The alchemists shadow, p.2
The Alchemist's Shadow, page 2
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Tinker, wringing the rag nervously in his hands, “but I don’t understand. The legal heirs?”
“My employer is a gentleman by the name of Oscar Snockett,” said Ms. Graves. “He is great-uncle to the twins and became their guardian upon the death of their parents. Mr. Snockett, however, is an old bachelor with no interest in children, and thus sent them to live here. Blackford House belongs to the Kojimas on their mother’s side. Distant relations of the original owners, yes, but legitimate nonetheless.”
“Allow me, Ms. Graves,” said the girl, stepping forward. “My name is Agatha Kojima. I’m twelve years old, and despite the awkwardness of the situation, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.” Agatha gazed up at the house. “That said, rest assured that my brother and I are no more pleased about our arrival than you are. I have done quite a bit of research on Watch Hollow with the hopes it might induce in me a desire to live here. I regret to inform you that it has not.” Agatha reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of jelly beans. “Jelly bean, anyone?”
Lucy shook her head, and Agatha popped a jelly bean into her mouth. Ms. Graves put her arm around the boy.
“And this here is Algernon.”
The boy gestured a quick hello, and then just stood there looking at Lucy with his nose raised slightly. Or at least, Lucy thought he was looking at her. It was hard to tell because Algernon’s eyes were buried beneath his bangs. As for his samurai doll, its hair was a tangled mess, its silken robes were ragged and dirty, and its nose was broken off. The mouth was carved so that Lucy wasn’t sure if the doll was smiling or clenching its teeth; and worst of all, the samurai’s eyes were wide and bulging like a bug’s—and they were staring straight at her.
“Well—er—nice to meet you both,” said Mr. Tinker. “And who’s your doll here, Algernon?”
Algernon made some quick gestures, and then Agatha stayed his hand.
“I don’t think they know sign language, Algy,” she said.
“Algernon doesn’t speak,” said Ms. Graves. “The doctors aren’t quite sure what’s wrong—only that it’s the result of an injury he sustained during the accident.”
“Accident?” asked Mr. Tinker.
“I’m afraid the twins lost their parents in a car accident. And in the two years since, we’ve learned to communicate with Algernon via sign language. It saves a lot of time once you get the hang of it. And to be sure”—Ms. Graves pulled the boy close—“we’ve certainly had enough time together to practice.”
Algernon puffed his bangs out of his eyes and smiled.
“I—er—” Mr. Tinker stammered. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss, kids.”
“And Algernon’s doll isn’t a doll, by the way,” Agatha said. “It’s a marionette with its strings cut off. Kenny is his name—a nickname for Kenzo, a character in one of my father’s puppet plays. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of Professor Hiroto Kojima, master puppeteer and renowned theatrical scholar, have you?”
Lucy exchanged a bewildered look with her father.
“Of course you haven’t,” Agatha muttered sarcastically. “In any event, now that we’ve dispensed with the pleasantries, I would like to see if Blackford House is as uninspiring inside as it is out.”
Mr. Tinker shifted awkwardly on his feet. “There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding—”
“Indeed there is, Mr. Tinker,” said Ms. Graves. “Mr. Snockett said nothing about any caretakers at Blackford House.”
“Well—you see, I have some papers—the deed and—” Mr. Tinker stopped himself, his eyes roving apprehensively among the children. Lucy understood. Some conversations were meant only for adults.
“Look, please, all of you, come inside,” Mr. Tinker began again. “You must be tired from your trip. What say we sort out what’s going on after a glass of lemonade?”
Everyone agreed, and as Mr. Tinker led the others into the house, Lucy remained behind. Her head was spinning. Blackford House belonged to her family! The deed said so. And not only that, Meridian had said so, too—right before she turned wooden again in the clock. “You Tinkers are the caretakers,” the cat had said.
Granted, being the caretaker of a house and its owner could be two different things, Lucy had to admit. But Blackford House was no ordinary house; and deed or no deed, being its caretaker meant that you were responsible for the magic here.
