Greenglass House (26 page)

He lowered his book. “A history of the Skidwrack and its environs.”

“For work or for pleasure?” Mrs. Pine inquired. “You know, I don't think I ever got around to asking what you do. It got so busy, and you're so unobtrusive. Comparatively, of course,” she added with a smile.

Milo kept pretending to read, but he was all ears. Mr. Vinge didn't answer right away. He seemed to consider the question for a minute before he said, “I'm retired.”

If she wasn't satisfied with the answer, Mrs. Pine didn't let on. “That must be nice. Can I get you any more coffee or anything, Mr. Vinge?”

“No, no.” He rose creakily and bowed. “I think I'll call it a night.”

“How about you, kiddo?” Milo's mom asked. “Looks like you and I are the last two standing.” She glanced out the window. “Inside, at least.”

“I'm fine.” He followed her gaze into the glittery night. “You think they're okay out there? Can I go check on them, maybe?”

Mrs. Pine smiled, but before she could answer, three bundled-up figures appeared from around the back of the house, plodding through the icy snow on the lawn. “Oh, crap,” she muttered. “I guess this means no power tonight.”

“Yikes.”

The door opened, letting in yet another swirl of freezing wind, and Mr. Pine stomped inside, followed by Brandon and Fenster. All three of them looked frustrated, to say the least.

Mrs. Pine rushed over to help them out of their coats. “Milo, bring those blankets.”

He gathered them up and carried them back to the three shivering men.

“Thanks, Milo,” Mr. Pine said.

They wrapped themselves up, then trooped to the dining table while Mrs. Pine made a beeline for the kitchen, then reappeared and passed around steaming mugs. “No luck, huh?” All three of them looked at her with matching expressions of disgust. “I see.”

“Naw, it's worse than that,” Brandon grumbled. “You want to break the news, Ben?”

“Break the news?” Mrs. Pine repeated warily. “Please do.”

Mr. Pine rolled his head on his neck. “My dear, you're not going to believe this, but we're ninety-nine percent sure somebody, somehow, went in and intentionally busted our generator.”

“Somebody . . .” Mrs. Pine dropped onto the bench next to him. “You're kidding me.”

“No, indeed. Sabotage,” Brandon declared darkly. “Sure as if somebody shoved a wooden shoe in the bugger.”

The old grandfather clock beside the sofa began to strike midnight. Milo's father raised his cup. “So Merry Christmas Eve to us.”

 

His parents and Fenster and Brandon sat up for a long time discussing the generator problem, what to do about it and how to make sure the house—or at least the guests—stayed warm enough and the food didn't go bad and that sort of thing. Milo returned to the loveseat and picked up his book again.

He had been in the middle of the story about the Devil and the scavenger, but he couldn't quite get back into it now. There was too much rattling around inside his head. Negret and Sirin had recovered three stolen items, plus they'd figured out what had brought Georgie, Clem, and Mrs. Hereward to the house. All of that had been pretty cool. But Georgie, who had been really nice to him, had been crushed, which wasn't so much fun. Then there was Dr. Gowervine's story, which Negret suspected had also answered the question of what had brought him to Greenglass House.

What might the vidimus look like? And if Dr. Gowervine was looking for it, could he have stolen the three objects during his search? Georgie had told Negret her notebook contained information about someone connected to the house, and Clem had said she was the only other person who'd be interested in it—but what if Clem was wrong? What if Dr. Gowervine had somehow figured out that the notebook had something to do with the house and had swiped it for a look? Maybe that's what had happened with Mrs. Hereward's bag, too.

The only thing that didn't appear to fit was Mr. Vinge's watch, which didn't have anything to do with the house. Still, an old watch could be valuable, so maybe that theft had just been about . . . well, plain old theft.

Greenglass House back around 1812 . . .
Lansdegown House,
Milo corrected himself . . . Doc Holystone fortyish years ago . . . the gate, everywhere . . .

“Milo.”

He jerked awake. Mr. Pine sat beside him on the loveseat, smiling tiredly. “How about heading on up to bed, kiddo? We're going to be up late here moving food and firewood and stuff.” Milo nodded sleepily and gathered up his things. “Where'd you find that?” Mr. Pine asked, nodding at the rucksack.

