22
Another Broken Bone
VAN rushed to the bedroom door. The hallway was deserted. He tore back across the guest room, ripping the shades apart to stare out the window. But there was no one in the yard below, or in the alleyway beyond the vine-coated brick wall, or anywhere, as far as he could see.
Van clenched his hands. His pulse pounded. His veins were full of stinging bees.
What could he do? He couldn’t tell anyone—at least not anyone here—what had just happened, not without having to explain too many other impossible things. And he couldn’t let the Wish Eater go, either. Not when he knew who must have taken it. Not when he knew where they were headed.
Van shoved the window up and craned out.
A wide stone ledge ran below the guest-room window. The ledge ran all the way across the back of the house, sticking out in a wider spot over the windows of the dining room.
Before he could worry himself out of it, Van swung one leg over the windowsill. He set his slippered foot on the ledge, just like Pebble must have done the night before. And if Pebble had done it, why couldn’t he?
He dragged his second leg through the window and balanced on the ledge, his back pressed hard against the wall. The ground was dauntingly far away. Only the thought of tiny, terrified Lemmy being jostled through the city, not knowing what lay ahead, kept him from climbing straight back inside.
Leaning against the wall, Van shuffled sideways until the ledge widened. There he turned around, crouched on his hands and knees, and inched backward toward the edge. If he held on to the ledge with both hands until the very last second, the drop to the ground wouldn’t be that far. At least that’s what Van told himself.
He dangled one leg, and then the other, over the ledge. Clamping his hands around the stones, Van pushed backward. There was a short plunge, and Van found himself hanging like a wet wind sock just outside the tall windows of the dining room, where Mr. Grey and his mother were seated.
Fortunately, they were facing away from the window.
Van took a deep breath. Then he let go.
He hit the ground with both feet. A painful jolt lanced up through his slippers into his shins, and Van couldn’t help letting out a little oof. Before the pain had faded away, he was scrambling across the grass and using the big stone planter to climb over the yard’s back wall once again.
He raced out into the twilit city.
Block after block after block streaked by. Van didn’t think about his tired legs, or his aching lungs, or all the trouble he might find himself in when he finally got back to the Greys’ house again. He didn’t think of anything but little Lemmy.
So it wasn’t until he was panting up the walk to the big white house that Van remembered Mr. Falborg wasn’t at home.
His pounding heart sank into his stomach.
But there must be something he could do on his own. Especially if he had the help of a wish or two. Van veered off the walkway into the hedges. Through the leaves, he could see the glow of lights in a few of the house’s windows. Maybe Mr. Falborg had come home early. And even if he hadn’t, maybe Van could sneak in through a back window and make his way up to the hidden room where—
Van’s feet flew out from under him. His body tilted backward. His spine hit the lawn with a painful smack.
Someone craned over him.
In the dimness, Van could just make out the features of a craggy face.
Hans.
Hans’s lips moved. A trickle of sound worked through Van’s pounding heart and panting breath, but he couldn’t make out any words. Because, as Van remembered with a sinking feeling, he’d left his hearing aids on the Greys’ bathroom counter.
“I—” Van gasped. “I need help.”
Hans held out a warm, calloused hand. He pulled Van to his feet, saying something else in his rumbly accent. It was too dim for Van to see his lips, but he knew what it meant when Hans gestured to the front door.
Van followed him into the house.
Gerda sat in the big black-and-white kitchen, drinking tea and sorting mail at a square white table. Renata lay on a stack of envelopes beside her. They both looked up as Hans and Van entered. Gerda’s eyes widened with surprise. Renata looked as bored as ever.
Gerda rose from her chair. She gestured for Van to take it, saying something that ended with “. . . do for you?”
Van stayed on his feet. “I forgot Mr. Falborg wouldn’t be here,” he said carefully. Gerda and Hans exchanged a look as Van went on. “He let me borrow something. But somebody stole it. I’m afraid they’re going to hurt it.” A hard, sticky lump was forming in Van’s throat. He swallowed. “I just thought, maybe . . . if I could use another of Mr. Falborg’s things, I might be able to get it back.”
