Touch of Fear ▸ House of Anubis [2]

chapter sixty-three. house of tricks

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            Victor unwraps the handkerchief, spilling its contents onto the table. We only had two amulets—the real ibis and the fake one, and...Alfie just destroyed both of them. We're staring at both broken amulets right now, incredulous and shocked.

            "Like I said," Alfie remarks, "I, uh...I might've got it a bit wrong."

            A bit wrong...is putting things mildly. He destroyed our only chance of getting past that door. We're doomed, all thanks to the Amazing Alfredo who went off-book. He's pointedly ignoring our wide-eyed looks to him.

            Suddenly, Ziestack starts to laugh loudly and actually a little maniacally. As Sweetie joins in on the guffawing, Ziestack says, "Victor, you ruined this poor lad's trick."

            Alfie nervously laughs, hitting Victor on the arm. "You ruined the poor lad's trick."

            "Leave us," Victor commands. Alfie lets out a whimpering sound, running out of the dining room. The adults stay seated, whilst of the rest of Sibuna follows Alfie out, and upstairs to our Sibuna room. Something tells me the room is about to get very loud!

            Alfie shuts the door once we're all inside, and Nina rounds on him and immediately begins scolding him, "Alfie, I can't believe you ruined our only chance at getting through that hidden door."

            "What's the matter, Nina?" Alfie replies. I'm two seconds away from smacking him. "Don't you believe in magic?" Then he rubs his hands together, and then—to our shock—pulls an intact ibis amulet out of his sleeve and puts it around his neck.

            My mouth drops open. He...amulet... it's safe? "But—how—why would you do that to us?!"

            "Well, I couldn't do a standard disappearing trick," Alfie answers. "He'd always assume we had it. I had to make him believe it was destroyed."

            "You didn't think to share?" Patricia retorts.

            "I needed your reactions if he was ever gonna buy it."

            "But—how?" Fabian asks.

            Alfie explains, "Okay, I knew I needed two smashed amulets to fool everyone. So I took the fake amulet, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and put it up my sleeve. I then made a decoy amulet out of clay. I dropped the decoy from my sleeve, picked up Victor's real amulet, placed it into the trick pouch, finally dropped the decoy amulet into the handkerchief, and that's the one I smashed with my shoe.

            "After I showed Victor the broken clay pieces, I just took the real amulet out of the trick pouch and slipped it in my pocket. But I had to make sure Victor saw two broken amulets, so I deliberately dropped our fake amulet on the floor and stamped on it so he couldn't get a closer look at it. But the real one was safe the whole time."

            Oh...my God. Alfie's a genius!

            "Alfie!" Nina exclaims happily, running forward to hug him. But her relieved expression drops immediately. "Guys, the dollhouse." The rest of us turn around to look at it—only to find that it's not in the spot we left it in. The table we've had it on has moved from against the wall to a foot or two forward. Someone moved it. "It's been moved."

            "Someone's been in here," I realize.

            "Are you sure?" Fabian questions.

            Amber states, "Yeah, they're right. Someone's moved it away from the wall."

            Fabian glances at Nina. "Maybe you should lock it up to be on the safe side."

            Nina nods. "Yeah. This is one thing we cannot let Victor get his hands on."

—

            The good news is that we checked on the reflectors we've discovered so far, and both mirror and coin are still safe and sound, as is everything else of Sarah and Lily's. Right now, we're in the lounge at school and we're looking at the complete zodiac again, trying to figure out where the other five are.

            "Okay, so each opposite pair of symbols equals one object," Nina reiterates, pointing at the computer screen. Patricia leans over me to look at the paper sketch. "But that object could be anything or anywhere."

            Patricia enters the room and sits down. "Good, this isn't gonna take long at all."

            "At least there's only seven reflectors."

            "And we already have two of them," I remind everyone.

            "And at least we've got some help," Fabian adds. "Each object will have a falcon symbol on it. So we'll know if we found the right thing."

            "That's if we find them," Amber pipes up, being unnecessarily pessimistic.

            "We have to," Nina tells us, "if we want to get to the Mask first. And look, I think I already know what one of the symbols is. It's a cup bearer." I glance at my sketch before looking back to her, not understanding what she's getting at. "The Cup?"

            "The Cup of Ankh?" I question. Okay, that could make sense. Frobisher could have made it one of his reflectors. "But that's still in the panel in the attic, which is now Vera's room, isn't it?"

            "I didn't say this was gonna be easy."

            Alfie glances at us. "Why can't just one thing be easy?"