House of Secrets (7 page)

A musical
plink
made him turn his head.

“What was that?” Cordelia asked.

It came again, a tiny chime, like a muted string being plucked. Brendan and Cordelia moved toward it. “Nell?” “Mom?” “Dad?”

They reached the wreckage of the Steinway. It wasn’t as ruined as the rest of the furniture; although its legs were snapped off, it still had its sinuous piano shape. The
plinks
were coming from inside. Brendan and Cordelia lifted the lid together . . .

And there was Eleanor, curled up on the strings. She picked at one. “I think that’s an A.”

“Come here, you.” Cordelia offered Eleanor a hand while Brendan held the piano open. Once she was out, her brother and sister hugged her so hard that they all fell over.

“Did you black out?” Brendan asked.

“No, I was awake the whole time.”

“What did you see?”

“That . . .
angel thing
rose to the ceiling, the whole house got really tall, and everything went black.”

“That’s what we saw! You
did
black out!”

“No, I was awake. It was the
world
that went black.
She
made it happen. I
told
you I saw her when we first looked at the house, and you didn’t believe me, remember? And now look what happened!”

“How do you know it was her?” Cordelia asked. “It could’ve—”

But Brendan interrupted his sister. “I saw her too. The Wind Witch.”

“What? When?”

“When I freaked and said it was ’cause I lost my PSP? I saw her. She grabbed my hand and . . . she asked me my name.”

“Bren!” Cordelia shoved her brother. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“How was I supposed to tell you? Would you have believed me? No, you would’ve told me I was trying to get attention.”

“No I wouldn’t! I listen to you—
when you actually have important things to say
. Which is very rarely—”

“
You’re
the one who got us into this situation, Cordelia.
You
stole from the library—”

“I
borrowed
—”

“She specifically said, ‘You stole from my library!’ Do you remember that, or were you already blacked out?”

“Stop fighting!” Eleanor yelled. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

Brendan and Cordelia had to catch their breath. “We don’t know,” Brendan admitted.

Cordelia struggled to keep her face composed so she wouldn’t scare Nell. “They’re gone.”

“Then let’s find them,” said Eleanor.

They started looking by the wall where they had last seen their parents. There was a streak of blood on the paint but otherwise no sign. Eleanor started to cry when she saw the blood. Cordelia put an arm around her. The siblings made their way into the great hall. It was as unrecognizable as the living room, with the coatrack sticking out of a wall and the pottery reduced to jagged jigsaw chunks.

“Arsdottle’s fine,” said Brendan, looking at the philosopher bust.

“Because the Wind Witch liked him when she was a girl,” Cordelia said. “She spared him.”

They spent a quiet moment staring at the implacable bust—and then entered the library. Cordelia cringed. It was bare now, with the shelves gone, the ladders smashed, and the long table split in two. The books had mostly sailed into the living room, but some were still there, strewn around with their covers open. Cordelia picked one up.

“Guys, it’s
The Fighting Ace
! This is the book I was reading when the Wind Witch attacked. Isn’t that crazy?”

Brendan wondered briefly if it was one of the three books that had expanded in front of him, but they had bigger problems now. “Who cares?”

“
I
do,” insisted Cordelia. Brendan snorted and led Eleanor toward the kitchen. Cordelia carefully found her place in the novel and salvaged a sliver of wood for a bookmark. No matter how bad things got at Kristoff House, with
The Fighting Ace
she could escape.

The kitchen showcased more destruction: the fridge was dented and leaking; a burner grate from the stove had smashed through a cabinet and destroyed the dinnerware; a family-size box of Cheerios had spilled its guts into the sink. The kids ran upstairs, frantically calling for their parents, but there was no sign.

The second floor was also in ruins, with two exceptions. The pictures in the hallway were in perfect condition. That made sense, because they were of Dahlia’s family; she wouldn’t hurt them. But Cordelia discovered something in the master bedroom, too: the white-and-bronze
RW
trunk.

“Bren? Nell? Look. Everything is demolished, but this trunk is fine.”

“Maybe the Wind Witch protected it,” said Brendan. “Maybe there’s something inside she wanted to keep.”

“Or,” said Cordelia, “it’s magical. Guarded by a ward.”

“A what?”

“You know, like a magic symbol that protects something.” Cordelia paused. “What about ‘RW’? Who do you think he is?”

“Maybe it’s a
she
,” Eleanor said.

“Rutherford Walker,” said Brendan, recalling the name. “Dr. Rutherford Walker, to be exact.”

“Who?”

“Our great-great-grandfather. Dad told me his name once.”

Cordelia was impressed. “You remembered from hearing that once? How come you don’t have better grades?”

“Because at school there’s nothing worth remembering.”

“Well, this trunk could be a clue,” said Cordelia. “Remember what the Wind Witch said: ‘For the evil done him by the Walkers
—
’”

“‘For
all
the evil done
upon
him by the Walkers—’”

“Bren, she was talking about revenge. And
him
was her father, Denver Kristoff. It must be revenge for something that happened decades ago. Maybe Kristoff started a blood feud against us.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know; why does anybody start blood feuds?”

“Maybe that old bag is
crazy
. She said a lot of stuff back there. ‘The craven consultation with Dr. Hayes’? Who’s he? What’s that even mean?”

“I don’t know . . . but our family used to live in San Francisco.”

“And you think some relative of ours just happened to know the guy who built this house?”

