“I don’t think so. He might have thought we were nuts before we went into the library, but he can’t think so now. He saw Ms. Widdershins leaving his house with the book. He has to believe us. Besides, going to her house was his idea.”
All we needed was for him to tell his parents what we were after. He may have thought his parents didn’t like our teacher, but they seemed pretty chummy to me. “We’ll see tomorrow, I guess.” I leaned on my handlebars. “You don’t think he’ll call our parents do you?”
Diana contemplated that for a moment and shrugged. “I don’t think so. Why would he? We weren’t spraying graffiti on a fence or something. We went to the library. Normal teenagers tell their parents they’re going there and then go smoke under a bridge or turn each other into revolting creatures out behind Harbor House. We went for a bike ride.” She flipped her hair over a shoulder. “They should be thanking their stars that they have such awesome kids.”
I laughed. She sounded so serious. With a wink, she pushed off from the concrete. “Come on, Caroline. The argument only works if we get home before we’re supposed to. Otherwise, it’s best to look sincere and apologize.”
***
My hopes sank into my tennis shoes as I pedaled the last few hundred feet up to my house. Mom stood on the front porch, hands on her hips, tiny leaves caught in the hair at the crown of her head. At least her shoes were still on. When she started sprouting roots I knew I was in for it.
“Caroline Sequoia Bennings, you are in serious trouble.”
I took my time putting my bike inside the open garage, and then trudged to the front porch, trying to look contrite. Judging by the scowl on Mom’s face, I wasn’t very good at it.
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
She shook a finger at me, a few more leaves popping from her hair. “Don’t you try that innocent act with me, young lady.”
Well, it had been worth a try, anyway.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to get a phone call from your teacher telling me you’ve been snooping around her house? I thought you knew better than that.”
My mouth opened and closed, as I struggled to come up with something to say. How the heck did she find out? No one had been home. The only thing moving in that house was the cat.
Ms. Widdershins was a witch. She had a familiar.
“The cat told her?”
“That’s all you can say for yourself?” Her words were starting to get shrill, and in the small spattering of leaves gathering at her feet, I saw a root begin to poke through the laces of her sneakers.
Crap.
“We didn’t mean any harm. She’s the library president and we saw her leaving. We followed her home to see if she checked out a bunch of books we wanted to see, and if she’d let us go through them.”
“You couldn’t have waited until she returned them?” Mom demanded.
“They were reference books.” I told her.
Mom pinched the bridge of her nose. “Go inside and talk to your father. He’s the one who started your obsession with research and libraries. He can deal with you.”
I tried not to look relieved as I slid past her into the house. Dad was waiting in the foyer, and my relief fizzled at the frown on his face. He didn’t even speak, just pointed to the small study he’d claimed.
I dropped my book bag in the hall and followed him inside. Despite how much trouble I was in, I noticed papers, books, and leather-bound journals strewn about the room. Dad had been working on the research again.
“Caroline, are you listening to me?”
I pulled my attention away from the open box in the corner and sat down in the big wooden chair across from his desk.
“I can’t believe you would act like this. You know better.”
“But, Dad, it isn’t what you think. We weren’t out to get her or anything.” When he didn’t say anything, I added, “You know, it isn’t like we were out painting graffiti all over her fence or something.”
Diana’s argument didn’t work so well. Dad’s face turned bright red. “According to Ms. Widdershins, that’s exactly what you were doing.”
Shock jolted through me like an electric current. “What?”
“You left some rather rude drawings all over the side of her house.” Dad couldn’t seem to decide whether to be angry or sad.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “We went and looked in a window and we left. We didn’t even have any spray paint. Besides, she hates me as it is. I don’t need to encourage her!”
Dad held up a hand. Anger deepened the lines around his mouth. My dad didn’t get upset often, but when he did, I paid attention.
“I didn’t believe it either. But it was written in lavender paint. And the can of touch up paint for your room is missing.”
My jaw dropped. Someone set me up. They must have. But who? Diana and Leo were the only people I’d really made friends with, and even they had never been to my house yet. It didn’t make any sense. Unless Ms. Widdershins set me up herself.
The longer I thought about that, the more right it sounded. One look at Dad’s expression told me to keep it to myself. Somehow, I didn’t think he’d see things my way. I sank into the seat. “Honest, Dad, I didn’t do anything. I know we shouldn’t have been sneaking around her house, but we wouldn’t be nasty.”
He didn’t believe me. I could see he wanted to, but he decided we were guilty before I ever got home. My nose burned with unexpected tears. I’d been in trouble plenty of times. But I’d never gotten into serious trouble, and never had my dad refuse to hear my side of the story.
As I sat there, listening to Dad lecture me about personal property, respect, and the horrible situation I’d put everyone in, I focused on what I knew. Whoever did this knew I was looking for information about the curse and my house. And they didn’t want me snooping around. But they didn’t know me very well if they thought this would stop me.
I would find out who set me up, and I’d prove to everyone I was innocent. And in the process, I was determined to find out about the curse as well.
