The Strangers Read online

  “And these are the McMartin familiars, of course,” the man went on, smiling down at the glaring trio.

  “We are no longer in the McMartins’ service,” said Horatio stiffly.

  “No, of course not.” The bearded man wheeled back to Olive. “And Olive Dunwoody—the ordinary little girl who is brave enough to live in a witches’ den.”

  Olive wasn’t sure that she liked this description of herself. The more she thought about it, the less sure she was.

  “And who are you?” she asked as the man shook her hand for the third time, and the sleeve encasing his arm began to look dangerously strained.

  “Do pardon my rudeness. I am Byron Widdecombe, expert on magical history, semi-expert on magical genealogy—dark magicians in particular.”

  Rutherford looked as though someone had lit a wick inside his head.

  “The Byron Widdecombe?” he repeated, eyes wide. “Author of A Dauntingly Dry Description of the Medieval Magician’s Herbarium?”

  “The very same.” The bearded man gave Rutherford a bow, and Olive was sure she could hear threads popping.

  “I’ve been studying that book!” said Rutherford, beginning to jiggle from foot to foot. “I would like to discuss the various purposes you theorize that Witchnail might serve to—”

  “Rutherford, wait,” said Olive, grabbing him by the tweed sleeve. “Mr. Widdecombe, you said you’re an expert on dark magicians? So you’re a—”

  “Oh, dear me, no,” the man interrupted. He waved his meaty hands. “I am a scholar of dark craft, not a practitioner. My own magic is of the standard academic variety.”

  “Standard academic variety” didn’t sound too threatening to Olive, whatever it meant. Still, she gave Rutherford a pointed look.

  Rutherford blinked back at her. “He’s telling the truth, Olive.”

  “Our only intention is to help you, Olive,” said Delora, who had settled herself beside the funny-looking cards. Her silvery eyes fixed on Olive’s face—or, rather, just above Olive’s face, as though she were looking at something much more interesting that was floating over Olive’s head.

  Olive glanced up at the empty air.

  “That is why my husband and I are here: To help you.” Delora raised her graceful hands, gesturing around the room. Her eyes coasted over Walter, who was seated awkwardly on the edge of the table. “And Walter too, of course,” she added, as an afterthought. “Walter is not a naturally talented witch, but he can at least keep watch over you and your home.” Her eyes flicked up to the spot above Olive’s head again, and Olive fought the urge to reach up and swat at the air. “I remain patient with him, in hopes that one day he will do something right.”

  Olive glanced at Walter. He perched on the very edge of the table, gazing straight down, with his bony legs reaching all the way to the floor. His narrow shoulders squirmed. His Adam’s apple bobbed. He looked like a long-legged water bird trying to swallow a too-large fish.

  Olive felt a sudden impulse to pat him on the head.

  “If you would not object, Olive,” the bearded man took over, “perhaps we could visit the house tomorrow. It might prove very helpful to our cause. Even as a historical artifact, it is of great scholarly interest.”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know,” said Olive. “My parents don’t know the truth about the McMartins, and I’m not sure I should . . .”

  “Say no more.” The man waved his hands. “We shall wait for a more convenient time.”

  “When it is meant to happen, it will happen,” Delora added, as though she were announcing a wise and important truth.

  “Mr. Widdecombe,” said Rutherford, who had been jiggling impatiently all this time.

  “It’s Doctor Widdecombe, actually,” said Doctor Widdecombe.

  “Doctor Widdecombe, may I ask what you are working on at the moment?”

  “Besides keeping watch for the McMartins and protecting their familial home—my own spells are currently guarding the house from evil intentions, as it happens—and caring for my beloved Delora, whose gift makes her exceedingly sensitive to troubles of all kinds . . .” He turned toward Delora, who placed one hand over her forehead and closed her eyes. “. . . I am preparing a study on the speed at which various herbal extractions lose their potency.”

  “Fascinating,” said Rutherford.

