Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere Read online

  Don’t think like that, said the reasonable voice in her head. Just keep walking.

  Olive’s mouth felt dry and sticky, like the gummy stuff on the back of a price tag. She could only take tiny, shallow breaths.

  Pale roots hung from the ceiling in places, as fine as human hair. Once they brushed Olive’s head, and for a moment she was sure that her heart had stopped beating. That’s it, she could almost hear her heart saying. I can’t take it anymore. You’re on your own. But nothing moved, and there was no sound. In a moment, Olive felt the familiar knocking beat behind her breastbone again. She ventured on.

  The lamp trembled in her hand, sending twisted, shadowy versions of herself racing over the packed dirt walls. Somehow, these other Olives didn’t make her feel any less alone. But she kept going, slowly, following the light, until the roots began to disappear. The ceiling was getting higher too—or the floor was getting lower. Either way, the tunnel was widening until the lantern light didn’t reach the walls at all. The air grew even colder and very, very still; Olive couldn’t feel the little breezes made by her own motion bouncing back toward her anymore. And suddenly, the farthest edge of the lamplight struck something—something that glimmered back.

  Olive hesitated, shivering, wondering if she really wanted to find out what lay ahead. She could still turn back. She could apologize to Leopold and tell him that whatever he was guarding was still secret and safe. She could pretend that none of this had ever happened.

  And then, as she stood frozen in the pool of lamplight, Olive felt something she couldn’t explain. A funny sensation trickled through her body almost as though it were flowing down the tunnel toward her. Her heartbeat slowed. Her breath drifted out in a long white plume. She didn’t feel alone anymore. Instead, Olive felt as though something protective and familiar had wrapped itself around her. She was standing at the very root of the house. Above her, the basement, the gleaming hardwood hallway, the wide stairs, the bedrooms, and the shadowy attic soared up like the trunk of a giant, immovable tree. She was part of that tree now. And once you are part of something, it can’t really frighten you.

  Raising the lantern, Olive stepped toward the glimmering thing. It grew brighter as her light glinted from a thousand surfaces at once, refracting like the image in a fly’s magnified eye. Reflected stripes and glowing circles made weird patterns in the darkness.

  The tunnel had ended in a three-sided room. Each of the three walls was covered with shelves, and each shelf was lined with jars . . . hundreds and hundreds of jars.

  Olive took a careful look all around, turning in a circle. The walls here were stone-lined, like in the basement, except that there were no gravestones here, as far as she could tell. A few thick wooden pillars speared up from the floor, meeting the ceiling that hung several feet above her head. In the center of the room was a long, high table. The whole point of this room, obviously, was the jars. But what was this—some ultra-special, top-secret pantry?

  Her bare feet whispered across the stones. Once she reached the far wall, she realized that some of the jars were empty, but a few dried streaks of whatever they’d held still clung to their sides, as though they’d been poured out and shoved back into place. Other jars had been smashed. Fragments of murky glass littered the shelves’ edges. Olive walked very carefully, avoiding the shards that were scattered across the floor. Faint stains lingered here and there on the stones.

  On tiptoe, she took hold of a jar on the topmost shelf. Its thick bluish glass had grown cloudy with time, and Olive rubbed it with the heel of her hand. Inside, something dried and flaky crumbled from the jar’s walls, like old milk around the rim of the jug. Olive shook the jar. The white flakes moved and settled.

  Bouncing on both feet for warmth, Olive took down another jar. This one was full of something reddish and powdery that looked a bit like cinnamon. The next one contained tiny blue-black curls that might have been petals from a flower. Another one was filled with thick yellow liquid. As Olive turned the jar, clearing it off with her palm, a small skull appeared between her spread fingers. In the first moment of surprise, Olive nearly dropped the jar. Then she swallowed hard and held it toward the lantern, turning it to see what was inside. A bird skeleton floated in the yellow liquid, its wings bare of feathers, as delicate as paper lace. She shoved the jar back into place.

