The Strangers (13 page)

“In there?” Morton frowned up at the glowing windows. “No one.”

Something feathery and nervous fluttered inside Olive’s chest. “But there’s a candle burning inside. Why would an empty house have a burning candle?”

Morton shrugged. “It’s always been there.” Slowly, he turned to follow the worn brick path that led to the stoop. Olive trailed after him. Their footsteps thudded on the wooden stairs.

They stood before the closed front door, wavering on their feet. At last, Olive reached up and tapped cautiously on the cold wood. There was no answer. Olive counted to ten under her breath (“You skipped
eight,
” said Morton), but no one came. When she grasped the heavy brass knob and pushed the door inward, it pushed back at her. “Go inside, quick,” Olive whispered. They darted across the threshold before the painted door could pull itself shut.

The slam echoed through the empty house. Keeping close to the door, Olive glanced around. No rugs lay on the floor. No lights hung from the ceilings. The walls were drab and bare. One lonely velvet couch sat in the front room, with no one sitting on it. The only light inside the house came from just around the corner, where the bluish glow reached toward them, beckoning them on.

Olive edged around the wall. Morton tiptoed behind her.

In the center of the bare, round room, there stood a small wooden table. Atop the small wooden table was a candle in a silver holder. Its flame danced lightly in Olive’s breath as she leaned in, studying the wax’s strange blue color, and the silvery coating that glittered atop it, almost like frost on a windowpane.

Olive gave a little gasp.

“It’s a Calling Candle,” she whispered.

“A Calling Candle?” Morton whispered back.

Olive’s mind flew back along the painted street, where candles burned in window after window.

“Maybe they’re
all
Calling Candles. Aldous could have used them to bring people in here.”

Morton kept quiet.

Olive stared at the candle’s bright flame. “But no one’s in this house. I wonder if Aldous left the candle here, waiting for the next person, and just never used it. And if he never used it . . . that means that we
could
.” Olive felt her heart jump higher and harder, like a huge metal pinball bouncing between her ribs. “We could call my parents.”

Morton looked into Olive’s eyes. “Or
my
parents,” he said.

“Or Annabelle,” Olive added as the pinball turned to a lump of ice.

Morton gave a little jerk. Instinctively, he put the hand that Annabelle had sliced with a dagger behind his back.

“It might be the safest thing to do,” said Olive softly. “That way, at least she’d be stuck Elsewhere again.”

For several silent moments, both Olive and Morton stared at the candle, like two starving people studying their last crumb of food.

Olive licked her papery lips. “So,” she whispered. “Who should we call?”

“No one,” said a sharp voice from behind them.

O
LIVE AND
M
ORTON
whirled around.

Three pairs of bright green eyes glittered in the light of the candle.

“You should call no one,” Horatio repeated, “because you haven’t the faintest idea what you’re doing.”

“Where have you been?” Olive burst out as a confusing mixture of gladness and frustration rushed through her. “I’ve hardly seen you all week, and now you show up just in time to keep me from finally doing something worthwhile?”

“As it happens, Olive,” said Horatio, fluffing his thick fur, “we have been doing something
worthwhile
too: Guarding this house’s secrets and keeping you from making any dangerous mistakes. Apparently we are indeed ‘just in time.’”

“But I haven’t done anything,” Olive protested. “
Nobody
has. My parents are gone, and it’s been a whole week, and I can’t keep wasting time!”

Leopold tilted his sleek black head. “Aren’t Mrs. Dewey and Doctor Widdecombe and Walter’s aunt Deluda—”

“Delora,” Horatio corrected, “though ‘Deluda’ might be more appropriate.”

“—aren’t they making any progress?” Leopold finished.

“No.” Olive spread her arms, exasperated. She looked back at the candle burning on the table. “And here I have the chance to do something real.”

“No you don’t, Olive,” said Horatio. “And not merely because you
shouldn’t
try to use an object as powerful as a Calling Candle, but because you don’t know how.”

“Yes I do!” Olive argued. “You hold the candle, and you say someone’s name into the flames, and you can only use it once.”

“As usual, Olive, you have approximately half of the necessary information,” Horatio said dryly. “First, you can only call
one
person, so summoning
two
parents will pose a bit of a problem. Second, if the person you call is being held by other magic—under the influence of another spell, or trapped in another painting, perhaps—they cannot appear. Calling your parents could be a waste of time as well as a waste of a candle.”

