Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  “You’ll take no one,” said my mother. “Put Eli down and go.”

  “Mom?” I said.

  “Ah, Melinda,” said the demon. “Miss me?”

  “Like the plague,” said my mother.

  “What could be merrier than the plague?”

  “Mom?” I said again.

  “If you touch my daughter you’ll regret it.”

  “Why should I be afraid of a mewling little kitten like you, Melinda?”

  “Because I know who you are afraid of, Redwing, and you know the things I could tell her.”

  “You can’t. You wouldn’t.”

  “Put my husband down and go.”

  The metal Pilgrim sneered before yelling “Hellsfire!” so loudly the very stones of the massive building vibrated in their places.

  But even as the dust of shaken mortar fell to the stone courtyard, it backed away, and as it did it gently placed my father upon the ground. “One more false step from any one of you,” it said, “and mark my words, the Websters will be no more.”

  And then with a harsh, metallic scritch clank, scritch clank, the Pilgrim strode defiantly away before climbing over the gate and through the round gap beneath the arch. It must have kept climbing like a great iron spider to his spot above the great clock on City Hall tower, because after we picked up Barnabas and dusted him off—sadly unharmed, he informed us—and we ducked through the gap he swung open in the south gate and onto the street, there it was, fixed in its spot high on the tower, staring benevolently upon the city as it had for over a century.

  We all ended up back at my house. Talk about awkward.

  The adults sat in a tight circle in the living room—my mother, my father, my grandfather, and Barnabas—savoring my success and figuring out what to do next, along with my stepfather. Stephen had been shocked to see them all: the bent old man, the odd-looking clerk, and, most surprising, my father. After saying hello he backed away, but then I spoke up.

  “Just so you know, Grandpop,” I said, “Stephen is a lawyer, too.”

  “Is that so?” said my grandfather. “Splendid. What kind? Criminal? Constitutional? Extranatural?”

  “Patent law,” said Stephen.

  “Oh, I see,” said my grandfather. “I suppose that counts, too.”

  “Stephen told me patent law is a cornerstone of the law.”

  “A small one, maybe,” said my grandfather. “A brick, perhaps.”

  “It was Stephen,” I continued, “who taught me the rules about serving a complaint on the defendant. And when we were taken away by the police, it was Stephen who marched into the chief’s office and got us released. That’s where I first heard about habeas corpus.”

  “Well done, Stephen,” said my father, smiling at the current husband of his ex-wife. How does that even work? “Why don’t you join us?”

  “Thank you, Eli,” said my stepfather to my father, “but I think Peter just woke up. All the excitement down here. I should help him get back to sleep.”

  “I’ll go,” I said, and quick as that I was out of there and up the steps, which, let me tell you, was a relief. I couldn’t handle a grand family reunion just then. I couldn’t bear sitting stiffly as my bizarre extended family tried to make sense of each other. Especially since I had too many mysteries still raging in my head.

  How did my mother know Redwing, and what kind of blackmail did she have on him? She had rebuffed all my questions with a “Not now, Elizabeth.” I let it go because I was so stirred by her bravery—but all my suspicions about her had been confirmed. I would have to get to the bottom of her story.

  And also, what had my father meant with the cryptic comment he made as he pulled me aside after Redwing, in his Pilgrim guise, had left? “This isn’t the end of it,” my father had said softly to me. “Redwing has big plans that need to be stopped. It’s up to the Websters, all of us, to do the stopping.”

  “What kind of plans?”

  “We’ll talk later. Now’s not the time,” he had said, being as purposefully mysterious as my mother.

  It was all enough to have me feeling paranoid and alone. But I had a solution.

  Peter’s room was dark, and as I stood in the doorway I felt a wave of disappointment at the thought he might have gone to sleep, but then I heard his voice.

  “Lizzie?”

  “Can I come in?” I said. “I need a hug.”

  “My stuffed bear is in the corner. You can hug him.”

  I laughed, and jumped on the bed beside him as he giggled ferociously. I gave him so tight a squeeze he couldn’t squirm free, though he didn’t try very hard.

  “What’s going on downstairs?”

  “A Webster-Scali reunion,” I said. “Talk about strange. It’s like Frankenstein’s monster meets the mommy.”

  “Dad was so worried the whole time you were away.”

  “He’s worried a lot.”

  “Not always,” said Petey. “Usually he’s just reading or talking about what it was like when he was young. But tonight he was walking back and forth, back and forth. Where were you?”

  “In the city,” I said.

  “With the girl?”

  “What girl?”

  “The girl that was floating around at the cemetery.”

  “So you did see her.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone. But I really wanted to tell Tyler. He thinks he always has the best stories, even though his are made up.”

  “I knew I could trust you. That was Beatrice.”

  “How come I could see her, when no one else could except you and your friends? You’re a Webster, so from what Mom says that lets you do all kinds of cool stuff. But I’m not a Webster, I’m a Scali, which is not cool at all.”

  “Wrong. Being a Scali is the coolest thing ever. But I figure if you could see Beatrice and I could see Beatrice, then maybe it was because of the one thing we have in common.”

