The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 (12 page)

“H-hello,” Olive stammered. “That’s my cat,” she added, pointing at Horatio. “Sort of.”

“So he is yours now, is he?” said the young man, smiling. The smile made his face quite handsome, and now he looked even
more
like Robin Hood on a TV show, in spite of his ragged clothes. “I’m glad to hear it. He’s had some other owners in the time I’ve known him.”

“Oh…” said Olive slowly. “Then he’s been in here—I mean, in this painting—to see you before?”

“Oh, yes,” said the young man. He reached down to scratch Horatio between the ears. Horatio tilted his head toward the man’s hand, his green eyes sliding shut. Olive had seldom seen Horatio look so pet-able. “We’ve known each other a good long while.”

“It looks like it,” said Olive, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot and trying to remember
not
to wipe her bloody hands on her shirt. “Well—I’m sorry to take him away again, but I need him to lead me back to the picture frame.” Olive looked from the man to Horatio. The cat gazed back at her calmly. “Horatio,” she said, raising her eyebrows in a hinting way, “didn’t you say we had to
get out of here?
”

Horatio met her eyes. “There is no hurry,” he said. “We’re perfectly safe now.”

Olive turned to the young man again and gestured toward the hills beyond the edge of the wood. “I know it’s kind of silly, but I got lost out there, and now I don’t—”

“Child, you’re bleeding,” the young man interrupted.
Very gently, he grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her nearer, turning her palms to get a better look. His hands were very cold, which Olive knew meant that he’d always been a painting, not a trapped and transformed person—like Olive herself would be if she stayed in here for too long. “You’d best let me clean you up,” he said.

Olive looked into the man’s painted eyes. Other people would probably have called their color
hazel,
but Olive could see that his eyes were actually a mixture of green and amber and gold. Aldous McMartin might have been a very bad man, but he was a very good painter to have made eyes this sparkling and alive. Olive knew just how tricky painting eyes could be.

“It’s all right. We are safe here,” Horatio said, noticing her hesitation. She glanced from the young man’s painted eyes to Horatio’s bright green ones, and the cat gave her a reassuring nod.

“Okay,” she said at last. “But I can’t stay long.”

The man nodded, smiling. He drew her inside the tiny cottage.

A small iron stove was burning with painted light in one corner, and sending wisps of painted smoke up through the chimney. It gave off a gentle warmth, and its flickering light reminded Olive of the candles she had seen burning in the windows of the painted Linden Street. But there were too many other things
inside the cottage for Olive to think about the fire for long. The walls of its one tiny room were covered with a wild collection: dried bunches of herbs and flowers, carpentry tools, cooking utensils, a little mirror, pots and pans, bits of fur and feathers and cords and strings. It was nearly as jumbled as the attic of the old stone house. But these things were much shabbier and rougher than the antiques in the attic. These were the belongings of someone who didn’t even have what he
needed,
let alone enough stuff to fill a whole third floor with the overflow.

“So—you live here? All the time? In this one little room?” Olive asked, before realizing that these questions might sound rather rude and wishing that she could stuff them back in again.

But the man just smiled. He glanced up from the small square table where he was folding a scrap of fabric. “Yes, I do.”

“All by yourself?”

The man went on smiling. “That’s right. It’s just me and a few animal friends.” He gestured to the woods outside, where birds and squirrels chittered among the branches. Then he dipped the folded cloth into a jar filled with what looked like water, and patted it softly against Olive’s palm.

Olive flinched and bit her lip. But she let the man go on cleaning her skin, even though it stung, and his
painted fingers felt as cold as river stones around her hand. She glanced around the shabby little room again, and then back down at the man’s bony fingers. She had the sudden urge to bring him some food—and maybe some nice new clothes too—before she remembered that he was a
painting,
not a person who felt cold or hunger at all.

“There,” said the man at last. He held up the damp fabric. Olive watched the splotch of water and the red streaks of her blood fade away as the cloth returned to normal.

“So, Olive,” he said, tossing down the cloth, which flew back to its regular hook on the wall and straightened itself neatly, “how do you like your new home?”

Olive paused. “How did you know my name?”