  It sounded anything but fascinating to Olive. As Rutherford and Doctor Widdecombe discussed the row of glass bottles, and Delora rearranged her cards, and Walter rocked uneasily back and forth on the table, Olive let her eyes wander around the rest of the room. On the shelves that lined one wall, knickknacks that must have belonged to Lucinda Nivens—or to Mary and Harold Nivens before her—had been pushed aside to make room for other, stranger objects. China cups and porcelain bud vases had been wedged into the corners, giving way to heavy leather books and bumpy brass binoculars and stoppered bottles. Also wedged into a corner, his arms folded, glowering out at all of them, was Morton. He had pushed his robes back at last, revealing his round and furious face.

  Olive edged toward him. “Morton?” she asked, under her breath. “What’s wrong?”

  Morton’s lips pressed each other into a flat, angry line. “They’re in my house,” he whispered.

  “Well—sort of,” Olive whispered back. “It used to be yours, and then it was Lucinda’s for a while, and now it’s sort of . . . no one’s.”

  “It’s mine,” said Morton. “It’s ours. It belongs to me and my parents.” His voice grew louder with each word. “And we’re going to need it back.”

  Rutherford and Doctor Widdecombe stopped speaking. Delora and Walter rose to their feet.

  “These people are just using the house for a little while, Morton,” said Olive, feeling a bit embarrassed. “They’re helping to keep us safe.”

  “But I didn’t say they could stay here. My mama and papa didn’t say they could stay here, and move their stuff, and change everything, and push all the furniture around. And we’re going to need this table, when—” Morton broke off.

  When what? Olive wondered, watching him. Why would Morton and his long-lost, no-longer-living parents need a dining room table, here, in the real world?

  Morton seemed to be wondering the same thing. The anger on his face trickled away like melting frost. He stared down at the rug.

  Leopold leaned supportively against Morton’s knees.

  “Do you want to go home, Morton?” Olive asked, after one long, quiet moment. “To Elsewhere, I mean?”

  Morton nodded. Still looking at the floor, he pulled his hood back over his face.

  “I suppose Rutherford ought to be heading home as well,” said Doctor Widdecombe, trying to sound jovial. “Mrs. Dewey will worry if he’s too late. Tomorrow is Sunday, which I assume means no school for any of you. If you are free to visit us, Olive, please do. For now, a good Hallows’ Eve to you all.”

  Walter guided them to the back door. He opened it wordlessly, waiting for them to step out. Olive glanced up into his face as she stepped over the threshold, but she couldn’t tell whether the expression on it was anger, or humiliation, or something else entirely. The lock clicked behind them.

  “It looks like your parents are waiting for you,” said Rutherford, nodding toward the old stone house. Lights glowed from its downstairs windows, making the muffled darkness of the Nivens house seem even darker and lonelier by comparison. Rutherford gave them all a courtly bow. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Featherbird!” Harvey called after him, in Quasimodo’s mumbly voice.

  “Were you talking about Doctor Widdecombe and Delora when you said we wouldn’t have to fight alone?” Olive asked Horatio as she followed his bushy tail through the lilac hedge. “Did you know they were here all along?”

  “I was aware of their presence,” Horatio answered, “and of their protective spells enclosing the house, o
f course. But secrecy was required.”

  “Hmmph,” said Morton.

  “How did you know?” Olive asked, pushing the lilac branches apart for Morton to wriggle through. “How come you can sense things that I don’t even notice?”

  Horatio paused to watch Olive untangle Morton’s cuff from a knot of brittle twigs. “As I’ve told you, Olive, we cats can see things that others cannot.”

  Morton straightened up on the other side of the hedge. “Then why can’t you see where Mama and Papa are?” he demanded.

  “I’m afraid we cannot do everything,” Horatio huffed. “We can only speak, and open doors, and move objects, and sense the presence of magic.” He marched toward the front of the old stone house, throwing the words back over his shoulder. “Perhaps you would be more impressed if we juggled live mice while balancing teacups on our heads.”

  “Who hiccups under beds?” slurred Harvey, dragging his leg through the grass.

  “Morton didn’t mean that as an insult, Horatio,” said Olive.

  “Yes, I did!” said Morton.

  “He is only a little boy,” Leopold put in.

  Morton stomped one foot. “I am not a little boy!”