Lucy gasped. The magic! What would happen if these people found out that Blackford House was magical?
For a split second, Lucy saw the future unfold all too clearly before her eyes. Blackford House, sensing that Ms. Graves and the Kojimas were bad, would evict them just as it had done to Mr. Quigley. Ms. Graves would certainly report the incident to the authorities, and then who knew what sort of people might start poking around after that—maybe even another alchemist like Mr. Quigley!
Her heart hammering, Lucy bounded inside and joined the others in the darkly paneled foyer. Much as the Tinkers had done when they first arrived at Blackford House, Ms. Graves and the Kojimas stood at the foot of the grand staircase, eyes wide and mouths open as they gazed up at the enormous cuckoo clock built into the wall of the first landing.
“Why, it looks just like Big Ben!” Ms. Graves exclaimed.
“Big Ben isn’t a cuckoo clock,” Agatha muttered. Lucy glanced over at Oliver, who was looking around the foyer uneasily. She could tell he was thinking the same thing. If their guests were up to no good, then surely Blackford House would evict them at any moment.
The house, however, was quiet—save for the low, steady ticking of the clock’s massive pendulum.
“And are those animals instead of numbers?” asked Ms. Graves.
“Well—er—yes,” stammered Lucy’s father. “I’ve been doing some work inside, and as you can see”—he indicated his sweatshirt—“I’ve made quite a mess of things.”
Algernon stepped up onto the staircase and began tugging at the round end cap at the bottom of the banister.
“Algernon, stop that!” cried Ms. Graves. “What on earth are you doing?”
Algernon explained himself in sign language, and Agatha rolled her eyes.
“He’s looking for the switch to a secret passageway,” she said. Algernon nodded and signed again. “A house like this is sure to have a secret passageway, he says.”
Lucy exchanged an anxious glance with Oliver, and then their father chuckled awkwardly.
“Please forgive him,” Ms. Graves said. “I’m afraid Algernon can be somewhat . . . impulsive at times.”
Mr. Tinker again chuckled awkwardly. “Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “Anyway, follow me to the kitchen. For the lemonade, I mean.”
“Very well, Mr. Tinker,” said Ms. Graves.
“Please, call me Charles.”
“Very well, then. Charles.”
Lucy sighed and folded her arms. She didn’t like this new wrinkle in things at all. And to make matters worse, just before the others disappeared past the staircase and into the butler’s hallway, Lucy saw something she disliked even more.
It was Samurai Kenny. He seemed to be watching her.
And he was definitely not smiling.
Two
What a Mess
Oliver stood in the library doorway, keeping an eye on the Kojimas while at the same time trying to eavesdrop on the adults in the adjoining parlor. They were sitting side by side on one of the antique sofas with a bunch of papers spread out before them.
“So, you see, Ms. Graves—”
“Please, Charles, call me Bedelia.”
“Er—Bedelia. Well, you see it says right here in the original deed that, if the owner of Blackford House dies and no heir is found, then the house shall be bequeathed to its caretaker. We thought the owner was Mortimer Quigley and—”
“This Quigley fellow,” Ms. Graves interrupted. “He’s the gentleman who hired you to fix the clock?”
“That’s right. He said he purchased the house from a relative of the Blackfords in England. However, once we checked things out at the town hall, there was no record of Blackford House belonging to anyone. And since we’d been taking care of things—well, that’s how the deed came to me. My name’s right here, see?”
Ms. Graves gave the deed a quick scan and then set it down among the other papers. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would Mr. Quigley hire you to fix a clock in a house that didn’t belong to him?”
Mr. Tinker fumbled for a reply and then shrugged.
“And where is this Mr. Quigley now?” asked Ms. Graves, and Oliver’s father fingered the collar of his sweatshirt.
“Er—well—” he stammered, “he just sort of . . . disappeared.” Ms. Graves raised an eyebrow. “Believe me, I know it sounds suspicious, but—it seems Mortimer Quigley was involved in some shady dealings and—well, who knows what he was really up to and where he went. . . .”
