Secret Breakers: The Power of Three by H. L. Dennis

scrabbling in his pocket for a rather crushed packet of Polos. ‘I’m starving. We should stop to eat.’
    ‘What and lose more lives?’ blurted Tusia. ‘I don’t think so.’
    Brodie was beginning to panic. ‘The clue said we should prepare to feast,’ she said, trying to cling on to any hope she could find. ‘Maybe it’s that simple. We go back to Hut 12. That’s where there’d be a feast.’
    ‘Hut 12’s too obvious. And why the flower?’ Tusia said, leaning her head against the tapestry.
    ‘Look,’ Brodie said at last. ‘We’re tired and hungry. Let’s take the tapestry into the other room and lay it down on the floor so we can read it like a map.’
    ‘OK. Maybe there’s something we’re missing,’ added Tusia as she helped Brodie lower the hand-sewn map and carry it through to the music room.
    ‘I tell you what I’m missing,’ huffed Hunter. ‘My lunch.’
    ‘We don’t have time for this!’ shouted Tusia, waving the lifeline in his face. ‘Five lives left, Hunter. That’s all. And then it’s over.’
    The girls put the fabric map down on the music-room floor and weighted down the corners with their shoes and the huge reference books.
    ‘OK, Station X,’ said Brodie, lifting her head in exasperation to allow the sun from the window above to warm her face. ‘Tell us where you want us to go before it’s too late.’
    Brodie closed her eyes and thought for a while. The light from the window danced on her face. Flashes of colour streamed through the stained glass. Brodie could still see the flowers with her eyes shut.
    She opened her eyes.
    ‘The glass.’ She blinked to see more clearly. ‘It’s patterned, right?’
    ‘Well done, Miss Observant. The glass skylight does have pattern on it. And the relevance of that is?’ asked Hunter.
    ‘And we’re supposed to remember all we’ve learnt?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And the thing we forgot when we were coming into the mansion for the very first time was about …’
    ‘Light being knowledge,’ Tusia interrupted, scrambling to her feet.
    ‘Still not with you,’ Hunter said, peering to see whatever Tusia was staring at in the skylight above them.
    Tusia was now reaching for the encyclopaedia. ‘Corpse flowers,’ she said. ‘Look. That stained glass in the skylight. It’s of flowers. All sorts. But look. In the corner, there’s a corpse flower.’
    She thrust the book into Brodie’s hand so she could see and true enough, the ugly flower depicted on the glass looked remarkably like the one sketched beside the definition.
    ‘OK,’ said Hunter, dragging out the word as if not entirely convinced. ‘I can see the flower and that’s all great. But how’s that tell us where to meet?’
    Brodie read the clue again. ‘ To take a place amongst us, line the lower stitches straight with the fire then prepare for feasting in the place where the corpse awakes at two . So, if light is knowledge then maybe our answer is when the light shines through the corpse flower in the skylight at two.’
    ‘OK,’ Hunter said again, looking at the patterns made on the floor through the glass. ‘But how will light through the window give us a location? You want us to dig up the floor looking for corpse-flower bulbs? Cos the light’s going to fall on the floor, right?’
    Brodie rubbed her eyes to concentrate. ‘We could hold a map,’ she said. ‘Under the light.’
    Hunter seemed impressed but Tusia was shaking her head. ‘But where would we hold it? Would you just wander around under the light? That way you could make the light fall anywhere you want to. That can’t be what the clue means.’
    Hunter looked down at his shoes. ‘So maybe there’s a fixed map. On the floor.’
    ‘Well, there is now. I mean, not a fixed one. But this tapestry. There’s your map.’
    ‘So, where on the floor should it be?’ yelped Tusia. ‘Where do we put it?’
    Hunter’s face looked as if the suggestion he was saying in his head was not really very