by Ben Guterson
“What?” Freddy said. “Slow down, slow down! I don’t get it. How did you find out all of this?”
“There’s no time to explain!” The string quartet started up a new tune that was suddenly very loud, and Elizabeth pulled Freddy to the side of the hall. “Have you seen Norbridge in here?”
“Not yet. I thought he would be showing up for the party soon.”
Elizabeth clutched her pendant tightly, scanned the room one more time, and saw only a mass of people dancing and laughing; she couldn’t help feeling that if those people knew what Gracella and the Hiemses might be planning, if they only understood there was something evil in Winterhouse that might, that very evening, try to harm them …
She stopped thinking about it and turned back to Freddy. “We have to find him,” she said. “Right now.” She grabbed Freddy’s hand and they rushed toward the door closest to them.
“Where are we going?” Freddy said.
Elizabeth considered for the briefest of moments before saying—with complete certainty—“The library!”
* * *
The corridor to the library was darker than usual, Elizabeth thought, and the approach to the huge wooden doors was like traveling through a dark tunnel. When she and Freddy, as quietly as possible, opened one of the doors, Elizabeth felt as though they were stepping into a broad valley at midnight—and then the two of them were alone in the gloom and silence of the library. They stood, listening and waiting.
“I don’t think anyone’s here,” Freddy whispered after a moment, his voice shaking. “Maybe we should look somewhere else.”
Elizabeth put a finger to her lips. She looked up. On the third level, high above them, a faint glow of crimson hovered in the air. She pointed to it; Freddy stood rooted to the floor.
“We need to go up there,” she whispered.
Freddy winced. “Why don’t we go find Norbridge and bring him back here to look into it?”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “What if he’s up there and needs our help?”
Freddy pushed up his glasses and nodded.
Elizabeth took Freddy’s hand in hers. “We can’t be afraid. We can do this together.”
Without a sound they began to climb the long stairwell. Elizabeth moved deliberately, listening for any noise from above, but all remained silent. She put a hand on her pendant, ran her fingers across it.
“Faith,” she said to herself.
They reached the top of the stairwell and, in silent agreement, moved toward the reference room, the very place Elizabeth had found The Book; with each step the crimson light grew stronger. An awful smell—the acrid bite of a just-lit matchstick combined with a deeper odor of something rotten beneath—filled the air, and Elizabeth scrunched her nose in disgust. She paused, took a halting breath, and pressed on.
When they came to the open doorway, Elizabeth was instantly baffled by the scene that met her eyes. On a chair in the middle of the room, bathed in a glow of crimson light, sat a tall, thin woman in a long overcoat with her white hair set in a crown-like bun. She was looking to a corner of the room so that Elizabeth saw her in profile only. The woman, it seemed, had not noticed her and Freddy come into view. Elizabeth gave a gasp of surprise. The woman sat perfectly still, as though she had heard nothing.
“So many years since I have been in this library,” the woman said, her voice nearly a whisper, as she continued to look away. The crimson light around her throbbed as she spoke, a strange and ominous pulse. “So many years,” the woman said. It was as if she were speaking to someone else in the room, though Elizabeth was too frightened and perplexed to make sense of what was happening.
“Such a wonderful place,” the woman continued, her gaze fixed far away, her voice low and steady and icy calm. “So many memories. Hours, days—endless days!—spent here, with all these lovely books. Looking, examining, searching.” She turned to glare at Elizabeth and spat out her final word with a cruel hissing sound: “Searching!” Her eyes flashed wide and evil as the crimson glow around her flared.
Elizabeth’s skin felt on fire: Before her was the woman from her nightmares, the woman who had haunted her sleep and trapped her in an endless library.
“You!” Elizabeth sputtered, hardly aware she was speaking. “You … are…”
“Yes, I have returned to Winterhouse,” the woman said, her voice louder now, but just barely. “That must be what you are trying to say.” She smiled cruelly.