Despite his beating around the bush, Oliver thought his father was doing a good job of explaining things to Ms. Graves without lying too much. Mr. Quigley was involved in some shady dealings—but no one needed to know that it was alchemy, or that Edgar Blackford and the Shadow Woods were responsible for his death.
“Forgive me, Charles,” said Ms. Graves, “but this whole thing seems highly irregular. Mr. Quigley’s disappearance notwithstanding, look here”—she shuffled some papers—“this is a copy of the last will and testament of Esther Snockett Blackford, who was grandmother to the twins and married to a distant relation of Roger Blackford. The will clearly states that Blackford House shall be . . .”
Oliver didn’t need to hear much more to get the gist of things. Both the Tinkers and the Kojimas had a solid legal claim to Blackford House. Besides, it was hard to pay attention to the details, what with Agatha close by. Even now, as she stood with her back to him on one of library’s rolling ladders, Oliver couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“It’s a dream come true!” she said, gazing up at the bookshelves. “Uncle Oscar would never let us in his library. And look at this”—she snatched a book off its shelf—“a complete set of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Amazing!”
As Agatha thumbed through the book, Algernon sniffed the contents of one of the chemical jars on the bookshelf and smiled. He set the jar on the table, rattling some beakers among the chemistry equipment there. One half of Oliver was worried that Algernon might break something, but the other half felt sort of relieved to have other people around. Oliver couldn’t imagine what it must be like for Algernon not to be able to speak. Ms. Graves had told Pop that it was the result of nerve damage. If Algernon even tried to whisper, his vocal folds would spasm, choking off his air. A very rare condition, the governess added. The poor child.
“Yeah, this room is pretty cool,” Oliver said, pushing up his glasses. “We don’t know much about all that chemistry stuff, though. Been meaning to learn more about it but, you know, we don’t have internet here. No cable either and the cell service stinks—except for out in the truck, I mean.”
“Who needs all that when you’ve got a whole universe of books at your fingertips?” she said. “Or a pair of giant windows.”
Agatha giggled. She was referring to Kenny. Algernon had set his samurai puppet on the window seat so that its big, bulging eyes appeared to be gazing out at the Shadow Woods beyond the pasture.
The Shadow Woods.
They weren’t nearly as scary as when Oliver first moved in, he thought, and they were a lot smaller, too. The clock was responsible for that. It shrank the Shadow Woods back to their normal size after they’d nearly taken over the house. Still, Oliver thought Kenny would look right at home there. With his broken nose and messed-up hair, the puppet looked more like a zombie than a samurai. His face was white and smudged with dirt, and his thick, arching eyebrows made him look angry.
Oliver turned his gaze back on the adults. Despite the fact that they were talking about serious stuff, there was also something about the way his father was acting around Ms. Graves that Oliver had never seen before. He seemed sort of nervous, but in a shy, smiley way that—
“Hell-ooo?” Agatha said, snapping her fingers.
Startled, Oliver blinked back at her with a look of, Huh, what?
“I asked you a question.” Agatha hopped off the ladder and moved closer to the painting of Roger and Abigail Blackford above the library’s hearth. “Who are they?”
Oliver glanced back at his father, who, at precisely the same moment, pointed to the painting above the parlor hearth and began stumbling over a fib about where it came from. That was one of the first magical things the house did after the clock was fixed—it painted a portrait of the Tinkers, hung it above the parlor hearth, and moved the Blackfords’ portrait to the library. Deed or no deed, if there was ever proof that the Tinkers were the rightful owners of Blackford House, their portrait was it.
But how could Pop ever explain such a thing to Ms. Graves without giving away the house’s secrets?
“Well?” Agatha asked, and Oliver stepped farther into the library.
“Er—that’s Roger and Abigail Black-ford,” he said, voice cracking, and he cleared his throat.
“Right, our long-lost twentieth cousins and whatnot,” Agatha said dully. “Do you know what happened to them?”
Oliver shrugged. “Well, from what Pop found out at the town hall, Roger Blackford died first. About forty or fifty years ago, I think. Abigail died later. She was over a hundred years old.”