“Third,” Harvey added, in a British accent, “you’d need the assistance of a fellow agent to keep the entrance open, in order for your target to be transported Elsewhere.”

“What does that mean?” Olive asked.

“To put it in civilian terms: One of us would have to sit in the picture frame.”

“Oh,” said Olive. She gazed around at the three cats, their glossy coats shimmering in the candlelight. “You know, Agent 1-800, it seems funny that you would do that to help Aldous McMartin trap his enemies, but you won’t do it to trap your own.”

The cats were silent for a moment as the meaning of Olive’s words sank in. Leopold cocked his head. Horatio’s eyes narrowed.

Harvey raised one eyebrow. He turned slowly to the other cats. “I believe she has a point,” he murmured.

“Olive,” said Horatio in a low, measured voice, “think very carefully about the risks you run by bringing Annabelle McMartin here.”

Morton took a step backward, pressing himself to the wall.

Olive pictured the painted Annabelle strolling gracefully up Morton’s street. Her face would be cool and pretty and calm, and her eyes would be terrifying gold glints in the darkness. She would glide toward the porches, the hushed and frightened houses, the windows where Morton’s neighbors stared out, cowering—

No. They would need to bring Annabelle someplace secure. Someplace where she couldn’t hurt anyone else.

And Olive knew the perfect spot.

“I wouldn’t call her here,” Olive told Morton and the cats. “I’d call her into her own portrait. If she doesn’t tell us everything we want to know, then we’ll leave her there. She’ll be stuck, just like she was before.”

There was a moment of quiet as the three cats studied Olive, their shadows quivering on the wall.

“A clever plan, miss,” said Leopold at last.

Horatio whirled toward him.

Leopold looked into Horatio’s wide eyes. “Why not contain her, before she can plot any further harm to us?”

“Because ‘containing’ Annabelle in this house is like tossing a viper into your own bathtub,” Horatio retorted.

“But Agent Olive’s strategy could work,” Harvey chimed in. “We may need to strike pretentiously in order to avoid a greater risk.”

“He means
preemptively,
” Leopold murmured to Olive. “A preemptive strike
is
generally wiser than an emptive one.”

Horatio let out a sigh. “As all of you seem to agree, and as I know how stubborn some of you are,” he added, his eyes flicking to Olive, “I won’t waste my time trying to dissuade you.” With a flourish of his tail, the orange cat trotted toward the door.

“Are you leaving us, Horatio?” Olive asked, disappointed.

“I’m heading to Annabelle’s portrait,” Horatio snapped. “Allowing you to rush into this confrontation without a single sane witness seems like a bad idea.”

Olive gave Horatio’s receding tail a smile. Carefully, gently, she slipped her fingers through the metal loop of the candleholder and lifted it from the table. The candle’s blue light flickered, but it didn’t dim.

Morton held the front door of the house open as everyone else hurried out.

“I’m not coming with you,” he muttered to Olive as the door thumped shut behind them. “You talk about magic too much. And it’s not safe. And I don’t . . .” Morton hesitated, twisting his bare toes against the floorboards. “. . . I don’t want to see
her.
”

Morton wouldn’t meet her eyes, but Olive knew he was thinking of the last time they had confronted Annabelle together—when Lucinda had thrown herself between Morton and Annabelle, saving Morton from Annabelle’s burst of fire by being burned herself.

“I understand,” she said softly. She gave Morton’s arm an awkward pat before following the cats into the street.

Halfway down the hillside, Olive glanced over her shoulder. Morton stood at the crest of Linden Street, staring after them. The hem of his too-long white nightshirt rippled over his bare toes. “Be careful!” he called.

Olive gave him the bravest wave she could manage. She guessed this was what knights must have felt as they rode into combat: a mixture of anxiety and readiness and anger, all pushing down the fear that kept threatening to rise. Holding the candle steady before her, she hurried the rest of the way down the hill.

• • •

The upstairs hall was silent.

Horatio led the way along the corridor. Olive followed, flanked by the other two cats, keeping her eyes on the candle. Even in the late-afternoon light that floated through the house’s windows, the glow of the candle was strangely vivid, its color unearthly, too startling to be beautiful. Olive cupped her hand around the flame, trying to keep any stray beams from flickering down the stairs and catching Walter’s eye.

