Sorcerer's Secret (9 page)

“I better go on alone from here.”

“What?” Rory exclaimed. “No! We're going with you!”

“I don't know if Kieft is watching my father's farm, but he probably has somebody out here spying,” Alexa explained. “I won't risk it. Please, just wait here in the alley until I get back.”

With that, she raced down the alley and disappeared. After a moment Rory sneaked a peek around the corner and gasped. Halfway down the alley, the concrete turned to dirt, the walls melted into trees, and the buildings just faded away into stalks of corn. In the distance, he could see a large manor house set back behind a grove of flowering trees. It was beautiful.

“What now?” Bridget was asking Soka behind him.

“Now,” the Munsee girl answered, leaning against the wall, “we wait.”

A
lexa hurried through the cornfield toward the old manor house, taking care to stay hidden among the stalks. She'd grown up on this land, helping her father with anything he needed, from harvesting the crops to researching the law. It had been a happy home, though a sense of sadness and loss never quite faded. The specter of Marta van der Donck floated above them all and Alexa had never felt as if her mother was far from her, even though she barely remembered her.

Alexa stepped out from the corn into the open to run up to the front door, when the sound of hooves on gravel made her jump. A dozen or so riders on horseback were trotting up the long driveway, led by a handsome young man in a long coat wearing a tricornered hat, out the back of which hung a thin, rakish ponytail. He guided his men up to Alexa, towering over her from atop his well-muscled steed.

“What are you doing here, Van der Donck?” he asked her, his thin voice imperious.

“This is my house,” Alexa replied stiffly, strong dislike bubbling up alongside the fear. “And you and your little friends are trespassing, DeLancey.”

James DeLancey smirked. “We're merely keeping the peace. In case you haven't heard, more gods have been dying. My Cowboys and I are riding around, making certain no villains are given free rein in our borough.”

“You and your Cowboys are more likely to be the problem than the solution, James,” Alexa informed him. It was true: during the Revolution, the native-born Cowboys, led by DeLancey, had taken great delight in terrorizing the Bronx on behalf of the British. After their deaths, they'd continued their marauding ways in the spirit realm, which often had put them at odds with Alexa's father. She had no doubt who they were working for now, or why they were here.

“Anyone with you?” DeLancey was asking, looking around. Yes, he was definitely searching for someone in particular. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“This is my home,” she repeated, trying to keep her cool. “And you are not allowed on my property. Get out before I call the militia. You know Stephanus van Cortlandt would love an excuse to put a bullet in your chest.” He gave her a murderous look but she stood her ground, staring him down while his men shifted restlessly. Finally, DeLancey's frown slipped into a mocking grin.

“Fine.” DeLancey smirked, turning his horse around. “But I will be back. We're in Kieft's army, you know. We'll protect you from the Munsees whether you like it or not.”

With that, he flicked the reins, galloping off down the path, followed closely by the horses of his fellows. Alexa watched them go—her fear only showing in her shaking hands—before turning to race inside the only home she'd ever known.

Alexa ran up to her father's study, heading right for his desk to tear through his papers as fast as she could. But she couldn't find any reference to Swindlers or Fair Engineers or any of it. She didn't understand what any of the clues meant. This was just like her father, she thought ruefully. He loved puzzles and riddles and had no problem solving them in record time. But he was gone, leaving her in charge of the game. And she didn't know how to play.

What had the Fortune Teller said about the Bronx? Look behind the Beloved; that was the clue. Alexa had no idea what it could mean. And nothing in her father's papers gave her a hint. She sighed as her hopes deflated: the whole house was a dead end.

Discouraged, Alexa made her way toward the door. But before she could walk out of the study, a portrait caught her eye, hanging next to her father's old easy chair. In the portrait, Alexa's mother was standing in this very room in front of her husband's desk, wearing a beautiful blue dress with a white shawl, and her bright blue eyes seemed to be laughing at some unknown joke. This was the Marta van der Donck Alexa pictured in her head, since her mother had died soon after Alexa was born. Growing up, she'd spent many long hours staring at the portrait, wondering what advice her mother would have given her about whatever problem plagued her that day. She would sometimes walk in on her father sitting behind that huge mahogany desk and just staring at the portrait of his dead wife, tears in his eyes. He'd loved Marta so much . . .

A thought occurred to Alexa. Look behind the Beloved.Could it be that easy? Barely able to breathe, Alexa gingerly reached out and lifted up the picture.

Nothing. Not even a small note taped to the back. Just the cold, hard wall. Alexa carefully let the portrait fall back into place. She should have known her father would never be so obvious. Oh well, another dead end.

She kissed the air in front of the portrait and turned to go . . .

Something held her up. She glanced back at the portrait. What was that? Something behind her mother she'd never noticed before, sitting on her father's desk.

“That's impossible,” she muttered to the portrait. But still, there it was. A small brown package sitting on the desk in the background. Alexa had spent the past three hundred years staring at this portrait and she'd never noticed it before.

Because it had never been there before . . .

