House of Secrets (11 page)

“Draper, miss. Wing Commander Will Draper. Royal Flying Corps, Squadron Seventy.”

“I’m Cordelia Walker.” She stuck out her hand and spoke quickly. “This is my brother, Brendan, and sister, Eleanor. We can help you, Mr. D—”

“Call me Will.” Will took her hand and lightly kissed it, managing a winning smile through his pain.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, okay. Oh.” She took her hand back and stared at it briefly. “We have a house nearby. Can you walk?”

Will stood, leaning away from the pain, and lurched as his knees buckled. Cordelia caught him and propped him up on his uninjured side.

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

The group made its way back to Kristoff House. It was easy to see which direction they’d come—the horses had trampled a path in the undergrowth. Brendan walked sullenly in front, tearing the tips off ferns and disassembling them piece by piece. Cordelia stayed next to Will, supporting his left side, smelling the smoke and sweat and blood coming off him and trying to explain exactly who they were, what decade they were from, and what they were doing here. (Will wouldn’t believe a word of it.) Eleanor walked beside them, at one point tapping Cordelia’s shin with a twig and mouthing,
You like him!

In a few minutes, Kristoff House appeared. Will blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Is it possible that arrow was tipped with a hallucinogenic drug? I’m having visions.”

“We told you we had a house,” Eleanor said.

“But how did it get here? Brought by woodland creatures?”

Cordelia sighed. “I
told
you—”

“It flew in from San Francisco,” Brendan said.

“Come off it, I won’t be made a fool—”

“We’re not making fun of you,” said Cordelia. “We don’t know how it got here, but it’s our house, and inside we’ve got stuff that will help your shoulder.”

Will furrowed his brow. “It’s much nicer than my house,” he finally admitted, before allowing the Walkers to lead him in.

S
oon afterward they took Will to the kitchen. The sun was lower now; the light coming through the windows was amber instead of yellow. Eleanor found her barbecue fork in the dumbwaiter and declared she was going to search the house to make sure they were safe. Cordelia said that was fine as long as she screamed if she saw anything strange. Eleanor left as Cordelia and Brendan helped Will onto the kitchen table.

“I’ll get you some ice to numb the pain,” Cordelia told Will. Brendan followed her to the fridge, whispering, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What?”

“Taking in strangers? We’re about to spend a night here without electricity. We have limited food. We don’t know who this guy is or—”

“Bren,” Cordelia said with a smile, “you don’t have to be jealous just because he’s better-looking than you.”

“That’s not true! He’s not—”

Cordelia raised her eyebrows like,
Really?
Behind her, Will took off his shirt—very delicately so as not to disturb the arrow.

“So?” Brendan whispered. “I’ll have a six-pack too when I’m
old
.”

“You
wish
.” Cordelia opened the freezer and pulled out an ice tray, but it was only filled with water. The shelves inside dripped with melted Häagen-Dazs. “I’m sorry, Will,” she said. “No ice.”

“Not a problem,” shirtless Will said. “Can you please come help me fetch something?”

Brendan rolled his eyes. Cordelia walked to Will.

“It’s for my shoulder, in my right hip pocket. Can you—”

“Sure.” Cordelia tried to project an air of confidence, like she was an old pro at dealing with handsome young British soldiers. She edged her fingers into Will’s pocket, blushing as she looked away from him, and felt something metal warmed by the heat of his body.

“Your gun?” she asked anxiously.

“No, no, gun’s on the other side. Go on, you’ve almost got it.”

Cordelia pulled out a sterling silver hip flask.

“There she is!”

It was slim and curved, with a Latin phrase etched on the front. Cordelia squinted at it. Even though she’d only known Will for about thirty minutes, she liked to think of him piloting fighter planes, not drinking. She handed the flask over disapprovingly.

Will took a long pull. As he drank, Eleanor came back to the kitchen from her mission securing the house. Her eyes went wide. When Will rested the flask in his lap, she ran up and grabbed it.

“Hey!” Will said.

Eleanor turned the flask upside down and let all the alcohol drain onto the floor.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Will yelled. He lunged at her but sat right back down—his shoulder hurt too much.

Eleanor handed the now-empty flask back to him. “We used to have this uncle Pete,” she explained. “I mean, we still have him, but he’s not the same. He started drinking way too much. One time he got crazy and threw a raw steak at our aunt. So I don’t approve of drinking, and you’re not allowed to drink if you’re in here.”

“But it’s
my
drink!” Will protested.

“But it’s
our
house,” said Eleanor firmly.

Will sighed and looked at his shoulder. “Then how exactly do you expect me to manage my pain? If you haven’t noticed, I’ve got an arrow sticking out of me!”

“Right,” said Cordelia. “We have to take that out. Any idea how?”

“No! I was trained for war with Huns, not barbarians.”

As Will got worked up, his face got pale. Beads of sweat lined his brow. Cordelia felt his forehead with the back of her hand. It was burning up. She became deadly serious.