Inside the lavender bedroom, everyone paused. The cats sniffed the air. Olive wondered what their noses noticed, besides the scent of lilies of the valley and un-breathed air and emptiness. Olive shivered.

Harvey leaped onto the chest of drawers below the picture frame. “Begin Operation Tea Party Two,” he announced into his imaginary transistor wristwatch.

“When did we decide on that name?” asked Leopold, stiffening to his most commanding height. “I believe we ought to call this the Lavender Battle.”

“The Lavender Battle?”
Harvey repeated, looking dubious.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of the War of the Roses,” said Leopold, even more stiffly.

“What do you say, Agent Orange?” Harvey asked. “Operation Tea Party Two or the Lavender Battle?”

Horatio rolled his eyes. “Why not call it ‘Art Restoration’ and get it over with?”

“
Operation
Art Restoration,” said Harvey. “I like it.” He slipped through the frame, with Leopold marching after.

Horatio waited until Olive had clambered up onto the chest of drawers before following the others into the painting. She adjusted the spectacles with one hand, made sure the candle was steady in the other, and dragged herself backward through the frame with one arm in the air, like someone heading down a playground slide while holding an ice-cream cone.

She landed on her knees on a slippery silk couch, still holding the candle over her head. She flipped around, surveying the painted room. Everything looked exactly as it had on her first visit. Unwilting bunches of lilies and lilacs clustered in porcelain vases. Polished seashells and figurines decorated each surface. The cats had already darted off in three directions, peering under furnishings, checking each corner, sniffing at the fireless fireplace. Olive pulled herself out of the sofa cushions and ventured toward the tea table.

The silver filigree teapot still sat where Annabelle had left it. Two cups and saucers waited on the spotless tablecloth, flanked by delicate silver spoons. Olive set the candle down in the center of the table before picking up the cup that she had sipped from months ago, on her first visit with Annabelle. The cup was still warm. Olive picked a sugar cube from the bowl and plopped it into the cup. She took a tiny, tentative sip. The tea was still not sweet enough—maybe because the sugar cube Olive had just dropped in had appeared again, whole and dry, inside the sugar bowl.

With a deep breath, Olive set the cup back in its place and picked up the Calling Candle. “Is everybody ready?” she asked, wondering why she felt compelled to whisper. “Should we start?”

“The area is clear,” said Harvey, in Agent 1-800’s British accent. “I will monitor the entrance.” He bounced up from the back of the couch and perched on the bottom of the frame, his body half inside, half outside the painting.

“Remember to keep your distance from her,” Horatio warned, moving toward Olive. “Don’t let her come near enough to touch the spectacles. And remember to
think
before you speak.”

“I will.”

“If she turns violent, we will defend you,” Leopold said, in his gruffest voice. “You can be sure of that.”

Olive gave him a shaky smile. “Thank you, Leopold.”

She took another breath. Now that she was about to do it, bringing Annabelle here felt almost insane—just like dropping a viper into your bubble bath, as Horatio had said, or lowering a spider down your own shirt collar. But she had come this far, and she couldn’t go back—not if she wanted to see her parents again.

“Okay,” she whispered, more to herself than to the cats. She raised the candle with both hands. Its flame was tinted and transparent at the same time, like a droplet of molten glass. Olive stared into the layers of burning color, from the purplish halo around the wick to the ripples of aquamarine and emerald that paled to gold-white at the top.

“Annabelle McMartin.”
The flame shivered in her breath.
“Annabelle McMartin. Annabelle McMartin.”

The candlelight began to pulse. A sudden breeze entered the room, fluttering the lace curtains, making the tablecloth billow and the teacups rattle. Olive felt the air swirl around her, an invisible wave flooding the room. The back of her neck prickled sharply. In her hand, the candle dimmed, its flame shrinking to a crumb of turquoise fire.

Then, as suddenly as if someone had flicked a switch, the wind died. The tablecloth straightened itself. The curtains rippled into place. The flames of the candle brightened again, only now they were the yellow-gold flames of any ordinary candle—like all the other candles inside the painted windows of Linden Street.

And standing inside the parlor, with waves of smooth dark hair and a string of pearls gleaming softly around her neck, was a young woman in a long white dress.