Ambush

  She frowned, and my hopes were dashed.

  Wane was the youngest and by far the most modern person employed by my father at the moment. She had short dark hair and was pretty in a sort of smart-artsy-girl way. She usually wore light, fitted shirts and a half smile that was both ironic and sincere. In the past, the Pillage Manor had employed a staff of hundreds of people. But as my father had become more and more withdrawn and as he had self-exiled himself to the top floor, the staff had dwindled. Millie and Thomas had let almost everyone go. They had also sold a lot of the furniture and artwork to pay the taxes and keep the manor afloat. It wasn’t until my father had been temporarily shaken from his madness that Millie and Thomas had been told that there was plenty of money hidden away in the Pillage family—enough to help repair the town after the attack, repair the damage I had done to the garage, and now pay for three school buses.

  “This is uncomfortable for all of us,” Wane said.

  “Can I explain?” I pleaded.

  They all nodded, and I told them everything about the past few days and how I had managed to end up in the lake with the buses. I used my best expressions and widest eyes. I tried to look contrite and humble, but I could tell by the way Wane was shaking her head that she wasn’t completely buying it. I tried to really blame it on the mushrooms and work up some tears for a strong finale, but I just couldn’t get my tear ducts to cooperate—I just wasn’t a crier. The best I could conjure up was a couple of weak sniffles.

  After I had said my piece, I hung my head and waited for them to swarm in around me. I figured they would wrap their arms around me and tell me how they had misjudged me and then beg me to forgive them for being so cruel. No one swarmed in. Thomas did speak, and his sympathy sounded like this: “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  I looked up.

  “Do you?” Thomas asked quietly. His deep, still voice seemed to make my bones vibrate as a wave of sticky guilt shivered up and down my body.

  “I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “I can’t help it.”

  “That’s what we’re afraid of,” Thomas said dejectedly. “You’re a Pillage and perhaps there’s simply something in you that has a need for chaos.”

  “So it’s the fault of my innards?” I asked.

  “It seems as if the whole of you is born to act out,” Scott spoke up. “You find trouble everywhere—like in the gardens, the conservatory, the basement, in society. You are a boy who needs less stimulation.”

  “I live with old people in an old manor in the mountains above an old town,” I argued back. “I have no cell phone, no real TV, no Xbox, nothing stimulating at all.”

  “Still,” Thomas said.

  “Yeah,” I said back, “still is all there is here. Endless stillness—it makes me miss the dragons.”

  Millie gasped.

  “We need no talk of that,” Thomas insisted. “Your family has carried that weight and burden for far too long. Let’s not drag out old corpses just to get a look at them.”

  I had no idea what Thomas was saying. But I was tired, and tired of being talked at.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said contritely.

  “Good,” Millie said, followed by a deep sniff.

  “You’ll be required to stay in the manor unless escorted by one of us,” Wane said.

  “What?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “You are confined to the manor,” Thomas explained. “You will be driven to school by me, picked up by me, and will abide in the manor unless one of us is with you.”

  “That’s insane,” I argued. “I can’t . . .”

  “You will,” Scott chimed in. “We took you in and . . .”

  “You took me in?” I interrupted. Something in the way Scott had spoken set me off. I mean, if Millie had said it I would have been all okay, but Scott had no right. He worked in the stables and hardly had anything to do with me. He was short in stature and wits, and his chin was covered with a wiry black beard. Scott had been the one who caught me trespassing in the back gardens at first. He was an expert at yelling at me whenever he felt I was doing things that I shouldn’t be doing around the manor, so we didn’t hang out much. On a couple of occasions I had taken the time to help him weed some of the gardens and trim a couple of trees, but we had no deep relationship. Now he was acting like he was some trusted relative who had sacrificed all the love, money, and time he had to raise me.

  “You didn’t take me in,” I shouted. “My dad pays you.”

  “Beck,” Wane warned.

  “What?” I snapped back. “In case you’ve forgotten, I was tricked into coming here. Remember? You sent for me.”

  “Don’t let the child in you speak up,” Millie tried to calm.

  “This is crazy,” I continued. “This was all an accident. Does my dad know what you’re doing?”

  “It is your father who has issued the decree,” Thomas said sternly. “He will have you confined to the house and to the lower three floors until he returns from the hospital or feels you’ve earned a longer leash.”

  “Like a dog?” I said feeling the red in my neck rise to my face and color my whole head. “Chained up?”

  “Beck,” Millie said kindly, throwing out the first soft word in the conversation. “This is for your own good.”

  “Really?” I questioned, looking slowly at all of them. “I’m old enough to know that what you’re really saying is that this is for your own good. Keep me locked up and your lives will be easier. Well, you can’t . . .”

