The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 (5 page)

“Well, come over here, so we can speak without shouting to you,” snapped Horatio.

Olive scurried around to the other side of the shed and crouched down until she was at cats’-eye level.

“Miss,” Leopold began, “we owe you our apologies. I was”—he fought to get the next words out—“an
incompetent
guardian. The security of the tunnel was compromised, and I deserve to be disciplined.”

“You desairve to be burned at zee stake!” hissed Harvey, with a knightly toss of his coffee can. “Beheaded! Put on a pike!”

“Hey!” objected Olive, even though it sounded to her more like a reward than a punishment to put a cat on a fish. “You have no right to criticize, considering that I found
you
asleep at your post about half an hour ago.”

“Zat is true,” said Harvey, in a smaller voice. “But napping ees not treason.”

“Annabelle is tricky,” said Olive. She looked down at Leopold, who in turn was looking sadly down at his toes. “Almost anybody could be fooled by her.”

Horatio let out a long breath through his nose. “She’s right,” he said at last. “I suppose our only course
of action now is to fill in this hole and redouble our efforts.”

“The price of safety is eternal vigilance,” Leopold mumbled to his front paws.

Olive patted him on the head.

“Leopold,” Horatio commanded, “go back inside and patrol the tunnel. Harvey and I will get to work out here. Olive…” Olive straightened up, ready to be useful. “Go wash up. Your parents will be home soon, and you look like you’ve been rolling around in a coal scuttle.”

Olive sagged again. She headed toward the back door obediently, wondering what a coal scuttle was. Leopold slumped along beside her. Behind them, Harvey and Horatio were already crouching at the far side of the garden, examining the tunnel’s newest entrance.

“You may not see much of me for a while, miss,” said Leopold, not meeting her eyes, once the back door was safely shut behind them. “I will be going underground for a time. But if you ever need me, you’ll know where to find me.” With a nod that lacked its usual soldierly sharpness, Leopold vanished down the basement stairs.

Olive watched him go. Then she stood by herself in the kitchen for so long that her feet began to go numb. She was stacking up a tower of thoughts, and Olive knew that if she moved, the whole tower might come crashing down.

If it
was
Annabelle who had dug her way into the room at the end of the tunnel (and it seemed more than likely that it
was
), then she would almost certainly have taken some of the jars. However, she hadn’t taken the papers, which gave Olive a sliver of hope. Furthermore, with or without the paint-making instructions, Annabelle wasn’t a painter, as far as Olive knew. It was
Aldous
who was the artist of Elsewhere. What good would the paints be to Annabelle? Olive chewed on a strand of her hair, thinking. What good would the paints be to
her?

Well, they would be no good at all unless she knew how to concoct them. And in order to even begin to do that, she would have to put together all those thousands of bits of torn-up paper. And that could take
ages,
if she managed to do it without losing her mind first. One Christmas, an aggravating great-uncle Dunwoody had sent Olive a jigsaw puzzle. It was made up of five thousand pieces, and every piece was covered with a broken picture of other puzzle pieces. If you put all five thousand pieces together, you had what looked like another pile of unsolved puzzle bits all tumbled together on a tabletop. Just the idea of putting that puzzle together made Olive’s brain start to hiss and sputter like a frying egg.

Even if she
did
manage to reassemble all those torn-up papers, and even if they
were
recipes for paint, and
even if she
could
figure out how to use them…what would she use them
for?
What could Olive possibly paint that would be worth bringing to life forever?

Olive was still thinking and chewing when the front door creaked open.

“Hello, junior high school student!” called Mr. Dunwoody cheerily as he and Mrs. Dunwoody set down their briefcases. The words
junior high
kicked over Olive’s tower of thoughts very efficiently.

Mrs. Dunwoody bustled down the hall, kissed Olive on the head, and went into the kitchen to turn on the oven. “I’ll get dinner started, and then we want to hear all about your first day.”

And so, from the start of the meal until the end of the evening, the three Dunwoodys talked about school (and about math class in particular), about study habits (about the use of rulers, compasses, and graphing paper in particular), and about the importance of good grades (A-pluses, in particular). By the time Olive climbed the stairs to bed, Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody were glowing like two delighted jack-o’-lanterns, and Olive was so worn out and worried that she didn’t want to do anything but crawl under her blankets, squeeze Hershel, and pile the pillows over her head.

