Death stopped on the first landing. Felix stopped with him, but Death shook his head and pointed a bony index finger downward.
It was happening again.
Felix creaked down the remaining stairs. He tried to breathe slowly, to calm the wild thump of his heart. He stepped into the flickering light as the cellar door closed above him.
Gretchen knocked on the bedroom door.
Asa hadn’t answered the first time, but Gretchen knew he was in there from the heavy percussion and screeching electric guitars. Any other day, she would’ve given up after the first knock and let Asa be. But she needed an answer to her question today. She pounded louder, to be heard over the raging music.
Another half minute passed, and still no response. Gretchen raised her fist to knock a final time, but as she did the door swung open, and Asa stood before her. His cheeks were blotchy and damp. It looked like he’d been crying. But that couldn’t be. Gretchen decided the red in his face must be from anger.
“What?” Asa barked.
“Uh,” said Gretchen. “Got a minute?”
Her brother regarded her with suspicious eyes. This was odd, what Gretchen was asking, and both of them knew it. Gretchen didn’t knock on Asa’s door, and he did not knock on hers. They didn’t talk, not unless Asa had something mean to say.
Gretchen said, “I have a question to ask.”
“Forget about it,” said Asa, shutting the door.
“No, wait!” Gretchen shoved her foot across the threshold. “Just hear me out, okay? I’m only asking something theoretical.”
Asa stilled the door. Maybe to prevent a showdown with Gretchen’s sneaker, or maybe because just a tiny part of him wanted to know what she’d say.
“Go, then,” he said. “You’ve got a minute.”
“All right.” Flustered, Gretchen searched her mind for the story she had rehearsed. “Say there was a summoner who made a deal with a Shade, but it turned out it wasn’t a good deal. But then, say that summoner got amnesia! Like, they completely forgot how to do Rites. Could another summoner help them out? I mean, is there a Rite you could do to undo the first, bad Rite?”
Asa’s gaze darkened with every word Gretchen spoke. When she finished, he was shaking his head. “What are you talking about? How would that ever happen?”
“I told you, it’s hypothetical. Hypothetically, is there a Rite that undoes other ones?”
“No,” said Asa. “A deal with a Shade is a deal forever. They can’t be undone.”
“Ever?”
“Never. Rites are permanent. That’s why they’re dangerous.”
“But . . . well, what if there’s an undoing Rite we just don’t know about?”
Asa threw a hand in the air. “Sure, Gretch, go ahead and think that.”
“Well, I don’t know what to think! Nobody here gives me answers. Dad shared all his secrets with you, and I don’t get to know anything.”
“I told you to stay out of it,” said Asa.
“But I’m part of this family! I’m a Whipple, too!”
Asa slammed his hand against the doorframe. “Stop talking like that,” he growled. “Like we’re some special breed. Don’t you understand what being a Whipple means? We’re cursed, and we curse those around us. People get hurt because of us. People—people die because of us. That’s what it means to be a Whipple. There’s nothing special about it.”
Gretchen didn’t know what to say. She gripped and released the hem of her sweater, blinking against tears. Asa stepped away from the door, startled, it seemed, by the words that had poured from his mouth. He looked almost . . . sorry.
“You’ve had your minute,” he said, and he shut the door in Gretchen’s face.
She kept tugging at her sweater, staring at the toxic waste site sign that hung from Asa’s door.
People die because of us, Asa’s voice said again, angry and strange.
Gretchen wondered if people really had died because of the Whipples. Because of Rites.
She wondered if Asa was talking about Essie Hasting.
Lee did not see Felix for two full days. Then, Thursday morning, as Lee was leaving for school, he found his brother on the front porch, hanging herbs to dry from the rafters as though nothing had happened. Lee ran to him, but Felix shrugged himself violently out of Lee’s embrace.
“I’m fine,” he said. “It wasn’t a big deal, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
And that was all he said.
