Amber House: Neverwas (35 page)

people perceive your situation or maybe how they see you. A

person who is surprising, exciting, consistent, and faithful.”

“The last card — the most likely future outcome of your

issue.” She flipped it. I looked at it, strangely unsurprised. A

skeleton rode a pale horse across a night landscape scattered with

bodies.

Death
.

The woman hurried to reassure me. “This is actually —”

I interrupted her, speaking in a flat voice. “— a good card

that means the end of an old way of life and the beginning of a

new way of life.”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “How did you know that?”

“I was wrong. I did have my cards told once before.”
The first

time I turned sixteen.
“Thank you,” I managed. “I have to go.”

N

The library was nearly as warm as the fortune-teller’s shop,

I supposed because the thermostat was under the control of

the elderly librarian. But I wasn’t going to stay long. I found the

alcove that housed the card catalogue. I started in the Ma-Mom

drawer, looking for “Metropolitan,” but was redirected to the

224 O

Mon-Mu drawer for “Museum, Metropolitan.” I flipped through

the cards, searching for something on the museum’s design.

Growing discomfort between my shoulder blades interrupted

me — it felt as if I were being watched. I turned, but saw no

one’s eyes on me. I went back to the cards, still uncomfortable,

grateful when I found a reference to a multivolume set on New

English architecture that promised four pages of photos of the

museum, along with a simple floor plan.

I followed the Dewey decimal number deep into the stacks,

into the silence invoked by muffling walls of books. A neon light

overhead made humming and cracking noises as it decided

whether to stay lit or become permanently burnt out. I ran my

eyes along the book spines, bending over to make out their let-

ters and numbers in the failing light.

I heard — something. And smelled some trace of vanilla,

maybe. I peered through the gaps below shelves to check other

aisles, front and back. I scanned the books faster, looking for a

matching four-book set. Finding it. Pulling out the heavy vol-

ume and starting back, darting into the main aisle where the

rustles and murmurs of other patrons reached me once again. I

felt ridiculous for my attack of nerves.

I begged paper and a pencil from the librarian, and settled at

a table. Opened the book to the Metropolitan floor plan.

Laboriously I worked to re-create its lines to offer to Jackson as

a reference. I hadn’t inherited my mother’s artistic abilities, but

the schema wasn’t too bad. It gave a general idea where the main

rooms and halls were.

That smell. Not vanilla, but something close, mixed with cit-

rus and herbs.

“You are interested in architecture, Miss Parsons?”

I jumped.
Bay rum
, The smell was bay rum and smoke. Karl

Jaeger walked around the table into my view. “May I see?”

he asked.

o225

I looked up into his blue eyes and rudely flipped my drawing

facedown. “Sorry,” I said. “Not much of an artist.”

He smiled. As usual. He leaned to see the original in the

book. I closed it. His smile widened to show teeth. All perfectly

white and even. A phrase — so familiar I could practically taste

it — got stuck to the tip of my tongue. “Evidently you don’t

think the architect was much of an artist either. Fortunately for

Mr. Hunt of the Metropolitan Museum, the rest of the world

does not agree.”

I found his interest distinctly unpleasant. As he intended, no

doubt. “My little brother doesn’t get to go to the Amber House

exhibit. He wanted to know what the museum looked like.”

“Such a solicitous older sister,” he said, tipping his head. He

looked a little puzzled. “It was strange. When I met you in

Amber House, you seemed almost to have an aura around you, a

strong vibrational energy. I have been trained,” he said, “to

observe people closely.”

Trained to observe?
“What’s your job?”

He smilingly wagged his finger at me, as though I was making

an improper suggestion. “Attaché,” he said. “Embassy staff. It is

even printed on my cards.”

I hated him.

“At any rate, now I can see in the bright daylight of this

fine Confederate library, you are a very ordinary girl after all.

Aren’t you?”

I stood, picked up my book and paper, coat, and bag, and

shoved my chair back in place. I looked him in the eyes. “A
very
ordinary girl,” I said, adding as I walked away, “who doesn’t like

Nazis.”

I marched swiftly toward the main entrance, his laughter

echoing after me.

N

226 O

Out on the street, I wanted to be —
home
. I felt, suddenly, exposed and alone. The thought swam forward:
What was he

doing here?
Then another thought, wilder and more suspicious than the first:
Is he following me?

After the heat of the library, the cold had more bite. I quick-

ened my steps, to warm myself and to shake the feeling I was

being pursued. I was nearly jogging when I reached the park at

the edge of town. I made myself slow as I wound through the

naked trees, taking care not to stray from the path that ended

just across the road from Amber House.

A black Mercedes idled on the road’s shoulder in front of the

estate.

I jogged across the road, well east of the car, heading for the

small gate, but Jaeger stepped out of the trees, much closer than

his car. I stopped in my tracks, standing in the center of the road

like a startled deer.

He said nothing. He was a silent presence, tall and wide,

wrapped in a heavy black coat trimmed in silver. My scarf dan-

gled from the hand he held out toward me. His other hand was

hidden in his coat pocket.

He spoke finally. “I found it left behind, beneath your chair.”

I took two small steps forward, but could not make myself go

farther.

“How interesting,” Jaeger said. “Here in the shadows of

Amber House, I can see my first impression of you was the cor-

rect one. There is something quite special about you after all.

Your energetic emanations are quite vivid.” He cocked his head.

“But perhaps, I just see more clearly here. What do you think,

Ms. Parsons?”

All the while he held my scarf out, daring me to come closer.

But I didn’t budge.

“Did you know,” he continued, “that I made an offer in gold to

your mother for the property? She was insulted.” He smiled.

o227

“But she should have taken the offer, because sooner or later I

will have that house, and my price will only go down from here.”