Oliver cleared his throat again—ugh, stupid voice cracking!—but Agatha didn’t seem to notice. She just hugged her elbows, her eyes never leaving the painting.
“Anyway,” Oliver went on. “Pop said that, after the old lady died, the house stood empty for like thirty years. Mr. Quigley—the guy who hired us to fix the clock—he told us that he was the owner. But that was a lie and . . . well, you know.”
Oliver swallowed hard and pushed up his glasses. He was sounding like an idiot.
“They look like zombies,” Agatha said, jerking her chin at the painting. “And that black spot—what, was there a fire here or something?”
Oliver shrugged awkwardly. He’d thought the same thing when he first arrived. The Blackfords’ skin was gray and their eyes almost black, and in Abigail’s arms was a large, smoky smudge, as if the paint there had been burned away. But Oliver knew now that the smudge used to be a portrayal of Edgar Blackford as an infant. There was another smudgy painting of Edgar as a boy upstairs. The house was responsible for marring his image, just as the house was responsible for the portrait of the Tinkers in the parlor.
But there was no way Oliver was going to tell Agatha all that.
Just then, a gentle hissing sound came from the chemistry table. It was Algernon. He’d mixed something in one of the beakers and now it was foaming over!
“Algy!” Agatha snapped, rushing to his side. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Algernon made some quick hand gestures, but Agatha waved him away just as quickly. Oliver could sense the boy’s frustration as he frowned and hung his head.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” Agatha said, turning to Oliver. “He wants you to know that he’s a very good chemist. He’s won awards”—Agatha swiveled her eyes back to Algernon—“but that’s no excuse for messing with things that don’t belong to you.”
Algernon made a fist and, looking up at Oliver, rubbed it on his chest in a circle. Oliver figured the gesture meant “sorry.”
“Er—it’s no biggie,” Oliver said, his eyes on the beaker. The foam was now spreading out all over the table. “Let me go grab a rag or something.”
Oliver dashed through the parlor and out into the foyer, where he spied Lucy staring up at the painting of Blackford House in the adjoining dining room. Oliver knew what she was up to—she was looking for a sign of Ms. Graves and the twins. He’d done the same thing earlier, while the others were finishing their lemonade in the kitchen. As far as Oliver could tell, nothing had changed. His family was still on the porch, waving to the young man atop the carriage, and the white horse was still grazing in the pasture.
Impulsively, Oliver hurried around the other way, through the butler’s hallway, and into the kitchen, where he searched under the sink for some rags and came up empty. Pop must’ve used them all in the clock, he thought, and was about to run up there when Lucy entered from the dining room. Their eyes met, and Oliver felt caught.
He’d been trying to avoid her.
“I thought you were Pop,” Lucy said, and an awkward silence passed between them. Oliver wasn’t mad anymore about the fight with Billy, but given the mess Algernon had made in the library, he wanted to keep Lucy out of it. She’d been acting weird for a couple of weeks now—sort of grumpy and distant all the time—which was why he’d let her tag along with him and Billy. Big mistake that was.
Lucy looked down at the floor and said, “I really am sorry about Billy.”
“Just forget about it, okay?” Oliver said, turning to go—he needed to find those rags before the whole library was full of foam.
“If you want to hang out with him,” Lucy said quickly, “you know, just the two of you at the parade, I mean—I won’t bug you guys.”
Oliver had forgotten about that. Tomorrow was the big Watch Hollow parade, which commemorated a famous battle from the Revolutionary War. It was a huge deal around here—huger than the Fourth of July, Billy had told him. Billy’s father was even going to dress up as Ben Franklin and march with the Merchants’ Guild.
Oliver fumbled awkwardly for something to say—Lucy really was sorry, he could tell—but then Agatha peeked in from the dining room and things got even more awkward.
“Oh, there you are,” she said, stepping inside. “Change of plans, I’m afraid. Whatever was foaming there in the library has now stopped and turned to powder. I should think a dustpan and brush will suffice.”