The young man blinked. “Horatio told me,” he said, after a moment.

Olive glanced down at Horatio, who was looking very comfortable beside the young man’s feet, grooming his whiskers. “It’s all right, Olive,” said the cat, catching her eyes again. “You can trust him.”

Something outside of the cottage made a soft thumping sound. Olive looked around, but neither Horatio nor the young man seemed to notice it. Probably just the wind, Olive told herself. “Um…” she began. “I’m growing to like it more and more. It’s starting to feel like
home
. For a long time, it didn’t. I
could tell—at least, it seemed like—the house didn’t want us here. But now I think maybe it does. A little bit, anyway.”

The red-haired man nodded. “Good,” he said. He watched her for a moment, smiling and silent. Then he said, “Well, Olive, we’d best get you back to the picture frame, before any other injuries befall you. Horatio, you know the way.”

Looking slightly reluctant, the cat got up. He padded to the door and waited, with his eyes on Olive.

“Thank you,” said Olive to the young man.

“No, I thank
you
for visiting
me,
” said the man, leaning against the door frame to watch them go. In the daylight that fell through the doorway, his reddish hair shone in waves, and his features looked as clean and strong as if they had been carved out of wood. Olive couldn’t decide if she thought he was handsome now, or if he just looked like a hawk crossed with a lion.

She waved. The man waved back. Horatio gave him a little nod. Then Olive and the cat set off through the woods.

Maybe it was her guilt—or maybe it was her sense that the man was still staring after them—but Olive didn’t speak until they reached the edge of the trees, and the shack had long since disappeared from sight.

“Horatio,” she said as they hurried up the first rocky hillside, “who was that man?”

Horatio didn’t turn around. “Just a peasant,” he said. “A poor man without a real home.”

“That’s sad,” said Olive, remembering the man’s gentle, bony hands and ragged cuffs.

“Yes,” said Horatio.

Olive let a few silent moments go by. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” she asked as they climbed through the mounds of bracken.

The cat didn’t answer.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything stupid. I just thought if I made a painting of Morton’s parents, then he would stay Elsewhere and be safe, and not be lonely anymore. But it turned out wrong.”

“Of course it did,” said the cat.

“I won’t do it again,” said Olive. “I’m going to get rid of the instructions, and I’ll dump everything from the jars down the toilet. I’ll even throw away all the stuff from the room below the basement, if you think—”

“No,” Horatio cut her off. “
I
will take care of the jars and the paint-making instructions.
You
just need to stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll try. I promise,” said Olive. “Do you believe me?”

Horatio gave her a look out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t say anything more.

They trotted down the next hillside, Horatio staying several steps ahead, Olive trying to keep up
without tripping over anything. Ahead of them, in the wispy white air, Olive could make out the square of the picture frame glowing with light from the upstairs hall.

Horatio waited below the frame as she put on the spectacles, watching her fumble them in her still sore hands. “You go through first,” he commanded, taking a final sweeping glance at the craggy hillsides. “I want to keep an eye on you.”

Olive obeyed. She landed on the carpet in the upstairs hall with one arm trapped beneath her and one large orange cat on top of her. “You managed to catch my claw on your cuff,” said Horatio in an irritated tone, extracting his paw from the leg of her jeans. Olive felt his chilly claw scrape her ankle as he hopped off of her legs and sidled away. “You could be quite the formidable enemy, Olive, if you managed to inflict any of this sort of damage on
purpose
.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Fine,” snapped the cat, shaking his paw. “I assume all the painting materials are in your bedroom?”

Olive nodded.

“Then why don’t you go downstairs while I take care of them?”

Olive frowned. “But how are you going to—”

“We have
ways,
Olive. Talking is not my only talent.”

“Okay.” Olive stood up and edged slowly toward the head of the stairs. Horatio’s eyes followed her. “I was really going to get rid of everything, Horatio. Are you sure you don’t want me to help?”

“If I did, I would have said so,” Horatio pointed out. “And if I may remind you, Olive, it has often been better for everyone concerned when you did
not
know exactly where things were. Now
go downstairs.
”

Prodded by Horatio’s words, Olive thumped slowly down the steps. She looked back over her shoulder more than once. Each time, she found Horatio still watching her, his green eyes intent and cold.