  “Stop it, Beck,” Millie interrupted, sounding like the mother of all mothers.

  “I just think . . .”

  “There’s no debate,” Thomas insisted.

  I had had enough. I grabbed the little bit of food Millie had offered me and stormed off to my room. I had a lot to think about, and I wanted to do it somewhere where nobody but me could interrupt.

  Chapter 10

  There’s a Place

  By the way, just so you know, adults continually baffle me. I had changed quite a bit since I had arrived here in Kingsplot. I was taller and stronger and, according to Wane, even better looking. I had also learned to occasionally consider other people’s feelings. I didn’t always need to be so concerned about myself being happy that I forgot about everyone else. I was a little more honest, a tad wiser, and definitely more likely to think before I acted. Sure, there was the recent bus thing, but if you remember, it was actually the mushrooms’ fault. I was trying to be better, but every adult I knew couldn’t see that.

  Now I was being grounded like a little kid.

  I was angry about what my father was doing to me, but I was also relieved to be back in my own room. There was no bed softer than the one I had, and I loved the huge bathroom across the hall that only I used.

  I entered my room and turned on the light. Someone had been in and made my bed since I was last here. The drapes on my window were pulled open, and a nice warm light flooded in over the chest of drawers and the upholstered chair in the corner. I looked out the window and down toward the stables. I checked the window to make sure it was locked, and then I turned and walked to my closet. I opened the door and looked around for anything that might be hiding. I didn’t see any mold in my room, but just to be sure, I got down on my hands and knees and double-checked.

  Everything was clean. I quickly changed out of the prison clothes into some cargo shorts and a slightly obnoxious purple polo shirt that Thomas had bought me on a recent trip to town.

  I pulled out the copy of The Grim Knot from the bottom dresser drawer. I had read the worn little book so many times that I about had it memorized. At first I had seen no value in the book, but now I loved the notes and words my ancestors had jotted down. I had even added a few things myself on the last pages to update what had happened with the dragons while I had been here.

  I set the book down and picked up the stuffed animal next to it. It was a stuffed koala that a reporter—a horrible person who had met an awful fate—had given me. But seeing h
ow that wasn’t the stuffed animal’s fault, I had named and kept him.

  I put Mr. Binkers back on the dresser and set the book next to him.

  There was a knock at the door. I opened it to find Wane standing there with a tray of food.

  “Millie feels bad,” Wane said. “She couldn’t let you go the rest of the day without something decent to eat.”

  I took the tray from Wane and set it on my bed.

  “Thanks,” I said begrudgingly. “It’s going to be really boring confined to the manor.”

  “Sorry, Beck,” Wane replied. “It’s for the best.”

  “Can I finally get a TV or cell phone?” I begged. “I need something.”

  “Maybe it’s time for a TV,” Wane conceded. “But let’s not say anything about it for a couple of days. Let things cool down just a bit. Read your dictionary.”

  The dictionary Wane was talking about was the copy she had given me when I moved here. She had given it to me so I could look up the meaning of her name. Since then, however, I had used it to make the things I said in my head more interesting. I had most recently looked up the word zephyr after I had heard Thomas use it.

  The food Millie had delivered was so good I forgot to feel bad. Mille had sent up half of a roasted chicken with an amazing red-colored glaze on it. There were three rolls that tasted like clouds made out of butter and some cooked carrots that were swimming in some sort of brown sugar sauce. A mug filled with milk and a piece of chocolate cake wrapped up in a paper wrapper finished the meal off.

  “Wow,” I whispered to myself, marveling at what Millie could do with food.

  I took my tray down to Millie, thanked her for being a food wizard, and then turned around and hiked back up to my room. I grabbed Mr. Binkers and lay down on my bed. I knew it was childish of me to keep the stuffed animal around, but it made my room seem less formal.

  There was another knock on my door.

  “Come in,” I hollered.

  The door opened, and a flash of red slipped in. Beneath the red were two blue eyes that I was very happy to make contact with.

  “Kate,” I said happily as I lay on my bed with Mr. Binkers.

  Kate smiled and her pink lips made the formal room appear beautiful. “I see you have your stuffed animal.”

  I tossed Mr. Binkers on the floor and stood up. “Prison’s changed me,” I joked.

  I took Kate’s hand and stood up.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I sort of missed you,” she replied. “Weird, huh?”

  “Concerning,” I admitted. “Just so you know, I’m confined to the manor.”

  “Millie told me,” Kate said. “I thought we could go up to the dome.”