  “Well—” Olive began.

  “I’m not!” Morton interrupted. “I may look like I’m nine years old, but I’ve been alive much longer than you!”

  “Not longer than I,” Harvey mumbled from the corner of his mouth. “I looked down from the rooftops of the great cathedral of Notre Dame to see the city of Paris built, stone by stone, and to watch—”

  “He wasn’t talking to you, you ninny,” said Horatio. “Why don’t you pretend to be deaf again?”

  By the time they reached the front porch steps, everyone was arguing.

  No one noticed that the jack-o’-lanterns had toppled over and rolled away beneath the creaking swing. No one noticed that although lights still burned behind the closed doors of the library and the parlor, all the entrance lights had been turned off, leaving the hallway in total darkness. Even when Olive opened the front door and led the group—now arguing in whispers—inside, no one noticed that the rug had been rumpled and shoved aside, or that the coat tree had fallen down, leaving a dent in the polished hardwood floor.

  Not until Olive switched on the lights, illuminating trails of spilled candy and walls scuffed with the marks of kicking feet and clawing nails, did anyone notice that something in the old stone house had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

  “Mom?” Olive called, venturing into the hallway. “Dad?”

  Her toes hit something that glinted on the floorboards. Olive glanced down. It was a pair of glasses with thick lenses and bent wire frames. Her father’s glasses. The glasses he never went anywhere without.

  “Mom? Dad?” Olive shouted—though she already knew that there would be no answer.

  8

  FOR OLIVE, TIME stopped at that moment. Perhaps it went on for other people, whose watches kept ticking and whose hearts kept beating, but for Olive, the passing minutes fell away like links cut out of a chain. She couldn’t feel, or see, or remember a thing until suddenly the gears seemed to catch again, and Mrs. Dewey was squeezing her against one silk-robed shoulder, and she was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, with Morton two steps above her, and a pair of wire wings in her lap.

  Olive glanced up. Curlers were clustered around Mrs. Dewey’s head like a halo of pink mushrooms. Her robe smelled of lavender and several stranger spices, and her face was worried and warm.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to drink this, Olive?” she asked, holding up a small white bottle. “It will help you to feel less upset.”

  But Olive didn’t want to feel less upset. An awful thing had just happened, and she wanted to feel every last bit of its awfulness. Anything else would be pretend.

  “No,” she said into Mrs. Dewey’s squishy shoulder. “No, thank you.”

  “The cats are searching the house,” said Rutherford. His voice sounded strangely slow to Olive, and his wiry body was unusually still. He stood beside the newel post, dressed in his blue dragon pajamas. “If there are any other clues to be found, I am certain that they will find them.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Olive croaked. The lump in her throat seemed to grow larger each time she swallowed, and it hurt to squeeze the words out. “We already know who took my parents. And we know it’s my fault.”

  For once, Rutherford said nothing. For the space of several seconds, there were only the sounds of Olive sniffling into Mrs. Dewey’s soggy shoulder, and the bare trees tapping against the walls outside, stirred by gusts of autumn wind.

  The quiet was smashed by a sudden knock at the front door. Rutherford hurried to open it. With a burst of chilly air, Doctor Widdecombe, Delora, and Walter blew through the doorway of the old stone house.

  Doctor Widdecombe planted himself in the middle of the entryway, letting the others squeeze in behind him. “Oh my,” he said. “Oh my, my, my.” From her damp spot on Mrs. Dewey’s shoulder, Olive watched his eyes take in the long, dim hallway, the library’s carved double doors, the scratched wooden paneling, and the glimmering paintings on each wall. “Oh my, my, my,” he breathed.

  Delora swayed behind him, wrapped up in a huge black shawl like a cross between a mummy and a vampire. “Yes,” she whispered, closing her silvery eyes. “There is danger here. Powerful, deep-rooted darkness.” Her eyelids fluttered open. “You poor child,” she murmured, reaching out to stroke Olive’s hair.

  Olive leaned closer to Mrs. Dewey.

