Greenglass House (40 page)

“But she wasn't
their
child! Not the child of anyone who was involved in actually bringing the thing back here and hiding it.” Mr. Vinge looked truly and utterly perplexed.

“But he was our captain, and she was our captain's daughter,” Fenster snapped. “And it weren't me who put that critter there, but I bet I can tell you what was going through the mind of the fellow who did:
If I can't do a thing for Doc, I can do this one thing for his little girl.
Or for her memory, I suppose. By then, of course, she was gone too.” He frowned, and it looked for a minute as if Fenster Plum was trying not to shed a tear himself. “I wish I'd thought of it. I wish I'd known.”

Mr. Vinge stared at the figurine, utterly flummoxed. Then, all in a moment, the confusion fell away from his face. “In that case . . .” He held out his hand. “I'll take that, Milo.”

It was exactly what they'd planned all along, but now that Mr. Vinge was standing there reaching for the miniature Sirin, Milo clutched the treasure to his chest. “No way. What do you care, anyway? You were looking for a weapon, or a secret or something. This is nothing to you.”

“It
is
something to me,” Mr. Vinge retorted, “because if Doc Holystone cared that much about it, then it's what I came here to find.” He took a step toward Milo, who scooted away and off the table on the other side. “It may have been part of his life, but I won't have it become part of his legend.”

Fenster jumped to his feet. “You'd take it and hide it away just out of spite? A
toy?
”

Mr. Vinge whipped out the gun and pointed it at him. “What kind of fool are you? It won't be enough to hide it away.
He's
proof of that.” He gestured at the laundry room door. “Our Dr. Gowervine spent his
life
looking for this. You think he's the only one? No, it has to be destroyed, even if it really is nothing but a piece from a game.”

“Milo,” Meddy began hesitantly, “don't go rogue on me. Don't take stupid chances. Give it to him before he does something with that gun—”

Milo ignored her. “I won't let you,” he said. “It's hers, even if she never got to have it herself. It's not about Doc Holystone; it's about a guy and his kid who didn't get to say goodbye to him.” He wiped his fist angrily at the dampness on his face. “It's a treasure, and you can't have it.”

Mr. Vinge sighed. “Please don't make me use this gun, Milo.”

The room erupted with protests. “No!” Milo's mother and father and Fenster stumbled over one another as they leaped to their feet, but before Mr. Vinge could turn his weapon on them and warn them to sit still, the air in the inn changed.

The chandelier rattled, and so did every window on the floor. The dying fire sent up a puff of sparks, and the string of lights on the Christmas tree flickered.

“Stop this.”

And everyone in the room, every single person, turned to look at Meddy. For the first time, the rest of them could see her.

There was nothing different about her that Milo could see. She was still wearing the ridiculous yellow robe and the blue glasses, but other than that she looked like a normal kid. There was no halo, no sudden glow, nothing you'd think would signal to folks that there was, suddenly, a ghost in their midst.

But then, maybe it was enough that there was suddenly a
girl
in their midst—a girl who, as far as the rest of them knew, had appeared right out of nowhere.

Everyone—Milo's parents, Fenster, Mr. Vinge and his two thugs—was staring at Meddy, but she only had eyes for Mr. Vinge.

She walked straight up to him and reached for the gun in his hand.

Mr. Vinge flinched. Sweating suddenly, he pointed the gun. He squeezed the trigger.

Milo screamed.

Meddy stopped short and looked down at her stomach. Then she turned to look at the bullet hole in the floor just behind her. “You
shot
at me. I might be dead, but I'm still a kid. You shot at a
kid.
” She shook her head in disgust. Then, before anyone, including Milo, could so much as blink, she was standing centimeters from Mr. Vinge's white, sweat-streaming face. No, not standing—because they were eye to eye, even though Mr. Vinge was nearly six feet tall and the ghost of Addie Whitcher was shorter than Milo.

“I'll take that,” she said with a voice like ice floes cracking in the river. “Before you shoot someone you can hurt.” And then the gun was in her hand and she was small again. Mr. Vinge collapsed back against the table, both hands over his heart.

“Hey, boss?” the taller of the other two agents asked uncertainly.

