“Mom?” Van interrupted desperately. “Can Peter and I go get a lemonade?”
“Of course!” his mother sang. “Enjoy yourselves!”
Van grabbed Peter by the sleeve. He dragged him to a far corner of the tent, feeling—strangely—more like Pebble than he’d ever felt.
“I’m really sorry,” Van said, once they stood face-to-face in the quieter spot. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you. It’s just . . . I have something else I need to do tonight.”
“Another dangerous secret you can’t tell me about?” Peter’s voice was chilly. “Fine. I took your message to that weird office, by the way. As soon as I got back to the city. And I didn’t open it, if you were wondering.”
“Thank you,” breathed Van. “And I wasn’t wondering.”
Beyond the walls of the tent, the sky was beginning to dim. Lengthening rays of sun seared the gardens with gold, and the fountains glittered, scattering droplets that winked like burning sparks. Along the paths that wound toward the open-air stage, strings of fairy lights began to twinkle on.
“I’d explain everything if I could,” Van rushed on. “It’s just—they’re not my secrets. They’re somebody else’s. I—”
But as Van spoke, a change swept through the tent. Operagoers set down their glasses and surged toward the lighted paths. Peter turned away.
“Wait. What is it?” Van asked, grabbing Peter by the sleeve again.
“They played the fanfare,” said Peter. “Didn’t you hear it?”
Without waiting for an answer, Peter turned and strode off.
Van scanned the receding crowd. His mother was leaving the tent on Mr. Grey’s arm, the two of them beaming at each other like this entire party was for them. The instant they were out of sight, Van spun around, ducked underneath the tent wall, and bolted for the woods.
Ahead of him, the puff of Pebble’s dress glowed against the shadows. As Van raced closer, he could see that she had already demolished her shiny bun and pulled her hair into its usual sloppy ponytail. Bobby pins and tiny white blossoms lay scattered in the grass around her.
“He did it,” Van panted, jogging to a stop. “Peter delivered the message. The Collectors should be coming.”
“. . . guess we’ll see,” said Pebble shortly. “Come on.”
They plunged into the trees.
The path from the Fox Den to the well was far longer than the one from the Falborg mansion. The sky darkened above them as they ran, turning from deep blue to murky violet. The first tiny stars appeared, glimmering in gaps in the canopy, their light too weak to press through.
Van kept his eyes sharp, scanning the trees on every side, watching Pebble’s ponytail bob ahead of him. The hem of her dress was already splotched with mud. Her sandals had gone from white to brown. Van pictured her, locked for years inside Mr. Falborg’s fancy homes, buttoned into fancy clothes, forced to live as a girl named Mabel, when the real Pebble must have been there all along.
A gust of cold, damp air slid down his back. Van glanced around. There was nothing behind him. But a few feet away, a branch swung back and forth too forcefully to have been pushed by the wind.
Van scrambled closer to Pebble.
They passed the Falborg mansion, keeping deep within the trees. The peak of its tower loomed above them, thrusting like a knife into the sky. Without speaking, they ran faster.
But the night fell faster still.
By the time they reached the clearing, the sky was blue black. They stumbled onto the grass, gasping.
The well waited for them. Dampness shimmered on its stones. Moss blanketed its roof, and tiny white mushrooms glowed all around it like the crumbs of fallen stars. When Van stood still, he could feel it: the faint, trembling motion of something far below. Something alive.
Pebble dove through a patch of ferns and pulled out an armload of flashlights. She passed Van two of them.
“Now what?” Van asked as Pebble switched on two flashlights of her own.
His heart was thumping too hard and Pebble was too out of breath for him to catch her answer, but it sounded like up. Or, maybe, hope.
Pebble aimed her flashlight beams at the sky. Van did the same. The sky was so vast and so deep, their little lights seemed useless—like four tiny arms trying to stir the ocean. But Pebble didn’t stop. So Van didn’t either. He glanced over at her, watching her profile against the thickening shadows for a moment, before looking up again.
A small, dark blot had appeared in the sky.
