Greenglass House (38 page)

“Maybe.” He retrieved his rucksack and opened it. It was a little harder to shift into Negret mode now that this was so clearly not a game anymore. Then another thought occurred to him. “How do you carry things, anyway? How come nobody's seen a phantom yellow robe flying around the house?”

“No idea.” She smiled weakly and glanced at the open box of role-playing game supplies. “In some games, different worlds and different beings exist on different planes. Maybe I have my own plane and I pull things I can wear or carry over to where I am.”

“Like you can turn things ghostly?”

“Maybe, temporarily. But it only seems to work for little things—although I did manage to take some of my books downstairs to the tree that morning we created your character. But remember when we were locked in the guest room and I shoved you into the door?”

“Yeah.” Negret rubbed his still-sore nose.

She shrugged. “Let's call that an experiment that didn't work.”

“But you could've gone and gotten the key and brought it back?”

“I thought about that,” Sirin admitted. “But that would've meant passing through the door, and I didn't want to give myself away unless I had to. And as it turned out, you came up with a way out yourself. But speaking of keys, is your spare passkey in your bag? Can I borrow it in case he's locked everybody up somewhere?”

“Yeah.” Negret located the key and handed it over. “It'll only work for the guest rooms, though.”

“Okay. I'll be back as soon as I can.” She smiled weakly and disappeared through the door. Negret swallowed hard. It really was true. He willed his heart to slow down to its normal pace and forced himself to focus.

By the time Sirin returned, Negret had the clues laid out on a flat-topped trunk.

“Everyone's fine,” she said breathlessly. “Nobody was hit. But what's the room at the back of the house by the kitchen?”

“Laundry room. Or the pantry. They're both there. Why?”

“I think Vinge and his guys have people locked in the laundry room.”

“What?”

“One of those strangers is watching that door, and there's yelling coming from the other side. Mr. Vinge has your parents and Fenster in the living room, and he's grilling them about my dad and the house. I heard him say something about them being under arrest. And Mr. Vinge's other guy is on the second floor. I think he's looking for you. So we have to hurry.”

“My mom and dad are
under arrest?
” he protested. “Can customs agents even
do
that?”

“I don't know, but he seems to
think
he can. He has the key to the laundry room door, too. Is there more than one?”

“I don't know. I've never seen my parents lock that door.” Milo dropped his head into his hands. “This is awful. Can't you get them out without a key?”

“How? If I could pick locks, don't you think I'd have done it when we were locked in the guest room before I tried shoving you through the door?” She shook her head sadly. “I'm not magic, Negret, I'm just . . . not like you. I can pass through walls, but
you
can't, and neither can the people locked in your laundry room.”

“Can't you do
anything?
” he snapped before he could stop himself.

“Not much,” she snapped back. “That's why I needed you!”

“Sorry.”

“It's okay. It frustrates me, too. But look—I brought these.” From her pocket Sirin took a small paperback book titled
Works, Being the Fifth Catalog.
She laid it on the trunk next to the blank decoy paper and the chart they'd gotten back from Georgie. “I ducked into Dr. Gowervine's room and checked in that satchel.” She pointed at the bottom edge. “Look:
Skellansen.
I think this is a catalog of his stuff. I thought it might help us to see some of his work. And I brought that funny foggy-window map picture.”

“Good idea.”

He picked up the Skellansen catalog. “Guess we have to start somewhere.” It was hard to care about the pictures he was looking at as he flipped through it.
Focus,
he thought.
There could be a clue here, and if there is, Mom and Dad need me to find it.

Stained glass and more stained glass. Round church windows and vaulted church windows, windows that showed cheerful monks brewing beer, windows with beautiful ladies dancing, windows with ships under sail slicing through blue water with white foam at their bows. And there was more. Tables with mosaic tops. Fireplace screens with glass set into them to catch the light of the flames and send it flickering throughout the room. Glass chandeliers and glass candelabra and glass lamps.

