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Authors: Chris Columbus,Ned Vizzini

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Once he was gone, Eleanor got up to leave.

“Where are you going?” Cordelia asked. “There’s more to discuss!”

“Yeah . . . ,” said Brendan. “Like what happened to the Storm King? Did you send him away too?”

“I forgot,” said Eleanor. “But I wrote down one last wish.”

“What?”

Before Eleanor could answer, Mrs. Walker screamed in the kitchen. The Walkers raced down and found their parents staring open-mouthed at her laptop, hitting refresh like robots.

“Guys . . . ?” Cordelia asked. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s . . . ah . . . some kind of glitch with the bank,” Dr. Walker said, holding up his phone. “I’m on hold with them.”

“Mom?” Brendan asked.

Mrs. Walker’s eyes were filled with tears of happiness. She answered in a quivering, hopeful voice, “It appears that we have ten million dollars in our savings account.”

Brendan and Cordelia turned to Nell:
No.

Eleanor gave them a slight nod and a smile:
Yes
. But she quickly turned back to her mother and feigned surprise.

“That’s
crazy
! How could that happen? Maybe you guys played lotto and you don’t remember?”

“Look at this,” Dr. Walker said, still on hold with the bank. He put an envelope on the kitchen table. “Our first piece of mail at this address.”

Mrs. Walker opened it. It was a letter about the lawsuit at the John Muir Medical Center, where Dr. Walker had worked.

“‘In exchange for silence on this matter, the plaintiff has pledged a settlement of . . .
ten million dollars
’?” Mrs. Walker asked.

“Yes, thank you very much, good night,” said Dr. Walker into the phone. He hung up. “It’s real?”

“Look at this, honey! It’s real! I told you that countersuit would scare him! The money must’ve already transferred!”

Dr. and Mrs. Walker cheered and hugged each other. Their kids joined them in short order.

“Awesome, Dad!” Eleanor said. “Can I get a horse now? Please?”

“Why not?” said Dr. Walker.

“Yesss!” said Eleanor. “And we can name her Majesty?”

“Where in God’s name are we gonna put a horse?” Mrs. Walker asked.

“With ten million dollars we’ll build her a stable on the roof!” said Dr. Walker. “Along with a special horse elevator to bring her to the park!”

As the family laughed, Cordelia tried to take a mental picture. There was only one thing wrong—she felt a little cold. And when she covered herself with her grandmother’s old wool throw, it didn’t help, as if the cold were coming from inside her instead of out. But she’d been through a lot; there were bound to be lingering effects.

The fact was that these moments—when the Walkers weren’t fighting, and they weren’t late for anything, and they were just together and comfortable in a way they could never explain—were rare. And a lot of money from a magical book might make them even more rare. It might, indeed, bring its own problems, and those problems might be terrible.

But for now, for tonight, everything was as it should be.

Epilogue

M
eanwhile, far below Kristoff House, on the rocky shore known as Baker Beach, right in the path the house would take if it ever did slide into the ocean, a wet hand grabbed the top of a huge boulder.

The hand was thick and tough. Seaweed hung from it. The sharp rock tried to cut it open, but the hand was too strong.

A second hand joined the first, and with a hoarse moan the owner of them heaved up, flopping onto the boulder. The brute waves of the Pacific crashed behind like static. Waking up in the bay after a journey between worlds will deaden the senses.

Next was a headfirst skid down to a patch of sand. Then a crawl to the cliff below Kristoff House. Then a painful climb. Fingers scraped. Thorny vegetation dug in. The hands didn’t flinch. Salt was spit. Pain was pushed deep, to be covered by hate that shone as brightly as the Golden Gate Bridge to the left, or the onyx sea below.

Finally the hands hauled the owner into the backyard of Kristoff House. The face looked at the familiar structure. Noted a family, in the kitchen, sharing hot chocolate.

I could kill them all,
thought Denver Kristoff.
They’d be dead within seconds, for killing Dahlia. No one takes my daughter away from me.

But now was not the time. Kristoff had a place he could go, a place that made Kristoff House look like a shack. His mouth was still twisted into a horrific double rictus, and his nose was still flaps of flesh, so he would need a mask—but at this place, he would be welcomed for a sacrifice he had made in the past . . . and able to plan his next move.

The Bohemian Club at 624 Taylor Street. Home of the Lorekeepers. Just a few blocks from where Will Draper was headed.

It’s a real place in San Francisco, you know. You can visit anytime you want. It’s no secret.

END OF BOOK 1

About the Authors

CHRIS COLUMBUS
has written, directed, and produced some of the most successful box-office hits in Hollywood history. He first made his name by writing several original scripts produced by Steven Spielberg, including the back-to-back hits
Gremlins
and
The Goonies.
As a director, Columbus has been at the helm of such iconic projects as
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Home Alone, Stepmom,
and
Mrs. Doubtfire.
As a producer, Columbus was also behind the hit films
Night at the Museum
and
The Help
.

NED VIZZINI
is the best-selling author of the acclaimed young-adult books
It’s Kind of a Funny Story
(also a major motion picture),
Be More Chill, Teen Angst? Naaah . . . ,
and
The Other Normals
. He has written for the
New York Times, Salon,
and the
L Magazine
. In television he has written for ABC and for MTV’s
Teen Wolf
. You can visit Ned online at www.nedvizzini.com.

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www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Credits

Cover art © 2013 by Greg Call

Cover design by Amy Ryan

Copyright

Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

HOUSE OF SECRETS

Text copyright © 2013 by Novel Approach LLC

Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Greg Call

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

www.harpercollinschildrens.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-06-219246-2 (trade bdg.)

ISBN 978-0-06-225964-6 (international ed.)

13  14  15  16  17 LP/RR DH 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780062192486

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BOOK: House of Secrets
12.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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