He was still smiling as he started toward me, his footsteps

falling swiftly and silently on the frozen ground. And the phrase

I could not bring to mind in the library finally surfaced. I

thought, suddenly, wildly:
What big teeth you have.

The sound of a gun cocking made him stop short.

A voice spoke from my right. “My dad was in London when

the Nazis reduced it to rubble.”
Jackson
. “I don’t like Nazis very much.” I saw him, then, partially hidden behind a rock, with a

shotgun aimed squarely at Jaeger’s broad back. I could have

wept, I was so glad he was there.

Jaeger had turned at the sound. “If you know what’s good for

you, you will go now. What happened to your grandfather might

turn into a family tradition.”

“I’ve heard,” Jackson said coldly, “a shotgun blast leaves a

pretty big hole in a man. Shall we conduct a little experiment?”

Jaeger dropped my scarf in the road, walked stiffly to his car,

and opened the door. “Jackson Harris, is it not? I wish to get the

name correct in my report.”

“Two
R
s,” Jackson called to him.

“We will meet again,” the Nazi said, smiling before he disap-

peared behind the dark glass of the car.

Jackson trained the gun on the car’s windows as it pulled

away. It roared to the crest of the hill, then the hum of its

engine faded. He sagged down against the rock he’d been using

as a shield. I ran through the gate to kneel beside him. “You all

right?”

He gave a weary chuckle. “Surprising how exhausting it is

keeping the damn thing pointed at someone. It’s a big chunk of

metal.”

“That was incredible. You were incredible,” I said. “Where’d

you get that gun?”

228 O

“The barn. Was your grandfather’s.” I helped him to his feet.

He broke open the barrel and showed me. “It’s not even loaded.”

I just shook my head. “I believed you.”

He smiled. “Good thing
he
believed me.”

“What in the hell was he trying to do?” I said.

“He was trying —” Jackson started, then stopped. He put an

arm around my shoulder and started us walking back toward the

house. I thought to myself that the arm was partly support for

him, but partly support for me too. “I don’t want to scare you,

Sare. But he wanted to make you disappear. Whatever kind of

sense he has that makes him good at what he does, Amber House

makes it a whole lot stronger. When he looked at you, he saw a

threat to his Thousand-Year Reich. And he was right to see it.

Because you’re going to make
them
disappear.”

A mind-blowing thought.
Poof. No more Reich. Could it be

that easy?

“I still have no idea how we’re going to pull that off.” I stopped

walking and pulled my sketches of the museum out of my pocket

and unfolded them. “I had some thought these might help, but

they’re pretty pathetic.”

Jackson pulled a similar wad of paper from his pocket and

handed it to me. “We’ll match yours against mine and see how it

all stacks up.”

I opened his. Page after page of notes, some with times jotted

in the margins. Flecked with — “Blood,” I said. “You’ve been

forcing visions? No wonder you can’t stand up.”

“We need to know what to do.” He shrugged. He took the

pages back. “I’m not done yet.”

“Jackson —” I started. He tried to silence me with a look. I

wouldn’t be stopped. “
If
you need to do this again, I want to be there with you to try to help.”

He started to shake his head, but then said, “Fine. Maybe it

will help.”

o229

“
After
my parents leave,” I said.

“Sure.”

“Anything else we need to handle?”

“I need to get a train ticket to New York.”

“I’ll drive you into town — you’re not walking. You don’t

look like you’d make it.”

“Will I make it with you behind the wheel?” he teased.

We’d reached the house. My mom stuck her head out the

front door. “I’ve been looking for you, honey. Where did you

vanish to? I need your help. Come on in as quick as you can.” She

started to duck back inside but turned back to speak to Jackson.

“Is Rose getting over that bug?”

“Yes, Mrs. Parsons. She told me to thank you for the soup.”

“My pleasure. I know it wasn’t as good as she could make.”

“She enjoyed it very much. It was really nice of you.”

“No problem. You tell her we miss her, all right?”

“Sure will, Mrs. Parsons.”

I watched my mother disappear, then turned back to

Jackson. “Bug?”

He shook his head a little. “She didn’t want them to know. She

didn’t want your mother fussing over her. Don’t tell her or your

father, Or Maggie or Sammy either.”

“She’s going to need help, J.”

“No, she’s not.” He stopped me when I started to answer:

“Come Saturday, we going to fix time, and then she won’t need

any help.”

He sounded so confident. “Did you see us do it? Succeed?”

He thought about his answer. He looked into my eyes. “You

know I wouldn’t, couldn’t, lie to you, Sarah. I’ve seen it go a lot

of different ways. There are a lot of things that can go wrong.

But — I
have
seen us succeed. We just can’t quit. Neither of us.

We have to see it through to the very end.”

Like his father
, I thought.
Clear the nest.

230 O

We agreed to meet again at five o’clock, near the front gate,

to go buy Jackson that ticket to New York.

It was really happening. We were going to break into the

Metropolitan Museum to steal a two-thousand-year-old coin so

we could — what?

Save the world.

CH A P T ER TW E N T Y-FOU R

K

At 4:57 p.m., I slipped out the front door, quietly lifting the car

keys from the tray on the table as I went.

Not quietly enough.

“Hey, hey,” my mom called after me. “Where are you going

with those?”

“I asked Dad,” I said, closing the door before she could squeeze

off another question.

Jackson was waiting just out of sight at the driveway entrance.

I pulled over and he climbed in.

“You didn’t tell me what you saw,” I said as we drove off. “All

those notes.”

“I want to get it all worked out first.”

“They looked pretty detailed.”

“I’ve got pieces of it — I’ve got
most
of it. We’ll have to memorize it all, right down to the minute. I’m going to be responsible