Where is Miles?
“Of course,” Stefen says to Dr. Cliffton. “I understand.” He closes his hand over the slate-colored Variants and returns his hand to his pocket. How odd, to see the flashes of Mother in him when he turns his face in profile—?features that always meant softness and protection in her, now jagged and distorted on his face. For a second it seems that he’s going to leave. That maybe it’s all going to be that easy.
But then he turns back around. Whips his hand out of his pocket again, and before I can even cry out, he’s thrown a shower of Variants into the air.
They hit Mrs. Cliffton straight in the face.
“Matilda!” Dr. Cliffton yells, and the sound of her name echoes, and I think numbly, She can’t even hear him.
Mrs. Cliffton blinks several times. Her eyes turn glassy, as if she’s just wakened from a deep sleep and she’s still caught somewhere between waking and dreaming.
Oh, I realize. The slate-colored dust. Hypnosis Variants.
“Matilda!” Dr. Cliffton charges toward Stefen, giving Will a hard shove. “Will, run! Go!”
But Will doesn’t run. He regains his balance and bolts toward Stefen, just behind his father.
Stefen is too quick for either of them.
He throws another blast of slate-colored Variants over Dr. Cliffton and Will as if he were casting a net. Will stops running. The dark blue of his eyes lightens and then becomes blank. Something inside of me slips, like an anchor coming unmoored.
“Stay there and be still,” Stefen directs Dr. Cliffton and William, and they instantly obey. I am frozen in place, watching in horror. I cover my mouth so that I won’t make a sound.
Where is Miles? I could sob with relief when my fingers feel a prick, sharp enough to draw blood. It is the beautiful, saving point of my Star, coming out of its binding. My heart leaps as my hand closes around it.
I’ll kill him myself before he gets to Miles.
“Malcolm,” Stefen asks. “Tell me now. Where is the girl?”
He answers immediately in a monotone voice: “The Mackelroys’ house.” I draw in a sharp breath.
“And do either of the children have the Helena Stone in their possession?”
Dr. Cliffton blinks. “I do not know what that is.”
The Helena Stone? I fumble with the ring, feeling the metal under my clothes lying hot on my breastbone. Why is Stefen so desperate to have this? It has to be more than a simple trinket if he is willing to go this far to get it.
Which means I have to make sure that he never does.
“Never mind,” Stefen says with impatience. “Victor, where is the Mackelroy house?”
“I’ll show you,” a second voice says. A man steps from the shadows.
It’s Victor Larkin.
I have to hide my mother’s ring. And suddenly my thoughts clear, and I know exactly where to put it. I have to find Miles’s perfect hiding spot, where it lay for months. I begin frantically feeling along the wall for the shelf. Terror scrapes down my spine like the serrated edges of a knife as I fumble along the stones with my fingers. I feel a break, but when I reach my hand inside, it is too shallow. My pulse throbs as I keep looking.
It’s been a minute, maybe more, when my blood suddenly chills. I know, instinctively, that it’s been silent beyond the wall for much too long.
I scramble back to my peephole.
They must have asked William a question, and I couldn’t hear his answer.
The Clifftons are standing in a row, as still as dolls.
And they’ve all turned to stare straight at my hiding place.
“Hello at last, Aila,” Stefen says softly.
He is standing right behind me.
I pivot and scream, scrambling away from the new handful of the Variants he’s drawn from his pocket. He advances on me, and I stumble when I catch a glimpse of his left ear.
One final horror for me to find.
There’s a knot at the tip, in an exact mirror of my own.
It’s the last thing I see before he covers me with the Hypnosis Variants, and they fall around me like flakes of ash, and I know, then, that he has won.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“Did she see me here?” Larkin growls. “No one was supposed to see me here.”
“After tonight it won’t matter what she’s seen and what she hasn’t,” I mutter.
I try to hide the shudder whenever I glimpse Aila’s face. The same gray eyes, pointed chin, dark auburn hair. It is like Juliet, back in time.
As soon as her eyes glaze, I order her to join the others. She doesn’t move quite as quickly as the Clifftons had. “Go!” I bark at her. She takes her place at the end of the line, and I examine her hands. She is the spitting image of Juliet, except for the finger where she always wore the ring.
It isn’t there.
I curse. Something red starts beating behind my right eye.
“Where is the Helena Stone?” I shake her so hard that her head snaps back. “Where is the ring your mother always wore?”
I almost think I see a flicker of something in her eyes, but that’s impossible. She swallows and answers in a monotone voice, “Father has it. He’s at war.”
I resist the urge to scream.
But—?I tell myself—?at least if the Stone is far from here, then it can’t end the Curse. I blink away the red and am trying to decide what to do next when a light suddenly flips on in the kitchen.
I scramble for my last pouch of Hypnosis Variants. Pour them into my cupped hand, ready to throw, and drop the emptied pouch in the grass. I turn to welcome our final player.
“Mrs. Cliffton?” a young boy’s voice calls out, cracking with fear as he opens the back door. “I think there’s something wrong with Genevie—” He sees us and stops short.
I stare at him. If Aila is Juliet, then this child is me.
“Miles,” I say quietly, “come here,” but his eyes suddenly go wide. He’s seen something behind me, and I instinctively flinch. Turn just in time to see a hurtling flash of silver.
I bring my hands up to shield my face, straight into the path of something sharp. The razor edges of a Star bite through my hand.