Emerald Green (18 page)

“Don’t jump to conclusions. Read the first lines,” Grandpa told me.

I opened the book at the first chapter. “
Happy families are all alike; every
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Er—yes. Very nicely put. And so wise. But all the same—”

“Looks normal, doesn’t it?” Lucas was beaming. “But it’s a specially prepared edition! The first three hundred and last three hundred pages are genuine Tolstoy, as well as two hundred pages in the middle. But the rest of it is from me to you—set in exactly the same typeface. A perfect disguise!
In here you’ll find all the information that I’ve been able to gather in thirty-seven years—although I don’t yet know exactly what was the particular reason for Lucy and Paul to run away with the chronograph.” He took the book from me and riffled through the pages. “We have proof that the count withheld certain important documents from the Guardians right from the year of the Lodge’s foundation onward,
prophesies suggesting that the philosopher’s stone isn’t what he wanted to make everyone think.”

“Then what is it?”

“We aren’t quite sure yet. We’re working on getting those documents.” Grandpa scratched his head. “Listen, I’ve done a lot of thinking—and I realize that I won’t still be alive in the year 2011. I’ll probably have died before you’re old enough for me to tell you everything I manage
to discover before my death.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I nodded.

My grandpa smiled his wonderful Grandpa smile, the one that creased up his whole face in wrinkles. “It’s not so bad, Gwen. I assure you, even if I had to die today, I wouldn’t be sad about it. I’ve had a wonderful life.” The laughter lines deepened. “It’s just a shame that I won’t be able to help you in your own time.”

I nodded again, fighting back tears.

“Oh, come along, little Raven. You should know better than anyone that death is part of life.” Lucas patted my arm. “I might at least be expected to have the decency to haunt this house as a ghost when I’m dead. You really could do with some support.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” I whispered, “but not so nice too.” The ghosts I knew were not particularly happy.
I was sure they would rather have been somewhere else. Not one of them enjoyed being a ghost. In fact, most of them didn’t even think they were dead. No, it was a good thing that Grandpa wouldn’t be among them.

“When do you have to travel back?” he asked.

I looked at the clock. My God, to think time could pass so fast! “In nine minutes. And I have to elapse in Aunt Glenda’s bedroom, because
in my own time, I’ve bolted the door of the room on the inside.”

“We could try simply pushing you into the room a few seconds in advance,” said Lucas. “You’d disappear before she really grasped the fact that—”

At that moment, there was a knock on the library door. “Lucas, are you in there?”

“Hide!” whispered Lucas, but I’d already reacted, diving under the desk just before the door opened and
Lady Arista came in. I could only see her feet and the hem of her bathrobe, but her voice was unmistakable.

“What are you doing down here in the middle of the night? And are those by any chance tuna sandwiches? You know what Dr. White said.” She dropped, sighing, into the chair I had warmed for her. Now she was in view up to the shoulders, which were ramrod straight as usual. I wondered if she’d
see part of me, too, if she turned her head.

She clicked her tongue, sounding annoyed. “Charles just came to see me. He says Glenda’s been threatening to hit him.”

“Oh, dear,” said Lucas. He sounded remarkably relaxed about it. “Poor lad. What did you do?”

“Gave him a whisky,” replied my grandmother, and she giggled.

I held my breath. My grandmother, giggling? I’d never heard her do such a
thing. We were always surprised when she even laughed, and giggling was in an entirely different league. Rather as if you were hearing an opera by Wagner played on the descant recorder. “And then he started crying!” said my grandmother scornfully. That sounded more like Lady Arista. “So after that
I
needed a whisky.”

“That’s my girl!” I could tell from his voice that my grandfather was smiling,
and suddenly I had a warm sensation around my heart. The two of them looked really happy together. (Well, from the neck down, anyway.) Only now did I realize that I’d had no real idea what their marriage was like.

“High time for Glenda and Charles to move out of this house at long last,” said Lady Arista. “I don’t think our children are especially good at choosing partners, do you? Harry’s Jane
is such a bore, Charles is a weakling, and Grace’s Nicholas is as poor as a church mouse.”

“But he makes her happy, and that’s what matters.”

