House of Secrets (36 page)

“He’s not a
captain
!” Cordelia screamed, grabbing the bars. She held them so tight that Will thought her bones were going to pop through her knuckles. “He’s not
anything
! He’s just a pilot from a pulp fantasy novel. And you know what? He’s not even a good pilot!”

Tranquebar turned to Will. “What does that mean?”

“She means . . . uh . . . that I used to pilot a different sort of craft, and that I learned my skills from a book,” Will said quickly. “Come now, enough of this nonsense. Let’s leave this mad girl alone.”

Tranquebar nodded, and they headed down the hall. Will looked back at Cordelia, trying to give her a glance that said
I’m sorry
, but she glared at him with such fury that he flinched.

“She seems quite insane,” said Tranquebar. “I’m glad you made the decision to lock her up. And what about the book?”

“It’s still in the quarters, and that’s where it’s staying,” said Will. “I won’t tell her brother and sister about it. That whole family is a little crazy about that book.”

“I must ask,” Tranquebar said, “what did she mean about you being ‘fictional’?”

“She . . . ah . . . she didn’t say ‘fictional’; she said ‘frictional.’ As in I cause a lot of friction. Because . . . uh . . . well, the girl has become rather obsessed with me.”

“Really?”
asked Tranquebar.

“Yes,” said Will. “It’s embarrassing. She has this massive schoolgirl crush. Anyway. As captain of this vessel I have more pressing matters to discuss. For example, where is this ship headed?”

Tranquebar smirked. “I forget that you yourself are so young and naive, Cap’n. It’s almost as if you haven’t spent much time in the real world.” He paused. “The
Moray
is bound for the port of Tinz, to meet with Captain Sangray’s trading partners. These are very shrewd men who have traveled months across many continents for the sole purpose of meeting Captain Sangray. It’s a straightforward transaction. They want to trade gold for our spices and cocoa leaves—and who knows, maybe they’ll be interested in purchasing a house that can bring skeletons back to life. There’s no telling what
that
might command on the black market.”

“When do we meet these traders?” Will asked.

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“And then?”

“Then you’re free to do what you like! Maybe a shore leave? I know of this tropical isle occupied by only women: stunning, beautiful goddesses who wear nothing but the shells of—”

“Perhaps, Tranquebar. But for now my wish is to retire to my chambers and have a peaceful night’s sleep.”

“Of course,” Tranquebar said. They had reached Captain Sangray’s chambers. “But . . . here? You can’t sleep
here
, Captain.”

“Why not?”

“The whole place is destroyed!” Tranquebar gestured to the room. “The stained glass must be repaired; the tar must be cleaned out; the torture paraphernalia must be removed. And that nasty book is here. I have a much better room prepared for you.”

“But I
want
to sleep here,” Will said, looking at
The Book of Doom and Desire
. There it was! On the floor! Just waiting for him!

“Captain. In these early days of your command, the men of the ship will be looking to see if you can take the counsel of your first mate. If not, they may become suspicious that you’re too headstrong. Too ruled by emotion. Too proud to lead.”

Tranquebar closed the door to Captain Sangray’s quarters and locked it with one of his many keys. As he led Will farther down the hall, Will wondered who
really
had the power on the
Moray
.

Meanwhile, Cordelia was searching for some sort of structural weakness in her jail cell. It wasn’t looking good. Under the hay was a simple wooden floor with no trapdoors. A nasty smell emanated from one corner, where the wood was discolored and warped. The window wouldn’t work, because there
was
no window. And when Cordelia went searching for a key amid the hay, she found only one disturbing item . . . a severed pig’s snout.

It’s not even humane to keep a pig in here!
Cordelia thought. As half her brain tried to plot an escape, the other half started thinking about all the ways she could get back at Will—and her siblings. How could Bren and Nell not have noticed she was missing? They were probably eating and playing dice and toasting their new captain up on deck. If Cordelia got hold of them, the first thing she would do was lock them
and
Will in this cell. Then she’d forbid them to talk to one another. Then she’d—

She thought she spotted a weakness. The cell’s heavy lock was close enough to the bars for Cordelia to sneak her fingers past them and get her nails into the keyhole. She tried to pick the lock (without having any idea how) and managed to get her fingernail deep inside . . . but then she moved too quickly.
CRACCCKKK!—
she snapped off her fingernail against the metal mechanism.

“Aaaagh!”
Cordelia inspected her hand. It was a bad break—not only was her fingernail reduced to a jagged stump, but her fingertip was bleeding. The pain reduced her to a child.
“Please! Help! Somebody! Anybody!”

No one answered. In frustration, she threw her cell phone against the wall.
Nobody in my address book is going to help me.
The phone bounced and landed in straw. And then she remembered one person who could help.

One person with real magic.

“Dahlia!” she called.
“Wind Witch!
I’m lost, and I need your guidance! Please, please,
please
, come and get me out of here, and I’ll bring you to
The Book of Doom and Desire
, I promise!”

Cordelia was hardly finished when she heard a rustling sound. The hay on the floor began to rise and pirouette in the air, along with her cell phone. The straw swirled faster and faster, turning into a mini hay storm, whirling like an egg-shaped cocoon. . . .

And the Wind Witch appeared in front of Cordelia, exploding the hay across the chamber. She was unmistakable—bald head, fierce blue eyes, purple robe—but something was different about her this time. At first Cordelia couldn’t figure it out. Then she saw.

The Wind Witch had a big smile on her face.

“C
ordelia, my dear,” the Wind Witch said, eyeing the scroungy surroundings, “this doesn’t seem like the proper room for someone of your stature.”

