“Begging your pardon, sir,” I said tentatively. “But Judge Hurst can’t be Prince Nightshade. We were prisoners together in the prince’s dungeon. The judge ran afoul of him, and Prince Nightshade turned him into a purple-eyed Shadesman.”
“Good heavens!” cried Lord Dreary. “Are you certain, lad?”
“I’m afraid I am, sir.”
“Well there you have it, then,” said Mr. Grim. “After all these years, my prime suspect in the murder of Abel Wortley has been proved innocent.”
“But at what cost?” said Lord Dreary, wiping his brow. “Judge Mortimer Hurst a Shadesman? I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.”
“Tell me, Master Grubb,” said Mr. Grim. “Did you learn anything else during your imprisonment at Nightshade’s castle?”
My throat tightened and my stomach sank. Given everything Prince Nightshade had told me about Elizabeth O’Grady, I felt ashamed for knowing things about Mr. Grim’s past that I shouldn’t—not to mention that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or embarrass him in front of Lord Dreary. At the same time, however, I knew that I had to tell him what Prince Nightshade had said—or at the very least, the nub of it.
“Well, sir,” I began. “The prince went on a bit about knowing you—about your past and such. Said he never guessed you for a collector of magical objects, since you never showed much interest in such things.”
“Is that so?” said Mr. Grim, leaning forward intently. “And what else did the prince say he knew about me?”
My heart began to hammer, and my eyes flitted to Lord Dreary. Hadn’t he spoken of Elizabeth O’Grady to Mr. Grim yesterday, in this very room?
“You can speak plain in front of Lord Dreary, lad,” said Mr. Grim, reading my thoughts. “I trust him with my life.”
It was clear there was no avoiding it now, but how could I tell Mr. Grim everything without causing him grief? I didn’t think it possible, but after sputtering about nervously for a moment, it all came tumbling out anyway.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” I said. “But Prince Nightshade made light of your loss, sir.”
“My loss?”
“Of Elizabeth O’Grady, sir.”
Lord Dreary stiffened and looked anxiously at Mr. Grim. I expected at least the same reaction I’d witnessed in secret the day before, but much to my surprise, Mr. Grim appeared unmoved.
“I see,” was all he said, and he sat back in his chair, thinking.
“Alistair, I—” Lord Dreary began uncomfortably, but Mr. Grim held up his hand, and the old man was silent.
“All that was common knowledge twelve years ago,” said Mr. Grim. “Still is, apparently. Nevertheless, a job well done, my young apprentice.”
I swallowed guiltily and looked at my shoes. Despite Mr. Grim’s approval, it didn’t feel like a job well done at all. A heavy silence hung about the room as Lord Dreary searched for something to say. But then Mr. Grim hopped up from his desk and crossed to a bookshelf.
“Well, no use getting all gobby eyed about it,” he said with a smile. “We’re on an adventure, after all, and thus haven’t the time for such things.”
“But, Alistair,” said Lord Dreary, “given what this lad just told us, it appears as if your theory about Nightshade being one of our old antiquities associates is true.”
“I’d wager my life on it,” said Mr. Grim, scanning his books. “And yet, even if we knew for sure the prince’s identity, it wouldn’t do us much good unless we could pry him out of that armor.”
“Yes,” said Lord Dreary. “It appears to be impenetrable.”
“Nothing is impenetrable, old friend. Not even the secrets of the universe. You just need the right tools.”
Mr. Grim pointed to his head and winked. And then, with a low humming sound, the library’s lamps and wall sconces came alive with blue animus.
“Ah,” said Mr. Grim. “Looks as if Cleona is doing her part; now all we need to worry about is Gwendolyn.”
“Chomp, chomp…” she muttered deliriously. And as if on cue, Mrs. Pinch entered with a bowl of steaming brown soup and a tiny spoon.
“Here we are, then,” she said. “This should get her going again.”
Mr. Grim and Lord Dreary came over to the armchair, and Mrs. Pinch took my place next to Gwendolyn. She set down the bowl on the end table and, gently propping up the Yellow Fairy’s head, spooned some of the soup into her mouth.
