Harry kept in front of us and walked slowly, with measured, careful steps crunching through the snow. “You have to be careful not to disturb them,” he whispered over his shoulder.
“Disturb what?” I whispered back, casting a dubious glance at the ground beneath my feet, which suddenly seemed too dark and murky. Like I was walking through a lake instead of snow.
“There are snakes,” Harry said. “And great big spiders.” After a few more steps he added, as an afterthought, “Roaches too, but they don’t bite. They’re just gross.”
“I see. But the snakes and the spiders, they do bite?”
“Sure,” said Harry. “They bite hard.”
I tried not to look too disturbed by this news, but I stepped more lightly. And wished, as the darkness grew, that we had a flashlight, or could have risked using one if we did.
“None of them are native to this area,” Harry went on, his voice taking on the tone of a teacher delivering a lesson. “And they definitely shouldn’t be active at this time of year, anyway. I read about them all online. I don’t know how they survive.” He shrugged as he walked on. “Probably an enchantment.”
“Are there a lot of enchantments on your house?” Cooper asked.
I reached out with my mind as he spoke, trying to get a feel for the place. But I could sense nothing. Not even the bushes that surrounded us. As with the chestnut tree at the edge of the property, everything felt completely blank.
I had an intuition that this dead zone wasn’t due to an absence of magic, but to a boundary imposed by and on it. There was place-magic here, but it wasn’t for me to tap into.
“Oh, loads,” said Harry, in answer to Cooper’s question. “But most of them are off.”
“What do you mean, off?” I asked.
“Off,” Harry repeated. “Like how you turn a thing on or off.”
“Your enchantments can be turned off?”
“Um, yeah, they need magic?” Harry looked over his shoulder again, and regarded me as if thinking I was awfully slow, for a grown-up. “You don’t keep your computer on all the time, right? Or the oven, or whatever you use?”
I supposed that made sense. It might even help explain why the magic here was so locked down, so impossible for me to touch. A family of feeders needed vitality to work magic, and the Wick clan’s central struggle in life was how difficult vitality was for them to come by in this world. They wouldn’t waste it powering the enchantments Harry spoke of—not even magical wards—except when they absolutely needed to.
And if this was not one of those times, that meant Harry was telling the truth: our coming was a secret. They didn’t know. There was no trap.
This is too easy. Just like the trip up here was too easy.
So let something be easy, for once.
I only hoped it was that simple. And maybe it was. If Serena really had sent Harry out to help us, maybe she’d found other ways to smooth our way, too.
About time she pitched in.
“The witch threatened you, you said?” I asked.
Harry didn’t answer; he was too busy leaping backwards to get away from something I couldn’t see.
He barreled straight into me. Thanks to the curse and the stresses of the day, not to mention how thin I’d gotten, the boy’s weight was enough to knock me down. Cooper made a grab for me, too late. I landed face-down, spitting splattered snow out of my mouth and wincing at the flare of pain in my wrists.
But I shortly discovered that I had bigger problems: namely, a thick, dark snake only inches from my face. It reared up, mouth open, fangs at the ready.
I gasped and started to shuffle back, then froze, trying desperately to remember what you were supposed to do. Stay still or run?
Before I was obliged to choose, Cooper’s boot came crashing down on it, a few inches below its hissing head. Phineas took advantage of the distraction to yank me to my feet. I turned to see what had happened to the snake, but I saw nothing at all in the snow—not even blood.
“What happened to it?” I asked.
“Went back into the hedge,” said Cooper.
“Did you get bitten?”
He shook his head and gestured at his foot. “I’m pretty well covered up anyway. It’s fine.”
We all looked at Harry, who didn’t seem the least bit perturbed. He blinked back at us and said, “Told you there were snakes.” Then he turned and kept walking.
Okay, maybe it’s not all that easy.
As we fell in step behind Harry again, Cooper asked, “Are we headed into the main house? Is that where Serena is?”
Harry nodded, and Cooper and Phineas both gave me I-told-you-so looks, which I ignored.
“What about your father?” Cooper went on. “Is he inside, too?”
“No, Daddy went away. Uncle Jarod and Uncle Toby and Aunt Lola all went with him, because of what the witch said.”
“What did the witch say?” I asked.
“When she saw that you were coming, she told me to watch for you,” said Harry. “But she told everyone else she had a vision that you went to Minnesota, because you found out where Augustus lives, and you think the sapwood seeds are there.”
“Everyone else,” I repeated. “Do a lot of your aunts and uncles live here?”
“Five uncles and aunts, and six cousins, between three houses,” Harry said. “Some of the cousins are babies, though.”
Before I could ask more, Cooper stepped forward, suddenly eager. “And the sapwood seeds, are they in Minnesota?”
Harry raised his chin. “Maybe.”
Cooper squatted, getting level with Harry’s face, studying it intently. “Or are they here? In the house? Another building? Does your father have a safe hidden away somewhere?” I knew he was looking for changes in the boy’s eyes, his body language, as he asked each question.
Harry scowled at him. “I can’t tell you that. I’d rather be cursed by the witch than let some vital scum get our seeds.”
