Meeting

Table of Contents

 

 

Unmasking
Child of an Ancient City
(with Tad Williams)
The Thread That Binds the Bones
The Silent Strength of Stones
A Red Heart of Memories
Past the Size of Dreaming
A Fistful of Sky
A Stir of Bones
Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors
(short stories)
Catalyst: A Novel of Alien Contact
Spirits That Walk in Shadow
Fall of Light
Thresholds
(Magic Next Door, Book I)
Meeting
(Magic Next Door, Book II)

VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in the U.S.A. by Viking, a member of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2011

 

Copyright © Nina Kiriki Hoffman, 2011

All rights reserved

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hoffman, Nina Kiriki.
Meetings / Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
p. cm.—(Magic next door ; bk. 2)
Summary: Middle school student Maya Andersen and her family move to
Oregon, where the residents of the apartment building next to them have
magical powers and the basement is a portal to other worlds, which Maya
and her secret alien companion, Rimi, must use to track down aliens who
snatched Rimi from her home planet in an attempt to rule the universe.

eISBN : 978-1-101-52934-8

[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Kidnapping—Fiction. 3. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction.]I. Title.
PZ7.H67567Me 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2011003002

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

 

 

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Devon Monk and Eric Witchey, co-conspirators and late night e-mail buddies.

 

To Ashton (again) and Connor and Zack H.

 

To Sharyn, who works so hard with me to make these books better.

 

Thank you all.

Maya Andersen held
the front door wide on a crisp autumn Saturday night to let the neighbors into the Andersens’ new house.

There were a lot of neighbors. She didn’t know all of their names, even after having them over every Saturday Music Night for six weeks, and spending three days a week after school studying magic and related arts and sciences at Janus House, the big apartment building next door, where all these people lived. Every Music Night she tried to focus on new people, get their faces into her mind so she could draw them later and put names to them. Different people kept showing up, though. Where did they all come from? Maybe the warren underneath Janus House, where the portal to other worlds was.

“Hi,” she said as the people flowed inside, and most said, “Hello, Maya,” as they passed her, or “Nice night!”

Five orange pumpkins perched on the porch railing. They glowed in the soft light spilling from the front windows and the open door. Maya’s family had visited the pumpkin patch that afternoon. Halloween was a week away.

The air carried the spice of dead leaves, fallen, raked, stacked, jumped in. There was the tang of cold working on water. Smoke from the chimney flavored the air. Maya sniffed the mix of autumn scents, remembering last year, back in Idaho, when her best friend, Stephanie, had still been alive. Maya and Stephanie had been plotting their costumes for a week already by this time. Stephanie always dressed as something magical—a witch, a wizard, an elf, or, the year when they were six, a unicorn. Maya liked dressing as Steph’s sidekick. If Steph was a witch, Maya dressed as a black cat to be her familiar. If Steph was a wizard, Maya might be a fellow wizard. Some years Steph dressed as something that didn’t need a sidekick, like a fairy, and Maya went trick-or-treating as a Viking, in honor of the Andersen family heritage. She had a nice metal helmet with horns and rivets, and not enough occasions when she could wear it.

Steph had already started chemo by October of last year, and she’d lost her hair. She found a Lady Godiva wig at a Halloween store, blonde, curly hair that touched the ground. She dressed as Rapunzel, only Steph’s Rapunzel had a magic wand with a crystal on the end. “It’s the spirit of television,” she had said, touching the crystal. “The witch can lock me in a tower, but I’ll still find something to entertain me.”

Maya had dressed as a ghost. She didn’t want to do that again—not with Steph dead and not haunting, the way Maya and Steph had planned sometimes when they sat together in the middle of the night with the lights out near the end of Steph’s life.

Maya wasn’t sure who to be this year. She was living in a new house, in a new neighborhood, with lots of strange new friends, including one she wore like a shadow, Rimi.

Did Janus House people even celebrate Halloween?

Some of the neighbors carried plates covered with colorful dish towels. Some carried instrument cases. Some carried their own chairs. When the visitors ran out of room in the living room, where the piano was, they placed their chairs in the dining room and on the porch and settled. Those with food took the plates to the dining room table and set them down. Those with instrument cases opened the cases, got out instruments, and tuned.

Twelve-year-old Benjamin Porta crossed the porch, following two adults Maya didn’t know yet. “Hey, Maya. Did you save me a seat?” He was just her height, with cinnamon skin, dark hair, and warm brown eyes with gold flecks in them. He wore a charcoal hoodie, blue jeans, and black tennis shoes.

“I put my coat over part of the couch,” Maya said, pointing toward the couch near the piano. “Don’t know if that worked.” She peered past people to the couch. Nobody had sat on her coat yet, but two other people had claimed spots on the couch. There was still a space just wide enough for two, if they were small. “Guess it kinda did.”

“Did you save
me
a seat?” asked Maya’s other new friend from Janus House, Gwenda Janus. Gwenda was tall, pale, dark-haired, and slender, with eyes the color of sky. Tonight she was wearing a dark, full-length skirt with no stiffening to make it stand out. Her blouse was fairly subdued, for her: pale green with lines of white embroidery that showed vines and flowers.

Maya sighed. She had left her coat on enough of the couch to reserve space for three, but that hadn’t worked.

“Just kidding,” said Gwenda. “I brought my own chair.” She held up a three-legged folded stool.

Maya kicked the doorstop under the doorsill—the door would have to stay open, anyway, so the people on the porch could hear—and the three of them made their way through the crowd to the couch.

The ancient witch and weaver Sarutha Gates, Maya’s main Janus House teacher, was one of the people already sitting on the couch. Beside her was her almost-twin sister, Noona. Both of them had long silver-gray hair and wore dark velvet dresses.

Maya picked up her coat and put it on. The sisters smiled at Maya and Benjamin as they squeezed onto the couch, Maya between Benjamin and Sarutha. Gwenda set her stool nearby.

Maya’s jean-clad leg pressed against Benjamin’s jean-clad leg, and her shoulder was against his. He felt warm through all those layers, and he smelled like fresh bread and spices. She liked being next to him.