“Mmm,” Gwendolyn said at once. “Chomp, chomp.”
“It’s seems to be working,” said Mr. Grim, relieved.
“Well, of course it is,” said Mrs. Pinch. “What kind of witch would I be if I didn’t know how to cure a fairy?”
“You mean—” I sputtered in amazement. “You mean Mack wasn’t just calling you names? You really are a witch, Mrs. Pinch?”
“But of course! Who else but a witch could run Alistair Grim’s Odditorium?”
“Cor blimey!” I gasped. “Then that makes you—”
“Yes, Master Grubb,” said Mr. Grim. “Mrs. Pinch is Odditoria, too.”
“Great poppycock!” said Lord Dreary.
“I think Master Grubb agrees with you, old friend.”
“Her color is coming back now,” said Mrs. Pinch. And as the old woman fed her some more soup, Gwendolyn’s glow turned yellow again and she blinked open her eyes.
“Where am I?” Gwendolyn asked.
“Back where you belong,” said Mr. Grim. “You gave us quite a scare there, going head-to-head with the prince like that.”
“A big bully he is,” said the Yellow Fairy. “But the boy is all right?”
“Yes, miss,” I said, stepping forward. “Thanks to you.”
Gwendolyn smiled and tried to sit up. “Right, then, let’s get on with round two.”
“There, there,” said Mrs. Pinch. “You need to eat and regain your strength.”
“Yes,” Gwendolyn said, shaking her head. “I’m afraid I still feel a bit loopy.”
Mrs. Pinch gave her another spoonful of soup. Gwendolyn’s eyes grew heavy and a look of peace came over her face.
“What’s in that soup?” asked Lord Dreary.
“Most of it’s secret,” said Mrs. Pinch. “Except for the chocolate. Never met a fairy who didn’t like chocolate. Never met a boy who didn’t like chocolate either.”
And with that Mrs. Pinch produced a normal-size spoon from her apron and gestured for me to take it.
“For me?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Pinch. “Fairies will eat anything made of chocolate. But since this old witch had to make her brew without her spectacles, I need a taster to tell me if I got the recipe right.”
Mrs. Pinch winked and I took the spoon.
“Oh, thank you, ma’am!” I said, and served myself a mouthful.
“Well?” she asked. “Is it good?”
“It’s delightful, ma’am. I haven’t had chocolate since before Mrs. Smears died. And never in my life have I had chocolate soup!”
“Mrs. Smears, did you say?” asked the Yellow Fairy.
“That’s right, miss. The wife of my former master. She died when I was six or thereabouts, and Mr. Smears wouldn’t allow me sweets for fear I might grow too fat for the chimneys.”
“I thought I recognized you!” Gwendolyn said.
“Miss?”
“You’re the lad I left on the Smearses’ doorstep twelve years ago!”
“You mean,” I sputtered, astonished, “you mean Mrs. Smears was telling the truth about where I came from?”
“Well, of course,” said Gwendolyn. “A woman like Mrs. Smears wouldn’t lie. And after all, she’d been coming into the Black Forest for years asking me for a child.”
“Well, blind me!” said Mrs. Pinch.
“Great poppycock!” cried Lord Dreary.
“An intriguing turn of events!” said Mr. Grim.
“But how,” I stammered, “who—”
“You were given to me by your mother,” Gwendolyn said. “The hooded sorc
eress, I called her.”
“Hooded sorceress, miss?”
“I never saw her face, you see. And I don’t know if she really was a sorceress, but she knew how to summon me in the language of the ancients.”
“Who was she?” I asked.
“Beats me,” Gwendolyn said. “But she told me she was dying and asked me to find you a good home.”
A wave of sorrow gripped my heart. “Then my real mother is dead?” I asked.
“I would think so, lad,” Gwendolyn said gently. “But had I known that Mrs. Smears was dead too, and had I known that her bully husband had treated you so unkindly, well, I would’ve snatched you back and chomped him up right quick!”
The adults laughed, but all I could do was gaze round at them, wide-eyed and gaping. I felt sad at learning about my mother, but then Nigel appeared with Broom in the parlor doorway, and my heart filled with joy.