Gerda and Hans traded another look. Then Gerda leaned closer to Van.
“Choose a small box,” said her lips. “And wish very carefully.”
Van gave a start.
Gerda’s mouth curled into a small smile. “We don’t yest take care of de house, you know.”
Hans ushered Van swiftly up to the hidden room.
“We would go with you, Gerda and I,” he said, stopping to face Van after unlocking the doors. “But we would be recognized.”
“Recognized?” Van repeated. “Do the Collectors know you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Hans. “They know all about us. To our misfortune.”
Hans reached through the doors and turned on the light.
Van watched Hans pause, surveying the room—probably checking for spiders or bats or missing boxes—before striding across the floor to the locked trunk. He opened it, pulling out two wishbones.
“Take an extra bone with you,” he told Van. “In case.”
Then he handed Van the bones, gave the room one last glance, and went out, shutting the doors behind him.
Van was left alone.
. . . But not really alone.
Van turned in a slow circle, surrounded by the rows and rows of boxes. He could feel the quiet, misty breathing of the hundreds of contained creatures. He lifted one of the wishbones. Instantly, he sensed the air change, as if all that misty breathing had gotten a bit faster. The Eaters were awake. They could smell food. And they surrounded him on every side, waiting, hungry . . . Van remembered Pebble’s words about a swarm of termites.
But one Wish Eater wasn’t dangerous. And he only needed one.
Putting the spare wishbone in his pocket, Van grasped the very smallest box on the very lowest shelf.
He sat down on the floor and lifted the lid.
At first glance, the box looked empty. But then Van spotted something curled up in one corner—something long and snakelike. As Van watched, it began to uncurl itself, revealing many pairs of short legs along its body, and a wolfish, sharp-featured face. It raised its head to look at Van. A tiny, misty tongue dangled out of its mouth. It panted softly.
“Hello,” whispered Van. “I have a treat for you.”
The wolf worm panted harder.
Van couldn’t quite bring himself to let the creature climb into his hands. Imagining all those stubby legs crawling across his palms made him feel like he’d just swallowed a mouthful of lemon juice. He set the box down and craned over it instead, holding the wishbone in snapping position.
And then he halted.
He thought of all the wishes he’d made, or helped to make. Half of them had worked beautifully. Half had gone wrong. And the last one had almost gotten his mother . . . Van couldn’t even think the next word.
He would have to be careful. Incredibly careful. He’d make the smallest, most limited wish he could think of. A wish more like his first two. Maybe then everyone would be safe.
Van tightened his grasp on the wishbone.
I wish to get into the Hold without anybody noticing me.
The bone cracked.
A white wisp trickled from its end. The wolf worm lapped it up like a dog drinking from a garden hose.
The air thic
kened. Van felt the brush of dew on his skin, a cool little tingle on every hair. Something sparkled on the ends of his eyelashes.
The dew faded.
Van didn’t feel any different. He glanced around the room. Nothing had changed. There were no reindeer-drawn sleighs waiting to take him away this time. Maybe—like with the white deer—he’d find evidence of the wish later. He certainly hoped so. He slammed the lid over the wolf worm and shoved the box back into place. He hustled toward the door. But on the threshold, he halted again.
Van had never wished for perfect hearing. That would have been like wishing for more teeth, or an extra hand. He had what he was used to. He knew how it worked, and he knew how to use it.
But tonight, without his hearing aids, in the tarry darkness of the Collectors’ lair . . .
He turned back. In two steps, he’d crossed to a shelf. He pulled down a small cardboard box.
The creature inside was shaped like a bear cub. As it turned to blink up at Van, he saw that it had large, almost human eyes, and a muzzle that looked like a pig’s snout. Van tugged the spare wishbone out of his pocket. The creature sat upright, snuffling eagerly.
Van grasped the wishbone by both delicate ends. He didn’t want anything too big. He didn’t want any special powers. He just wanted, for a single night, to hear like an average eleven-year-old boy.
Snap went the bone.
