The Collectors #2 Page 5

  “That’s right.” His mother’s smile dimmed slightly. “As kind as the Greys have been, and as much as I hate to leave them, it’s time for us to move on. This city is so big and so loud, and for someone small and special like you, caro mio . . .” She squeezed Van’s hand. “The country will be quieter. It will be safer.”

  Van scrambled to gather the spilled marbles. He wanted to argue, to explain that his special hearing had nothing to do with the danger he was in, but he could grasp only a few problems at a time. “So . . . we’re leaving the city? For the whole fall?”

  “For the fall. Or for good. We’ll have to see what comes next!” His mother swished one hand through the air. “The Fox Den provides a tutor for company members’ children, so you won’t have to start another new school. We’ll live there, in our very own quarters, with no busy streets or speeding garbage trucks for miles around! It will be perfect!”

  Van tried to breathe, but his lungs had forgotten how.

  The Collectors had told him to stay put. What if Pebble did try to reach him? What if Lemmy came back, lonely, hungry, and afraid? And what if Van wasn’t even there?

  “Mom . . . ,” he began.

  But the truth was one giant, complicated knot of impossible secrets. There was nothing he could even begin to unwind.

  “When would we leave?” he croaked.

  His mother’s eyes sparkled. “Tomorrow!”

  Now Van sat bolt upright. “Tomorrow! But—”

  “Don’t worry.” His mother coaxed him back with both hands. “This is going to be the easiest move we’ve ever made. We’ll leave our things where they are in our old apartment, pack up the stuff that we brought here, and set off! Later we’ll come back for anything we need. The city is just a train ride away. A long train ride. But it’s nothing compared to that trip from Paris to Tokyo to Sydney! Remember that?” His mother laughed. “We were so disoriented from the time changes and the jet lag, for three days we ate pizza for breakfast and had dinner at three a.m.!”

  Van remembered. But he was barely listening. His thoughts were climbing out the window, leaping into the yard, and running away through the city. He had to ask the Collectors what to do. He had to let them know that he didn’t want to leave. He couldn’t give them one more reason to think he was an enemy.

  His mother climbed off the bed and headed toward the closet. A limp broke the line of her usual graceful walk. Leaning on the cane, she threw open the closet door and revealed the row of Van’s carefully hung clothes.

  “I have to make a quick visit to the bank,” she said, turning back to him. “In the meantime, you should get up, get dressed, and start packing!” She stepped toward the door. “Quick, caro mio! Velocimente!”

  She swished happily into the hallway.

  A moment later, Van threw himself out of bed. He wriggled into some dark clothes and hurried out into the hall.

  His mother had vanished down the staircase. He could hear her speaking loudly into her cell phone, her voice ringing up from the foyer below. Van thought he caught the words “train” and “Leola” and “domani”—Italian for “tomorrow”—just before the heavy front door banged shut.

  Van flew down the stairs. He’d nearly reached the door when a voice from behind him called, “Van! Glad I caught you.”

  Van whirled around, pressing his back to the door.

  Mr. Grey was sauntering down the staircase, adjusting a button on the cuff of his spotless dress shirt.

  What had Mr. Grey meant by caught? Had Peter told on him for nearly sneaking out?

  “. . . Hear you’re leaving us,” said Mr. Grey. “I hope . . . sour guess . . . too unpleasant.”

  Van had always found Mr. Grey’s soft, accented voice hard to understand. Maybe it was because Mr. Grey always kept his face so stiff and his chin so high in the air. It often felt like Mr. Grey was speaking to some invisible person floating a few feet above Van’s head.

  “Yes,” said Van. “I guess.”

  “May I speak with you for a moment?” Mr. Grey gestured to the living room.

  When people like Mr. Grey asked a question like this, it wasn’t really a question at all. Heart spiraling down toward his stomach, Van followed Mr. Grey’s pointing arm.

  He sat down on the edge of the couch.

  Mr. Grey sat in an armchair opposite.

