Spellbinder (19 page)

“But he didn’t say this was
causing
the imbalance,” she explained. “He just said it might be able to help him locate what was.”

Steve looked at her skeptically, and she had to admit he did sort of have a point. If the whole thing about imbalances caused by objects from another world was true, then surely the amulet would have created problems being here. Or maybe this world was too solid, and the ghost world was more susceptible.

“We really need to know what that word means,” she said finally. “
Phatês
.”

Steve held the amulet up and watched the dragons for a few moments, then turned back to Belladonna. “We’ll ask him,” he said.

“Ask him?”

“Yes. Think about it—he’s so impressed with himself. Didn’t he enjoy making us out to be so stupid and undereducated and stuff?”

“Ye-es?” said Belladonna dubiously.

“Well, that sort of person always loves showing off. Just like Mr. Brunswick in Geography—if you let him run on long enough, he’ll tell you the answers just to prove how much cleverer he is than you.”

That was true, and Belladonna had to admit that Steve was certainly very good at getting Mr. Brunswick to give up the answers to almost anything, but he was a Geography teacher and Dr. Ashe was an alchemist, and she wasn’t entirely convinced that he’d fall for the same ruse. Still, they really did need to find out what the Sibyl’s word meant before they had any further dealings with him.

“Okay,” she said, “we’ll ask him.
Before
we give it to him.”

“Yes. Before.”

They reached the theatre and slipped around the back, being careful to avoid Steve’s parents. Belladonna gave him a shove up to the window and he repeated the process of the day before. As they made their way down the old backstage corridors toward the stage, Steve turned to Belladonna.

“If we decide not to give it to him, what’re we going to do?”

“I’m not sure,” said Belladonna. “We’ll talk to Elsie. Maybe she has some ideas.”

“Huh,” said Steve. “Good-bye, universe.”

“She’s been dead for over a hundred years. She must have learned
something
.”

Steve looked unconvinced, but nodded his agreement. Belladonna smiled and tried to look confident, though she couldn’t help suspecting that Steve was right. On the other hand, there was still a chance that Dr. Ashe could turn out to be okay . . . and his diagrams had looked very technical. . . .

They reached the stage and stood in front of the door marked seventy-three. Belladonna reached for the handle and once again spoke the Words of Power, although this time she was more aware of what she was saying.

Steve shook his head. “That is so strange,” he said.

He reached for the doorknob, but before his fingers could close on it, a tremendous howl echoed from the back of the theatre.

“Oh, no,” he whispered.

Belladonna turned around and saw Mrs. Evans racing down the aisle toward the stage, her clip-on black ponytail flying behind her like a distress flag.

“Stop!” she panted as she reached the stage. “What are you doing?”

She started to scramble up onto the stage. Steve
looked at Belladonna and gripped the amulet firmly in his fist.

“Come on,” he said, and stepped through the door.

“Noooo!” screamed his mother, running toward them with a speed that was impressive, considering her size.

Belladonna turned to follow Steve, but it was too late—Mrs. Evans’s pudgy hand closed around her arm like a steel vise.

“What have you done?” she screamed. “You stupid girl!”

Belladonna struggled to free herself, twisting every way she could while trying to edge toward the door. Mrs. Evans raised a hand to strike her, but the backward swing of her arm caught the door, and even as Belladonna flinched, expecting the blow, the scenery flat toppled over and hit the floor of the stage with an almighty crash, splitting the flimsy door into two pieces.

Mrs. Evans gasped and stared at the fallen doorway while Belladonna stopped struggling as the realization suddenly hit her: Mrs. Evans knew.

Mrs. Evans seemed to realize that she had revealed something she hadn’t intended. She turned her attention back to Belladonna and her eyes narrowed as she pondered the new situation, but the hesitation was all Belladonna needed; she wrested herself free and took off down the labyrinthine backstage corridors of the theatre.

