“I don’t think we can leave it all up to him, no matter what he said. It’s hard to trust anyone in this house. We must learn the truth ourselves.”

Something clicked inside Jason’s mind. “Part of the house fell apart after Sadie smashed her ukulele. Then she said she saw her bedroom. She thought she was going home. And then she disappeared.” Connie straightened her spine and nodded. “Maybe … Maybe the other marked objects are located in the dollhouse too. If the group smashes them like Sadie’s ukulele, maybe the house will release them too!”

Connie held her hands in front of her apron and gave him a satisfied smile. “I like how you think, Jason Benjamin. If we can locate the rest of the objects, we can point the kids in the right direction.”

Jason nodded. “So … we look through the dollhouse. And when we find what we’re looking for, we find a way to contact the group again. We tell them where to go and what to do.”

“It’ll be harder this time,” said Connie.

“Harder? Why?”

She nodded at the black mirror across the room. “It knows we’re here. It knows my tricks. If we need a reflection to communicate with them, the house will do everything it can to make that impossible.”

“So … no more mirror portals?”

“We’ve got to be clever.” Glancing around the room, she looked worried that even the air might be listening to them. “Follow me.” She took Jason’s hand and brought him outside again.

All this growing and shrinking was making him dizzy.

Connie unlatched the clasp at the dollhouse’s roofline and swung it open. The group of kids were on the first level of the house, heading down a hallway that led to a cavernous room Jason hadn’t seen before. But they were frozen, like the last time he’d opened the dollhouse. And Marcus was with them again, his curly red hair made of yarn and sprouting out of a cotton-sack head.

“Okay,” said Connie. “The ukulele’s cage was inside the music room. If the other objects follow that logic, we should be looking in places where the object typically belongs.”

“Right,” said Jason. “We’ve got to find …” He paused, unable to remember.

Connie pointed at the dollhouse. “Well, here’s Lou’s object.”

Jason flinched. “Oh, right. But we can’t smash it to pieces while they’re all still inside. Can we?”

“I think not.” She went on, “Then there’s Cal’s camera. Nina’s cloak. Rufus’s sketchbook.”

“What about Marcus?”

“Marcus didn’t come to Larkspur with an object,” said Connie. “None of his group did.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jason sighed. “But then … how do we get him out of Larkspur?”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” said Connie.

CHAPTER 26

IN THE BALLROOM, the kids paused to regroup.