“Attic.”

“Very cool. That might be my dad's old city scout bag. I bet he'd love that you found it.” He ruffled Milo's hair. “Do you think you're awake enough to take a candle up with you and blow it out before you fall asleep?”

“Yeah. Or—wait.” Milo reached into the bag and felt around for the old metal lantern. “Can you get this going? I found it up there too.”

His father took the lantern and looked it over. “Wow. What a weird old lantern. Hey, Nora,” he called over his shoulder, “do we have any lamp oil?”

“Yeah, I think there's a bottle in the study that I bought for that funny pig lamp of yours.”

“My pig lamp is not funny,” Mr. Pine retorted. “Come on, Milo. Let's see what we can find.”

Up in the study, Milo sat sleepily in one of the overstuffed chairs and idly turned the lamp over in his hands while his dad rooted through cabinets and desk drawers by the light of one thick candle. Then he sat bolt upright and awake.

“Found it,” Mr. Pine said, waving a plastic bottle of colorless liquid and a box of matches. “It was on the liquor shelf, 'cause
that's
both logical and safe. Your mother, sometimes . . .” He regarded his son curiously. “What's that look for?”

Milo ignored the question. “Can you bring your light closer, Dad?”

On the bottom of the lantern was a pattern of curling scratches. He hadn't given them a second thought when he'd found it in the Emporium, but now, with two days' worth of stories and his growing collection of inexplicable clues, no detail seemed unimportant.
Now
he couldn't help but notice how much the curls looked not like a collection of random marks, but like . . . well, like something that had been scratched there
intentionally.
It almost seemed—he licked his thumb and rubbed at the spot. Yes. They were definitely meant to represent something. He turned the lantern one way, then another.

It was the candlelight that helped him see it, and just like the gate in the windows, once he did he couldn't un-see it. The curving, curling lines came together right before his eyes into the teardrop shape of a single lick of flame, and Mrs. Hereward's words from the night before came rushing back to him.

Julian handed over
. . .
the lamp he'd extinguished earlier that night. Sloe scratched the symbol
. . .
onto the underbelly of the lantern. “You will always be able to light your way, as long as you have a flint.
. . .
”

Milo reached into his bag again and took out the little tinderbox and flint he'd found near the lantern in the attic.

Mr. Pine was watching him with a bemused look on his face. “You going to let me in on the secret?”

“Dad,” Milo said slowly, “remember Mrs. Hereward's story last night? The one about the roamer guy?”

“Sure.” He glanced at the lantern again. “Oh, hey, I get it. There was a lantern in that story, wasn't there?”

“Yeah.” Milo thought hard for a minute. “You know, she says her ancestors built this house.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. She told me when I asked her about her missing bag. That's why she came to stay here. She said there was a family legend that her ancestor had one of the relics from that story.”

“What do you know?” Mr. Pine was smiling now. “What are you thinking, Milo? You think this is the lantern from the story?”

“I was thinking,” Milo said slowly, “that even if it isn't really magic, maybe this lantern would make her
think
of that one. It has a . . . a
something
scratched on it, just like the one in the story. And I found this, too.” He held up the tinderbox. “I guess I was thinking . . . maybe she would like to have them. If it's okay with you.”

Mr. Pine put an arm around Milo and hugged him. “That's the best idea I've heard all day. Let me make sure your mom doesn't object. I've never seen these before, and I don't imagine she has either, so I don't think she'll mind. But how about I ask her, just in case? I'll let you know what she says in the morning.”

“Okay.” Milo turned the lamp right-side up. “Can we try it first, though?”

“Sure.” Mr. Pine uncapped the bottle of oil and poured some into the lamp, holding the cloth wick to make sure it didn't fall in. They waited a minute for the oil to soak the wick; then Milo held up the lamp by its chain and Mr. Pine struck a match. The wick caught fire immediately, turning from a red-gold flame to a deep blue.

“I'll be darned,” Mr. Pine said. “Look at that blue! That definitely doesn't happen with my pig lamp.”