The woman stood, lifted her hands slowly above her head in some threatening gesture, as though about to toss an invisible ball at Elizabeth and Freddy. Under her jacket she wore a satiny black dress and a vest with strange patterns on it—just like the designs on Selena’s vest—and long black gloves. There was a wild look in her eyes, and the crimson light billowed around her. She lowered her arms and stared at Elizabeth and Freddy, her face set in an expression of restrained fury. She seemed to be considering just how, exactly, she wanted to harm them, as though there was no question that she had them trapped now. And it was this more than anything—that the woman seemed in complete control—that sent another wave of terror through Elizabeth. She reached for Freddy, and they clasped hands.
The woman laughed. “My dear, dear brother was just as stunned to see me as you are,” she said, and she looked to the corner of the room again. There, at the foot of a bookcase, lay Norbridge. He was motionless and slack. Before Elizabeth could gather her thoughts, the woman floated forward—as though a stiff wind had pushed her from behind—and landed lightly on the floor, halving the distance between her and Elizabeth in one instant motion. The strangeness of it—that the old woman had actually skimmed forward in a flash—sent a shock through Elizabeth’s body as though she’d been hit with slivers of broken glass; it was so uncanny and unexpected that Elizabeth felt paralyzed.
“I didn’t even have to come get you,” the woman said. “You’ve come to me!” She gave a weird leer of pleasure, jutted her face in Elizabeth’s direction, and bugged her eyes out.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth said feebly. “What’s the matter with Norbridge?”
The woman looked at Norbridge. “Fast asleep!” she yelled, her voice booming suddenly; and she lifted both hands, palms outward, and began to laugh.
Elizabeth stood fixed in place, watching.
“What am I doing, you ask?” the woman said, as she turned back to Elizabeth. “I’m putting an end to him, once and for all. That’s what I’m doing. And then I was going to come for you. But you’ve saved me the trouble.” She moved two steps closer to Elizabeth. “So many nice books in this room, eh?” she said gently, before beginning to yell once more: “And they all remind me of the years I spent here as a girl, all the times he humiliated me, lorded over me, made me feel like nothing!”
And at this, she bounded to the nearest bookcase—once again skimming forward by some unseen force—snatched a book from a shelf, whipped around toward Norbridge, and hurled the book in his direction, just missing him.
“No!” Elizabeth yelled as she dashed over to Norbridge. She fell to the ground beside him and cradled his head.
“Please…” Freddy said, his voice barely audible. He was staring at Elizabeth as if he hoped she might somehow save all of them.
“Silence!” the woman said, plucking out another book and hurling it toward Freddy. The crimson light around her was quivering, pulsing wildly.
“Freddy!” Elizabeth screamed, and as she stood, the woman glared at her with a face full of hatred.
“Be quiet!” the woman yelled.
“Freddy!” Elizabeth screamed again. “Go! Get Jackson! Hurry!”
Freddy lurched through the doorway and was gone.
“It won’t matter!” the woman called, before turning back to Elizabeth. “By the time anyone returns…” She bugged her eyes out again and looked at Elizabeth as though she had her fixed in some snare she’d laid.
“Why are you doing this?” Elizabeth said.
“Because I can,�
�� she said. “Because I want to. Because I hate all of you, and most of all, I hate this place.” She lowered her hands. “I am Gracella Winters, as I’m sure you’ve figured out from all your snooping. And I’ve come back.” She laughed and pointed to Elizabeth. “You brought me back. You woke my spirit in the library, and you brought it fully awake at my cabin.” She spread her arms and glanced quickly downward to admire herself. “I only needed it to reunite with my bodily form—and now I am whole once again! You made all of this possible.”
Gracella was speaking softly now, staring at Elizabeth, who began to feel oddly fatigued. Her arms and legs became heavy, and a deep weariness fell over her.
“It was you, my dear,” Gracella said. “You clever girl.” She kept staring deeply into Elizabeth’s eyes, repeating the words—“You clever girl”—and Elizabeth felt her limbs growing thicker. Gracella stepped closer. Something in the back of Elizabeth’s mind was whispering to her, was telling her not to keep looking into Gracella’s eyes; but she stood fixed in place as the old woman continued saying the words in a lulling, quiet chant.