Van stared at it. At first it was so small and so dark that he couldn’t see it at all, but only the sky that disappeared behind it. Then it began to grow, dropping lower, until he could make out a dense, casketlike shape—like a black train car without wheels. Above the casket, lashed to it by strands that glinted in the starlight, were two more shapes. These were huge and silvery, half hidden in swathes of net. But Van could tell two things.
They were alive. And they were coming fast.
Pebble touched his arm. “. . . the carriage,” she breathed.
The flying shape loomed closer. It blotted out a patch of stars that grew and grew, like a widening hole, until at last the dark thing itself came plummeting down into the clearing.
Van and Pebble staggered back. Van stumbled on a lump in the ground, dropping his flashlights as he caught himself. They rolled off into the grass.
The dark shape landed just inches away. It hit the ground so heavily that its edges sank into the earth. Up close, in the shaking beam of Pebble’s flashlights, Van saw that it did look a lot like an unwheeled train car—one made of black metal, with narrow, glassless windows lining its sides. A hatch jutted from its top, where three drivers controlled a mass of iron spikes and glinting ropes. And above the carriage, bound by spiderweb nets and prodded by those spikes, were two monstrous Wish Eaters.
The drivers dragged the Eaters downward until they hovered just above the grass before the carriage. Then they drove iron stakes through the loops of rope, pinning the beasts to the ground. The Eaters howled.
A door in the carriage burst open.
A man stepped out.
His hulking shape filled the doorway. His black leather coat swept the grass. Straps of glinting metal hooks crossed his back, and silvery ropes coiled over his shoulder. His sharp black eyes—one of them twisted slightly by the deep scar that curved from his eyelid all the way to his jaw—fell on Van.
His face split into a warm smile.
“Well,” said Razor, the master of the Hold. “It’s a good trip that ends with finding you two.”
15
The Plot
Razor stepped aside. Other Collectors poured out of the carriage: several of Razor’s Holders, Jack and his fellow guards, and one tall, gray-haired man with rats on his shoulders.
Nail stepped into the clearing. His rats, sniffing the air, suddenly went still. Nail’s gaze fell on Pebble.
Before he could speak, Pebble plunged into an explanation. “Uncle Ivor . . . rest of the evening . . . have it contained . . .” She spoke faster and faster, dropping her flashlights and clutching anxiously as her skirt instead. “. . . in time. But I didn’t know if you’d think . . . ,” she added, slowing down at last. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Nail stepped closer to her. If he spoke, Van couldn’t catch the words. Nail opened his arms and wrapped Pebble up inside them. The rest of the Collectors surged closer. Pebble disappeared in a mass of embraces and long dark coats.
At the same moment, a small, silvery shape scuttled out of the carriage and bounded onto its roof, overlooking them all.
Van watched the squirrel search the crowd. Its eyes locked on something. Its body went still.
“Pebble!” Barnavelt squealed.
Pebble’s head whipped up. “Barnavelt!” she shouted back.
The squirrel dove into the crowd, bouncing off Collectors’ heads. “Pebble, is it really you? Are you sure it’s you?” Barnavelt made the final leap to Pebble’s sh
oulder. He pressed against the side of her neck, sniffing loudly. “Oh. It is you,” he said, clearly relieved. “But Pebble, what are you wearing?”
Van heard the ripple of laughter. The circle of dark coats closed around Pebble again.
An unexpected emptiness opened inside Van’s heart.
Of course Pebble was still a Collector. Of course they welcomed her back. He was glad for her, and at the same time, her being fully one of them once more left Van alone, on the edge, not quite sure where he belonged. If he belonged anywhere at all.
At last, the knot of Collectors broke apart. Several people spoke at once. Van caught the words well, Eater, trap. Razor gave commands to the other Holders, who unloaded vicious hooks and spikes and yards and yards of spiderweb net from within the carriage. Nail murmured with Pebble, occasionally turning his head to listen to the rats whispering in his ears.
Behind Van, something moaned. He jerked around.
