Instantly, Blaise was at Sunni’s side, with Jeremiah hovering above them.
“Did you get it?” she whispered.
Blaise nodded and unfolded Soranzo’s handkerchief. The crimson shard was slick with red elixir. “The nightsneaks would be proud.”
“Yeah, but we need a knife,” said Sunni. “I’m not letting that thing touch us.”
Jeremiah took one of his tiny pocketknives from his waistcoat. “Use this one.”
Sunni held out her palm. Blaise cleaned Jeremiah’s blade on his breeches and gently cradled her hand.
“You want to do it instead?” he asked.
“No, you.” She closed her eyes and felt the pressure of the knife’s edge sweeping over her skin.
Blaise collected Sunni’s welled-up blood and wiped it onto the shard’s tip, mingling it with the elixir. After quickly swabbing the knife clean on his jacket, he handed it to her. “Go for it.”
If it were not for the rising heat and sparks coming ever nearer, Sunni might have hesitated. She had had to use a blade in Arcadia, and it still filled her with revulsion. Before the idea of cutting her friend could get too terrible, she pressed the metal through the fleshy bit at the base of Blaise’s thumb. He winced and the blood sprang up.
Sunni drew the knife over his wound as lightly as she could and added Blaise’s blood to the shard’s mix, whispering, “Sorry.”
Their blood was now mingled not only with Peregrin’s red elixir, but with Soranzo’s and Livia’s blood. She had no time to dwell on how revolting this was.
“Let’s go,” said Blaise, wiping his cut on his breeches.
Jeremiah pulled them both up to standing and pointed at his painted door. “Draw, boy, draw!”
“Draw what?” Blaise pleaded. “A nine? We’re not named Soranzo, like they are.”
“You said you are a seven,” said Jeremiah. “And you, Sunniva?”
“I don’t know . . .” she replied faintly.
“Try the seven, boy!” Jeremiah exclaimed. “Maybe you can go through together!”
Blaise’s hand juddered as he drew over the scratches Soranzo had made, and a shaky number seven emerged, glistening crimson. The handle and wooden panels took shape. He pressed on the door and it gave. “Come on — now, Sunni! Grab my hand!”
She looked back into the blazing workshop.
“Go, Mr. Starling!” she shouted. “You can’t die in this fire! You’re supposed to live and build a new house full of your murals here.”
“Sunni!” Blaise said sharply. “We can’t tell him anything!”
“But we’ve got to tell him this!” Sunni shrieked. “Mr. Starling, you’ve got to paint another door in your new house. If you don’t, we won’t be able to get back through it now — because it won’t be there!”
“What?” Jeremiah reeled backward, holding his head. “Paint another infernal door. . . . I do not understand. . . .”
“Please just do it. Don’t worry, Soranzo will never be able to come through painted doors again. Not without the elixir!” She pointed at a cloth-covered package. “That’s the musketeer painting. Toby missed it. You must take it and get out of here!”
The sweat from Jeremiah’s forehead mixed with tears rolling down his cheeks. “It is all I have left — and it is not even mine.”
Blaise thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out their pouch of coins. “Take this. It’s hardly anything, but take it.”
Jeremiah bowed and took one anguished look around him as he snatched up the painting and ran from his burning workshop.
Sunni grabbed Blaise’s hand and left the painted door slightly open, and the fire’s radiance lit their brief journey across time. But there was something odd about the way back into Starling House. A crack of light silhouetted the door.
It’s the middle of the night, Sunni thought. No one should be there.
Blaise pushed the door open, and they stepped in. This was not Starling House, but an unfamiliar room lined with bookshelves; there was a large oak table in the middle, piled with books, papers, and old instruments. A single candle burned on the table, and the place was utterly silent. Sunni looked at the door they had just come through and noticed two carved faces in the frame overhead.
“This isn’t right,” she whispered, holding Blaise back from going any farther. Every hair on the back of her neck was standing up straight.
