Mayhap tried to remember what the grass had said to her the day before, but all she could remember was the feeling of being surrounded. And the word liar.
Pavonine spoke to the house. “Please make Winnow better,” she said. “Please.”
The girls waited.
Nothing happened.
A clank sounded behind them — then the squeak of a hinge.
Mayhap and Pavonine turned to see that one of the miniature windows was open, swinging back and forth. For a moment, the grass hovered beyond it. Then it began to snake its tendrils into the room, curling and susurrating, sighing and raveling. It was as if it was taunting Mayhap.
Little liar. Little liar. Little liar.
“May —” said Pavonine.
Mayhap barred her sister with her arm. “Don’t go close to it. Watch that Peffiandra stays on the bed.” She looked at her droomhund. “Seekatrix: stay.” He obeyed.
Mayhap walked to the window and pushed the grass out of it with one hand. It clung to her, but she wrestled it back, slamming the window shut. She rubbed her skin where the grass had touched it.
“What’s happening, May?” asked Pavonine again.
Mayhap could see that she was petrified.
She thought for a moment about telling her sister the truth. About Winnow going out into the grass. About opening the door. But she didn’t want to frighten Pavonine. She had to keep that all to herself; she had to deal with it on her own.
The only thing she could think to do was to return to the entrance hall, to ask the grass what it had done, and to hope it would answer plainly.
“I’m not sure, Pav,” she said, “but we have to start somewhere. Let’s look for Evenflee, all right? You can look up here and I’ll go downstairs.”
Pavonine nodded gravely.
Winnow moaned.
Mayhap’s throat tightened, and she had to concentrate hard in order to speak. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve searched the downstairs rooms,” she said.
But Pavonine was bending over Winnow, whispering, “Shhh, Winn, we’re going to find Evenflee, and we’re going to make you better,” and she didn’t hear her.
As Mayhap wound down the carpeted stairs, someone called her name.
She jumped and looked behind her, up the curving steps, toward the room where she’d left her sisters. But the sound wasn’t coming from there.
Mayhap.
Mayhap.
She gripped the marble banister. It didn’t sound like the grass — cold and windy and many-throated. It didn’t have Tutto’s echo-metallic tone, either. It sounded like a person. But not Winnow, and not Pavonine. The voice made Mayhap’s bones ache, like growing pains. It sounded like — she hoped it was, she desperately hoped it was —
It sounded like Mamma.
Mayhap galloped down the stairs. Maybe she would find it was nothing or maybe — maybe she would find her mother in the soft-lit drawing room, holding her arms open so that Mayhap could crawl into them. Maybe she would rest her head on her mother’s shoulder. Maybe her mother would stroke her hair. Mayhap would tell her all about Winnow, and Mamma would know what to do.
She followed the voice to the conservatory. The door that separated it from the eastern wing of Straygarden Place was made of pale-blue glass. And the voice was coming from behind its warps and blurs. Seekatrix wagged his tail slowly — uncertainly — beside her.
Of course, thought Mayhap. Of course. It makes every bit of sense.
She let her hand hover over the doorknob.
Mayhap, said the voice again. Mayhap, Mayhap.
Mayhap stepped inside. The room had three walls of glass and one of brick, and crescent-shaped windows were cut into its high, transparent ceiling. The silver grass that towered all around it made the moon-windows look like real moons — vivid and distant. Through the glass, Mayhap could see wanderroot trees outside, floating through the night sky. Six wanderroot trees floated inside the conservatory, too — slow as breathing. On wrought iron tables sat pots of soil, and in the pots were dead plants. Mayhap’s mother, a botanist, had been trying to figure out why nothing grew at Straygarden Place except silver grass and wanderroot trees.
The room shrieked. Or rather the bats in the room — the bats that lived in the branches of the wanderroot trees, the bats her father had been studying — shrieked.
They were white as milk, flying in all directions, swarming her. Mayhap drew her hands over her head.
“Mamma?” she called. “Mamma?”
“So the grass has finally got one of you,” came the voice.
Mayhap’s heart skipped like a stone in her chest. What an odd thing for her mother to say. The bats were flying as fast as shooting stars around her, and she couldn’t see through the cloud of them.
Then the little creatures shot back up into the trees, roosting like awful, ivory-skinned fruits, and Mayhap saw Seekatrix a little way away, sitting on someone’s lap, and the lap did not belong to her mother.
It belonged instead to a girl in a glistening dress.
A girl with death-white skin and streaks of silver in her blond hair.
Even her eyes were white, like boiled eggs without their shells.
Mayhap stopped.
“Mayhap,” said the girl. Her voice was a misty forest. “That is your name, is it not? The house has told me all about you. The middle daughter.” Her egg-eyes shifted in their sockets as she stroked Seekatrix’s back and whispered into his ear. He arched his neck to lick her face and she let him, rubbing his fluffy head.
“Y-yes,” said Mayhap. “I am the middle sister.”
The girl stood and took a step toward Mayhap, holding Seekatrix. “And I am the Mysteriessa of Straygarden Place,” she said.
The silver in her hair was giving Mayhap a headache.
“The —” said Mayhap, trying not to step away. “The — who?”
The girl smiled knowingly, the way Tutto sometimes smiled at the Ballastian sisters when they asked him a question. “I use my magic to take care of the house,” she sang in a creaky voice. “I take care of you and your sisters.” She kissed Seekatrix’s head, and he closed his eyes with pleasure. He was so calm in her presence, not nervous at all.
“Why have I never seen you before?” asked Mayhap.
“There are things about this house you don’t understand,” said the Mysteriessa. She allowed Seekatrix to slip to the floor, and he ran to sit beside Mayhap. Mayhap resisted the urge to pick him up. She didn’t want to be distracted.
“You called my name,” said Mayhap.
“I did,” said the Mysteriessa. “I hope you did not find that impertinent.”
“It wasn’t rude,” said Mayhap. “I am only . . . confused, that’s all. And worried. I’m terribly worried. It’s my sister, she’s —” She didn’t want to cry, but she was afraid that she soon would whether she liked it or not.
The Mysteriessa approached and put a hand on Mayhap’s shoulder. Mayhap felt an ache in her chest, like something missing. A keyhole without a key to put in it. “Everything is going to be all right, May,” said the Mysteriessa. “I am going to help you. Do not worry about Winnow.”
“You know what happened to my sister?” said Mayhap, feeling dizzy.