Olive flopped into a chair, folded her arms, and glared intently at the tablecloth. Rutherford plopped into the opposite chair, frowned at Olive for a moment, and then turned his scowl on the tablecloth as well. Mrs. Dewey clicked back and forth in her tiny high heels, pouring milk and arranging cookies. Finally, she took the chair between the two of them, glanced back and forth at their angry faces, and looked curiously down at the tablecloth to see what it had done wrong. Then she sat back in her chair and heaved a sigh.
“So Rutherford told you about the international school,” she said.
Olive went on glaring silently at the tabletop.
“He’s had a very difficult time making this decision, Olive,” Mrs. Dewey went on. Her voice was gentle. “I think he’s still not sure that he’s doing the right thing. Part of him would like to be with his parents in Europe, but another part of him feels that he should stay here and be your friend and help you.” Mrs. Dewey turned to her grandson. “Isn’t that right?”
“Approximately,” muttered Rutherford.
Olive’s and Rutherford’s eyes met for a split second before zooming off in different directions.
“We both want to help you, Olive,” said Mrs. Dewey. “Your problems are awfully large to deal with them all on your own.”
Olive felt a lump starting to form in her throat.
“Have a cookie,” said Mrs. Dewey, holding the plate under Olive’s nose. The scent of warm chocolate wafted right down into Olive’s lungs, loosening the lump just a little.
“As you know, I’ve been keeping an eye on your house,” Mrs. Dewey continued, watching Olive take a first bite. “The charm I used keeps any uninvited guests from getting inside. And as far as I can tell, the charm is doing its job. But…” Mrs. Dewey let out a ladylike breath through her nose. “I’m afraid that…in spite of my best efforts…something may have gotten in.”
Olive swallowed a half-chewed bit of cookie. “What?” she coughed. “But how?”
Mrs. Dewey passed Olive a napkin. “Well, that’s the odd thing. Whatever it is, it didn’t break the charm. This means that it either got into the house by some magical, unexpected means—or it was invited in.”
Olive stared at Mrs. Dewey’s soft, round face. But she wasn’t seeing Mrs. Dewey at all. Instead, she was seeing her own mother in the front entryway of the old stone house, opening the door, saying, Come in, please. I could count the number of visitors we’ve had in this house on one hand…
Olive’s fingers went numb. Her half-eaten cookie slipped out of her hand and tumbled onto the flowery tablecloth. “Can you tell who it is?”
Mrs. Dewey nibbled thoughtfully at a cookie. “I’m afraid I can’t. I can’t say who or what it is, if it’s a portrait or a person, or how it got there. All I can say for certain is that there is a malevolent presence in your house.”
“Her house always feels like that,” said Rutherford.
Mrs. Dewey pursed her little pink lips.
“What can we do?” Olive whispered.
“Have another cookie,” said Mrs. Dewey, even though Olive hadn’t finished her first one. She gave Olive an encouraging smile. “There isn’t much that double-chocolate chocolate chip cookies can’t illuminate.”
Mrs. Dewey watched as Olive took a bite. The cookie was warm and rich and delicious…but underneath the familiar tastes was something rusty and spicy, which didn’t taste familiar at all.
“Is there something special in these cookies?” Olive asked slowly.
Mrs. Dewey’s smile turned knowing with a hint of coy. “I find that after I’ve eaten a few of these cookies, I can see things a bit more clearly,” she said. “Take one more for the walk home, Olive. And tonight, keep your eyes open.”
Mrs. Dewey began to gather up the plates and cups. Rutherford sat very still in his chair, avoiding Olive’s eyes. Olive wavered to her feet. She couldn’t think of what to say to him. So many words were crowding her mind, shoving each other toward the exit, that none of them could get out at all. She managed to whisper “Good-bye,” although anyone watching her would have thought she was talking to the tablecloth.
“Good-bye,” Rutherford mumbled back.
As she stumbled through Mrs. Dewey’s front door, the thought crossed Olive’s mind that Rutherford might have been saying good-bye for good.