“I’m just —” Blaise suddenly whirled around and pushed her back through the door, yanking it shut. “Soranzo! Go back, Sunni!”
She fell backward into Jeremiah’s fiery workshop and Blaise toppled onto her, dropping the shard on the floor. The door slammed behind them.
“What do we do now? If we end up behind the wrong door, we’re doomed.” Blaise scrambled to his feet and banged his fist against the door, returned again to its painted state. “How can we control what time we end up in?”
“I don’t know!” The crimson shard lay close to Sunni. She picked it up and handed it up to him. “Try again! We can’t stay here!”
Choking, she got to her feet and pressed one hand against the door as Blaise traced the number seven again. There was so little elixir, all he could do was drag and scrape the shard’s tip against the wall, hoping it would work.
A huge section of flaming ceiling beams crashed to the workshop floor, and they both shrank against the door. Suddenly it gave way and they stumbled into cool blackness. Sunni shoved the door closed with her foot, and the pair lay there for a moment, neither in one time nor the other.
Blaise crawled forward and felt for the door they sought. He pushed through to a room that was almost pitch-black, but not quite. The windows glowed with the radiance of streetlights and London’s all-night illuminated skies.
“This is the right place . . . I think. Hang on.” He bumbled around tables in the dark and ran his hand along the far wall until he found a switch. A cluster of electric candles burst into life in the chandelier above. The Cabinet of Curiosities was intact, exactly the same as when they had left it, with Jeremiah’s murals of animal specimens and cases of insects.
They ran to the windows. More electric lights brightened the doorways in Phoenix Square, and a lone pedestrian walked below them, staring at the illuminated face of his phone.
Overwhelmed with joy, Sunni and Blaise turned and buried their heads in each other’s shoulders. After a few moments, they went back to the painted door, which was as flat and inert as when they had first seen it. Their oversize felt slippers were on the floor nearby.
Sunni touched the door, half expecting it to feel hot from the inferno they had just left. But it was wonderfully cool.
“Where were we?” she asked. “That place where Soranzo was?”
“I don’t know. It looked older than Jeremiah’s.” Blaise shuddered. “He was just standing there, staring at me.”
“Was it 1583?”
“I couldn’t tell you! Listen, wherever they are, they can’t travel anywhere else because the elixir is gone.” He uncurled his hand from around the crimson-stained shard. “And we’ve got this.”
“Unless Soranzo goes to Blackhope Tower in 1583 and gets into Arcadia.”
“We were just there a few months ago, Sunni. Did anyone even mention seeing him? They were all worried about him and his spies, but I don’t remember hearing about anyone who looked like him.”
“I don’t know,” said Sunni slowly.
“Or maybe he did get in and has already come out as a skeleton? Yeah, he could be one of the skeletons they described in that Blackhope Enigma leaflet I have at home.”
“I hope you’re right.” She swallowed hard. “Jeremiah got out of the fire and lived to build this house. But he’s long dead now, and so are Amelia and Henry. They’re all dead.”
They were silent for a few moments. Blaise had a funny look on his face, the kind he hadn’t directed at her since before he met Livia. He reached out for her hand.
“Ouch!” Sunni pulled her cut hand away.
&n
bsp; He sighed. “Sorry.”
“We’ve got to call your dad!” she said, embarrassed.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” Blaise dug around in his bag and found his watch. “One a.m. People will think we’re coming back from a costume party.”
“We are.” Sunni wished he’d take her hand again. Why did she always blow it?
Blaise adjusted his satchel on his shoulder and pulled open the door to the landing. “Come on.”
Sunni extinguished the light in the Cabinet of Curiosities and flicked the stairwell light on before they scurried downstairs. On each landing, they had to turn one light off and turn on another. Anyone watching from outdoors would have wondered what poltergeist was busy in Starling House.
When they reached the main entrance hall, Sunni glanced up at the painted blue sky and clouds above the English country landscape. The electric lights were harsh and showed the paint strokes, but it didn’t matter to her as long as the murals were all there, unchanged by their trip to Jeremiah’s time.