“It was you,” Gracella said softly, slowly. “You were the one, my dear, clever girl.”
A deep silence descended on Elizabeth—everything narrowed to only the sound of Gracella’s voice as she drew nearer, moving closer to Elizabeth. She raised both arms—and, if someone had been watching, it would have appeared that Gracella was about to put her hands around Elizabeth’s neck.
CHAPTER 36
THE BOOK REVEALED
BOOT
BOLT
BOLD
BOND
BONE
GONE
Norbridge made a low sound, a small rasp of a cough, and Gracella looked to him. In that split second, Elizabeth felt as though she’d been pinched; her body came alive again, and she realized Gracella was right in front of her. Elizabeth’s muscles unfroze, and she jumped two steps back and looked at Norbridge once more.
“I don’t know what you’ve done,” Elizabeth said. “But I’m asking you to please stop this. Stop trying to hurt us.”
Gracella extended an arm in Elizabeth’s direction as if to make an accusation. She looked bigger somehow, as though she’d grown several inches or, in some inexplicable way, expanded her body; her crown of silver hair and her pale skin and the weird symbols on her black vest made her look foreboding and spectral. Her arm extended toward Elizabeth, and then Gracella’s eyes bored into her once more just as she turned away.
“Look at me!” Gracella roared. “Look at me!”
“No!” Elizabeth yelled. The room filled with a terrible noise like rushing wind, and it was all Elizabeth could do to stand in place, keeping a distance between her and Gracella. She put her hands to her ears, darted to the far side of the room, and then watched as Gracella stood, peering at her with perfect calm.
The noise stopped, and the room was silent.
“My daughter Selena discovered where you were,” Gracella growled, staring at Elizabeth with fury. “Once your little flashes of intuition began months ago, she sensed them—and then it was a simple matter for her to locate you. To track you down. She gave your pathetic aunt and uncle money to get rid of you, she arranged to have you brought here, and all the while she and Marcus watched you after they brought my body here to wait. We needed you, you see. To bring me back, and to help us locate something … invaluable.” She reached inside her overcoat and slid out A Guide for Children. “You were the last of the line—the last one with the power to find The Book. And now it’s mine. You played right into our hands. You did more than I ever hoped. You brought me back!”
Elizabeth felt total panic. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Your dear grandfather does!” she yelled. “And as he lies there, he can think about all the years he slighted me!”
Elizabeth felt paralyzed. “I…” she began to say, but she was so frightened she could barely speak, much less move.
Gracella shrugged cruelly. “My dear brother is halfway to his end,” she said. “He can’t help you, and there is nowhere to run.” She pointed to Elizabeth. “I will solve the rest of the puzzle. And after that I will get rid of each of you in turn. But if you know anything at all about this little game our friend Riley Granger created, you had better tell me now, and maybe I’ll make things not quite so bad for all of you. Not quite so … uncomfortable.” She stood watching Elizabeth. “I’ll give you ten seconds to tell me what you know.”
For the first time since she’d entered the room, Elizabeth became aware of the awful smell once again; but she was so overwhelmed with dread for Norbridge, she could hardly think straight. She stood in place, the lines of the strange rhyme in the Granger book sounding inside her: If in your hands you hold The Book / It’s up to you then—saint or crook?
Gracella glared at Elizabeth. “Time’s up!”
She pointed at Elizabeth once more, stepped toward her slowly with her arm extended. Elizabeth stood watching, and Gracella was so close Elizabeth could have reached out and touched her gloved hand.
“It’s almost a shame you have to die,” Gracella said. “You seem like such a resourceful girl.”
“Please, don’t do this,” Elizabeth pleaded.
Gracella shook her head sadly, cruelly. “Poor girl.”
“You don’t have to hurt anyone.”
Gracella lifted a hand as if to slap Elizabeth. “We brought you here to find The Book for me! Do you realize your mere presence here increased my power? Made it possible for me to finally rejoin my physical form and overwhelm my weakling of a brother?” She hesitated. “There’s just one final piece of the puzzle. And if you don’t know it, I may as well kill you right now.”
