Annie said she had. Jamie shook his head.
“It’s the only book series where the author actually got the elf part sort of right,” Bloom said. He settled into a large chair.
The chair began singing, “Welcome back, Bloom. Welcome back! Let’s read an adventure today, please, pretty please? Please?”
“The chair is singing!” Jamie jumped off the couch as if he expected the furniture to grow teeth and munch him. “The chair … it’s … it’s …”
“Well, it likes a good story,” Miss Cornelia said calmly, as if chairs talked every day.
“It’s just … It’s hard to get used to the whole talking-furniture thing,” Annie tried to explain for both of them.
Miss Cornelia cleared her throat, pointed at the chair, and announced, “No reading today. We are talking. You may listen if you want.”
The chair seemed to pout, but settled down. Tala jumped up onto the couch with them and laid his head on Annie’s lap. She plunged her hands into his fur.
Miss Cornelia strode across the room, agitated. She clasped her hands together and stared out the window. “Annie, I am so sorry that you have not been here with us your entire life and once you are finally, miraculously here, you are faced with this—an unprotected town getting ready for battle, monsters tromping through the barrens as if it were their home, so much danger.”
She whirled around and stared at Annie, tiny and small, sitting on the couch, dwarfed by the big white dog and all the books.
“That is the only thing that is worth being sorry about, Annie, and that was never your decision and it had nothing to do with you or your worth,” Miss Cornelia stated. “I am angry at how horrendous your life has been, Annie, and yours as well, Jamie. I am angry at people and trolls who do not know how to love. I am angry at your blithering idiot of a social worker, and I am enraged, absolutely enraged, that the two of you and Bloom have had to live lives so full of pain. I am angry that I have so little time to prepare you. I am angry at all of this, at my own weakness.”
She squatted down to Annie’s level and added, “But I am very un-angry at you.”
Annie braved out a smile.
“I promise you that I shall not let you go back with those dreadful humans. What were their names? The Wiegles?” Miss Cornelia continued after Eva nodded for Annie, who seemed incapable of answering. “I promise, and you can ask Bloom, my promises I always keep.”
Miss Cornelia stood back up in one quick motion and gestured at Bloom, who jumped backward into the chair, which said, “Ouch.”
Annie’s smile became huge and mighty and turned her face beautiful, Jamie thought as Miss Cornelia focused her attention on him. “And I promise you, James Hephaistion Alexander, that for as long as I am the Stopper of this town, you will have a home here.”
He swallowed. “What if I become a troll?”
“You won’t.” She said it with absolute conviction, and Jamie wanted to believe her. “You won’t. I vow it.”
A rainbow appeared on the ceiling.
“How melodramatic,” Miss Cornelia said, but she laughed lightly as she gazed up. Then she turned to Bloom, who was apologizing to the chair, and announced, “Bloom, well done keeping the others safe today and warning the town.”
“Me?” Bloom slowly smiled, a full, beautiful smile that seemed to make him glow.
“Yes.” Miss Cornelia sighed. “And you may need to be heroic a lot more, very soon.”
She turned to Annie. “And you, too, Annie. Remember how I told you that you will have to be brave?”
“Yes,” Annie said. She tried to say it loudly and seem brave already. She wasn’t sure if it worked.
“Well, that time is now. What you three faced with the monster sighting is only the beginning, I’m afraid.” Her gaze caught all of them with its forceful seriousness. “You will have to help one another. You will have to depend on one another, of that I am sure. Will you be able to?”
The children exchanged glances. They gulped and agreed.
“Good,” Miss Cornelia said. “Now the four of you, off to the kitchen and get some food. I have to call another meeting, find the mayor, and converse with him about these recent events. There is so much to do and you must be hungry.” Absently she added, “Are you hungry?”
Bloom petted his stomach. “Starved.”
“And thirsty,” said Eva. “But mostly hungry. No, mostly thirsty. No …”
“Very well, then.” Miss Cornelia’s voice calmed back down. “You can show Annie and Jamie to the kitchen. Gramma Doris is still off running an errand. We’ll have to make do.”
They all stood up. Tala leaped off the couch.
“Don’t leave me!” squeaked the chair to Bloom.
Jamie made a mental note to add to his list of elf qualities: they are well liked by furniture.
“I’ll be back,” Bloom said. He turned away and rolled his eyes, whispering, “It’s so needy.”