“You were asked to leave this house before,” she went on in a deadly calm voice. She looked from Mr. Vinge to the agent who had spoken, then shifted her gaze to his partner and back to Mr. Vinge. “
I'm
not asking.
You will leave this house.
You will leave my friends in peace. And you will do the same for my father's memory.”

Mr. Vinge glanced up, and despite his obvious fear, for a moment it looked as if he might be on the point of arguing. Before he could open his mouth, though, Meddy was huge and nose-to-nose with him once more, and this time, her face was so angry it looked almost disfigured.

“You will leave this house!”
Her voice came out something between a wail and a scream. Milo clapped his hands over his ears, and he wasn't the only one. It was a painful sound, full of misery and sadness. And fear, Milo realized. Meddy was scaring herself. But stronger than the fear, stronger than the misery, was the rage of Addie Whitcher. It burned white-hot on her face, revealing her furious heart the way spreading daylight illuminates the landscape. And in the face of that rage, there was nothing,
nothing
for Mr. Vinge to do but run.

He dashed out from between the table and the screeching ghost girl who still held his gun dangling at her side and flung himself at the foyer. He fought his way through the door and the buffeting wind that slashed its way in, and disappeared into the snow and the night. Despite the wind, the door swung shut with a bang. Then it opened again, and a gust picked up one of the coats hanging on pegs in the vestibule and whisked it out into the night.

Through the windows, Mr. Vinge's dark shape could be seen darting clumsily across the grounds toward the road. His coat rushed along after him until he spotted it and panicked. The coat tackled him. After a moment, Mr. Vinge got awkwardly back to his feet, picked up the coat, stared at it, pulled it on, and started running again. And then he was out of sight.

Meddy looked from the open door to the two remaining agents. “What are you waiting for?” she asked frigidly. “Do you want me to get
your
coats? Or do you need me to make the ghost face again?”

They looked at each other; then they too sprinted out into the night.

Meddy held the gun as if it were a dead rat as she walked back into the living room. She set it carefully on the table and looked at Milo's parents. “I think someone had better put this somewhere safe.”

Milo's mother nodded shakily. She picked up the gun gingerly, looked around for a moment, then made a beeline for a little drop-front desk in the kitchen that could be locked with a key. Mr. Pine rushed across the room and collected Milo into a huge and quaking hug.

“I'm okay, Dad,” Milo assured him. “You should probably let everybody out of the laundry room.”

Mr. Pine made a sound that was sort of like a laugh and sort of like a giant sigh of relief. “Right-o,” he managed. “Probably have to break the door down. One of Vinge's creeps had the key.”

“I've got it,” Mrs. Pine said from the kitchen. “There's a spare in the junk drawer.”

Meanwhile, Fenster was staring at Meddy. “Addie?” he said uncertainly. “Addie Whitcher?”

Meddy smiled at the old smuggler. “Hi, Fenster. It's nice to see you. Thank you for the nice things you said about my dad.” Then she smiled at Milo. “And thank
you,
except what did I tell you about going rogue and taking stupid chances? We had a
plan.
He really could've hurt you, and I didn't know I could do all that stuff until I tried. It could've gone really wrong.” She still looked a little freaked out.

“The plan?” Mr. Pine stared from his son to the ghost girl. “You . . . you two . . . had a plan?” He rubbed his face. “Milo, when I figure out what's going on, you're going to get a serious talking-to about what to do when someone has a gun, but at the moment I just don't know what to think about anything.”

“No kidding,” his mother added.

“Be free,” she said, unlocking the laundry-room door and throwing it open. “We won. Or rather, Milo and his friend did.”

This, of course, required much explanation, and more introductions.

“So let me get this straight.” Dr. Gowervine stared at Meddy.
Everyone
was staring at Meddy. “You—Milo, you found Doc Holystone's cargo, in order to get Mr. Vinge to leave, and then you changed your mind?”

Milo nodded. “I should've done what Me—Addie said. She told me to hand it over.” He held out the figurine to her. “But it's yours. It should be with you. It's important. It's from your dad.”

