Stormy looked behind him, saw only empty hallway. Billingham had never, to his knowledge, failed to come on his father’s order, had never had to be called more than once, and Stormy saw here the present intruding on the past. Whatever had happened to the butler in the House he’d shared with Norton and Mark and Daniel and Laurie, whatever had caused his absence for the past two days, was affecting life in this House, too.

It was a pretty good indication that the butler was dead.

That worried him. Like the others, he had originally believed that the butler and the girl were allies, working together. But though both were intimately and inexorably connected with the Houses, he now saw them as antagonists, opposing forces, and the idea that the butler was dead, that the girl was now free to do as she chose, with no one to stop her, frightened him to the core.

A door opened in the hallway behind him, and Stormy turned to look, hoping and praying for it to be Billingham, but it was his grandmother who emerged from one of the bathrooms, hobbling out with the assistance of a bone-handled cane.

“Hi, Grandma,” he said, but the old lady ignored him, turned the other direction, walked away.

“Billingham!” his father bellowed again.

Facing forward, Stormy glanced around the study. He had seldom been asked in here as a child, and he had always been too afraid of his father to take the initiative and enter on his own, so his memories of the room were hazy. One whole wall, he saw now, was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A big picture window on the opposite wall looked out onto the back garden. There was a desk and a pair of identical leather chairs. Two dark wood filing cabinets. A potted palm.

And a doll.

Stormy’s breath caught in his throat. It was lying on the floor directly behind his father, as though his father had dropped it there. The face was upside down, but the wide white eyes seemed to be staring into his, the disturbing inverted smile trained directly on him. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen the figure immediately, and the thought occurred to him that his father had been holding it behind his back, hiding it.

He met his father’s eyes, and the old man looked quickly and guiltily away.