  “Mom?”

  “With Mom, there’s always more going on than we know. Hey, Peter, can I ask you something?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did she seem happy?”

  “Who?”

  “Beatrice.”

  “I think,” he said. “Especially when she breezed right through you. Then it was like she was one big smile. What did that feel like?”

  “You know how when Mom gives you a hug and all the things that bothered you all day disappear and all you can feel is Mom squeezing the air out of you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It felt like that.”

  After the case of Beatrice Long, I no longer wandered the jungle of the Willing Middle School West lunchroom like a lost meerkat looking for a safe spot to park my tray. Now I carried my lunch to a table in the center of the lunchroom and sat with a motley crew of regulars.

  There was Natalie, of course, and Henry Harrison, too, who had moved from being a client to being a friend.

  Also sitting with us—surprise, surprise—was Debbie Benner. That final kiss at Beatrice Long’s gravesite had burned away Henry’s dazed love for a ghost and he was back with Debbie. You would have thought Natalie would have been upset, but she and Debbie had become fast friends. Natalie helped Debbie pick out shoes, and Debbie was training Natalie in, get this, tennis. Apparently, Natalie had a killer backhand. It wasn’t uncommon to see the two of them walking together in the hallway in their tennis skirts, heads leaning one toward the other, chat-chatting away.

  Joining the four of us were the Fraydens, who were no longer just friends but now teammates. Yes, I had gone and done it: I had joined debate club. It was actually a suggestion from my stepfather. “I did it myself in junior high and then through high school,” said Stephen proudly. “Gosh, Lizzie, it’s great practice for a lawyer.” I rolled my eyes, of course I did, but then I gave it a try. For me it wasn’t about the competition so much as forcing myself to speak up, to speak out, to develop a skill that might be needed in the future.

  Redwing has big plans that need to be stopped, my
father had said. It’s up to the Websters, all of us, to do the stopping. I still didn’t know what he was talking about, but when the time came I wanted to be ready.

  “Big match tonight,” said Charlie Frayden. “You ready, Elizabeth?”

  “I suppose,” I said, poking the mysterious filling inside my tacos.

  “You better be,” said Charlie. “We need you.”

  “She’s a tiger,” said Doug. “Elizabeth Webster is a tiger at debate.”

  “I could have told you that,” said Henry. “She just needs to get her hair out of her eyes every now and then.”

  “Her hair’s her secret weapon,” said Natalie, who had slept over one recent night and convinced me to change my hair color. “Hot pink to hide an assassin’s heart.”

  “What’s today’s topic?” said Henry.

  “Supernatural spirits, fact or fiction,” said Doug.

  “I think Elizabeth will do okay on that one,” said Natalie.

  “We’ll probably get the negative,” I said.

  “That’s the easy side,” said Charlie. “Ghosts are just figments of our overactive imaginations. We see ghosts because we make real what we want to be real. Who hasn’t left a molar for the tooth fairy?”

  “Ah, yes, the old tooth fairy argument,” said Doug. “It works every time.”

  “She doesn’t like that,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The tooth fairy. Pretending she doesn’t exist makes her very angry.”

  “Did she tell you that?” Charlie asked, his voice soft with wonder.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” I said. “And she mentioned your name when she said it.”

  We were laughing at Charlie’s frightened gulp when I looked up through my dyed-pink hair to see a girl standing before me, black pants, black shirt, long black hair, and a steel ring in her nose, holding one hand in the other. We didn’t know each other, but I knew she was an eighth grader, and I recognized the look in her eye.

  “Uh, Miss Webster?” she said.

  “Call her Lizzie,” said Natalie.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “Take my seat,” said Charlie, who was sitting across from me. “Go ahead. I’ll just move over here. Right over here.”

  “Thank you,” she said, before sitting down, her gaze nervously resting on the tabletop.

  “Hey, Young-Mee,” said Henry.

  “Hi, Henry,” she said without looking up at him.

  “You mind if they stay and listen,” I said, “or would you prefer we talk privately?”

  “No, they can all stay. Debbie was the one who told me I should come to you.”

  “Good.” We leaned in, all of us, forming a huddle. “What’s this about, Young-Mee?”

  “Well,” she said, “there’s this thing that’s happening in our house? It’s like creepy and scary and I don’t know what to do about it?”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” said Natalie. “Lizzie is the reigning queen of creep.”

  “Maybe it’s not real,” said Young-Mee. “Maybe I’m just going crazy.”

  “You’re in the right place for that, too,” said Debbie Benner with a smile.

  “It’s like one day a month I hear this shrieking in our basement? At first, I thought it was the shutters squeaking in the wind, but it happens even on the calmest day. And my parents don’t hear it, or my brothers. Just me…and the dog. Yeah, the dog hears it, I can tell, the way she runs around in circles when it comes.”

  “What does it sound like?” I said.

  “Like a cat has its tail stuck under a rocking chair and the chair keeps rocking. And now it’s like I’m a wreck for a week before it comes, dreading it, and a week after because I get so worked up and scared.”

