A Crown of Dragons

  She stared me right out the door.

  On the landing, near the bathroom, I bumped into Josie.

  “What’s that for?” She pointed at the bucket.

  “Your head, because you’re so ugly.”

  “Wha —?” For someone who was actually very pretty, she had a scowl that could crack a lump of stone. “You’re pathetic,” she hissed. She stuck out her tongue and stomped downstairs.

  She was right, I was pathetic. I shouldn’t have been taking my anger out on her. But words like I’ve got a lot on my mind didn’t really cut it with younger sisters.

  The attic hatch was in the landing ceiling. Entry to it was a four-stage process:

  • Using the pole stored in the linen closet, undo the hatch door and let it drop open.

  • Hook the pole onto the last rung of the folding ladders.

  • Draw the ladders down to floor level.

  • Pick up thy bucket and climb.

  A light came on the moment I poked my head through the hatch. The attic was bigger than I’d imagined, a wide-open space with no walls, just lots of sturdy beams that crisscrossed where the house changed shape. It was cold up there, but no worse than the first frosty morning of autumn. There wasn’t much to see. Josie’s old dollhouse, two fake Christmas trees, an ironing board, a clapped-out oil heater, and a stack of plastic storage boxes. The area around the hatch was boarded and therefore easy to walk on. I could stand up straight and touch the highest beams if I stretched. But Mom was right about my bedroom area. That was all open joists, running like railway tracks into the eaves.

  I found the leak right away. There was a hole in the roofing felt, big enough to poke a finger through and scratch the shingles. Water was trickling through it, running down a rafter and dripping onto the insulating material that was stuffed between the joists like yellow cotton candy. I knelt at the edge of the boarded area. I figured I could reach just far enough to place the bucket and catch the drip. But the bucket was unsteady on the insulation. So I crawled along two joists, using hands and knees, scraped some of the insulation aside, and put the bucket directly onto the ceiling plaster. It was still a bit lopsided, but it was catching the drip and it wasn’t going to fall. Job done.

  “Michael, how are you doing?” Mom’s voice, from the landing.

  “Okay!” I yelled back.

  “Come on, then. We need to get you to school.”

  School. That other essential ingredient of a secret agent’s life. I wasn’t a geek, but I did like school, especially English with Mr. Hambleton. Everyone knew I was his favorite pupil, but he had to nudge me twice that day for staring out the window. Even a dumb joke from Ryan Garvey couldn’t get me out of myself. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mom and the guy who’d asked her out. That moment when she’d touched my chest and said, There’s something I want to tell you … ramped up the stress like nothing Klimt could ever throw at me.

  I was still under a cloud when Mom came to pick up me and Josie from school.

  I stared out the window all the way home.

  As we pulled into the drive, Josie said, “Mom, there’s a man on our roof.”

  Dennis Handiman. His white van was in the drive.

  Mom stopped the car and turned off the engine. It was still raining gently, but DH Roofing, to his credit, was indeed on the roof. Or rather, on a ladder, leaning over the roof. He was wearing black sweatpants and a jacket so thick it could have insulated our hot water tank. On his head was what Mom called a trapper hat. One of those furry things with flaps over the ears. “He called back, then?”

  “Hmm, this afternoon. He asked me the whereabouts of the leak and told me he’d pop by and have a look if he had time.”

  “I’m going in,” said Josie. She shivered and got her keys out.

  “You go, too,” Mom said to me. “I’ll deal with this.”

  But I was interested to hear what Dennis had to say. After all, I’d been the hero of the hour, this morning.

  He waved and came down the ladder. In his hand was what looked like a broken shingle. “That’s your culprit,” he said, striding up. He put two pieces of the shingle together to demonstrate where it had cracked.

  “Ugh, how’d that happen?” Mom asked.

  Dennis pointed at a nearby tree. “Probably whacked by a branch in the storms.”

  “Or a heavy foot,” Mom tutted.