“Not just some relative. Dr. Rutherford Walker, our great-great-grandfather, who owned this trunk. What did Dad tell you about him?”

Brendan sighed. “He was the one who settled here. He jumped off a boat when it anchored in the bay, because San Francisco was so beautiful. And he stayed.”

“Maybe Dahlia Kristoff fell in love with him.”

“Like he’d date a bald chick.”

“She wasn’t bald
then
, obviously—”

“Guys!” Eleanor yelled. “We’re
supposed
to be looking for Mom and Dad!”

“We are, Nell—just help me get this trunk open—”

“No! We have to find them
now
!” Eleanor’s mouth trembled. “Aren’t you worried that they’re
dead
? Didn’t you see that table hit Mom and that chair hit Dad? And there’s
blood
on the wall downstairs? I don’t want to be an orphan! I want Mom!
I want Mom!
” Her face collapsed into angry angles. She doubled over, crying, pressing her fists into her eyes.

“Nell, it’s all right,” Brendan said, wrapping her up. “Close your eyes, okay?”

“They’re already
closed
!”

“Okay, so keep them closed. And . . . ah . . . think about a happy time.”

“Like before our parents were
gone
?”

“Ah, yes . . . Deal, a little help?”

“Think about the future,” Cordelia said, gently pulling Eleanor’s fists away from her face. “When we
find
Mom and Dad.”

Eleanor held back her next set of tears. “Are your guys’ eyes closed too?”

Cordelia looked to Brendan. He shut his eyes. She shut hers. They all pictured the same thing: their smiling parents, alive and well, occasionally bickering, often annoying, but full of love. “They’re closed,” Cordelia said.

“Okay, so we’re gonna open them, and then we’re gonna make it our
mission
to find Mom and Dad. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Brendan and Cordelia. They all opened their eyes and kept searching.

They didn’t find anything in the other bedrooms or bathrooms (Eleanor did pull her dolls out of the dumbwaiter, which pleased her), so the only place left was the attic. Brendan pulled the string, brought down the steps, and led them up.

“What time is it?” Cordelia asked. The attic was a wreck. The rollaway bed was tossed into a corner.

“I don’t know, why?”

“Because it looks like daylight outside.” Cordelia nodded to the window. The shutters were closed, as were all the shutters in the house, as if the Wind Witch had tried to conceal the mayhem she had caused. Thin shafts of sunlight shone through the slats—and through the translucent white curtains that were on every window.
Did we get through the night?
Brendan wondered. He’d never been so happy to think about dawn in his life. He walked to the window—and ducked as a small black shape dive-bombed him.

“A bat!” Brendan yelped. “Watch out, guys!”

Cordelia screamed way louder than Brendan or Eleanor expected, then hurtled toward the attic steps.

The bat, which couldn’t have been more than three inches long, plummeted toward her. Cordelia slapped at her face and nearly broke her neck tumbling down the steps before closing the attic door behind her. “Kill it!” she yelled.

“Cordelia?” Brendan said. “It’s just a bat! What’s your problem?”

“I
hate
bats!” Cordelia answered from downstairs. “Where did it come from?”

Brendan looked at the stand where the bat skeleton had been. Sure enough, the stand was there. But the skeleton was gone.

“Remember that bat skeleton I told you I saw? Well . . . I think it came to life.”

“If it’s a magical zombie bat, you shouldn’t mess with it!” Cordelia said, running her fingers through her hair. She was sure she could feel the bat’s sinewy wings brushing against her scalp.

In the attic, Brendan motioned for Eleanor to help him. They approached the window as the bat circled frantically. They opened the shutters; sunlight flooded the room. The bat retreated to a corner in the rafters.

“Is it gone?” Cordelia asked from downstairs. “Can I come up?”

But Brendan and Eleanor didn’t answer. They couldn’t. They were too busy staring out the window.

A primeval forest lay outside Kristoff House.

T
rees with trunks as thick as houses reached up so high that Brendan and Eleanor couldn’t see the tops no matter how they craned their necks. Beams of dappled light broke on giant ferns spread like green fans over mossy logs. It looked like the painted background in a dinosaur exhibit, still and calm and even a bit fake. Trees marched into the distance, blending into a uniform brown-and-green curtain.

“Where are we?” gasped Eleanor.

Brendan opened the window. Sounds swept in: caws, chirps, and rustlings in the air.

Downstairs, Cordelia noticed that her siblings were unusually quiet, so she went back into the attic to see what was going on. “Hello?” she said, stepping to the window.
“Whoa.”

The trees started just a few feet from the house. Smaller trees stood below them, where the honey-hued light broke through. A thin haze lay at eye level, listing up and down. They could make out the sound of a brook babbling in the distance and, behind the caws and chirps, a loud, grating buzz. The haze entered the attic, carrying a tang of dirt and pine and a balm of sweet flowers and sap.

“Where’s our street?” whispered Eleanor.

“Maybe the Wind Witch moved our house somewhere,” Cordelia said.

“Jurassic Park?” asked Eleanor.

“Humboldt County.”

“Does Humboldt County have
those
?” Brendan pointed to one of the towering trees in the distance. Circling it was the source of the buzzing—a monstrous dragonfly with the wingspan of a condor.

The dragonfly’s body was dull green, its wings clear mesh. It drifted up and down as it circled around the trunk, disappearing and reappearing, its purple eyes as big as dinner plates. It was so huge that the Walker children could see its complicated mouth parts twitching.