At the edge of the clearing, the harnessed, hooded Wish Eaters tugged weakly at their ropes. The Eaters were huge—terrifyingly huge—but that moan had been sad and small, like the sound a captured animal makes as it sits alone in its cage.
Van’s stomach began to hurt. He turned back toward the preparing Collectors.
With their nets and weapons ready, the Holders formed a ring around the well. Starlight glimmered on the tips of their iron hooks. Their spiderweb nets seemed almost to glow.
Pebble and Barnavelt backed out of the way. Nail stepped to the side of the well.
For the next moment, no one moved. Stillness settled over the clearing. The Collectors stood like sculptures in dark stone, motionless except for the occasional ripple of a wind-stirred coat.
Van froze too. He held his breath. He concentrated on the earth beneath his feet, trying to feel the tremble from deep underground that he had felt before. But even the ground kept still. He wondered if the Collectors had forgotten all about him. He wondered what he was doing here, and whether he should run away without ever seeing the awful thing hidden in the well, or what the Holders and their hooks would do to it. He wondered why he couldn’t decide.
After a moment so long that Van started to think it would never end, Nail broke the stillness. He reached down and drew something from one of his coat’s many pockets, setting it on the rim of the well.
It was a green glass bottle. The starry light sealed inside of it pulsed softly.
A wish, Van thought.
“To lure the Eater out,” answered a tiny voice that spoke directly to Van’s mind.
Small, tickling paws scrambled up Van’s body. Nail’s rats settled themselves on his shoulders.
“Violetta. Raduslav,” Van whispered, feeling surprisingly grateful to have two big black rats pressed against his neck. “Did you come to keep me company?”
“Yes,” said Violetta, the higher-voiced rat.
“And no,” said Raduslav, in his slightly lower voice. “Also safer back here.”
“But a decent view,” added Violetta.
The three of them stared across the clearing at the pulsing green light.
“What is Nail doing with the wish?” Van asked.
“Must offer what it wants to eat,” said Violetta.
“But the Eater won’t eat,” Raduslav put in. “Will be caught first.”
“Will they really be able to catch something this big?” whispered Van.
“They will,” said Raduslav. “Or they won’t.”
“One or the other,” agreed Violetta.
Reaching into his pockets again, Nail placed another glowing wish on the rim of the well, this one in a larger, paler bottle. The Holders shifted, clutching their weapons.
But if the bait was working, there was no sign. The hole of the well remained black and empty. The ground beneath their feet kept still. As the Collectors stared into the well, something high and far off caught the corner of Van’s eye. He glanced up. In the sky above the Fox Den, a golden glow hung in the air. Those must be the lights of the outdoor stage, Van reasoned, as another burst of gold reached toward the stars.
A flicker of motion yanked his attention back to the well. Nail muttered something to the nearest Collectors. The circle around the well edged backward, a new, heavy tension hanging in the air.
One of the Holders took a metal box from the carriage. The others stood back as he approached the well, holding the box carefully in both hands. Nail unlatched its lid. Eerie reddish light poured from within.
Nail removed a third bottled wish—a wish with a color Van had never seen before. It looked like a lit coal, but brighter, or like a jewel of burning blood.
“What is that?” Van breathed.
“Dead wish,” Raduslav whispered back. “Eater won’t be able to resist.”
The harnessed Eaters moaned again. This time, Van felt an answering shiver in the ground beneath him. Invisible frost flashed through him, freezing his lungs. The thing at the bottom of the well was stirring.
“It feels,” said Violetta softly.
“What—what does it feel?” Van managed.
“Feels us,” the rat answered.
A rush of wind raked through the clearing. The Collectors’ black coats billowed. Gathered tight around the well, they looked like a flock of blackbirds perched on the carcass of something newly dead.
“Will they hurt it?” Van whispered to the rats. “If they can’t just catch it, will they—”
He was interrupted by a roar.
Van jumped. The rats scrabbled at his shoulders.
But the roar hadn’t come from the depths of the well. It had come from the edge of the clearing.