Miss Cornelia hustled them into the hallway and then turned, almost as an afterthought, to Annie. “No matter what happens, you must remember that you are special and that there is magic encoded into every cell of your body. Promise me that?”
Annie twitched away, obviously uncomfortable.
“Promise,” Miss Cornelia demanded.
A lump rose in Annie’s throat. She couldn’t make herself say anything, so she nodded. It was a nod of promise and hope. That was good enough for Miss Cornelia, who pivoted and sped back down the hall.
Jamie closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe out. His heart nearly shattered with relief. They would always have a home. They would, that is, if evil didn’t destroy it.
Once in the kitchen, they peeked in some cabinets and found peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff.
“Maybe we could make sandwiches?” Jamie asked.
“And hot chocolate,” said Eva. “Dwarfs love chocolate, just in case anyone wanted to get me a present at some point for being so heroic.”
“Great.” Bloom handed some carrot sticks to the Wiegles’ little dogs that were camped out on the blinking tile floor.
Jamie hummed as he made the sandwiches. There was so much food, more food than he’d ever seen.
“After this,” Annie babbled, “I want to draw you guys. I used to have this picture journal. I could write Miss Cornelia’s last name in the front of the book—that’s where I write all my families’ last names—and it would be the absolute last name I will ever have to write. Wait. What’s Miss Cornelia’s last name?”
She slapped together the sides of a sandwich and handed it to Tala.
Tala wolfed his sandwich down and smacked his jowls. Jamie gobbled his just as quickly.
“Aquarius,” Bloom answered. He bit into his sandwich and smiled a peanut-butter smile.
“Aquarius. Cornelia Aquarius. If she adopted you, your name would be Annie Aquarius. Your initials would be AA. Those are good initials.” Jamie licked his lips and made another sandwich. His hand tingled ominously.
Annie started humming again. Alia Aquarius wrote the Magic Mistakes book upstairs. She and Miss Cornelia must be related.
Miss Cornelia’s kitchen was much more normal than the rest of the house. An oversize old-fashioned stove sat in the middle of the room, and a massive fireplace dominated one of the walls. The stainless steel refrigerator seemed modern enough, but when Jamie opened it, the contents inside danced and sang out what they were, reminding him of Mr. Nate’s fridge at the library.
“I am cheddar cheese, cheddar cheese, cheddar cheese,” a yellow slab sang out in a startling baritone. Tala and the other dogs started yipping along.
“Radishes are delicious,” a bunch crooned, twirling around and showing off their deep red color.
“Pr-r-runes kee-e-e-e-eep you-u-u reg-u-lar!” a fruit sang in an extremely high soprano voice that reminded Jamie of opera singers. In the hutch, a wine glass shattered.
He slammed the refrigerator door shut. “It’s hard to eat food that sings,”
he said.
“Maybe that’s why they do it.” Bloom bit into his sandwich.
They munched in silence for a while.
“I feel worried,” Jamie said, staring at his hand, wondering why it was still tingling. “Like something horrible is going to happen.”
Bloom paled. “Me, too.”
Annie piped in. “Me, three.”
Eva was about to argue differently when something creaked in the hallway. None of the dogs stirred.
Bloom’s ears twitched. “Lately, Miss Cornelia hasn’t been herself. Her powers are just not as strong as they were, you know, Eva? I’m worried some things might be slipping through, and she’s not sensing them the way she normally would.”
“By ‘things’ do you mean bad things?” Jamie’s skin tingled.
“Trolls. Evil vamps. Things of the night. But we’ve always been safe inside Aurora. Nothing could get in here unless it’s invited in.”
The refrigerator engine stopped humming. The kitchen was suddenly silent. Annie’s foot shook so much it wiggled the table. She grabbed it with her hand.
Bloom stood up, focused. “Something’s happened. Can you feel it?”
Jamie and Annie didn’t have time to say they did. The entire house had suddenly turned terribly, terribly cold. Bloom stared at them with panicked eyes, and together they raced out of the kitchen and ran down the hall. Eva took the lead with Tala running at their heels.
“Miss Cornelia?” Bloom panted.
Jamie shook his head in the smallest of nods. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew without a doubt that it was about Miss Cornelia, and that whatever it was, was bad. Something had gone wrong, and when they got to the foyer he froze, horrified.
“What is it?” Annie whispered beside him.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back.
Mr. Nate was standing stock still at the front door, surrounded by a moving mass of feathers the color of pitch.
