housekeeper, staring at us in surprise. Of all our servants Maria had been with us the longest. She had been nurse to both Konrad and me (Konrad being her favorite, naturally) and was practically a member of the family. Indeed, when we were seeking the Elixir of Life, she helped us find the disgraced alchemist Polidori, and kept our secret for us. And when we finally gave the elixir to Konrad, she was in his bedroom, watching. But I never told my parents that-and never would.
“Hello, Maria,” I said breezily. “We’ve just been amusing ourselves with our ancestors’ portraits. It turns out Henry here has a connoisseur’s eye when it comes to evaluating a painting. He was just pointing out all the signs of wealth in the portrait. The clothing, the fruit, and so forth.”
“Is that right?” Maria said, looking from me to Henry with some suspicion, then up at Wilhelm Frankenstein. “That fellow, I always look away when I pass him.”
“Why’s that, Maria?” Elizabeth inquired.
“The way his eyes follow you. Makes my skin crawl.”
“Yes, it’s quite a feat to paint the eyes for that effect,” said Henry, playing the part of the eager expert.
Once more Maria turned her gaze on me, and I knew she suspected something. She’d known me since I was a babe and of late knew what secrecy I was capable of. We would have to be very careful. Then her face softened and she smiled. “I like seeing you all together, enjoying yourselves.”
“Thank you, Maria,” I said.
We made bland comments about the painting until she walked off to resume her work. We waited for her tread to fade away.
“Do you think she heard anything beforehand?” Henry asked.
“No,” I said. “But let’s be quick.” I stared at the portrait hard, willing it to open up its secret meaning. “What of that mirror?” I said, squinting.
Near the top of the painting, in the background, hung an oval mirror in an ornate gilt frame. I could see that there was something reflected in it, but the images were too small, and too high up for me to see.
Elizabeth nodded. “There may be something interesting up there.”
I ran to a closet that I knew contained a stepladder, and when I returned, I saw that Henry had taken a magnifying glass from Father’s study.
“It’s really quite amazing,” he said, examining the painting. “Did you know that there’s virtually no craquelure on this canvas?”
“Craquelure?” I said.
“Those little wrinkly cracks you get on old paintings as the oils dry over time. This piece was done three hundred years ago and has hardly a blemish.”
An unexpected shiver went through me then. “You really do know a great deal about paintings,” I said.
“My father deals in antiquities sometimes.” Henry climbed the rungs of the stepladder so that his face was almost perfectly level with the mirror. “Did you know this was a self-portrait?” he asked.
“No one ever mentioned it.”
“He was a talented man,” Elizabeth said. “Your father said as much.”
Henry leaned closer. “He shows himself painting, with a brush in his…” His voice trailed off.
“What?” I demanded, stepping up the ladder and jostling with Henry.
He passed me the magnifying glass, looking a bit pale.
Truly the painted details were amazing, for even through the lens my view was as crystalline as something seen beyond a window. Within the mirror Wilhelm Frankenstein stood behind an easel, his right hand raised. But his fingers held no brush, only pointed to the canvas, as though giving directions, while the actual brush hovered just above, in midair.
“What do you see?” Elizabeth asked impatiently.
“The brush is floating,” I said. “It must be some joke. He’s just congratulating himself, saying it’s like magic.”
“Look more closely,” said Henry.
I squinted at the brush. “Is that not shadow?”
Henry shook his head. “The light comes from the other direction.”
What I’d mistaken for shadow was in fact a pair of black butterflies who together held the paintbrush, wings aflutter.
“Let me have a look,” said Elizabeth, and Henry stepped down to allow her room. Her warm body pressed against mine as I passed her the glass. She studied the painting.
“It gives me gooseflesh to see it,” she said.
Henry cleared his throat. “Victor’s right, of course. It could all be a joke.”
“Or he could truly be commanding some spectral force to do his work,” I said.
Elizabeth was slowly moving the magnifying glass across the painted image within the mirror. “Behind him, did you see the large window? And is that…”
“What?” I demanded. “What do you see in the window?”
“The sky. There are clouds, some of them in the shape of angels, I think. But in the middle of the sky…” She stood back and swallowed. “You’d better look at this.”
Almost reluctantly she passed me the magnifying glass. I found the window, marveling once again at the painting’s clarity. I saw the blue of the sky, the feathered clouds-and there, in the center of this blue sky, was a keyhole.
A star-shaped keyhole.
I lowered the glass and looked back at the pendant hanging from Wilhelm Frankenstein’s neck.
“The pendulum weight is a key,” I said.
Elizabeth nodded.
“We must find this lock,” I said.
“A keyhole in the sky?” Henry said skeptically.
“It must be somewhere in the house, surely,” I replied.
“You’ve lived here your entire life,” Henry said. “Have you ever seen a keyhole like this?”
“No, but it may be covered up. Wilhelm built the chateau three hundred years ago. It’s been added on to considerably over the years, but it would have to be in the oldest part, the original part. A window,” I said, thinking aloud, “or perhaps someplace on the ramparts, where the chateau is closest to the sky-”
“I know where it is,” said Elizabeth quietly.
Henry and I turned to her together. “You do?” I said.
“In the painting-that’s not the sky. It’s the ceiling of our chapel.”
We never used the chapel in Chateau Frankenstein. My parents did not believe in God, and my siblings and I had been brought up to believe that only mankind could make a heaven or hell of earth. So no candle burned on the chapel’s altar to signal Christ’s presence. No priest ever came to say Mass here. Yet in Wilhelm’s time it had surely been a place of Roman Catholic worship.
It was on the chateau’s main floor, in the very oldest part. A narrow room, the chapel had only a few windows covered with stained glass, and a stone altar at one end. A large chandelier hung from the high ceiling.
My entire life I don’t think I’d ever spent more than a few seconds at a time in this room. It offered no hiding places for games. It was cold and drafty and unwelcoming. And I’d certainly never taken the time to gaze up at the ceiling, as the three of us did now, with great attention. We’d made sure to close the door securely behind us, and turn the lock so Maria or any of the other servants couldn’t wander in and see us.
The ceiling had once been painted but had been left to fade and flake, though you could still see the traces of what once must have been a brilliant and colorful fresco. Through the painter’s skill the ceiling had been transformed into a vast vault of heavenly blue sky, and all around the base peered smiling cherubs and angels.
Head tilted back, I said, “The chandelier.”
“Same as in the portrait,” Elizabeth concurred. “Only larger.”
“The ceiling’s too high to see if there’s any keyhole,” I muttered.
The chandelier was suspended by a stout rope that ran along the ceiling, through a complicated pulley, and then down the wall, where it was tied off at a cleat. Like all the other chandeliers in the house, it needed to be