Lee left the house, feeling pushed out, unwanted. He knew Felix had suffered. He wanted to listen to what had happened, to try to make things better. But Felix, it seemed, wanted nothing of the sort. He meant to keep the suffering to himself, locked away in a place Lee could not reach. And so, Lee did not reach again. When he returned home that night, he said nothing to Felix. When Felix wanted to talk, he would.
Only, Felix did not speak that day or the next day, or the next. He did not join his brother on the porch, or in the conservatory. They weren’t fighting—no shouts or blows. But Lee wondered if this silence might be worse than any fight. It stretched out, uninterrupted, with no visible end.
Even in the silence, Lee was worried about his brother. He couldn’t concentrate for more than half-minutes at a time at school. He didn’t run on the track after practice just for fun, as he usually did. He ate his lunch in the supply closet, atop an overturned mop bucket, rather than join the kids at the orange table.
And above all else, he stayed away from Gretchen Whipple.
When he saw her quicken her steps in the school hallway, trying to catch up with him, he ducked into the boys’ restroom. When he felt her eyes burning holes into his back in English class, he didn’t look her way.
Back on that wet Monday, they had made no future plans. He and Felix had toppled out of the bathroom window, and that had been that. Now, seeing Gretchen made Lee feel acutely uncomfortable. She knew. He’d told her secret things about his life and the Agreement, and Gretchen had laughed about it. Now Lee felt a horrible sensation every time he saw her, like she’d caught him stripped down to his underwear, and things could never, ever be the same.
The more Lee had thought about it, the more he’d come to realize that Gretchen was the one responsible for Felix’s punishment. If she hadn’t come calling at Poplar House or convinced Lee to make a deal, Felix would never have had to chase after them. And all for what? Gretchen had done nothing for Lee but almost get him thrown off a cliff.
For two weeks, Lee had done an excellent job of avoiding Gretchen. Then, on the Monday before Thanksgiving, his luck ran out. She found him in the supply closet.
“It smells like salami in here” was all she said before closing the door and flipping on the light. “Why the heck are you eating in the dark, Vickery?”
Lee didn’t answer. He was eyeing the door, wondering if he could bolt past Gretchen and escape.
“Hey!” Gretchen caught his gaze. “Don’t even think about it. You owe me an explanation. Why have you been ignoring me?”
Lee shrugged. He bit into his lukewarm corn dog.
“I told you a lot of really private stuff, Vickery. I let you—the enemy!—into my house. And now you go and give me the cold shoulder, for no reason. I thought . . . I thought you weren’t like the rest of those orange-table jerks.”
Lee snapped up his chin. “I’m not.”
“Oh yeah? We made a deal, and now you won’t even look at me. You’re embarrassed, huh? You think that Dylan and Emma are going to kick you to the curb if they find out we’re friends.”
Lee blinked in confusion. “What?”
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” said Gretchen, her voice suddenly unsteady. “I’m not cool enough?”
“What? No! It’s not that, it’s . . .” Lee looked away and in a quieter voice said, “Felix got in trouble for breaking the rules. And I know Death hurt him, only he won’t talk about it. He won’t talk to me at all. And look, I believe the things you said. I think you might be able to
help us. But I’m really worried about Felix right now, so it just hasn’t seemed like the right time to go on another investigation.”
Gretchen blinked. “You’re just . . . worried about Felix?”
Lee nodded.
“Well you could’ve told me that, you know. I would’ve backed off.”
Lee looked at Gretchen, dubious. “Really?”
“Just because I want your help doesn’t mean I need it.”
Lee sniffed. “You made it sound a lot more dramatic when you were chasing me down.”
“Yeah, well, I can be dramatic.”
Lee laughed. “Tell me about it.” The closet grew quiet, and then Lee said, “It really does smell like salami.”
“Sorry about your brother,” Gretchen said.
“You don’t even like him.”
“Not really. But you like him, and I like you, and you’re sad, so I’m sorry.”
Lee looked at Gretchen. “You like me?”
