“Walking stick,” she said. “Like Jack has in the stories. Right? So what have you guys found? Or were you just standing there talking the whole time?” She raised an eyebrow at them. It was the tone of voice she used when she argued with Otto in that “we’re friends” way, but it was directed at both of them.
“I found this,” Eleanor said, slipping the crystal out of her pocket. “It made some things in the room glow. But I don’t know why.” They looked expectantly at Otto.
“Um. Let’s see,” he said, turning slowly and looking a little bit overwhelmed.
“The cards are like the ones the fortune-teller used in ‘The Glass-Heart Girl,’” Eleanor said, pointing. She stepped to the next shelf. “Hm. This fur hat might be from ‘Tatterskin.’ Or . . .”
But Otto was looking down at one of the glass cases. “What about this?” he asked. He pointed at a fancy compass in a silver case. It was the size of a pocket watch, and hung on a chain like one, too. Instead of directions like north and south, the edges of it were painted with vines. At the top of the circle was a delicate blue flower. On the opposite side was a trio of spiky thorns.
“I don’t remember that from any of the stories,” Eleanor said.
“I like it,” Otto said. “Maybe not everything we need is in the stories.”
“Maybe,” Eleanor said doubtfully. “But I really think you should pick something else.”
Otto opened the case and took out the compass without responding. “I don’t think it’s pointing north,” he said. “North should be . . .” He turned around, tapping his forehead, until he faced the wall. “That way. And it’s pointing toward the window instead. But then, this room shouldn’t be here. And who knows where out there is.” He waved at the window. “We can’t expect this room to obey normal laws of magnetism and direction. I should check downstairs and see if it works normally outside the room.”
“I’m going to keep looking in here,” Eleanor said. She still wasn’t convinced that he should take something that wasn’t in one of the stories. She’d find him something else. Something better.
Pip was going through her sword-fighting motions again, so Otto shrugged and trotted down the stairs by himself. Eleanor peered through the crystal. The walking stick was definitely glowing. So was the deck of cards. She wanted to call Otto back and see if the compass was glowing, but he’d seemed a bit annoyed with her for not agreeing with him.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” Pip told her, stopping her swinging. She blew a strand of hair out of her face with a puff of breath. “I’m glad your mom’s not evil.”
“I’m sorry your parents are.”
“Yeah. But at least that means I was right,” Pip said. “And I do like being right.”
Eleanor laughed. “Me too,” she confessed.
Outside the room, Otto shouted in fear.
Nineteen
Other voices rose, sharp and angry.
“Mom,” Pip whispered. They rushed back to the top of the stairs, trying not to make any noise. Otto had closed the door most of the way when he left, so they could peer through the crack together. All they could see from this angle were feet, and only because the people were standing right in front of the tall fireplace, but that was enough to see what was going on. Ms. Foster’s sharp heels stood in front of Otto’s scuffed-up, dirty sneakers and a pair of black, polished men’s shoes. It looked like the man had Otto by the arms.
“Otto, darling,” Ms. Foster said. “We have been looking all over for you. You’ve had us quite worried. Practically beside ourselves.”
“We know what you’re doing,” Otto said. “We’ll stop you.”
“Yes,” Ms. Foster said, unconcerned. “We. Where is my daughter? And the delightful Eleanor Barton?”
“You’ll never find them,” Otto said.
“We’ll see about that,” Ms. Foster replied. More footsteps approached. Two more men. “Take him out to the car. And search this house. Top to bottom.”
Pip’s hands tightened on the walking stick, but Eleanor shook her head. There was no way they could fight a bunch of adults. They’d just get captured themselves.
Pip glared at her, but she knew Pip wasn’t really angry at her. She was angry at the men below.
“They’re so well hidden, you could look all day and never find them!” Otto yelled as they dragged him off. He was telling them to stay put. And Eleanor didn’t see what else they could do.