“Nigel!” I exclaimed, running to hug him. “And Broom! You’re all right too!”
Broom, whose stick had been mended with a bandage, gave a quick curtsy and set about tidying up the library.
“Number One fetched her from the water,” Nigel said, scooping me up in his big arms. “And sorry I couldn’t join the fight, Grubb, but I used the last of my animus to charge up the bats.”
“You mean—”
“That’s right, Grubb. I only had enough left to send them off before I fizzled out. Cleona just finished recharging me, in fact. So I should be right as rain for a while now.”
“Yes,” said Lord Dreary. “It’s good to have you back, William—er, uh—”
“Nigel, sir,” the big man said, smiling. “Less confusing that way, isn’t it?”
“Well, well,” said Mrs. Pinch, rising with Gwendolyn in her arms. “Given the day so far, I should think that all of us could use an early lunch.”
“Come to think of it,” said Lord Dreary, “I am a bit hungry.”
“Me too,” Nigel said.
“Chomp, chomp!” Gwendolyn said, and she began to coo.
“All of us downstairs to the kitchen,” said Mrs. Pinch, squinting as she carried the Yellow Fairy to the door. “Master Grubb, you take along Gwendolyn’s soup.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, hopping from Nigel’s arms.
“Oh dear,” Nigel said. “I almost forgot. Cleona asked to see you, Grubb.”
“Me?”
“That’s right. Her chamber is upstairs, two doors down from Mr. Grim’s. You think you can find your way up and back down again to the kitchen without my help?”
“Yes, Nigel. One landing up the spiral staircase, through the secret panel next to the lift, and then two doors down from Mr. Grim’s chamber.”
“Right-o,” Nigel said. He took from me the bowl of chocolate soup, and all of us made for the parlor except Mr. Grim.
“I’ll be down in a moment,” he said, moving to his desk. He looked as if he was thinking very hard about something.
“Everything all right, sir?” Nigel asked.
“Oh yes, Nigel,” said Mr. Grim, smiling thinly. “We’ve got quite an adventure ahead of us once we get the Odditorium up and flying again. I just want to make sure everything is in order.”
“Humph,” said Mrs. Pinch, annoyed. “Well, blind me if I’m going to keep your lunch hot for you!”
And so we left Mr. Grim in his library. The others traveled down in the lift to the kitchen, while I dashed up the spiral staircase and slipped through the secret panel. The portraits that lined the upstairs gallery had yet to be cleaned of Cleona’s chalk mustaches and nasty comments, but still I found no humor in them. On the contrary, a wave of sadness rippled through me as I passed by the portrait of Mr. Grim as a child.
Kiyoko, I said to myself. She had wanted so badly to meet him.
I took a deep breath and swallowed back my tears—no time to get gobby eyed when on an adventure, Mr. Grim had said. I hurried down to the end of the hallway, counted backward two doors from Mr. Grim’s chamber, and knocked.
“Come in,” Cleona said, and I opened the door.
The first thing I saw in the wall opposite me was a large porthole cover with a wheel at its center. Hanging from a mechanical arm above it was a strange machine that looked like a giant silver egg that had been sawed in half lengthwise. Pipes zigzagged from it and into the ceiling in every direction, and sticking out from the egg’s belly was a wide, stubby cannon. The rest of the room, including the floor, was covered with hundreds of paneled mirrors. And as I closed the door behind me, it looked as if a thousand other Grubbs closed the door behind them too.
“Over here, Grubb,” Cleona said.
I discovered her lying on her back, closer to the floor in another one of the strange egg machines. A mechanical arm connected it to the wall on one side, while a dozen or so pipes connected it to the wall on the other.
“Cor blimey, miss. Is this where you charge the Odditorium?”
“Yes. The mirrors store my animus, and that machine over there with the cannon is Uncle’s Sky Ripper.”
“That’s what Prince Nightshade called it too. A Sky Ripper.”
“Speaking of Prince Nightshade, I never got a chance to thank you for rescuing me from that sphere of his. The energy surrounding it prevented me from escaping. So, thank you, Grubb.”
