As if they’d rehearsed it, Meredith pressed the exact place to open the root cellar door. Elena fell to her hands and knees. Faster than even he had imagined he could go, Matt went barreling toward Stefan with one shoulder down. Mrs.
Flowers was frantically pulling great swaths of dried herbs down from where they hung above the kitchen table.
And then Matt was hitting Stefan with all the power in his body and Stefan was stumbling over Elena, his head going down and down and meeting no resistance on the way. Meredith was coming at him sideways and helping him do a complete forward flip in the air. As soon as the flip took him out of the doorway and he was cartwheeling down the stairs, Elena got up and shut the door and Meredith leaned against it, as Matt shouted, “How do you keep in a kitsune?”
“These might help,” gasped Mrs. Flowers, stuffing odiferous herbs into the crack under the door.
“And — iron!” cried Elena, and she and Meredith and Matt all ran to the den where there was an enormous, tripartite iron fire screen. Somehow they bundled it back to the kitchen and set it upright against the root cellar door. Just then the first crash came from the inside against it, but the iron was heavy and the second crash against the door was weaker.
“What are you doing? Have you all gone crazy?” Stefan shouted plaintively, but as the entire group began to cover the door in Post-it Note amulets, he cursed instead and became pure Shinichi. “You’ll be sorry, damn you! Misao’s not right.
She cries and cries. You’ll make it up to her with your blood, but not before I introduce you to some special friends of mine. The kind who know how to cause real pain!”
Elena lifted her head, as if hearing something. Matt watched her frown. Then she called to Shinichi, “Don’t even try to probe for Damon. He’s gone. And if you try to track him I’ll fry your brains.”
Sullen silence greeted her from the root cellar.
“My goodness gracious, what next?” murmured Mrs. Flowers.
Elena simply nodded for the others to follow her, and they went all the way to the very top of the house — Stefan’s room — and spoke in whispers.
“How did you know?”
“Did you use telepathy?”
“I didn’t know at first,” Matt admitted, “but Elena was acting as if the star ball was in the root cellar. Stefan knows it’s not there. I guess,” he added with a guilty start, “that I invited him in.”
“I knew as soon as he started groping my hair,” Elena said with a shudder.
“Stefan and D — I mean, Stefan knows I only like it touched lightly, and at the ends.
Not mauled like that. Remember all Shinichi’s little songs about golden hair? He’s a nutcase. Anyway, I could tell from the feel of his mind.”
Matt felt ashamed. All his wondering about Elena maybe changing into a vampire…and this was the answer, he thought.
“I noticed his lapis ring,” Meredith said. “I saw him with it on his right hand as he went out earlier. When he came back he had it on his left hand.”
There was a brief pause as they all stared at her. She shrugged. “It was part of my training, noticing little things.”
“Good point,” Matt said at last. “Good point. He wouldn’t be able to change it in sunlight.”
“How did you know, Mrs. Flowers?” Elena asked. “Or was it just the way we were behaving?”
“Goodness, no, you’re all very good little actors. But as soon as he stepped over the threshold Mama fairly shrieked at me: ‘What are you doing, letting a kitsune into your house?’ So then I knew what we were in for.”
“We beat him!” Elena said, beaming. “We actually caught Shinichi off guard! I can hardly believe it.”
“Believe it,” Meredith said with a wry smile. “He was off guard for a moment.
He’ll be thinking up revenge right now.”
Something else was worrying Matt. He turned to Elena. “I thought that you said that both you and Shinichi had keys that could take you anywhere, anytime. So why couldn’t he have just said, ‘Take me inside the boardinghouse where the star ball is’?”
“Those were different keys from the Twin Fox key,” Elena said, her brows drawn together. “They’re, like, the Master Keys and Shinichi and Misao still have them both. I don’t know why he didn’t use his. Although it would have given him away the moment he was inside.”
“Not if he went inside the root cellar, and stayed there the whole time,” Meredith said. “And maybe a Master Key can override the ‘not invited inside’ rule.”
Mrs. Flowers said, “But Mama still would have told me. Also there are no keyholes in the root cellar. At all.”
“‘No keyholes’ wouldn’t matter, I don’t think,” Elena answered. “I think he just wanted to show how clever he was, and how he could fool us into giving him Misao’s star ball.”
Before anyone else could say a word, Meredith held out her palm, with a shining key on it. The key was golden with diamonds inset and had a very familiar outline.
“That’s one of the Master Keys!” cried Elena. “It’s what we thought the Twin Fox key would look like!”
“It sort of came out of his jeans pocket when he did that flip,” Meredith said innocently.
“When you were flipping him over me, you mean,” said Elena. “I suppose you picked his pocket too.”
“So, right now, Shinichi doesn’t have a key to escape with!” Matt said excitedly.
“No key to make keyholes,” Elena agreed, dimpling.
“He can have fun changing into a mole and burrowing out of the root cellar,” Meredith said coolly. “That’s if he’s got his transforming gear or whatever with him.”
She added, with a troubled change in her voice, “I wonder…if we should have Matt tell one other person where he’s actually hidden the star ball. Just…well, just in case.”
Matt saw knitted brows all around him. But suddenly the realization hit him that he had to tell someone that he’d hidden the star ball in his closet. The group — including Stefan — had picked him to hide it because he had so stubbornly resisted when Shinichi was using Damon’s body as a puppet to torture him a month ago. Matt had proved then that he would die in hideous pain rather than endanger his friends. But if Matt were to die now, Misao’s star ball might be lost to the group forever. And only Matt knew how close he had come today to tumbling down the stairs along with Shinichi.
Far below they all heard a shout. “Hello! Is anybody home? Elena!”
“That’s my Stefan,” Elena said and then, without a shred of dignity, she ran to launch herself from the foyer into his arms. He looked startled, but managed to break her fall before they both went down on the porch.
“What’s been going on?” he said, his body vibrating infinitesimally, as with the urge to fight. “The whole house smells like kitsune!”
“It’s all right,” Elena said. “Come and see.” She led him upstairs to his room.
“We’ve got him in the root cellar,” she added.
Stefan looked confused. “You’ve got who in the root cellar?”
“With iron against the door,” Matt said triumphantly. “And herbs and amulets all over it. And, anyway, Meredith got his key.”
“His key? You’re talking about — Shinichi?” Stefan turned on Meredith, green eyes wide. “While I’ve been gone?”
“It was mostly an accident. I sort of stuck my hand in his pocket when he was upside down and off balance. And I lucked out and got the Master Key — unless this is an ordinary house key.”