Olive blinked hard. She scanned the entire lawn, but she still couldn’t see anyone but the boy in the white nightshirt. Who was he talking to?
“That means I’m still It,” the boy announced to the empty yard as he trotted up to the front porch railing. “I’ll count to one hundred. Ready, set, GO!” He put his face down on his arms and began to count.
Olive and Horatio exchanged a dubious glance. With a last slow look around the yard, Olive tiptoed toward the porch steps.
“Pssst . . . Morton!”
“Twenty-eight—What?” The boy in the nightshirt looked up, and a smile broke across his round, pale face. “Olive!” he exclaimed. The smile disappeared. “You made me lose count.”
“Sorry. Are you playing hide-and-seek?”
“Yeah.” Morton beamed, hopping down the steps. “I’m It.”
Olive glanced around again. The nearest person she could see was an old woman in a rocking chair on the porch next door, several yards away. She certainly didn’t seem to be hiding. “But . . . Morton . . . who are you playing with?”
“My friends,” said Morton, with a silent obviously at the end.
“I don’t see anybody here,” said Olive.
“Of course you don’t,” said Morton. “They’re invisible.”
“Invisible?” Olive repeated. “Do you mean they’re . . . um . . . imaginary?”
Morton gave a one-shouldered shrug. He grabbed the bottom post of the porch rail and swung back and forth. “Maybe. But they still play with me. They play with me more than some people. Some people who you really can see.” He cast a pointed look in Olive’s direction.
“Morton, you know the spectacles got broken. I can’t come in here whenever I want to anymore. I have to get one of the cats to bring me.” Olive glanced over her shoulder at the fuzzy orange bulk of Horatio, who was currently sculpting his whiskers.
Morton started swinging in such wide arcs that Olive had to step out of the way. “My real friends come and play with me whenever I want them to, because they know I don’t have—” Morton stopped in midswing, glancing up at the dark windows of his big, empty house. Olive could almost hear the words a family hanging in the air, but Morton didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he spun around and pointed across the yard. “Ronald is hiding right over there, under that porch. Charlotte Harris is the one behind those bushes, and Elmer Gorley always wears plaid pajamas. You can come out, guys!” he yelled toward the street.
They waited, Morton smiling, Olive frowning, as Morton’s invisible friends approached.
“This is Olive,” Morton told the empty yard. “I’ve told you about her. . . . Yep, she’s the one who helped me get rid of the Old Man.”
“Helped you?” interrupted Olive.
Morton ignored her. “No, she doesn’t know how,” he went on, answering a question Olive hadn’t heard. “She still hasn’t figured it out. So we’re all stuck here until she does. Besides,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper and bending toward someone’s invisible ear, “I don’t think she’s really trying. Most of the time, she’s probably just doing girl stuff. Playing with dolls. Fixing her hair.”
“I don’t even have any dolls!” Olive protested.
Morton giggled, as though one of his invisible friends had said something funny. He looked at Olive, hiding his smile behind one cupped hand. “Yeah, she does, doesn’t she?”
“Well,” said Olive loudly, putting her clenched fists on her hips, “I came here in the middle of the night just to see you. I could be in my bed right now, all warm and comfortable. But I guess I didn’t need to. With all your new friends, I guess I don’t need to worry about you at all anymore.”
“I don’t think you really do worry about me,” said Morton in a low voice.
“Of course I do!” said Olive, throwing her arms up. “I think about how to help you all the time.”
“But you’re not here all the time.” Morton studied a spot on the misty ground. “And I am. All the time.”
“You know I can’t stay here, Morton. If I wait too long, I’ll get stuck here too.”
This seemed to trouble Morton for a moment. Olive could see his chin working as his face moved from sad to angry and finally back to uncaring. “I know,” he said at last, sharply, tossing his head so that the white tufts quivered. “That’s why I have these other friends.” He glanced over his shoulder. “They’ll stay with me until—until something else happens.”
Olive shuffled her feet. The painted grass hurried to straighten itself wherever she smushed it flat. “I really am trying, Morton.”
