The Collectors #2 Read online

  Dedication

  For Danielle, who is there when the woods get dark

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 The Thing at the Bottom of the Well

  2 Watch Out

  3 Curses

  4 Voices in the Dark

  5 The Collection

  6 Not So Buon Giorno

  7 In the Fox’s Den

  8 Pebble

  9 Wishing Well

  10 Through the Woods

  11 Doom Will Get You Anyway

  12 Pebble’s Past

  13 Meet Mabel

  14 Peter and the Woods

  15 The Plot

  16 Intermission

  17 The Horde

  18 Blackout

  19 Trapped

  20 Time to Choose

  21 Out of the Well

  22 Quiet

  23 Wish You Were Here

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  The Thing at the Bottom of the Well

  The thing at the bottom of the well was asleep.

  It had been asleep for quite some time. The thing itself didn’t know how long, because it no longer measured time at all. Light slipped into darkness, warmth dissolved into cold, and the thing remained where it was, drowsing, occasionally staring out at the soggy shadows through the slit of one gray eye.

  The well was ancient, dug and used centuries ago. The thing at its bottom was older still. Its great gray body stretched through the tunnels that branched from the well’s shaft, filling the courses where deeper water used to run. Its claws sank in the black dirt.

  People brought it offerings now and then, but the thing at the bottom of the well rarely took them. It was so vast and so old that it rarely felt hunger. It rarely felt anything at all.

  But once in a great while, between stretches of sleep, something small and new would catch its eye.

  Late one summer afternoon, a family came walking through the woods: a mother, a father, and a five-year-old boy. They’d had a picnic in a clearing, and now they were rambling along the overgrown paths. It was the little boy who spotted the well—the crumbling and mossy wooden roof, the circle of stacked gray stones. His mother gave him a coin. The boy tossed it into the well. In half a heartbeat, it had slipped out of reach of daylight and vanished into the deep, deep dark.

  The woods rustled. The little boy’s parents steered him away.

  Far below, at the bottom of the well, the coin landed with a delicate tink. It struck a mound of other coins that had piled up above the shallow water, most of them eaten away by rust and mud and time. It lay there, glimmering against the darkness.

  The world is full of wishes like this one.

  Secret wishes, birthday wishes, wishes scribbled in diaries, wishes mumbled to no one. Most wishes are merely words. I wish I didn’t have school tomorrow. I wish I was rich. I wish I could just disappear. But some wishes—the ones made on birthday candles and broken wishbones, the ones hung on falling stars or thrown down certain deep, dark wells—are more than that.

  Some wishes, with help, can come true.

  The thing at the bottom of the well opened its eyes. With one huge, clawed hand, it reached for the wish glinting on the pile of coins. It scooped the wish into its toothy mouth . . . and swallowed.

  Mist, thick and silvery, filled the air, rising up through the well like smoke from a chimney.

  And in the forest above, a unicorn leaped from the underbrush.

  It galloped past the path where the family was walking, its silver mane and tail gleaming, its hooves so swift and soft that the little boy was the only one to notice it at all.

  He raced off the path after it.

  His parents turned a moment too late. They shouted for the little boy. They chased after him, screaming now, trampling through the bracken. Before long there were other sounds: motors and sirens, dogs snuffling through the brush, booted feet moving in lines. By the time the little boy was found, cold and scared but safe at the bottom of a ravine, nearly two days had passed. He kept insisting, while his crying parents hugged him and the EMTs checked him over, that he had wished for a unicorn, and his wish had come true.

  The thing at the bottom of the well heard all of this.

  It listened distantly, indifferently, the way it watched the weak shafts of sunlight that ventured down to its tunnel before being consumed by darkness.

  The thing had caused far worse trouble than this.

  Digging its claws deeper into the earth, it settled back to sleep.

  2

  Watch Out

  Far away from that deep, misty forest, on one shady street in a big, bustling city, there sat a very small boy named Van.