Gretchen looked straight back at him. “Yeah. I like you. I know I accused you of cowardice before, but you’ve proved yourself. I think you’re all right, Vickery. Is that going to make things weird?”
Lee stared.
Gretchen smiled. “A girl’s never told you that before, has she?”
Lee thought about Emma holding his hand under the orange table. “Not exactly.”
“Well, I don’t want to kiss you or anything,” she said, making a face. “I only mean you’re not like other kids, and I like that about you.”
“Even though I’m a Vickery.”
“Sure.”
Lee considered this. He considered the fact that his face felt warm. He considered that he was alone in a closet with the mayor’s daughter.
“You’re not too bad either,” he said. “For a Whipple.”
“Appreciate it.” And though Gretchen smirked like she didn’t care, her cheeks were pink. “Anyway, even if you’re temporarily bailing on your side of the deal, I’m still upholding mine.”
Lee’s heartbeat picked up. “You found a Rite to break the Agreement?”
Gretchen grimaced. “Well, not exactly. I’ve been asking around, but no one’s telling me much. Typical. The only thing left to do is go to the source itself. Remember how I said I had a plan to get the Book of Rites?”
Lee nodded.
“So here’s the deal: I’m doing this to help you, but I’ll need a little help from you.”
“Do I have to crawl through your bathroom window again?”
“I make no promises.”
“Well . . . okay, I guess.”
“You free this Wednesday night?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Then come to my place, eight o’clock.”
“It’ll be dark then,” Lee said.
“Uh, yeah. Okay?”
Lee swallowed and nodded. He wasn’t about to tell Gretchen that he didn’t like walking in Poplar Wood alone at night. She’d decided he wasn’t a coward, and he meant to keep it that way.
“Eight o’clock,” Gretchen repeated. “Come around to the back of the house. I’ll be looking out for you. And hey.” She pointed a finger. “I’m still holding you to your end of the deal. Once Felix is better, we’re back to figuring out what happened at Hickory Park. Got that?”
“Is your brother going to show up again?”
Gretchen scowled. “Definitely not.”
“Then okay,” said Lee. “The deal’s still on.”
Gretchen nodded, businesslike. She reached for the door, then stopped. “And Lee? Maybe this time you shouldn’t tell Felix.”
Lee thought about his brother. About the way he’d shoved away Lee’s hug and stoppered up all his words for days on end. As though he couldn’t be bothered with Lee’s concern.
“No,” he said. “I won’t tell Felix a thing.”
Three candles had gone out in the cellar.
It hadn’t mattered that Felix had shut his eyes, or that he had gripped his ears and tried to conjure happy memories of summer days he’d spent with Lee. Death wasn’t a mere matter of the five senses; Death was beyond them.
It began as a scent. Felix smelled it even with his nose pressed firmly between his knees. Honey and rotten meat commingled—one scent so sweet it made him salivate, the other so rank it tugged a gag from his throat.
Then came the sound of shrieking—shrieks like rusted nails dragged against metal, over and over. Red blotches burst and bled in the dark of Felix’s eyelids. Then the color seemed to travel down to his throat and touch the back of his tongue with a taste like curdled milk. Death wrapped around him so completely, colder and damper on his skin than the already cold dampness of the cellar.
There was no safe place when a life was snuffed out. The sensations lasted for hours on end, and then as suddenly as they came on, they left. There were thousands of candles alight in the cellar, but Felix never had trouble finding the one that had been extinguished; that smell of honey and meat remained pungent in the last smoky fizzle. Then, as was Felix’s duty, he retrieved the candle and placed it inside one of Death’s chests, among all the other dead lives within.
Three times he had done this.
Felix had not begged for mercy or pounded on the cellar door, offering bargains with Death to let him out. He knew that Death never gave second chances. He knew, too, that his father was under Death’s command and could not rescue him. So he endured his punishment in silence.