Morton nodded, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “Well, I’m going to start counting to one hundred again.”
“Oh,” said Olive, surprised. She took a step backward. Morton had been crabby and even rude in the past, but he had never been too busy for her before. “I guess . . .” she said, and then didn’t know what to say next. She turned away from Morton’s house. Across the lawn, two bright green eyes glimmered, watching her.
“Wait!” She spun back toward Morton, who looked up from his counting once again. She shook the hurt feelings off of her face and put on what she hoped was a blank, businesslike expression. “I really just came to ask you something. When you lived next door to the McMartins, did you ever see Aldous or Annabelle with a book of spells?”
Morton gave a tiny jump at the mention of the Old Man’s name, and out of habit, glanced up at the sky. Its soft blue-violet hue didn’t change.
“I mean,” said Olive, “with any book that looked really old or strange or special?” Morton was already shaking his head, but Olive went on. “Maybe it had symbols on the cover, or weird-colored ink . . .”
“No,” said Morton. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay,” said Olive. “One more thing. Did you ever know anybody with the last name Dewey?”
“Of course he didn’t know the Deweys,” snapped Horatio, who had appeared suddenly next to Olive’s shin. “The Deweys didn’t move in until nearly fifty years after Aldous McMartin died.” The cat gave a sigh. “Olive, I’m leaving. If you would prefer to stay here and turn into paint, be my guest.” He flounced toward the sidewalk. “In fact, it would be nice to have the whole bed to myself.”
“I’m coming,” said Olive, scurrying after the cat. She turned back to wave at Morton, but he was already counting to one hundred, with his face hidden in his arms.
Olive followed Horatio down the street and onto the soft green slope of the field. Ahead of them, the picture frame glinted softly in the misty air. She glanced over her shoulder at the row of houses. Morton himself had disappeared, presumably chasing an invisible friend, but his big gray house still loomed in its place, its emptiness echoing with questions.
“Horatio . . .” Olive began, rather slowly. “. . . Did Morton have parents? I mean, he must have had parents. Right?”
“Well, he didn’t sprout from an acorn,” said Horatio. When Olive just blinked down at him, the cat heaved a sigh. “Yes, Olive. He had parents.”
“What happened to them?” Olive’s mind clicked through the years, trying to remember Aldous’s age, and Annabelle’s age, and how old Morton was when Aldous trapped him in the painting, and then to subtract all of those numbers from the year it was now, while trotting down a foggy hillside at the same time. Even when she’d gotten to the end of the equation, she felt sure 1822 wasn’t the answer to her question. “They’d be really, really old now, wouldn’t they?”
Horatio’s eyebrows went up. “Yes,” he drawled. “One hundred and twenty is rather old for human beings.”
Olive slowed. Mist swirled around her ankles, filling in the holes left by her footsteps. “So, did they—did they die?”
Horatio paused beside her. He glanced away, toward the hanging picture frame, as he answered. “I can’t say for certain what happened to them.”
Olive sidled around the fluffy orange cat so that she could see his face. Horatio didn’t meet her eyes. In fact, he looked
distinctly uncomfortable. Suspiciously uncomfortable.
“Did Aldous do something to them?” Olive demanded, with growing certainty. “Did you do something to them?”
Horatio’s eyes hardened. “Well, Morton’s parents did raise a bit of a ruckus in the neighborhood when their little boy vanished from his bed in the middle of the night,” he said dryly. “You know how parents can be. So overprotective. Aldous needed them out of the way before they drew too much attention to the McMartin family.”
Olive crouched down in front of the cat, blocking his path. She stared into his green eyes until at last they looked back at her, and the cool, sarcastic set of Horatio’s face began to melt.
“I don’t know exactly what happened to them,” Horatio said, after a long, quiet moment. “I believe they were—disposed of. By him.”
“Disposed of?” Olive pictured Morton’s parents whirling down the drain of a slimy garbage disposal. It wasn’t a pleasant image. She studied Horatio’s face again. He gazed back at her with an unusually misty look in his bright green eyes.