  The boy’s full name was Giovanni Carlos Gaugez-Garcia Markson, but nobody called him that. His mother, the famous opera singer Ingrid Markson, called him Giovanni. Nearly everyone else called him Van, if they spoke to him at all.

  At that moment, Van was seated on the broad stoop of a grand, gray stone house. Van lived there for now. But the house was not his house. Van was much more comfortable outside it, even though he could still feel the house looming behind him, its four stories of windows staring down at him disapprovingly. Inside the house, his mother was practicing a new song cycle, her powerful voice ringing through the walls. Van couldn’t hear this. He’d taken out his hearing aids and left them in his bedroom when the practicing started. This was the best thing about being hard of hearing, as far as Van was concerned: it was like being able to plug your ears with your fingers but still have both hands free. Plus, without your hearing aids, you had a good excuse for not talking to anyone, which was very handy when you had no one to talk to anyway.

  It was Van’s own fault that they had to live in this snooty house. The house belonged to Charles Grey, director of the largest opera company in the city and Ingrid Markson’s sort-of boss, as well as her sort-of maybe-almost boyfriend. Mr. Grey was wealthy and arrogant and important—or at least he was important to people who liked opera, who were the only people Mr. Grey cared about.

  Several weeks before, when Ingrid was hit by a car and broke her leg while chasing Van through the city, Mr. Grey had offered them a place to stay while she recovered. Van knew he should feel grateful for this. But all he felt was a shaky wariness—the sense that as long as Mr. Grey was close, he should be on his guard. He guessed this was what trout felt when they spotted a juicy worm dangling into their stream, its wormy body curved into the shape of a hook.

  Mr. Grey had a twelve-year-old son named Peter, who was just a year older than Van. Peter and Van had one thing in common: they both wanted to keep their parents apart. Even though they agreed on this important thing, and even though they could sit at the same dinner table and say “Pass the bread” without glaring, Peter was definitely not Van’s friend.

  Van had had friends once.

  They had crammed his life with excitement and danger. They had revealed the twinkling stashes of magic hidden in the world all around him. And then they had gone, leaving him behind, taking most of their magic with them.

  Van slipped one hand into his pocket and grasped the swirling glass marble inside. The marble was proof that it had all really happened. That he’d been part of something big and strange and wondrous, at least for a little while. Van squeezed the marble tight. Then, letting go, he dragged his attention back to the Greys’ front stoop.

  Several acorns from the street’s towering oaks lay on the step beside him. All but one of them still had their bumpy little caps. Van nudged the acorns with caps into a group. The lone capless one was left by itself.

  �
��Hey, Baldy,” Van imagined the largest acorn snarling. “There’s a dress code here. Acorns without caps aren’t welcome.”

  The capless acorn sighed and inched quietly away.

  Van scanned the grass around the stoop. A few tiny stones. More acorns. But past the base of the steps, just beyond the hedge that divided the Greys’ property from the sidewalk, something glittered. Van scooted down the steps.

  Half hidden by the hedge, partially buried in the shady dirt, was a bottle cap. Van tugged it free. Its edges were bent inward so that it formed a perfect bowl. When he brushed the dirt away, the bottle cap glinted like gold in the sunlight.

  He set the bottle cap on the bare acorn.

  The other acorns let out loud gasps.

  “Can it be?” one of them whispered. “Is that the lost crown of Acornucopia?”

  Van shoved the capped acorns closer.

  “It is!” they exclaimed. “It’s the ancient crown!” All of them—except for the biggest one—bowed their capped heads. “Hail to the king!”

  The crowned acorn looked around at the others, dazed and shy. “But . . . but I’m not a king. I’m just an ordinary acorn.”

  “The lost crown will only fit the rightful king of the Acornish,” said one of the gathered acorns. “Hail, King!”

  “Hail, King!” the other acorns echoed. And this time, even the biggest acorn bowed its cap.

