And yet.
He wondered at times, in the dead of night, if people like the Whipples saw Shades differently, maybe they knew Shades differently. Maybe they knew things he did not.
Lee could not break the Agreement. He had tried before and failed. But maybe there was someone else who could, and maybe that someone was the one person he wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with.
Felix hadn’t been happy about Lee’s deal with Gretchen. He’d spent the better part of an hour that morning trying to convince Lee to back out. In the end, Lee had calmed Felix by telling him that the deal with Gretchen would keep her away from Poplar House. If Gretchen was in town with Lee, then she wouldn’t be inclined to instigate any more impromptu acts of vandalism or housekeeping, would she? And then Death wouldn’t be inclined to give Gretchen more than just a “warning.” Lee shuddered at that thought and tugged extra hard on his toggles.
“This is perfect weather, isn’t it?”
Gretchen had arrived. She stomped up the bleachers in bright green galoshes and stopped a few rows down from Lee, where she could fix him with a long, appraising look.
Lee wiped at his running nose. “I don’t see why it’s so perfect.”
“Because we’re solving a mystery,” Gretchen said with the patience of an adult teaching a kid the ABCs. “Mysteries are solemn affairs. They deserve gray skies and thunder.”
Gretchen really was crazy, Lee decided.
“Here’s the deal, Vickery,” Gretchen said. “You help me, I help you. If everything goes according to plan, I can figure out a Rite to break your Agreement before Christmas. But before any of that, you and I are going on a field trip.”
“A field trip where?” Lee eyed the bulky backpack hoisted on Gretchen’s shoulder. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Hickory Park.”
“Isn’t that . . . where they found Essie Hasting’s body?”
“Yep.”
Lee had a very bad feeling about this. “That’s a long walk.”
“Yes, genius, it is.”
Gretchen stomped back down the bleachers, and hesitantly, Lee followed.
“I thought it was still roped off,” he said.
“Most of it’s open to the general public again. It’s just the cliff that’s off-limits. They say it’s not safe.”
“Well, sure, she fell off it.”
Gretchen turned suddenly, nearly causing Lee to run into her upturned chin.
“That’s what they say.”
“Uh. Well, what do you think happened?”
“The police, the coroner, the newspaper—everyone who says Essie fell—they all have one thing in common: They report to my dad.”
Of course, Lee reflected. Mayor Whipple ran the town. He was rich and powerful, and no one would dare cross his will. It wasn’t surprising to hear he controlled the sheriff and the coroner and the Boone Herald. But if Lee was understanding Gretchen correctly, that meant—
“You think your dad is mixed up in this? That he’s got something to do with Essie Hasting?”
“I don’t know,” said Gretchen. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“Okay, but how?”
Gretchen resumed her marching. “You’ll see.”
“So you have this great big plan that I’m supposed to help out with, and you’re not going to tell me what it is.”
“Pick up the pace, Vickery, would you? We might have to run at a moment’s notice, hide in tight crevices, maybe even punch a few people. You’ve got to be on your game.”
Lee didn’t appreciate anyone telling him he was slow. It was not only mean; it was tremendously untrue.
“I don’t have to do this, you know,” he said angrily. “You could be a little nicer.”
“I’m never nice when I’m on a mission. Business supersedes niceness. Memorize that motto, Vickery. Recite it in your sleep. And yes, you do have to do this, if you want to break that Agreement of yours. Quid pro quo, remember?”
Lee wished Gretchen wasn’t right.
“That’s what we can talk about,” Gretchen said. “Why don’t you tell me about your family’s little Agreement?”
“No.” Lee was surprised by how fast the word came out. Well. Business superseded niceness, didn’t it?
“I can’t help you break the Agreement if you won’t tell me what it is.”
“I don’t trust you yet. This could be a trick.”
“A trick to do what?”
“I dunno, get information from me. To report back to your father.”
Gretchen’s laugh was loud, with a half dozen snorts thrown in. When the giggles subsided, she said, “You severely overestimate the paternal bond in the Whipple household.”