Lady Arista stood up. “Yes, I like Nicholas best of them all. It would be much worse if Grace had stayed fixated on that impossible de Villiers boy, the ambitious one.” I could see her giving herself a little shake. “The de Villiers men are all shockingly
arrogant. I hope Lucy will soon see reason.”

“I think Paul is rather different from the rest of them.” Grandpa was grinning. “He’s a nice boy.”

“I doubt it—there’s little to choose between them in that family. Coming upstairs with me?”

“I was going to read for a little longer—”

Yes, and you’re also going to talk to your granddaughter from the future, please.
Because my time was running out.
I couldn’t see the clock from here, but I could hear it ticking. And I was beginning to get that damn roller-coaster sensation in the pit of my stomach.

“
Anna Karenina.
Rather a melancholy book, don’t you think, my dear?” I saw my grandmother’s slender hands pick up the book and open it at random. Presumably Lucas was holding his breath—I know I was holding mine. “
Can one ever explain to someone
else exactly how one feels?
Maybe I ought to reread it sometime. But I’d need my glasses.”

“I’m rereading it first,” said Lucas firmly.

“Yes, but no more reading tonight.” She put the book back on the table and bent down to Lucas. I couldn’t see for sure, but it looked as if the two of them were kissing.

“I’ll come straight up in a couple of minutes, honeybunch,” said Lucas, which was a mistake
on his part, because at the word
honeybunch—
Good heavens! He meant
Lady Arista
!—I jumped so violently that my head banged against the desktop.

“What was that?” asked my grandmother sternly.

“What do you mean?” I saw Lucas’s hand sweeping
Anna Karenina
off the table.

“That noise!”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Lucas, but he couldn’t prevent Lady Arista from turning my way. I could almost feel
her eyes sparkling suspiciously above her Roman nose.

Now what?

Lucas cleared his throat and gave the book a good kick. It slid over the parquet floorboards in my direction and came to rest eighteen inches from the desk. My stomach cramped as Lady Arista took a step toward me.

“But that’s…,” she was murmuring to herself.

“Now or never,” said Lucas, and I assumed that he meant it for me. With
a sudden gesture I put out my arm, snatched the book, and clutched it to my breast. My grandmother let out a little scream of surprise. But before she could bend down to look under the desk, her embroidered slippers blurred before my eyes.

Back in 2011, I crawled out from under the desk with my heart thudding and thanked my stars that no one had moved it an inch since 1993. Poor Lady Arista—after
seeing the desk grow an arm and gobble up a book, she’d probably needed another whisky.

As for me, all I needed was my bed. When Charlotte barred my way up on the second floor, I wasn’t even startled anymore, as if my heart had had quite enough excitement for one day.

“I heard you were very sick and had to stay in bed.” She switched on a flashlight, dazzling me with its bright LED beam. That
reminded me that I’d left Nick’s flashlight behind somewhere in 1993. Presumably in the wardrobe.

“That’s right. Obviously I caught your bug,” I said. “Seems to be a bug that keeps us from sleeping at night. I went to find something to read. And what are you doing? A little fitness training?”

“Why not?” Charlotte came a step closer and directed the beam of the flashlight on my book. “
Anna Karenina.
Isn’t that rather heavy going for you?”

“You think so? Well then, maybe we’d better swap. I’ll give you
Anna Karenina
, and you can lend me your copy of
In the Shadow of Vampire Mountain.
”

Charlotte was so taken aback that she said nothing for a full three seconds. Then she dazzled me with the bright flashlight again. “Show me what’s in that chest … and then maybe I can help you, Gwenny. Help
you to avert the worst…” She could sound all gentle and persuasive when she liked, almost concerned on my behalf.

Tensing my stomach muscles, I pushed past her. “Forget it, Charlotte. And stay away from my room, will you?”

“If I’m on the right track, then you really are even stupider than I thought.” Her voice was back to normal. But although I expected her to go on standing in my way, and probably
to smash my shinbone at the very least, she let me pass. Only the beam of the flashlight followed me a little distance.

We can’t stop time, but it will sometimes stand still for love.