  “I haven’t stepped onto the roof,” he said. A look of concern lit his quick brown eyes. It was difficult to read much more of his expression, thanks to the dense black beard he’d grown.

  “No, no, not you.” Mom was quick to apologize. “We had the TV antenna adjusted recently.”

  “Did we?” This was news to me.

  “Yes, while you were in the hospital,” Mom said. “I’m wondering if they were a bit clumsy up there.”

  Dennis cupped his eyes and squinted at the chimney, where the antenna was fixed. “I still favor the branch theory. Anyhow, I’ve replaced the shingle, but the one I’ve put up is a different color. I can get you one of yours in a couple of days. Might be a good idea to renew the felt underneath it at the same time.”

  “There’s a hole in it,” I said.

  “Yes, I spotted it,” said Dennis.

  “Is that a lot of work?” said Mom.

  “Not really. I’d need to take some rows of shingles off and cut and replace the felt. A quick check inside the roof space will show me the extent of it.”

  “You’d better come in, then,” said Mom. “Can I get you a cup of tea or anything?”

  A smile broke through the beard. “That would be great,” he said, though he sounded slightly hesitant. “There you go, soldier. Souvenir for you.” He handed me the broken shingle.

  “That’s actually strangely appropriate,” said Mom.

  Dennis looked up for an explanation.

  “He’s writing a story about a dragon scale.” She tousled my hair. MOTHER! I hated her doing that in front of strangers. I wasn’t six anymore. She was right, though, the shingle did look a little like the scale in the UNICORNE artifact room.

  “I, um, just need to get something from my van,” said Dennis, and was starting to drift that way when Josie shouted from the door, “Mom, come quick!”

  “Why, what’s the matter?”

  “There’s a hole!”

  “What hole? What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, just come!”

  “Excuse me,” Mom said, setting off for the house.

  “This doesn’t sound good,” said Dennis. He looked me up and down for a moment. “Go on, you lead. I’ll get what I need and follow you in.”

  I nodded and hurried inside.

  “Oh my goodness!” I heard Mom cry.

  I pounded up the stairs.

  They were in my room. There was a hole in the ceiling. On the floor beneath the hole was an upturned bucket and a mound of plaster. A great plume of dust was hanging in the room.

  “Ohhh, dear,” said a voice from the landing. Dennis put a reassuring hand on Mom’s shoulder. “It’s a mess, I know, but it can be fixed.”

  Josie turned away, shaking in horror. “Whose head is that bucket for now?” she hissed, and waltzed off to her room.

  Mom rarely got flustered, but she was in a state now. “Right,” she said, “we’re going to need bags and … and towels to dry the carpet. And the curtains will have to come down. Oh my goodness, this dust is everywhere. I’ll have to call … I think the insurance documents are in …”

  “Can I make a suggestion?” Dennis said calmly.

  Mom put her fingers to her temples. “Please do.”

  He stepped into the bedroom and looked at the hole. “Before you do anything else, we need to tidy that up to make sure no more plaster comes down.” He picked up a piece that had landed on the floor. “This stuff’s heavy. It’ll give you a nasty headache if it drops. You’ll need proper contractor bags for the mess.” He dipped into his pocket for a set of keys and threw them to me. “Blue b
ags. Back of the van. Bring them all. Do you have a pair of stepladders?”

  “I’ll get them.” I put the broken shingle just inside my room.

  Mom shook her head. “You’re getting the bags.”

  “I can get the ladders on the way back. They’re only in —”

  “Michael, just —” She broke off, squeezing her fingers into fists of frustration. She would never have blamed me directly for what had happened, but this was hard for her all the same. She loved this house. I could see she was already thinking ahead, wondering how we would cope with my bedroom out of action. The greater cleanup. The carpeting. The redecoration.

  Once again, Dennis came to my rescue. “Got an old sweater and jeans, Michael?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “No,” said Mom, realizing where this was going.

  Dennis stuffed his hands into his pockets. “His bucket, right?”

  Mom took a breath.

  Dennis said to me, “What do you normally do while your mom’s making dinner?”

