What Lies Beneath ▸ House of Anubis [1]

chapter forty-two. house of masks

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Nina didn't show up for class at all, but after Fabian, Patricia, and I told Alfie what was really going on—well, enough to stop him from attacking any more teachers the way he did Mrs. Andrews—we agreed that we had to find her and tell her what we did. I think she'll be upset that we didn't talk to her about it, but she wasn't even answering her phone and we had to put a stop to it somehow. Hopefully she understands why.

"Hey," I greet her as Patricia, Fabian, and I walk into our room, where she's sitting on her bed, "find whatever you went looking for today?"

"Not exactly," Nina answers, "but I did find this in the attic."

She hands Fabian an old newspaper clipping. I look over Fabian's shoulder to read it, immediately met with the headline BOARDING SCHOOL FOUNDED ON ANUBIS ESTATE. It's accompanied by a large grainy photograph of four figures, two women and two men. The two men? Victor Rodenmaar Junior (this confirmed in the article) and Rufus Zeno. And the two women? The article identifies them as Sarah Frobisher-Smythe and Lily Henry.

It's easy to notice that Victor and Rufus haven't aged a day. And it's easy to identify Sarah, because she had brunette hair. But the other woman has light-colored hair. And crystal blue eyes. I can't tell that in this greyscale photograph, but I know because I've seen her before. The woman in the dream I had that told me to find the girl with the eye. This is her.

This is Lily Henry. My great-grandmother.

"Whoa," Fabian remarks.

"This photo was actually taken in 1960?" Patricia questions as she takes the clipping and sits on Nina's bed. 1960? Wow. Nina nods. "Rufus and Victor have hardly changed."

"Yeah, and Sarah's aged normally," Nina replies. "I know."

Fabian glances at it again. "Who's the other woman?"

"It's Lily Henry," I answer immediately, blinking as I sit next to Patricia. "1960—that's just a couple of years before she died. She...founded the school with the rest of them? Victor founded the school?"

"Ashley, she looks just like you," Patricia comments, holding up the clipping so they all can see. Fabian and Nina look between me and her to confirm. I saw it the night she appeared in my dream. I remember thinking it was like looking in a mirror and seeing my future self. "Just older. It's eery!"

Fabian says, "So, does this mean the elixir—"

"—really does exist after all?" Nina finishes. "Yeah. Looks like it does."

"And Victor's not the only one taking it," I point out. Rufus and Victor—in a photograph together from 1960, which uses their names, and if they were really the age they looked, they would've barely been alive in 1960. Or at all. How old are they, really? "Rufus is, too."