Wally slowly took out the silver rose. A face reflected in one of its petals. The girl’s skin glowed like winter light through a frosted pane.
“Hi!” she said. “I’m Breeth!”
Wally threw the rose. It tumbled along the floor, coming to a stop against one of the baseboards. He stared at it, trying to assure his pounding heart that he was just tired and hallucinating.
“Ahem.”
Wally leapt away from the wall, which seemed to have just cleared its throat.
The painting of the aristocratic goblin scowled at him. “You shouldn’t throw people, you know,” it said with the girl’s voice. “It’s very rude.”
Wally might have screamed if his breath hadn’t been stolen.
The ghost, or whatever she was, could move between objects. He sprinted down the hallway.
“Wait!” the girl said, her voice now a creak in the wall. “Don’t run! I’m nice!”
Wally reached the door and threw it open, only to find two robed people—a redheaded woman with an eye patch and a small man in a military getup, as hairy as he was thin—hunched over a map of tunnels.
“We’ll send Ludwig’s birds through here,” the woman said, tapping the map.
The hairy man saw Wally and nudged the woman. “Isn’t that the thief Linus caught?”
The woman looked at Wally, narrowing her one eye. “How did you escape?”
Wally slammed the door and sprinted back past the portraits. The door flew open behind him, and the robed people were on his heels.
“Stop him!” the woman cried.
The hairy man drew out a garden sprayer and pumped mist into the hall. The roots on the floor writhed to life. Wally was able to leap over them and make it to the sandalwood hallway, but then he was trapped. The roots grew into the exits, sealing them shut.
Wally turned around, backing away as the robed people came around the corner.
“There, there now,” the man grumbled. “That’s a good street urchin. We’re not gonna hurt ya.”
“For heaven’s sakes, Weston,” the woman said. “He’s a child, not a dog.” She looked at Wally. “Surrender now and we’ll lead you safely back to your cell. I promise we’ll be kinder than the Manor. There are rooms here that will swallow you whole.”
Wally raised his fists, ready to fight. But then he noticed something slithering on the floor. The roots coiled around the man’s and woman’s ankles, and with a yank, pulled their legs out from under them.
“Stand down!” the man bellowed at the roots as they dragged him and the woman through the hallway. “I wanted you to block the exits, not us!”
The woman snagged a pair of shears from Weston’s belt and started slashing. Wally stared a moment, dumbfounded at his luck, then tried to loosen the roots blocking an exit. It was like trying to claw through solid wood.
“Um, you’re welcome?” a voice said above him.
Wally looked up at a wooden chandelier, which swung with the ghost girl’s voice.
“I tripped them for you!” she said, her face smiling in the intricate leaf carvings. “You should say thank you.”
“Thank you?” Wally said numbly.
“You’re welcome!”
The chandelier stopped swaying, and Wally watched the ghost girl creak through the ceiling and then inhabit the roots of one of the blocked passages. The roots untangled, creating an opening.
“This way!” she said.
Wally stared. Was this how it started? If he followed the ghost, would that be the first step into madness that would land him in Greyridge with his brother?
“Trust me!” she said.
The robed people were almost free of the roots. Wally would have to take his chances with the ghost. He ran down the passage.
“Turn right!” the girl cried, a groan in the floor.
Wally went right. Then left. Then left again. Then zigzag. Then straight ahead. The girl’s creaky voice led him through the twisted forest passageways—moss and leaves and crumbled earth—until he came to what looked like a garden of suits and dresses.
“In here!” she said as an armoire opened with a gust of pollen.
Wally slipped inside, and the armoire shut behind him. He held his breath and hugged his knees as footsteps entered the room.
“How did he manage to navigate the forest wing?” the redheaded woman asked. “I’ve been here fourteen years, and I still get lost.”
The hairy man grunted. “Better question is how he got my roots to ignore a direct order.”
“It seems we have a mage loose in the Manor,” the woman said.
“That kid? Unlikely. Did you see the look on his face?”
