The Collectors #2 Read online

  Pebble didn’t answer. She just looked at Van, her eyes like two small fires.

  Abruptly, she patted at her coat’s many pockets. “Maybe . . . bandage,” he heard her mutter. She tossed the contents of the pockets to the floor. A tiny folding knife. A spare battery. A wishbone in a paper napkin. Her hand shook. “. . . make a splint . . . string . . .”

  “Pebble,” said Van. “He needs a lot more than a splint.”

  He reached for the wishbone on the floor.

  “What . . . ?” whispered Pebble. “. . . know how dangerous it can be!”

  “Sometimes you have to take the risk. Like you said.”

  Van stood and unlatched the nearest window. A gust of cool, piney air swept inside.

  “Van.” Now Pebble’s voice was half choked by a sob. “I can’t risk Barnavelt.”

  “But if we don’t do something fast, he might not make it.”

  Both of them looked at the squirrel curled, motionless, against Pebble’s chest. Neither of them needed to remind the other that wishes couldn’t bring things back from the dead.

  Van craned out the window, holding the wishbone in his fingertips. Hope faltered in his chest. Maybe this wouldn’t work either. Maybe his plan would fail before it had begun. But then, amid the trees, a patch of white mist glimmered closer.

  A moment later, Lemmy’s cloudy body filled the window, its wide eyes glancing from the wishbone to Van’s face.

  “Come in, Lemmy,” Van whispered.

  Lemmy floated over the windowsill. Its eyes fell on Pebble and the bundle in her arms.

  Pebble held the squirrel closer.

  Van knelt beside her. “It will be okay,” he said softly, grasping the ends of the wishbone. “Lemmy will help us.”

  “Wait.” Pebble raised her head. She looked into Van’s eyes. Up close, he could follow her lips and catch each word. “Maybe you should wish for something else.”

  “What?”

  “You should wish . . .” She swallowed. “You should wish for both you and Barnavelt to get out of here.”

  “What?” said Van again. “No.”

  “Van,” Pebble insisted. “You don’t need to do this. You can get out. Go find your mom. Be safe.”

  “No,” said Van. “I’m not leaving you.”

  Pebble went quiet. Her fingers stroked Barnavelt’s fur.

  “Maybe we should use the wish for something even bigger,” said Van. “It is the only one we have.”

  “Like . . . stopping my uncle?”

  Van nodded.

  “But the bigger the wish, the more can go wrong. And if Barnavelt doesn’t . . . if he isn’t—” Pebble broke off, swallowing again. “Barnavelt needs it most. I’ll have to stop my uncle by myself.”

  “You mean we’ll stop him,” said Van.

  Pebble met his eyes once more. “We will.” She took a deep breath, grasping one end of the wishbone. “Okay. Go ahead.”

  Van grasped the bone’s other end. I wish for Barnavelt to be all right, he thought, as clearly and forcefully as he could.

  The bone snapped. Pale droplets fell from Van’s broken half, drifting down as lightly as soap bubbles.

  The Wish Eater bent to swallow them.

  A burst of mist surged through the room. Dew collected on Van’s eyelashes, gathering on the strands of his hair. He took a breath, feeling its magic whoosh into his body and float out again.

  In Pebble’s arms, Barnavelt stirred. He rolled over, revealing a wound where the blood had begun to clot at last. His inky eyes opened.

  “Pebble?” he asked drowsily, blinking up at her. “Hey! Where have you been?”

  Pebble let out a laugh-sob.

  “Good job, Lemmy,” Van breathed.

  Everyone kept quiet for a moment—even Barnavelt, wrapped in Pebble’s arms.

  Then, very slowly, the Wish Eater held out its hands. It hovered next to Pebble, waiting.

  Pebble glanced up. Instinctively, she recoiled, pulling Barnavelt away.

  Van watched Pebble cower, and he watched Lemmy wait with its long-fingered hands open, and he understood what had to happen next.

  “Pebble,” he murmured. “This is how Barnavelt will be all right. Lemmy will get him out and keep him safe. This is how the wish comes true.”

  Pebble hesitated for another long beat. She looked at Van, her fingers stroking anxiously at Barnavelt’s fur. Then she turned her eyes to Lemmy. The Eater gazed back at her. Its eyes were bright and steady.