Van spun to look.
The harnessed Wish Eaters were in a frenzy. Their bodies thrashed against the ropes. A handful of Holders broke from the well and rushed to control them, gouging them with iron hooks. The Eaters howled.
Sickened, Van turned from the Eaters to the well, to the bottled wishes twinkling there, just out of the starving beings’ reach. If the wishes were enough to lure an ancient Eater, of course they would tempt these beasts too. For a blink, Van imagined dashing forward to grab the bottles and giving the poor things what they wanted. But when he turned back toward the Eaters, he saw that they weren’t facing the well at all. They were craning toward a spot in the distance.
Toward the same spot where Van had seen the glow in the sky.
The glow above the Fox Den had grown brighter. Now, as Van watched, pink and violet bursts tinged the air above the trees. Swirls of silvery mist rose around them. A falling star streaked across the blackness, its trail as solid and bright as the blade of a knife.
“Oh no,” whispered Violetta.
“Oh no, no no,” added Raduslav.
The Eaters screamed.
One of them bucked its cloak of nets aside, revealing the head of a skeletal horse. Leathery wings sprouted from its back. The monster bellowed, sharp silver teeth gleaming.
Van staggered backward. He barely felt the rats jumping from his shoulders, barely noticed them bolting through the grass toward Nail. The creature’s roar clanged inside Van’s skull.
The other Eater kicked at the restraints, managing to rise a few feet from the ground. Two Holders were dragged off their feet. More Collectors ran to help. Van scuttled away from the fray. Across the clearing, through a mass of moving bodies, he glimpsed Pebble standing a few steps from the well, and saw Nail setting the dead wish back in its locked metal box.
A burst of blue light, this one so bright that it singed the air of the clearing, flashed from the direction of the Fox Den. The carriage made an earth-tearing lurch. Nail shouted for Razor. Razor shouted back, his reply lost in an Eater’s roar.
The Holders behind Van were shouting something too. Van thought he caught the words media show.
He repeated them to himself.
Media show. Media show.
Meteor shower.
Chaos surged through the clearing.
The Holders abandoned the thr
ashing Eaters, who had nearly freed themselves from the spiderweb ropes. Gathering up their weapons and nets, the Holders raced into the trees, toward the strange light.
Another meteor sliced across the sky. Mist, so thick that Van could almost taste it, billowed across the treetops.
Pebble’s familiar grip closed around Van’s arm. Behind them, Razor’s deep voice gave a last command.
“That way!” he shouted, pointing toward the Fox Den. “RUN!”
16
Intermission
The curtain closed on act 2 of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. The audience rose to its feet for intermission, following the fairy-lighted aisles to the grounds, where they could wander until act 3 began.
It was a perfect late summer night. The fountains around Fox Den sparkled. Breezes brushed the gardens, carrying away the scent of roses. Except for the wisps of silvery mist that stopped some distance from the stage, settling on the grass like cottonwood seeds, the air was as clear as glass.
Someone spotted a shooting star.
Clusters of people glanced up. There were oohs and ahhs. Some of the operagoers applauded, as though this were another part of the show. For a moment, faintly enough that no one noticed, the air thickened with fast-falling dew.
And then the phones began to ring.
“What? I got the job?”
“She was accepted? I knew it!”
“You’re getting married? Oh, darling, that’s wonderful!”
The wisps of silvery mist drifted closer, although now there was no breeze.
Another falling star streaked above.
Thousands of rose petals rained down over the gardens. A bald man scurried away from the crowd, blinded by the fast-growing hair already hanging in front of his eyes. Backstage, the soprano playing Gretel came down with a coughing fit so violent that she could barely breathe. She was still coughing when her secretively smiling understudy was hustled into Gretel’s costume.
The wisps of mist grew larger. Still, no one in the crowd seemed to see.
Three more falling stars sliced the sky. The air billowed with fog.
Five limousines roared up the drive. One popped its trunk, spilling a pile of chocolate bonbons. Another opened its doors to release a pack of purebred Pomeranians.
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