18
THE OLD STONE house was empty and dim. Olive’s footsteps thumped through the silence, their echoes ringing off the walls. She slumped up the stairs to the second floor and was about to throw herself face down onto her bed with Hershel when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a familiar furry form.
Horatio sat on the carpet at the far end of the hallway, staring up at a painting on the wall. He gave a little jerk as Olive approached.
“Olive,” he said, getting up and moving toward her. “You’re home. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten.”
Olive sank down against the wall. She reached out to stroke Horatio’s head, but she’d barely felt the cool strands of fur against her fingers before Horatio ducked out of reach.
“You’re still angry with me about the paints, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Angry?” Horatio repeated. “No, Olive, I’m not angry with you.” But the cat continued to back away from her, edging slowly toward the stairs.
“It seems like you’ve been avoiding me,” Olive persisted. “I thought maybe we could go exploring together, or we—”
“I have more important things to do at present, Olive, than playing with children.” Horatio turned away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will be going outside.”
“Are you making sure no one gets into the tunnel again?” Olive asked, following Horatio to the head of the staircase. “You and Harvey filled in the hole, right?”
Horatio hesitated. He descended a few steps before looking back at Olive. “Yes, of course,” he said at last. “No one has tried to reach the tunnel again, as far as we can tell. But it is wise to be cautious.”
“‘The price of safety is eternal vigilance,’” Olive quoted with a little smile. Horatio looked blank. “That’s what Leopold always says,” she added.
“Ah. Leopold. Yes.” Horatio gave her a long look before bounding down the rest of the stairs into the hall below. The last Olive saw of him was a glint of daylight from the front windows glancing off of his sleek orange fur.
She gazed along the hall, back to the spot where Horatio had sat. He’d been staring up at the painting of the craggy hill. Olive wandered toward the painting. She stood in front of it for quite a while, wondering what Horatio had seen that had held his interest so tightly, but today, there was no hint of smoke, no twirling leaves. Looking at that little stone church, no one would ever guess that it held Olive’s secret. No one would know why this painting suddenly made Olive shiver from head to toe. Olive herself wasn’t quite sure.
That night, after dinner in the old stone house, Mr. Dunwoody suggested that they all play a round of Forty-two, the more complicated version of Twenty-one that Alec and Alice had invented back in their college days.
“It is Friday night, after all,” he said, smiling around the dinner table. “I think it calls for something special.”
“Not Forty-two,” moaned Olive.
Mrs. Dunwoody’s face lit up. “Why don’t we go to the grocery store?” she suggested.
Olive sank down into her chair. The Dunwoodys had invented another math game for the grocery store, informally known as Total Plus Tax, in which each family member took part of the shopping list, estimated the exact total cost of the items (including tax, if any), and split up, trying to shop so that their purchases added up to that estimate. Whoever came closest was the winner. Olive didn’t know what reward the winner got, exactly, because she’d never won, but she guessed that it was something she could live without.
“Not grocery shopping,” she moaned.
After some more suggesting and discussing and moaning, Mr. Dunwoody proposed that they all go for a wal
k. Olive was out of objections at this point. Besides, the sun was just going down, and the sky that could be glimpsed through the windows was a streaked canvas of pale gold and fiery red and dark, encroaching purple. It might be nice to walk under it.
The few scattered streetlights had just flickered on as the Dunwoodys climbed down from their front porch. The very last rays of the sun lingered on Linden Street’s tallest houses, making their rooftops shine like bronze until the darkness snuffed them, one by one.
Leaves stirred by an evening breeze clicked softly to the pavement as they walked. Olive kicked a crackling pile beneath Mr. Fergus’s big maple tree and listened to them whisper back to the ground before being crunched under her parents’ feet. Mrs. Dunwoody counted them before they landed. “Forty-seven,” she murmured to Mr. Dunwoody.
