“And then,” Great-Uncle Thorne said with a sigh, “we discovered that the egg was missing. How she carried on! Accusing me of thievery. And worse. The more I insisted I had nothing to do with its disappearance, the more she insisted I did. There were no more trips to The Treasure Chest. No more midnight swims or Newport parties or adventures. That autumn I went to school in England and I never spoke to or saw my sister again. Until I came back last winter. And then . . .”
Great-Uncle Thorne dropped his head in his hands and began to sob.
“There, there,” Felix said, rubbing Great-Uncle Thorne’s back the way his own mother did when Felix was upset.
“But . . . ,” Maisie began.
Then she waited, because with Great-Uncle Thorne sobbing like this, it probably wasn’t the time to ask.
Great-Uncle Thorne raised his tearstained face.
“What?” he asked her.
“Well, Great-Aunt Maisie had her egg. We saw it,” Maisie said, looking to Felix, who nodded in confirmation.
“And I presume you have yours?” Maisie asked rhetorically. “So this one is the egg Phinneas Pickworth gave to Ariane when you and Great-Aunt Maisie were born?”
“The very one,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, and sobbed even harder. He held the egg close now, like a long-lost friend.
Maisie waited until Great-Uncle Thorne’s sobs quieted.
“But what’s so special about this egg? I mean,” she added quickly, “other than the fact that it was your mother’s and everyone thought it was missing.”
Great-Uncle Thorne took a deep breath.
Maisie and Felix held their breath.
“I don’t know,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Maisie, puzzled, asked him.
Great-Uncle Thorne held the egg at arm’s length and studied it. Maisie and Felix studied it, too.
The Treasure Chest grew very quiet.
“Yes,” he said finally. “It is special because it belonged to our mother, a woman we, sadly, never knew.”
He paused again, took another deep breath, then continued.
“And of course, the fact that it was missing—stolen, we all believed—makes finding it even more wonderful.”
“So maybe that’s it?” Felix said. “Those facts alone make it a very special egg. And make it even more exciting that we found it again after all this time.”
But Great-Uncle Thorne shook his head.
“You see,” he said, one finger rubbing the odd sapphire, “unlike my Fabergé egg or Maisie’s, this one has never been opened.”
“Why not?” Maisie asked.
“Inside is the key,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.
“The key to . . . ?” Maisie prodded.
“My mother was French,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “You know that, oui?”
“Is that why everyone here speaks French and eats French food?” Felix said, thinking of the moules frites and duck à l’orange and pot-au-feu that showed up for dinner almost every night.
“And you know that Elm Medona is an anagram for—”
“Lame demon,” Maisie interrupted, frustrated.
“Which comes from the French novel Paris Before Man, which was written by Pierre Boitard in 1861 and which is about time travel,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.
“What does any of this have to do with the egg?” Maisie said in exasperation.
“The key is in this egg,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.
Maisie opened her mouth to ask, again, What key?
But Great-Uncle Thorne held up his hand to stop her.
“I have no idea what the key opens. Or what it means,” he said. “I only know that my father, Phinneas Pickworth,” he added, as if Maisie and Felix might have forgotten who his father was, “ordered Maisie and me to never, under any circumstances, take out the key unless he told us it was time.”
“That’s why it was so terrible when it went missing,” Maisie said, thinking out loud.
“I know that if we lift this sapphire, something will open,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, his long fingers resting on the dark sapphire.
“I know that whatever opens will reveal another door, and that door requires a code to open it,” he said. “But whatever the implications of all of that are . . . well . . .”
Great-Uncle Thorne shrugged.
“For now,” he said, “I will take this to my room with me and reunite it with the other two.”
He began to walk toward the door.
“Wait!” Maisie called to him. “What about Hadley and Rayne?”
Great-Uncle Thorne, baffled, looked at her.
“The Ziff twins?” she reminded him.
“Ah! Yes. Very troublesome.”
He considered for a moment then said, “I’ll return this to my room and then come back here to discuss the Ziff twins.”
Felix watched Great-Uncle Thorne leave The Treasure Chest.
“Weird, right?” Maisie said. “The mysterious key. The right time . . .”
“Mmmm,” Felix said, because that was all he could think to say.
What he knew, what he felt certain of, was that the egg had not been in The Treasure Chest all these years after all. Someone, or something, had returned it today, this very afternoon. And Felix had a terrible feeling that whatever that key opened, the time had come to use it.
CHAPTER 2
THE RETURN OF THE ZIFF TWINS
Minutes passed.
Then more minutes passed.