Which was exactly what she did.

5

S
OMETHING SMALL BUT insistent poked at Olive’s shoulder. Even through a thick layer of sleep, she could feel it jabbing her arm again and again, as though there were an elevator button on her pajama sleeve. Groggily, Olive shifted beneath the blankets, smooshing her face into Hershel’s fuzzy side.

The small, insistent thing kept poking.

“Olive,” whispered a voice.

Olive jerked her shoulder away.

The poking shifted to her face. “Olive,” the voice whispered again. The small, insistent thing poked her cheek. Poke, poke, poke.
“Olive.”

Olive finally managed to raise her rusty eyelids. She gazed out into the darkened room. From somewhere amid the folds of her blankets, a pair of vivid green eyes stared back at her.

“Good,” said a voice with a faint British accent. “You’re awake.”

“Well, I am now, Harvey,” said Olive rather grumpily. “You woke me.”

“Shh,” whispered the cat. “Someone may be listening. Don’t reveal my identity. Call me
Agent 1-800.
”

“What happened to Sir Lancelot?” asked Olive.

“Who?”

“Never mind.” Olive closed her eyes again.

Harvey’s paw gave her cheek another insistent poke. “I have top-secret, high-importance, vital-organ, rush-delivery information,” he hissed.

“Vital organ?” Olive repeated.

“It concerns Agent M. Aka
Sir Pillowcase.
”

“You mean
Morton,
” said Olive, eyes still closed.

“Shh!” Harvey hissed again.
“Agent M.”

“What about him?”

Harvey lowered himself toward Olive’s face until his nose was nearly touching hers. Olive could feel the wisps of his whiskers against her skin. “Agent M is plotting an escape.”

Olive’s eyes popped open. “But—he
can’t
escape. He can’t get out of Elsewhere. Not on his own.”

Harvey stalled for a moment, kneading Olive’s stomach as he rocked from paw to paw. “Reluctant as I am to inform against a fellow agent,” said the cat at last, “I am afraid…he tried to bribe me.”

“Huh?”

Harvey lowered his voice to a whisper. “He offered to be The Guy That Dies.”

“The…
who?
” said Olive, wondering if she’d fallen asleep again.

“The Guy That Dies,” Harvey repeated. “In any situation we might enact: any duel, any joust, any cannonball volley, I would be the victor, and he would be The Guy That Dies. Meliagaunce to my Lancelot. The Sheriff of Nottingham to my Robin Hood. The good guys to my Captain Blackpaw!”

“Oh.”

Harvey tilted his head to one side. “I must admit that I was tempted.”

“You didn’t say
yes,
did you?”

Harvey stiffened. “Of course not. I am loyal to our cause.”

“Then everything’s fine.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Harvey with another poke as Olive tried to close her eyes again. “Agent M is growing desperate. He’ll take any opportunity—however dangerous—to get out.”

Olive heaved a sigh. “I guess I should go talk to him.”

“A wise decision,” said Harvey. With an action-hero flip, he leaped off of the bed and slunk toward the door. “Situation comprehensive,” Olive heard him mutter into his imaginary transistor wristwatch.
“Sleeper cell has been informed. Now heading to the head of headquarters.” A moment later, there came a low creak from the door, and Agent 1-800 was gone.

Olive swung her legs out of bed and jumped to the floor, landing as far away from the bed as she could. She double-checked the hallway for portraits and parents before creeping out of her room, putting on the spectacles, and hauling herself through the frame around the painting of Linden Street.

The moment her feet touched the painting’s misty ground, something smacked her in the side with a
thwump
. Olive flailed backward, hitting her head on a corner of the picture frame that dangled in midair behind her and flopping flat on her back in the grass. Something in a white nightshirt landed on top of her.