But what did it mean? She'd already searched the desk and found nothing. So where . . . her eyes widened as a thought occurred to her.

“You sneaky bastard,” Alexa told her dad, wishing the old man were around to hear it. “It's in the painting! But how can I reach it?”

She had only one option, crazy as it seemed. She reached out tentatively to touch the surface of the painting . . . and her finger sank in up to a knuckle. She shook her head in admiration. The package was behind the Beloved, all right. Feeling decidedly strange, she reached farther into the painting, first sinking her fingers, than her hand, then her arm into the art. She took great pains not to touch her mother (that would probably give her a heart attack), but instead reached around her toward the desk. She groped forward and forward, until she was practically half in and half out of the painting, her nose an inch from passing through. For a moment she was afraid she was going to fall in completely, but finally she got a grip on the package. With a quick yank, she pulled it free of the portrait, her heart jumping as she almost brushed against her mother's shawl.

Triumphant, Alexa gazed down at the package in wonder. Tearing it open, she felt a wash of understanding flow over her.

“Hello,” she whispered as a smile crept across her face. “I've been looking all over for you.”

B
ridget was getting bored, sitting around waiting for Alexa to return. And now that the excitement of going on a quest had faded somewhat, she found her mind slipping against her will to thoughts of her dad. She'd spent her entire life daydreaming about the day her father would show up. And then when he does, she's too scared to say hello? What was wrong with her? When her dad ran off like that . . . she was disappointed. She'd thought her father would be more like . . . well, more like Rory. Instead, he was the Road Runner, always on the move. She knew it should make her feel better to know that it wasn't because of her that Dad left, that he seemed to leave everyone sooner or later. But it really didn't.

“I wanna take a look at Alexa's house!” she announced, not wanting to think about her dad anymore. She hopped to her feet, making sure her new sword stayed in her belt. The thing was a lot heavier than its cardboard predecessor, and it kept tripping her up. But it sure looked dangerous on her hip.

“No, Bridget,” Rory told her. “You heard what Alexa said. No going anywhere!”

“Don't worry, poopy pants!” she answered brightly, tiptoeing to the end of the alley. “See how careful I'm being? I just want to peek! I won't go skipping down the driveway or anything.”

She reached the corner of the last building and stuck her head out to see. Her heart leaped to see the walls fade away into swaying corn. She never thought she'd see anything as pretty as the flowering trees surrounding the stately manor house on the hill. She sneaked around the corner, keeping close to the wall. She'd step into the corn, just for a moment, to see what it was like. Then she'd go back to the others.

She walked right up to the towering stalks, staring up at the tips framed against the blue sky. But before she could take another step, a hand shot out from within the corn and pulled her into the stalks.

“Wha–” she began, before a hand clamped over her mouth.

“Shh,”a voice whispered. “There are enemies near. Can you stay silent? Nod if you can.” Terrified, she nodded. The hand released her and she spun around to face her assailant.

“You're surprisingly active for such a sick girl, Bridget,” Peter Hennessy said, smiling wryly.

“Dad . . . ? ” Bridget couldn't have described the avalanche of emotions crashing over her if she tried. Instead, she began to babble in a whisper. “I'm sorry I didn't say hello back at the shell pit. You look a lot like Rory. I'm not really sick, I'm just stuck in this paper body. I'm really good at hopscotch. Are you here to help us? My favorite ice cream is all of them mashed together. Do you have a sword? I just made myself a new one. It's called Buttkicker 2. I like sports, do you like sports? Are you going to leave again?”

“Bridget, please, slow down,” her father said. The look on his face made her want to cry. “I'm just happy to see you.”

“Me too,” she said, hopping in place. “I knew you'd come back, someday. I knew it!”

“Yes, well.” Her father looked away. “Thank you for believing in me.”

“Why did you grab me like that?”

“Because your friend Alexa is about to have an unpleasant confrontation, and I don't want you to get caught up in it.”

“But we've got to save her!”

“Bridget?” Her brother's voice whispered from outside the corn. “Are you in there?”

Her father stepped out of the corn and quickly pulled in Rory and Soka. “Keep quiet!”

“Dad?” Rory looked thunderstruck. “What are you doing here?”

“Alexa's in trouble!” Bridget announced. “And we've got to save her.” Pulling out her sword from under her belt, she began marching through the corn toward the house. Her father ran up alongside her.

“No! Those are dangerous men. We need to get away while we can.”

“That's not what heroes do, Dad,” Bridget informed him. “You should know that by now.” They reached the far edge of the corn and peered out. Alexa was stepping out of her house just as a group of riders came galloping down the drive.

“Hey!” Alexa exclaimed. “I told you to get off my property !”

“What were you doing in there, Alexa?” the head rider asked her, pulling up his stallion in front of the house. “You went in and out awful fast.”

“None of your business, DeLancey,” Alexa retorted, though she was backing up to the door. The one she called DeLancey urged his horse closer as his men fanned out beside him

“I think that it is,” he said. “Mine and Mr. Kieft's.”