The Collectors #2 Page 6

  The familiar thrill of found treasure prickled through him. It was nothing compared to the thrill of padding down the stone staircase into the Collection, but it was something. Slipping the castle into his pocket made the emptiness inside him seem a tiny bit less empty too.

  As Van straightened up again, something else caught his eyes. Something lying in the grass a few yards down the slope. Something that glittered.

  Van crept toward it. The thing was a paler shade of green than the grass around it, but if it hadn’t been for that pearly glitter, he might not have spotted it at all. Van dropped to his knees in the grass.

  Before him lay a green jade dragon.

  He lifted it gently. The dragon had a curving tail and claws and long, feathery whiskers. It was surprisingly heavy for something so delicate.

  Van rocked back on his heels, holding the treasure. He might not be able to keep such a potentially valuable thing for himself, at least not without making sure that no one had reported it lost. But for now, he would keep it safe. Slipping the dragon into his other pocket, he rose to his feet.

  He’d already moved farther down the path than he’d realized. Behind him, the mansion had dwindled into the distance. Just ahead stood the grand stone arch carved with the words FOX DEN OPERA. And beyond that arch lay the road, narrow, shady, and deserted. Van had never seen a road so quiet that it didn’t even have lanes. When he kept still, listening, he couldn’t hear a single car. How far would he have to follow that road before he found another person?

  The thought made him shiver.

  For the third time, Van started to turn back. But also for the third time, something stopped him.

  Just beyond the Fox Den archway, at the side of the road, there stood a tree with a large knothole. And inside that knothole, something glimmered.

  Van hesitated.

  Taking just a few steps outside the grounds wasn’t really breaking his promise, was it? He wasn’t going to get lost, not with the road right there and Fox Den beside him. And he couldn’t leave the glimmering thing there without even knowing what it was.

  Van darted through the arch.

  The knothole was at Van’s eye level, too low for most people to see inside, deep and dark enough to hide its contents from anyone else. Cautiously, he reached inside, and drew out a heavy glass paperweight.

  The air in Van’s lungs turned to ice.

  For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He could only stare down at the glass circle in his hand, the whorls of color trapped inside it like frozen fireworks.

  He’d seen paperweights like this before.

  In Mr. Falborg’s collection.

  Van spun in a circle. The road was deserted. There was no one in the shadows, or hiding in the rustling woods nearby. Not as far as he could see.

  Could this be a coincidence? Was a glass paperweight just the sort of thing that ended up in a tree outside a fancy opera festival?

  Or was someone sending him a message?

  Van scanned the road once more. This time, amid the shadows flickering over the pavement, he spotted something.

  Something small and gleaming and familiar.

  A penny.

  Beyond that first penny, half hidden in the moss on the road’s shoulder, was another penny. And another.

  This wasn’t a coincidence.

  An icy, electric sensation, like scraping your fingernails across a frosty window, raced over Van’s skin.

  He raced down the shadowy road.

  The pennies were scattered widely but evenly along the shoulder. Van kept his head down, picking up each coin as he found it, his eyes combing the ground for more. He spotted other small things: mushrooms as pale as pearls, ruffled fungi on rotted trunks, the thick green lace of ferns. The stash of pennies in his pocket grew heavier. Van’s breaths came quicker. He was so focused on the small things below him, he didn’t notice the larger things appearing all around.

  He didn’t notice the high brick wall looming through the woods beside him. He didn’t notice the open gate in that wall, its tall iron bars topped with forbidding spikes. He didn’t notice the shady lawn beyond the gate, or the building waiting at the end of it.

  When the road beneath him forked, one branch leading onward into the woods, the other becoming an older, pebbled drive that wound through an open gate, Van barely paused. He had to follow the pennies. And they were leading him to the right, up that old, pebbled drive.

  And then, halfway up the drive, beside a knot of evergreen trees, the trail of pennies stopped.

  Van scanned the ground. He dropped to a crouch, examining the trees’ roots, even looking up into their branches. There were no more pennies to be found. But behind the trees, cupped in a patch of moss, was something else.

  A marble.

  Van picked it up with shaking fingers.

