Legacy (18 page)

“Hang on,” he growled.

He deserved better odds than this. “I can’t, Peter,” I said, and let go.

I heard the fire trucks coming. When I opened my eyes, Peter was holding me. “Why’d you let go?” he whispered.

I sat up, feeling sore but basically unhurt. I guess I just got the wind knocked out of me. But Peter . . . I took his bloody hands in my own. Just seeing them made my heart hurt. “Are you . . . Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” he lied. He was looking at the fire that was running down the wall like melting wax, more slowly now, as if it knew we’d escaped. “That’s not natural.”

“I know,” I said, shivering. “Peter, did you see—”

He put his arm around me and pulled me up, wincing. The
fire had reached ground level, and was sizzling its way toward us along the grass. “We have to go,” he said.

I was scared. How far was it going to chase us? Because there was no doubt in my mind anymore. The fire was in pursuit, and we were its target.

We had reached the street when the first truck pulled up. With amazing speed the firefighters had the hose off and were spraying water onto the grass.

“What the hell kind of fire is this?” I heard one of them shout over the din of machinery and pumping water.

Another—I guess he was the chief—stopped us. “You the ones who called in?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

As the fireman asked us questions, I hung on to Peter as if he were a lifebuoy and I were in the middle of the ocean.

In the distance the house steamed and smoked as the water doused it. With a crack, part of the porch collapsed. One of the chimneys broke off and tumbled along the roof, crashing onto the circular driveway.

It looked, for all the world, as if the house were dying.

The sky on the day of the official Wonderland groundbreaking ceremony was sunny, but the mood of the Old Town residents in attendance was anything but.

They had given the Meadow a very wide berth, especially since Hattie’s Kitchen was torn down. But on this Saturday morning they were out in force. Most of the twenty-seven families, including several who no longer lived in Whitfield, showed up. In fact, aside from the mayor and a few Wonderland officials whose job it was to attend these things, almost all of the people who came to the event were witches.

I was there with Agnes and Gram. It was the first time I’d been allowed out of the house since the Shaw mansion burned down. They wouldn’t even let me stay in my dorm room.

I suppose I should have been grateful, though. It could have been a lot worse. As it was, my aunt and great-grandmother and Hattie managed to contain the situation with only the
minor consequence of keeping Peter and me under lock and key for the rest of our lives.

Naturally, the police didn’t believe us when we told them that the fire had started spontaneously, or that it had spread in the bizarre way that we described, but in the end, it was decided that since there was no evidence of arson, and the burned house technically belonged to Peter, then no charges would be filed.

That did not, however, exempt us from Hattie’s wrath. When she came into the police station to claim Peter, I thought the walls were going to burst apart.

“Do you have any idea of the value of the objects in that house?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Peter began. “We didn’t—”

“No, you do not! You have no idea how many priceless antiques burned to ash because you couldn’t see fit to listen to me when I told you to stay away from that place!”

“That’s—”

“Don’t you talk back to me!” she shouted. I could see the duty officer sinking down in his chair.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I want to know
what
you were doing there after I expressly forbade you to go?”

“We were looking for the deed,” I broke in.

“Was I talking to you?” she demanded, turning on me. “Did I ask you to say something?”

“No,” I said.

“You placed every house on Front Street, and every family who lives there, in mortal danger.”

By now Peter and I knew better than to answer. It was a
good thing, too, because at that moment Gram and Aunt Agnes walked in and stood next to Hattie, all of them glaring at the two of us. It was like being stared down by the three witches from Macbeth—red eyes, vibrating ears, fingers sparking with blue light. The officer on duty didn’t seem to notice, but Peter and I could feel the air being sucked out of the room.

“Now I am going to ask you both one question, and one question only, and the answer had better be the truth, because if it isn’t, I will find out,” Hattie said. “Is that clear
?
”

I nodded, shook my head, then nodded again.

“Did you in any way cause a fire to break out in the Shaw house?” she asked levelly.

“No, ma’am,” Peter said.

“In
any
way,” she repeated.

“We did not,” I said.

“Neither of you, together or separately?”