And, Van realized, he had actually heard it snap.
Instinctively, he raised his hands to his ears. But the little plastic bumps of his hearing aids weren’t there. Van could hear the brush of his fingertips against the whorls of skin. He shivered. When he turned his head, he heard the rustle of hair against his pajama collar. His own startled breathing was annoyingly loud. Distractingly loud.
Something jingled overhead. Van glanced up. The big glass chandelier had started to spin. Van looked around, but nothing else in the room was moving—just the chandelier, which was now twirling and rocking from side to side.
The Wish Eater stared up at the ceiling too. It gave a little shimmy, the fur of its bearlike body puffing mistily around it. An instant later, as both Van and the Wish Eater watched, the light from the chandelier began to change color. It darkened to aqua blue, then paled to green before blossoming into splashy fuchsia. The jingling grew louder. Below the jingles, a rhythmic song started to play.
Bump-bumbum-BUMP-bum, bum-bumbum-BUMP-bum . . .
Van flinched. The noise grew larger, pressing down on him like a prickly blanket. When he glanced down, the Wish Eater looked larger too.
With a nervous rush, Van tried to shove the lid onto the box. The Wish Eater struggled, pushing back with its dense little body. The chandelier flashed to purple. Jing-jing-JING! went its glass arms. Bump-bumbum-BUMP-bum! said the music, which seemed to come from everywhere at once. And then, swiftly, smoothly, the chandelier began to drop downward. Its chain lengthened behind it, like the thread of a descending spider. The music grew louder still. When it was just a few feet from the floor, the chandelier stopped falling and began to sway. It swung back and forth, faster and faster, making widening arcs across the room. Jing-jing-JING! Bump-bumbum-BUMP. Its light seared from purple to red.
The chandelier swung harder, its fragile glass arms nearly hitting the shelves on either side. It sliced straight over Van’s head, close enough that he could hear the whoosh as it ripped through the air.
“Stop it!” Van hissed to the Wish Eater. “It’s going to smash!”
But the Wish Eater went on shoving against the lid, its smiling little face following the light.
The chandelier swooped toward the opposite wall, missing the shelves by inches, dragging warped shadows after it. It roared back toward Van. He dove to the floor just as the chandelier met the spot where his head had been an instant earlier.
Van leaned against the lid of the box with all his weight. “Stop!” he begged, as the Wish Eater pushed back with its fuzzy arms. Just as Van was about to scream for help, the Wish Eater lost its footing. It tumbled sideways, and Van crammed the lid back onto the box.
The music ceased. The chandelier faded to white. After one more swing, it went still. With a soft clicking sound, its chain retracted into the ceiling, and the chandelier rose, and everything was as it had been before.
Van shoved the Wish Eater’s box onto its shelf. He slumped back on the rug. His own heavy breathing clogged his ears.
He hadn’t wished for that to happen. Just like he hadn’t wished for the toys on his miniature stage to come to life. Mr. Falborg’s fancy chandelier could have shattered into a thousand pieces. It could have sliced Van with a thousand little shattered-glass cuts. Then he would have had to use another wish to repair the damage, and who knew where that would have led? Kernel’s words whispered in his mind: Wishes are extraordinarily hard to control. Watching Lemmy play with SuperVan had been fun. But this had been frightening—like climbing onto a carnival ride and then looking down to find no one at the brakes.
A bit nauseated now, Van wobbled to his feet.
But the reality of what lay ahead stopped him before he could reach the door. Without a spare wishbone, he was unarmed. Unprotected. Even more alone.
He wouldn’t use another wish—absolutely not. Not unless he absolutely had to.
But what if he absolutely had to?
Van darted back to the leather trunk, hoping he could jimmy the lock somehow. But as soon as he pushed the lid, it flew open. Hans must have forgotten to lock it again, Van realized. Or maybe he’d left it unlocked on purpose.
