The Collectors #2 Read online

  Across the room, the curtains covering the window gave one soft, slow ripple.

  Van’s heart hopped into his throat. He inched toward the window. Part of him wanted to turn and run away, preferably to a room with no windows and plenty of bright lights. But another, more stubborn part had to know what waited behind those curtains.

  And the voices wrapped around him like fine black threads, tugging him closer. “Van. Van. VAN.”

  He yanked the curtains aside.

  Darkness.

  That was all.

  It filled the window from corner to corner, glossy and thick as ink.

  At once, the voices went silent. Van leaned closer to the window, wondering when the sky had turned so black that it hid every hint of moon and clouds.

  The darkness in the window seemed to ripple. Shifting air brushed his face.

  That was when Van realized that the window was wide open. There wasn’t even a pane of glass between him and the darkness.

  The solid, moving darkness.

  Before Van could back away, the darkness exploded.

  Shreds of flying shadow swarmed around him. Small, needle-sharp claws snatched at his clothes. Beaks pinched the tufts of his hair. Black wings beat around his face, blurring his vision. The air whirled with birds, too many of them too count, far too many to swat away. The birds grabbed him, beaks and talons clutching his pajamas and lifting him straight up into the air. Van’s feet left the floor. A second later, too surprised even to scream, he sailed through the open window, the flock of blackbirds swirling around him.

  The birds carried him over the Greys’ backyard. Through the blur of flickering wings, Van caught the flash of trees, a low brick wall, and then his own feet, dangling over an alley below.

  As quickly as they’d snatched him up, the birds let go.

  Now Van let out a shriek.

  It was a short one.

  Just a few feet below—about the distance from the top of a bed to the floor—the padded seat of a small, bicycle-drawn carriage waited to catch him. Van thudded into it. He sat there, gasping, too stunned to move.

  Two bicycles were attached to the carriage. Each one was mounted by a man in a long dark coat. The man on the left bicycle turned around. His shoulders were broad. His face was hard. His sharp black eyes met Van’s.

  The man named Jack gave the tiniest of smiles. Aloud, he said, “It takes a few tricks to get hold of you, Van Markson.”

  Before Van could squeak out an answer, the carriage took off.

  5

  The Collection

  The bicycle-drawn carriage sped through the city. Van rocked in its seat, pushed backward by surprise and velocity. Ahead of him, Jack and his fellow rider pedaled hard, their black coats billowing, the flock of birds wheeling around them. Jack’s long, dark braid whipped in the wind.

  In the short time they’d known each other, Jack had threatened Van, kidnapped him, and chased him off the side of a building—all to protect the Collection, of course. What was Jack going to do to him now? Without Pebble here to speak up for him, had Van become an outsider again? Had he turned from an ally to an enemy?

  Van craned to look over the side of the carriage. It was moving so fast, the pavement seemed to melt into gray liquid below its wheels. If he tried to dive out now, it would hurt.

  A lot.

  Van slid back in the seat, digging his fingernails into his palms.

  Through alleyways and backstreets they raced, keeping to the darkest spots. The bicycles made a sharp right at the end of one alley, and the carriage tilted dangerously, one black-spoked wheel rising off the pavement before crashing back down. Van let out a squeak. The birds cawed.

  One more turn, and the carriage rumbled into a familiar street. Van spotted the flash of the exotic pet shop’s neon signs and caught the whiff of sweet dough wafting from the bakery, just before the carriage surged to a stop.

  Jack swung down from his bicycle. He hoisted Van from his seat and set him on the empty sidewalk. The other rider took off. In seconds, the carriage had rounded a corner and disappeared. The flock of black birds scattered into the shadows—all except one: a huge, glossy raven, who fluttered down to perch on Jack’s shoulder.

  Van and Jack—and the raven—were left alone.

  “Are you . . . are you kidnapping me?” Van managed. “Again?”

  Jack’s stony face was impossible to read. “. . . Simply cutting you,” he answered.

  “Cutting me?” Van squeaked.

  “Escorting you,” Jack repeated, more clearly. With a slightly sarcastic bow, he gestured to the building beside them.