“No, Hattie,” I said. “The fire just happened. And then it came after us.”

“It
came after
you?” the officer scoffed.

“Stay out of this,” Hattie snapped. He sank back in his chair.

She stared at Peter and me for a long moment. Finally she inhaled, raised her head, and said, “I believe you.”

We both sighed with relief . . . until I got a better look at my relatives. Their bad vibrations were obviously undiminished by Hattie’s not-guilty verdict. They are usually very nice people, really, but at that moment I could have sworn that little silver darts were shooting out of their identical eyes. Coronas of dark fury circled their heads.

It was because of Peter, I knew. They hadn’t liked the idea
of my seeing him even after he’d proven that he wasn’t cowen and had earned the right to stay in Old Town. I don’t think they had anything against him personally, but there was some mighty bad feeling against the Shaws in general.

“You will come with us,” Aunt Agnes said, after all the paperwork had been gone through. Gram nodded good-bye to the officer, who never moved an inch.

“And you,” Hattie said, blocking my way so that I would be sure to hear what she was saying to Peter, “will not see Katy again outside of school. Do you agree?”

Peter looked at me, then back at her. “No,” he said.

The police officer rested his head in his hand. I think he really wanted us to leave.

Agnes nudged me. “It’s all right, Peter,” I said. “It won’t be forever.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Hattie said.

At least I’d been allowed to leave Gram’s house occasionally. Peter hadn’t even been permitted to attend the Wonderland groundbreaking, which hardly promised to be the social event of the year.

Still, it drew a huge crowd, and the sheer number of attendees lent a festive air to the proceedings. Someone had set up a funnel cake stand, and several hawkers walked around offering soft drinks for two dollars a can. Mabel Bean, who was Miss P’s mother, was doing a brisk business selling her famous blueberry cookies from a folding card table. Sharing it was a crafter who made swans out of wheat. All in all, it promised to be a better time than I’d thought.

Except for Mim. At exactly nine a.m., she appeared in the
center of the roped-off area set aside for the groundbreaking. She was wearing a hard hat and a pink Prada suit. In her manicured hands (her nails painted in “Crucial Fuschial”) was a shovel.

She was already irritated, I could tell. The shovel, which probably should have been gleaming and new for the occasion, had instead been covered with dried mud and tar and other unspeakable forms of detritus. Also, the handle must have had grease or something on it, because she was dangling it between her index finger and thumb. While the mayor of Whitfield (cowen) was introducing her, she kept shooting threatening looks at the workmen—whom she had undoubtedly offended in some horrific yet typical manner—lined up behind her, their expressions those of perfect innocence.

“. . . and here, representing the Wonderland Corporation, is Mizz Madison Mimson!”

She held up one hand, as if to quiet the thunderous cheers of the crowd, although at that point all you could hear were a couple of crickets. “First, I want to thank you all for this terrific turnout,” she began, beaming, “because Wonderland isn’t just a business, even though it will bring
hundreds
of jobs into Whitfield . . .” (a pause here for more applause that never came). “It’s also a—
aggh
!”

Her left foot, shod also in Prada, sank into the ground.

“Sinkhole,” someone near me whispered, but a couple of people, including Miss P’s mother, shook their heads. A faint smile played at the corners of Mrs. Bean’s lips as she bit into one of her cookies.

Mim, however, was not smiling. Leaning heavily on her shovel, she pulled her foot out of the mud with a sucking
sound, then went after the shoe that had been left in the muck. She had to dig as far as her elbows to retrieve it.

“It’s also a family,” she went on doggedly, apparently trying to decide whether or not to put the mud-soaked shoe back on. “And so, without further . . .”

This time I saw it. At least three people shot five fingers at Mim. A moment later, her right foot sank into the ground.

“Where are the geologists?” she demanded. The mayor came over making sympathetic noises while at the same time trying to keep some distance between her and his own impeccable ensemble.

She tried to stick the shovel into the ground—which, naturally, was hard as a rock—to pull her leg out of the muck. Now she was barefoot, covered in mud up to her knees, her pink suit daubed with brown blobs, but undaunted.

“Without further ado . . .”

