Touch of Fear ▸ House of Anubis [2]

chapter seventy-one. house of forgeries

☾ ☽

            After sleeping on everything we learned last night and the night before, Sibuna plus Jerome are due to meet in Frobisher Library to talk to Jasper together. Alfie and Jerome arrive last, the former stating, "I had a terrible dream last night where Vera was a double-agent, Rufus was a kidnapper, people are out to get Ashley, and Fabian's godfather is a mole."

            Amber looks at Patricia confused. Patricia tells her, "A different kind of mole, Ams."

            "I wish I could say it was all a dream," Nina remarks.

            Jasper, just the man we need to talk to, surveys us as he comes over. "Oh, grim faces. Well, what can I do for you?"

            "Well, first you can grovel," Amber replies. "Then you can help us get Trudy and our dollhouse back."

            Upon realizing we know everything, Jasper sighs and looks toward the person who told us. "You shouldn't have told them, Jerome."

            "He wouldn't have had to," Fabian counters quietly, "if you'd been honest with me."

            "I didn't want to put you in danger. Trudy got too involved, and look what's happened to her. I was trying to keep you safe."

            Alfie scoffs. "Safe, shmafe. We're gonna bust her out, aren't we?"

            "Look, Jasper," I add, "we know Rufus. We kind of go way back, as in he knew my great-grandmother Lily Henry." He glances at me, a sudden wary look in his eye. "Yeah, remember me? Future kidnap victim if Rufus gets his way. He's pure evil."

            "Which is why we need your help," Fabian states. Jasper looks reluctant. "Well, you're going to help us, aren't you, Jasper?"

            Jasper pauses before answering, "Everyone has an Achilles heel, and the Collector's is antiquities." Rufus is going by the Collector? "The one thing he wants more than anything, or anyone," he glances at me again, "else is the Mask of Anubis."

            "Yeah, well, you can tell him to get in line," Amber retorts.

            "No, but if Jasper tells him he has the Mask of Anubis," Fabian theorizes, "then he'll want to go and meet him. And then while he's gone, we can rescue Trudy."

            "Great plan," Patricia says, "tiny flaw."

            "What?"

            "We don't have the Mask."

            Except there's something we can use to patch that flaw up, and Nina's walking straight toward it. The replica Louisa Frobisher-Smythe made. "But Rufus doesn't know that," she says.