Olive let out a deep breath. She looked back at the twinkling lights already dimming in the distance. “If he doesn’t have a family, it’s nice that Morton has some friends here,” she said. “Even if they’re invisible.”
Horatio gave her a keen look. “It’s nice that you think it’s nice.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, some people don’t like to share their friends. Especially people who only have one.”
“I don’t only have one,” argued Olive. “I have more than one.” She looked down at her bare toes. “I have you.”
A tiny smile uncurled on Horatio’s face. “I see,” the cat mumbled, patting his whiskers. “Very well.” He glanced up at Olive, the smile back under control. “But I’m never going to play hide-and-seek with you.”
“Fine,” said Olive.
Together they climbed through the picture frame.
Still, Olive couldn’t help thinking about Morton and his other friends while she climbed back into bed and settled Hershel beside her on the pillow. Even in her dreams, she saw Morton’s face. She saw him standing before his huge, empty house, with no mother or father waiting inside. She watched him running through the misty fields, chasing a friend who wasn’t there, while she was stuck on the outside of his world, with no way in.
She had to find that spellbook so that she could help Morton. She had to find some answers. And she had to find them soon.
6
FOR BEST EFFECT, apply the leeches to the inside of the throat using a leech glass or a large swan’s quill, Olive read, and immediately started coughing. She shoved The Healthful Effects of Bloodletting back into its spot high on the third set of shelves, which was as far as she had gotten in a whole morning of searching the library. Across the room, the dancing girls in the painting of the meadow seemed to be smirking at her. Olive guessed that, if she could have seen them, the faces of Morton’s invisible friends would have worn the very same expression.
Morton’s words from the night before still stung and itched in her mind like a mosquito bite. She still hasn’t figured it out. Much as Olive hated to admit it, Morton was right. She hadn’t formed a plan, the spellbook was nowhere to be found, and Olive’s head was getting cluttered with things she didn’t want or need to know. “What on earth is a leech glass, anyway?” she muttered to herself.
“A leech glass was a long glass tube, sort of like a test tube,” said a very fast voice from below. “A rolled piece of paper could be used for the same purpose. Leeches have been used in medicine for thousands of years, including during medieval times, which is why I know all about them. In fact, the word leech comes from the Old English word for physician.”
Olive froze, balanced on the top of the ladder. At the far end of the room, standing in a cluster by the library door, were Mrs. Dunwoody, Mrs. Dewey, and Rutherford Dewey. They were all looking up at Olive. It was Rutherford who had been speaking, of course. Beside him, Mrs. Dewey gave a halfhearted smile. Mrs. Dunwoody looked a bit stunned.
“Olive, you’ve met Rutherford, haven’t you?” said Mrs. Dunwoody. Compared to Rutherford, Mrs. Dunwoody seemed to be speaking in slow motion. Olive nodded, biting her tongue. “He’s going to spend the afternoon here with you.”
Inside of Olive, something started screaming. She bit her tongue even harder.
“I have an appointment in the city,” explained Mrs. Dewey, tugging on a pink jacket that fit around her body like a balloon fits around its ball of air. “Mrs. Nivens is away for the afternoon, and besides, I thought it would be much nicer for Rutherford to spend the day with someone his own age for a change.” She gave her grandson a significant look. “Rutherford could do with some normal young friends.”
Olive chewed on the inside of her cheek.
“Well,” said Mrs. Dunwoody cheerily, “he’s more than welcome. Take as much time as you need, Mrs. Dewey.” And the two women bustled out of the library, leaving Rutherford and Olive alone.
Rutherford strode toward the center of the room. Mrs. Dewey had obviously tried to make him look presentable. His curly brown hair had been doused with water and combed flat to his skull. He was wearing a pair of severely ironed pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a big crest of a lion fighting a serpent. He was also wearing a huge, heavy-looking pair of metal gloves.
Olive examined Rutherford between her eyelashes. She couldn’t look him in the eyes. He knew her secret. A boy like Rutherford Dewey certainly wouldn’t have forgotten what she’d said. And now she had to spend the whole afternoon with him—a boy, a stranger, someone “her own age,” who would definitely notice and remember every single odd, awkward thing she did or said.