  “I’ll be sorry to see you go,” said Mr. Grey. “But once your mother makes up her mind, there is no changing it. As I’m sure you know.”

  Mr. Grey gave him something that Van guessed was supposed to be a conspiratorial smile. It looked more like he was suppressing a burp.

  “To be honest, I’m concerned,” Mr. Grey went on. “Your mother hasn’t entirely healed and traveling long distances with a child with special needs can’t be easy, even for someone in perfect health.”

  Van bit his lips.

  He could have shot back that without his sense of direction, his mother would probably still be wandering around the bridges of Venice. Without Van to remember their room numbers, his mother would have sashayed into a few hundred strangers’ hotel rooms instead of just a few dozen. Without Van keeping track of them, his mother would have lost more keys, more gloves, more sunglasses, more cash—more of everything that could slip out of a pocket without her noticing.

  Van always noticed. He and his mother took care of each other. But those stories belonged to them, and no one else.

  “She . . .” Mr. Grey was continuing more quickly, “. . . taken . . . her mind . . . this curse . . . there’s no dissuading her. She believes she must get you out of the city.” He looked at Van for a long, wordless moment.

  Van started to wonder if he’d missed a question. Maybe Mr. Grey’s British inflection had made it sound like a statement instead. He stared at Mr. Grey’s chin and waited.

  The quiet curdled around them.

  Van wished there was a creature of some kind in the room to break the tension. A lazy cat to pet. An unselfconscious dog rolling around on the carpet. Maybe even a distractible squirrel. But people like Mr. Grey never had pets.

  Van rubbed his palms over his own knees.

  If Mr. Grey would just hurry up, he might still have time to race to the Collection and back before his mother returned.

  But then Mr. Grey said something that made Van forget everything else.

  “She’s doing this for you, you know. Only for you.”

  Van looked straight at Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey looked back at him. “For me?”

  “This is not a move that will advance your mother’s singing career.” Mr. Grey’s voice was as polite and careful as always, but it seemed more direct, somehow—as though Mr. Grey was finally speaking not at Van, but to him. “For the first time, she’ll spend an entire season coaching other singers, not performing herself. It may not be easy for her to make a comeback afterward. It certainly won’t be easy for your mother to step out of the spotlight.” Mr. Grey paused for a moment. “But she believes that she must get you out of this city. That you’ll be safer up there in the woods. Maybe she’s right; maybe not. I do know that she is doing this solely for you. Not for herself.”

  Mr. Grey’s words sank straight into Van’s body. He could feel them settle on his heart, weighing it down like birds on a thin branch.

  His mother was doing this for him.

  Van had lost everyone else. Lemmy. Pebble. The Collectors. Mr. Falborg. None of them needed him anymore. And the problems that tangled between them weren’t something that he could fix on his own anyway.

  The only person left in the entire world who actually needed him was his mother.

  The one who had never left him.

  “What should I do?” Van whispered. “For her?”

  “Keep an eye on her, please.” Now Mr. Grey’s voice was gentle but clear. “I know how good at that you are. And if you need anything at all, do let me know.”

  Van nodded. Mr. Grey shook Van’s hand with a grip that was much smoother and cooler than Nail’s.

/>   Then Van got up from the couch, turned away from the front door, and dragged himself upstairs to pack.

  7

  In the Fox’s Den

  “Isn’t it lovely?”

  Van’s mother spun in a circle, taking in the rooms around them. Their suite was in a converted stable, with stone walls and polished hardwood floors and wide windows everywhere. From the front of the stables, forking paths led to the Fox Den mansion and trailed across the wooded grounds to the open-air stage. To the back of the stables, there was nothing but woods.

  His mother leaned on the sill of an open rear window and took a deep, piney breath. “Oh, Giovanni, we are going to be so happy here!”

  Van couldn’t find an answer in the emptiness inside him.

  Like a sleepwalker, he shuffled to his mother’s side. The woods beyond the window looked damp and dense and dark, even in the daylight.