  The cold was becoming painful now. Olive’s arms felt like pieces of raw chicken straight out of the refrigerator. Determined to stay for as long as she could stand it, she skimmed along the lower shelves. In the unbroken jars were things that looked like dried leaves, and things that looked like mold, and things that looked like nothing she had ever seen before—probably because they were meant to be inside the body of something else. When she came to something that was definitely a jar full of dead spiders, Olive bit her tongue to keep from screaming out loud.

  She backed toward the high wooden table, shivering, keeping one eye on the jars in case anything in them started to move. The table’s surface was cluttered with empty jars and lids, sheets of thick yellowed paper, and old dried-up pens. A few big stone bowls with funny rounded mallets sat there as well. Olive dipped her fingertip carefully into one of these bowls. It came away covered with bright orange powder.

  Wiping her finger on her shorts, Olive squinted down at one of the sheets of paper. Carmine, it said. Nothing else. Olive frowned. Carmine? Was that somebody’s name? She turned over the other sheets of paper. They were blank. But hidden beneath them were scraps of other pages, all torn into tiny bits. Someone had ripped up a sheaf of papers and then hidden them, like Olive sometimes did with a test that had gone particularly badly. What were these? Recipes?

  Olive glanced up at the rows and rows of jars, each reflecting a thin band of lantern light. Then she looked back down at the table. And then, for the first time, she noticed something else that glimmered. Something closer, and smaller, and very familiar.

  Olive stopped. Everything else stopped too—her breathing, her blinking, her blood moving slowly around in her chilly body. Because there, on the table, half hidden behind a large empty jar, was a pair of spectacles.

  They were bigger than Ms. McMartin’s spectacles, which Olive had found in a dresser drawer so many weeks ago, and which she had crushed in the upstairs hallway when she fell out of the forest painting. They looked heavier, sturdier, as if they were made of a tougher metal. Annabelle McMartin’s spectacles, with their thin frames and long, delicate chain, had been the spectacles of a woman. These were the spectacles of a man.

  These were Aldous McMartin’s spectacles.

  Olive’s thoughts exploded like a giant firework, shooting every worry away. Delight, excitement, and freedom surged through her, along with something even more wonderful, something like hearing your shovel thud against a chest of treasure you had buried yourself and thought you’d never find again. She reached for the spectacles.

  “Olive!”

  Olive whirled around. Some instinctive part of her brain made her hide the spectacles behind her back.

  All three cats stood in the entrance to the stone chamber. By the pale light of the camping lantern, they appeared silvery and blurred, with only their green eyes flashing clearly against the background of darkness. Horatio was the one who had spoken. Behind him, Harvey glowered up at her. Leopold hung back at the light’s edge, his shoulders slumped and his head hanging low. If Olive didn’t know it was impossible, she would have sworn that the black cat was crying actual tears.

  “I hoped it wasn’t true,” said Horatio softly. He remained at the edge of the stones, as if he didn’t want to come any nearer to Olive. “But, once again, I was wrong to place my hope in you.”

  Olive’s stomach, which had been floating with ecstatic butterflies just a moment ago, began sinking toward her right kneecap.

  “The moment you’re out of one danger, you’re off looking for another, aren’t you? And you’re not just putting yourself in jeopardy, but everyone around you, everyone who care
s most about you. But you seem to conveniently forget about this—to forget, or not to care.”

  Olive opened her mouth to protest, but Harvey let out a hiss like a rattlesnake, his teeth glinting in the lantern light. Olive took an involuntary step back.

  “You had to push farther, didn’t you,” Horatio went on, in the same quiet voice. “Now you’re trying to control us, when we have risked our safety, again and again, to protect you?”

  Leopold made a noise that sounded almost like a sob. Harvey leaned against him protectively and glared at Olive.

  Olive’s stomach headed for her big toe. “I don’t see why you thought you had to protect me from this,” she said, gesturing toward the rows of jars and trying to smile. “A giant pantry? What’s so scary about that?”

  The cats’ eyes widened. They exchanged rapid glances. None of them spoke.