“Have you found it?” asked Rutherford.
“Found what?” said Olive, who could barely make her mouth work, let alone her brain.
“The grimoire. I’m sure this room is the most natural place to look.” He stopped at the foot of the ladder, staring up at Olive through his smudgy lenses.
For a second, Olive fought with herself. Was it too late to lock the secret up again? It probably was. Besides, trying to talk to a boy she barely knew was hard enough. Without any time to prepare, her brain didn’t feel capable of talking and lying at the same time. “I haven’t found it yet,” she finally said, but the words got stuck, and she had to clear her throat and start over. “I checked all of these shelves, but I have the rest of the room to do.”
“I could help you,” said Rutherford, jiggling in his loafers. “I’m a very fast reader. I can read about seventy pages in an hour, depending on the size of the font, of course.”
Olive wanted to scream NO! and shove him out of the library. Actually, she didn’t want to shove him; that would mean touching him. Ew. What she really wanted was a giant, invisible hand to close around Rutherford and drag him out of the room, down the street, and all the way to Norway or Finland or wherever he’d said his parents were.
But that didn’t happen.
“You don’t have to help,” she mumbled.
“I would be happy to. I’ll have to remove my gauntlets, though.” He tugged on the strap fastened around one wrist. “Normally, I wouldn’t, but it’s hard to turn pages with them on.”
“I’ll bet,” said Olive.
Rutherford held up his left hand to give Olive a closer look, still speaking a mile a minute. “These are replicas, of course, but they’re still very authentic. I got them at a renaissance festival, and the craftsman modeled them after German gauntlets from the fourteenth century. The rondel is deceptive, because it looks like a mere decoration, but it was actually for blocking maneuvers.”
Olive nodded very slowly.
Rutherford dropped the gauntlets gently onto the rug. “Now, just because I’m laying down my gauntlets, it doesn’t mean that I’m challenging you to a duel.”
“Oh,” said Olive. “Good.”
They spent the next hour searching the shelves in near
silence. Olive stayed at the top of the ladder, and Rutherford paged through the books closer to the floor, occasionally mumbling “Interesting,” or “Is that so?” to himself.
While Rutherford seemed to be skimming through the books at lightning speed, Olive couldn’t focus. She felt too nervous to even breathe. She didn’t want Rutherford here, that was for sure. Furthermore, she had the sense that the house didn’t want him here. Someone or something was watching them, she was certain—just as certain as she’d been all those many moments when she’d ducked just in time to feel a spit-wad or snowball go whizzing past her ear. As time ticked by, the library seemed to get darker and quieter, until each turning page sounded like a giant, rattling sheet of tin. The walls seemed to be leaning in around them. They wanted to push Rutherford out too.
Olive hoped they wouldn’t find the spellbook. She didn’t want to share any more secrets with this boy. Fortunately, she felt increasingly certain that the book wasn’t in this room at all.
“Are you going to be in sixth grade or seventh grade of junior high this year?” Rutherford asked abruptly, without looking up.
The words sixth grade and junior high always made Olive’s stomach squirm and clench, as if they were grubs she had swallowed whole. “Sixth,” she managed to answer.
“So am I,” said Rutherford. “We’ll be going to the same school. I’ll be staying at my grandmother’s house for at least a year while my parents conclude their research.”
There was a soft rustle from the big potted fern by the fireplace. Olive stared at the plant for a moment, but it didn’t move again.
“I’ve already attended seven different schools throughout the U.S., Europe, and Canada,” Rutherford went on, “but my parents thought it would be better if I stayed here this time.”
The fern gave a soft hiss. Rutherford didn’t seem to notice.
“Wow,” said Olive softly. “I’ve only been to four different schools.” Bad memories darted through her, nibbling at her stomach like a horde of tiny, needletoothed fish: days of no one to eat lunch with, days of being picked last for teams, days of spending recess sitting near the playground fence, pulling up shoots of grass just to look like she had something to do. She took a breath. “Do you mind it? Changing schools over and over, I mean?”
Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 2 Page 4
