As he spoke, he rose from his seat, towering over them. His voice seemed to grow deeper and wider, and listening to it was like tumbling endlessly down a hole. And as deep and as strong as his voice became, his body grew frail, thin—almost transparent at the edges.
And then he collapsed back into his seat. His hands trembled. He adjusted his glasses and shook his head. “No. You cannot stay. Not if you want to live. Truly live. Besides. You have a friend to save. Or are you afraid enough to leave him?”
“I could not be more afraid than I am now,” Eleanor said, glaring at him. “And I’m not going to leave him.”
“Me neither,” Pip said. Her voice wavered, but she sounded sure.
“Then use the back door. Off you scurry,” Bartimaeus said, pointing his pen at a shadowed corner of the room. “Don’t worry, it will take a little while for the hound to nose you out.”
Pip and Eleanor joined hands once again and went to the door. It was smaller, tucked between two towering shelves. A rough black figurine holding what looked like a gourd glared at them with triangular eyes from one of the shelves. Eleanor shuddered and pushed open the door.
It opened with a creak, and they stepped out in a courtyard Eleanor recognized at once. They were on the campus of Eden Eld Academy.
The door began to swing shut behind them, but Bartimaeus called out as it did. “One more thing, Miss Barton. If you should happen to see your father, tell him the answer is yes.”
Eleanor spun around, her mouth gaping, a hundred questions tangling together in her throat. But the door had vanished.
Twenty-Two
Eleanor groped in her pocket for the crystal and put it up in front of her eye, but though the reddish color of the brick appeared, there was no door.
“I thought you didn’t know who your dad was,” Pip said.
“I don’t,” Eleanor said. She stared at the wall as if it would explain things to her. She’d asked her mom who her father was, of course, but she’d never gotten very satisfactory answers. She didn’t know what to think about what Bartimaeus had said. Could he just be wrong? And if he wasn’t, why did he know her dad?
And what had her mother known, anyway?
“Weird old man,” Pip muttered. She kicked the ground. Eleanor forced thoughts of her parents out of her mind. For Otto’s sake, she needed to stay focused. “And we’re back at school. Yay.”
“On a Saturday,” Eleanor said. “At least no one’s here. But we should find somewhere to hide.”
“The library,” Pip suggested. “We can hide in the archives. The only person who ever goes in there is Mrs. Zimmerman, and she moved here from Portland four months ago. There’s no way she’s January Society.”
They raided a vending machine along the way—Eleanor could hear Pip’s stomach growling—and darted around to avoid being seen from any of the windows. They wedged themselves between two stacks of old newspapers and split up the bags of kale chips and edamame puffs. Eleanor hoped Otto was getting something to eat, and that they were keeping him somewhere comfortable. There was no reason to hurt him, was there? They just didn’t want him running away.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to find Otto wherever they’re keeping him,” Eleanor said. “He could be anywhere.”
“We can’t give up,” Pip replied.
“I’m not giving up. We just need to find out where the door is. We know they’re bringing him there. We can save him when they do, and then run away and hide.”
“They need all three of us for the deal. Maybe it would be better for the two of us to hide and wait it out,” Pip said.
“They’ll probably put Otto through the door either way, if they think it might save even some of them,” Eleanor said.
“Yeah. You’re probably right,” Pip said. “So then . . . where’s the door?”
“I don’t know. The Founders’ Memorial?” Eleanor guessed.
Pip made a face. “I doubt it. It’s in the middle of Main Street Square. There’s a Halloween festival there every year.” She looked grim. “Do you think . . . do you think that’s so that they know everyone will be there and won’t accidentally stumble on the Society? So no one interrupts them?”
“Who organizes it?”
“The January Society,” Pip said. “They run everything in Eden Eld.”
“Not after tonight,” Eleanor said fiercely, as if by saying it she could make it true. “After tonight, there won’t be a January Society. Because they’ll all be in the gray. And we won’t be.”
If the door wasn’t at the Founders’ Memorial, where would it be? Eleanor searched around the room until she found a set of long, flat drawers that were full of maps. They were all sorts of maps, new and old—elevation maps, maps of the county, maps of specific places in Eden Eld. She sifted through them until she found one marked Eden Eld—1898. It was in a wide, flat cardboard box with tissue paper over it. She pulled out the box and set it on top of the bureau of drawers, setting the tissue paper aside.
The map was drawn in dark gray ink, or maybe black ink that had faded—or maybe it was some other color entirely, and it was only the gray world making it that way. She started to run her finger over the line of the river that snaked along the southern edge of town.
“Don’t touch that!” Pip warned her. “You need to wear the special gloves.” She yanked open a small drawer and fetched out a pair of thin white gloves.
Eleanor flushed. She should have known that. She was the one that loved old books and things. She pulled the gloves on and went back to peering at the map.
The streets branched out from Eden Eld, with closer-together streets at the center. It looked like a spiderweb with too many right angles. The streets weren’t as dense on the map as they were in modern day, and the town was much smaller, but that meant it was easier to see everything—and she figured wherever the door was, it would be roughly the same now as it was back then.
“I don’t see anything obvious,” she said.