Ms. Foster stayed behind. She turned in a circle, like she was looking around the room. There were tiny daggers painted on the backs of her high-heeled shoes.
“Unacceptable,” she muttered. “Simply unacceptable.” She sighed. “It will all work out. You’ve planned for every eventuality. You have this under control.”
Eleanor and Pip exchanged bemused looks. Eleanor supposed that it was a good sign that Ms. Foster had to give herself a pep talk. She just wished the woman didn’t sound quite so cheered up by it. Pip gave a shrug as if to say She’s always like this.
“And of course Claire’s daughter would be the one to cause so much trouble,” she continued. “Always such a troublemaker herself, sneaking off with that boy of hers. I wonder if the girl shows any . . . Not that it will matter, after tonight.”
Eleanor thought she was talking to herself, but then a floorboard creaked, and a new voice spoke. “Why do I get the feeling you’re making excuses?” a man asked. A shudder of fear went through Eleanor at the first word. Pip stifled a gasp, and they grabbed each other’s hands tight. The man had a strange voice. Like honey and like vinegar. Eleanor couldn’t see his feet, or any part of him. “You don’t need to make excuses, Delilah. They don’t matter one bit to me or to my sisters. Either you bring the children to the doorway after dark, or you don’t. We will be just fine either way. You, on the other hand . . .” He chuckled. “You know the deal. We’ll see you after sunset, at the place it all began.”
The floorboards creaked. Ms. Foster let out a sigh. “What a horrible man,” she muttered, and then she walked away, too, her heels click-clack-clicking on the floor.
Eleanor eased the door shut.
“What are you doing?” Pip whispered.
“They’re going to look all over the house. So we need to hide in here until they’re gone,” Eleanor said. “Then we’ll go after Otto.”
“We can’t let them take him. Who knows what they’ll do to him?” Pip replied, nearly forgetting to whisper in her agitation. “They don’t know we’re here. We can sneak up behind them and—”
“And what? Hit them with a stick? Then what?” Eleanor demanded. “We can’t just charge right in!”
“What if they hurt him? We have to—”
“You heard him. Mr. January. He said that they had to bring us to the door after dark. They don’t have any reason to hurt Otto until then.”
“So what, we do nothing?”
Eleanor balled her hands into fists. She was right. She knew she was right. But so was Pip. Hunkering down here until dark didn’t solve anything. They needed a plan, but she couldn’t think of one. There were too many pieces missing. “What would Otto say?” she asked.
“‘We need to collect more data,’” Pip said in an exaggerated version of Otto’s usual hyper-fast voice.
“I think Otto would be right,” Eleanor said. “Charging in isn’t the answer, and neither is sitting around doing nothing. There are still things we don’t understand. Let’s look around in here first. We can’t go anywhere else right now, anyway. Not with the Society searching the house.”
Pip nodded reluctantly, though her hands were tight around the walking stick, and Eleanor could tell that she was thinking about how it would feel to wallop one of the January Society goons with it.
“This is like a museum,” Pip said, speaking each word slowly as she thought it through. “So shouldn’t there be some kind of . . . rec
ord or something? A list of what’s here and what it’s for?”
Eleanor perked up. “The desk at the back, maybe?”
Pip held out her hand, and Eleanor took it, not sure which of them needed the contact and reassurance more. Pip pulled them to the back of the room.
The desk looked familiar, and Eleanor stared at it for several seconds before she realized where she’d seen one like it before. “This looks like your mom’s desk,” she said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Pip exclaimed. The legs were carved with the same sort of gnarled tree trunk shape. It wasn’t exactly the same—the corners were curved instead of straight, and the wood was a different color—but it might have been made by the same person. “Her desk was made by Bartimaeus Ashford. He made stuff for all of the founding families. People are always bragging about ‘having a Bartimaeus.’” She rolled her eyes.
The desktop held only a few objects: a silver letter opener, the handle shaped like an elongated owl; an inkpot; an old-fashioned dip pen; and a single sheet of old, brittle paper, set out as if ready to be written upon.