  Something inside Pebble seemed to release. Her tensed arm opened. Slowly, gently, she placed Barnavelt in Lemmy’s hands.

  “Keep him safe,” she whispered. “I . . . I’m trusting you.”

  Lemmy tucked the squirrel into the curve of one misty arm.

  “Hey,” murmured Barnavelt in a sleepy voice. “I’m flying again. I’m flying in a big pillow. Hey, Pebble. Do you see me flying?”

  Lemmy squeezed through the open window frame. The Eater floated out into the night, carrying Barnavelt with it.

  Pebble watched until they had vanished into the trees. She spun back toward Van so suddenly that Van jumped.

  “Now we find my uncle,” she said.

  Then she bolted for the door.

  20

  Time to Choose

  They stormed through the fourth floor, flinging open doors, bolting down empty hallways. There was no trace of Mr. Falborg himself, although signs of his obsessions were everywhere: framed stamps and marble statues, puppets and matchbooks, shields and teacups, coins and bones; thousands—millions—of precious things that now belonged to one person alone. And here they were, shut up in an echoing old house, where no one else would ever glimpse them.

  The more he saw, the sicker Van felt.

  “Fifth floor,” Pebble called over her shoulder.

  They rushed up a narrow staircase.

  It led them to a round chamber where a collection of antique tapestries covered the walls. They had reached the tower at the end of the house, Van realized. A spiral staircase wound up through the ceiling. Small windows let in slips of dark sky. From the corner of his eye, Van saw something streak past those windows—something silvery and large, lit by a red-gold glow.

  They raced upward. The stairs twisted beneath them, making turn after turn. Van’s heart pounded harder. His knees grew wobblier. From above, he could feel the shift of moving air, a breeze that was dewy and scented with pine. They ran until at last they reached the final step and staggered out onto a wide wooden floor.

  They had reached the top of the tower. The peaked metal ceiling thrust upward above them. In the center of the room stood a towering glass case filled with bottles—bottles that pulsed with a reddish, smoldering light. Large windows encircled the whole chamber, letting in a haze of night sky. And standing in front of one open window, his back to them, his white suit glowing with reflected light, was Ivor Falborg.

  Mr. Falborg closed the window. The cool breeze died. The room turned echoingly quiet. Mr. Falborg turned to face Van and Pebble, cupping a last smoldering bottle in both hands.

  “Ah, Mabel. And Master Markson.” Mr. Falborg smiled, his crinkly blue eyes landing on the two of them without a hint of surprise. The room was still enough, and the glow bright enough, that Van managed to follow his words. “Well, this is wonderfully convenient timing. We’ve just finished our work.”

  Van saw Pebble suck in a breath. Her eyes were wide. Furious. Horrified.

  “The dead wishes.” She inched forward like an animal on a leash. Van crept forward too, keeping her face in sight. “That’s what you wanted.”

  “Of course.” Mr. Falborg raised the glowing glass bottle in his hands. Still smiling, he nodded toward the windows. “And I’ve had wonderful assistance.”

  Van followed his gaze. The swarm of Wish Eaters had gathered just outside the windows, their moonlight-tinged bodies forming a silvery mass around the tower. They drifted past the windowpanes, teeth glinting, pale eyes staring in, like sharks in a backward aq
uarium. The back of Van’s arms pricked with fear.

  “That’s why you did all of this.” Pebble’s voice was flat, not questioning, but setting out the facts. Van wondered if, deep down, she still hoped Mr. Falborg would argue with them. “You tricked me into luring the Holders here, so your Eaters could steal the dead wishes and bring them back to you.”

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Falborg, as though Pebble had just recited the steps to a cookie recipe. “Wish Eaters are extremely loyal. Once you’ve fed and protected them, they’re yours for life.” His twinkly eyes moved to Van. “You’ve learned that firsthand, haven’t you, Master Markson?”

  Van started. “I . . . But—Lemmy isn’t mine. It came back to me because it wanted to.”

  “Do you see any cages around these creatures?” asked Mr. Falborg, gesturing to the swarm outside. “Any nets or cruel iron prods, as are used by your Collectors?” His eyes flicked to the lance in Pebble’s hand. “These wonderful beings are mine by choice. They know that I will provide for them.”