Van reached in and chose one perfect, pointy-tipped wishbone. He slipped it into his pajama pocket. Then he scurried out of the room, through the winding halls, and down the main staircase of the big white house. As he was dashing around one corner, Van thought he spotted—out of the corner of his eye—a flash of a figure in a white suit. But when he glanced back, the flash was gone, or it had never been there at all.
He was halfway through the hall when he thought of something else. “Hans? Gerda?” he asked, skidding back toward the kitchen. “Do you have a flashlight I could borrow?”
Moments later, with a small flashlight clicking against the wishbone in his pocket, Van burst through the front door into the night.
23
The Beast
THE City Collection Agency huddled in its dingy spot beneath the night sky.
Van tugged the door open and slipped inside. For a second, he leaned back against the wall, panting, letting the quiet of the office envelop him. His head was pounding. The roaring, whooshing sounds of the street still ricocheted inside his skull. Hearing this way made him feel uncomfortably fragile, like he was walking around with one less layer of skin.
He’d spent the whole trip hoping that some magical ride would show up—a friendly dragon, maybe, or a bumper car. Apparently his wish wasn’t going to come true that way. Besides, he’d only wished to get into the Hold. He’d have to do the rest himself.
Once the pulse in his ears had quieted, Van tiptoed to the inner door.
There was no one on the stone staircase. Even the flocks of pigeons and scurrying rats seemed to have cleared the way. He raced down the steps into the green-gold light.
But when he peeped out into the entry chamber, Van’s skin went cold.
There were Collectors everywhere. Maybe, thanks to the thick cloud cover shutting out any falling stars, it was an unusually calm work night. Crowds of people in long dark coats milled around, talking, laughing together. Van ducked into a shadowy nook a few steps beyond the staircase.
This was a lucky move. An instant later, a raven flew down the staircase and shot past Van’s hiding spot, its caws drilling into his ears.
Another voice—a human one—followed it. “We need help here!”
All the Collectors turned to stare.
A dark-coated man dashed from the staircase into the main corridor. A small mound of fur and blood lay in his arms. “Get Nib! It’s bad!”
Several C
ollectors came running. Their footsteps thundered in Van’s head. “Who is it?” someone shouted.
“It’s Ruddigore,” the first man panted. “A dog got him.”
There were gasps. “A dog?”
“A big German shepherd. We were watching the Venti Park fountains . . .”
The crowd closed around the man, rushing him toward one of the branching corridors—but not before Van caught a glimpse of a raccoon’s striped tail dangling limply over the man’s arm.
His stomach wrenched into a knot. There was no way of knowing if the injured raccoon was the same one who had offered him a French fry. But it certainly could have been.
Had his wish done this? Was a poor, injured raccoon providing the distraction that would get him down to the Hold?
Van swayed on his feet.
What could he do? It was too late to prevent the injury. He couldn’t help save the raccoon. All he could do was try to save another other poor little creature. And this was his chance.
Van charged as fast as he could toward the massive staircase.
He ran down, down, down, past the Atlas and its maps, past the Calendar and its heavy black books. He could hear the distracting slap of his own feet against the stones. He raced past the landing that led to the Collection’s grand double doors, down into thicker and colder darkness.
At last Van’s steps began to slow. When the darkness grew so dense that he could barely make out the next step, he pulled the flashlight from his pocket and flicked it on.
Its beam was small and narrow. Aiming it straight ahead showed him nothing at all. It was like trying to reach the bottom of a well with a chopstick. That was all right, Van reasoned. He didn’t want to give a signal to Razor or his assistants. He aimed the beam straight downward instead. It made a small, pale splotch on the stone steps. Van followed it, stepping from one bright place to the next, keeping his eyes and ears sharp. No one was going to sneak up on him this time.
He’d just reached the end of another flight when a roar ripped through the darkness. It was closer than it had ever been before—and, to Van’s ears, a thousand times louder. The noise vibrated through the steps straight into his bones. His skull throbbed. His thoughts popped like fireworks. Instinctively, he reached up to pull his hearing aids away. But there were no hearing aids. There was no escape from the awful, obliterating noise. Van clenched his teeth, gripped the banister, and waited.
The Collectors Page 17