  Van and his mother had lived in dozens of cities. They moved so much, his mother liked to tell people that they owned more suitcases than dishes—which was true. But Van had never lived in a place where you could look out the window and see nothing: not a single other building, not a single other window looking back at you.

  The emptiness that filled him pulled harder, as though he were being swallowed from the inside.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” sang his mother. “It’s like heaven.”

  Van just nodded.

  The Greys had escorted them to the train station early that morning. Van had stared out the car window on the ride there, looking for one last glimpse of a familiar dark coat, or the flash of a silvery, bushy-tailed squirrel. But he’d seen nothing.

  At the station, Mr. Grey and Van’s mother leaned close together, murmuring words that vanished into the din. Van and Peter stood side by side, watching them. The station was so echoingly loud, and Van’s eyes were focused so tightly on his mother’s lips, he didn’t notice Peter trying to get his attention until Peter shouted, “HEY!” and bumped his arm at the same time.

  “. . . Too bad din . . . put our plan into action,” Peter said, once Van turned to face him. “The metal bands and the burping and everything.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Van tried to smile, but his face might as well have turned to cement. “That would have been great.”

  His mother had taken hold of his arm, and the two of them had climbed aboard the waiting train. Through the windows, Van spotted Mr. Grey and Peter, still standing on the platform. Van caught Peter’s eye. He managed to lift one hand and flash the devil’s horns gesture, like he’d seen metal fans do. Peter grinned. A second later, the train had lurched forward, and the Greys slipped out of sight.

  Now, staring out the window into a forest that seemed to go on forever, Van almost wished he was staring out at Peter Grey instead.

  “I’m meeting with the company directors for a little chat,” said his mother, tugging Van’s attention back to the present. “Would you like to come along?”

  Being alone in this place sounded terrible. But being alone among a crowd of operatic strangers sounded worse.

  “I’ll stay here,” he said.

  His mother gave him an understanding smile. Van felt an ache within his ribs, knowing that she didn’t understand at all.

  “This will take a little getting used to, caro mio.” His mother wrapped an arm around him. “Give it time. I just know we’re going to love it here.”

  She planted a kiss on Van’s forehead before picking up her cane and sashaying toward the door.

  “Oh, Giovanni,” she added, turning back. “Stay indoors for now, until we’ve had the chance to explore the grounds. I’m sure we’re perfectly safe, but in the woods . . . you never know.” She blew another kiss. “À bientôt!”

  The door thumped shut behind her.

  For the space of a few breaths, Van stood perfectly still. The room stood still around him. There were no rumbles vibrating through the floor, because there were no apartments or hotel rooms below it. There were no tremors of traffic buzzing through the walls, because there was no traffic. There wasn’t even a street. There was only the dark mass of the woods, softly swaying beyond the windows.

  Van tugged the window shut.

  The room grew even stiller.

  He shuffled into his new bedroom. The bare walls and empty shelves gaped at him. The cover on the bed looked stiff and crackly, and Van could already tell that it wouldn’t keep him warm. Turning to his pile of luggage, he unzipped the suitcase that held his miniature stage and collection box.

  The train had jostled his treasures around, but nothing seemed to be broken. Van dug past model cars and plastic trees, past the wooden pawn that he’d once used as a stand-in for Pebble, past the gray china squirrel with its curling tail.

  SuperVan had sunk all the way to a bottom corner. Van pulled the figurine into the light. Somehow, SuperVan looked smaller today. His gleaming black boots were duller. His little cape hung askew.

  Van set SuperVan in the center of the bare black stage.

  He stared at the figurine for a long time, waiting. But he couldn’t think of a single thing for SuperVan to say or do.

  At last he gave the figurine a little nudge. It toppled onto the stage floor. Its blank plastic eyes stared at the ceiling.

  Van left it lying there.

  With a deep breath, he hauled himself to his feet. As he turned back toward his pile of luggage, something outside the window glimmered.

  Van whipped around.

  At the edge of the forest, among the shadows and shifting leaves, there was a brief flash of silver. Van sucked in a breath. Had Barnavelt followed him all the way here? Were the Collectors still watching him, keeping him safe? Was he still—almost—one of them?