  I was all for that. We both walked quickly to the stairs. We climbed up to the fourth floor, walked across the large empty hall, and took the next set of stairs to the fifth floor. We spent even less time on the fifth floor and climbed quickly up the sixth and then seventh. We reached the trapdoor that led up into the copper dome on the top of the manor. The dome was where my father spent all his time when he was in the manor. Of course he had been in the hospital for so many weeks now that we had decided to claim the dome for ourselves.

  We pushed open the trapdoor and climbed up into the dome room. There were windows all the way around the edges, making the space light and airy. In the center of the room was a tall square wall with two doors. One of the doors led to a thin hidden ladder that ran all the way down to the basement of the manor. We had found the ladder after my father had been using it to slip out of the dome and travel through tunnels to get to the cave we had raised Lizzy in.

  In the dome room there was an old worn bed, a table, and a telescope pointing out one of the windows. Three of the windows were open with the wind blowing carelessly in and out. On the floor there were thick furs and on the ceiling was a map of the world.

  “I never get sick of the view,” Kate whispered almost reverently as she looked out the windows.

  “Thanks,” I joked.

  “You sound like Wyatt,” Kate said.

  Wyatt was our friend, but he had an annoying habit of talking about girls as if every one of them loved him and was desperate to be with him.

  “No way,” I said. “Wyatt would have said, ‘you’re welcome.’”

  Kate was thinking of other things and didn’t waste any effort to reply. I turned and looked out the windows toward the back of the manor. I could see miles of overgrown gardens and trees. In the far distance the black walls of the conservatory were visible. It seemed like four lifetimes since we had first raised dragons in there. The air and mist of Kingsplot seemed to make even my mind soft.

  I kept turning and gazed out toward the mountains where the cave was where we found the train and hatched Lizzy. I could barely see the dark opening hidden among the contours and crags of the stony mountain. All around the mountains were thick forests that stretched on for hundreds of miles. I then turned the opposite direction and looked out and down into the Hagen Valley. Kingsplot was many miles down and away, but through the low clouds I could see some of Lake Mend and bits of steeples and road.

  “There might not be a better view in the whole state,” Kate said.

  “I don’t know,” I debated. “The view from the back of a dragon is pretty hard to beat.”

  “Yeah,” Kate agreed. “I’ll miss that for the rest of my life.”

  “You know that the bus thing was an accident,” I said, bringing up what we still hadn’t talked about.

  “I know,” Kate said nodding her head. “I was there, remember?”

  “Those mushrooms were disturbing,” I added. “And while I was in jail, a cactus from the museum came by and tried to turn me into a pincushion.”

  “Millie told me you destroyed a cactus.”

  “It destroyed itself while trying to kill me.”

  “What does it all mean?” Kate said seriously. “I thought this stuff was supposed to stop when you got rid of the stone.”

  Kate and I walked back down the stairs. When we were crossing the fifth floor, we could hear water running somewhere in the distance.

  “Did you leave the water on?” Kate asked.

  “No,” I answered. “I haven’t been up here for weeks.”

  “Is Thomas or Wane around?”

  “Maybe,” I said shrugging. “But they usually don’t come anywhere near the fifth floor when my father’s not in the manor. I’m not even supposed to be up here.”

  We walked quietly across the big parlor on the fifth floor. The noise seemed to be coming from down the west wing. I led Kate to the end of the hall where there were two doors. I opened the first one and it was filled with old washing machines, stoves, and a huge iron boiler. I looked around, but the noise wasn’t coming from there.

  I closed the door and we walked to the last door in the wing. Both of us leaned our heads against the white painted wood door. I could faintly hear the water running behind it.

  I reached out and knocked.

  Nobody answered.

  “Open it,” Kate whispered.

  “What if someone’s in there?” I whispered back.

  “Isn’t that what we’re trying to find out?”

  Kate reached out and turned the doorknob. It felt good letting her go ahead of me. It spoke volumes about what a believer I was in guys and girls both experiencing equal amounts of potential horror. I didn’t want her for a second to think that I thought girls were less capable of going through strange doors and getting mauled first.

  Kate opened the door slowly, and the sound of running water was loud and clear. There were no lights on in the room so I bravely stuck my hand in and flipped on the light switch. Nothing happened. Kate and I stepped in anyway.

  It was a very large bathroom with two sinks, a toilet in the corner, and a large claw-foot tub near the far wall. There was also a large lounging area with a tiny couch and a fancy end table. I suppose the lounge area was designed for whoever was
taking the bath to be able to sit and wait for their water to fill. Big, ornately framed mirrors hung on the walls, and there was a chandelier in the shape of a tree hanging from the ceiling. There was another door between two windows on the largest wall. We could clearly see that the faucet of one of the sinks was on and running. The sink basin was shallow and filled with water that was now flowing over the side of the sink onto the white tiled floor.