Meddy took it with both hands. “It's really beautiful, isn't it?” She held it up so that Dr. Gowervine, who was hovering nearby, obviously hoping for a look, could see it. “Isn't it beautiful?”

“It
is
a scholiast,” Mr. Pine said, peering at the little painted owl-girl and then at Meddy. “So you're the reason Milo knows all about Odd Trails all of a sudden, huh?”

She nodded. “Think maybe the three of us could play sometime?” Milo asked. “Or . . . do you have to leave now? Now that you have your present and Mr. Vinge is gone?”

She considered. “I don't know. I don't . . . feel like I need to leave.” She looked at Mr. and Mrs. Pine. “I guess you probably don't want your house haunted, though.”

Mrs. Pine shrugged with an exhausted smile. “Sounds to me like it's been haunted for a while now. Not to mention, it was your house first.”

“The truth is, I don't really know how it works,” Meddy said. “It's like I told you before, Milo. Time passes and I don't know what happens to it. So I don't know if that means I'll keep on finding myself here or not. But if you don't mind, it would be nice to be able to say hello when I am. And maybe play Odd Trails.”

Milo's father still looked shaken, but he managed a smile too. “We'd be delighted to have you.”

Dr. Gowervine, meanwhile, had taken the painted figurine for a closer look. “Not to sound too disappointed, but this is really the thing I've been looking for all this time?”

“We thought maybe the chandelier was Mr. Skellansen's work,” Milo said. “Could that be?”

“Yes, yes, I think you're probably right about that. If I hadn't been so focused on something that . . . well, that could tell a story, something more like an actual window, I probably would've realized it myself.” He frowned. “But all my sources really did seem to indicate that Skellansen had chosen Doc Holystone as the subject of his window for the archives.” He held the figurine out awkwardly to Meddy and pulled his hand back a little too quickly when she took it, as if he were afraid she might bite. “Although, of course, I think Milo is right and it's a treasure in its own right,” he added hastily. “And so is the chandelier. There are so few pieces of Skellansen glasswork in the city, it's quite amazing to find one here. Just . . . well, you understand.”

“They're not
your
treasures,” Meddy said.

He nodded a bit sadly. “Indeed.”

Milo looked up at the chandelier. Then he picked up the stool Mr. Vinge had yanked out from under him and set it back up on the table. “Dad, can you hold this for me?”

Mr. Pine gave him a wary look, but he held the stool steady while Milo climbed up again. Holding his father's shoulder, he stood on tiptoe and reached again for the rectangular brass hull. It had turned a little, he remembered, when he'd jimmied off the lid that had formed the top of the quarterdeck. Now he gave it an experimental twist, and it moved without resistance. Turn by turn, Milo unscrewed the piece from the brass wiring tube until the hull came loose in his hand. It was heavier than he'd expected, and he nearly dropped it before he managed to hand it off to his dad. Then he looked inside the tube.

There was something wrapped around the inside, so tight against the inner surface that it would've been easy to miss if he hadn't been looking for it. He reached in carefully and worked it loose until he was able to draw it all the way out.

“Wow.” He looked up from the cylinder of paper in his hand. “Dr. Gowervine, do you want to look first?”

The professor didn't have to be asked twice. He rushed to the table and took the roll carefully, reverently. As Milo climbed down, Dr. Gowervine set the paper on the table and gently, very gently, began to unfurl it.

“Oh, my,” he whispered.

The paper unrolled to reveal a stunning painting.

“Oh, my,” Dr. Gowervine said again. “Oh, my. Do you think . . .”

Mrs. Pine hurried into the kitchen and returned with clean coffee cups. Carefully, the professor weighted down the corners with them. “Oh, my. Oh,
my.
”

A small clipper ship was cutting swiftly down a river. Carved into the prow in place of a figurehead was a winged shape Milo thought he recognized from the old chart's compass rose: an albatross. It was a beautiful ship, and from the motion of its bow wave and the billow of the sails, it appeared to be the kind of vessel Milo's grandfather would've called a “weatherly, sweet little sailer.” There was another ship behind it on the river, but that one wasn't nearly as weatherly; it seemed to be struggling to keep up, and its sails weren't nearly as trim.