  Van checked the ground around the stoop for other lost treasures. Being hard of hearing meant that Van didn’t hear the way most people heard. But it also meant that he noticed things other people didn’t notice. He saw things that most people didn’t see. A lifetime of traveling with his mother to one new place after another, and of being alone in those new places, had honed Van’s imagination as well as his treasure-hunting skills. These things kept him busy. They kept him company. Sometimes they kept him safe.

  And sometimes they did the opposite.

  Van focused his eyes. A plastic pen cap was wedged against the edge of the sidewalk. A twist tie, a blue button, and a frayed strip of ribbon lay near the curb. And glinting in the dirt beneath the hedge was a long, narrow, silver bolt. Van knelt, thrusting his head and shoulders into the scratching branches. Behind him, unseen and unheard, a garbage truck rumbled onto the street.

  Van pried the bolt out of the dirt. A perfect scepter for the Acornish King! He was scraping the grit from its silver whorls when he thought he heard a soft voice say, “Van. Hey. Van.”

  Van halted.

  He hadn’t heard the voice at all. He had felt it, inside his head.

  Which meant he must be imagining things.

  His friends were gone. He was alone inside the hedge. No one was calling his name, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

  Van crawled deeper into the hedge. The garbage truck rolled closer.

  The voice spoke again. “Van. Van. VanVanVan!”

  Now Van froze. Maybe he hadn’t imagined the voice, after all. Because he certainly wasn’t imagining the squirrel who had leaped into the twigs just above his face. The silvery, busy-tailed, anxious-eyed squirrel. The extremely familiar squirrel.

  “Van!” squeaked the squirrel. “Sheesh! I’ve been calling your name forever. Or for a few seconds. Probably seconds.”

  Joy filled Van’s chest.

  “Barnavelt!” He lunged toward the squirrel, twigs and leaves snapping around him. “I’ve missed you so much! Have you heard from Pebble? Where is she? Is she all right?”

  The squirrel’s round black eyes grew even wider. “Pebble?” he echoed, in a small voice. Then he shook himself, like an Etch A Sketch erasing its own drawing. “No. She hasn’t—it’s not that.”

  Disappointment dimmed Van’s joy. “Then what?”

  The squirrel blinked. “What what?”

  “Why did you finally come back?”

  “Oh!” The squirrel shook himself again. “To tell you to watch out.”

  “Watch out?” Van repeated. “Watch out for what?”

  “No,” squeaked the squirrel. “Just WATCH OUT!”

  Barnavelt leaped out of sight.

  Van sat back on his heels, perplexed. Just watch out? Had Barnavelt shown up after several empty weeks only to shout a few confusing words and disappear again?

  And then, through the twigs of the hedge, Van saw the flash of sunlight on a windshield.

  The truck was close enough that at last he could hear it too. The roar of the engine. The shriek of tires as it swerved up over the curb, coming straight at him.

  Van dove backward through the hedge. He landed on his back, on the little paved patio surrounding the Greys’ stoop, with one foot snagged on an ornamental yew and the other in a giant stone tub of geraniums. Leaves and twigs rained down around him. A piece of trash—one small square of paper—fluttered free of the swaying bushes and settled directly on his chest.

  The truck crunched through the hedge’s other end. It veered over the spot where Van had knelt a second ago, then swerved sharply, tires screeching, and disappeared from Van’s view.

  There was an air-bending, world-rattling BOOM.

  A jumble of other noises followed: glassy clinking noises, rocky crumbling noises, the sharp note of a scream.

  Cautiously, Van sat up. He grabbed the piece of paper that had landed on his chest and peered around the edge of the still-shaking bushes.

  A garbage truck appeared to be visiting the house next door.

  It had flattened several bushes before barreling straight into the neighbors’ front window. The truck’s cab thrust through the frame where glass should have been. Its body stuck out awkwardly into the front yard, like an elephant halfway through a too-small door. Black tire tracks streaked the pavement just in front of Van’s toes.