From my vantage point, everyone in the crowd with the exception of my relatives and Miss P, who was standing some distance away, was pretending to be scratching behind their ears. I could actually see the spells shooting out of their fingers en masse as, with a blood-curdling scream, Mim dropped waist-deep into a churning pool of mud.

“Damn it!” she screeched, flinging away the shovel as if it were a javelin. “What kind of fricking—” At that moment, a toad leaped out of the mud onto her head. Her arms flailed, sloshing mud across her face. Another toad appeared. Then another, until she was surrounded by dozens of croaking amphibians leaping animatedly around her.

“You!” she called to the mayor, who was backing away, his face a mask of horror.

Then from out of the muck slithered a fat eel the size of an anaconda that wound around Mim’s waist and worked its way up her torso until it was wrapped around her head like a turban.

“Get this thing off me!” she wailed as the eel settled in. The toads bounced merrily. Big bubbles formed on the surface of the mud and burst, releasing odiferous gases into the air.

A lot of the onlookers had their cell phones held high, taking pictures. The soda vendors made another sweep. Schoolchildren were shooting five fingers willy-nilly, producing things like frog eggs and rabbit droppings and shrieking with delight.

Miss P pushed her way through the crowd. “Mother!” she shouted. Her mom turned to look at her and giggled. Gram hid her mouth behind a lace handkerchief as the mayor retreated out of the Meadow and into a waiting limo.

“You get back here!” Mim screamed at him as the limo sped away. Seething with frustration, she knocked the eel to the ground and grasped it below its head, apparently attempting to strangle it with her bare hands.

She was tough, I’ll give her that.

“Go home, Wonderland!” someone in the crowd called. That set off a chorus of jeers and anti-Wonderland epithets as Mim finally released the startled eel and hoisted herself out of the mudhole.

“We don’t want your stinking store!” someone else shouted.

I think that must have been the last straw for her. Looking like a
Velociraptor
that had just fought its way out of a tar pit, Mim reared back on her sturdy if filthy legs and bellowed, “Well, you’re going to get it whether you want it or not, you low-life jerks!”

The Wonderland executives who, to tell the truth, hadn’t offered much help or support from the beginning, looked stricken. One took out a notepad and wrote something down. The construction guys remained in position, chortling.

Then an egg flew over the heads of the crowd and splatted against Mim’s forehead.

“Now, that’s enough!” The person who spoke was, of all people, Miss P. Even angry, she looked like a cute cartoon version of a mouse. What was weird, though—really weird—was that I’d
heard
her. I saw her when she said it, but she hadn’t been standing nearby, and there had been a lot of noise.

What was even more weird was that the crowd dispersed almost immediately after that—so quickly, in fact, that Mim herself was left standing virtually alone in the Meadow, seething, ready to fight anyone who cared to take her on.

I felt sorry for her, not because she was covered in mud, or even because she’d momentarily had the pants scared off her, but because she’d been made aware of how much she was hated.

“Can I help you?” I offered, walking up to her.

“Come to gloat?” she sneered, trying to sweep the egg off her face with a tissue from her pocketbook. “Well, get your fill now, ’cause times are going to change.”

I held out a wad of tissues for her. She snatched them out of my hand and tried to wipe off her mud-caked legs. She was blinking a lot. I think she was trying not to cry.

“Katy!” Aunt Agnes called. I looked over my shoulder at her.

“Go,” Mim said quietly. “I’ll be okay.” She held up the filthy tissues. “Thanks for these.” She smiled. “Katy.”

As I neared the edge of the Meadow, I saw Mim pick up her things and turn on the construction guys. “Get to work!” she snarled, clutching her mud-filled shoes to her chest.

The men laughed. One of them saluted. Then, as they conferred—no doubt about how to proceed, given that a second sinkhole had appeared on the site—Miss P ventured forward, her hands on her slim hips.

I don’t know if anyone else saw it or not. Certainly not the construction guys. And most of the people at the groundbreaking (a funny word, considering just how the ground had broken) had already left. But I swear, before my very eyes the mudhole cleared up, drying in concentric circles from the outside in.