Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere (16 page)

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Authors: Jacqueline West

BOOK: Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere
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On tiptoe, she took hold of a jar on the topmost shelf. Its thick bluish glass had grown cloudy with time, and Olive rubbed it with the heel of her hand. Inside, something dried and flaky crumbled from the jar’s walls, like old milk around the rim of the jug. Olive shook the jar. The white flakes moved and settled.
Bouncing on both feet for warmth, Olive took down another jar. This one was full of something reddish and powdery that looked a bit like cinnamon. The next one contained tiny blue-black curls that might have been petals from a flower. Another one was filled with thick yellow liquid. As Olive turned the jar, clearing it off with her palm, a small skull appeared between her spread fingers. In the first moment of surprise, Olive nearly dropped the jar. Then she swallowed hard and held it toward the lantern, turning it to see what was inside. A bird skeleton floated in the yellow liquid, its wings bare of feathers, as delicate as paper lace. She shoved the jar back into place.
The cold was becoming painful now. Olive’s arms felt like pieces of raw chicken straight out of the refrigerator. Determined to stay for as long as she could stand it, she skimmed along the lower shelves. In the unbroken jars were things that looked like dried leaves, and things that looked like mold, and things that looked like nothing she had ever seen before—probably because they were meant to be inside the body of something else. When she came to something that was definitely a jar full of dead spiders, Olive bit her tongue to keep from screaming out loud.
She backed toward the high wooden table, shivering, keeping one eye on the jars in case anything in them started to move. The table’s surface was cluttered with empty jars and lids, sheets of thick yellowed paper, and old dried-up pens. A few big stone bowls with funny rounded mallets sat there as well. Olive dipped her fingertip carefully into one of these bowls. It came away covered with bright orange powder.
Wiping her finger on her shorts, Olive squinted down at one of the sheets of paper.
Carmine,
it said. Nothing else. Olive frowned. Carmine? Was that somebody’s name? She turned over the other sheets of paper. They were blank. But hidden beneath them were scraps of other pages, all torn into tiny bits. Someone had ripped up a sheaf of papers and then hidden them, like Olive sometimes did with a test that had gone particularly badly. What were these? Recipes?
Olive glanced up at the rows and rows of jars, each reflecting a thin band of lantern light. Then she looked back down at the table. And
then,
for the first time, she noticed something else that glimmered. Something closer, and smaller, and very familiar.
Olive stopped. Everything else stopped too—her breathing, her blinking, her blood moving slowly around in her chilly body. Because there, on the table, half hidden behind a large empty jar, was a pair of spectacles.
They were bigger than Ms. McMartin’s spectacles, which Olive had found in a dresser drawer so many weeks ago, and which she had crushed in the upstairs hallway when she fell out of the forest painting. They looked heavier, sturdier, as if they were made of a tougher metal. Annabelle McMartin’s spectacles, with their thin frames and long, delicate chain, had been the spectacles of a woman. These were the spectacles of a man.
These were Aldous McMartin’s spectacles.
Olive’s thoughts exploded like a giant firework, shooting every worry away. Delight, excitement, and freedom surged through her, along with something even more wonderful, something like hearing your shovel thud against a chest of treasure you had buried yourself and thought you’d never find again. She reached for the spectacles.
“Olive!”
Olive whirled around. Some instinctive part of her brain made her hide the spectacles behind her back.
All three cats stood in the entrance to the stone chamber. By the pale light of the camping lantern, they appeared silvery and blurred, with only their green eyes flashing clearly against the background of darkness. Horatio was the one who had spoken. Behind him, Harvey glowered up at her. Leopold hung back at the light’s edge, his shoulders slumped and his head hanging low. If Olive didn’t know it was impossible, she would have sworn that the black cat was crying actual tears.
“I hoped it wasn’t true,” said Horatio softly. He remained at the edge of the stones, as if he didn’t want to come any nearer to Olive. “But, once again, I was wrong to place my hope in you.”
Olive’s stomach, which had been floating with ecstatic butterflies just a moment ago, began sinking toward her right kneecap.
“The moment you’re out of one danger, you’re off looking for another, aren’t you? And you’re not just putting yourself in jeopardy, but everyone around you, everyone who cares most about you. But you seem to conveniently forget about this—to forget, or not to care.”
Olive opened her mouth to protest, but Harvey let out a hiss like a rattlesnake, his teeth glinting in the lantern light. Olive took an involuntary step back.
“You had to push farther, didn’t you,” Horatio went on, in the same quiet voice. “Now you’re trying to
control
us, when we have risked our safety, again and again, to protect
you
?”
 