  It was made of clear glass, with a spiral of pale colors twisting inside. It made him think of a distant, mysterious planet.

  It made him think of Pebble.

  This wasn’t the marble he’d given her—that marble was in his own pocket at this very second. But it was similar enough to freeze him in place. It was similar enough to mean something.

  Behind the evergreens, a twig cracked. Footsteps shushed across the grass.

  Van didn’t hear this.

  But he did hear the voice that came a second later.

  “Well,” it said. “It took you long enough.”

  8

  Pebble

  Van whipped around.

  A girl stood on the path behind him.

  Instead of a too-big coat full of bulging pockets, she wore a pale green shirt and spotless jeans. There was no squirrel perched on her shoulder. But she had the same sloppy ponytail, and the same ears sticking out through her thick brown hair, and the eyes, just the color of mossy pennies, of somebody he used to know.

  Pebble held out one hand, palm up. “I’ll need that stuff back.”

  Joy and shock and confusion smashed together in Van’s chest. His frozen lungs tried to pull in a breath. At the same moment, several words tried to shove their way out of his mouth. Van had been on underground trains at rush hour, when masses of people tried to squeeze out the train doors while more masses of people tried to push their way in. This seemed very much like what was happening inside him right now.

  He made a glugging, choking sound, something like “Huhyuhhk?”

  “I’ll need that stuff back,” Pebble repeated.

  Van swallowed. “You . . .” His voice wobbled so hard that he had to start over. “What do you mean, it took me long enough?”

  “After I sent the postcard.” Pebble flung one arm toward the top of the sloping drive. “It took you forever to get here!”

  Van followed the line of Pebble’s arm.

  At the end of the drive, nestled against the forest, was a house. At least, Van assumed it was a house, although it looked more like a mishmash of a college and a castle. It was a rambling brick manor, with wings jutting out on each side, and tall, narrow windows, and a high tower at one end. It was a house Van had seen, sketched in ink, on the front of a battered postcard.

  “Wish you were here,” Van breathed. “You wrote that postcard? You—you wanted me to wish I was here?”

  “Of course,” said Pebble proudly. “I knew you’d figure it out! When I came up with the plan, I couldn’t believe how perfect it was.” Her words came faster, beginning to blur together. “Knew I couldn’t just wish you here, cause . . . that big . . . even noticed. Then . . . of a postcard, except the message couldn’t be suspicious . . . thought of the perfect thing, and wished for it to reach you without anybody else ever seeing it. And it worked!” Pebble threw out her hands, looking extremely pleased with herself.

  Van’s mind reeled.

  Pebble was here. She wasn’t tied up in a tower, or locked in a golden cage like a cockatoo. She had orchestrated all of this.

  “You used a wish?” Van asked shakily.

  “I normally wouldn
’t. You know that,” Pebble answered. “But I had to get a message to you. We barely have time to—”

  “But I only found the postcard because it was stuck in a hedge,” Van interrupted. “And I jumped through that hedge because a garbage truck almost squished me.”

  Pebble’s eyes widened. Her mouth closed.

  For a moment, the two of them stared at each other. Van couldn’t be sure what Pebble was thinking, but her face seemed to be wrestling with itself. Meanwhile, Van was realizing that the garbage truck might not have been an attempted murder at all. It might have been a wish gone wrong: less cruel, but just as dangerous. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

  “Well,” said Pebble at last. “It didn’t hit you. You’re here. You wouldn’t have found the card without the truck almost squishing you. So everything worked out. Come on,” she added, straightening her shoulders. “There’s a lot to tell you, and I have to put all of Uncle Ivor’s things where they belong before he comes back.”

  “You mean he’ll be here soon?” Van staggered backward. “But . . . even if the truck wasn’t his fault—he still tried to kill me!”

  Pebble stared at Van as though he’d started speaking in dolphin sounds. “What?”

  “He wished me in front of an underground train!” Van exclaimed.

  Pebble’s dubious expression flickered. “Well . . . that wish must have gone wrong too,” she said at last. “Uncle Ivor would never have tried to kill you. He just wanted you out of the way.”