They wound their way slowly up and down the block, passing the Butlers’ glowing windows and catching a trail of piano music that trickled out of Mr. Hanniman’s living room. Mrs. Dewey’s cozy house was lit up inside. Olive wondered whether she and Rutherford were having another botany lesson, or if they were washing the dinner dishes and talking about medieval battle tactics, or if Rutherford was in his room, putting stacks of dragon T-shirts and an army of carefully wrapped figurines into a suitcase. A twinge of pain shot through her heart.
The last hint of sunset had vanished by the time they passed Mrs. Nivens’s empty house. Olive shuddered, gazing at those black, empty windows, and slowed her steps until her parents caught up with her.
“Strange about Mrs. Nivens, isn’t it?” said Mr. Dunwoody, nodding at the tall gray house.
“Strange and sad,” said Mrs. Dunwoody.
“Yes,” whispered Olive.
Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody had been holding hands, but now they let go of each other to wrap their arms around Olive’s shoulders. Wedged right between them, Olive felt safer and warmer. The heap of worry even began to lighten a little. But as they passed the shriveling lilac hedge, the full height of the old stone house loomed over them. Olive looked up at those dark, empty windows and felt the house looking down at her in return, beckoning her, daring her to come back inside. And she had nowhere else to go. Perhaps she was only imagining it, but it seemed as though one last beam of sunset—a beam that should already have slipped behind the horizon—fell across the front steps, leading like a glowing carpet to the front door.
With a nervous, bumpy feeling in her stomach, Olive followed her parents up the creaking porch steps and back inside the old stone house.
19
KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN.
Olive repeated Mrs. Dewey’s instructions to herself as she lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. The shadows of leafy branches danced and skittered across the plaster. What was the “malevolent presence” Mrs. Dewey had detected? Was it Ms. Teedlebaum? Was it Annabelle herself? Was it someone—or something—else? And how would simply keeping her eyes open let her uncover the truth?
Olive turned these questions over and over in her mind until they started to dissolve, crumbling apart like a cookie, or like a torn-up sheet of paper…
…And suddenly her eyelids were snapping open and she was staring up into the darkness, feeling as though she had been dropped into her bed from a hundred feet above.
How had she let herself fall asleep?
Bolting upright, she turned toward the alarm clock. It was already after 3:00 a.m. Whatever had been making noises in the hallway might have passed by long ago.
Olive glanced from the alarm clock to the door, which she had left open just an inch. Instead of a strip of hallway lit by the pale gray glow of the moon, a wavering band of blue light slipped through the gap in the door. As Olive stared, the light seemed to brighten, stretching across her floor all the way to the side of her bed. It touched the rumpled blankets, poking and prodding at Olive’s legs.
As quietly as she could, Olive climbed out of bed and let the beam of light lead her to the door. The hallway was empty. The lights weren’t on; no one carrying a magical lantern or a strange, blue-bulbed flashlight was passing by. And yet, a ribbon of blue light filled the corridor, unrolling itself like a carpet just wide enough for one person to walk on. It led from Olive’s bedroom door, past the paintings of Linden Street and the moonlit forest, and down into the darkness of the lower floor.
Olive blinked. She rubbed her eyes and looked again and blinked some more. The carpet of light didn’t go away. If anything, it seemed to grow brighter, becoming a pearly blue river of light that lapped at Olive’s toes.
Mrs. Dewey’s words—There isn’t much that double-chocolate chocolate chip cookies can’t illuminate—floated through Olive’s memory. There was something here for her to find, and this light was leading the way. She edged out into the hall. The ribbon of light tugged her forward, its beams falling from nowhere, leaving everything outside its stream in darkness. Olive waded in the light, following its path along the corridor and down the stairs.
In the entryway, the carpet of light zagged to the left, leading along the hall toward the kitchen. Olive passed the hollow doorways of the parlor and the dining room. The glowing pathway guided her through the darkness, turning again once it reached the kitchen and trickling beneath the basement door.
Great, muttered Olive’s brain. It would send me down there.
With a fortifying breath, she turned the knob of the basement door.
