Loop (30 page)

Finn pulled me down next to him. “What are you talking about? Someone hid something on the back of one of your mom’s canvases?”

“Huh? No, when my mom saw Tufty scratching that canvas on our mantel, she realized the saying had to do with a painting. Leonardo’s. He was a member of the Haven. There’s a picture of him and Quigley over there on the wall. Don’t you see? He has the answer to everything.”

“Leonardo … DiCaprio?” he asked.

“Who?”
No.
I had to stay focused. “Da Vinci.”

Understanding dawned slowly across Finn’s face. He nodded.

“The
Mona Lisa,
” we said in unison.

“Of course,” Finn said, “the enigmatic grin. It all fits. She’s known for her mysterious smile.” He clapped his hands together. “There must be a hidden message on the back of it or under the paint. Something about Truth.”

“Exactly. Wait. No.” Disappointment flooded in as quickly as my elation had. “You heard what my mom said. Art Historians have scoured that portrait for centuries. Examined it. X-rayed it. Used scans that don’t even exist in your time. If something was there, they would have found it by now. That’s what confused Mom.”

And me.

Finn shrugged. “So we go back and ask da Vinci ourselves.”

I skipped the
too far,
too dangerous,
too impossible
argument.

“Parlez-vous Italiano?” There was no telling what mishmash of languages I’d used, but it got my point across. Finn gulped and shook his head.

“It was a good thought,” I added.

Then I looked up at the wall of photos and realized it wouldn’t matter if Finn and I were both fluent in sixteenth-century Italian. If we sneaked back and landed in da Vinci’s kitchen. If we arrived the exact minute he put the final stroke on the portrait. We were too late before we’d even begun. Quigley had gotten to him first, when he had sketched the blarking painting.

The arm-in-arm photo of them mocked me from its place of honor right above Quigley’s chair. Any attempt to Shift to his time would be pointless. They were in league with each other. He’d already told her any secrets in the painting. There wasn’t anything behind the enigmatic grin anymore.

All that my mother had gone through was for nothing. I scowled. A sudden desire seized me to smash Quigley’s face. First her eyes. Then her nose. Then that stupid, smug smile.

I stood and marched over to the wall, grabbing a stylus off her desk as I went. My legs found a new strength.

“Bree?” Finn stood as well and looked nervously out the classroom window. “What are you doing?”

“What I should have done a long time ago.”

Pop.
I jammed the stylus through one of her eyes.

“Bree,” Finn hissed.

Pop. Pop.
The other eye and the nose.

Finn rushed over and held back my hand, which had started to shake anyway. I stared at Quigley’s mouth. The lips curled into a knowing sneer. Leonardo and Quigley weren’t friends. They were accomplices.

My free hand formed a fist. I’d punch the whole thing in. Show Quigley what I thought of her. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would feel—

“Amazing.” My hand dropped to my side. The last piece of the puzzle slipped into place before my eyes. Quigley had been so adamant that I not touch her frames when I was cleaning. But the da Vinci one had been crooked already, like someone had hung it in a hurry. The plaster had flaked off when I had tried to straighten it.

I ran my fingers around the curves of the frame, prying the edges from the wall. It had been there the whole time. Inches from my grasp. Literally.

“The Truth lies”—I gave the frame a good yank and it popped right off the wall—“
behind
the enigmatic grin.”

There was nothing there.

That wasn’t entirely true.

There was a hole.

Plaster flaked to the ground like snow as I stuck frantic fingers in the hollowed-out section of the wall. It was shallow, eight inches long by two inches high. And empty.

“No, no, no. It was so perfect. I mean, it didn’t explain how both our moms had heard the saying … clue … whatever it is. Or what the Truth was.
But it was sooo perfect
.”

My mix of elation and disappointment was short-lived. A soft clapping sound filled the air behind us. Finn and I whirled around. Terror.

Dr. Quigley stood in the doorway, applauding.

“Not bad,” she said with an appraising nod. “I knew you’d figure it out. It’s a shame you’re too late.”

My knees went weak and I leaned against Finn for support.