  Nail’s warning—“She may have realigned with her uncle. She may be working with him against us”—flared through Van’s mind.

  Pebble held out a hand again. “You can keep the pennies, but I need everything else back. Hurry.”

  With jittery fingers, Van dug into his pockets for the castle, jade dragon, paperweight, and two marbles, and dropped them all into Pebble’s palm. Immediately, he wished he could snatch one marble back. He hadn’t meant to hand over both of them. He’d planned to keep the older one, the one he’d given to her months ago, until he knew whether this was the same Pebble he’d given it to in the first place. But it was too late now.

  Pebble’s eyes went straight to the second marble. Then they locked on Van’s. “I knew you’d find that too,” she said. “I knew you’d keep looking.” A little spark flared inside her eyes, like a match touching the wick of a birthday candle. “I knew you’d understand everything. You’re the only one who would.”

  Then, for the first time since he’d arrived, Pebble gave him a smile.

  It was like the flash of a camera, there and gone so fast that it made Van dizzy. The entire world seemed dimmer without it.

  Pebble whirled away. “Come on,” she called over her shoulder, her voice sharp and serious again. “We can talk inside!”

  Van hung back for as long as he could stand it. Then he took off after Pebble, running hard to catch up.

  The vast brick house seemed to grow as they approached. More and more wings slid into sight, more rooms and nooks and tall windows thrust out in all directions, as though the place were adding to itself before Van’s eyes. By the time they stepped through its massive front door, he felt disoriented and very small.

  They entered a long, high-ceilinged chamber. Three chandeliers dripping with crystals dangled from the rafters. Curio cabinets and gilt-framed oil paintings covered the wood-paneled walls. The space was so still and so solid, Van could hear the echo of his own footsteps.

  “Mr. Falborg owns this place?” Van whispered.

  “. . . Owns a bunch of houses. He collects them too.” Pebble turned to face Van. “You don’t have to be quiet. Uncle Ivor’s at an auction, and Hans and Gerda are running errands. Come this way.”

  She beckoned Van into the next chamber, a gigantic living room where dozens of Tiffany lamps tinged the air with light of every color. It was like being inside a kaleidoscope, Van thought. A kaleidoscope with velvet couches. And a giant fireplace. And a row of suits of armor.

  “Are those real?” he said, still whispering.

  “Well, they’re not real knights. But they’re real armor.” Pebble unlatched a glass case in one corner and placed the jade dragon in an empty spot. “And I told you, you don’t have to whisper.”

  But Van wasn’t sure he could stop. He wasn’t sure he could trust this place, or this clean, coatless Pebble, or the colliding feelings in his heart.

  Pebble led the way through a hall lined with model ships, and then dashed up a staircase and into another corridor, this one filled with dangling silk and paper kites.

  “Did Mr. Falborg wish all of this here from his house in the city?” Van asked, swatting a kite tail out of his face.

  “Some of it,” Pebble answered, opening a door to yet another staircase. “. . . collections all over the place. But he brings his most valuable things wherever he goes.”

  “Then—are the Wish Eaters here right now?” Van looked over his shoulder, as though he might find a few of the misty little beings floating in the air behind him.

  “They’re here,” said Pebble shortly. “And they’re secure.”

  “What about the ones . . .” Van remembered the silvery, long-toothed beasts lurking in Mr. Falborg’s city garden and couldn’t repress a shiver. “What about the ones that weren’t little anymore?”

  Pebble threw him a look. “It’s a big house.”

  She opened a thick wooden door.

  Van trailed her across the threshold. The room inside was spacious but cozy, lit by red glass lamps hanging from the rafters and clustered with small tables. Armchairs and cushioned seats and pillowed couches waited for someone to flop onto them. The walls were lined with shelves of boxes, flat and thick, small and huge, in every color of the rainbow. Van focused on one colorful row. Candy Land. Hungry Hungry Hippos. Ten editions of Clue. Twenty versions of Monopoly.

  “This is the game room,” Pebble explained, placing the miniature castle on a table where the rest of a chess set waited for it. “It’s probably my favorite room in this house. But it’s a lot less fun when—you know.” She looked away, mumbling the last few words. “What injures you.”

