Spellbinder (20 page)

Grandma Johnson stepped back, as if she was seeing her granddaughter for the first time.

“Alright,” she said finally. “You’re right. The Council . . . well, everyone really . . . everyone looks tired because they’re not having dreams. No dreams at all.”

“Why?”

“Dreams are sent by the ghosts.”

“Ghosts send dreams?” Belladonna rolled her eyes. “And prevent accidents? What else do they do? Control the weather?”

“You’ve been spending too much time with that Evans boy,” said Grandma Johnson testily. “They send dreams to the living through an alabaster doorway in the House of Mists.”

“Is this according to the Ancient Greeks as well?”

“Partly. But it was confirmed by the Conclave of Shadow. Belladonna, I really don’t have time to—”

“What happens if we don’t have dreams?” interrupted Belladonna, looking narrowly at her grandmother. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Grandma Johnson glanced back at the door to the front room and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “We die. All of us. There. I said it. If we don’t find out where the ghosts have gone, accidents will be the least of our worries. Now, off you go home.”

“No! Wait!” Belladonna wriggled free of her grandmother’s determined push toward the front door. “You can’t say that and just send me home! Why would we die if we don’t have dreams?”

“Lower your voice! Dreams are the most important
part of sleep . . . everyone knows that. We have them during our deepest sleep, our most important sleep. People . . . all creatures need to sleep or they sicken and die.”

“So if you don’t die after accidentally falling off the cliff, you’ll die from not dreaming about it?”

“I suppose.”

Belladonna stopped and stared at her grandmother. There was something new in her tone of voice and in her eyes: a nervousness and uncertainty that she had never seen before.

“You’re not sure, are you?”

“It’s in the books,” said Grandma Johnson hastily. “The books explain it all.”

“What books? The books they were talking about?”

“Dr. Ashe’s books of magic. Yes, we know all about him. A thoroughly unpleasant man when he was alive, and by the sounds of it, no better since he’s been dead. The notebooks were found in his apothecary shop after he died. There are four of them and we consult them from time to time. Now, come on, off you go!”

She opened the front door and began gently pushing Belladonna toward it.

“But what about the Hunt and Aunt Deirdre?”

“Aunt Deirdre’s a grown-up. If she wants to act like a fool, that’s her lookout, but you stay away from them. Just cover your ears and let them ride by.”

Belladonna reckoned it would take more than covering your ears to ignore the Hunt, but she was about
to do as she was told and leave when suddenly she froze.

“Mrs. Kostopoulos!”

“What?” Now her grandmother was really confused.

“Mrs. Kostopoulos. She’s Greek. Can I ask her a question?”

Grandma Johnson clicked her tongue irritably, but stepped aside. Belladonna burst through the door into the séance room. She had left out the part about asking the Sibyl about Dr. Ashe when she’d told them what had happened, but there was just a chance . . .

“Mrs. Kostopoulos,” she blurted, “do you know any Ancient Greek?”

“A little,” said Mrs. Kostopoulos, taken aback.

“Do you know what the word
phatês
means?”

“
Phatês?
Um . . . I don’t . . .”

Belladonna’s heart sank, but the portly hairdresser suddenly smiled.

“Yes!” she said. “Yes! It means ‘liar.’ ”

“Liar?” whispered Belladonna.

“Why do you want to know that?” asked her grandmother.

“Because that’s what the Sibyl said when we asked her about Dr. Ashe:
phatês
. Liar.”

Grandma Johnson looked grim. “And the Evans boy is trapped over there with the amulet?”

Belladonna nodded. She had a sick feeling in her stomach.

“Right,” her grandmother’s usual no-nonsense manner had returned and she wheeled Belladonna around and out into the hall again. “We need to get to work. We have to find another way to the Other Side before Dr. Ashe gets the amulet.”

“But you don’t know what it’s for!” said Belladonna.

“That doesn’t matter. If
he
wants it, well, it can’t be good, can it?”