Cordelia didn’t realize it, but she was on her knees, her head bowed low. She had sunk in terror when the hay had come to life . . . and now that the Wind Witch was in front of her, she felt it was appropriate to stay on the floor.

“I agree,” said Cordelia, “but I had no choice in the matter. Will locked me in here.”

“Well, it’s obvious what he thinks of you as,” said the Wind Witch. “A pig to be kept in a pen.”

Hearing those words aloud made Cordelia wonder if Will could be that cruel. She rose to his defense. “Will’s not a truly bad person. He just doesn’t understand—”

“He understands perfectly well! The world has always been difficult for women like us, Cordelia. Do you think that’s by chance?”

“Well, I never really—”

“Of course not. We’re a threat. And all men know it. Originally, they were better at hunting, so we let them take charge. We needed their strong arms to operate bows and arrows. We needed their fast legs to chase wild animals. But times have changed—in my lifetime and yours. Hunting has become a routine trip to the supermarket. Defending the home has become something we can do ourselves. We don’t need men anymore, and they know it. So they’ll do anything—lies, tricks,
murder
—to see that we don’t rise up against them.”

“We?”
Cordelia asked.

“People like you and me,” said the Wind Witch. “The world’s brilliant women.”

Cordelia smiled. It had been a long time since anyone had called her brilliant. Her father was so stressed out about not having a job—and before that, about the job that he
had
—that he hardly found time to praise her. Her mother said she was smart . . . but that was what mothers were
supposed
to say. Her teachers at school took notice, but there was nothing worse than having a teacher give you a compliment. A teacher’s compliment only meant something if you were in college and your teacher had a PhD.

“And as brilliant women,” said the Wind Witch, “we have a right to use this powerful book.”

“When did you first learn of it?” asked Cordelia.

The Wind Witch sighed. “Do you really want to hear the story? It won’t bore you, coming from an old woman like me?”

“Of course not,” said Cordelia. “Please, tell me.”

“I was eight years old,” said the Wind Witch. “I snuck out of bed one evening, followed my father, and watched him use the book. As you can imagine, I was enthralled by what he was able to conjure . . . but he was upset that I had found him. He screamed at me. I started to cry. To calm me down, he did something with the book—and a new stuffed animal appeared for me. I understood that, somehow,
the book made wishes real
. First it was the stuffed animal . . . then a dollhouse . . . chocolate . . . it was a young girl’s dream. But he made me promise
never
to open the book myself. It was a promise I kept for a few years. Until I was thirteen.”

“What happened?” asked Cordelia.

“I started to have issues with some classmates at school,” continued the Wind Witch. “There was one girl, Charlotte LeVernais, who was particularly cruel. She made fun of the way I spoke, the way I dressed.”

“You were bullied?”

“That’s what they call it now,” said the Wind Witch. “Back then it was just called being young. It got so bad, so hurtful . . . that the only thing I could think to do was sneak into my father’s hidden chamber and use the book to grant a wish. To make Charlotte stop.”

“I can understand that,” said Cordelia. “I’d probably wish for something like that too, if some awful kid was messing with me, and I was only thirteen—”

“I wished for Charlotte to lose her voice,” explained the Wind Witch. “For her vocal cords to evaporate, so she would never speak again, never hurt another person for the rest of her life.”

“Wow,” said Cordelia. “That’s a bit extreme.”

“But it worked,” said the Wind Witch. “And as a result, I started using the book for more wishes. I wished for popularity. I wished for the most handsome boyfriends. I was suddenly happy. It could have lasted forever, if not for my father’s interference.”

Cordelia just stared at her, waiting for her to go on.

“He was weak,” said the Wind Witch. “Worried that using the book would turn me into someone different, the way he became the Storm King.”

“And how exactly did that work?” asked Cordelia.

“He believed that removing the book from its original location had somehow been responsible for the Great San Francisco Earthquake,” said the Wind Witch. “And that gave him an idea: What if he had the ability to control weather? To create natural disasters? That would be the ultimate power. The power of a god. He began to conjure storms, each one more turbulent than the one before. His last was so treacherous it caused the deaths of thirteen people.”

“That’s horrible,” Cordelia said. “Why would you want a book that let you do that?”

The Wind Witch didn’t answer. Cordelia wasn’t surprised. Deep in her heart, she knew the answer: power.

“We had a creepy old gardener who was always staring at me,” said the Wind Witch. “This made me feel uneasy. So I used the book and blinded the man. When my father confronted me, I admitted to him what had happened. He was furious. He forced me to restore the gardener’s eyesight, and then hid the book from me. He met with Aldrich Hayes of the Lorekeepers. It was Hayes who taught my father the magic that enabled him to hide the book in the world of his novels. But before he got the chance, I transformed myself into the Wind Witch. I wanted to convince my father to
share
the power. To make him realize that
together
we could rule over anything . . . any city, any country.”

“I assume he did not react well,” said Cordelia.

“He was livid. At that point he was far more powerful than I, so he banished me from our home. He thought he could keep me from the book. But I was smarter than that.”

“What did you do?”

“I disguised myself as a man,” said the Wind Witch, “and became a member of the Lorekeepers. They taught me strong magic, and soon I learned ancient spells that enabled me to enter the world of my father’s novels. I began my search for the book. . . .”

“But when your father discovered this,” Cordelia said, “he put a curse on the book so you could never go near it.”

“Exactly. But now I have you. And why should you not use the book? Unlike your siblings, you had the courage to open it.”

“I don’t know if I should have. It felt good at the time . . . but Will told me it was hurting me. Changing my face.”

“What does he know? Your siblings and Will don’t deserve the book. They aren’t as clever as you. They’re holding you back.”