As she neared the front door, she crouched down and pressed one finger to the painted ladybug. Blaise knelt beside her.
“Do you think Jeremiah was happy in the end?” she asked. “After everything he went through?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think an unhappy guy would paint ladybugs in his hallway.”
Sunni’s eyes were soft. “Maybe not.”
“We’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” said Blaise. “Just like when we came out of Arcadia.”
“Your dad will believe us, and so will mine. Rhona will go mad, and Dean won’t want to know, but they’re all going to have to accept it.”
“You think it’s finally all over now?”
“I don’t know,” Sunni answered. “It wasn’t over before. Look what happened at school — and all the publicity. Then we go on vacation, thinking we can be anonymous in a big city, and this happens.”
“We’ve always got each other,” said Blaise.
“Really?”
He cocked his head at her. “Yeah, really. Why do you even have to ask?”
“I dunno. I’ve felt kind of, you know, w-weird lately,” she stammered. “Like we weren’t such good friends anymore. Or something.”
“You’re my best friend. Honest.”
“But you really liked Livia. Didn’t you?” It all came out in one big, breathy, embarrassing spew.
Silence.
“I did like her,” he said. “At first but not for long.”
Something in the way he said it made her feel the subject was closed.
“Okay,” she said, smiling to herself.
“Hey. What do you look so pleased about?”
“None of your business.”
“Oh, really? Even if it’s about me.”
“It’s nothing to do with you,” Sunni said with a toss of her head.
“Liar,” said Blaise, taking off his hat. He slipped his arm around her back and slowly moved his face toward hers.
Just as she could feel his breath on her lips, she heard a metallic clicking noise and the front door burst open with an explosive bang. Two grim-faced London Metropolitan Police constables pushed into the hall amid the squawk of voices from their two-way radios.
“Stay where you are!” barked one of them.
“We’re in,” said the other into his radio, as they closed around Sunni and Blaise like huge black-and-fluorescent-clad aliens. “And we’ve got two trespassers. Over.”
By the time Sunni and Blaise stumbled out of the police station, propped up by their haggard, unshaven fathers, the sky was pink and the pigeons were already hunting for breakfast. The silent taxi ride to their hotel was a blur. Sunni could not keep her eyes open, but every time she dozed off, the memory of the two constables’ stern faces woke her with a start. Their eyes had been hard as granite, as if they’d seen and heard every bad thing in the city, and they hadn’t given her and Blaise any ground when they’d questioned them at the police station.
“A tour guide kidnapped you?” they had scoffed. “And took you through a door that doesn’t exist? You expect us to believe that?”
Sunni had tried to tell them who Throgmorton really was.
“Time-traveler, kidnapper, conman? Right,” one of the officers had said, shaking his head. “Enough of this malarkey.”
Even the arrival of their fathers hadn’t done much good. Mr. Doran waved around the missing person report he’d made, but the police said he should have taken more responsibility for her and Blaise. He’d looked terribly stunned for a few minutes, and it had fallen to her dad to stand up for them all. In the end, the police remained unconvinced by anything she and Blaise had said, but they had finally been let go. Mr. Forrest and Mr. Doran had to give in their contact details and agree to bring the pair back to London if their presence was required for further inquiries.
Sunni lay in her bed all day, curtains closed against the sun, drifting in and out of sleep. Now Blaise’s face kept appearing in her head, closer and closer, then reeling backward as the police barged in. She caught her breath every time. Will he ever try to kiss me again?
When her dad knocked on the door at four o’clock, she croaked, “Come in.”
“Time to get up, sweetheart. We managed to get two cabins on the sleeper train for tonight,” said Mr. Forrest. “You’d better get those packed up, if you’re taking them.” He nodded at Sunni’s battered eighteenth-century dress, hat, and shoes lying on the floor.
“I’m taking them.” Sunni’s face was half-hidden under the quilt. “You believe my story, don’t you, Dad?”
