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Battle of the Beasts

Page 28

by Chris Columbus


  Warrior Cordelia—or Cordelia of Arc—threw down her banner and pulled out a sword. Then, from atop her steed, she bore down on an enemy knight and chunked into his shoulder. The knight fell from his horse. This was Warrior Cordelia’s first kill of the day, but it would not be her last.

  “I’m . . . I’m a terrible person,” Cordelia said.

  “What?” said the Wind Witch. “You don’t want the power?”

  “I don’t want to fight battles,” Cordelia said. “I don’t want to kill people. I want to help people!”

  “But in this world, you’re like Genghis Khan! People will speak your name for centuries! And back on earth, too, you won’t be ignored! I can make this happen everywhere.”

  “This is wrong,” Cordelia said. “This is evil.”

  “It’s your destiny,” said the Wind Witch.

  “No,” said Cordelia. “Not this.”

  “Then what is your destiny?” asked the Wind Witch. “A dreary life of monotony? Bingo and NASCAR?”

  “No,” said Cordelia. “Night school. Where I’ll learn to be a lawyer, and then to change the system, any way I have to.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying! Cordelia, stop! Don’t go!”

  But Cordelia had already made her decision. And the door—the same one that Brendan and Eleanor had seen, the true Door of Ways—appeared before her in the battlefield. She opened it and walked through. And when the Wind Witch saw her disappear, she let out a piercing scream and fell to her knees. She had lost all three of the Walker children. Everywhere around her, the battle between the black and blue armies raged on. But the Wind Witch was oblivious to it. For the first time since she could remember, real tears fell from her eyes. She had been truly defeated. She had lost her entire family.

  The Walkers never woke up at the same time. One of their favorite things to do was wake up early and go to one another’s rooms, hitting each other with pillows, yelling, “Wakey-wakey!” But now, in the same instant on a misty San Francisco morning, they all woke up in their beds in Kristoff House as if they had just had crazy dreams.

  They ran into the upstairs hall.

  Cordelia smacked into Eleanor. Brendan came down the ladder from the attic so fast, he nearly broke his hip. They all looked at one another in astonishment and started speaking at once.

  “Did you—?”

  “I saw—”

  “What did she show you?”

  They were overjoyed. More than anything, they felt a sense of peace. The adventures they had been on were so draining, so emotional and intense, especially at the end, that they felt like it might be easier to just lie down and give up. But they weren’t lying down. They were laughing and hugging and jumping, so much so that they were shaking the lights downstairs.

  “So, Deal,” Eleanor asked, “who will you miss more? Will or Felix?”

  “I’m not answering that.”

  “The question is,” Brendan said, “who’s a better kisser?”

  “Too soon, Bren!”

  Mrs. Walker came upstairs. “What’s going on, you three? Why are you so happy?”

  The Walkers nearly decapitated her with huge bear hugs.

  “We’re . . . ,” Brendan started. “We’re just happy to see you, Mom!”

  “We love you!” Cordelia said.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Mrs. Walker said, “but will you come downstairs? I need your help with the packing.”

  “Packing?” Eleanor asked.

  The siblings looked at one another—and that’s when they realized that their mother wasn’t smiling. She didn’t seem anywhere near as happy to see them as they were to see her. What was wrong? They followed her downstairs and saw a startling sight.

  Everything in the kitchen was packed in cardboard boxes.

  “We’re moving?” Brendan asked.

  “Of course we’re moving,” Mrs. Walker said. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a few days. “You knew that.”

  “Why?” Cordelia asked.

  “Why? What do you mean, ‘why’? Do you have a memory problem?”

  “We’re just confused, Mom,” Eleanor said. “Why are we moving?”

  Mrs. Walker gave Eleanor a very curious look.

  “Because it’s gone,” she said with slow obviousness.

  “What?” Brendan asked.

  “Where have you kids been? We’ve lost everything—all the money. We have to move.”

  “When?” Eleanor asked.

