The Blackhope Enigma (28 page)

“Do you wish it had never happened?”

Sunni paused. “While we were there, I just wanted to get home, but now that I am — I don’t know. I’m glad, but I can’t stop thinking about Arcadia.”

“Me too. And nobody but us will understand what it was like — if they even believe us.”

Sunni sighed. “I know.”

“Is Dean feeling the same as you?”

“To be honest, I don’t know what Dean thinks — he doesn’t want to talk about Arcadia at all. He’s right back into his creature comforts, eating constantly and stuck on his computer, playing games. Rhona is spoiling him rotten.”

“Can I talk to him for a minute?”

“Yeah, if I can tear him away from the screen.” She shouted her stepbrother’s name. “OK, see you at school tomorrow.”

“Bye, Sunni.”

Dean was crunching something as he said hello, sounding distant.

“Deano,” Blaise greeted him. “All right, man?”

“Yeah. I just ate three pieces of pizza. And chocolate cake.” He gave a little
heh-heh
.

“Better than dried fish.”

There was a long pause. “Yeah.”

“So,” said Blaise, “you’re OK, huh? Your legs all right?”

“Got Band-Aids on.” Dean slurped a drink on the other end. There was another pause.

“Cool.” Blaise wasn’t sure what else to ask.

“Gotta go. My mom’s taking me to buy a new game.”

“Sweet. OK, man. Take care.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” asked Mr. Forrest as he pulled the car up to Braeside High School’s main entrance. Groups of students hung around outside, waiting until the last possible second to saunter in.

“I’m sure, Dad. I’ll be fine.” Sunni stepped out of the car into the mild March air and waved back at him.

Before the car had pulled away, several girls ran up and enveloped Sunni in a group hug. She was pelted with questions and ushered into school like a queen bee at the center of her hive. At first it was amazing to feel all this welcoming warmth. But as the day went on, a ball of apprehension began to grow inside her.

Every head swiveled to look at her in the hall. Her name floated in and out of conversations to an alarming degree. Kids even cornered her in the bathroom to ask more questions and tell her what they thought. It began to dawn on Sunni that coming home wasn’t going to be easy, not by a long shot.

That afternoon Sunni dodged more curious kids and escaped to her art class.

She bumped into Blaise at the door and let out a deep breath. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you all day. You missed Spanish.”

“Yeah, overslept.” He scratched his head. “I’ve been keeping a low profile since I got in. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff people have said to me. That we’re liars and we made Arcadia up. People I don’t even know.”

“I’m getting it, too,” she said. “Some people are nice, you know, really glad to see me. But others are just mean.”

“I don’t get why it even matters to them so much.”

Sunni shrugged ruefully. “Are you ready to talk to Mr. Bell after school?”

“Yeah. I guess we’d better,” he said, and flashed a hopeful smile.

Applause greeted them as they walked into the classroom. Lorimer Bell stood by his desk, looking like he might burst with emotion. Blaise and Sunni slid into their seats, their faces pink and bashful, until Lorimer called out for quiet.

“We’re all very, very pleased to have you both back. It has not been the same in here without you.”

“Yeah, I had to think up my own ideas to draw,” said one boy, and the class tittered.

“Tell us what happened,” said a girl.

Lorimer put his hands up. “Let’s give Sunni and Blaise a chance to catch up first. There will be plenty of time for stories later.” He took a box of charcoal sticks from a cupboard. “Besides, we have work to do. Charcoal portraits. Everyone else is already paired up, so why don’t you two draw each other? Taking turns, of course.”

Blaise and Sunni raised their eyebrows at each other. Lorimer looked puzzled, so Sunni shook her head and said, “Sorry, Mr. Bell, it’s nothing. Portraits sound fab.”

Their charcoal sticks flew across the paper. The other students glanced over at the pair, who seemed to be in their own bubble, far away from the classroom.

When everyone else had left for the day, Sunni and Blaise stood by Lorimer’s desk.

“Do you have to leave straight away, Mr. Bell?” asked Sunni.

