Claire held her breath as the footsteps passed by. It was too soon for relief, but she hoped that maybe, just possibly, she was going to get out of this. She stood up but stayed crouched as she hooked a finger in the back of a boot, ready to take them off. There was still enough time. If she ran, she could make it to the narrowboat Kleo had arranged for her. There, she could figure out her next steps—and try to figure out what had happened to the real Love Knot Tine.

The closet door cracked open, and light fell on her. Claire looked up from the boots to see Thorn’s eyes widen. “It is you,” he gasped. “How—?”

But Claire didn’t hear the rest of his sentence.

She’d already taken a step.

Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER

13

Once, not so very long ago, shortly after the Martinson family arrived at Windemere Manor, Dad had pulled out the cleaning sprays and Mom had tossed the girls a few rags. Before all Aunt Diana’s treasures and artifacts could be organized and packed up for the estate sale at the end of summer, the mansion itself needed a good scrub.

Carpets were rolled up and suds splashed out of buckets as the family tackled the grime. But it wasn’t too long before sponges and rags lay abandoned on the windowsills while Sophie and Claire, socks on their feet, took turns running and skidding down the long corridor.

“I’m practicing for the Olympics!” Sophie had called as she’d swooshed past their disapproving parents.

“We’re drying the floors!” Claire had added in the split second before she’d crashed into an old pirate’s chest.

That’s what the Seven League Boots felt like, as if that split second of pitching forward had been extended into an eternity.

One second, Claire was in the shoe closet, and in the next, the world was yanked out from beneath her, sending her toppling forward, past Thorn and through the door—and straight toward the stone wall of the Historium.

Claire threw out a hand. Maybe if she hit the blocks just right, the stone would—she wasn’t sure—turn soft? Become sand? Or, more likely, she thought to herself, her finger bones would be the first to shatter, the sound of their snapping a prelude to the crunching of her ribs, and spine, and skull.

She didn’t want the last image she saw to be of the Spinners’ Historium, so Claire squeezed her eyes shut and let her memory flash backward to Sophie, leaning over to help her up from the floor while Mom and Dad flicked soapy water at them, sending bits of white foam high into the air.

“Not fair!” Sophie had shrieked as she raced outside and onto the manor’s sprawling yard. “You’re taller than us!”