  “The movers are taking our boxes and personal stuff today,” said Mrs. Walker. “Tomorrow they come for our beds and furniture.”

  “Where are we going to live?!” Cordelia asked, shocked.

  “A sublet on Fisherman’s Wharf,” said Mrs. Walker, trying to hold back her emotions. “Hopefully we’ll sell quickly. And I’m going to have you back at your old school next week.”

  “That might not be such a bad thing,” Eleanor told Brendan and Cordelia as Mrs. Walker turned away, continuing to pack the boxes. But then Eleanor realized something and grabbed her siblings. “Oh no,” she whispered. “This is what the Wind Witch showed me. It’s all coming true! Dad really is going to die . . . and Mom’s going to go crazy . . . and we’re all going to live with Uncle Pete!”

  “That’s not what I saw,” said Cordelia. “I saw myself in a dead-end marriage with Tim Bradley.”

  “There’s no way those things have to come true,” said Brendan. “Those are possibilities. The Wind Witch was just playing tricks on us. Nothing’s set in stone.”

  “What are you three babbling about? Come and help me with these plates!”

  The doorbell rang. Brendan answered it. He was shocked to see a man in a Spartan Movers outfit—the same man who had talked his ear off when he’d moved into Kristoff House just a few weeks before.

  “Hey!” the moving man said. “The lacrosse player! Sorry to see you’re moving out, kid. Easy come, easy go, huh?”

  Brendan nodded mutely, flabbergasted and gutted. He followed the moving man up the stairs as other men in Spartan uniforms came into the kitchen and hauled boxes out. It’s one thing to run and fight in a fantasy world, Brendan thought hollowly. It’s another to deal with problems in the real world.

  As Brendan went up the stairs, Cordelia turned to Eleanor. “We’re losing Kristoff House,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I mean, we’re really losing it. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to be looking back at it through the trees, waving good-bye.” Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut, trapping the tear that was about to come out of one of them. “It’s a good thing I have this.”

  “What?” Eleanor asked.

  Cordelia reached into her back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

  “The Nazi treasure map!” Eleanor said.

  “Insurance,” Cordelia corrected. “If this map really leads to Nazi treasure, we can find it and give it back to the world, and save our family.”

  “But how do we know that map leads to real treasure? Couldn’t it lead to a fictional treasure that’s only in Kristoff’s books?”

  “I’m starting to think the real world and his world are more connected than we think. And no matter what—this is proof. This is an artifact from our adventures that no one can deny. We’ll find a way to use what we know to save our family.”

  She folded the map up and put it in her pocket. Eleanor held her hand.

  “Saving our family,” Eleanor said, “is one of the things we do best.”

  Epilogue

  Brendan sat in his almost vacant room, with only one remaining dresser and a nightstand. He stared at the ceiling, at the empty space where his posters used to be. There were small patches of paint missing from where he had taped them up. How did we get here? thought Brendan. Things were bad before we left, but not this bad. And it feels like they’re only gonna get worse. . . .

  Brendan’s attic door swung open.

  Eleanor climbed into the attic, followed by Cordelia.

&nbs
p; “Hey, Bren,” said Eleanor.

  “Since it’s our last night, we thought it’d be nice if we all sat out on the roof,” said Cordelia. “We’re probably never gonna have a view like this again.”

  “No kidding,” said Brendan, opening the window and climbing outside, onto the rooftop. Cordelia and Eleanor followed.

  They sat at the edge of the roof, where not so long ago, in another adventure, they once hid from bloodthirsty pirates. The view was just as magical: San Francisco Bay, illuminated by a full moon and the glorious Golden Gate Bridge. A thick layer of fog swirled all around the bridge. They sat together in silence for a long time, enjoying the breeze, listening to the sound of a heavy fog horn. Finally, Brendan said what they were all thinking.

  “Maybe we should’ve gone along with the Wind Witch.”

  “Yeah,” said Eleanor. “At least I’d be a princess.”