Chapter Nine
Sleep didn’t come easy. I’d been grounded within an inch of my life, and told if I screwed up again, Mom would probably turn into a tree with grief. Her words, not mine. I thought it was a little over dramatic but whatever. Now I was trapped here, whether I liked it or not. At least I still had my cell phone. No contact with the outside world might have killed me.
My parents had already called and arranged for Leo, Diana, and me to head to Ms. Widdershins’ house tomorrow. Being a weekend, we were now contracted out as her slaves for a day. Once we apologized and spent our time scrubbing and repainting the entire house, we were then, assuming we had any energy or daylight left, to do whatever she asked us to do. Not my idea of a fun weekend.
No one told me yet what the supposed graffiti said. When I asked Dad, he just crossed his arms and glared. I guess he thought I was being smart since I instigated the entire thing. How exactly everyone came to that conclusion, I’ll never know. I doubt Diana pointed fingers at me. Couldn’t say for sure about Leo, but he didn’t seem like he’d be that big of a pain.
I’d spent all evening, after choking down dinner at a silent and angry table, racking my brains to come up with some explanation for how we’d been framed. It just didn’t make sense. Especially how they’d managed to get the paint out of my house. My parents worked from home. If a stranger walked into the house, they’d have ended up hanging from the ceiling, wrapped up in a million layers of roots.
My parents might look like hippies, but they were never pushovers. Nothing looked broken into, at least nothing I had seen yet, but I hadn’t exactly been allowed to wander the house in search of answers after dinner. I was supposed to be doing my homework. Math sat at the desk, waiting. I groaned and plopped down in front of the open book. Mind-numbing algebra equations didn’t really seem like much fun at the moment.
I spent f
ive minutes solving and un-solving my Rubik’s cube, which normally helped me think and calm down, but even the familiar feeling of warm plastic and the flash of the primary colors weren’t comforting. At last, I pulled out the diary page and gently unrolled it on the desk again, my fingers tracing over the script. Someone wrote this. The curse existed, and I wanted some information. A little paint and punishment wouldn’t stop me. Whoever was behind this had no idea who they were dealing with.
I had always been one of the kids that, when told they couldn’t or shouldn’t do something, would do it just to prove everyone wrong. Within reason, of course. I wasn’t stupid. The only exception had been the magic tests. I couldn’t help those, and somehow it made this all the more important. If I could solve a mystery the town had been hiding for decades, it would prove to everyone, even to me, that magic wasn’t the answer to everything. That someone without any talent for magic or potions or prophecy could do something they couldn’t.
Every test administrator and teacher I’d ever known, from the ones who thought I was pretending to the ones who thought I was an idiot, flashed through my mind. My hands fisted on the desktop. I would solve this. I was good at puzzles, and this was the biggest one I’d ever come across.
So intent on my decision, I jumped out of my seat when my phone buzzed across the papers on my desk. I flipped it open quickly, afraid my parents would hear and remember they wanted to take that away too.
“Hello?”
“Oh thank God, you’ve still got your phone.” Diana said, her relief evident, even through the phone. “It took me two hours of whining and wheedling to get mine back from Dad.”
I stole a glance at the door. Mom and Dad were downstairs, and I doubted they’d be up anytime soon. “What happened, Diana? I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Someone set us up. And when I find out who, I’m going to tear their hair out by the roots,” she hissed.
I slouched into the chair, glad that we thought the same thing. “Do you have any ideas?”
“No. But I know it couldn’t have been us. We were together until we went home. I don’t know anyone who knew where we were. And I don’t know how they connected us to the paint.”
I sighed, my breath fuzzing the line. “It’s the same color I painted my room, and the can of touchup paint is missing. But I don’t have a clue how it got there. I didn’t take it out.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Really?”
Anger sprang to life. “Are you saying I did it?”
“No! That’s stupid. I know you didn’t. But how do you know no one got in?”
I started to tell her about the “alarms” my parents always put up, but I stopped. I didn’t know for sure those were in place. For all I knew, they hadn’t gotten them done yet. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I didn’t see anyone. And no one has mentioned anything looking broken. But they had to have gotten in somehow. Unless Ms. Widdershins set us up herself.”
“That’s what I think. But I don’t understand why. I mean, she doesn’t know you that well, she loves Leo’s brother, and I’m fabulous. Why would she want to do that to us?”
I shrugged, and then realized she couldn’t see me. “Who knows? Have you talked to Leo?”
“No. I can’t get him to answer his phone. But I know the kinds of punishments they’ve gotten before. His dad’s going to make sure he never even looks sideways at a can of paint again. Guaranteed.”
I thought I heard the creak of the steps, and I started to panic a little. “I gotta go. I think the parents are coming up.”
“Right. See you tomorrow. Bye.”
I snapped the phone closed and shoved it in a drawer just before my bedroom door opened. I looked up from where I scribbled some numbers onto my math homework, trying not to look guilty. I hadn’t broken any rules. They hadn’t taken the phone away, after all.