Leopold made a noise that sounded almost like a sob. Harvey leaned against him protectively and glared at Olive.
Olive’s stomach headed for her big toe. “I don’t see why you thought you had to protect me from
this,
” she said, gesturing toward the rows of jars and trying to smile. “A giant pantry? What’s so scary about that?”
The cats’ eyes widened. They exchanged rapid glances. None of them spoke.
“And besides,” said Olive, an indignant feeling slowly building itself up to a fire inside her, “the spellbook is mine now. Why can’t I use it?”
“That book is using
you,
” said Horatio.
Olive’s mouth fell open. “It is not.”
Horatio blinked up at her. “Do you know what a witch is, Olive?”
Several pictures zoomed through Olive’s mind: pointy black hats, broomsticks, a young Annabelle McMartin smiling sweetly from her portrait. Nothing that made for a very good answer.
Fortunately, Harvey didn’t wait for one. “A witch is someone who uses magic,” he snapped, in a voice Olive hardly ever heard: his own. But angrier.
“Don’t you see what’s going on?” asked Horatio. “You’re becoming one of them
.
”
Olive shook her head, slowly at first, then faster, until the room was a blur. “No,” she said. “I’m not . . . like them.”
“Is that so?” Horatio raised his whiskery eyebrows. “What do you call using the McMartins’ things? Harvesting their plants, casting their spells? What do you call making Leopold obey you, against his will?” Leopold made another little choking sound. “What do you call making Harvey help you to get that ridiculous book and using it, in spite of his warnings?”
“I didn’t
make
Harvey do it,” Olive objected. “He could have said no.”
Harvey let out another low hiss. “Once you asked for it, I had to,” he spat. “The house wanted to give it to you.”
“We’ve tried to protect you.” Horatio’s eyes narrowed, becoming sharp slits of reflected light. “But it appears you’re not on our side anymore, Olive. If this goes any farther, it will be us
against
you. Either way, from now on, you’re on your own.”
Horatio turned, the tuft of his tail vanishing into the darkness like the fronds of some undersea plant. Leopold followed him, hanging his head. Harvey went last, giving Olive a long, hard look that left her frozen in place for several cold minutes after the cats had gone.
And then she was truly alone.
16
 
C
LUTCHING THE PAIR of spectacles and the camping lantern, Olive struggled to the top of the ladder, hoisted herself through the trapdoor, and hurried up the basement steps. The cats had already disappeared.
She left the lantern in its place on the cabinet shelves. Her parents were still shut inside the library, and they didn’t seem to hear her as she raced up the staircase into her bedroom, shivering, and threw herself under the covers, new spectacles, clothes, and all. She grabbed the book, which lay just where she’d left it underneath the blankets, and held it tight to her chest. Immediately, she felt a little bit warmer, and much less alone.
The gold embossing flickered in the light of her bedside lamp. Olive snuggled up against the smooth leather cover and fought to push down the lump that kept rising in her throat.
Stupid cats,
she told herself. Who needed them anyway? She had her own pair of spectacles again. If they wanted to pretend to be in charge of this house, let them. Olive knew who had the real power. This was
her
house.
She buried her face against the book’s velvety pages, wrapped her fingers tight around the spectacles, and waited for sleep or morning, whichever came first.
 
By the time Olive woke, her room was filled with searing sunlight. In her sleep, she’d wriggled all the way underneath the covers, wandering through dreams of forests and blowing leaves and high, thorny hedges that kept growing and growing, no matter how hard she tried to push through. Olive stretched, wondering why she felt as though she’d hardly slept at all. Her legs hurt, and her back hurt, and her fingers were cramped and sore from being wrapped around the spectacles all night.
The spectacles! Olive gave a happy gasp, remembering all the exploring that lay ahead of her—and then she froze, halted by something that
didn’t
lay beside her.
The spellbook was gone.
Olive put the spectacles into the pocket of her shorts and shoved away the rumpled blankets, searching every corner of the bed. She found a pink sock that she’d been missing for weeks and a blue gumball, now covered with a fine fur of lint, but no book. She bent over the edge of the mattress and peered under the bed. Several dust bunnies and shoe boxes were there, along with one of her missing slippers, but no book. Starting to feel rather panicky, Olive slid off the bed and rummaged quickly through the room, looking in drawers, under chairs, and inside the closet, where the chalk circle and the bowl of milk stared up at her accusingly. No book.
It had been right beside her last night, she was certain. How could it have just disappeared?
As soon as she’d asked herself this question, Olive knew the answer.
The cats
.
Of course. They had stolen it from her, slipping in at night to take it right out of her arms, and had craftily hidden it somewhere.
Those stupid, spying, furry little . . .
Fury swept up through Olive’s body like the lit fuse of a bottle rocket, burning and hissing upward until:
POW
.
“HORATIO!” Olive shouted, storming out into the hall. “LEOPOLD! HARVEY! GET OUT HERE!”
The empty house absorbed her voice. No one answered. No cats appeared.
Olive thundered down the stairs. A note from her parents hung on the refrigerator, telling her that they had gone to campus and would be back in the late afternoon. White sun, filtered through a screen of shifting leaves, flickered in bright patches on the polished floors. “HORATIO!” Olive yelled again. “HARVEY! LEOPOLD! I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!”
Faster than she’d ever done it before, Olive thumped down the steps into the basement. She yanked the strings of the hanging lightbulbs so hard that they quivered in their sockets. Leopold wasn’t in his corner. The trapdoor stood open, just as she had left it. Olive crossed the chilly floor and kicked it shut. Her parents were more likely to notice the trapdoor if it was open . . . probably. Then again, they might not notice unless they fell through it, which wouldn’t have a very happy outcome either. Fists on her hips, Olive surveyed the basement. No green eyes flickered at her from the corners.
She stumbled back up the stairs. Her mind beat against the same thought over and over, like a moth throwing itself against a lightbulb: She needed to get the book back. The longer it was missing, the more likely it was that someone else could find it, or that something would happen to it, and she would never see it again. This thought was so awful, Olive had to close her eyes and concentrate on breathing.
If Leopold wasn’t in his place, and Horatio was nowhere to be found, there was still one cat to look for, and one other place to check. And Olive finally had a way to get in. She pulled the spectacles out of her pocket and raced up the stairs to the second floor, down the hallway, and into the pink bedroom.

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