“Your wound is getting infected. Nell, come with me. Brendan, stay with Will.”

“What? What do you want me to—”

“Keep him calm, relaxed. We’re going to find out how to treat him properly.”

She grabbed Eleanor and left the kitchen.

“You really
do
like him, don’t you?” Eleanor asked in the hall.

“No.”

“Yes. You’re doing that thing where you look away when you answer my questions. That’s how I know you’re not telling the truth.”

“I just want to keep him alive. He’s good with a gun and he—”

“Looked away again.” Eleanor smirked.

They went to the living room and picked up all the books that had been blown in during the Wind Witch’s attack. They brought them to the library (it took a few trips) and tossed them on the floor so all the books in the house were in a central location. It was a mess. Books lay on the floor in literary dunes. Some were open; some had had their covers ripped off. Mixed in with them were the splintered ladders and broken table of the library.

“Now we have to separate the books,” Cordelia said. “Put the ones by Denver Kristoff by the door; give the others to me.”

“Why are we doing this exactly, Deal?”

“Because maybe one of those books is a medical manual! Can you help? Just look for a
K
—”

“I can read ‘Denver Kristoff’!”

“Don’t get mad, Nell—”

“I just searched this whole house by myself to make sure it was safe, and you’re treating me like a little kid!”

Cordelia smiled to herself. She and Brendan had known the house was okay when they’d let Eleanor go off exploring; they had each checked a floor when they’d gone to the bathroom upon arrival. (Unfortunately, after testing the sinks and determining that the plumbing was as busted as the electricity, they had been forced to go outside.) “I’m sorry, Nell,” she said. “Tell me if you find anything interesting, and I’ll tell you if I need help.”

The sisters went to different corners of the library. Every time Eleanor came across a non-Kristoff book, she handed it to Cordelia. Cordelia was looking for something like
Gray’s Anatomy
, but she wasn’t having any luck. She wondered how she could open up Will’s shoulder, pull out the arrowhead, and sew it back up without a book to guide her. At least she had her memories of her father. She remembered how he used to sit her down at the kitchen table and show her how he performed surgeries, with a pan of lasagna for a patient and a butter knife for a scalpel. “The most important thing,” he told her, “is to think of your hands as tools. They’re the greatest and most precise tools in the world, but they’re just as dumb as a hammer. They’ll perform as well as you command them to.”

They searched for twenty minutes. Cordelia found books about Scottish armor, Polynesian occult practices, and mushroom cultivation, but she didn’t find anything that would help Will. Eleanor, meanwhile, pretended that Kristoff was a neighborhood in Denver, Colorado, and so she was looking for books about Kristoff restaurants and shops; that helped her read the covers fine. For fun she tried to read all of them, and soon she came across something that jogged her memory.

“Hey Deal! Wasn’t this the book you stole from the library?”

Cordelia immediately recognized the first-edition copy of
Savage Warriors
. . . and then something clicked in her head. The memory that had eluded her when she was captured by Slayne.

Cordelia took
Savage Warriors
and began flipping pages.

“What? What are you doing?”

When she hit page 17, she screamed.

“B
rendan! Brendan!” Cordelia ran into the kitchen, waving
Savage Warriors.
Eleanor was close behind. Cordelia was momentarily silenced by the sight of Will, propped up on the kitchen table with some pillows, playing Brendan’s PSP.

“What?” her brother asked.

Brendan sat next to Will. The pilot’s skin was sickly and pale, but he looked happy. “We’re relaxing,” Brendan said. Then, to Will: “Get him!”

“Oh!” Will yelled. “How do I get him?”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea for him to play . . .
Red Dead Redemption
?” Cordelia asked.

“He likes it! Gaming is good for people in pain. What’s it called? Tempur-Pedic?”

“Therapeutic.”

“Whatever.”

“Give me that.” Cordelia snatched the PSP from Will and turned it off.

“Beg pardon!”

“Bren, you need to preserve the batteries in this thing.”

“Why?”

“We may need them. And how about you, Will? How are you feeling? Still think you’re in France?”

“I’m not sure where I am, Miss Walker.”

“I have an idea.”

Cordelia opened
Savage Warriors
to page 17.

“Listen: ‘They came forth from the forest then, seven men. Born majestic but transformed by time and blood into rootless killers. They rode on great steeds in armor that covered them as casts of steel. They were the Savage Warriors, who lived to sow mayhem and reap plunder. They killed men quickly . . . and women specially.’ Remind you of anyone?”

“Yeah, the dudes who just almost murdered us!” Brendan said.

“That’s not all. I
knew
those warriors seemed familiar. Their leader in the book . . . his name is Slayne.”

“Like the guy whose face I messed up!” exclaimed Eleanor.

“Guys:
we’re trapped in a Denver Kristoff book.”

“The writer who built this place,” Brendan said to Will. “Wait—Deal, shouldn’t you have figured this out before? Didn’t you
read
that book?”

“I skimmed it, Bren, okay? I have a lot of books to read.”