But I didn’t collapse until he took a step toward Quigley and said,
“Aunt Lisa?”

chapter 27

APPARENTLY, I HAD SLEPT
through the “What to do when you find out your traitorous pseudoboyfriend is in league with your evil History teacher” lesson in Risk Assessment 101. But, like all lessons in Risk Assessment 101, it would have gone something like this:
Push-the-Blarkin’-Emergency-Fade-Button-Already
. Which wasn’t very helpful in the present situation. I did the next best thing. I darted to the corner of the office, grabbed the floor lamp, and swung it around like a weapon. There was nowhere to run. I was trapped.

“I can explain, Bree,” whispered Quigley, edging her way across the room with her hands up. “But you need to bend down below the window. Everything needs to look very, very normal if anyone looks in my classroom door.”

Finn, who was inching my way from the opposite side, obeyed and slid down the wall. Of course he did. She was his aunt.

“What’s going on?” he asked Quigley. “Are you a
teacher
here?”

And with that, it became official. I had never been more confused in my life. One minute, I was finally about to get the answer to the question—well, one of the questions—that had been driving me bonkers since I’d first heard the name Muffy van Sloot. The next thing I knew, I was trapped in the gnarled branches of the world’s most twisted family tree.

As if she could read my mind, Quigley said, “I realize you have no reason to trust me. And you’re probably questioning everything you know about Finn here as well. But I need you to believe me; he’s as confused as you are right now.”

Either Finn was a fabulous actor or Quigley was telling the truth. All the color had drained from his cheeks. Quigley continued to move toward me. Finn’s eyes flitted back and forth between the two of us.

“Take one more step, Quigley, and I’ll scream my head off,” I said. “I may not know everything, but I know enough.”

“Wait. Aunt Lisa is … Quigley?” Finn froze for the briefest of moments, then lunged at me. He was so fast, I didn’t have a chance to brace my body for the impact. But he didn’t hit me. Or knock me down. Didn’t even jostle me. Instead, he crouched in front of me facing Quigley. He squared his shoulders in a defensive posture.

“What’s going on here?” he all but snarled.

Rather than look miffed or even surprised, Quigley maintained a serene expression as she walked to her desk and sat down.

“My, my, Finnigan. Is that all it takes to turn on poor Aunt Lisa? A threat against your precious Bree?”

“Yep.” Finn twitched as Quigley folded her hands across her desk.

“Good.” She leaned back in her chair and smiled.

I slid down the wall, not out of obedience, but out of sheer shock. The lamp tumbled from my grasp and smashed on the floor. Quigley winced at the sound, glancing out the door, and adjusted the overhead lights to compensate.

“What are you talking about?” Finn asked, but I held up my hand to interrupt him.

“I’m going to fire off some questions,” I said. “I don’t care who the answers come from. But, so help me, they’d better come.”

My protector (or possibly traitor) and enemy (or possibly ally) both nodded their heads.

“What did you do to my mom?”

“Nothing,” replied Quigley without skipping a beat.

Okay, perhaps best to take a different route.

“What
happened
to my mom?”

“That requires a bit of speculation, as she’s in a coma and can’t tell us, but I believe she was attacked.”

“Yeah, I believe that, too.” I grabbed a shard of glass from the broken lamp and wielded it in a threatening way.

“Not by
me.
” Quigley sounded genuinely shocked at the suggestion.

“Who then?”

“I … I don’t know exactly. From the times I’ve been able to sneak Nurse Granderson in to check on her, it appears her coma is medically induced.”

“Meaning?” said Finn.

“Someone’s drugging her. It’s true that her chip isn’t functioning, but that seems to be unrelated to the coma.”

“Okay. Are you really Finn’s aunt?”

“No.” Both Finn and Quigley answered at the same time, Finn with more vehemence.

“She’s a friend of my parents,” said Finn. “I thought.”

“Actually, I’m not yet. I’ve only met you once when you were much younger. I wouldn’t have recognized you if you weren’t the spitting image of your father. It doesn’t surprise me that I’ll befriend them at some point, though. I found them to be … admirable.”

Sounded like she had some future self issues, too.

Quigley turned to me, and her voice took on an almost pleading tone. “Will you let me explain? At least as much as I’m able.”