Once their voices faded, the armoire’s woodwork sighed.
“Phew!” the ghost girl said. “That was close.”
In the faint keyhole light, Wally could make out a face in the wood grain. He’d seen human-looking patterns like this before, but they’d never actually spoken to him. The girl’s voice was like the squeak a drawer makes.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked.
Wally stared at his knees, hoping if he ignored her, he would stop hallucinating.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” She giggled. “Unless I accidentally close your fingers in a door or something.”
This wasn’t very reassuring. He kept his lips shut.
“Oh no.” The girl gasped. “Can you not hear me anymore?”
She sounded so disappointed that Wally felt a twinge of guilt. If this ghost was real, she had saved him from being caught. And she hadn’t done any of the things ghosts usually do in stories. Her eyes didn’t drip blood. Her hair didn’t rage like dark fire. Her teeth and fingernails didn’t grow to monstrous lengths as she flew shrieking at him. She just talked like a normal kid. If that kid had wooden vocal cords.
“CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME!” she shouted, her voice rising from a creak to a groan.
Wally plugged his ears and finally looked into her knotted eyes. “What are—How can—Why did—?”
“So you can hear me!” The girl smiled, making the wood squeak. “That’s good. For a second there, I was worried I broke your brain! What’s your name?”
Wally swallowed, trying to keep his mind from unspooling. “Wally.”
“I’m Breeth. Not sure if you caught that before you threw me down the hallway.”
“Oh, um, sorry about that,” Wally said, fully aware that he was apologizing to an armoire.
“As for your question,” Breeth said, “or three questions—I don’t know how I’m doing this! I just know I can possess anything so long as it was alive at one point. Wood. Old bones. Roots. Silvered flowers. It’s like I’m taking over for a soul that’s no longer there!”
Wally nodded slowly, trying to wrap his head around too many things. “What about the painting?” he said, remembering the angry goblin face.
“That paint’s made of mashed-up lilac petals!” Breeth said.
He nodded like that made sense. “What were you…?”
“What was I doing in that rose?”
“Uh, yeah,” Wally said, even though he wasn’t sure what he was going to ask.
The armoire made a creak, and a flurry of moths fluttered out of an old fur coat. They flapped their desiccated wings, arranging themselves in the shape of a face.
“I was hoping you’d help me with something!” Breeth said, her voice dusty and fluttery. “I was watching you walk around the Manor, and I thought, huh, I’ve never seen him before. And then I thought, wait a second, he must be a thief! And then I thought some not-so-nice things about you that I won’t repeat. But then I watched you some more, saw you were harmless, and realized, This boy can help me! I’ve been stuck in this boring old Manor ever since I died. So I kept my splinters crossed that you would steal something I could possess. And then I was like, Duh, Breeth. You can just move the hallways around to get him to steal a silver rose and then hide inside it. So that’s what I did!” The moths made a swirl of delight. “I never thought you
’d be able to talk to me!”
Wally frowned. Had he not solved that coiled hallway? He’d felt so smart for a second.
Breeth put a moth-winged finger to her lips. “How can you see me, by the way? No one else in the Manor even knows I exist.”
Wally shrugged. But then he remembered something Graham once told him—that people only saw what they wanted to see.
“Take the color blue, for instance,” Graham had said. “People went thousands of years without having a word for it. They called the sky green and the oceans gray as slate. Then one day someone held up a cornflower and said, ‘This is blue,’ and suddenly everyone saw it. There are all sorts of interesting things that people can’t see just because they don’t have the words, or their minds aren’t ready to accept them.”
Wally had decided, right then and there, that if his mom was a ghost, he would want to see her, no matter the consequences. He never did, of course.
“I don’t know how I’m doing it,” he told Breeth.
“Well, we’re just a couple of perplexed peas in a pod then, aren’t we?” she said.
The dead moths fell to the floor and the armoire flew open. Wally flinched, expecting one of the robed people to seize him.