She ran back, past the dressing rooms and the
wardrobe rooms, past all the offices and cubbyholes that populate the less glamorous environs of theatres everywhere. The heavy steps of Mrs. Evans were never far behind, but Belladonna knew that she had to get out. She raced down the last corridor toward the door, grasped the handle, and turned. It was locked! She looked back; Mrs. Evans was at the other end of the corridor, a lumbering silhouette, closing in.

Belladonna looked around frantically. Where was the window Steve used to get in? There was a door to her right; she pushed it open and found herself in a tiny office. The window was high on the wall, but there was an old wooden desk nearby. She pushed the desk under the window and started to climb.

The pale autumn sun hit her face as she pushed herself up and out. She swung one leg over and was straddling the window, when the office door burst open.

“Oh, no you don’t!” said Mrs. Evans.

But it was too late. Belladonna dropped to the ground and took off like a greyhound. As she rounded the corner into the High Street, she could hear Mrs. Evans trying to get the stage door open, but she didn’t hang around to find out if she was successful. She just ran, and didn’t stop running until she was nearly home, when she finally slowed to a walk.

At the front gate, she stopped. Steve was trapped on the Other Side and she was fairly certain she’d never be able to use the door again. She really had to tell someone now.

She thought about Aunt Deirdre and the way she’d looked when she went out after the Hunt last night. Somehow, Belladonna felt this latest piece of news might tip her aunt right over the edge. No, she needed someone who wasn’t fazed by anything, someone who took everything in her stride and for whom Mrs. Evans would be no more challenge than a naughty child.

She turned away from home and headed for her grandmother’s house.

B
Y THE TIME
Belladonna reached Yarrow Street, it was late afternoon and a chill had descended on the town. The sky had turned overcast and the cold breeze of the morning had become an icy wind that pierced through to the bones. Belladonna pulled her jacket tight and zipped it up, but it didn’t really help. She walked the last few yards to Grandma Johnson’s house trying to think about what she would say. She knew she’d get in trouble for not telling her about the door, and even more trouble for actually going through to the Other Side, but none of that mattered now. Steve was trapped. There was no way through and people all over the world were in danger.

She walked up to the front door of number 3 and rang the bell.

The front of Grandma Johnson’s house was the same as all the others in her row, but unlike the others, she had a sign in her front window: a large drawing of a
hand with the lifelines marked out and the words “Fortunes Told” in bold blue print above it. Belladonna blew into her icy hands and rang the bell again. There was no answer. She looked at the windows and noticed that all the curtains were drawn. That was strange—it was nowhere near dark yet. She rang the bell a third time, and then knocked for good measure. This time the curtain in the front room twitched and she thought she saw someone’s eye peeking out at her, though she was pretty sure it wasn’t her grandmother’s. She waited, shivering, on the step, but nobody came to the door. Now she was getting angry. She rang the bell again and leaned on it extra long. The door flew open.

“Go home, Belladonna,” said her grandmother sternly. “I’m busy. I’ll come by later.”

She started to close the door, but Belladonna reached forward and held it open.

“No,” she said. “This is important.”

“I’m sure it is, dear, but—”

“I’ve been to the Other Side!” she blurted. “I found the door!”

Grandma Johnson stopped. She opened the door slowly and looked down at her granddaughter. “You what?”

“I . . . that is,
we
found the door. Number seventy-three. Painted red. And we went through. It’s really cold, can I come in?”

Grandma Johnson stepped aside and allowed her
into the narrow hall. The door to the front room was closed, but she could hear muffled voices inside.

“I’m sorry,” said Belladonna, lowering her voice. “Do you have a client?”

“No,” said her grandmother, “just a few friends. Now what’s this about the door?”

“It was in the old theatre. In a pile of scenery.”

“But . . . the Words of Power . . .”

“I said them. I didn’t know them but I said them. They just came out. And the door opened, so we went through.”

“We?”