There was something in the Quig’s eyes that had never been there before. Dare I dream, humility? Or
friendliness
? Whatever it was, I found myself saying a reluctant “Yes.”

“About a year ago—”

“You’ve known about this for a
year
and couldn’t save my mom?”

“Let me finish.” Quigley went back to her usual clipped commands. “About a year ago, an object came into my possession. It’s a device—from the future—and I was tasked with hiding it. To keep it safe at all costs.”

“What does it do?” I asked. “The device?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t told that. I know a lot of people are after it, and I know it’s the only one of its kind.”

“But what
is
it?”

“It’s … well, it’s
Truth.
But unfortunately, I—”

“What did you just say?” Finn beat me to the question but had to hold me back from scrambling over to Quigley’s desk.

“Were you the one who told my mother that saying? About Truth and the enigmatic grin?” I strained against Finn’s grasp. “Were you?”

“No.” Quigley leveled me in her gaze. “I believe
you
were.”

“Me?” I stopped struggling. I may have inadvertently also stopped breathing.

“Unless I’m mistaken, you’ve just returned from a little heart-to-heart with your mother. I’ve never actually met the woman.” Quigley threw her hands up in a halfhearted shrug. “Well, conscious, I mean.”

Oh, she would pay for that. Finn couldn’t hold me back. In a blink, I launched myself at her. Quigley didn’t flinch. As calmly as if she were applying a fresh coat of crimson lipstick, she pulled a QuantCom out of a drawer and zapped me at the lowest stun setting. My heart fibbed a beat from the jolt. I backed off.

“Get. Down. You will be seen,” said Quigley.

I rubbed the numb spot on my arm where I’d been stung as I slouched back to the corner. “But I heard it from
her
.”

“
Everyone
heard it from her.” Quigley made no attempt to disguise her annoyance.

Finn was too quick for me. He pinned my arms against my sides and held me tight. “Let’s hear her out. She obviously knows more than we do.”

“As I said,” Quigley went on, “while your mother was busy announcing my clue to the whole world—”

“
Your
clue?”

“Yes,
my
clue. I told you I was the one that hid the device. Do you think I’d do that and not tell someone where I left it in case something happened to me?”

“Tell who?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” she said.

I swear, this conversation was like some never-ending game of Russian roulette with no bullets.

“Nope,” I said. “Not obvious.”

“Finn.”

“Yeah?” He looked up in surprise.

“Finn. That’s who I told,” said Quigley.

“What are you talking about? You said you don’t know my family yet. You’ve only met me once when I was little.”

“
That
was why I went back in time to meet your parents when you were a baby. To make sure they told you the clue.”

“And that was the clue you came up with? ‘The Truth lies behind the enigmatic grin’? From
that
I was supposed to gather you’d hidden some device behind a photo of Leonardo da Vinci painting the
Mona Lisa
? In the freaking twenty-third century?”

“I was in a crunch. I wanted to take it back to Leo to stash away. He owes me a favor. But, in the end, I decided he couldn’t be trusted. That man would trade his own mother for a cool enough gadget.” She looked at the photo and frowned as she noticed the poked-out eyes and nose. “I assumed one of your descendants was destined to find it, especially after Bree’s midterm assignment to Chincoteague Island popped up. I never dreamed you’d come here posing as Bree’s long-lost cousin. Which, by the way, was beyond reckless.”

Amen.

“But that clue is so convoluted,” said Finn. “How the heck was I supposed to realize that an ‘enigmatic grin’ referred to the
Mona Lisa
?”

“I’m sorry. Did I not choose a famous enough painting for you, Finnigan?”

“Why Finn?” I asked, my eyes drifting up to meet Quigley’s.

She stared at me, her mouth ajar.

I stated the question again, thinking she didn’t understand. “Why did it have to be—?”

“You mean you don’t know?” she said. “I thought it was … obvious.”

“No.
Not
obvious.” Opposite of obvious.

“Because
you
told me to, Bree. When you brought me the device.”

I hadn’t—
dang it
. Future Bree.

There’s one Rule of Shifting most of us never stop to ponder. It goes without saying. Or at least it should: Never piddle in your own past.

As I sat there, trying to assimilate this new scrap of information, I had a new appreciation for that rule.