14

A
FTER BEING BANISHED downstairs by Horatio, Olive shuffled unhappily through the empty rooms, making a dive for the living room couch when she heard her mother’s cheery voice call out, “I’m home!” from the front door.

For the next few hours, Olive was stuck under several blankets and Mrs. Dunwoody’s close supervision, pretending that her stomach hurt and that her scraped palms didn’t. She was too worried about Horatio’s anger and Morton’s terror to concentrate on a book. Instead, she watched TV until she could feel her brain beginning to melt, and all the storylines ran together, and soon she couldn’t remember who had won what talent contest or stolen whose boyfriend or insulted whose family and had to fight in a magical duel.

But sometime in the midafternoon, when the soap operas and talk shows had finally given way to cartoons, there was a sharp tap at the front door.

“I’ll get it,” said Mrs. Dunwoody, setting down the stack of math tests she was grading. “Don’t get up, Olive.” She patted Olive on the head on her way out.

Olive craned over the arm of the sofa, leaning as far as she could toward the hallway without toppling straight onto the floor. Her first thought was that it must be Rutherford, and a part of her—a small, mostly hidden part—hoped that it was. Her second thought was that it might be Annabelle herself, perhaps in disguise as a delivery person, hiding her face behind a huge bouquet of flowers. “These are for you,” Annabelle would say, and Mrs. Dunwoody would invite her inside, and then the floodgates of
real
trouble would break open…

But the voice that came from the front door wasn’t Rutherford’s
or
Annabelle’s.

“Hello,” said a voice that was accompanied by the jingling sound of many keys and pens and whistles. “I’m Florence Teedlebaum, the art teacher at the junior high. I noticed that Olive left her project at school, and after I learned your address from the school office, I thought I would drop it off so that she could finish it in time for its due date on Monday.”

Olive, still wrapped in blankets, wriggled off the
couch and sidled along the walls toward the entryway, keeping out of sight.

“How nice of you,” Mrs. Dunwoody was saying. “I’m Alice Dunwoody, Olive’s mother. I know Olive has always enjoyed art class.”

“As have I,” said Ms. Teedlebaum as Olive slipped across the hall and flattened herself against the staircase so she could peek through the banister. “And what do you do, Olive?”

“Alice,” said Mrs. Dunwoody.

“Florence,”
said Ms. Teedlebaum correctively.

“Florence,”
Mrs. Dunwoody repeated, after a brief pause. “I’m a mathematician.”

“Really!” exclaimed Ms. Teedlebaum. “I’ve never understood much about math. I just couldn’t see the point of adding up the same numbers over and over again when the answers almost always come out just the same, anyway.”

“Yes…” said Mrs. Dunwoody slowly. “Well, it was so nice of you to come all this way to bring Olive her homework.”

Ms. Teedlebaum flapped her hands. Even muffled by the sleeves of her jacket, her bracelets jangled loudly enough for Olive to hear. “Not at all. It was no trouble. I’ve been to this house before. As a matter of fact, I had a bit of an ulterior motive in driving over here.”

“Oh?” said Mrs. Dunwoody.

OH?!
echoed a voice in Olive’s head.

“Your collection of Aldous McMartin’s art,” said Ms. Teedlebaum. “It’s practically legendary in this town.”

Olive’s heart rocketed up into her trachea.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Dunwoody, “I hardly think of that as
ours
. I’m not sure a person can truly
own
a work of art, anyway. I really think of it as belonging to the house.”

Olive swallowed. Her heart slipped a tiny bit lower in her throat.

“Where are my manners?” Mrs. Dunwoody asked. “Come in, please. I’m a rusty hostess. I could count the number of visitors we’ve had in this house on one hand.”

Olive listened with mounting dread as Ms. Teedlebaum’s shoes tapped into the foyer. “But I bet you wouldn’t need to use your hand, being a mathematician.”

Mrs. Dunwoody laughed. “That’s very true.”

“I’ve always thought it would be handy to have more fingers, just so you could keep count of more things,” said Ms. Teedlebaum.