Brightwood (11 page)

TWENTY-­FOUR

There was another door out of her mum's bedroom. It opened onto a corridor almost completely jammed with objects and furniture. Daisy got to her knees and began to crawl through the thickets of chair legs and floor lamps, over logs of rolled-­up carpets and deep into forgotten caverns beneath tables.

At one point, the way was completely blocked by several huge dressers. She couldn't climb over them because they were covered with a jumble of what looked like plates and china ornaments. And the dressers were wedged so tightly against the wall that she couldn't squeeze past.

It seemed no wonder her mum's old room had been forgotten. Nobody could reach it.

She hesitated for a second and then jumped, straddling the width of the corridor with her palms and the soles of her bare feet pressed tight against the walls. It was hard, but by bracing her arms and legs and moving quickly, she managed to keep her body suspended above the dressers while making her way to the end of the corridor before dropping to the floor again.

Daisy squeezed her aching arms and tried to figure out where she was in the house. She went along another corridor and then down a flight of stairs, and suddenly found herself at the far end of the Portrait Gallery.

She heard the clock striking. It was late. Eleven o'clock at night.

Daisy went back to her room. Her face was pale when she looked in the mirror, her hair wild around her face. She tried to tuck the strands back into her braid, but it was no use.

She looked terrible. She looked like a frightened little ghost.

Normally her mum did her hair. She used a silver-­backed hairbrush that used to belong to her grandmother. She brushed and brushed until Daisy's hair fell in a satin sheet to her waist. Sometimes she sang:

Down in the valley, the valley so low,

Hang your head over, hear the winds blow . . .

Gritting for sure thought she was a frightened little ghost. Daisy clutched her braid at the nape of her neck, pulling it as tight as she could, and reached for her knife with the other hand. He thought he could get rid of her like he had gotten rid of the weeds and the rabbits.

He was wrong.

Roses love sunshine, violets love dew,

Angels in heaven know I love—

Daisy closed her eyes and cut as firmly as she could.

When she opened her eyes, she looked completely different. She didn't look frightened any longer. She looked ragged and fierce and
real
. Daisy glanced down at the long coil of her braid still hanging from her hand. Now that it wasn't a part of her anymore it looked like any other object. Something that she might not even have recognized as hers unless she had just cut it off her own head.

“That's better,” Frank said from the other side of the room. “Now you look like you're ready to put up a fight. But you can't be wearing those little-­kid shorts. I suggest a stout pair of jungle pants.”

“Jungle pants?”

“Dark green with plenty of pockets,” Frank informed her. “Plus loops for hanging things off.”

Daisy went to her chest of drawers. “These are the right color,” she said, holding up a pair of trousers she wore when she helped mow the lawn. “Will these do?”

“I suppose they'll have to,” Frank said, clearly unimpressed.

Daisy was changing into the trousers when she remembered the card with the kangaroo that she'd found in her mother's bedroom. It was still in the pocket of her shorts.

“I found another relic,” she told Frank, pulling it out.

The kangaroo was brown, with a baby peeking out of its pouch. Underneath the photo, it said:
GREETINGS FROM DOWN UNDER!

Daisy turned the card over and looked at the date. “It's from ages ago,” she said. “Eleven years.” Gritting had written:

Dear Caroline,

You've ignored me for a long time, but now you won't need to do it any longer! I've left the country. I'm going into the hotel business with a partner in Australia. I don't plan on coming back.

I hope you have a good life. I certainly will!

Daisy thought it was a rather nasty message, although she wasn't sure exactly why. She had felt the same about the letter Gritting had written to her mother. As if there was something bad hiding just behind the words.

“He killed my horse,” she told Frank. “Did you know that?”

Frank shook her head in disgust.

“He did it for no good reason,” Daisy said. “Just for the fun of it.”

“You can't trust anyone who kills things for fun,” Frank commented. “They're rotten on the inside. You've got to deal with this fellow.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Daisy said.

“I find most things easy,” Frank said.

“So how should I deal with him?”

“It's obvious,” Frank said, looking smug. “So obvious, even you should get it.”

Daisy thought that real or not, Frank was begging to be kicked.

“So tell me!”

Frank folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head to one side in a patronizing manner. “I'll make this simple. Lost cities always have temples in them, don't they? And what do temples have?”

Daisy stared at her blankly.

Frank sighed. “They have
traps
! Floors that slide open, knives that come out of the wall—that kind of thing. All you have to do is lure this rival explorer into the temple and wait for him to get caught.”

Daisy was furious with herself for believing—even for a moment—that Frank might have anything useful to suggest. “That's completely ridiculous!” she snapped.

“Where's the fellow now?” Frank said, ignoring her. “Thanks to you, he can't get back across the river because you destroyed his boat. Which means he could be . . . anywhere.”

“I think he's in the room above the garage,” Daisy said. “The lights are on up there. He must be staying there for the night.”

“Good,” Frank said. “That gives us time. It's still hours to morning.”

“I don't even
have
a temple!” Daisy burst out.

“Then you'd better hurry up and find one,” Frank said.

TWENTY-­FIVE

Daisy didn't dare to switch on the chandelier in the Marble Hall in case Gritting was still awake. There was a clear view of the house from the room above the garage, and she didn't want him to look out and see her. Instead she put on a couple of lights that stood on a table near the entrance to the ballroom.

In the dim glow of these lights, the Marble Hall
did
look a little like a temple. The shelves cast long shadows like columns, and the area beneath the chandelier was just where an altar might go.

