Touch of Fear ▸ House of Anubis [2]

chapter seventy-six. house of illusions

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            "Eddie!"

            Patricia runs toward him, knocking him over just before the statues took off his head.

            "Hey!" Eddie exclaims, sitting up on the ground. He's safe. Still down here, but at least he's still got his head.

            "You were about to lose your head!" Patricia retorts, and then backtracks, "I—I mean bang your head. Low ceilings." The red eyes on the statues disappear.

            "Thanks, I guess? Well, this is cozy," he remarks, reaching for the blindfold.

            Patricia grabs his hand and stops him. "No, you can't take that off yet. I'm not ready. I'm...flossing." I mouth the word at Amber. That's such a weird excuse, even for this kind of a situation. "Anyway, there's somewhere else I need to take you, so let's go." She starts to help him up and we back out of their way. "Watch out, low ceilings."

            "Right, right, right," Eddie says as they duck under the swords. "You're acting weirder than normal. You know that, right?"

            The second they're both down the secret tunnel, the rest of us duck under the Anubis statues' sabers, checking out the next room. Please let the Mask of Anubis be in here... "Whoa," Alfie comments, because there are four more statues inside, along with some kind of fancy chair. Like a throne or something facing the statues.

            "So this is the chamber of the Mask?" Fabian asks. "And the Mask is..."

            "Not here," I realize, looking around. There's no mask, just these statues and a bunch of color-contrasting tiles. I guess we were wrong about the constellation being our final task before we find it. "It's not here."

            "No!" Amber exclaims.

            "Well, maybe there's another door," Alfie suggests as he begins to walk forward, but Fabian and Nina reach out to stop him.

            "No, wait," she tells him. "We don't want to rush in. It might be a trap."

            "Wait," Fabian remarks, looking around the room. "I think this is a game. I've seen this board before. We need to look it up. Let's go."

—

            While Fabian's off doing research on whatever our actual final task is, the rest of us split off from each other after breakfast this morning. Patricia got Eddie out, back through the passage into the library without any more close calls, while the rest of us exited through the antechamber. Hopefully they've talked about his confession down in the constellation task, because that really was adorable. But see, now that whole thing's got me thinking about Jerome again, and I think we really need to just sit down and talk about it all.