  “And besides,” said Olive, an indignant feeling slowly building itself up to a fire inside her, “the spellbook is mine now. Why can’t I use it?”

  “That book is using you,” said Horatio.

  Olive’s mouth fell open. “It is not.”

  Horatio blinked up at her. “Do you know what a witch is, Olive?”

  Several pictures zoomed through Olive’s mind: pointy black hats, broomsticks, a young Annabelle McMartin smiling sweetly from her portrait. Nothing that made for a very good answer.

  Fortunately, Harvey didn’t wait for one. “A witch is someone who uses magic,” he snapped, in a voice Olive hardly ever heard: his own. But angrier.

  “Don’t you see what’s going on?” asked Horatio. “You’re becoming one of them.”

  Olive shook her head, slowly at first, then faster, until the room was a blur. “No,” she said. “I’m not . . . like them.”

  “Is that so?” Horatio raised his whiskery eyebrows. “What do you call using the McMartins’ things? Harvesting their plants, casting their spells? What do you call making Leopold obey you, against his will?” Leopold made another little choking sound. “What do you call making Harvey help you to get that ridiculous book and using it, in spite of his warnings?”

  “I didn’t make Harvey do it,” Olive objected. “He could have said no.”

  Harvey let out another low hiss. “Once you asked for it, I had to,” he spat. “The house wanted to give it to you.”

  “We’ve tried to protect you.” Horatio’s eyes narrowed, becoming sharp slits of reflected light. “But it appears you’re not on our side anymore, Olive. If this goes any farther, it will be us against you. Either way, from now on, you’re on your own.”

  Horatio turned, the tuft of his tail vanishing into the darkness like the fronds of some undersea plant. Leopold followed him, hanging his head. Harvey went last, giving Olive a long, hard look that left her frozen in place for several cold minutes after the cats had gone.

  And then she was truly alone.

  16

  CLUTCHING THE PAIR of spectacles and the camping lantern, Olive struggled to the top of the ladder, hoisted herself through the trapdoor, and hurried up the basement steps. The cats had already disappeared.

  She left the lantern in its place on the cabinet shelves. Her parents were still shut inside the library, and they didn’t seem to hear her as she raced up the staircase into her bedroom, shivering, and threw herself under the covers, new spectacles, clothes, and all. She grabbed the book, which lay just where she’d left it underneath the blankets, and held it tight to her chest. Immediately, she felt a little bit warmer, and much less alone.

  The gold embossing flickered in the light of her bedside lamp. Olive snuggled up against the smooth leather cover and fought to push down the lump that kept rising in her throat. Stupid cats, she told herself. Who needed them anyway? She had her own pair of spectacles again. If they wanted to pretend to be in charge of this house, let them. Olive knew who had the real power. This was her house.

  She buried her face against the book’s velvety pages, wrapped her fingers tight around the spectacles, and waited for sleep or morning, whichever came first.

  By the time Olive woke, her room was filled with searing sunlight. In her sleep, she’d wriggled all the way underneath the covers, wandering through dreams of forests and blowing leaves and high, thorny hedges that kept growing and growing, no matter how hard she tried to push through. Olive stretched, wondering why she felt as though she’d hardly slept at all. Her legs hurt, and her back hurt, and her fingers were cramped and sore from being wrapped around the spectacles all night.

  The spectacles! Olive gave a happy gasp, remembering all the exploring that lay ahead of her—and then she froze, halted by something that didn’t lay beside her.

  The spellbook was gone.

  Olive put the spectacles into the pocket of her shorts and shoved away the rumpled blankets, searching every corner of the bed. She found a pink sock that she’d been missing for weeks and a blue gumball, now covered with a fine fur of lint, but no book. She bent over the edge of the mattress and peered under the bed. Several dust bunnies and shoe boxes were there, along with one of her missing slippers, but no book. Starting to feel rather panicky, Olive slid off the bed and rummaged quickly through the room, looking in drawers, under chairs, and inside the closet, where the chalk circle and the bowl of milk stared up at her accusingly. No book.

  It had been right beside her last night, she was certain. How could it have just disappeared?

