“Which way?” asked Rufus.

Jason blinked, concentrating on Cal’s camera. A moment later, he stood and walked toward a doorway at the gallery’s far wall.

Lou stood too, holding out her arm. “He wants us to go this way.”

Rufus smiled. He raised his eyebrows, and his face changed slightly. He wore a glimmer of excitement. “Tell your brother: It’s time to Sneak.”

CHAPTER 32

JASON CREPT THROUGH countless open doorways, and Lou followed silently with Rufus at her side, as if they were all tethered together.

Rufus moved with spy-like skill. If Jason didn’t turn back every few steps, he might have thought that the boy had left him and his sister to wander the house alone. He wondered if the house, or the creature, or whatever was in charge here, could sense him like his sister could.

They reached an archway off a long hall that opened onto a balcony. Connie’s father must have gazed at constellations out here, gathering inspiration for his landscape paintings. The Observatory. An antique telescope was pointed toward what should have been star-spangled heavens. Instead it stared out a blackness one might discover in the depths of a fathomless cave.

Lou and Rufus peered at the iron cage that was bolted to a dark corner on the floor.

Inside the cage was an accordion camera—the one that Cal had found in the woods of Greencliffe.

“Shoot,” whispered Rufus. “How are we supposed to get it out of there?”

“We’re not,” Lou answered. She grabbed the telescope and folded up the tripod, then pushed the legs between the bars of the cage. Using all of her strength, she jabbed the tripod into the cage, smashing into the camera. It felt like she was killing something. Her arm shook. The balcony shivered. Lou hit the camera over and over until it was nothing but a small pile of broken glass and crumpled metal. If Cal were still at Larkspur—and Lou was pretty sure he wasn’t—now would have been when he would have vanished.

Instead, the building echoed the smashing of the camera with a destruction all its own. A crack raced across the doorway back inside, and the balcony floor tilted away from the house.

Rufus leapt across the gap and then reached back for Lou, grasping her forearms just before she lost her balance. The balcony fell away into the darkness as Lou slammed against the wall just below the doorway. Rufus grunted and groaned, pulling her up to safety.

As she scrambled to stand up, she found that a gray patch had already spread out underneath her feet and was racing ahead of them into the hallway. The floor felt soft, as if it might crumble away at any moment.

Lou clutched Rufus’s hand, and together they dashed at the advancing line of decay, hopping over it and continuing on toward the final cursed objects.