“But—”

“You’ve done very well, Belladonna. Now go home and ask Aunt Deirdre to make you some hot soup. She’s not up to much in a kitchen, but even she should be able to open a can. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

And with that, she gave Belladonna one last push out onto the front step.

“It’s getting dark,” she said matter-of-factly. “Go straight home. Tomorrow’s a school day.”

The door clicked shut. Belladonna stood on the step for a moment, then turned and began to walk slowly home.

The wind was still cold, but she wasn’t feeling it any more. Her mind was racing with the few snippets of information she’d managed to glean from the Council. She tried to remember if she’d dreamed last night. She certainly didn’t look like them, with dark circles under her eyes, did she? She stopped in front of a shop window and examined her reflection. She did look
a little tired, but was it because she hadn’t been dreaming or because she hadn’t had much sleep last night?

She dawdled on. Dr. Ashe’s notebooks. Something bothered her about that, but she couldn’t think what.

The house was dark when she let herself in. She turned on all the lights, turned the central heating up, and leaned against the kitchen radiator until she felt warm, then she made herself some tea and went and sat down in front of the television. It was six o’clock and the news was on. Once again, it was a catalog of freak accidents and motorway pileups. She glanced at the clock and settled down to wait. At seven o’clock she went and stood at the window, peering down the road for any sign of Aunt Deirdre’s car. By eight she decided she had better call her grandmother, but just as she picked up the phone, Deirdre’s car roared up to the curb outside.

“Where have you been?” she demanded as her aunt walked in the door.

“Not now, Belladonna,” said Aunt Deirdre. “I’m shattered. What time is it?”

“After eight.”

“Right.” She took off her coat and hung it on the hall pegs. “Did you get your own tea? There’s a good girl. I’ve got work to do.”

Belladonna followed her into the kitchen as she powered up her laptop. “But—”

Deirdre drew in her breath sharply and fired a
warning glare at her niece. It was no use. Belladonna drifted back into the sitting room and watched a film about gangsters and nightclub singers that she was fairly sure neither her parents nor her aunt would want her to watch. At ten o’clock, she turned off the television, said good night to her aunt, and went upstairs to bed.

Sleep was out of the question, of course. She just lay there, staring at a small damp patch in the ceiling over her bed and thinking. She wondered if Steve was alright and hoped he’d managed to find Elsie again. Or perhaps Elsie had vanished now too.

The whole thing made her feel so helpless.

And then it happened again. The distant baying of hounds, the thundering of hooves, and the clanking of iron bridles as the Hunt bore down on the small house on Lychgate Lane. Belladonna sat up in bed and saw their shadows through the closed curtains, raging past in a maelstrom of horses, boots, and dogs. The noise grew almost unbearable, the howls and clatter melding together until it almost seemed like a single agonized cry, and then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone and all was silence again. Belladonna sat, listening, hardly daring to breathe. Then she heard the click of the front door closing and the roar of the car as Aunt Deirdre set off after them once more.

Belladonna ran to the window and watched as the small car disappeared around the corner. What would she do if she caught them? She tried to picture Aunt
Deirdre stopping the Hunt, holding up one of her long white hands and demanding that they cease making such an unconscionable noise and settle down and talk like civilized human beings. She smiled to herself. If anyone could do that, it was probably her aunt.

She closed the curtains again and got back into bed, but no sooner had her head hit the pillow than she sat bolt upright again.

“There’s another notebook,” she whispered to herself. “There were five on the shelf!”

She closed her eyes again and pictured Dr. Ashe’s laboratory. There was the big book he had shown her first, then the second one—the one with the picture of the dragon—he’d taken that one from a shelf. There were other printed books on the shelf, and next to them were the notebooks. Five notebooks. They had to be the books her grandmother was talking about! She jumped out of bed, ran downstairs to the phone, and dialed her grandmother’s number.

“Hello, you have reached the home of Jessamine Johnson. I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.”

