Page 72 of If Anything Happens To Me

“You were just pretending to help us,” I said. I remembered him on his phone—he must have been texting Fitch our location. It was why he immediately suggested meeting up with him. “You drove me and Iris all around. You were just having fun, waiting to deliver us to Fitch.”

“The point,” Fitch said, interrupting me, “is that you are right where you belong, Oli. You and Hayley. And my disloyal sister.”

“Where’s Iris now?” I asked him.

“What have you done to her?” Hayley asked.

“Don’t worry,” Fitch said. “I’ll find her.”

What did that mean? He didn’t have her?

“Anyway, I’ll give you time to think about things, but we’ll be back very shortly,” Fitch said. He gestured at Matt. “Come on, let’s go.”

Matt nodded. His eyes bored into mine, and for just a split second, he glanced down at the rope bracelet on my wrist: the Turk’s head, our sailor’s knot. Then he turned away and headed downstairs, with Fitch right behind him.

After Matt walked out, I felt like a zombie.

No one had any energy left. Hayley sat at the card table, staring at the puzzle, not even trying to fit the jigsaw together. Abigail sat on the edge of her bed, staring straight ahead. Her arms were wrapped around herself, as if trying to hold her whole spirit together. Talk about the Sword of Damocles: It was over our heads, swinging lower.

It sliced away our hope: hope for rescue, for getting out of there. For me, the main hope I’d lost was that I had meant something to Matt, that I had been wrong about him and he was nothing like Fitch. I wasn’t going to let a broken heart defeat me. I had until they returned to come up with a new solution.

The old dilemma was still there: We had to knock out the camera feed before we could break the window and head down to the street, and the ceiling was still twelve feet high. The stuffed birds hung down twenty inches or so, but that still left them way too high off the floor for us to reach.

And it wasn’t as if Fitch had left a ladder to make things easy for us.

I felt a combination of galvanized, discouraged, determined, and apprehensive. I knew I’d hear footsteps on the stairs before long, and that might be the end of us. I didn’t know for sure what Fitch had in mind for us, but I was positive it couldn’t be good.

I found myself standing in front of the panels. The Sibylline sisters had left clues for us all along, I realized. They had triggered Iris’s memory, told her where to look for Hayley. In a way, they were where it had all started: the first sisters known to have the family malady. I hadn’t spent any time with the panels—with the oracle sisters—since Fitch had drugged and hauled me into the attic.

Each of the three panels was a rectangle made of wood—about six feet tall, three feet wide—with the surface painted in oils. From a distance, the sisters looked similar: tall, slender, standing in a classical pose reminiscent of ancient columns, wearing identical pleated white dresses that fell to their ankles.

But up close, the sisters’ features were different. Circe and Athena bore a family resemblance—they had the same golden-red hair as Minerva did, and Daphne had her dark hair. I noticed that all three sisters were wearing necklaces—fine gold chains with a charm attached.

When I leaned closer to see what was etched in the gold, I saw, to my shock, that the jewelry was real, not painted onto the wood—the chains were attached to the panels with delicate silver wires, and the charms dangled freely.

I couldn’t believe it: The charms were exactly the same as the ones Minerva made at her shop—gold, set with tiny diamonds. And just like the one I had found at the grave site in the Braided Woods. I reached out to hold the disc on Athena’s necklace in my hand, and I saw that Athena’s exact features had been etched into the delicate circle of gold.

Then I peered at the other two charms. Each one contained a portrait that resembled, exactly, the girl who was wearing it. The craftsmanship was brilliant and uncanny.

“Abigail,” I said, beckoning her over. I pointed at the three necklaces.

“Just like the ones my cousin makes!” she said, coming to stand beside me. “They’re exactly like Minerva’s.”

“That’s how they look to me, too,” I said. “But is there any way to tell how old they are? Were the charms made when the panels were painted?”

“Well, there are some scratches in the gold, so that could mean they’re old. But they look exactly like the ones Minerva makes so . . . I don’t know.”

“Abigail, does Minerva ever come here, to the attic?” I asked.

Abigail looked upset. “He brought her here once. To do a test on her. She didn’t like it.”

“I know, it hurt, she told me. But I mean, does she come here other times? Does she know what’s going on, with what Fitch did to my sister?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Abigail said. “I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one in the family who knows.” She looked troubled, filled with shame. “And I’ve stayed quiet. I haven’t told. Oli, thank you for even talking to me. For asking me about these necklaces. You must hate me.”

“I know it’s complicated for you,” I said. “I get that you love Fitch. It must be hard to see him this way. And you’re helping us now. So thank you.”

She nodded, her expression lightening a little.

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