  As soon as she’d asked herself this question, Olive knew the answer.

  The cats. Of course. They had stolen it from her, slipping in at night to take it right out of her arms, and had craftily hidden it somewhere. Those stupid, spying, furry little . . . Fury swept up through Olive’s body like the lit fuse of a bottle rocket, burning and hissing upward until: POW.

  “HORATIO!” Olive shouted, storming out into the hall. “LEOPOLD! HARVEY! GET OUT HERE!”

  The empty house absorbed her voice. No one answered. No cats appeared.

  Olive thundered down the stairs. A note from her parents hung on the refrigerator, telling her that they had gone to campus and would be back in the late afternoon. White sun, filtered through a screen of shifting leaves, flickered in bright patches on the polished floors. “HORATIO!” Olive yelled again. “HARVEY! LEOPOLD! I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!”

  Faster than she’d ever done it before, Olive thumped down the steps into the basement. She yanked the strings of the hanging lightbulbs so hard that they quivered in their sockets. Leopold wasn’t in his corner. The trapdoor stood open, just as she had left it. Olive crossed the chilly floor and kicked it shut. Her parents were more likely to notice the trapdoor if it was open . . . probably. Then again, they might not notice unless they fell through it, which wouldn’t have a very happy outcome either. Fists on her hips, Olive surveyed the basement. No green eyes flickered at her from the corners.

  She stumbled back up the stairs. Her mind beat against the same thought over and over, like a moth throwing itself against a lightbulb: She needed to get the book back. The longer it was missing, the more likely it was that someone else could find it, or that something would happen to it, and she would never see it again. This thought was so awful, Olive had to close her eyes and concentrate on breathing.

  If Leopold wasn’t in his place, and Horatio was nowhere to be found, there was still one cat to look for, and one other place to check. And Olive finally had a way to get in. She pulled the spectacles out of her pocket and raced up the stairs to the second floor, down the hallway, and into the pink bedroom.

  She put on the spectacles with shaking hands. The painting of the stone archway hung before her. Olive extended one hand and felt it slide easily through the warm surface of the painting into the stillness of the attic beyond. She leaned forward, pressing her face through the archway, feeling the painting slide and slip all around her, until she toppled all at once into the dark, dusty alcove. Well, at least she knew the spectacles worked. That was a plus.

  She hurried up the stairs, trying to avoid
stepping on any dead (or living) wasps with her bare feet.

  “Harvey?” she called, reaching the attic floor. “Harvey, I know you can hear me!”

  Whether Harvey heard her or not, he didn’t answer. Maybe he wasn’t in the attic at all. It was hard to imagine the place without Harvey, hiding somewhere in the rafters with his eye patch or his tuna-can breastplate, ready for the next adventure. Olive turned in a slow circle, taking in the dusty jumble of furniture, the silent corners, the shadows where no green eyes glimmered. The room felt stuffy and too quiet . . . and strangely lonely. Olive pulled her mind back to the missing book and let anger shove loneliness aside.

  Stalking to the center of the cluttered room, she stripped the covering off of the easel. The pair of painted hands still curved around the scrapbook on the table. Olive could just catch a glimpse of the old photograph on the open page—Annabelle and Lucinda, aged 14—but she wasn’t about to board that train of thought today. She needed to get the book back.

  “Harvey?” Olive called again, unsurprised now when there was no answer.

  With a frustrated growl, she stomped toward the round window that overlooked the backyard. There were no cats to be seen in the overgrown garden or darting into the shadows beneath the trees—only a smallish, mussy-haired boy, striding quickly away across Mrs. Nivens’s lawn. Peeping around the window’s edge, Olive watched Rutherford hurry back into his grandmother’s yard. What was he up to? Had he been skulking around her house again, waiting to pester her with more questions about the book? As Olive stared, Rutherford glanced back at the old stone house. Instinctively, she ducked farther into the shadows. But Rutherford didn’t seem to see her. A moment later, he had disappeared completely behind the knot of birch trees. Olive breathed a sigh of relief.