House of Secrets (12 page)

“This is preposterous,” said Will. “Who ever heard of being trapped in a book?”

Instead of answering, Cordelia handed Will another book.

“
The Fighting Ace
,” said Will. “What’s your point?”

“Open it and read. Out loud.”

Will started with page 1: “‘He was destined to end up as rugged as they come, but as he walked across Farnborough Airfield on April 22, 1916, Officer Cadet Will Draper was nothing more than a boy who wanted to fly.’ Now hold on a minute! What’s the meaning of this?”

“Uh,
you
?” Cordelia said.

Will continued to read. “‘Before he boarded the plane, Officer Cadet Draper removed a silver flask from his pocket. He took a long drink, then glanced at the engraved inscription,
Per Ardua ad Astra
, and thought of the day his brother Edgar gave it to him. . . .’”

While Will read, his voice got smaller, and then he dropped the book as if it had burned him. Brendan looked at Will’s empty flask next to him.
Per Ardua ad Astra
.

“What does it mean?”

“Royal Flying Corps motto,” said a trembling Will.
“‘Through Struggles
to the Stars
.
’”

“Big deal. I’ll bet everybody in the Flying Corps has one of those.”

“But does everybody in the Flying Corps have a brother named Edgar?” asked Cordelia softly.

Will gave a stunned shake of his head—and then became animated, angry, as if realizing that a grave injustice had been done to him. “Miss Walker, what have you gotten me mixed up in?”

“It wasn’t us—we were minding our business—but the Wind Witch—”

“You dragged me into this mess! I was on a mission, trying to turn the tide at Picardy, and all of a sudden I’ve abandoned my commanding officers and come to read about myself in some elaborate game played by American children?!
It’s not right!
”

Children?
Cordelia thought.
I’m almost as old as he is! And probably a lot smarter.
Brendan put a hand on the pilot’s back to calm him down. Will took a deep breath to continue yelling—and coughed. Blood sprayed across the kitchen table.

“Oh my God—” Eleanor said.

Will’s eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed into the pillows behind him. Cordelia gulped and stared at his shoulder.

“Nell, take those pillows away. Bren, get the kitchen scissors, a candle, and some matches. We’re operating on him.
Now.
”

T
he only candles Brendan could find were a bunch of scented ones, so the kitchen filled with the aroma of Truffle White Cocoa as the Walkers prepared to do home surgery on Will. The smell tickled Brendan’s nose as he dipped the kitchen scissors in the spilled whiskey from Will’s flask. They had to sterilize the blades.

Cordelia knew she had one chance to get the arrow out of Will’s shoulder. It was strange; before he’d collapsed, she’d had a million different thoughts in her head:
Where did he come from?
Could he help us find our parents?
Now she had only one:
What’s the quickest way to get that arrow out?

Or,
she corrected,
what’s the safest way?
Because the first rule of being a doctor was “do no harm,” and there were plenty of ways to harm a person when you started digging into them with kitchen scissors. Like germs. Brendan handed Cordelia the dried-off scissors and she heated the blades in the candle flame. She wondered if “do no harm” had been invented to keep doctors from feeling guilty.

“How can I help?” Eleanor asked.

“Go upstairs and get Mom’s sewing kit,” Cordelia answered.

“Seriously?” said Brendan.

“And some Tylenol. Or ibuprofen. Any headache stuff you can find in the medicine cabinet. He’s going to need it.”

“I’m not allowed in the medicine cabinet.”

“You are now.”

“But I don’t want to miss what you’re doing!”

“Yeah, you do. Trust me.”

Eleanor went up the spiral stairs with her sister’s serious tone echoing in her head. Maybe it
was
better to be the youngest.

Cordelia inched the scissors, slightly open, toward Will’s wound, then hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?” Brendan asked.

“Shh!
I’m trying to pretend Dad is here, guiding me!”

“That’s just gonna make you feel pressure—”

But Cordelia had already tuned him out, remembering what her father had told her: Hands were tools. The body was a machine. Sometimes you had to get in and fix it like you had to fix a dishwasher.
Just dig in. One quick tug, like a Band-Aid, and it’ll be over.

On television Cordelia knew dramatic music would be playing while she did this. In real life the house stayed horribly quiet. She heard the crackle of the burning candlewick. She heard her breath. As the hot scissor blades approached Will’s skin, she heard the tiny hiss of hairs curling back on themselves . . . and smelled them. Truffle White Cocoa was no match for Eau du Singed Hair. Cordelia lost her nerve and pulled back.

“Maybe you should think of it like a video game,” Brendan suggested.

“Like a game where you
operate
on people?”

“Yeah, pretend they just came out with this high-tech version of Operation. Just imagine getting points if you pull the arrow out right.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Duh. Game over.”

Cordelia cleared her head and decided to try. Advancing on Will a second time, she pictured a counter above his shoulder starting at 0 points. With every inch she brought her hand closer, it ticked up: 10 points, 20, 30 . . . She pressed the tips of the scissors into Will’s flesh: 40, 50. . . . The singed hair didn’t bother her, nor did the sizzle of skin, because—60, 70—
she was doing it.
She dug in, gritting her teeth, going for the arrowhead. Will’s body twitched, but he stayed unconscious.

“Awesome, you’ve almost got it!”

Upstairs, Eleanor jumped off the bathroom sink with a bottle of Aleve and entered the master bedroom to grab her mother’s sewing kit. She wondered what color Cordelia would want to sew Will shut with.
Black will make him look like a scarecrow. Maybe pink.
She took the kit, which was in a wicker basket, and headed out, moving too quickly to notice the
RW
trunk in the middle of the room.