  Wedged between the pet shop and the bakery was a small, drab office building—the kind of place that was so uninteresting it practically becomes invisible. Worn wooden letters beside its door spelled out CITY COLLECTION AGENCY.

  Jack opened its dingy front door. “Inside!” shrieked the raven on his shoulder.

  Van stumbled through the doorway.

  “But—what’s going on?” he asked as Jack stepped past him in the office’s empty blackness. “Why did you come for me now? Is this about Pebble? Is there news about her and Mr. Falborg? Or is this about that truck that almost hit me today? Do you know if—”

  “Hold on,” Jack interrupted.

  “Hold on!” echoed the raven.

  “. . . Instructed to bring you here,” said Jack, leading the way around a partition into an even more lightless corner. “. . . Have to wait to find out why.”

  He flung open a hidden door.

  Beyond it, a steep stone staircase angled downward.

  A burst of familiar scents whirled up to Van’s nose. Dust. Candle smoke. Old paper. From somewhere far below came a faint green-gold light, its glow tinging the edges of the darkness.

  Jack waited until Van had stepped through the doorway. Then he shut the door soundly behind them both.

  They started down the long, steep staircase. The glow brightened as they descended, washing from their feet to their knees and up to their chins, until at last they stepped out onto a wide stone floor and the green-gold light enfolded them.

  Van caught his breath.

  The Collection’s entry chamber was even larger than he remembered. Its arching ceiling, made of greenish stone, seemed to narrow into the distance. Rows of dangling stained-glass lamps cast pools of light onto a floor as broad and gleaming as a lake. And across the expanse of that floor, Van could see the huge, open pit, surrounded by a winding stone staircase, that led down and down and down, into the subterranean dark.

  The whirl of excitement and fear he’d felt on seeing this place for the very first time rushed through Van’s chest, as strong as ever. But there was no time to feel it. Jack was prodding him across the floor, toward the top of that long, twisting staircase.

  Van started downward. Jack and his raven marched behind.

  They neared the first landing, where the words THE ATLAS were carved above a tall stone arch. Through the archway, Van glimpsed a cavernous room lit by hanging glass lamps, where people in dark coats gathered around long tables, murmuring together. Maps charting every location in the city, from public fountains to studio apartments, papered the walls. Bobbing pigeons and scurrying rats crisscrossed the floor.

  Jack nudged him onward, down the stairs.

  The air grew colder and damper. It seeped through Van’s pajamas like water in an icy cave.

  Two flights farther down, they passed another stone arch, this one carved with the words THE CALENDAR. Beyond the arch was another sprawling chamber, this one filled with bookshelves bearing row after row of identical black books. Van knew that each book was crammed with the names, addresses, and birth dates of every person in the city. Collectors needed to know who would be blowing out birthday candles, and where and when.

  Gray-haired Grommet, the head of the Calendar, sat at his long desk, gathering information from the stream of dark-coated Collectors that hurried in and out of the room. Several of them brushed straight
past Van on their way back onto the staircase. Only a few seemed to notice him at all. Those that did gave him small, startled looks. One woman with a rat peeking out of her coat pocket seemed to wink at Van as she passed, but she whisked onward so fast that he couldn’t be sure.

  “Keep moving.” Jack put a forceful hand on Van’s shoulder. “. . . Do than keep track of you.”

  “Of you!” taunted the raven.

  They climbed downward.

  Soon the air was as cold as snow. Darkness thickened before Van’s eyes. The echoes of this cavernous space were beginning to play tricks on his ears, making every shuffling footstep sound like the beating of a huge wing, every distant voice seem to be coming from just over his shoulder. He gripped the banister tightly. His heart thudded harder.

  They crossed another landing, turned down another steep stone flight, and reached an expanse of flat stone floor. Jack stopped him with a firm hand. Beyond this landing, the staircase twisted onward, reaching down through the chilly blackness until it met the depths of the Hold.

  Just the name—the Hold—made Van shiver. He held his breath, straining to hear, but tonight, no sounds came from below. None that he could catch. Still, the roars and howls of the Creatures trapped there rang so clearly in his memory that they made his head ache.