  “You said it comes once a month?”

  “It’s the same day, the fifteenth. Every fifteenth of the month I hear it.”

  “Ah, the ides,” said Charlie Frayden, nodding. “It’s like something out of Julius Caesar. That’s Shakespeare, Mr. Harrison, sir.”

  “It sounds to me like a Class Two banshee,” said Doug Frayden, who lately had been studying my grandfather’s copy of White’s Legal Hornbook of Demons and Ghosts, the definitive guide to the dead and undead.

  “What’s a banshee?” said Young-Mee.

  “An unhappy spirit,” I said. “A banshee is trying to tell us something but doesn’t know how to express herself like a human being, because she’s not a human being anymore. We just have to figure out what she is trying to say.”

  “So it’s a she?”

  “If it’s a banshee,” said Doug, “it’s a she. And Irish, too.”

  “Why is an Irish ghost haunting me?”

  “We’ll have to ask it,” I said.

  “How do we do that?” said Young-Mee.

  “I know,” said Natalie. “Let’s have a party!”

  “That’s your answer to everything,” said Henry.

  “Lighten up, Henry,” said Debbie. “You’ve got to show some spirit if you want to battle in the spirit world.”

  “And I have just the right lipstick,” said Natalie. “Estée Long-gone.”

  “So, Lizzie,” said Young-Mee, “what should I do?”

  Think about this for a moment. An eighth grader with a ring in her nose was asking me, a seventh-grade math geek, for advice. You never know what you’ll find when you look closely at yourself. I would have liked to have found a brilliant singer, an actor who would leave them weeping in their seats, a painter, an acrobat, something artistic, something normal, but that wasn’t to be. No, instead what I discovered was this bizarre lawyer thing. But when I looked around at my team, that didn’t seem so bad.

  “Go home tonight,” I said, “and tell your parents you’re having a Julius Caesar party for some kids in your English class. Then, on the fifteenth, we’ll all show up in costume.”

  “Toga party,” said Doug.

  “Totally,” said Natalie.

  “We’ll all get together wrapped in sheets, play games, drink punch, dance a little, and maybe, when the screaming starts, we’ll try to have a discussion with your banshee. I have someone who can teach me the Latin that might get it done. If you have any questions before then, just get in touch with me.”

  I gave her my shiny new card.

  “Webster and Spawn?” said Young-Mee.

  “The family firm,” I said. “I’m the spawn.”

  I’ve had the bones of this story for years, for decades actually—ever since I went to work in my father’s small and peculiar law office—and I spent thousands of words trying and failing to bring those bones to life. Truth is, they never started dancing until Elizabeth Webster carried her lunch tray into my office and asked if she could eat at my table. I’m so grateful that she was willing to sit with someone so low on the pecking order, but that’s just the kind of kid she is.

  Elizabeth might have shown me the route, but I also received much-needed help on the way to making this novel what I wanted it to be. I want to thank my agents, Wendy Sherman and Alex Glass, whose unwavering enthusiasm for the novel, and careful guidance toward the market, were instrumental in the creation of this book. I also want to thank Laurie Morrison, a terrific novelist herself, for encouragement and advice, and Tamson Weston for help with the tone and voice. My editor, the amazing Tracey Keevan, has not only made the book much stronger, but made me a better writer, too.

  There are so many others to thank as I make my way toward a new audience. Alison Dasho, a friend and inspiration, was one of the first people to see the book and I am forever grateful for her faith in me and the story. Multas gratias to Anne Smith, of the Shipley School, who gently corrected my Latin. I also want to thank the students at Mighty Writers in Philadelphia for keeping me connected with the kind of kids I’m writing about, especially Mosadi Pearson, Lauryn Dorsett, Makayla Jordan, Moriah Lahr, Eric-Ross McLaren, Emanual Marquez, and Ayah Pearson. Your talent and commitment are a constant inspiration.

  My sons,
Jack, a physicist, and Michael, an engineer, told me I needed more math in the book. Their skills are proof that some things are not genetic. I also want to thank my daughter, Nora, for being strong and funny, sarcastic and steadfast, independent and caring. There’s a lot of her in both Elizabeth and Natalie, which is why I love them so. My wife, Pam, has been my greatest supporter, from writing school through every twist and turn that has followed. Thank you for letting me share your life.

  Finally, I want to acknowledge two historical works that lie at the foundation of Elizabeth’s world. “The Devil and Daniel Webster” is a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét, first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1936 and beloved by kids everywhere since then. Benét won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his epic poem John Brown’s Body. And then there is a treatise that remains a cornerstone of American legal practice, The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., published in 1881. Ebenezer Webster stands on a volume of The Common Law when he reaches for his hat.

  WILLIAM LASHNER is a former criminal prosecutor with the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His novels have been published worldwide and have been nominated for two Shamus Awards, a Gumshoe Award, an Edgar Award, and have been selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. When he was a kid his favorite books were The Count of Monte Cristo and any comic with the Batman on the cover. This is his first novel for young readers.