 

Milo awoke sometime later. It couldn't have been much later, because the blue flame of the lamp was still flickering on his desk, and his dad had said it could stay lit only until he came back with extra blankets.

The house was full of noises. There were the usual house noises, and the rattles of the windows and eaves from the wind that was still whipping through the trees and cracking icy branches outside. There were the sounds of adults moving and talking downstairs on the first floor. He could pick out his parents' voices, and Brandon's because his accent wasn't local, though he couldn't make out what they were saying.

But the noise that had woken him wasn't coming from downstairs. It was coming from
upstairs,
and not from the house itself. Milo had slept through enough nights with guests on the floors above to know what it sounded like when someone was walking around up there.

He swung himself out of bed and checked the clock on his desk. Its face glowed in the blue lamplight. Two a.m. Mr. Pine must have lost track of the time. He'd never intentionally have left Milo asleep with the lamp burning.

Milo slipped on his escaladeur shoes and instantly felt Negret yearning to sneak out and investigate. He looked longingly at the brass lamp, but wandering around a dark house in the middle of the night with an open flame just seemed like asking for trouble. He fished his flashlight out of his desk drawer and clicked it on and off. The beam was harsh and cold compared to the soothing cobalt light of the lamp.

From his rucksack he took the round mirror with the spotted glass he'd found in the Emporium, and from the bedside table he took the old blackjack's keys. He put one item in each of his pajama pockets, then, reluctantly, he extinguished the blue flame, opened his door, and crept out.

The second floor wasn't completely dark; someone had put a lantern on the kitchen table and another on the stand next to the stairs. Both were turned down low, so they only cast small pools of light, but it was enough to keep him from walking into things.

Negret paused by the stairs and listened again. The voices downstairs were still murmuring to one another. He tiptoed up the steps, remembering to skip the creaky ones. He figured the noise he'd heard had come from the next floor, since it had been loud enough to wake him. But now he couldn't hear anything.

There.

It wasn't the same as before, but he knew exactly what it was. It was the sound of someone turning one of the house's old doorknobs. Negret took the last few steps as quickly as he dared and reached around the turn of the stairs with the mirror in his hand. The reflection showed him an empty hallway, lit very softly by a battery-powered camp lantern that stood on the table where the poinsettia had been. It, too, was turned down low, but it cast enough light for Negret to be certain there was no one in the hallway. Every door was closed, except for the one to the unoccupied room in which he'd found the watch.

He tiptoed down the hall to the empty room, wondering what he was going to say if he found anyone there. There wasn't any particular rule against guests wandering around the house and poking their heads into rooms that weren't theirs—as long as nobody else was in them. Still, with the thefts and the broken generator, it seemed that anyone sneaking around might have some kind of nefarious purpose in mind.

Well, not everyone,
Negret thought defensively.
I'm not up to anything nefarious.

He stepped into the doorway, pointed the flashlight inside, and clicked it on. Cold light blazed into the room, throwing an indistinct circle of illumination on the dark window. Everything was just as he and Sirin had left it the afternoon before. Negret turned the beam toward the bathroom. Nobody. He tiptoed farther into the room, then over the bathroom threshold. Heart pounding, he swung the flashlight beam around the open door. Nobody. Heart pounding even harder, he flung aside the shower curtain.

Nobody. The room was empty.

There, again!

From out in the hallway, the sound of a doorknob turning. Negret fumbled with the shower curtain and scrambled out of the bathroom. Another knob turned, a different one, with a slightly different scraping sound. He misjudged the length of the bed and banged his shin against the footboard, which sent him sprawling, grasping for his lower leg as he stumbled the last few feet to the hallway. By the time he reached it and jabbed the flashlight beam out into the dark, the hall was empty once more.

But now he was sure something was afoot. Someone had left one room and entered another. He turned off the flashlight and tiptoed back toward the staircase. 3E, Mr. Vinge; 3N, Mrs. Hereward; 3S, Dr. Gowervine. Somebody was awake and moving around and was either in someone else's room or had just left it, but the closed doors gave no clues away.