  I shrugged. “Homework?”

  “In here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, tonight you’ll learn something about the building trade. In the van, you’ll find some big dust sheets. Bring one of those as well.”

  Mom folded her arms. “Look, this is very good of you, Mr. Handiman —”

  “Dennis,” he said.

  “But … we’re taking up your time. And we need to discuss … a price for the work.”

  He looked at me again. “Cup of tea was mentioned, wasn’t it?”

  I smiled. I didn’t drink much tea.

  “I meant for replacing the shingle,” Mom said.

  He raised a hand. “It took two minutes. Look, we can sort out money after I’ve secured this hole. Then you can decide how you want to proceed.”

  He sent me away with his eyes.

  When I returned, with bags and sheet and stepladders in tow, Dennis had worked some kind of magic on Mom. She had gone downstairs but left some old clothes on the floor outside the bedroom. By the time I’d changed out of my uniform, Dennis had bagged up the biggest bits of plaster and was arranging the stepladders under the hole. “Spread the sheet out on the landing,” he said. “Two important rules of the trade: Try not to make the mess worse, and always clean up after yourself.”

  I spread the sheet and came back in.

  He was already at the top of the ladders. “I’m going to break off some loose chunks. You hold a bag open and I’ll drop them in, okay?”

  “Okay.” I grabbed a bag.

  “We need to get back to sound plaster. It’s an old ceiling, but it’s not in bad shape. Once these loose bits are off, it should hold. The water will have weakened it. If you ever need to catch a leak up there again, put a board across the joists and the bucket on the board, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed.

  He snapped off a piece of plaster. “Stuff happens, Michael. Don’t beat yourself up.” He dropped the chunk into the bag. “So, dragons. You keen on them?”

  “Kind of, yeah.” My gaze flashed to the bed. In all the fuss, I’d forgotten about the folder. I’d left it out because Mom had already seen it and Josie wouldn’t come into my room for any reason. But I didn’t want an outsider to open it. Right now, it was covered in plaster dust. Untouched.

  “My girl loves dragons,” he said, dropping another chunk.

  My arms sagged. He was right, the plaster was heavy. “You’ve got a kid?”

  “Melody. Bright as a button. Crazy about unicorns and dragons. What’s the story you’re writing?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Again, I flashed a glance at the file. Was he probing or just making conversation? The mention of unicorns was particularly unsettling. If there was one thing Agent Mulrooney had taught me, it was always to be on my guard.

  “Melody’s favorite bedtime story is about a dragon that drops its scales in the autumn —”

  Thud. The next piece of plaster hit the bedroom floor.

  “A bit like that. I thought you were under it.”

  “Sorry. It’s just … Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure.” He broke off a smaller piece of ceiling, making sure it went into the bag. “What time does your dad get home?”

  “All right, who are you?” I put the contractor bag down.

  “What?” The hat flaps hugged his puzzled expression.

  “Who sent you?”

  He looked away for a moment. “I’m a roofer, Michael. I work for myself.” He came down the ladder for an empty bag. “Look, I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset you, but I can manage this on my own. Go and see your mom. Tell her I’ll be another few minutes. Then I’m out of your hair, okay?”

  I looked into his eyes and saw flecks of gold. He was telling the truth, and now I’d made myself look totally stupid. “I’m sorry. It’s just … my dad doesn’t live with us anymore. He liked dragons. Sensitive subject.” I picked up the paper chain looped around my bedpost. Thankfully, it hadn’t been damaged.

  He glanced at it and said, “Well, that’s cleared the air — in a manner of speaking.” He waved some plaster dust away from his face. “Shall we finish the job?”

  “Okay.”

  He handed me the empty bag. “There’s only one bit left.” He pointed to an area where the plaster was cracked.

  We took up position again and worked in silence for a few seconds. Then he said, “So, at the risk of you kicking my stepladders over, what do you think of Manchester United’s chances this weekend?”

  “Oh, I’m not a soccer fan,” I said.