“Still,” said Lee. “I don’t trust you yet.”
Gretchen sighed. “I guess that’s fair. I definitely don’t trust you.”
Lee wanted to say more. He wanted to ask Gretchen exactly what she knew about apprentices, because truth be told, he knew very little about summoners. He’d heard of Rites—the method by which summoners commanded the Shades. His mother had told him they were ancient spells, first created by wicked sorcerers at the dawn of time, but Lee had yet to witness a Rite for himself, and he wondered if his mother might be repeating mere rumors. And sometimes—though Lee would never admit it—he wondered if Rites weren’t so very different from the Agreement that ruled his own life, if the Whipples and the Vickeries weren’t actually in very similar situations.
There was a lot Lee wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut, and neither he nor Gretchen spoke a word the rest of the way to Hickory Park. Gretchen whistled to herself, and she didn’t seem to mind the funny looks Lee gave her.
At last, they arrived at the park entrance, and like Gretchen had said, the Do Not Cross tape had been cut down from the trees. Even so, the park was deserted. There were no playing children, no jogging couples, no dogs on walks. Only damp, mulchy earth and tall, bare-branched trees. It was still drizzling, and a low fog poured toward their sneakers.
“Come on,” said Gretchen, grabbing Lee by the hand and tugging him along a gravel running trail.
Lee would have felt more uncomfortable about the fact that they were holding hands if Gretchen weren’t squeezing his quite so tightly. “Ow,” he said, wriggling his fingers.
“Don’t be a wuss” was Gretchen’s reply.
They walked for minutes more until, abruptly, Gretchen left the trail, leading Lee into a tangle of trees. The ground sloped sharply upward, slickened by leaves. Eventually Gretchen was forced to let go of Lee’s hand so that she could better balance her own ascent. They climbed upward and upward, and Lee slipped more than once, conking his shins on roots and rock, his legs a jumbled mess. But finally, the branches cleared, and the mulch turned to crumbling stone and then to . . . nothing at all. They were feet away from a cliff. The cliff. Yellow tape strung along the trees made a flimsy, fluttering fence.
Gretchen lifted the tape and motioned for Lee to duck beneath it.
He did not. “You didn’t say we were going here.”
“Where’s here?” Gretchen blinked innocently.
“The place . . .” Lee lowered his voice. “The place where she died.”
“Where else would we be going? If you’re running an investigation, the first place you go is the scene of the crime.”
Lee narrowed his eyes. “No one’s calling it a crime but you.”
“C’mon, Vickery. You doing this or not?”
Lee wavered. He thought of the Agreement. He thought of what it’d be like to see his father cheering him on at one of his races. He thought of what it’d be like to eat his mother’s cheese biscuits at one supper table, as a whole, unbroken family.
He ducked under the tape.
“Excellent,” said Gretchen, and then unzipped her backpack. From it, she removed two flashlights. She handed one to Lee.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“Investigating, of course. We don
’t have the sun on our side today, so we’ve got to be extra perceptive. I’m starting on the left edge of the cliff, over there. You start on the right, there. Anything that looks out of the ordinary, holler to me.”
Lee made a face, but Gretchen was already marching to her side of the cliff with great purpose. The rain was beginning to pick up. Gretchen could say what she wanted, but Lee happened to think this was the worst possible weather in which to be walking along a deadly cliff. He kept his steps at a decidedly safe distance from the cliff’s edge, and he noted that Gretchen did, too.
His flashlight beam revealed little more than rain-laden grass. There were no footprints, and Lee could not say anything was out of the ordinary because he didn’t know what ordinary was to begin with. After many minutes of swinging the flashlight and uncovering nothing, he looked to Gretchen, who was now standing closer to the edge of the cliff. He wanted to shout at her to step away, it was dangerous, but he was afraid that shouting suddenly might be more dangerous still.
Gretchen was shining her flashlight at an object on the ground, which she knelt to pick up. Lee hurried to her side. The object was a lined notebook, its pages covered in a tiny scrawl. The paper was turning pulpy in the rain, but the ink did not bleed. He made out words at the top of the page: Wishing Rite.