“There’s nothing in the drawers,” Pip said as she finished her quick examination of them. “Maybe one of them has a false bottom?”
Eleanor frowned at the paper. It reminded her of the paper in the book of tales—and those pages had been blank, too. Until they weren’t. If there was writing hidden on it, was there a way to see it?
She took the crystal lens from her pocket. Things had looked different through it once—maybe they would again. She held it up to her glasses and closed her other eye.
Words spilled over the page, written in an elegant script that she struggled to read. She spoke the words aloud for Pip’s benefit.
To Whomever Has Found This Room,
The objects held within this vault are safe, or relatively so, the unnatural powers within them benevolent. If you have found your way here, I assume you are clever enough to learn how to use them without my instructions, and I do not have the patience for explanations in any case.
Use what you can, and take what you must. The People Who Look Away must be stopped. Come and find me if you can.
B. A.
“Bartimaeus Ashford,” Eleanor guessed, and then she smacked her hand against her forehead. “B. A. is the person who wrote the book! The book of fairy tales! He’s the one that’s helping us! The plaque by the coffee shop said that nobody ever recorded a date of death for him. And the cat-of-ashes talked about him like he was still alive somehow.”
“Then he’s got to be the Storyteller,” Pip said excitedly. “In the book the heroes go and ask him questions, but they don’t ask the right ones. If we can find him—”
“And ask the right questions—” Eleanor continued.
“Then we can beat Mr. January once and for all!” Pip finished.
Help. Finally they would have help. They had been on their own this whole time, but here was someone who knew what was going on, who knew about wrong things and magic and Mr. January. Surely Bartimaeus Ashford, if he truly was still alive, would help them. And he had to be better at stopping Mr. January and the Society than three newly minted teenagers.
“So where does a somehow-not-dead-even-though-he’s-like-a-hundred-and-thirty-years-old guy go to hide?” Pip asked.
“Well, he’s not in the house. He built other places in town, though, right?” Eleanor asked.
“Yeah. A lot of the buildings, actually,” Pip said. “I bet he’s hiding out in one of them! We can search the town.” Outside, footsteps thumped angrily across the floor, and Pip deflated a bit. “After they’re gone,” she added.
For now, they had to wait.
Twenty
They sat and waited and waited and sat, not daring to so much as whisper. Floorboards creaked and floorboards groaned. Voices muttered here and there through the house. It seemed like you could hear the men in suits no matter where they were. Maybe it was another trick of the room.
Once, footsteps came up right outside the door and shuffled around a bit, but they turned right back around.
Eventually, the front door slammed. Car engines started up outside, then faded. Finally Eleanor felt safe opening the door. They crept down together, cautiously, and stopped to listen. No creaking or groaning or voices, and the house felt empty, like it had when they arrived.
Pip bolted for the hallway.
“Pip!” Eleanor cried in alarm.
“Bathroom!” Pip called over her shoulder, and Eleanor stifled a relieved laugh, realizing that she had the same urgent need.
A few minutes later they joined up in the front hallway. The sun was coming in through the windows now, but the light was weak and thin. Fall light, filtered through clouds. Eleanor felt strange, like she’d been gone over with a rolling pin. Thinned out. Noises seemed too loud and muffled at the same time, and she found herself looking at the door to the hidden room, wanting to go inside, slam the door shut, and never, ever leave.
She did not trust that urge at all. She’d read too many fairy tales entirely. A feeling like that usually came with a curse at the other end of it, and she was cursed plenty enough already. She resolved not to spend more time than she needed to in that room.
“We have until dark,” Eleanor said. “That’s what he said.”
“That was—it was him, wasn’t it?” Pip asked, chewing on a strand of her hair nervously. “Mr. January?”
“Yeah. It was him. He didn’t seem to like your mom very much.”