“Vital scum, huh?” Cooper got back on his feet. “What’s your father been telling you about us?”
“That you want to stop us from planting the forest,” said Harry. “And don’t even try to tell me that’s a lie, because I know it’s true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Cooper said. “If we let you plant that forest, a lot of people would die.”
“No they wouldn’t,” said Harry. “We don’t want to kill anybody. We just want to drain them. They’d be treated well.”
“Treated well, what, like livestock?” Cooper asked.
Harry gave him a disgusted look. “We need the forest for food. We’re the ones who will die, if we let you stop us.”
Well, there was no denying that much. I wondered, suddenly, what it must be like to grow up as Harrier Wick, knowing you were doomed to die unless your father could manage to enslave human beings for you to feed on.
“Listen, kid—” Cooper began, and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry flinched and dodged away from him.
Phineas got between them. He gave Cooper one hard, warning look, then turned to Harry. “So, the witch led your family away from here, so we could rescue her.”
Cooper gave Phineas a dark glare in return. On this, I was firmly on my cousin’s side, but I understood Cooper’s frustration, too. It wasn’t like he had the opportunity to question a Wick very often, and certainly finding the seeds was of grave importance.
But I’d much rather do it when I was able to draw an easy breath again. Breaking the curse had to come first.
And besides, Harry was just a kid. He hadn’t asked for his lot in life. And I certainly saw no evidence that he deserved it. I detected no trace in him of the brutality that had marked his late siblings.
The boy with the red glasses is nice.
We’re the ones who will die.
“Yeah.” Harry looked from Phineas to Cooper and back again, his expression suggesting he was trying to decide whether to continue. Finally he said, “She said you would take her away,
if I helped you. I want her to leave.”
“Good thinking,” Cooper said. He seemed to have regained his composure, and even gave Harry his most charming smile. “Lead the way.”
We walked in silence for a short while longer, until Cooper touched my elbow and whispered low, close to my ear, “His eyes widened, when I asked if the seeds are in the house.”
“What—”
“Shh!” Harry stopped and put a finger to his lips. We’d reached the end of the maze.
He whispered something too quietly for me to hear, and gestured frantically for us to get back. We did, until we were all practically inside the hedge.
I inched closer to Harry, trying to peer around him, but all I saw was a pale ribbon of paved walkway through a garden, and the side of an enormous building beyond. I guessed, from my memory of the aerial photographs I’d studied on the plane, that that was the main house ahead. The zoo and assorted smaller buildings would be on the other side of that.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“You can’t hear him?” Harry breathed.
I shook my head. He goggled at me like I really was the simplest person he’d ever met, and stood very still, waiting for I knew not what. I glanced back at Cooper and Phineas, but they seemed equally bewildered.
Then, finally, I did hear it: a deep baritone voice, singing. It was coming closer, but still too far off to make out any of the words of the slow, mournful song.
A singing man, with long teeth.
Harry shrank back even farther into the hedge, if that was possible, until his red glasses and the owlish eyes behind them were nearly all of him that I could see. He screwed those eyes up tightly, the way a toddler might, as if hoping against all logic that if he couldn’t see whoever was coming, they wouldn’t be able to see him, either.
Following his lead, the rest of us pressed as close as we could against the wall of branches and needles, and waited while the singing man approached. Cooper reached into his coat pocket, and I knew he was readying his gun.
Finally the words of the song became clear.
“Three blind mice… three blind mice…”
Is this for real?
I blinked at Cooper, whose mouth dropped open. Whoever the long-toothed man was, he was singing the nursery song like it was a funeral dirge. It was barely recognizable.
“…the miller and his merry old wife…”
I felt as much as saw a shape pass the opening of the maze as the voice got louder, then retreated again.
“…she cut off their tails and then licked the knife.”
We waited in stillness for another few minutes, until silence settled around us again. Then Harry extricated himself from the hedge and looked around at us, his face solemn.
“It’s a lucky day. He didn’t come into the maze.”
“Who was he?” I asked.
“Jeeves.” Harry’s tone as he said the word was dire, the voice of someone telling you they (or perhaps you) have a terminal disease.
“And who is he?” asked Phineas. “What’s his job here?”
“He’s the butler.”
“You’re kidding me,” Cooper said. “You have a butler named Jeeves?”
“Well, that isn’t his real name.” Harry gave Cooper the same look he’d already given me several times, as if astonished by our stupidity. “It’s just what Daddy calls him.”
“Let’s keep moving,” I said. “Who else is in the house right now, Harry?”
“Mother,” he said. “But she doesn’t leave her room much. Jeeves is watching me.” He seemed to suppress a shudder, and I had the sense the poor kid would have hidden from Jeeves even if he wasn’t escorting a group of intruders to visit their prisoner. This long-toothed butler (and his teeth are sharp) must be the reason Harry so desired to learn the trick of invisibility.
“It must be hard,” I said gently. “Being scared of the witch and of Jeeves, and being afraid of punishments from both of them. But you’re doing the right thing, taking us to her.”