  “Is that what you’re going to do with the dead wishes?” Pebble cut in, her voice flatter and harder than before. “Feed them to your Eaters?”

  “Of course not.” Mr. Falborg brushed the lapel of his white suit, as though he was shooing away imaginary dirt. “At least, not all at once.”

  “But—”

  Mr. Falborg raised a hand, cutting Pebble off. “I am aware of their power. I honor that power. That’s why I am the right person to keep them.”

  “What makes you think you’re right at all?” Van blurted, before he could help it. “You lie. You trick people. You use people to get the things you want.”

  Mr. Falborg’s eyebrows rose. “Haven’t you done the same, Master Markson?” He stepped close to Van, bending down to speak straight into Van’s face. The glow of the dead wish glittered in his eyes. “Think of how you’ve used the people around you. Think of how often you’ve lied to your lovely mother. Think of the secrets you kept from Pebble and the Collectors and poor Peter Grey.”

  “But . . . I had to!” Van protested.

  “Yes, you did,” agreed Mr. Falborg. “You knew you were acting for the greater good. You wanted to save something larger than yourself. That is what I do as well. I am a collector.” His eyes shifted to Pebble. “Not a prison guard. Not a torturer. Not a thief of other people’s wishes.”

  “But you hurt us,” said Pebble. Her voice started low, growing louder and louder until it rang from the stone walls. “You almost crushed Van with a train. Your Eater nearly trampled us. Your stupid trap almost killed Barnavelt!”

  “Incidental,” said Mr. Falborg, the way someone else might have said “A mere drizzle.” He shook his head apologetically. “I am sorry to have given you such a fright. But everything has turned out for the best, hasn’t it?” Mr. Falborg straightened, holding the dead wish between them like a bomb with a lit fuse. “Which gives us the perfect chance for a fresh start.”

  As he went on, Mr. Falborg stepped toward a window, angling his face away. Van lost most of his next words. He thought he caught “children” and “mistakes” and “understand”—but then Mr. Falborg unlatched the window, letting in a fresh gust of air, and turned back to them, drawing a wishbone from his vest pocket.

  Van’s heart went still.

  Mr. Falborg couldn’t kill them with a wish. But he could do something pretty close. And there was no safe way to stop him, not while he held that dead wish in his other hand.

  “Where shall we begin?” Mr. Falborg asked. “Perhaps with Mabel?” His eyes settled on her, gentle and warm. “Mabel,” he said softly. “I will forgive . . . betrayals . . . stay with me for good. This will be my wish for you: You will never see any of the Collectors or their Creatures again.”

  Pebble took a choking breath. The flashlight fell from her hand. The Eaters outside the window pressed close to the frame.

  Mr. Falborg turned his gaze on Van. “Or shall we start with Master Markson?” Van stepped forward, his eyes trained on Mr. Falborg’s face. “My wish for you,” Mr. Falborg continued, “will be that you forget all of this. Everything you’ve seen. Everyone you’ve known. You will return to your own life, content and safe, perhaps with a new father and brother, without any memory of the trouble you’ve caused.” Mr. Falborg gave him a tender smile. “You are not a Collector, Van Markson. You will never be one of them. And with their cruelty, why would you want to be?”

  Van turned toward Pebble. His throat felt like it was being crushed in a gigantic fist. “He’s right. He should start with me.” He forced out the words. “We can’t let Mr. Falborg keep you prisoner again. Besides, the Collectors need you, and I’m—I’m not really a Collector. I won’t ever really be a Collector. You’ve said so yourself.”

  Pebble grabbed Van’s hand. “No,” she said, squeezing tightly. She pulled him close. “You can’t forget us. Maybe you’re not exactly like us—but we need you too. I need you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” said Pebble, her wide eyes staring into his. “Because you can see both sides. You see the good and the bad about Eaters and wishes and everything else. Because—you’re you.”

  Van glanced back at Mr. Falborg. The man in the white suit had gripped the ends of the wishbone and raised it toward the open window. Outside, the Eaters roared.

  Both sides, Van thought. The good and the bad.

  He’d discovered so much magic hidden in the world around him. The magic of wishes and Wish Eaters, the magic of Collectors and of ordinary people. That magic was both dangerous and wonderful—too dangerous and too wonderful for anyone, no matter their reasons, to control all of it. No one should be allowed to steal that power.