“No, no,” said Lorimer. “I hoped we could catch up.” He pulled up chairs for them. “We were all so worried about you.”

“Why didn’t you come get us, then, Mr. B?” Blaise’s voice was flat. “You knew how.”

A stunned look passed over Lorimer’s face.

“But you sent your cousin instead.”

“I did not send Angus — believe me.” Lorimer put his hand to his throat, remembering their last encounter. “He forced me to help him work out the password, and then he assaulted a guard to get access to the labyrinth.”

“The police told me about the guard.” Blaise nodded.

“The Mariner’s Chamber was closed off after Angus got in. I couldn’t have followed then, even though I wanted to help you.”

Blaise leaned forward. “But you knew more about Corvo and the painting than you told me.”

“How could I risk putting you in danger? Besides, I didn’t know the password, Blaise. Angus realized you had to have used a word you’d seen that day in the Mariner’s Chamber. He knew the only likely clues would be on the information card next to the painting and made the right guess.”

“Did you tell anyone else?” Sunni asked.

“I was sure the police wouldn’t believe me — it sounds like such a far-fetched story. And I hoped that Angus would bring you back.” Lorimer smiled, but his hands trembled. “How
did
you manage to find the way out?”

“Thanks to Angus, we almost didn’t get out. He nearly killed Blaise and didn’t blink an eye.”

“Angus is no angel, but he wouldn’t go that fa —”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bell, but he did.” Blaise opened his sketchbook and pointed at a drawing. “That’s Hugo Fox-Farratt and a servant boy, Inko. Within an hour of meeting them, Angus had gotten rid of Hugo, luckily not for good, and left Inko for dead. We never saw him again.”

“That is not the Angus I grew up with.”

Blaise could only shake his head. “Something must have twisted him up pretty good since then.”

“When did you draw these?” Sunni turned the sketchbook around so she could get a better look.

“On the
Venus
, when I was alone,” Blaise said. “Lucky I had a plastic bag to keep my sketchbook mostly dry.”

“My sketchbook is totally warped, and a lot of the drawings look like they were done on wet paper towels. But at least Marin’s sketch of the Roman gods is still in there,” she said. “These drawings are fantastic, Blaise.”

“They most certainly are.” Lorimer thumbed through the drawings and stopped on one page. “That’s a beautiful one of you, Sunni.”

“You drew me on the labyrinth? How?”

Blaise was beet red. “It’s from memory.”

She smiled at him.
You’re really, really nice
, she thought.
How did I miss that before?

“So these other people found their way into the painting before you,” said Lorimer.

“Yes, into paintings underneath the top one, that have living things and water and food just like here,” said Sunni. “Corvo made them as a sort of adventure park for Sir Innes Blackhope, with monsters and mazes and sailing ships.”

Lorimer flipped the sketchbook to a drawing of Angus in his fedora and overcoat.

“But what’s happened to my cousin? You haven’t said.” Lorimer’s voice was hollow. “The
Braeside Sentinel
says he’s still in the painting. Is that true?”

“He is, but . . .” Sunni said. “Oh, Mr. B, it’s really hard to tell you this. Angus is alive, but . . .”

Blaise broke in. “But he’s trapped. Fausto Corvo is in there, too. We found him and his apprentices in one of the underpaintings. And they have his three lost enchanted paintings with them for protection.”

“The lost paintings,” said Lorimer. “So they do exist.”

“Yes. Angus made out to everyone that he was searching for us, but he was really after those lost paintings. So Corvo drew a magical prison portrait of Angus and captured him inside it.”

Lorimer’s face drained. “Angus — captured by Corvo’s sorcery?”

“W-we’re really sorry, Mr. Bell. We tried to see if there was a way to bring him back, but there wasn’t.”

“But —” The art teacher slumped back in his chair. “This is horrible. Caught in a piece of paper. Horrible.”

“No, no, Corvo is going to free him from the portrait, but only after Angus is banished to an island.”

“I can’t take this in.”