“Of course I do.” He sat in a chair and rubbed a hand over his tired face. “I believed you last winter, and I believe you now.”
“We didn’t go looking for trouble,” said Sunni. “And it’s not Mr. Doran’s fault, either.”
“I know that,” said Mr. Forrest. “He and I talked. I don’t blame him — or you. But we’ll be keeping an extra-sharp eye on you for a while, Sunni. Until we’re sure the dramas around Blackhope Tower and Fausto Corvo are over, once and for all.”
“If they ever will be,” Sunni mumbled into her pillow.
“What, sweetheart?”
“Nothing. Sorry you had to come down here to look for me.” She poked her head up. “What are we doing after we’re packed?”
“We’ll need to get a decent dinner,” said Mr. Forrest. “It’s a long train ride back home.”
“I’m starving. Where are we going?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Can I choose?” She sat up, fully energized now.
“If Blaise and his dad agree . . .”
“Okay! Give me half an hour to take a shower and pack my stuff,” said Sunni, patting down her unruly hair.
“Deal.” Mr. Forrest winked and left the room.
With one leap, Sunni was out of bed and rummaging about for her London map. She laid it out flat on the bed and ran her finger over its central streets and squares.
“Where would you be?” she murmured. “You must be somewhere still.”
An hour later, Sunni was leading Blaise and their dads along High Holborn. It was warm enough for a summer dress and sandals, and she was reveling in having air on her arms and legs again.
“Don’t we want to turn here for Covent Garden, Sunni?” asked Mr. Doran.
“No, it’s up this way,” she answered.
“Where is this place then? Near the British Museum?”
Sunni stopped at a junction and looked around for street signs. “Not quite. It’s kind of . . . hidden away.”
“As long as the food is good and we’re almost there, it’s fine with me,” said Sunni’s dad.
Blaise nudged her shoulder with his as they crossed the road. “We should have turned off at the last block.”
“Huh?”
“If we’re going where I think we’re going.” His eyes twinkled.
“Really. Then why don’t you take over, Marco Polo?”
“Okey-doke.” He turned in the opposite direction and said, “This way, dads.”
“Lead on, buddy,” said Mr. Doran. “Just don’t take us someplace where you vanish again.”
“No worries, Dad.”
They left the main road and wound through smaller, quieter streets. Blaise stopped a few times to look around, and made them backtrack once, but eventually he stopped at the entrance to a narrow lane.
“This isn’t it,” said Sunni. These weren’t the houses they had passed with the nightsneaks, all crooked and neglected. This lane was lined with a tidy, scrubbed row of houses. She pointed at the street sign on the wall: greengage lane.
Blaise shook his head, grinning. “Look higher up.”
An old, very faded plaque read bandy lane.
“What’s the story?” asked his father. “I don’t see any restaurants here.”
“Down at the end,” said Blaise, setting off toward a building decorated with hanging baskets full of brightly colored flowers.
Sunni hastened after him, her heart jumping as she noticed a small wooden sign above the door. It looked freshly painted, but the design hadn’t altered in over 250 years. The green dragon still reared up on its hind legs.
Apart from clean windowpanes and the profusion of flowers sprouting from boxes and baskets, nothing else about the front of the Green Dragon had changed. Blaise opened the door and breathed in.
“No smoke and some new furniture,” he said to Sunni. “But the rest is the same.”
The Green Dragon’s fireplace was cold and there were no raucous pickpockets slurping ale, but it didn’t matter because Sunni could still hear, see, and smell all of that in her head. She went straight to their “usual table” at the back, where they had eaten with Fleet and Sleek.
“These are the same benches we sat on — I’m sure they are,” she whispered to Blaise as he slid in next to her.
“Have you been here before, kids?” Mr. Doran had to bend down under the low ceiling beams.
“Yeah,” said Blaise. “While we were . . . away.”
Mr. Doran got a funny look on his face. “Why did you come here? This must have been a pretty rough and ready joint in those days.”
The Crimson Shard Page 20