  “Fair enough. Any hobbies?”

  Solving murders, visiting ghosts, talking to crows, flipping reality. Nothing too exciting. “I like riding my bike.”

  “Neat. What make have you got?”

  “Nothing special — but it’s new. I got it for my birthday.”

  “I love cycling,” he said. “Do you all go out?”

  “We used to, when …” I dropped my gaze. We used to go out when Dad was around. Even Mom had her own bike then. I hadn’t thought about that for ages.

  “Hello, what’s this?” Dennis said.

  I looked up. In his left hand, he was holding a lump of plaster, but with his right he was tugging at a piece of plastic. He pulled down a sealed polyethylene bag. There was a small brown envelope inside it. “It was underneath the insulation.”

  “Hidden?”

  “You tell me.” He shrugged and stepped down off the ladder. He took the bag from me and put it with the rest. “I’ll be downstairs, chatting with your mom.”

  “Dennis?”

  “Yes?” He didn’t turn around.

  “Don’t say anything to Mom — about this.”

  He took off his hat and dusted it down. He had black, cropped hair, the same black as his beard. Somehow, he looked taller without the hat. “I fix things in people’s houses, Michael. What I see of their lives is none of my business. You want to make your mom happy?”

  I nodded.

  He bent down and picked up a small piece of plaster. “Then do what good kids are s’posed to do: Don’t make problems for her — and tidy your room.”

  I opened the bag as soon as Dennis had gone. There was no writing on the envelope and nothing to indicate who it might be for or who had put it in the attic — though I assumed it must be Dad. In the envelope was a small DVD, half the normal diameter. The words Day 4 had been written across it in black felt pen. I wasn’t sure a disk of this size would play on my computer, but I couldn’t risk starting my machine in this dust cloud. So I retrieved the file on Dad, cleaned the mess off it, put the disk in its envelope inside the folder, and hid the folder under a batch of towels in the linen closet.

  Then I started to clean up.

  Five minutes in, I realized it was hopeless. The room needed to be stripped, and I was floundering without Mom’s guidance. So I picked up what I could of the smaller bits of plaster, bagged them, and went downstairs.

>   Josie was in the front room, watching TV. Mom and Dennis were in the kitchen, talking.

  “That’s what I’d do,” I heard Dennis say.

  “What?” I said, coming in. “What would you do?”

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, hands around a mug of tea. He looked at me a little anxiously, I thought. “False ceiling. We screw batons to your existing joists, pop on some plasterboard, and skim it. Job done.”

  “Will we need to clear the room?” Mom asked.

  He shook his head. “No, I’ll cover everything. Might have to shift some furniture around, but I’ll cope.”

  “So there’s no point in tidying, really?” I said.

  Dennis laughed. “This kid is sharp.”

  “Hmm.” Mom raised an eyebrow. “The most pressing question is, where is Michael going to sleep while all this is happening?”

  “He’s not sharing with me!” cried a voice from the front room.

  Dennis walked to the sink, washed his mug, and put it on the drainer. “Can’t help you with that one, I’m afraid. I’d better be off. I’ll see myself out. I’ll be in touch to sort out a timetable for the work.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Mom.

  She touched his arm.

  He made a calling sign with his hand, glanced at me briefly, and left.

  “Right,” said Mom, as the front door closed. “We need to retrieve some clothes from your wardrobe and any other odds and ends you need. What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You touched his arm.”

  “So?”

  “And I saw the look you gave him when he washed his mug.”

  “I appreciate politeness,” she said starchily.

  “I think he’s handsome,” Josie said, overhearing.

  Mom threw down a dish towel. “See what you’ve started?”

  I scowled and sank back against the fridge. “Where am I going to sleep?”

  “Holton Woods, if you’re not careful.”

  “Good idea, Mom. Maybe wolves will get him!”

  “Josie, shut up,” Mom said. “It will have to be the air bed in the study. Are you going to be okay with that? We can take the picture down if it bothers you.”