  But as Van stood there, watching, not even letting his eyes blink, the edge of the forest went still. The leaves stopped their shifting. The shadows solidified.

  There were no more flashes of silver. There were no distractible squirrels or watchful dark-coated figures staring back at him. What he’d seen might have been the silvery underside of a leaf—or maybe it had been nothing at all.

  He waited for another minute, just in case.

  Nothing.

  When Van finally turned away from the window for good, he could still feel the feathery touch of eyes following him. But he knew this was only wishful thinking.

  The next morning, after a night of not-quite-warm-enough sleep, Van accompanied his mother to the dining hall for breakfast.

  The Fox Den mansion was a long, stately building made of gray stone, huge enough to hold one full-sized theater, two rehearsal halls, dozens of bedrooms for the singers and orchestra, and a dining hall as big and fancy as any restaurant.

  It was also echoingly loud. Dozens of musicians clustered around the tables, enjoying the breakfast buffet. While his mother laughed with a group of singers, Van hid his face in a bowl of cereal, letting their voices pummel him like sleet.

  “Giovanni?” His mother’s voice broke through the storm. “I lead my first master class in half an hour, and you’ll be on your own for the day. There’s a library in the mansion that you are welcome to use, and a game room with a pool table and puzzles. And of course you can go back to our suite. You know the way.”

  Van nodded, half listening. His mother put a hand on his arm.

  “Don’t go swimming without me,” his mother continued. “There’s no lifeguard on duty. And, Giovanni, do not leave the grounds. One of the singers was just telling me about a little boy who got lost in the woods a few weeks ago and wasn’t found for two days.”

  The grip on his arm tightened.

  Van looked at his mother’s face. She was gazing down, her bright smile eaten away to something thin and fragile, like a bit of toast crust on a plate.

  “I’ll be safe, Mom,” he promised.

  With a little start, his mother straightened. Her dazzling smile flashed back.

  “Of course you will. There’s so much to do right here at Fox Den, I’m sure you
wouldn’t want to leave anyway!” She placed a lily-scented kiss on his forehead. “See you this evening, caro mio.”

  Then she whisked away to a day of rehearsals and classes, and Van slunk out of the noisy dining room into a day that held nothing at all.

  He tiptoed along the grand hallway. According to the brass plaques hung all around, the Fox Den had been the country home of a nineteenth-century robber baron. A portrait of the baron himself hung in the mansion’s entry hall. Van had expected an eye patch or a billowing red scarf, but the robber baron was just a tubby old man with a mustache that looped all the way up over his ears. More brass plaques on the wall pointed the way to the library and the game room. Van followed their arrows.

  The library turned out to be a square, shelf-lined room full of books that had obviously been bought to match the wallpaper instead of to be read. The game room, a bit farther down the hall, was crowded with grown-ups playing pool, using the computers, and ignoring the blaring TV.

  Van backed away from the noise. He retraced his steps along the hall, ducked past the robber baron’s mustache in the entryway, and slipped out the heavy front doors.

  The morning outside was bright and quiet. Late-summer flowers bloomed in the gardens. Darting birds filled the sky like tossed confetti, and the woods all around rippled gently with the breeze. It should have been pretty. But the emptiness inside Van changed it, making the birds look lost and small, the sky too wide, and the forest like a dark sea, marooning him.

  Van pulled his eyes to the ground. He took a breath. He stepped onto the forking path.

  And that was when he saw it.

  A few steps to his right, something pale thrust up from the mulch beneath a blooming rosebush.

  Van hesitated. He’d been heading left, toward their suite, not to the right. But his feet had already swiveled him around. In six steps, they had carried him straight to the rosebush. Van crouched beside it.

  Buried in the mulch was a miniature castle.

  Van pried it out of the dirt. The castle was made of pale stone, with parapets and turrets and minuscule oval windows. From its size, it might have come from an aquarium for teeny, regal fish.