Spellbinder (31 page)

“This is the back,” said Elsie. “Maybe we should go in the front.”

She led the way around the terrace to a brick wall planted with espaliered pear trees. They walked out of the garden through a wooden door, along a narrow path past what appeared to be a dead herb garden, and out to the front of the house.

If the back had seemed impressive, the front was truly daunting in its splendor.

Two sets of marble steps curved around to a large covered porch that was guarded by eight soaring white pillars. The pillars ended in cascading carved acanthus leaves, above which was a stately pediment with a long marble frieze showing what Belladonna assumed to be gods and goddesses reclining in a variety of poses. At the center of the frieze was a statue of a woman on a chariot, ready to gallop out of the stone and away.

“Who’s that?” whispered Belladonna.

“The Queen of the Abyss,” replied Elsie, awestruck. “I saw her once. Only from a distance. She has a chariot drawn by a pterodactyl and bats follow her wherever she goes. She rules the Land of the Dead.”

“Well, she’s not doing a great job at the moment,” remarked Belladonna, staring at the beautiful yet grim marble face. It reminded her of someone. Someone she’d met.

“Let’s get on with this,” she said finally, reaching for the huge brass doorknob.

Elsie hung back, looking at the blank windows and listening for a sound, any sound.

“What is it?” asked Belladonna.

“It’s just . . . well, at first I thought the garden was dead because, you know, everything else is.”

“Yes,” said Belladonna, “it’s been spreading from the town.”

“But what if it isn’t?” said Elsie. “There was something about the garden that seemed sort of . . . established.”

“You think it started here,” said Belladonna.

“Yes. I don’t know. But maybe.”

Belladonna looked up at the imposing polished mahogany front doors, then turned on her heel and came back down. If Ashe was already there, then strolling in the front door would be a really bad idea.

“Let’s go in the back,” she announced grimly.

Elsie nodded and they retraced their steps to the rear of the house. The door there was almost as imposing. Belladonna turned the handle.

“Locked,” she said.

“What about the windows?”

Belladonna glanced at Elsie and began to examine the windows. They all appeared to be locked, but she gave each one an exploratory jiggle, just to be sure.

“No good,” she said.

She sighed and wandered away, trying to take in
the whole house to see if there was anything like a sturdy drainpipe near an open window. She knew that Steve would’ve found a way in already, but she lacked his crucial sneaking skills. She pushed her hair back from her face, turned, and looked out over the garden. It was so beautiful in its monochromatic way, and the silence made her feel calm even amid all the sorrow and dread.

A small breeze swooped across the lawn and stroked her face. It was slightly warm and smelled of summer. She tried to imagine the garden in all its glory, green and fragrant, with flowers bursting from buds and the steady drone of ever-industrious bees. The Conclave of Shadow had chosen a nice place for their meetings—it certainly knocked the socks off Grandma Johnson’s front room where the Eidolon Council met. So much so that Belladonna was finding it hard to believe that the two really consulted on anything. Grandma Johnson had said that the two councils supervised relations between the Living and the Dead, but in the normal run of things, there couldn’t really be much to supervise, and Grandpa had said that the Conclave of Shadow didn’t really do much of anything. She hoped that he was wrong and that the Council was already working on a way to return the ghosts to the Land of the Dead and open the doors so they could once more move freely between their home and the Land of the Living. She smiled a little at the thought of
her parents waiting for her again after school, her father anxious for the paper and her mother waiting on tenterhooks for the next episode of
Staunchly Springs
. But no sooner had the happy image floated into her consciousness than it was pushed aside by the memory of Steve, slowly dying in front of the small fire on the plain, and her Granddad sacrificing himself to save them from Dr. Ashe. Belladonna shook her head quickly, pushing the memories aside. Dwelling on the past wasn’t going to help and right now she needed to think clearly. Even if it was more than likely that the Conclave of Shadow had gone the way of all the other ghosts, she and Elsie still had to try to find them—they had to be sure.

She strolled down the steps toward the brown grass. It was when she reached the bottom that she saw it: a small window set into the bank.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Over here!”

“What?” Elsie ran over.