Negret tossed the catalog aside. “I don't know what I'm looking for.” He picked up Georgie's chart, then Dr. Gowervine's photo. “I can't figure it out if Dr. Gowervine couldn't. He spent his whole life trying to discover whether there's a hidden vidimus. This is hopeless.”

“It's not hopeless,” Sirin insisted. “Quit grousing and think.”

“I am!”

“You're complaining, is what you're doing.” She picked up the chart again. “Remember what Mr. Vinge said? That my dad and his crew used to hide information on charts like these.”

“Yeah. Encoded in the soundings. I'd have to be a codebreaker to read them.” Codebreaking was not an exploit he possessed.

“Maybe the information we want isn't in the dots. Remember, it was the ship that caught Georgie's attention.”

“The stupid ship thing.” Negret took the chart and looked at the curls of white painted on the page.

“I mean, my dad was captain of a ship. It's not totally impossible that it has something to do with—”

“Wait.” He touched the compass rose. “It's an albatross. That was the name of your dad's ship, right? That's what Mr. Vinge said.”

“Yeah . . . so?”

“Compasses are for navigating. To show the way, right? Well, this compass is pointing us to a ship. Literally.” He touched the arrow, which he'd thought was meant to indicate north. It was directed at the puff of curling sails. “Maybe the shape of the compass is meant to tell us what ship it is.”

“Well, if whatever it is is hidden on the actual clipper, we're out of luck,” Sirin said dubiously. “I don't know what became of the
Albatross
.”

Negret shook his head. “You said something before about a ship chandelier.”

“Yeah, the one in your dining room. I don't know if that's what it's supposed to be, but I always thought it looked like one.”

He looked at the sails on the chart. “And you said you sort of remember when it was hung.”

“Sort of. It was in the afterward.” Her eyes widened. “You think . . . ?”

Negret was already flipping through the catalog again until he came to a page of glass chandeliers. “Skellansen made them, too. Look.” Some looked like traditional chandeliers, the kind with faceted beads dripping from upturned arms of glass or brass. Others, though, were more fanciful. There was one with curves of red and gold that looked like a graceful ball of fire. Another was made of carved and engraved pieces that looked like glittering, silvery stars that seemed to be hanging in thin air. Milo pictured the cluster of cream-colored glass that hung over his dining room table. It would look right at home on this page. “Could be . . .”

“But didn't Dr. Gowervine say it was a story window?” Sirin protested. “Something that had information to give? What can a chandelier tell anybody?”

“Yes, but that's just what he suspects. Maybe he's wrong.” He tapped the catalog and the map. “The more I look at these and the more I think about it, the more I'm sure we're onto something.”

Sirin lifted the photographic map she'd taken from Dr. Gowervine's satchel, the one that appeared to have been drawn in the condensation on a window. “Okay, Negret, I have an idea. Keep the ship chandelier in mind now, and look at this again.”

What was she talking about? It looked the same as it had before: the best he could figure was that it showed a path through mountains to a rectangular building, and he said so.

“Not mountains,” Sirin said.
“Sails.”

“Which would make this rectangle thingy what?” Negret asked. “A deck?”

“Could be.”

“So . . .” Now he thought hard, trying to remember whether the chandelier downstairs had anything that could approximate a deck. It didn't, as far as he could remember, but maybe he was thinking too literally. “So you think this picture was meant to show someone where to look in the chandelier—in the ship—for something that's hidden there?”

“I think we should find a way to check.”

“That means going back down there where Mr. Vinge and his gun are.”

She nodded soberly. “I know. We need a plan. Negret, it's time that you and I talked about combat encounters.”

“Combat?” he repeated warily. “You aren't saying we should actually try to
fight
them, are you? Three men with at least one gun, probably more? Where'd they come from, anyway?” But even as he asked the question, he remembered the times when he'd thought he'd seen shadowy figures moving on the grounds. Maybe they'd been there all along, hiding somewhere out in the cold. Maybe in one of the old outbuildings deeper in the woods, where they could camp without being seen or heard.

“Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying,” Sirin said. “But not fighting like you're thinking. We can beat him, if we're smart. And we
are
smart. Smarter than he is. Look at all the stuff we figured out while he was sitting around with those stupid socks.”

Negret swallowed. One boy and one girl—one dead girl who admitted there wasn't much she could do—against three men with guns. And he wasn't sure they were smarter, or even whether that really mattered. When it came down to adults versus kids, adults always seemed to have the upper hand, even without firearms being involved.

Well, maybe not always,
he thought, remembering one of the stories he'd read on the first day of vacation.
The Devil, who is not usually arrogant, almost never loses. Still, it's happened, though it's a rare and peculiar thing when it does.
If the Devil could be beaten, surely an old man in ridiculous socks could be beaten too.

He scratched his head. “Okay, so we're smarter, even if we're smaller and we don't have weapons. What do we—” He stopped abruptly and tilted his head, listening. “Hang on.” It was the attic door, shifting just a bit on its hinges. “Someone's opening doors on the next floor down. The air's moving and rattling this one.”

“That's probably the guy I saw on the second floor,” Sirin whispered. She rushed to the door. “Can we lock this?”

“It doesn't lock from inside.” Negret met her eyes and grinned. “You can't unlock the door from in here either, you know.”

Sirin's face broke into a wide smile. “I see where you're headed with this, my dear Negret. And I like it.”

After a hurried discussion of strategy, he crept down the attic stairs and peered around the landing into the fifth-floor hallway. “Ready?” he whispered over his shoulder.

“Ready.”

A moment later, one of Mr. Vinge's thugs emerged from 5N. Negret kicked his heel gently against a step. The agent looked up. Negret gave an exaggerated jump as if he was horrified to have been caught, then sprinted back up into the attic. He kicked the door closed and ducked behind the garment rack just inside it.

The agent's feet hammered up the stairs and the door opened. “Kid,” he said, “nobody's going to hurt you.”

Sirin peeked out over one of the trunks farther in, just enough for the top of her head to be seen. The thug took a step in her direction. Milo wasn't sure what was different, but the agent had definitely seen her. She ducked down behind the trunk again. “Promise?” she called.

His eyes narrowed and he stalked deeper into the attic. “Yeah, promise. Come on out and let's get you back with everybody else.”

“I don't know,” Sirin said warily. Negret waited. The agent took another step, then another, toward the trunk where Sirin had been. Just a bit farther . . .

“Come on, now. Can't have you running around while we're trying to get things settled. Throws everybody off his game. That's how people get hurt.”

“Okay, then,” Sirin sang cheerfully. “Here I come!”

Even to Negret, who knew what was coming, it was a shock to see her appear right out of thin air. Suddenly, she was standing on top of a crate not two feet from the stranger. He stumbled back, then recovered himself and made a grab for her.

Negret was already on his feet and rushing for the exit with his rucksack bouncing against his back. The moment he was on the other side, he flung the door shut and shoved home the key from under the potted plant.
Click
went the lock just as the agent's bulk thudded against the door.

“He forgot to check for traps,” Negret scoffed as he pocketed the key and Sirin materialized on the stair beside him.

“Amateur,” she agreed. “Congratulations, Negret. You just won your first combat encounter. One down, two to go.”

The agent began banging furiously on the door. Negret led the way down to the next floor and into the nearest open room. “We can't just go down the stairs. They're going to be watching, if they sent that guy up after us.”

“They might hear him banging, too, if he keeps it up,” Sirin pointed out, dropping onto the luggage rack with her elbows on her knees. “They'll probably send the other guy up after him when he doesn't come back down. We shouldn't hang around here much longer. What next?”

Negret looked at the window and the snow-coated red staircase outside it. “Hey, Sirin, this counts as an emergency, right?”