P
EARL
S. B
UCK

SEVEN

AT ALMOST
ten o’clock, there was a knock at the door of my room. I woke from deep sleep abruptly, although it was the third time I’d been woken that morning. The first time had been at seven, when Mum came in to see how I was (“Your temperature’s gone right down—it just shows what a tough constitution you have. You can go back to school tomorrow!”) The second time was Lesley waking me
three-quarters of an hour later. She’d come in on her way to school on purpose, because I’d sent her a text message in the middle of the night.

I was surprised that the message had made any sense at all, because when I wrote it, I was almost out of my mind with fear, and my hands had trembled so much that I could hardly press the letter keys. The only way into my locked room had been from outside,
over the windowsill, which was about forty feet above the road. Xemerius had come up with the idea that if I climbed out the window of Nick’s room, I could keep close to the wall of the house and work my way along it to the sill of my own window. Xemerius himself had contributed nothing to the success of the operation except to say, “Don’t look down!” and add, “My word, it’s a long way to the
road!”

Lesley and I had only a few minutes before she had to go on to school, while I went back to catching up with my sleep. Until I heard loud voices outside the door. It opened, and Mr. Marley’s red head appeared.

“Good morning,” he said stiffly.

Xemerius, who had been dozing at the foot of my bed, sat up with a start. “What’s that gingernob doing here?”

I pulled the covers up to my chin.
“House on fire or something?” I asked Mr. Marley, not very imaginatively. According to my mother, I wasn’t expected to elapse until this afternoon. And then not, I sincerely hoped, straight from my bed!

“This is going too far, young man!” cried a voice behind him. It was Aunt Maddy. She nudged Mr. Marley to make him move aside and pushed her way past him into my room. “Obviously you have no manners
at all, or you wouldn’t just burst into a young lady’s room like that!”

“Yes, and I’m not fit to be seen in public yet myself,” said Xemerius, licking his forepaw.

“I … I…,” stammered Mr. Marley, red as beetroot in the face.

“It’s really no way to behave!”

“You keep out of this, Aunt Maddy!” A third person appeared: Charlotte in jeans and a bright green sweater that made her hair shine like
fire. “Mr. Marley and Mr. Brewer have just come to fetch something.” Mr. Brewer was obviously the young man in the black suit who now appeared. That made four of them. My bedroom was beginning to feel like Victoria Station at rush hour, only with nowhere near enough space in it.

Charlotte made her way to the front, using her elbows. “Where’s the chest?” she asked.

“Telltale tit, your tongue
shall be split!” sang Xemerius.

“What chest?” I was still huddled under my quilt as if rooted to the spot. And I didn’t want to get out of bed, because I was still wearing the grubby pajamas, and I had no intention of giving Mr. Marley a look at them. It was bad enough for him to see my untidy hair.

“You know perfectly well what chest!” Charlotte was looming over me. “So where is it?”

Aunt
Maddy’s curls shook with her indignation. “No one is to touch that chest!” she said in surprisingly imperious tones.

But they were nothing compared with the cutting edge of Lady Arista’s voice. “Madeleine! I told you to stay downstairs.” Now my grandmother also entered the room, straight as a ramrod, chin in the air. “This is none of your business.”

Meanwhile Charlotte had fought her way through
the crowd over to the wardrobe. She flung the door open and pointed to the chest. “There it is!”

“It certainly is my business. It’s
my
chest,” cried Aunt Maddy again, this time with desperation in her voice. “I only lent it to Gwyneth!”

“Nonsense,” said Lady Arista. “That chest belonged to Lucas. All these years I’ve wondered where it was.” Her icy blue eyes examined me. “Young lady, if Charlotte
is right in what she says, I wouldn’t care to be in your shoes.”

I pulled the quilt a little farther up and considered disappearing under it entirely.

“It’s locked,” Charlotte announced, leaning over the chest.

Lady Arista put out her hand. “The key, Gwyneth.”

“I don’t have it.” My voice was muffled by the quilt. “And I don’t see what—”

“Don’t be so stubborn,” Lady Arista interrupted me.
But as the key was back on its chain around Lesley’s neck, there was nothing I could do but keep on being stubborn.

Charlotte began searching the drawers of my desk, and Aunt Maddy slapped her fingers. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”