Inside was an empty schoolroom with two neat rows of desks facing a world map and a globe, and shelves of books on the far wall. “It looks like the schoolroom at the castle,” Talon said, “only huge.”

They leapt to the floor and crossed on foot to the door. Peering out, they saw they were at the end of a corridor, with two more doors facing them. The first room was cluttered with painting easels and lumps of clay in sad replicas of manny heads, and it stank of turpentine. The second room stank too, but the odor wasn’t turpentine. Magpie fluttered up to the top of a cabinet, and Talon climbed up beside her. Grimly they surveyed the room.

On shelves high and low creatures stood and crouched, frozen still, their eyes peeled open but lusterless. There were varmints with their tiny claws outstretched, tails curled, whiskers eerily still. Mice, voles, raccoons. A long row of dull-eyed birds stood upon the highest shelf and below them, a sad little collection of their nests and eggs. Nothing moved. For a moment Magpie thought the creatures were under some enchantment, but then she saw the jars.

They were jars not unlike those in a manny’s pantry, from which she’d once or twice pilfered jelly. But in these were no apricots or honey, only creatures afloat in stinking liquid. Skinks, snakes, tiny frogs. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. So many eyes in the room, and nothing blinked.

“All dead . . . ,” murmured Talon, stunned. Ill from the stink and the horror of it, he quietly took Magpie’s hand. She held it tight.

“It’s a collection,” she whispered, seeing how each dead thing was labeled in neat letters.

“It’s murder,” Talon answered.

They heard muttering at the same moment their eyes fell on the butterflies. Case after case hung on the wall, of butterflies and moths pinned open dead and arranged like art.

And there in their midst was Batch Hangnail.

He stood poised at the edge of a tall cabinet. He seemed to be wearing wings. As Magpie and Talon watched, he brought his hands together, bent his legs, and sprang. It was the imp version of a swan dive, and for a moment he seemed to float, his luna moth wings catching the air, and a pure and nearly beatific look of hope came into his face. The next moment he dropped like a stone and hit the ground cursing.