“Oops,” Breeth said, snorting. “Sorry. That was me. Should have warned you. I’m still getting used to the whole people seeing and hearing me thing.” She creaked out of the armoire and into an old rocking chair. “It’s safe to come out. I can feel Weston’s and Amelia’s footsteps a few halls from here.”
Wally stepped out, brushing pollen from his pants. “Can you get me out of this place?”
“Sure!” Breeth said, rocking the chair. “I know this Manor like the back of my hand!” She held up the chair’s armrest. “Literally! Ha!” She creaked out of the chair and up a wall so that she was knot-to-nose with him. “But if I help you, you have to do me a favor.”
Wally steadied himself. “What’s that?”
“Help me find my killer.”
His heart started to race again. “You were murdered?”
“Yeah.” Breeth made a sad sound, like a house settling in winter. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think that’s what’s keeping me in the land of the living. I have to bring my killer to justice. Then I can, y’know, move on and see my parents again.”
“Are your parents … dead?”
The sad sound echoed through the wall again, and it sort of slumped. “Yeah. My kidnapper attacked them.” For the first time since Wally had met her, Breeth went perfectly silent. A few seconds later, the wall straightened itself. “How about you? You got a family?”
“Um … no,” he said. “They all died in the Pox.”
“Oh,” Breeth said. “Maybe they’re haunting their own furniture somewhere.”
Wally thought of Graham in the hospital and his heart squeezed. “How am I supposed to help you?”
“My killer isn’t in this Manor anymore, I don’t think. I want to go out and find him, but I’ve been too afraid to leave because the Manor moves around the world, flying off to a new location at least once a week. Every time I open an exit, I find myself in a place I’ve never seen before. Even if I spoke the language, I couldn’t ask anyone where I am! ’Cause, y’know, I’m dead. So I creak right back into the Manor every time. But now you can help me find my way around and track down my killer!”
“Great,” Wally said, feeling less than enthusiastic.
“All I know about him is that he’s muscly and wears a mask made of steel and glass. Oh, and he smells like melting metal, if that makes sense.”
Wally rubbed the back of his neck. He had enough to worry about without tackling a murder mystery. All he wanted was to be back in Kingsport so he could check on his brother. But he didn’t think he could escape this Manor all by himself. And Wally sympathized with Breeth for wanting to see her parents again.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll help you if you help me.”
“Yay!” Breeth creaked across the wall and opened a door. “This way!”
Wally relaxed a little then. If he was losing his mind, at least it felt better than being alone in this place. Maybe that was why Graham always seemed so happy. People who saw things that weren’t there were never lonely, at least.
Wally followed the ghost girl toward the Manor’s exit.
Or, for all he knew, deeper in.
5
GREYRIDGE
Midnight struck stale and windless as Arthur scaled the craggy path up the sea cliffs to Greyridge Mental Hospital. Waves gnashed against the rocks. The wind moaned through the hospital’s barred windows. Arthur slowed his steps. It seemed silly, but he felt more afraid of this place meant to keep people safe than he was of the Stormcrow filled with murderous thieves.
By the time he reached the front gate, the Rook’s guards were riding out in their wagon. “Visiting hours are over, kid,” one of them called. “Go home.”
Arthur clasped the bars of the gate. The hospital was a fortress. Thorny hedges and a wrought iron fence wrapped around the border. The portcullis was sealed with chains. What he wouldn’t give to have Wally and his lock picks there with him.
“What floor is he on?” Arthur called after the wagon.
One of the guards sneered. “Second. Won’t do you any good anyway.” He gave the horse a whip, and the wagon went rattling down the hill.
Arthur considered the fence. Fortunately, it ended just a few yards from where he was standing. Unfortunately, it ended at a rocky cliff that plummeted two hundred feet into the sea.
He followed the fence to its corner, slipped around the bars, and climbed the side rungs down to the jagged rock face. Waves exploded over the ocean’s breakers as Arthur scaled the cliff to the hospital’s seaside walls. His fingers strained between the stone slabs, but he managed to climb to the second floor. His toes perched on three inches of limestone as he slid from window to barred window.