“MORTON!” Olive choked, once she could manage to breathe again. “What are you
doing?
”

“Tackling you,” said Morton, as though this should have been obvious. He rolled off of Olive and glowered at her from the grass. “I aimed for the picture frame, so we’d both fall back out. But you’re too
heavy.
”

Olive bristled. “Maybe you’re too
short.
”

Morton jumped up, standing as tall as his three and a half feet would allow. “Maybe you’re too
STUPID.
”

Olive took a deep breath and counted to five. On the crest of the misty hill before her, a few lights in the painted houses twinkled faintly.

“Morton,” she said, trying to push her voice down into a calm, steady line, “we’ve already talked about why you have to stay Elsewhere. You’re
paint.
People would find out about you, and they’d probably put you in a museum or something. And then they’d learn the truth about this house, and they’d either destroy everything or take it all away to study it, and then we would never find out what happened to your parents.”

Morton’s round, pale face seemed to soften. Olive was sure he was seeing the logic of her words. Then he said, “You should give me the spectacles.”

Olive’s hands flew up, grabbing the spectacle frames. “No way!”

“Why should
you
get to have them?
I
could use them. It’s
my
parents we’re looking for. Besides, you’ve got the cats. They can take you in and out any time you want. You’re just”—Morton stopped, momentarily befuddled—“a spectacle hog.”

“I am
not.
”

“Spectacle hog! Spectacle hog! Olive is a spectacle hog!” Morton chanted, hopping backward up the misty hill.

“Stop that!” Olive commanded.

“Oink, oink, oink,” taunted Morton, before turning and bolting for the street.

Olive chased after him. “Come back here!” she shouted, starting to smile in spite of herself.

Morton’s oinks turned to giggles as he led Olive in a looping, zigzagging path up the hill toward Linden Street, his baggy white nightshirt whipping around his legs. Finally, on the edge of a neighbor’s foggy lawn, Olive caught him by the elbow, and they both sprawled face-first into the dewy grass, sending up a puff of mist that hovered above them like an impatient cloud.

Olive sat up, laughing. She began to brush the grass off of her pajamas, but each blade had already flown back to its place on the ground, mending and straightening itself. A moment later, Morton sat up too, still giggling. “Oink, oink,” he managed, between laughs.

Gradually, Morton’s chuckles faded. Olive’s panting quieted. Soon the silence of Linden Street surrounded them again, as thick as the mist in the painted air.

The dark houses of a hundred years ago stood before them and behind them, quietly waiting. With their deserted porches and motionless curtains, their quiet rooms and closed doors, they had the air of houses where every inhabitant is fast asleep. Most of the houses were empty, as Olive knew. But here and there, other painted people—others who had been trapped, like Morton—waited inside those curtained windows, staring out into the street even now, watching Olive and Morton, the only things that moved. Nothing else ever changed here. It would be dusk on this misty spring evening for decades—maybe centuries—to come.

“Today was my very first day of junior high,” said Olive, after a few quiet minutes had slipped by. “I don’t think it could have been any worse if I had accidentally lit the building on fire. Actually, that would have made it better. Because then at least we’d have been sent home early.” Olive watched a wisp of mist settle back into place when she shifted her foot. “The kids were mean, the classes were hard, and I wore pajama pants by mistake. And then, when I got home, I found out that somebody had tried to get into the house to steal things.
Again.
Oh, yeah—and an angry witch who can’t really die is after me, and she’s already tried to drown me and light me on fire, so she’s probably coming up with something even worse to do to me the next time she gets the chance.”

Morton’s tufty head turned away. “I wish I got to go to school,” he said.

Olive looked down at the curve of Morton’s skinny back. A lump of sadness slid down through her rib cage, coming to rest right on top of her heart. “I’m looking for a way to help you, Morton,” she said. “And I
am
going to find your parents. I promised.”

“I’m tired of waiting,” said Morton into his folded arms. “I’ve been waiting and waiting, and nothing’s happened.”

“That’s not true,” Olive protested. “We found your sister.”

Morton’s wide blue eyes swiveled back toward Olive’s. She could practically read the words
And look how well
that
turned out
printed across his pupils.

Morton turned away again. When he spoke, he appeared to be addressing his knees, which formed two small white hills underneath his nightshirt. “I know you think it’s a bad idea,” he said. “And I know you won’t ever let me have the spectacles. But I’m going to find another way to get out of here. You can’t stop me.”