House of Anubis: House of Mistakes

Part XIX

Eddie pushed past the rest of Sibuna when they got back to the house, darting into the living room. "Hurry up. Let's find those lines. If you're right," he said, jabbing a finger in Fabian's direction, "the artifact should be in this room."

"Yeah?" said Alfie skeptically as he gave the room he'd only been in about a million times a cursory look. "And what if he's wrong? We already searched the place top to bottom last year and didn't find anything."

"We found spiders," Fabian said distractedly. "Big metal ones."

"But not a staff, dude!" Alfie replied.

Patricia rolled her eyes at their bickering, leaning out the door to peek up the stairs where she knew Victor was sitting in his office. She frowned. If we aren't careful...

"In the parlor!" Fabian said sharply, pointedly ignoring Alfie's pessimism and recapturing Patricia's attention. "Lines will lead...look for lines, I guess." They fanned out, beginning their search—futile as it may have seemed—for anything that stood out. Nothing did. Fabian huffed, running a hand through his dark hair, leaving it sticking up in several places. "There are lines everywhere!" he exclaimed, stating the obvious. He whirled around, eyes scanning the place with a laser focus before they stopped on the globe in an alcove of the room.

"Lines of latitude?" he asked, mostly to himself, but Alfie shrugged, falling in behind Fabian.

"Directions on a map," he chimed in. "That's a thing, right?"

Fabian made a beeline for it. "It is now."

Eddie beat Fabian there and tried to lift it up; it didn't budge. "Who the hell nailed this to the floor?" He grunted, trying again.

Alfie shrugged. "Jerome's great grandfather, probably."

Eddie tried valiantly not to mock him, finally giving up on attempting to move it. Fabian moved in and gave it a little spin as he crouched down, eyes scanning over the globe in a search for anything at all.

Eddie stepped back a few paces and stood beside Patricia, bumping her shoulder a little bit. She stayed perfectly still, as though he were a wasp that if startled too badly might sting her.

"Wait," Fabian said, and the other three perked up. "Egypt..." He twisted the orb around until Egypt lined up with some internal mechanism with an audible click inside the globe. They all watched breathlessly while Fabian lifted the top half up on its hinges to reveal...a whole lot of cobwebs and what looked like maybe scotch in glass jugs. Alfie caught Patricia's gaze and wiggling his eyebrows at the sight, to which Patricia—despite her apprehension—rolled her eyes. Fabian clearly noticed something the rest of them didn't, as he carefully extracted a long black and gold object from a cloud of dust in the depths of the globe. He lifted it slowly, and the afternoon light glinted dangerously on the reflective surface of the metal gilding.

Patricia was a little awestruck, but snapped out of it when she felt warm breath by her ear.

"I'll be right back, okay, Yacker?" Eddie whispered, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see he never once took his gaze from the artifact.

"Er, yeah," she whispered back, and he slipped away, unnoticed by neither Fabian nor Alfie.

She waited for a moment till she was sure he was out of earshot, wherever he'd gone off to, before she rushed into Fabian and Alfie's space. "Okay, I don't mean to alarm you," she hissed, still wary that anyone might be listening in, "but KT is not the traitor; Eddie is."

Both of them went stiff, and Alfie looked at her with wide eyes. "What?" he shrieked, and Patricia shushed him with a smack on the arm.

"Why do you say that?" Fabian asked, expression grave.

She hesitated; this was the hard part. "It's...well, it's complicated," she began, backing up and taking a seat on the couch. Alfie followed her, while Fabian shut the globe and awkwardly tucked the artifact into his blazer. "Last night, I had a dream—"

"You're basing this on a dream?" Alfie interrupted. "Trix, I know how bad nightmares can get, but it doesn't make them real."

"It was!" she snapped, tone pleading. "I've been having these feelings and nightmares for a while now, and I know it sounds crazy, but it's not. I'm not crazy."

Fabian looked like he wanted to say something, but she wasn't done yet. "I saw it happen through his own eyes, the way he tried to drag KT off. I saw him do it, and KT has the same marks as where I saw him hold her." Fabian shushed her, and Patricia realized she'd raised her voice. "Do you honestly think I'd be saying this if I wasn't certain? KT is innocent, and she's right. If we don't do something, Eddie is done for." She couldn't read either of their expressions very well, and she tried not to get frustrated when Fabian placed an attempt at a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I've never begged for anything in my life, but I'm begging you both right now: trust me. Eddie is the Sinner, not KT. I know it doesn't make sense, I know I'm not some Chosen One with magic powers and visions of the future, but I'm not crazy."

"No, you're not crazy," said Eddie from the doorway, and Patricia tensed, twisting in her seat and feeling sick to her stomach at the sight of the perfectly crafted expression of sadness and grim determination on his face. It would have had her fooled if she didn't know any better. "You're one of them."