Read Online Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere by Jacqueline West - Free Book Online Page A

shoving it carefully back into the closet and closing the door.
    The trio slipped along the silent hallway, where traces of moonlight turned the walls to silver, and headed into the lavender room. This room had once been Olive’s favorite. It had seemed sweet-smelling and delicate and pretty—just like Annabelle. Now Annabelle’s empty portrait hung like a menacing reminder above the chest of drawers. Although none of the guest bedrooms were used by the Dunwoodys, the lavender room felt especially cold and deserted, as though sunlight never reached it at all. Harvey leaped onto the chest of drawers, Olive held his tail, Morton held her foot, and they all crawled through the frame and landed, one by one, on the pillowy couch inside the painting.
    “This is where Annabelle McMartin’s portrait was painted, back when she was young,” Olive explained, wondering why she felt compelled to whisper. “It’s the downstairs parlor of this house. A long, long time ago.”
    Hesitantly, Olive climbed off of the couch and stepped toward the tea table. Everything stood at the ready: the cups and saucers, the dish of sugar cubes piled as high as ever. Annabelle’s full teacup sat just where she had left it. Olive touched the delicate porcelain. It was still hot. With a sudden shiver, Olive glanced around the room. It seemed that Annabelle would appear at any moment with her soft brown hair, her string of pearls, her gentle, too-sweet voice. Olive could almost feel the chilly touch of Annabelle’s fingers closing around her hand. She turned back toward Morton.
    Morton was making one slow revolution, like a wind-up ballerina in a jewelry box. “I’ve been here,” he whispered. “Not the painting. The real here.” He wandered away to the right.
    Olive skirted around the tea table, where Harvey was practicing fencing positions with a butter knife, and started looking under the furniture. Nothing. Next, she examined the shelves, but they held only delicate curios, little vases and seashells, and froufrou souvenirs. Just to see what would happen, she checked the doors. They had been painted shut, but not in the way that things are usually painted shut, when a little bit of paint dribbles into a gap and makes things stick together. These doors had been painted shut . They didn’t move or rattle their hinges when she pushed them. The doorknob didn’t even turn in her hand. With a discouraged sigh, Olive turned back toward the room.
    Morton was standing beside the fireplace. At first Olive thought he might have fallen asleep on his feet, he was standing so still—but of course Morton didn’t have to sleep. His back was to her, and he was huddled over something that he held in both hands so that Olive couldn’t see what he was looking at until she was peeping right over his shoulder.
    It was a photograph: a small black-and-white photograph in a silver frame. It had obviously been part of the row of photographs lined up on the mantelpiece. Olive looked at the other photos in the row. With a tiny shudder, she recognized the photograph of Aldous McMartin that she had found in a dresser drawer in the lavender room, just outside of this very painting. Next to Aldous’s portrait was a photo of a pretty but sour-faced little girl sitting between two rather dim-witted-looking grown-ups: Annabelle with her parents, Olive was sure. This was followed by several photographs of people Olive didn’t recognize.
    She glanced back down at the picture in Morton’s hands. It was another family portrait, probably taken in the 1910s or 1920s. The men wore suspenders; the women had square, ribbon-trimmed collars. Unlike in the other pictures, everyone in this photo was smiling. Two beaming parents were gathered with a teenaged girl and a little boy. The mother’s eyes were big and gentle and turned down at the corners with her smile. The father’s face was round and friendly. The teenaged girl had a face that was angular and smooth, and her smile