  And no one was going to steal the power inside of him.

  “Maybe we can stop this.” Van turned to Pebble’s mossy-penny eyes. “We have to try.”

  Pebble’s eyes flared. She squeezed Van’s hand once more. “Together.”

  “I am sorry, dear Mabel,” said Mr. Falborg. The bone in his grip began to bend.

  Pebble charged forward. “My name is PEBBLE!” Van heard her scream.

  Still holding tight to his friend’s hand, Van charged too.

  They flew at Mr. Falborg.

  Pebble’s shoulder struck him in the stomach. Mr. Falborg doubled over and quickly thrashed back, trying to raise the wishbone out of reach. But Van had already caught his arm. He clung to Mr. Falborg’s elbow, one hand scrabbling for the bone, while Pebble wrenched at Mr. Falborg’s other arm. Van’s fingers closed around the wishbone’s end. Mr. Falborg reached to stop him with the other hand—and in a moment so simultaneously fast and slow that Van couldn’t stop it, even as he watched it unfold, Mr. Falborg lost his grip on the glowing bottle.

  The falling wish flared. The glass shattered against the floor.

  A blast filled the tower room.

  A sound like the hum of ten thousand voices flooded the air, eating every wisp of oxygen. It rang in Van’s skull and buzzed in his lungs. Wind ripped at his hair. The air turned the color of the heart of a fire—a white gold so bright that it burns without touching.

  Just before the whirling light knocked them all to their knees, Van ripped the wishbone from Mr. Falborg’s grasp.

  The blast grew brighter, the sound swelling.

  Van peered toward the spot where Pebble should have been. Everything was a blur. All he could see was the glow of the dead wishes in their glass case, burning red against the white gold, and the smear of the open window where the storm of Eaters was about to push its way inside.

  Inside—to the released dead wish.

  Van grasped the ends of the wishbone. He couldn’t focus on a clear, simple wish. He could only remember a crowd of faces: Pebble, Barnavelt, Lemmy, Nail and Razor and Eyelet and Sesame and Jack, Charles and Peter Grey, even Mr. Falborg. And his mother, smiling down at him. All the good and all the bad, and everything in between. He could only hope, with every exhausted, terrified cell inside of him, that eve
ryone would be all right.

  The wishbone snapped. A fragile wisp whirled away on the fiery air.

  There was a roaring, screeching, rending sound—and then the cold and the mist poured in.

  21

  Out of the Well

  The thing at the bottom of the well was no longer asleep.

  Noise had woken it. Strange noise, strange light, bursts of something that flavored the air.

  Wishes, it realized, as their traces drifted over the trees and down into the dark. More wishes than it had ever sensed all at once.

  Even wishes hardly interested the thing at the bottom of the well. It was old enough that hunger and want had burned to ashes long ago. It had ignored the silly little wishes of the black-coated ones, meant to lure it out. It hadn’t survived for centuries by trusting every trap.

  But the power it felt now was different. This was something vast. Something strange. Something that had broken its rest, at the very least.

  Sleepily, slowly, it dragged itself through its tunnels, its vast body sliding up the shaft of the well and drifting out into the night.

  It ascended over the forest. Its body cast a shadow over the trees as it flew, like a cloud passing between the earth and the moon. The cool of the wind brushed its limbs.

  From high above, unseen, it gazed down at the mess of the Fox Den, the tiny people scurrying below. It veered away from the mess of ordinary wishes, following the tug of that stronger power back over the woods, toward a rambling brick house with a peaked tower.

  Other, smaller Eaters gathered here, whipping past the windows of that tower, where a reddish glow burned against the night. The thing from the bottom of the well glided lower. It sensed the power of the dead wishes collected inside, smoldering like a spark about to ignite a forest fire. A fire that would bring more feet trampling through its quiet woods, more noise and more trouble to the spot where it had slept in peaceful dimness for so long.

  That spark needed to be put out.

  The thing from the bottom of the well dove toward the tower. The other Eaters scattered around it like dry leaves. It grasped the peaked rooftop. With one clawed hand, it lifted off the metal roof and gazed down into the chamber below.