Rite.
Lee opened his mouth, making a sound like a pop.
Gretchen started, swinging her light straight into Lee’s eyes. “What the heck, Vickery? Try not to be a creep, huh?”
She closed the book and rose to her feet, shuffling several steps away from the cliff’s edge.
“What is that?” Lee asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, it looks like . . . I don’t know.”
Gretchen was frowning, the fringes of her dark, damp hair pressed to her cheeks. She tucked her flashlight under her arm and opened the book again.
“Here.” She motioned to Lee. “Shine your light.”
Lee did, and Gretchen tilted the book for them both to see. Slowly, she turned the pages. Each was covered in black ink—some words only scribbles Lee could not make out. Others were more legible, like the heading he’d seen earlier: Wishing Rite. Gretchen flipped to similar headings: Long Memory Rite and Second Chance Rite and Guilt Rite. Beneath each of these headings were lists that looked like recipe ingredients, and beneath the lists were words that were printed clearly, and never running more than six lines long. They reminded Lee of something.
Poetry.
They looked like poems.
There was nothing after Guilt Rite. Gretchen flipped and flipped, but only blank pages remained.
“Those can’t be . . . real, can they?” Lee asked.
“Of course they aren’t. Only summoners know Rites. We’re the only ones who have the Book of Rites, for crying out loud. This is just . . . I mean, it’s just . . . creative writing.”
Gretchen had sounded so sure at first, but now it was clear: She didn’t know what they were looking at any more than Lee did.
“Do you think that was Essie’s?” Lee wasn’t sure why he was whispering.
“I don’t know,” Gretchen whispered back.
She touched the last page with writing on it, titled Guilt Rite. Lee read part of the poem:
Your bad deeds will find you like dawn eating night,
Your nightmares will torment your sleep.
Thunder rumbled, low and loud, shaking Lee’s ribcage. Gretchen was saying something. She was reading the poem aloud.
Maybe it was the rain and the thunder, or maybe it was only the nervous pattering of his heart, but Lee was certain that reciting this poem was not a good idea.
“I think you should stop that!” he shouted over the storm.
Gretchen did not stop.
“Your murder will track you,” she read on, “a wrong seeking right.”
The rain turned harder, pinging into Lee’s skin like sharp pellets. He clicked off his flashlight, but it was too late. Gretchen had already seen the last line and was now bellowing it into the storm:
“Your image will come from the—!”
Deep. That, Lee knew, was the remaining word of the poem. Only Gretchen never spoke it. Before she could finish the poem, three things happened, all at once.
There was a great clap of thunder.
The ground moved beneath Lee’s sneakers.
And Gretchen screamed.
Lee found himself falling backward, and rain was suddenly pounding against his eyelids and up his nose. It took him several seconds to sit up and wipe his face free of water. When he had, Gretchen was nowhere to be seen.
Then—
“Lee!” shrieked an echoing voice. “LEE, HELP!”
It came from his feet. From the edge of the cliff.
Lee crawled toward Gretchen’s voice. Bits of stone crumbled beneath the heels of his hands and dropped over the cliff’s edge. The fog was so thick that Lee could not make out the ravine below. He did not want to see it; he felt woozy enough as it was. And he couldn’t be woozy. Gretchen Whipple was in trouble.
The cliff, it turned out, was not a straight drop. The earth sloped dramatically first, turning rocky and jagged before dropping off entirely. It was onto this slope that Gretchen had fallen and was now attempting to climb with no success. Her feet dangled off the cliff’s true edge, attempting to find purchase, slipping, and sending down sprays of loose rock.
“Hang on!” Lee shouted, leaning closer to the edge.
Gretchen threw up a hand, and he grabbed her by the wrist.
“Ow!” Gretchen shrieked. “You’re going to pull my hand off!”
“Give me your other one!”
But Gretchen’s other hand was still holding the notebook. She made no attempt to move it.
“Gretchen!” Lee shouted. “Let go of the book!”