  “I’d be Cordelia of Arc.”

  “But we wouldn’t be together,” said Brendan. “We wouldn’t be here. Now.”

  “Yeah, and the three of us together . . . ,” said Eleanor. “There’s nothing stronger than that. We’ve beaten pirates, frost beasts, Nazis . . .”

  That’s when Eleanor noticed the shadow.

  At first, it looked like another one of the oil tankers or sailboats in the bay. But the shadow was slowly rising out of the water, getting bigger and bigger. . . .

  Now it stood nearly as tall as the top tier of the bridge. And it was no shadow. Backlit by fog, it was—

  “Fat Jagger!”

  Cordelia and Brendan stared open mouthed. Sure enough, it was Fat Jagger, standing in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

  “That can’t be . . . possible . . . ,” said Cordelia.

  “He followed me,” said Eleanor.

  “Followed you?”

  “When the Wind Witch showed me my future with her, Fat Jagger was there,” said Eleanor. “He helped me get to the Door of Ways . . . he watched me go through . . .”

  And then Fat Jagger lifted his head toward the sky and howled at the moon.

  “Waallllk-errrr!!! Wallllk-eerrrrr!!!”

  And then, as brake lights lit up on the few cars on the bridge, Fat Jagger slunk down and disappeared into the water, leaving a surprisingly small ripple.

  “Oh man,” Eleanor said. “Do you think anyone saw him?”

  “I definitely didn’t see him,” Brendan said. “And even if I thought I did see him, which I’m sure I didn’t . . . I—we can’t deal with this right now.”

  “We have to,” said Eleanor. “Fat Jagger’s our friend! And he’s all alone out there in the middle of the water. He’s lost and scared.”

  “Get your coat,” said Cordelia, already climbing down off the roof. “We need to go to the bridge and get to Fat Jagger before somebody else does.”

  “And how exactly do you help a sixty-story giant who’s stuck in the middle of San Francisco?” asked Brendan.

  “We’ve had tougher missions,” said Eleanor.

  So the Walkers went back downstairs, sneaked outside, and headed to the steep cliff that led to the beach. As they climbed down carefully, moving toward the water, they all looked at one another—and were surprised to see smiles on their faces. Despite Brendan’s reservations, they couldn’t help themselves. This is where they were meant to be. This is what they were meant to do.

  They were the Walkers.

  And they lived for adventure.

  END OF BOOK 2

  About the Authors

  CHRIS COLUMBUS has written, directed, and produced some of the most successful box-office hits in Hollywood history. He first made his name by writing several original scripts produced by Steven Spielberg, including the back-to-back hits Gremlins and The Goonies. As a director, Columbus has been at the helm of such iconic projects as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Home Alone, Stepmom, and Mrs. Doubtfire. As a producer, Columbus was also behind the hit films Night at the Museum and The Help.

  NED VIZZINI (1981–2013) began writing for the New York Press at the age of fifteen. At nineteen, he published Teen Angst? Naaah . . . , his autobiography of his years at Stuyvesant High School. His debut teen novel, Be More Chill, was named a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly and selected for the Today Show Book Club by Judy Blume. It’s Kind of a Funny Story, a cult classic, was adapted into a feature film and was named one of the 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels by National Public Radio. The Other Normals, his third novel, was a Junior Library Guild selection. He also wrote for television, including MTV’s hit show Teen Wolf. His books have been translated into twenty-five languages.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.

  Books by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini

  House of Secrets

  Credits

  Cover art © 2014 by Greg Call

  Cover design by Amy Ryan

  Copyright

  Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  HOUSE OF SECRETS: BATTLE OF THE BEASTS

  Text copyright © 2014 by Novel Approach LLC

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Greg Call

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013956357

  ISBN 978-0-06-219249-3 (trade bdg.)

  ISBN 978-0-06-229594-1 (international ed.)

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  EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780062192523

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  FIRST EDITION

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