Death unlocked the cellar door at the end of the second day. Sweet, fresh air came pouring down the stairs, nearly drowning Felix in relief. When he emerged, he allowed his father to bundle him in quilts, and he fell asleep with Vince at his bedside.
In the morning, Felix’s work resumed as usual, and he refused the hug that Lee offered him. Life carried on for nearly two weeks, during which time Felix made no attempt to talk to his brother, and Lee made no attempt to talk to him.
Then, early on a Monday morning, there was a patient to see Vince. Felix stood silently in the corner of the examination room as his father asked the elderly man to lie down. Felix was nervous for the old man. The older a patient, the more likely it was that Death would take out his iron pincers and extract their life.
As it turned out, that morning’s appointment was a fortunate case. Death stood at the head of the table, his shadow falling over the man’s bearded cheek. Then Death whispered to Vince the names of the herbs needed to cure the old man’s arthritic complaint, and once Felix had concocted the prescribed broth, the old man left Poplar House with a lighter step than the one that had brought him.
The good visit did not mean Felix was in good humor. Questions turned over in his mind, as much in need of answering as they had been a week before: What if Rites really could work? And what if there was a Rite to end the Agreement, once and for all?
Felix knew his place. He had tried to forsake it once, to run away with his brother and break his bonds. They had failed, and that, he thought, had been the end of it.
But three candles had gone out before Felix’s left eye. A punishment for a broken rule that should not have existed, an Agreement that ruled his life and would for at least three more long years. An Agreement that would always keep his family apart.
There was a world outside of that Agreement. A world of grand libraries, books, and endless knowledge. A world that Death had never allowed Felix to see, a future of possibilities Felix could not imagine, so limited was the sphere he’d been kept inside. Now Felix felt himself expanding, a great balloon growing larger and larger, pressing at the edges of his small sphere’s glass confines.
He was not sure he’d fit inside much longer.
Lee unwound the violet ribbon from its spool.
A patient had visited Poplar House while he’d been at school, and the volume of the memories left behind was extraordinary for just one person. Three jars sat on the canning table, filled to their brims with a thick, tar-like liquid—all memories of Bad Things. Whoever the patient was, they must’ve
endured terrible tragedy. Lee was glad, at least, that the unfortunate individual had found Judith and was now rid of such foul remembrances.
Bad Things were the most difficult to store. They required the use of the rickety stepladder, and even then Lee had to reach above his head to slide them onto the shelf. Today, the jars were still fresh and unpleasantly hot to the touch.
Lee licked his chapped lips as he finished off his final violet bow. For a moment, he did nothing more than stare at the three jars, all labeled Forget. Then he picked up the first of the jars and ascended the ladder. He reached up to the bare space on the fifth shelf, jar in hand, the glass hot against his skin. Then, just as Lee was tipping the jar onto the shelf’s edge, it slipped through his curled fingers.
“NO!” Lee cried.
The jar hit the floor with a crash.
Lee scrambled down the ladder toward the damage, but it was too late. The black liquid hissed from the fissures of broken glass, and out came a smell like bad eggs. Lee covered his nose and ran for the door, but as he did, his legs grew heavy. Then, suddenly—
He was standing in a school hallway, turning his locker combination with practiced ease: left to 35, right twice to 15, left once to 20. He felt a light pressure on his shoulder and turned, an annoyed remark on the tip of his tongue. Then he saw her face, and the words dissolved.
“Essie,” he said. “What do you want?”
The question came out far meaner than he’d intended, and he watched with regret as Essie’s face fell from hopefulness to hurt.
“You don’t have to be that way with me,” she said.
“I didn’t mean . . .” He shook his head, then turned back to his locker, shoving his geometry book inside. “Whatever. Why are you even talking to me in public?”
“I don’t know. Considering you don’t ever acknowledge me.”
“It’s better that way.”
“Then stop complaining.” Essie tossed her hair. “I was going to tell you what I found out about the stone, but since your locker is so much more interesting—”
The House in Poplar Wood Page 12