“NEVER.”
“You’ve got to!”
“NO.”
Lee grunted, trying to keep both hands tight around Gretchen’s wrist. Then, heaving himself closer to the edge, he shifted his grip down her arm. This way, at least, he wouldn’t break her wrist. He tugged, and Gretchen screamed. It wasn’t enough to pull her to safety.
“You have to give me both your hands! If you throw the book up here, maybe I can—”
“NO.”
For just a moment, Lee lost focus. He looked beyond Gretchen, toward the misty ravine, and his vision began to blotch in big blooming spots of white. He shut his eyes and lunged, trying to grab Gretchen’s other arm. Rock moved beneath him, sifting and spilling until he too was hurtling forward, over the edge.
A thought flashed in Lee’s brain: Perhaps today was his day. At this very moment, in the cellar of Poplar House, his candle could be fizzling out.
But just as he slid off into the cold, wet void, someone grabbed him by the feet.
“Hang on, Lee!” shouted a voice. “We’ve got you!”
It was Felix.
Felix had followed them at a distance.
It was the first time he had ever ventured into town on a day that was not Halloween. That morning, his father had two appointments, and Felix knew his presence would be missed. Vince would be angry, and Death would be angrier still. But Felix was far more worried about Lee and what sort of trouble the mayor’s daughter had in store for him. Despite all Lee’s protests that he would be fine, Felix didn’t trust Gretchen Whipple.
As it turned out, he’d been right not to.
When, from the shelter of a dripping tree, he watched Gretchen tumble headfirst off the cliff, he’d run to help. But someone else had gotten there first, and it was that someone who grabbed Lee by the ankles and held on tight while Felix screamed down to his brother.
“Get out of the way, kid,” growled the tall, muscled someone. He knocked at Felix with his elbow and gave one mighty heave. He lunged, catching Lee around the waist, and hauled him and Gretchen up onto the muddy ground. Gretchen’s eyes were sealed shut, and she was hugging a small, tattered notebook. She stayed that
way for many seconds—enough time for the someone to get to his feet and wipe at the wet mud on his jacket.
Gretchen blinked open her eyes. “Th-thank you,” she sputtered to the someone. “Thank you so—Asa?”
Now they were side by side, Felix saw it: Asa and Gretchen Whipple looked very much alike. Same dark eyes, dark hair, same too-red lips.
With those dark eyes, Asa was staring coldly at his sister. “What are you doing out here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Gretchen said, scrambling to her feet. “Were you spying on me?” She turned on Felix. “Were you spying on me?”
“I don’t trust you,” Felix said.
“Did—did Dad let you go?” Lee panted at Felix.
“No.” Felix felt a stab of dread at the reminder. “But you wouldn’t listen to me, and I was afraid she would get you into trouble. And considering you just about died, I was right to—”
“Guh, you creeps!” shouted Gretchen. “Don’t you know it’s rude to follow people?”
Asa shrugged. “I saw you heading to Hickory Park and figured you were up to no good. I was concerned.”
“Yeah, sure. Don’t ever follow me again. You either, Felix. If you wanted to be part of this you should’ve treated me nicer when you had the chance.”
“Why would I want to be part of this?” Felix asked, horrified.
“Oh—oh—whatever!” Gretchen waved him off like he was a bad scent.
“So let’s see it then,” said Asa. “What was worth dying over, Gretch?”
He grabbed at the notebook his sister was holding, and with one powerful wrench, pulled it free.
“HEY! Give it back!”
The thunder had stilled and the rain had turned back to drizzle, so it was quiet as the three of them watched Asa, waiting to see what he would do with the strange book in his hands.
All the lines in Asa’s face turned hard and deep as he opened the book and flipped over its pages. “Where did you find this?” he asked Gretchen.
“Under the rocks.” She pointed to the cliff. “It was hidden, just a corner peeking out. Probably why the police didn’t see it before. I knew they would miss something. So it’s mine, by rights. I investigated. I found it here.”
The House in Poplar Wood Page 9