“But you don’t have to do any of this,” Elizabeth pleaded.
Gracella stared at her with bottomless loathing. She set The Book on the reading stand beside her and lifted her hands. There was nothing more to discuss; it was clear what she was about to do.
Elizabeth’s thoughts were racing furiously. She was trying to think through some way out of this danger—and in that moment after Gracella set The Book down, she realized she had one chance.
“I broke the code!” she shouted.
Gracella lowered her hands. “You figured it out?”
“I did!” Through her fear, through all the panic and confusion swirling within her, Elizabeth found a small point of calm deep within her mind, the very thing she had been practicing for over a week now. She grabbed onto it and moved her eyes to The Book. “I figured it out,” she said, even as she focused on the tiny spark of the feeling she was trying to summon. She needed time, anything to gain more time.
Gracella hesitated. She seemed to be working out how much she ought to trust Elizabeth. “What do you know?” She cocked her head at Elizabeth warily.
“There’s a secret message in the painting of Nestor Falls.” Her thoughts were slowing; she let her mind encompass The Book before her on the stand as if she was preparing to snatch it up.
Gracella lifted her hands and seemed poised to strike Elizabeth. “Go on,” she said.
The words of the poem throbbed inside Elizabeth’s head. If it’s the last, be cruel, be mad / And utter this: “I choose the bad” / But if the first, calm if you would / Intone just this: “I choose the good.” She stared at The Book and let her vision blur.
“Go on!” Gracella yelled.
“And you need a keyword to figure it out,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes were unfocused, and she felt her thoughts quieting.
“I know all this!” Gracella screamed. “I know all…”
She stopped, and the shock of her silence made Elizabeth hesitate. The feeling, which had been on the verge of breaking through, tamped down, and she moved her eyes away from The Book and to Gracella’s harsh face, which was now regarding her with a look of unexpected interest. She seemed to have changed her mind about something.
“Not only are you a Falls,” Gracella said quietly, �
��you really do have some degree of power, even at your age. I can feel it.” She laughed. “And you actually think you can use it now—and against me.” She laughed harder.
Elizabeth regained her concentration in the midst of Gracella’s distraction. She forced her mind to focus on The Book, on the feeling, on all of the things inside herself.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Elizabeth said absently.
Gracella laughed even louder. “Very good!” she said, with a taunting note in her voice. “Very, very good! And you have an inclination to practice deception, as well. I approve!” She leaned forward. “Perhaps you would like to use that power of yours to assist me,” she whispered. “Imagine that! How wonderful it would feel! The strength of it. And so, yes, I suppose you are correct—maybe I don’t have to kill you. Maybe you would like to join me.”
The feeling was on the verge of surfacing more powerfully than ever; but as Elizabeth listened to Gracella, she sensed something unknown within her: a black streak, something jagged and uncanny at the fringes of the feeling, clawed at her. It felt evil—and alluring. As she stared at The Book and pressed her thoughts tight and heard Gracella’s words echoing in her brain, she was stunned by a thought she had never imagined would come to her: What Gracella had said was … tempting.
Norbridge made a noise again, an anguished, rasping sound, and Gracella looked to him. Some tension in Elizabeth’s mind eased a notch, and the wicked feeling of a moment before fled. Her concentration knotted and her gaze bore into The Book with a fixity that felt unbreakable. Gracella was still looking away. The Book started to vibrate, moved like a pot filled with water just beginning to boil. And then, as if hooked by a line of unseen wire, it lurched off the stand and, with a delicate arc, landed at Elizabeth’s feet. As Gracella turned back to her, she scooped it up and, with both hands wrapped around it, she shouted, “I CHOOSE THE GOOD!”
The crimson light blinked out.
Elizabeth held her breath. For several awful seconds, she felt that something had gone awry, that she had done the one wrong thing and now all was truly and totally lost. Gracella stood motionless, her lips curled and her eyes glazed, and then she looked up quickly and flinched. Her face tightened. She hunched over and put a hand to her chest; it looked as though she couldn’t gather enough breath to take in.