“Angus can’t ever come back,” said Blaise in a soft voice. “Corvo told us to close the labyrinth, so Sunni shut it down after she came through.”

Lorimer put his hand to his forehead. “He’s trapped in the painting we were obsessed by. If I had known twenty years ago that this was how things would end up —”

“Twenty years ago?” Sunni interrupted.

“Angus and I were fascinated with Corvo’s work when we were teenagers. We learned everything we could about him and his supposed sorcery.” He gave a hard laugh. “We even tried to do our own magic — but it never worked. Over the years, I lost interest, and I thought Angus had, too. But as soon as the news reported you’d vanished, he guessed you must have learned how to get into the painting — and that’s when he turned up. I told him to leave it alone, but he never listened to me. Now Corvo’s magic controls him.”

“I’m really sorry this happened,” said Blaise miserably.

“It’s certainly not your fault! Angus knew what he was doing, and he is paying a very high price for it.” Lorimer sat up. “I didn’t think my cousin could ever be a killer, but he was a criminal. He was in prison until last summer.”

“Prison!”

“For forging old masters. It started after we finished art school. He was so good, he could copy almost any painting. Angus liked to show off his copying skills and make a bit of cash on the side. But he got greedy. He wanted really big money, so he made up false documents to go with his forgeries to make them look authentic. He started making paintings to order for some very sketchy people who sold them to museums. I’m glad Angus didn’t get hold of Corvo’s paintings. He didn’t deserve to be the custodian of such treasures — they would have ended up in the wrong hands.”

“No one can reach Corvo now,” said Sunni. “Or his paintings.”

A knock on the classroom door startled them. When he saw Blaise and Sunni, the visitor nodded and waited outside.

“Well,” said Lorimer briskly, “I am delighted you stayed to talk to me. Don’t worry anymore. Just go back to your normal lives. Speaking of which, the deadline for your projects is the week after next!” He tried to smile.

“Your book!” Sunni exclaimed. “I — I left it in the painting. It got really waterlogged. I’ll replace it, I promise.”

“Don’t worry, Sunni. I can get another,” said Lorimer as they walked to the door. “I hope that in time you’ll tell me more of your experiences in the painting.”

“We will. You’re probably the only person who’ll believe us,” said Blaise.

That night Lorimer sat in his studio, bewildered. No more Angus. His cousin had gone, and he was free. He knew he shouldn’t feel relieved, but he did.

One thing still bothered him though: Angus’s mysterious associate and his packet of information about Lorimer’s forged paintings.

Oh, hang it
, he thought.
I’m not going to live the rest of my life in fear. If he comes forward, I’ll be ready for him. Anyway, knowing Angus, he probably made the whole thing up, just to keep me in line
. He jumped to his feet and said aloud, “Well, no more. It’s over.”

He stacked all his photocopies, notes, and scribbles about Corvo back into their box and carried it into the sitting room, where he stuffed each sheet into the fireplace before setting them ablaze.

Sunni tapped at Dean’s bedroom door.

“What?” Dean was swaddled in his comforter with a bag of chips wedged next to him, intent on a video game. “I said, what?”

He turned and saw the warped sketchbook in her hand.

Sunni slid Marin’s parchment from between its pages and held it out. “I forgot I had this. You should keep it.”

Dean glared at his half-finished portrait. “What — to give to my mom for Christmas or something?”

“I don’t know. Just keep it as a souvenir.” Sunni studied the sketch. “It’s a really nice drawing, even though Marin didn’t finish it —”

“Yeah, good thing, too!”

“But just think if he’d been able to stay in Venice and become a painter — he might have become as famous as Corvo.”

Dean scowled at his game and wrestled with the controls. “Instead he dropped off the face of the earth and no one’s ever heard of him.”

“We knew him.”

“I want to forget about him.” He nodded at the portrait. “You keep it. You know you want to, anyway.”

T
he next afternoon, Sunni and Blaise strolled past the lions at the gates and up the driveway to Blackhope Tower. The castle had become a major attraction now, and the parking lot was full.