“That’s the only good thing I’ve heard about him,” Pip said. Her voice sounded like a bruise felt when you pressed down on it. “His sisters weren’t there. Do you think he’s like . . . their leader?”
Eleanor made a face. The fairy tale made it seem that way, but she didn’t exactly trust fairy tales to be accurate when it came to how important women were. The book never even gave the girl with backward hands a name, and she was at least as important as Jack. “Maybe it’s more like this is his project, and they have their own projects.”
“Ashford can tell us more,” Pip said confidently.
“We’ll find him. Then we’ll make a plan,” Eleanor said.
“You make the plan. You’re good at plans. I’ll bring the hittin’ stick,” Pip said. She had the walking stick in one hand and the poker sticking out of her backpack. Eleanor hoped she wouldn’t have to hit anyone or anything. They were just a couple of kids. Any fight they got in, they would probably lose.
“We need better protection,” she said.
“We have the stick and the poker,” Pip replied.
Eleanor had the book out. She was paging through, looking at “Rattlebird” and “The Graveyard Dog” and “Cat-of-Ashes,” but apart from the iron shovel the kids used in “The Graveyard Dog,” there wasn’t much mention of weapons. The cat-of-ashes and the rattlebird never even fought anyone in their stories.
“There has to be a clue,” Eleanor muttered.
“What’s that one?” Pip asked, and Eleanor stopped flipping pages.
It was a story called “Iron, Ash, and Salt.” Three children fell down a well and found themselves in a gray world filled with strange monsters. They protected themselves with iron, ash, and salt—a refrain it kept repeating.
“‘They drove the creatures back with iron! They drove them back with ash! They drove them back with salt!’” Pip read. She had a good reading-aloud voice, Eleanor thought. So you didn’t just hear the words, you felt them.
“The iron worked already,” Eleanor said.
“Yeah, but . . . most things get hurt when you hit them with fire tools,” Pip pointed out.
“It’s worth a try. There’s salt in the kitchen. And ashes in the drawing room fireplace.”
They took down the round container of salt from the kitchen cabinet, then filled a sandwich bag with ashes scooped up from the fire
place. Eleanor washed her hands. Pip just scrubbed hers clean on her jeans.
“So,” Pip said. “What’s the plan?”
Eleanor took a deep breath and held it. “One, get supplies. We’ve done that. Two, find Ashford. Three, get Otto free. Four, defeat the January Society and escape the curse.”
“It seems like step four is actually a lot of steps,” Pip said.
“It’s a work in progress,” Eleanor said with a grimace. “We’ll keep figuring it out as we go.”
“If saving Otto’s part of it, it’s good enough for me,” Pip said. The loyal fervor in her voice made Eleanor feel warm.
“All right, then. Ready?” Eleanor asked.
“No,” Pip said. “But let’s go anyway.”
Eleanor opened the back door and stepped out. For a moment she thought she’d been wrong, and the sun wasn’t done rising. But it was only that the colors were still all wrong. The whole yard was gray. Dark gray tree trunks, light gray ground, pale gray sky of pockmarked clouds. The shed, which should have been a faded blue, was gray, too.
It was worse, somehow, in the daylight. Stranger, eerier. It made the world seem dead—or halfway to dead, at least.
“Do you think it comes back? Color?” Pip asked.
“After midnight,” Eleanor said with confidence. “After today, everything will go back to normal.”
Pip shivered. “Let’s get moving. All this standing still is making it too easy to think.”
* * *
• • •
THEY RODE THEIR bikes along side streets and back paths again. Eleanor took Otto’s bike this time, since it was in better shape than the one she’d gotten from the shed, but her face was still hot and sweaty by the time they reached the official border of Eden Eld.
October 31. Halloween. There should have been kids in costumes, people handing out candy. Eleanor had always loved that her birthday was on Halloween. She loved to celebrate, but hated being the center of attention, and so it was perfect. It was like there was a giant party for her—but no one realized it. She could just watch and enjoy.
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