  Van turned his back on the plunging darkness.

  Before him, in the largest arch yet, were carved two words: THE COLLECTION.

  Jack shoved open the archway’s massive wooden doors. A beam of silvery blue, like the light that glowed from an aquarium in a dark room, washed out onto the landing.

  Van took a deep breath. He could feel the silvery blue of the air glittering down into his lungs. As Jack held the doors, Van crept forward, into the light.

  He froze just beyond the threshold. Van had seen this chamber many times before. But the place was so huge, so strange, so impossible, that each glimpse of it felt like the very first one.

  Van gazed around, barely breathing. A stone floor stretched away from his feet. Walls so tall that they seemed to lean inward stretched upward to a stained-glass ceiling. Spiraling iron staircases and walkways and ladders crisscrossed the chamber like thick spider-webs. In one distant corner, a mountain of coins glimmered softly. Another corner held a hill of tiny snapped bones. Dark-coated Collectors and Creatures hurried everywhere. Around them all, row upon row of shelves, more than Van could possibly count, rose toward the ceiling. Filling those endless shelves, their green and blue and indigo glass glimmering, were bottles.

  And sealed in each of those bottles was a wish.

  A wish made on a coin or a birthday candle. A wish made on a snapped wishbone or a falling star. A wish that had been gathered up by the dark-coated Collectors and their army of Creatures and sealed away before it could cause trouble in the world above.

  When the Collectors had first explained the danger of wishing, Van hadn’t quite believed them. What could be so bad about wishes? But after he’d seen for himself the volatile way that even the most harmless wishes could come true—like, for example, when your wish to stay in the city resulted in your mother being smashed by a rushing taxicab—Van had had to admit that the Collectors were right. About wishes, at least.

  Wishes were powerful. Wishes were unpredictable. Wishes were like the fuse of a firework: a small, bright spark trailing up to a beautiful combustion.

  Which could rain down from the sky and set your house on fire.

  Van was still gazing up at the bottles, as still as ice, when something pounced onto his shoulder.

  “Van. Van Van Van!”

  Van turned his head to find himself nose to nose with a quivering gray squirrel.

  “Barnavelt!” he gasped. “You’re all right!”

  “And you’re all right!” the squirrel squeaked back. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” said Van. “Thanks to you. You got there just in time!”

  The squirrel blinked. “Got where?”

  “To the Greys’ house. To warn me.”

  “The gray house?” The squirrel blinked again. “There are a lot of gray houses out there. Gray, and white, and brown, and . . . Hey.” Barnavelt sat up straighter. “I smell peanuts. Did you just eat peanuts?”

  “No,” said Van. “I—”

  “Are you sure? What about peanut butter? Or peanut brittle? Or peanut—”

  “You two will have to finish this fascinating conversation later,” Jack interrupted. He shoved Van and his furry passenger forward. “. . . waiting for you.”

  With Jack’s hand on his back, Van staggered across the massive floor. Flocks of pigeons scuttered out of his path. Long-coated Collectors rushed past him, labeling bottles, depositing wishes on the shelves, whisking quickly away again. As he moved through the room, Van spied the traces of recent damage: a bent iron staircase here, a broken railing there, the emptiness of several scorched, bare shelves.

  He hadn’t stepped inside this chamber since the night when his—unintentional—actions had nearly destroyed it. The night when Pebble disappeared. Anxiety writhed in his stomach.

  Jack steered him toward the rear wall, where three Collectors were gathered in a tight huddle.

  The woman with short, sleek hair and a pigeon on her shoulder was Sesame, head of the Atlas. The bearded, bespectacled little man beside her was Kernel, head of the Collection. And looming over both of them, his back to Van, was a tall, thin man with wiry gray hair.

  The man turned at their approach.

  High cheekbones. Steely gray eyes. Two black rats perched like epaulets on his shoulders.

  Nail.

  If the Collectors had a leader—and Van was pretty sure they did—it was Nail.