Mom appeared in the doorway. “You should finish up what you’re doing and then shower and get to bed. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
“Mom, I know you don’t believe me, but I really didn’t do what they say. I swear. I know I can be overly curious, and I take things too far sometimes, but I wouldn’t deliberately be mean and destroy property.”
She paused in the doorway, her hand opening and closing on the doorknob. “I want to believe you, Caroline, but this time, I have to believe what I see. And if that ever changes, your father and I will be first ones to apologize to you.” She stepped back into the hallway with a pointed look at my paper. “Right now, you’re grounded and I’m very disappointed in you. Finish up.”
Sometimes I couldn’t win for losing.
I finished my math and, knowing tomorrow would be a long day, grabbed my clothes and headed toward the bathroom. As I left, I dropped my shorts. Bending down to pick them up, I noticed a small gargoyle face in the wood vine carvings around my doorway. It looked so much like the banister knob I stepped back inside, closed the door and crouched down on my hands and knees to get a better look.
It was a little more flat and without glass eyes. I ran my fingers over the plaster carefully, excitement fluttering in my gut. They weren’t just similar. The two scrunched faces were exact replicas. No secret switches or hidden holes appeared, and I sat back, discouraged. There had to be something.
I ran my fingers over it again, and when nothing appeared, I bent down, lying flat on the floor and got so close I might have been kissing the aging little face. Then I noticed a faint line running around the edge of the carving. I debated for a moment whether trying to pry it off would be a bad idea. After being accused of vandalism once already, I didn’t want to get caught ripping up my walls.
Muttering a prayer, I got up, hunted through the desk until I came up with a cheap plastic letter opener. I wiggled the edge into the crack next to the gargoyle’s ear. For a few seconds, I didn’t think anything would happen. But as I jammed it in farther, the crack widened. I pulled out the blade and moved to the other side, working it back and forth until the face finally popped out of the wall and into my hand.
Behind it, a shallow compartment was filled with a few yellowing papers and something wrapped in a small piece of green velvet. The fabric was faded and worn, and when I picked it up, it crumbled into chunks in my palm, revealing a round silver locket. It had beautiful etchings of a bird on the casing. A swallow, I thought. When I pried it open with one fingernail, I was disappointed to find the picture had been damaged. On the other side, a tiny curl was tied with a piece of string and clipped in.
The hair was a little weird. I knew some people saved it. But with magic, if you believed in it enough, leaving a bit of yourself could be dangerous. My parents didn’t believe in such things, but some of their friends did. One wizard had even been so paranoid that he shaved his own head and regularly burned his hair and fingernail clippings, so no one could use them against him.
I never really saw the point of that. But then, I never had the problem of someone trying to steal my magic either.
I shoved the gargoyle back into his hole as best I could. I’d have to borrow Dad’s hammer later and tap it all the way back in, but, for now, it worked.
I took everything to my desk, put the locket inside an envelope and tucked it under the letter I already had. Then, I carefully unfolded the papers and flipped through. None of them followed the last line of the letter in the desk. It was the same careful handwriting, but the three pages just held mundane lists of counting sheets and linens and making a trip into town to go to the library and visit friends. The author listed names, but none of the names meant anything to me. Except one. She said she’d gone in and spoken with Annabeth Sanderston about the next meeting. But she didn’t elaborate.
Leo’s mother couldn’t be Annabeth, could she? I mean, his parents were old. But how could I find out if she had met my mystery writer? I couldn’t exactly walk up and ask what she’d been up to about a century ago. There wasn’t even a name
with all these pages to ask her about.
I started to put everything in the drawer, but I stopped, looking back at the gargoyle face. Someone had already been in the house once before. I didn’t want them to find any of this. Carefully, I folded up the papers and put everything in the secret compartment. It barely fit. If I found anything else, I’d have to come up with a new hiding spot.
Now that I knew what to look for, I would definitely find something else. In a house as heavily decorated as this, I’d bet there were lots more replicas of my gargoyle. I just had to find them.
***
The next morning, my parents dropped me off at Ms. Widdershins’ house, stopping briefly to offer sincere apologies and assure her they would be back promptly at five. Unless I decided to cause problems, and then they said they’d be back as soon as they could get there.
Leo and Diana arrived shortly after with similar parental concerns. Diana’s father, a tall, whip thin man with glasses and longish hair, gave us all a once over before getting back in his car and driving home. I didn’t think he was impressed by us.
“I can’t believe you would be involved in such a thing. You all seemed like such nice students,” Ms. Widdershins said, dressed in a billowing summer dress with daisies all over it. Her eyes were misty, as if she couldn’t fathom what we’d done.
It was an act, and I wasn’t buying it. But I kept my lips pressed together. Speaking would only make everything worse, and we didn’t need that.
“Come along then. You’ll start by scrubbing down the siding and then you’ll paint the entire house again.”
She led the way along the front of the house, opposite the window we had been looking in, and we turned the corner. There, scrawled over the siding in lavender paint, were several curse words and a crude picture of Ms. Widdershins dancing on a hill. As she stood there, her bottom lip quivering, I couldn’t keep my words to myself.
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