“A window,” she said. “The terrace must be over some part of the house.”

Elsie grinned and examined the window. It was small but had the air of something that had been forgotten. The wooden frame was damp and rotted and the glass was thick with years of accumulated dirt.

“Someone hasn’t been looking after this,” she said quietly, taking hold of the frame and giving it a sharp tug up.

There was a loud crack as the latch gave way and the lower sash jerked upward, breaking the glass in the upper pane.

“Oops.”

“Where does it lead?” asked Belladonna, peering into the blackness.

“Only one way to find out,” said Elsie matter-of-factly.

She stood up, made sure her ribbon was secure and her skirts smooth, then clambered over the sill and let herself down into the room below. This was immediately followed by a yelp, a thump, and an impressive metallic crash.

“Elsie!” hissed Belladonna. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she whispered back loudly, “but you should watch that second step!”

Belladonna smiled, tucked her hair behind her ears, and lowered herself into the darkness. She felt around with her right foot, peering into the blackness for something solid. Eventually she located something hard and reasonably sturdy and crept in.

“It’s the top of an oven!” whispered Elsie. “See?”

As her eyes slowly got used to the dark, she could see that she was perched on what was presumably the air vent, with the actual cooktop about three feet below. Elsie was standing on the floor, surrounded by upended saucepans and lids.

“Is it on?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the six huge gas rings beneath her.

“Yes, so you’d better hotfoot it down here,” said Elsie, cracking up. “No, of course it’s not on!”

Belladonna scowled as she lowered herself carefully down onto the top of the stove and dropped lightly to the floor.

Once she was down, they both turned around and had a good look at where they were. The kitchen was like nothing either of them had ever seen—it seemed to take up acres of space, with dozens of ovens around the walls, as well as three huge fireplaces with massive iron spits ready to go the next time anyone showed up with a wild boar or a whole moose. The center of the room was occupied by ranks of long wooden worktables littered with bowls, chopping blocks, condiment boxes, and spoons. Gleaming copper pans hung in graduated ranks from massive racks above their heads, and huge sinks stood ready for the truckloads of washing up that would be needed for even the humblest tea prepared in this colossal kitchen.

“Wow,” said Elsie.

“You could feed hundreds out of a place like this,” said Belladonna.

“Thousands,” added Elsie. “Come on, let’s go upstairs and find the Conclave.”

She marched off toward the door. Belladonna followed, but there was a knot in the pit of her stomach telling her to take care.

The kitchen door led out into a narrow hallway that seemed to stretch interminably in either direction. Elsie
looked up and down, then just picked a direction and marched off. Belladonna followed, cautiously glancing out of the small grubby windows that lined one side of the corridor as she went. The windows revealed nothing more than an empty cobblestoned courtyard. Belladonna noticed that the cobbles were wet and looked up at the narrow patch of suddenly iron-gray sky. The whole setup reminded her of scenes in those depressing Victorian novels they were always making them read at school.

“It seems so empty,” she murmured. “Are we too late?”

They turned a corner and started down another equally unpromising corridor, but they hadn’t gone far before a movement across the courtyard drew her attention. Belladonna looked out and there, on the second floor of the opposite wing, she saw a light, moving slowly.

“Elsie, look,” she whispered.

Elsie stopped and returned to Belladonna. “There must be someone there,” she whispered. “Maybe the Conclave is still here after all.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Belladonna.

Elsie tried to smile encouragingly, but Belladonna could tell that she had exactly the same feeling. They had been so much better off out in the open where they could see what was coming. Here, they could turn a corner and be done for.

“Come on,” said Elsie finally. “In for a penny.”

“My mother used to say that,” said Belladonna, following. “It’s a pretty stupid saying when you think about it.”

Elsie stopped in front of a door and opened it carefully, making sure that it didn’t creak. They peered inside. There was a narrow staircase leading steeply upward.

“Servants’ stairs,” said Elsie.

The stairs were old and wooden and curled upward in a wide spiral. Elsie started to climb, but Belladonna winced as the old stairs groaned beneath her feet.

“Quiet!” hissed Belladonna. “Will you be quiet! We don’t know what’s up there!”