“They aren’t exactly going to write evil gray door on a map,” Pip pointed out.
“I guess not.” Eleanor’s hand throbbed. She touched the shiny burned skin and felt the puffy flesh and painful divots where the cat-of-ashes had bitten her. She’d cleaned the bite with wipes from a first aid kit they found in the back of the room, but it still hurt.
What did they know? Her mind was spinning with a dozen things. Make a list.
Gray world. Door. Thirteens. Halloween. Iron, ash, and salt. The People Who Look Away. Mr. January. Palindromes.
Palindromes.
She traced a street that ran along the west side of Eden Eld before hooking toward the center of town. “Renner Road,” she read.
Pip looked confused. Then her eyes widened. “R-e-n-n-e-r. Forward and back. It’s a palindrome.”
“Are there any others?” Eleanor asked. They pored over the map together, fingers moving from one spidery line to the next.
“Here!” Pip declared. “Civic Boulevard.”
“Look. Level Avenue,” Eleanor said. They ran their fingers toward each other, tracing the lines of the roads. Together they formed a triangle—directly around the meadow outside of Eden Eld Academy.
“Here,” Pip said. “They’re coming here.”
Twenty-Three
Time ticked away, the afternoon sliding past them with alarming speed. Eleanor and Pip sat across from each other, backs against the bureaus of maps, their feet meeting in the middle. Eleanor was more tired than she could ever remember being in her life. They had been running and hiding so long and so often that they’d stayed ahead of all her emotions and her confusion and her worries, and all the new information she learned. She’d known they were there, but now they crashed down on her, filling her up until her skin felt tight and hot.
Her mother was out there somewhere, and she hadn’t been well but she hadn’t
been bad, either. She’d really been protecting Eleanor. Trying to save her from Eden Eld. And the fire—if she hadn’t set that, it changed everything.
But she couldn’t exactly explain that to the police. Or even to Jenny. No one would believe her. What proof did she have? Well, you see, officer, a talking cat made a vague comment . . .
And what if she was wrong? Maybe she only wanted to believe what the cat-of-ashes had hinted at. Maybe she was being foolish, holding out hope.
And anyway, what had Bartimaeus meant about her father?
The only thing her mother had ever told her about her father was that he was kind and handsome. He hadn’t known about Eleanor, that much she was sure of. He and her mom had been in love, but he’d always known he would have to leave—why, her mom left vague. His job, Eleanor thought, but she couldn’t remember if that was something her mother had told her or something she’d made up to fill in the gaps.
He left, and only after did Eleanor’s mother find out she was pregnant, and by then she couldn’t find him. She wouldn’t tell Eleanor his name; she said maybe when Eleanor was older she’d talk about him, but now it hurt too much.
And yet Bartimaeus knew who he was. And her father, it seemed, knew Bartimaeus. So was he involved in all of this somehow? Was he part of the January Society? She didn’t think so. She didn’t think her mother would talk about him with so much love if he was.
It was a mystery, and not one she thought she would solve today. Bartimaeus had sounded like he was giving her an offhand instruction, not an urgent one. Whatever question her father had asked, it didn’t have to do with Mr. January and the gray.
“What are you thinking about?” Pip asked. She had tucked one knee up against her chest.
“My parents,” Eleanor said. She shifted a little, making the drawers rattle.
“Me too. My parents, not yours,” Pip replied. “I was thinking about what will happen if we win. They’ll be gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. I won’t really miss my mom. She’s . . . No one ever really understands. She has this way of saying things that sound cheerful but they make me feel like I’m some kind of gross bug. Except bugs are actually cool and tragically misunderstood, so something worse than that. Like kale chips.” She wrinkled her nose, and Eleanor laughed. “She makes me feel worthless all the time. But I kind of like my dad. Other than the evil thing.”
“He’s not as bad?”
“She’s terrible to him, too. He’s mostly just quiet. He really likes books. You’d get along,” Pip said. “He translates books for a living. Mostly he stays up in his office and doesn’t come out. But he used to let me sit on his lap when he worked, and he has an armchair in the corner just for me, so I can do my homework and stuff in there with him. And sometimes he takes me out on adventures. For days at a time. We just go driving or camping, without Mom. He doesn’t say much to me at all, not like her, but when he does it makes me feel . . . better. It helps me not believe what Mom says.”
Eleanor didn’t know what to say. She’d been the one in need of comfort often enough lately that she didn’t think anything she said would help, but still she wished she knew the perfect words. But the only thing that would help would be to make it not true, and she couldn’t make that happen. Not for either of them.
“I don’t even know where I’ll live,” Pip said. She squeaked her sneaker toe against the tile, scrubbing at a scuffmark without success. “I don’t have any relatives in town. Some distant cousins on the Foster side, but we don’t know each other.”
“You could live with me. Me and Aunt Jenny and Ben,” Eleanor said.
“Really?” Pip asked.
“Of course,” Eleanor said. They both knew it didn’t work like that, but they smiled at each other anyway, imagining it. “We’ve definitely got enough room. You could have a bedroom next to mine. Or you could be in the other wing, and we’d have to run across the whole house to visit each other.”