Downstairs, Cordelia felt the tips of the scissors hit the arrowhead: 80 points. . . . She pinched and pulled straight up: 90. . . . The blood-soaked shaft inched out of Will’s body. . . .

“Almost!” Brendan said, and then Eleanor shrieked upstairs. Cordelia flinched—“Nell?”—and jerked the arrow up too fast.

It came out, but so did blood, like a fountain.

Brendan bolted for the spiral staircase—he didn’t know what had happened to Eleanor, but Kristoff House had given them lots to fear. Cordelia dropped the scissors and scrambled for a dish towel. She figured she must have hit an artery, because blood was pulsing out of Will with the rhythm of a heartbeat. It slid into his armpits, down his sides . . . Cordelia was suddenly filled with guilt and regret. How could she have been so stupid? How could she possibly have thought she was smart enough to pull this off? Now she was going to have a dead guy on her hands, and a cute one at that. Maybe the first rule of being a doctor should be “don’t try.”

“Bren! Get back here!”
Cordelia screamed. The blood spread beneath the excised arrow on the floor. She held the dish towel to Will’s shoulder. Brendan and Eleanor barreled in.

“Sorry, I bashed into that stupid trunk upstairs!” said Eleanor, before turning away in shock. “Oh no! What happened?”

“He’s dying!” Cordelia said, pressing on the reddening towel. Will twitched. “And waking up!”

“He can’t be doing both.” Brendan tossed the sewing kit on the table next to Will. He wiped the dish towel over the wound and threw it down. “We’ve just got to stop the blood.”

Will moaned as Brendan showed Cordelia the wound. “Look how small it really is.” With the blood wiped away, the tear was smaller than a quarter, but the problem was that the blood kept coming back.

“Tie it off!” Cordelia opened the sewing kit and began to thread a needle, but her hands were shaking too badly. All she had to do was get the tiny tip through the hole, but she couldn’t stop trembling. She made herself stop. She had done this before. She could do it now.

Brendan ransacked the sewing kit for something to tie off the wound. He found a spool of yarn and bit a length off with his teeth, then looped it around Will’s shoulder. As he did, he got a sudden flash of the veins and arteries in the Wind Witch’s face during the attack.
She’s behind this,
he thought,
and we have no idea why.
It was easier, in a twisted way, to focus on the looming evil that hung over them than on the situation at hand.

Brendan drew the yarn so tight—
thwip!—
that he thought it would break. Instantly the blood flow lessened.

Cordelia finally threaded the needle, knotted it, and moved toward Will’s shoulder.

“Here!” Eleanor yelled, pouring a tray of melted ice cubes over the wound to douse it clean.

Cordelia jabbed the needle in. No turning back now. She pulled Will’s skin together—
one stitch, two, three, four—
and then knotted the end of the thread (it was pink, the color Eleanor had hoped for) and stepped back.

It was done. The stitches held. The wound was closed. But Eleanor had an idea for one more thing that might be helpful.

She dumped candle wax all over it.

“Nell!” Cordelia exclaimed. The wax hit Will’s skin and quickly cooled into a hard white shell.

“Isn’t that good?” Eleanor rapped her knuckles against it. “Like a big scab.”

“I guess it can’t hurt,” said Brendan.

“And it smells nice,” Eleanor said. Will moaned beneath them.

“Is he dead?” Eleanor asked.

“Yeah, maybe the candle finished him off,” said Brendan.

“Shut up; he’s breathing,” said Cordelia.

“Well he
should
be dead.” Brendan grabbed a roll of paper towels. “I don’t even know how we did that. Good job, guys.” He started to wipe up the blood. It didn’t look red on the floor; it looked black. In all the excitement the sun had gone down, and the Walkers found themselves facing one another in a kitchen full of moonlight.

“Here’s medicine, Deal.” Eleanor handed her sister the Aleve.

“I hope that’s extra strength,” chuckled Brendan.

Cordelia put the bottle next to Will’s head. “We’ll give it to him when he wakes up. We have to keep an eye on him tonight. If we move him, we risk reopening the wound.”

“I’m not staying down here,” Brendan said. “If anyone or anything comes through the front door, I want to be upstairs.”

“Yeah, can’t we just go up and go to sleep? I’m so
tired
,” Eleanor declared, and it was like casting a spell; they all suddenly realized how tired they were. “Let’s wake him up and carry him. Then we can sleep in Mom and Dad’s big bed.”

“I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you two,” said Brendan, “but we should move him. Will! Wake up!”

“That’s not going to work! It’s too bad we don’t have smelling salts,” Cordelia said.

“Wait, doesn’t he have a gun?” asked Brendan.

“He keeps it on his left side,” Cordelia said. Brendan reached for the gun—

“
Bren!
Are you crazy? What are you doing?”

“I was going to fire some shots to wake him up.”

“You can’t just use a gun!”

“Why not?”

“Listen.” Cordelia stared at her brother intensely. “Just because we’ve been magically sent inside a book doesn’t mean you can ignore common sense. You have no idea how to use a gun. If you tried, you’d probably get us all killed.”

“Hey, guess what? If I had a gun, maybe none of this would’ve happened in the first place! Maybe I could’ve shot the Wind Witch before she sent us here! Did that ever occur to you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m the oldest. I’m in charge. No gun.”

Brendan paused, letting his anger build. “Who needs you anyway?
Any
of you! I was doing just fine by myself! I could have been at my friend Drew’s house and missed the whole thing! It’s not like you’d miss me! You don’t ever care about me—and I don’t care about
you
!”

Before Cordelia and Eleanor could respond, Will moaned on the table and opened his eyes. “What’s going on? What is that woman screaming about?”