“Steve Evans and me. And that’s the thing, really . . .” She hesitated—this was the difficult part—“he’s stuck. We were going through again—”

“What? Why?” Grandma Johnson rolled her eyes. “Oh, never mind. You’d better come in and tell everyone at once.”

She opened the door to the front room and ushered Belladonna in.

The front room was where Grandma Johnson usually met her clients. The walls were covered in a dark red flocked wallpaper, huge dark green plants lurked in the corners, and in the middle was a large round table covered with an old silk carpet. Usually there were only two chairs in the room, one for the client and one for Mrs. Johnson, but this afternoon it was full of chairs that had been brought from all over the
house, and Belladonna found herself being stared at by eight sets of curious eyes.

She recognized a few of the people: Mr. Philips from the corner shop where she bought her Parma Violets, Mrs. Kostopoulos from the hairdresser’s, and Mr. al Rashid from the petrol station at the end of the High Street, but the rest were all strangers. They all looked very serious, though, and most had dark circles under their eyes as if they hadn’t been getting much sleep.

“This is my granddaughter, Belladonna Johnson,” announced Grandma Johnson. “Some of you know her, I think. She has something she’d like to tell us.”

Belladonna glanced at her grandmother, taken aback. Who were these people? She had thought that the whole ghost thing was peculiar to her family, but now there was a room full of people who apparently sat around discussing it.

Grandma Johnson gave her a gentle nudge and smiled encouragingly. “Don’t be shy,” she said.

Belladonna looked at the people again, took a deep breath, and told them everything right from the beginning, including about the Hunt and Aunt Deirdre’s disappearance the night before. There was silence when she finished, then Mrs. Kostopoulos leaned forward.

“What makes you think Mrs. Evans knew about the door?” she asked.

“The way she looked when she knocked it over,”
said Belladonna. “And she knew that I knew. She gave me a really peculiar look.”

Mrs. Kostopoulos settled back in her chair and a chubby lady near the window cleared her throat slightly.

“This girl—”

“Elsie,” said Belladonna helpfully.

“Yes, Elsie. You say she is the only one who hasn’t disappeared?”

“No, there’s Dr. Ashe too. And Slackett, his assistant,” said Belladonna. “Oh, and everything away from the High Street seemed dark.”

“Dark?” asked the woman.

“Not dark, exactly, sort of run-down.”

“Decaying, perhaps?” asked Mr. al Rashid.

“Yes, decaying. But . . . more than that . . . sort of rotting.”

The people in the room looked at one another with serious faces.

“What does it mean?” asked Belladonna.

The people in the room ignored her and a few whispered to one another and frowned.

“We need to find another door,” said Mr. Philips finally. “We need to send someone to the Other Side to get a look at the situation and report back.”

That’s typical
, thought Belladonna, flashing a glare at Mr. Philips—she’d just told them that she’d been there and what she had seen but still they wanted an adult to
go. She was really tired of grown-ups treating her as if she was somehow unreliable.

“We should consult the books,” said a pale man near the back.

“Good idea,” said Grandma Johnson. “I’ll just see Belladonna off home and we’ll get right to it.”

She steered Belladonna firmly out of the room and closed the door.

“Who are those people?”

“The Eidolon Council,” said her grandmother, zipping up Belladonna’s jacket again.

“The what?”

“We supervise relations between the Living and the Dead. There’s a similar organization on the Other Side, the Conclave of Shadow.”

“Why do they all look so tired?”

“Because of the dreams.”

“Aunt Deirdre mentioned dreams. What is it? Are they having bad dreams?”

“No, dear, it’s not that,” she hesitated. “Look, just go home, we’ll take it from here.”

Belladonna could feel her anger rising again. “Tell me!” she said grimly. “I found the door and went to the Other Side. I lost Mum and Dad for the second time and was nearly eaten by a huge Hound. I think I can take whatever it is about dreams without bursting into tears.”