  It had all happened too fast for Van to be truly scared. What he felt was closer to disbelief, like he’d just watched the world perform an extremely messy magic trick. He swayed on the sidewalk, taking quick, hard breaths. Without really seeing it, Van glanced down at the paper in his hand. It was a tattered old postcard. The only words written on the back were WISH YOU WERE HERE.

  Wish . . . , Van thought.

  And then, before any passing cars could stop, before any neighbors could rush out of their houses to find out what on earth had happened, Van noticed something else.

  A shimmer hung in the air. It was silvery and shifting, like dew that evaporated before it could quite touch the ground. It brushed the tips of Van’s hair. By the time he blinked, it was gone.

  Only Van saw that shimmer. And only Van knew what it was.

  It was a granted wish.

  Someone had wished to hurt him. Or worse. And the wish had been just a few inches—and one squirrel—away from coming true.

  3

  Curses

  “We must be cursed!” Ingrid Markson’s voice made the crystal chandelier tremble. “Someone tell me what I’ve done to bring these disasters upon us!”

  Van’s mother was perched on the edge of the Greys’ striped silk couch, clutching Van tightly to her side. Even if he hadn’t been close enough to hear every ringing word, Van could have felt them in the reverberations of her rib cage. He guessed that being hugged by Big Ben would have felt a lot like this.

  “Oh, caro mio! Why is this happening to us?” His mother squeezed Van even tighter, her voice cresting with emotion. Ingrid Markson could make a grand operatic scene out of anything. Van had seen her do it in hospitals, in hotels, in busy restaurants. It may not have made a situation better, but it certainly made it splashier. “First I’m run down by a speeding car, and weeks later, my only child is nearly struck by a sanitation vehicle!” She stared down at Van, her eyes shimmering with dramatic, but genuine, tears. “What have I done to deserve this?”

  One of the two police officers in the Greys’ living room said something—something that sounded to Van like Monsters have armed the trap. No, he told himself, shoving back a jolt of fear. She’d probably said . . . Must not have heard the truck. That wa
s all. Nothing worse.

  “Yes. Giovanni is hard of hearing,” said his mother weepily. She looked down at Van’s ears. “And you weren’t even wearing your hearing aids? Outside, in the middle of the day? Oh, Giovanni, why?”

  Van took a breath. It was hard to explain how taking out the hearing aids could feel—the way it let him turn off his blurry hearing and focus his vision on a quiet, clearer world. But before he could even try, Mr. Grey strode in with a cup of hot tea on a saucer.

  “Don’t worry, Ingrid.” Mr. Grey reached down to grasp her non-Van-bearing shoulder. “. . . Get to the bottom of this.”

  “. . . May already have,” said the police officer. Van caught some of her words through his mother’s sobs. “. . . Swarm of wasps . . . side the truck. The driver . . . badly stung . . . he lost control of the vehicle.”

  “Is he all right?” Van asked.

  “Looks like he will be,” said the officer. “Eventually.”

  “. . . Lucky no one else was hurt.” The second officer looked straight at Van. “And you brought the danger on yourself.”

  Van’s heart stumbled.

  No. Angry wasps are dangerous stuff. That was what he’d said. Everyone else was nodding, talking about how the smell of garbage had drawn the swarm. None of them suspected what Van already knew.

  That those wasps had been wished there.

  “You’re safe, thank goodness,” wailed his mother, pulling Van so close that his cheek smooshed upward and squeezed his right eye shut. “But how many disasters can two people endure?”

  With his open eye, Van peered out the front windows. The street was in chaos, crowded with flashing police cars and tow trucks, gawking people and cordoned traffic. Nowhere in the mess did he spot a silvery squirrel.

  But Barnavelt had been there. Hadn’t he?

  “Ingrid.” Mr. Grey’s voice pulled Van’s attention away from the window. The director clasped his mother’s hand, murmuring something Van couldn’t catch, before turning toward Van. “And poor Giovanni.” His voice was so pitying it made Van’s teeth hurt. “Thank goodness you’re all right.”