  The Collectors’ faces weren’t angry. But they weren’t friendly either. Van’s heart plummeted like a sack down a garbage chute. Since early summer, Van had started to think of himself as almost a Collector. He could see wishes. He could hear the Creatures. He could do things ordinary people couldn’t do. It had made him feel special—special in an included way instead of an excluded one. But there was nothing in the faces of these Collectors that said “welcome back.”

  So . . . why had they brought him here?

  “Van Markson.” Nail’s voice snipped through the background noise like a pair of shears. The others went quiet.

  Nail reached down and took Van’s trembling hand. Van nearly jumped backward.

  Nail’s grip was warm. He bent lower, his face wearing something that wasn’t quite a smile, but that wasn’t anything else either. “We are glad you are well.”

  “I . . .” Van’s tongue was dry as paper. “You too.”

  Sesame and Kernel shifted closer, staring down at Van with sharp eyes. Van couldn’t meet their gazes. He felt like a moth on the end of a pin.

  “Isn’t this nice?” gushed the squirrel on Van’s shoulder. “Everybody’s back together again! Well, everybody except—” He halted. “Never mind. I mean, she’s not who I meant. I just meant . . .” The squirrel’s nose twitched. His gaze flashed away. “Does anybody else smell peanuts?”

  “Let’s not waste time.” Nail straightened again, his black coat sweeping the floor around him like a pool of shadows. “Van Markson. We believe that Pebble may have tried to contact you.”

  Van jerked hard enough that Barnavelt almost slipped off his shoulder.

  Just hearing her name aloud felt like a punch.

  Pebble.

  The girl with the sloppy ponytail and the too-big coat and the squirrel named Barnavelt on her shoulder. The girl he’d spotted scooping pennies out of a scummy park fountain. The girl he’d seen when no one else even bothered to look.

  His friend.

  His friend who was gone.

  Everyone was waiting for him to speak. Van closed his fist around the marble in his pocket.

  “I haven’t heard from Pebble since she left with—with Mr. Falborg.” He pushed out the words. “I haven’t heard anything at all.”

  Nail’s
eyes narrowed. “Are you certain?”

  Van swallowed. He glanced at Sesame and Kernel and Jack. Their faces were as still as glass.

  A cold, hollow spot tunneled through Van’s chest.

  “I’m certain,” he answered, his voice barely a whisper. “I’ve been waiting. I’ve been watching. Nothing.”

  “Peanuts,” whispered Barnavelt.

  No one else spoke.

  Van tightened his grip on the marble. “What . . . what makes you think she tried to contact me?”

  “Our members have seen wish activity near your current residence,” Kernel explained, patting his hands together in a way that had always reminded Van of a penguin’s flippers. “Aftereffects. Reality-altering mist.”

  “Oh.” Van shook his head. “That wasn’t because of Pebble. I’m pretty sure Mr. Falborg made a wish to kill me with a garbage truck.” A leftover shiver twitched down Van’s arms. “He must still be trying to get rid of me.”

  Sesame folded her arms, tugging Van’s attention upward. “You don’t need to worry about your safety,” she said. “There has been a rotating guard of Collectors and Creatures watching you ever since Falborg took flight.”

  “What? You . . . there has?” Van blinked up at the stern faces of the Collectors. Only Sesame’s pigeon blinked back.

  Van wasn’t used to overlooking things. The thought that he had missed something so huge made him feel queasy—as though a floor he’d thought was solid had started to crumble under his feet. The Collectors were spying on him. That wasn’t something you did to an ally. It was what you did to an enemy.

  “So, you’ve been watching me every second . . . ,” he ventured, “and you almost let me get squished by a garbage truck?”

  “Well.” Nail aimed a glance at Barnavelt. “That close call was the fault of one particular individual. Someone who was distracted by the smell of snack foods in your neighbors’ garbage can.”

  Van turned back to Barnavelt. The squirrel was staring mistily into the distance, his little nose sniffing at the air. “Honey roasted,” he whispered.

  Behind Van, Jack gave a snort.

  “If Pebble needs help . . .” Van pushed himself onward. “Why wouldn’t she just contact you?”