“We could find every single secret,” Pip said.
“I bet there are all sorts of amazing things we haven’t even seen yet,” Eleanor agreed. “And the house is so big and lonely. It needs more people.”
“Like a hundred more,” Pip said. “Your house is huge.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Eleanor replied.
“It’s absurd,” Pip finished, and they giggled. Then Pip hunched forward. “I wish Otto was here.”
“We’ll get him back.”
“I still wish he was here.”
“Me too,” Eleanor said. They lapsed into silence. For a long, long time, neither of them could think of anything to say.
“I’ve been thinking,” Pip said at last. “Bartimaeus said that you asked the right question. Or a smart question, or something. About the agreement.”
“He did,” Eleanor said. “But I don’t see how the agreement helps us. Other than knowing that the January Society will get ‘cast into the gray’ if we win.”
“It must,” Pip says. “It’s got to help us, otherwise he wouldn’t have said that.”
Bartimaeus didn’t seem like a particularly helpful person. He seemed more like the kind of adult who would congratulate you and pat you on the head like you were five, in the hopes that you’d leave him alone. But she thought about the agreement anyway, trying to remember every word of it. “All it said was that they have to put us through the door to the gray, and then the town will flourish, and all the stuff about good harvests and being safe,” she said. “Wait. They have to put us through,” she said again, drawing out every word.
“You figured something out, didn’t you?” Pip said, excited.
“The agreement isn’t just about what Mr. January wants. It’s like he said when he was talking to your mom. He’ll be fine either way. It’s about what the Society has to do to keep from getting sucked into the gray. They have to put us through the door. Which means if we put ourselves through the door . . .”
“Then they lose,” Pip said. “It doesn’t work. We don’t get sacrificed. Except . . . except we’ll be in the gray. That can’t be good.”
“I don’t think it’s good,” Eleanor said. “But I don’t know what it does mean. Maybe the People Who Look Away will be able to get us there, but maybe not. And it gets us away from the Society.”
“I still say we run for it,” Pip said. “Grab Otto. Run for the woods.”
“They’ve got to expect we’re going to come for him,” Eleanor objected. “Thirteen adults and just three of us? You really think we can get away and stay away from them? For however long it takes? Hours?”
Pip hunched in on herself. “I could,” she said defiantly. Then, “Maybe.”
“The only sure way to keep the Society from putting us through the door is to go through it ourselves. That has to be why Bartimaeus wanted us to look at the agreement.”
Pip sighed. “Okay. It’s a plan.”
“Maybe not a good one,” Eleanor admitted.
“Better than no plan,” Pip said.
Eleanor nodded vigorously. A plan was always better than no plan. “So, one: we wait for the Society to bring Otto. Two: we get him loose. Three: we run to the door, and go through before they can force us through.”
“They’re going to be expecting us,” Pip said. “But they’re not going to be expecting that.”
“I hope not,” Eleanor said.
Before long, it would be dark. Before long, it would be time.
And they would be ready.
Twenty-Four
Darkness fell, and Pip and Eleanor stole through the school hallways. Their shoes squeaked, and the echoes tumbled back on them like they were a whole army of Pips and Eleanors. It was almost enough to make Eleanor feel brave.
Pip remembered that Ms. West always forgot to lock her classroom, so that was where they went. They crouched low as they entered a
nd waddle-walked across the room, dodging chairs and tables, until they reached the window and peered over the edge. The meadow seethed with low-lying fog. Nine hooded figures stood ankle-deep in it, surrounding a small bonfire. With the loose robes and deep hoods, it was impossible to tell who they might be, but none of them was small enough to be Otto.
Pip nudged Eleanor’s shoulder and pointed. Another line of hooded figures emerged from the road that led to Pip’s house. Four Society members, with Otto marching between two of them, his hands tied in front of him. They’d put a robe on him, too, and he kept tripping on it where it dragged on the ground.
“Go time,” Pip whispered.
“Ready?” Eleanor asked.
Pip tapped the poker and the walking stick, which were hooked to either side of her backpack. “Hittin’ sticks engaged. You?”
Eleanor adjusted the wire they’d used to attach the crystal to one eye of her glasses, then checked the baggie of salt she’d tucked into her pocket. “Ready,” she said.
“Then we get in, get Otto, and get through the door. Wait for midnight, get back out, don’t get eaten by monsters or whatever’s on the other side,” Pip said.
As plans went, it admittedly needed refinement. Eleanor couldn’t help but feel she’d let them down in the tactics department. But it wasn’t like they’d had a lot of time. Or resources. Or help.
They skulked back into the hallway and jogged to the nearest set of doors. They’d raided the gym for sweatshirts in Eden Eld blue, which had turned a nice, dark gray without color, helping them blend in with the shadows. Pip pulled her hood up to hide her pale skin and bright hair, which managed to look shiny even with all the color gone.
They stuck close to the building as long as they could. The four figures and Otto had reached the others, with all of the adults forming a wide circle. One held Otto’s shoulders, keeping him rooted in front of her—it was a her. Eleanor could see the perfect, long fingernails even from here. Ms. Foster.
Thirteens Page 14
