Unhinged (Splintered, #2)(69)

After stepping onto the crumbling porch, I pause and stare at the brass knocker. It’s in the shape of a pair of garden shears.

Goose bumps erupt across my flesh. I look down at my scarred palms. Whoever put this knocker here knew I would come … they’re playing games with me. I grit my teeth. It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving without Jeb, no matter how menacing his captor is.

The knob turns easily, and I push the door open but stay on the porch to look in. The place appears to be abandoned, and it occurs to me there’s one outcome that could be worse than finding Jeb here: not finding him at all.

I stick my head in farther. The scent of paint and a pungent metallic odor hit me first. Then something else … sickly sweet and fruity … familiar enough that it makes my mouth water, but I can’t place it.

Sun rays stream from the ceiling where skylight panels make up the roof, giving the place a greenhouse effect. Cobwebs flecked with bug corpses drape from the glass and hang to the floor in places, glistening like grotesquely jeweled wedding veils. There’s one big room—not counting the loft to the left and a bathroom to my right, where a tall chest with fifty or more minidrawers stands just inside the open door. The canvas-covered walls are taller than they looked from outside. There’s no furniture, other than the portable scaffolds propped against the walls, so the sun’s reflection hazes off a dusty wooden floor.

The result is bright and ethereal … almost heavenly. Now I can see why Ivy chose this studio. I tiptoe around some art supplies, leaving the door ajar behind me. Chessie tenses under my hair.

There are paintings everywhere—three on easels covered with drop cloths, others on the canvas walls. I spin to take them all in, the wooden floor slick beneath me.

My breath accelerates as the paintings’ subjects become clear: garden shears and a child’s bloody hand; an octopus being swallowed by a clam; a rowboat afloat on a romantic river of stars; two silhouettes skimming on boards down a cliff made of sand; bleeding roses and a box with a head inside. Memories that Jeb and I made in Wonderland. Memories that no longer belong to him. Yet I’d recognize that morbidly beautiful style anywhere. He painted perfect renditions of our journey. He had to be working nonstop all night.

Somehow he’s remembered everything.

I back up and hit a rolled piece of canvas with my heel. I open it, revealing a painting of Jeb breaking into Mr. Mason’s car in the hospital parking lot, a nurse waiting beside him in a white dress.

I rock in place, feeling dizzy.

So Nurse Terri did play a part in my stolen mosaics—and Jeb helped her?

I remember Morpheus’s words: “Do you honestly think I’m the only one with the ability to slip undetected into a car with its alarm on?” He was right. Even some humans have that ability, if they know enough about cars.

But there could be an innocent explanation. Mr. Mason’s car is new, and Jeb has never seen it. The nurse could’ve lied and told him it was hers … that she had locked herself out. Once he had her car unlocked, he left. Then she stole my art—maybe under the orders of another netherling. That might explain how I never saw a fae form through her glamour.

That has to be how it happened, because Jeb would never betray me.

Morpheus was right about something else, too. I do hold him and Jeb to different standards. In the same situation, I would never give my dark tormentor the benefit of the doubt.

“Jeb!” I yell, struggling to suppress a sob. “Are you here?”

No answer, just the echo of my desperation.

Chessie weaves his way out of my hair.

“He’s in the loft … he has to be.” I say it aloud to comfort myself, although it doesn’t work. I climb the ladder. The rungs creak under my weight.

I stop once I’m high enough to see the upper level. The fruity, sweet scent is strongest here. There’s a large glass decanter turned over on the floor, droplets of what appears to be dark purple wine leaking from its wide mouth.

Jeb wouldn’t have been drinking. He almost never drinks, and especially not while painting.

Everything, including the barren wooden walls, is covered with thick, opaque webs full of bulges. There’s a minifridge and a floor lamp in the far corner. A box mattress sits next to the railing. I shake off the sudden image of my nightmare in the hospital, of Jeb’s body bound in web on a cot. This mattress might be dusty and old, but there’s nothing lying on top of it.

In fact, it doesn’t look like anyone’s been up here for years. I start to climb down, but then I spot something—the black polo and Japanese tie Jeb wore to his photo shoot yesterday—spread out in the corner closest to the ladder. Holding my breath, I return to the top two rungs, then reach out and grasp it. As I drag the shirt toward me, my three stolen mosaics come into view, hidden underneath.

I slap my hand over my mouth. The sound reverberates in the empty room and brings Chessie up beside me.

Just like at school, I can’t make out much, other than what appears to be a ravaged Wonderland and an angry queen. I wonder how Mom was able to read anything else into them.

Chessie buzzes around me, as if trying to tell me something.

Morpheus said the feline netherling’s gift is mapping out the best way to solve puzzles, then fixing them. Maybe that applies to magical artwork, too.

“Do you know how to read these?” I ask Chessie. “You were perched on Mom’s shoulder in my mirror—to help her read them, right?”