“The hall, I should imagine. Come on!”

She disappeared around the first bend. Belladonna quickly caught up, grabbed her belt, and yanked her to a halt.

“Let’s at least
try
to be quiet,” said Belladonna.

Elsie nodded and the two of them started up the stairs again, feeling each step and trying to avoid creaks. Five more minutes brought them to a large wooden door. Elsie glanced back at Belladonna, who nodded. She pushed the door open slowly and they both stepped out.

They were on a wide landing above the entry hall, bounded on one side by vast portraits and on the other by a sturdy mahogany balustrade. Looking down, they could see an elaborate marble floor and a sweeping grand staircase. Above them, an enormous
stained-glass dome sent shards of colored light across the walls and floors. The landing itself had four doors, carved with images of life and death, each surmounted by a different looming carving of death personified.

“It’s not very cheerful, is it?” whispered Belladonna, her voice dropping into the silence like a rock into a lake.

They froze until the last lingering echoes of her voice had faded and all they could hear was the steady ticking of the great long-case clock in the entry below them.

“This way,” whispered Elsie, gesturing toward a door on their right.

“Why that way?” asked Belladonna.

“There’s a sign. See?”

Elsie pointed at a small wooden sign with lettering picked out in peeling gilt. It read “Long Gallery,” then right below that, “Hall of Argument,” followed by a small arrow pointing to the right.

“The Hall of Argument,” explained Elsie. “That’s where the Conclave meets. I imagine that’s where they are. It’s where we saw the light and it would explain why it’s so quiet.”

“Yeah,” said Belladonna dubiously, “so would a few other things that leap to mind.”

Elsie rolled her eyes and strode toward the door. Belladonna watched for a moment, expecting her to fling the doors open in yet another bravura Edwardian
gesture, but instead she hesitated, bit her lip, and fingered her tie.

“What is it?” said Belladonna.

“Nothing . . . that is . . .”

Belladonna smiled and joined her at the door. Then she turned and slowly twisted the handle. The great door swung inward slowly and without a creak, but all sense of relief faded when they saw what was inside.

“What on earth is that?” whispered Elsie.

Belladonna felt along the wall, located a switch, and turned the lights on. Above their heads, chandelier after chandelier burst to life down the long gallery, the crystal drops scattering light throughout the room, glancing off mirrors and shooting out of the tall windows. The whole of the left-hand wall was made up of windows, stretching from floor to ceiling, while on the right, the walls held mirrors of exactly the same size and shape. Under normal circumstances, this would have made the gallery an almost magical place, but someone had turned it over to another use; shelves had been installed against the mirrors, all the way from the door to the fireplace at the far end, and on each of the shelves, so close that they were almost (but not quite) touching, was row upon row of glass jars. There were jam jars, pickle jars, wine bottles, water bottles, every size of glass receptacle imaginable, even bell jars like the ones they used in physics class to create a vacuum. The jars were all clean, but there were no labels or
signs to indicate what had been or what was now inside them. And something was definitely inside them—each jar seemed to be full of smoke or mist that moved slowly around like a self-stirring soup.

“Are they . . . ?” asked Elsie. “No! Oh, no! It’s us! It’s us!”

She ran to the shelves and touched jar after jar. She picked one up and began straining with the lid.

Belladonna looked at her, then at the ranks of jars. The milky, misty contents moved slowly. Then she knew.

“That’s . . . the ghosts?”

Elsie nodded.

“All of them?” Belladonna stared at the ranks of jars. “But . . . if it’s the ghosts of everyone who ever lived . . . shouldn’t there be more?”

“A spirit doesn’t take up much space,” whispered Elsie, “no space at all, really.”

Belladonna walked over to the jars and touched one. It was cold as ice, and the gray-green mist inside seemed to move faster at her touch . . . or was that just her imagination? She pulled her hand away—perhaps it wasn’t respectful—and tilted her head back to take in the rows of jars and bottles. How many ghosts were in each one? How many lives? She reached forward again, lightly touching the cold glass. Were her parents perhaps in this one? Were other ghosts with them? Were they at least together?