  Walter towered behind his aunt and uncle. His mussed-up hair had been slicked tight to his skull, making his smallish head look like a pea on a pedestal. “What should we do?” he asked, pushing the sleeves of his sweater up his spindly arms. The sleeves slipped back down again. “Call the police?”

  “Certainly not,” said Doctor Widdecombe, glancing up from the scratches on the newel post. “These are matters that they would not understand.”

  “The cats and I shouldn’t have left all at once,” said Olive, rubbing her stinging eyes with her sweatshirt cuff. “I shouldn’t have gone at all. But we thought the house was safe.”

  “We all thought the house was safe, Olive,” Mrs. Dewey assured her. “I used a charm against uninvited guests, Byron added his protective spells, Delora foresaw no reason to worry—”

  Olive shook her head violently. “I should have known Annabelle would find a way inside,” she said. “But I thought she would come after me, not my parents. I don’t know what she’ll do with them.” Olive swallowed a sob. “What if we’re already too late?”

  Delora glided to the foot of the stairs. “I am quite certain that your parents are alive, Olive,” she said. Her voice was soft and steady. “If they were not, I would hear them speaking from the other side. But if you have an object that belonged to one of them, something they used frequently, I may be able to tell you more . . .”

  Olive sniffled. Slowly, she held out her father’s glasses, which she’d been gripping so tightly that their lenses were white with fog.

  Delora closed her eyes again, lifting the glasses on one palm. “I can see him,” she murmured.

  Olive held her breath.

  “Yes . . .” Delora continued. “A tall, thin man . . . receding brown hair . . . a blue shirt with an ink stain on its sleeve . . .”

  Olive’s heart performed a pole vault. “That’s what he was wearing tonight!” she exclaimed.

  “That is all that I can see,” said Delora, looking down at Olive. “But I can assure you, Olive, that he is most definitely alive.”

  Olive let out a burst of air. “What about my mother?” she asked, jumping to her feet. “Can you make sure about her too?” While everyone stared after her, Olive raced into the library, grabbing the silver pen that always lay at a perfect ninety-degree angle along the side of her moth
er’s desk. She skidded back into the entryway and pressed the pen into Delora’s hands.

  Delora’s eyelids fluttered. “I see the hands that held this pen. No polish on the nails. A wedding ring engraved with an infinity symbol—”

  “That’s her!” said Olive.

  With a little smile, Delora put the pen and the glasses back into Olive’s hands. “She too is still within the realm of the living.”

  Relief washed over Olive like a warm bath. She sank limply back down onto the step beside Mrs. Dewey. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “What puzzles me, Doctor Widdecombe,” said Rutherford, “is why Annabelle would have abducted Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody while leaving Olive herself behind. On their own, they don’t possess anything that Annabelle would want.”

  “Ah.” Doctor Widdecombe folded his hands over his substantial belly. “But there is one obvious purpose for which she may have taken them.”

  Olive blinked up at Doctor Widdecombe. Ingredients for spells? suggested the panicky voice in the back of her brain. Food for magical monsters?

  “Bargaining,” said Doctor Widdecombe. “She will try to exchange them for something of value.”

  “You mean, ‘Something else of value,’” said Mrs. Dewey.

  “Yes,” said Doctor Widdecombe. He wiped his hands on the front of his jacket. “Yes, of course.”

  Olive’s hands shot to the spectacles tied under her collar. “Well—then—maybe I should just offer her what she wants,” she said shakily. The spectacles seemed to prickle against her skin, like metal hit by a sudden frost. “Because what I want most of all is to have my mom and dad back.”

  Delora widened her silvery eyes. “Do not be too eager,” she warned. “With our help, you may not need to give her anything at all.”

  “Delora is right, Olive,” said Mrs. Dewey, patting Olive’s shoulder. “If we can just be patient, Annabelle will eventually come to us.”

  As the others spoke, Doctor Widdecombe strode slowly away down the hall. He examined each doorway and peered into each open room. The glow of the wall sconces slid over his belly, like acrobats trying to balance on a ball. “It seems likely that Annabelle would take other things while she had the opportunity,” he said, staring into the silent parlor. “Is anything else of significance missing from the house, Olive? Any magical tools or objects? A book of family spells, perhaps?”