  When it’s just you.

  Van stepped toward an old-fashioned card catalog. He tugged open a drawer. It was filled with packs of red playing cards, all of them carefully boxed and filed away. The next drawer held green boxes. The third held pale blue.

  Something in his chest began to burn.

  He’d been so sure that Pebble needed him. That she was trapped somewhere, alone and miserable—as alone and miserable as she’d left him.

  But she’d been here all along. Here, in a big country mansion full of kites and suits of armor and more games than Van had ever seen in his life.

  Maybe it was the coziness of the room. Maybe it was the endless packs of cards. Maybe it was the Hungry Hungry Hippos that did it. Whatever the reason, the thing in Van’s chest suddenly went hiss—spark—FWOOSH.

  He wheeled on Pebble. “So this is where you’ve been?” he demanded. “Living in a giant mansion with every game in the world? This is what you’ve been doing while I thought you were being held prisoner?”

  Pebble’s mouth fell open.

  But Van rushed on before she could speak. “All this time, I’ve been thinking, Poor Pebble! Or should I call you Mabel?”

  Pebble’s mouth slammed shut again. “No,” she said through clenched teeth. “You shouldn’t.”

  “Why? Isn’t that your real name?” Van plowed on. “That’s what Mr. Falborg calls you. Have you just been pretending to be somebody else all along? Somebody named Pebble, who lived in a secret world underground? Is that why I shouldn’t call you Mabel, Mabel?”

  “No,” said Pebble tightly. “It’s because if you do, I’ll roll you up and stuff you inside that card catalog.”

  “Oh no. I’ll be stuck forever in a big fancy room full of games. How terrible.” Van wasn’t used to being sarcastic, but he realized that he kind of liked it. It was like putting
on a leather jacket that he knew wasn’t his style, but that made him feel like a much tougher guy. “Does your uncle have a room full of a million Legos too? Or maybe a special collection of every kind of candy that’s ever been made?”

  “No,” Pebble retorted. “He doesn’t collect anything edible. It degrades.” Her voice shrank to a murmur. “But Legos . . . yes.”

  “Of course he does.” Van hands balled into fists. “So while everybody was terrified for you, and the Collectors were asking me how to find you, and I was almost getting killed by trains and garbage trucks, you were just . . . here? Playing games? Making wishes?” Van shook his head so hard it made him dizzy. “Now you’re making excuses for your uncle, and—”

  “I’m not making excuses!” Pebble cut him off at last. “Reasons aren’t excuses!”

  “So what are the REASONS?” Van exploded. “Why? Why would you go with Mr. Falborg? Do you know how much I . . . how much Barnavelt has missed you?” Van’s heart slammed painfully against his ribs. “How could you just leave us?”

  The look on Pebble’s face abruptly changed. Its hard expression broke like a crust of ice on cold water, and Van saw something else, something softer and sadder, underneath. Before he could get a good look at it, Pebble lunged forward and wrapped him in a tight hug.

  “I missed you too,” she said, close to his ear.

  She broke away again, so suddenly that Van teetered. He plopped back into a red velvet armchair. It had all happened too fast for him to decide whether to hug her back. Pebble leaned low over Van’s seat.

  “I never said I was a prisoner,” she murmured. Her mossy eyes tunneled into his. “I’m a spy.”

  Van was too dizzy to manage more than “Huh?”

  Pebble locked her hands around the arms of Van’s chair and craned closer. “Why do you think I went with Uncle Ivor in the first place?”

  “Because . . .” Van thought back to that terrible night. He remembered the chaos he’d caused by releasing the Eaters. He remembered Pebble saving him, helping him to escape from Jack and the other furious guards. He remembered the sparkle of Mr. Falborg’s backyard fountain, the monstrous Wish Eaters lurking in the trees, the coin with Mr. Falborg’s wish arcing through the dim night air. He remembered Pebble stepping into Mr. Falborg’s open arms, leaving Van and Barnavelt behind. “Because he wished for you to join him. And deep down, you must have wanted to.”