Belladonna listened to the beep, hesitated, then hung up. She thought about it for a moment—she knew her grandmother was there. She picked the phone up and dialed again. She got the machine. She hung up and dialed once more.

“What?!” said Grandma Johnson, clearly furious.

“It’s me,” said Belladonna nervously.

“Belladonna? Why on earth aren’t you in bed?”

“The Hunt came again and Deirdre’s gone, but that’s not why I’m calling. I was thinking about Dr. Ashe’s books.” The words tumbled out, but Grandma Johnson wasn’t listening.

“Belladonna, stop. Stop. You’ve done very well up to now. Except for getting your little friend trapped in the Land of the Dead, of course. But it’s time to leave things to the grown-ups.”

“Yes, but—”

“No. Go to bed.” Her voice was kind, but there was no mistaking its firmness. “It’s school tomorrow.”

“Don’t you want to hear—”

“No, I don’t. What time is it?” There was a pause while she must have glanced at her watch. “Oh, good heavens! It’s after midnight! Go to bed. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Sleep tight.”

And she hung up.

Belladonna stood in the hall, holding the silent telephone to her ear for a moment before she slowly returned it to its cradle. She walked slowly up the stairs and into her bedroom and stared at her bed for a few minutes, then she turned on her heel and started to get dressed.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES LATER,
Belladonna slipped out of the house, her pink backpack slung over one shoulder and sagging slightly from the added weight of two ham sandwiches, two packets of crisps, and two cans of Tizer (just in case she got through and needed to eat). She hesitated for a moment at the gate, then walked away down the dark streets toward the town center.

It was cold and silent in the town, with the kind of stillness that can only be found in the hours after midnight, when everyone is asleep and the traffic lights blink through their changes on empty streets. Occasionally a car or two would speed down the road, and once she glimpsed a police car cruising its beat. After that, she kept to the shadows, walking swiftly toward Umbra Avenue.

She passed the arcade where they’d found the
dragon game, closed up tight with an enormous padlock on the door, and walked up to the empty launderette. She looked up and down the street, then crept up to the door and tried the handle. As she expected, it was locked. She peered inside to make absolutely sure there was no one there and then walked around to the alley at the back. As she walked, she heard the distant squeal and crunch of two cars crashing. Another accident. She hesitated for a moment, listening, but all was quiet again. She continued to the back; that door was locked too, but there was a window right next to it that looked like it might not be quite so resistant. It was an old sash window like the ones at school, so she decided to try Steve’s trick of slowly jiggling the latch free.

She got a firm grip on the top of the lower pane and gave it a sharp shove up and then down. There was a horrifyingly loud creak with the first movement and she froze, expecting the police car to come screaming around the corner and into the alley with sirens blazing, but there was nothing. She tried it again—there was still a noise, but it was much quieter, and by the fifth or sixth shove it had almost ceased making any sound at all. Every so often, she would stand on her toes and check on her progress with the latch. She could just make it out through a clean smear on the dirty window, and it did seem to be moving, but soooo slowly.

The time ticked by, and still she worked the window up and down. Her arms ached and she had to keep
stopping and shaking them out to get the blood moving again. Finally, after what felt like hours, she gave a final shove and the window slid open. She looked carefully up and down the alley, pulled an old plastic crate over from a nearby pile of rubbish, and climbed inside, closing the window behind her.

Inside, the launderette was much as she expected. She was in a small back office with crushed cardboard boxes stacked on one side and discarded bits of paper scattered about as if someone had simply emptied the contents of a now-vanished desk onto the floor. The only remaining furnishings were an ancient gray metal file cabinet that crouched in the shadows and a broken wooden chair that someone had leaned against the far wall. A streetlight outside filled the room with a strange blue-green light, casting long eerie shadows across the room and into the main part of the launderette beyond. Dust was everywhere and old washing powder crunched underfoot. She closed her eyes and tried to picture it the way it was in the Land of the Dead. The fireplace was where the chair was, and Dr. Ashe’s workbench . . .