Harry didn’t answer. He turned away to peek around the edge of the hedge and then, apparently satisfied that Jeeves was well and truly gone, ran across the garden at a speed I wouldn’t have thought such small legs capable of. Figuring he probably had a good reason for running, I did the same, Cooper and Phineas falling in beside me.
By the time we reached the house I was winded and dizzy, and doing my best not to show it. Sticking close to the brick wall, we crept around the building to a back door. I saw no trees, no cameras, and guessed we’d reached the private entrance Phineas had told us about.
Harry worked his thumb into a crack in one of the bricks, then popped it out to reveal a keypad in the wall beside the door. Cooper bent to pick up the dislodged brick and said something about it being plastic, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy surreptitiously watching Harry enter in 7-2-5-0-7, and committing the code to memory, just in case.
“My dad doesn’t think I know the right numbers, but of course I would know these ones,” Harry said, as the door unlocked with a barely audible click.
Cooper and I slipped inside behind him, but Phineas hesitated, then shook his head. “I’m staying out here. I’ll go back and wait for you in the center of the maze. That way if you don’t come back, I’ll be able to teleport out for help.”
I nodded. “Good thinking.”
“Hurry up!” Harry hissed behind us.
Phineas squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t trust him, keep your guard up, but use him if you can, I guess.”
I nodded again. That was pretty much the plan. I gave my cousin what I hoped was an optimistic wave and said, “We’ll text you,” before closing the door behind me.
Well, this has been a real funhouse so far. Wonder what it’s like on the inside.
When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I found that we were in a small, empty room. There were three doors in addition to the one we’d just come through, one ahead and one to each side.
I reached out with my mind again, feeling the place out, just on the off chance that the house might be different from the grounds.
It wasn’t. As I had outside, I felt only blankness, like a television that was turned off.
I opened my eyes to find Cooper watching me closely, no doubt guessing what I was doing. I shrugged and whispered, “I’ve got nothing.”
Harry waved his hand. “Hurry up.” He opened the door to the right, which looked like it led directly down to a cellar.
“Keeps his dungeon handy, I see,” Cooper muttered.
Harry turned on the light and rushed us down to a landing where the smooth stone stairs took a turn. He flicked a switch, lighting the lower staircase, and then another, to throw the one behind us into darkness again. Only then did he seem to relax. The second set of stairs was steeper than the first, and he took these more slowly.
“Anyone else around, besides your mother?” Cooper asked.
“Nope. The maids only come in the morning, and the chef too, most days, she just leaves our dinner in the fridge. The guard men come inside sometimes, but your friend put them to sleep or something.” Harry looked back over his shoulder. “Are they all right? A lot of them are jerks, but I like Lee and Jeff okay.”
“They’ll be fine,” Cooper assured him. “Our friend said they would wake up later and feel just like they had a nap.”
The second set of stairs met a third, until we must have been very deep underground. It was freezing, and terribly quiet. At least Jeeves was unlikely to hear or find us down there.
But if he does, nobody will be able to hear us scream.
Once at the bottom, we found ourselves in a small hallway lit by an ornate but dim light fixture, with two doors on the right, two on the left, and one straight ahead. They were all made of wood, but crisscrossed with bands of what looked like iron.
Harry stepped aside and gestured around. “Now you have to do the puzzles.”
I blinked at him.
“The puzzles?” Cooper as
ked.
“To get to the witch,” Harry said. “You’ll have to go by yourself. I’m not allowed to do the puzzles. I’m not allowed to visit her.”
“But you must visit her,” I said. “You just talked to her, didn’t you? When she told you we were coming?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Not in person. Anyway, dinner is soon and if I’m late they’ll know. The witch will be able to tell you how to get out again, if you get to her.”
“If we get to her,” Cooper repeated. “Can you at least tell us where to start? Which door?”
Harry didn’t answer. Instead he looked back and forth between us, studying us, his earnest eyes huger than ever. Finally he said, “You’ll take her away, right?”
“We absolutely will,” I said. “But can’t you give us any hints at all about these puzzles?”
“I just told you, I’m not allowed to do the puzzles.” And with that, Harry was hopping back up the stairs like some strange alien animal, out of sight.
“So,” said Cooper when he was gone, “what do you suppose the chances are that this whole thing was the weirdest trap ever, and we just let that little boy lock us in a Wick dungeon?”
I looked around at the formidable-looking doors, then pulled my sleeve over my hand to try the heavy iron handle of the nearest one. It was locked.
The boy with the red glasses is nice.
Are we sure about that?
“I’d say pretty high?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Good thing Phineas is out there roaming free, at least.” But I shook my head as I looked at the screen. “Or it would be a good thing, if there was any signal down here.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” said Cooper. “Felt like we came a mile underground. You okay? You were pretty shaky by the end of that walk.”
“I’m fine. Let’s just figure out what these puzzles are supposed to be.”
“Hang on,” Cooper said with a heavy sigh. “Rest here while I climb that mile back up again.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know, that’s why. Don’t move. Don’t try anything without me.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and started back up the stairs, taking them more slowly than Harry had.
I sat on the floor and waited, without much sense of time, in the dim silence. Finally Cooper came back down.
Witch Bound (Devilborn Book 3) Page 5