“Rival explorers always enter the temple sooner or later,” Frank told her from a spot above her head.

Daisy glanced up. She was sitting cross-­legged on top of one of the shelving units. “They're so greedy for artifacts and relics and treasure and stuff, they don't bother to take care.”

Frank ran a finger across her grimy neck. “Next thing you know, it's all over,” she said with relish. She looked around hopefully. “Any trapdoors in here? Arrows triggered by a hidden lever?”

Daisy shook her head. But she was busy thinking. In this shadowy light, the thousands of Day Boxes looked a lot like stone blocks.

She would need a ladder. There was one in the utilities room. But Daisy knew it would be impossible to move it through all the clutter in the corridors. Luckily there was a stepladder in the reception area. It was tall enough.

The stepladder made a terrible clattering noise as she half dragged, half carried it over to the first row of shelving. Every few moments, she stopped, her heart pounding, as she wondered whether Gritting could hear the commotion from the garage.

The shelves had been positioned close together to allow the maximum amount of storage space. And what made the pathways between them even narrower was the fact that the Day Boxes were longer than the width of the shelving, so they stuck out on either side. If the boxes weren't there, even a large person might make their way through.

Even a person as large as James Gritting.

Daisy pulled out a Day Box and rested it on the stepladder. Then she hesitated. She was allowed to look through her mum's things, although not to move the boxes. The boxes were arranged by date. If she started shifting them around, they would get out of order. And what she was planning to do was far, far worse than simply getting a few boxes out of order.

But the boxes took up so much space. All the days gone by piled one upon the other. Soon they would fill the house until there wasn't space left for any new days at all. There would be room only for the past.

Without giving herself a chance to change her mind, Daisy quickly pulled out another box. She carried both boxes up the stepladder and set them down on top of the shelving unit. Then she went down for another pair.

It was hot, sweaty work. Daisy could carry only two boxes at a time, and even then, she had to stop every few minutes to catch her breath. The ladder creaked and lurched as she went up and down, and several times, her hands slipped and boxes fell to the ground. They broke open and objects scattered across the floor. Daisy hurried to pick them up.

“You haven't got time for that,” Frank reminded her. “How many blocks have you got so far?”

Daisy made a quick count. “Nearly thirty.”

“Not enough.” Frank frowned. “You need
a lot
more than that for a decent trap.”

After a couple of hours of effort, Daisy had removed most of the boxes from a single avenue of shelving. Now that there was more room, the boxes that were left could be repositioned so they didn't stick out on either end. She shoved them into place with aching arms. Her throat felt tight. Moving the boxes had dislodged years of dust. She saw it rising like smoke in the weak light.

“Incense,” Frank said, nodding to herself. “Temples always have plenty of incense.” She got up from her perch and walked slowly along the top of the shelving units, staring at Daisy's handiwork with a critical eye.

“He'll be able to get into this part of the temple now,” Frank said. “But it isn't enough. You want him turning the corner. He's got to be able to get to the middle.”

“I'm tired,” Daisy said. “I need to eat.”

She went to the kitchen and opened a package of cookies, suddenly starving. She ate them two at a time, standing at the sink to catch the crumbs. Tar was at her side at the first rustle of the packaging.

“I should give you something better to eat,” she said, tossing him a corner of a cookie. “But I don't have time to cook anything. I've got to get Gritting into the temple and then trap him.”

Tar appeared to shiver slightly at the word “trap.” “What are you going to do with him after that?”

Daisy thought of the knife in her belt. She had gotten much better at throwing it. Now she could almost always hit a target without taking more than a second or two to aim.

“What would
you
do, Tar?”

The rat made a dart for a cookie crumb and stuffed it into his mouth. “Something, something, something,” he mumbled.

Daisy returned to the Marble Hall. She needed to clear additional passageways to lead Gritting deeper into the maze of shelving units, so deep he couldn't easily escape from her trap.

She took a deep breath and went back to work.

It was three in the morning before Daisy had cleared another passageway and nearly dawn by the time there was a way through the maze to the central area below the chandelier. The tops of the shelving units were piled high with the Day Boxes she'd removed, and movement up there had become difficult.

“You'll have to arrange them better than that,” Frank told her.

Daisy gritted her teeth. “I
know
! I'm the one doing all the work, remember?” She stared at the boxes. They needed to be set up in such a way that she could send them tumbling with only a shove or two. After a bit of thought, she chose a place close to the central clearing where the tops of three shelves joined together to form a T. This would give her enough room to get behind the pile of boxes when the time came to push them down.

Daisy stacked them carefully, one on top of the other, with their ends sticking out over the side of the shelf so that they would fall forward into the passageway below. Even though she had cleared the passageway, it was still narrow, and she thought fifty or sixty boxes would block it completely. The first light of morning was creeping through the Marble Hall by the time Daisy was done. She sat at the top of the great staircase, gazing down at her work.

Gritting would enter the twisting path below. He would follow it all the way to the clearing beneath the chandelier. Then Daisy would push the Day Boxes down behind him, blocking his exit.

It was quiet in the Marble Hall. The only movement came from Tar taking his usual shortcut along the chain that looped from the back wall all the way up to the ceiling pulley wheel that held the chandelier in place. For once, Daisy was too tired to scold him as he disappeared from view.

Daisy closed her eyes. Her hair was full of dust and her hands were black with dirt. She didn't care. She had made what was probably one of the best temple traps in the history of the world.

The only question was: how was she going to get James Gritting inside?