Each cell looked the same—murky rooms lit by faint storm light—but each inhabitant was unique. The first cell held a young man drawing a city on the wall using only cobwebs and his fingertips. The second held a woman rocking and chanting herself to sleep. Arthur had to duck past the third cell to avoid two orderlies with a lantern.
“Whaddaya mean frozen?”
“Hasn’t moved a muscle. That’s why her family dumped her here. Listen.”
The cell echoed with a hollow sound, like tapping on porcelain.
The first orderly shuddered. “That smile’s giving me the creeps.”
“You and me both.”
Arthur fought the temptation to take a peek. This sounded a lot like the conversation he’d overheard at the Stormcrow about the doll with blue eyes. He dismissed the thought and slid to the corner cell where Harry lay on a stained mattress no thicker than a folded sheet.
“Evening, Harry.”
Harry’s head jerked up. “Arthur. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to rescue you, obviously.”
Harry laid his head back down. “Don’t bother. This ain’t one of your adventure stories.”
Arthur grinned. “You also have our apartment key.”
Harry didn’t respond, and Arthur’s heart sank. He’d been trying to make his dad laugh.
Arthur gave the cell’s bars a wiggle. They were solid in their stone, and his hands were numb with ocean cold—another frustrating reminder that life didn’t work like it did in books. He took out the bundle Liza had given him at the Stormcrow and tossed it through the bars.
Harry picked up the meat pie and began scarfing it down. “How’s the lip?”
Arthur touched the raw spot where his dad had struck him. “I think it makes me look distinguished. Better than a mustache, really.”
Harry softened. “I didn’t want you talking to the Rook, son. Don’t want you getting tangled up like I did.”
Arthur looked away. Harry always grew sentimental when he sobered up, and it made Arthur uncomfortable.
“Don’t worry, Harry!” he said, bringing the adventure back in his voice. “I’ll steal so much cash for the Rook, he’ll free you from this hospital, and then we’ll buy the place!”
Harry fixed his red-rimmed eyes on Arthur. “You didn’t make a deal with him, did you?”
Arthur scratched under his hat. “Well…”
Harry shook his head. “I made that mistake when you was younger. The Rook’s talons will slide into you so slow-like, you’ll bleed out before you realize what happened.”
Arthur scraped rust from the bars. “It seemed square enough. He gave me my pants back.”
Harry snorted without amusement as he crammed the last of the meat pie into his mouth. “I’m just glad your ma’s not alive to see what a fool you’ve become.”
“I’ve become? At least I don’t drink away every cent I earn.”
Harry wiped his mouth on the sheet. “You don’t understand the world like I do.”
And I hope I never do, Arthur thought.
He stared at Harry’s measly bed, the slimy walls, the bowl of gruel veined with mold. “I can’t just leave you in here.”
“Yes, you can,” Harry said. “You can’t go saving every soul who gets themselves in trouble, Arthur. Not your friend. And not me.”
“But, Dad—”
“Stop arguing and listen.” Harry nodded out the window. “Go find yourself a job in the city. Keep your nose down and do the work. If you ever see a member of the Black Feathers, you hide. Hear me?” He pulled his hole-ridden sheet back over him. “Tell the landlady I’ll be late on the rent again.”
“I’ll tell her you’ll be back by tomorrow! With enough money to buy the tenements!”
Before Harry could respond, Arthur slid back along the limestone. He passed the cell with the frozen patient, then the cell with the chanting woman. He was about to pass the last cell when a hand shot between the bars.
Arthur’s foot slipped on the limestone and he barely managed to catch himself. His hat wasn’t so lucky. It twirled down a hundred feet and was swallowed by the waves.
As Arthur regained his footing and his heart rate, the hand turned its palm downward toward the sea. Then it pressed its thumb into the flat of its fingers, as if wearing a sock puppet. The hand looked left and then right and gasped when it seemed to actually see Arthur.
Thieves of Weirdwood Page 5