The carpet of light sliced through the blackness without lessening it. The basement’s dark, hidden corners remained dark and hidden as Olive edged down the chilly wooden steps, shifting her weight from board to board as slowly as she could.
The carpet of light stopped at the foot of the stairs. Olive reached the icy basement floor and paused, looking around, longing to reach for the light chain. The air was as black as spilled ink. Fragments of moonlight from the open doorway above only seemed to outline the darkness. She listened. The basement appeared to be empty, but from somewhere—somewhere distant and enclosed, somewhere that seemed to be beneath her feet—Olive caught the sound of voices.
Could her art teacher possibly be hiding underneath her house? Or could a living portrait with honey-colored eyes and soft, dark hair be lurking just a few steps away? And how odd had Olive’s life become that these two possibilities seemed equally likely?
She tiptoed across the cold stone floor to Leopold’s corner, following the sound. Behind her, the ribbon of blue light wavered slightly. A cold draft of air told her what she had already guessed: The trapdoor was standing open.
“She’s been up there,” said a voice—a low, whispering voice—from far beneath.
Olive inched along the wall beside the open trapdoor, trying not to think of the spiders and webs and sucked-dry bodies of bugs that might be scattered there, and lay down on the chilly basement floor, bringing her ears as close to the hole as she dared.
The voice that spoke next was deep and gravelly: Leopold. “I simply can’t believe that she would—”
“You can’t believe it? After the way she manipulated you?” the other, whispering voice interrupted. Now Olive recognized it. It was Horatio’s. “Is your memory that short?”
They must be near the foot of the ladder under the trapdoor, Olive realized. Their voices were close by, but muted and echoing, like sounds made inside of a deep well. She craned over the hole.
A third voice was speaking. At first, Olive couldn’t make out what it said, but then she caught the words double agent spoken in a crisp British accent. So Harvey was down there too.
She’s been up there. Did Horatio mean Annabelle? She had certainly manipulated Leopold—and Horatio, and Harvey—in her time. But double agent? There was nothing double about Annabelle. Her agenda was perfectly clear. Could he mean Ms. Teedlebaum? No, that wouldn’t make sense…Ms. Teedlebaum had never even seen the cats, as far as Olive knew. But who else could they be talking about?
Horatio’s irritated whisper trailed up through the hole again. “…What would it take to make you believe�
��”
“Simply don’t see why she would—” Leopold’s voice ended with another incomprehensible mutter.
“I can assure you that she has been up there.” Harvey was speaking again. “I observed her myself, from my base of operations. Much as it saddens me to think that one of our own has become a traitor to the cause, it would not be the first time…”
“No,” said Leopold’s voice, soft but clear. “No.”
The word echoed in Olive’s head. No.
“You refuse to believe us?” said Horatio’s voice. “I’ll show you.”
There was some softer, lower mumbling. The ladder gave a faint creak. Olive squirmed away from the trapdoor and pressed herself tight against the basement wall, futilely attempting not to think about the things with many legs that might be crawling from the stones into her hair. She held her breath and kept still.
Horatio and Leopold climbed one after the other through the open trapdoor. Neither one seemed to notice the carpet of pale blue light still glowing on the staircase. Olive pushed her shoulder blades against the gravestones of the wall, trying not to move, not even to blink. The two cats padded silently across the basement floor toward the stairs. Then Horatio halted. He turned to stare into the shadows, right where Olive was sitting. Leopold’s eyes swiveled in the same direction. Olive held as still as she had ever held in her life. She pretended that her skin had turned to plastic and that she couldn’t feel the cold against her back, or the itchy grittiness under her palms, or the air that was starting to burn in her lungs. She stared straight back at the cats.
“Does she think that we can’t see her?” Leopold asked Horatio.
“That would be my guess,” said Horatio dryly. “Take a breath, Olive. You look like you’re about to give yourself brain damage.”
Olive took a gulp of air.
“Ordinarily, I would reprimand you for eavesdropping,” Horatio went on, “but as it happens, this is rather convenient. Come with us, Olive. I have something to show both of you.”
The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 Page 12