“You’re welcome, miss, but I should be the one thanking you. You saved me from Nightshade’s Sirens, and then you saved me again back there at the castle.”
“Pshaw. That’s what family’s for, and you’re part of our family now, aren’t you?”
I looked down at my shoes.
“What is it, Grubb?”
“Begging your pardon, miss, but it’s not my place to talk to you about it.”
“Why not? If you can’t tell your family things, to whom can you tell them?”
“I suppose you’re right, miss.”
“Well, then?”
“Well, miss. While you were stuck in that sphere, Prince Nightshade told me about Mr. Grim and Elizabeth O’Grady.”
“Oh,” Cleona said, looking away. “I see.”
“Then it’s true what the prince said? Mr. Grim built the Odditorium to travel to the Land of the Dead and bring back her spirit?”
“Yes,” Cleona said quietly. “I’m afraid it is.”
“And you agreed to help him, miss?”
“Well, of course. After all, he helped me, didn’t he?”
“Helped you, miss?”
“Yes, Grubb. Although we banshees can foretell the death of a person to whom we’re attached, we cannot tell exactly how or when it will happen. And even if we could, supernatural law dictates that we are not allowed to interfere. If we do, we are doomed to walk the earth in anguish for eternity, and without a family to whom we may attach ourselves. Have you ever heard the wind wail on a dark and stormy night?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Those are the cries of banshees who have broken our sacred law of noninterference.”
“Good heavens,” I said, swallowing hard. “So—if I’m following you correctly, miss—are you saying you tried to interfere with the death of Elizabeth O’Grady?”
“I tried, yes. I was still a novice back then, and had only recently been attached to her family. And when I started wailing, I didn’t even know which of the O’Gradys it was for until I saw Elizabeth standing atop that cliff. It was impetuous of me, I know, but before I could think twice about it, I dove into the water after her.”
“You mean, she threw herself from the cliff?”
“Threw herself from the cliff and drowned.”
“But the sea—you can’t fly over water.”
“Not for long, no. And struggle as I did, I could not save her before I had to go back to land. But, you see, even though I failed, the fact that I tried to save Elizabeth from drowning was enough for the banshee elders to cast me out. And so there I was, roaming the earth in anguish, until Alistair Grim saved me.”
“How did he save you?”
“Your comb?”
“All banshees have hair like mine, and so they always carry a silver comb tucked in their robes. I lost my comb when I tried to save Elizabeth, and Uncle later discovered it snagged in her petticoats. Most people would have thought it just a silver comb, but not Alistair Grim. He knew the legend of the O’Grady banshees, and concluded that the comb must belong to one of them.”
“But how did Mr. Grim save you from your banishment?”
Cleona smiling knowingly. “Alistair Grim: inventor, fortune hunter…and some say, mad sorcerer.”
“You mean he used his magic, don’t you.”
“That’s right, Grubb. He used my comb and a magical spell to draw me out of banishment and attach me to his family. You see, back then, there was no Odditorium. But still, I thought the least I could do was help him bring back Elizabeth.”
“From the Land of the Dead, you mean?”
“It didn’t start out that way,” Cleona said. “About ten years ago, Uncle originally built a machine to transfer my spirit energy into a dead body—Nigel was his first successful experiment with that. But Elizabeth O’Grady had been dead for two years at that point. And when Uncle realized she wouldn’t come back to him as she was in life, he built the Odditorium so that her spirit could live with him here.”
“The magic paint. If he took Elizabeth someplace that wasn’t protected, the doom dogs would snatch her spirit back to the Land of the Dead.”
“That’s right, Grubb.”
“But why did Elizabeth run away from Mr. Grim in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Uncle never told me. However, everything he has done here at the Odditorium has been out of love for her. After all, love is the most powerful Odditoria of them all, is it not?”
“I suppose it is, miss.”
“Grubb?” Nigel called from somewhere. “Are you still there, Grubb?”
I gazed round, and Cleona pointed to the talkback beside the door.
“Yes, Nigel,” I said, flicking the switch. “I’m here.”
“On your way down, would you mind seeing what’s keeping the boss? He won’t answer on the talkback, and Mrs. Pinch is growing impatient.”
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