It’s like a cloud of feathers, Jamie thought, a cloud of moving feathers that’s descending on Mr. Nate.
Tala raced in front of Jamie and stood halfway between the children and the feathers. Balls of light were streaming from Mr. Nate’s hands, striking the cloud of blackness. The feathers just absorbed them. Then, as they watched, a beak formed. The pile of feathers had become an actual bird, the same bird they’d seen on the road. And it cackled.
“Mr. Nate!” Jamie yelled.
Mr. Nate turned around, stared at the children in disbelief a second before his face contorted in rage.
“GO-O-O-O-O-O-O!” Mr. Nate screamed. He launched a ball of glowing light at the cloud of darkness. The light disappeared, sucked up into the black. “Children! Run! Just—”
As they watched helplessly, the black cloud washed over Mr. Nate, consuming his words.
22
Hiding from the Horrible
Watching the darkness swallow Mr. Nate was more than enough to convince Annie to run. She grabbed Jamie’s hand. “Come on!”
“Where?” His hand squeezed tightly around hers.
Where?
Where?
She had no idea. Tala barked for them to hurry, nudging at them with his muzzle, pushing them toward the sitting room. Annie decided to trust the dog. “Come on!”
Eva, Bloom, and Jamie followed her into the room, slamming the door shut behind them. There was no lock.
“That probably won’t hold it back for long,” Jamie said. “We need a better place to hide.”
“But where?” Bloom asked. The room was just a room—albeit a fancy one. Long, lush drapes, mossy carpet, statues, and glass lamps didn’t really offer many hiding places.
A bunny hopped out from behind the pink, velvety couch and gave a little wave, and despite all of Annie’s pleading for it to hide, it didn’t hop off into a safe bunny place. Instead, it stood its ground and stared straight into her eyes, which Annie knew was not normal bunny behavior. Bunnies are, on the whole of it, pretty much wimps.
Annie stared back at the bunny. Then she reached down to stroke its fur.
“There is a monster,” she whispered. “We have to be quiet and we have to hide.”
The bunny nuzzled into her fingers for a moment, relishing the affection. Then it bounced backward and stared at her rather impatiently. The bunny thumped its rear left leg on the mossy floor.
Annie reached closer to the rabbit while Eva took up a fighting pose.
“Annie!” Bloom said, frantic, “there is a monster outside. Now is not the time to be fussing with bunnies.”
Jamie hushed him. “It’s trying to tell her something.”
The bunny bounced another step backward. It shook its head and thumped its leg and seemed indeed to be trying to say something. It took another hop back.
“You want us to follow you?” Annie asked.
The bunny hopped straight up and down, excited.
“Annie … ,” Jamie pleaded.
The creature hopped to the corner of the sitting room.
“Over here? This corner? Is this where you live? Do you have a cute little bunny house somewhere?” Annie asked.
The bunny rolled its eyes and hopped in place.
The Cupid statue stood there looking like a smooshed-down version of Walden Wiegle. Chubby and unfortunately naked, it held a little bow and arrow in its marble hands.
Annie didn’t know why artists always made Cupid undressed and pudgy. You’d think he’d be thin chasing after so many soon-to-be lovers all the time and shooting those arrows, she thought.
The bunny hopped on Annie’s foot to get her attention.
“Yes, it’s a very nice corner of the room,” Annie told it.
The bunny hopped on the statue and grunted, crossing its front paws over its chest.
The bunny hopped on her foot.
The bunny hopped on the statue.
The bunny hopped on her foot, again.
“Oh,” Annie said slowly, enunciating all of her words. “Yes, it is a very nice statue.”
The bunny nodded and hopped with extra enthusiasm.
“We don’t have time for this … ,” Jamie said. “No offense. Maybe we should hide under the couch.”
“It’s a lovely statue,” Annie lied, ignoring Jamie. It really looked like some pink sausages put together in marble and then topped with one of those big blond wigs that country music singers used to wear.
“It’s an absolutely beautiful statue,” Annie lied again, reaching out to pat the top of the statue’s golden head. “Yes. Totally lovely. A work of art.”
She gave its head one pat, then another. She wondered if any mice were living in its hair.
The bunny jumped up and down.
“Good statue,” Annie said, and as she spoke the words she gave the head a final pat and the whole thing began to move.
“Oh!”
Annie jumped back and covered her mouth with her hands. The bunny funked out a happy little celebration dance on the deep-green carpet, twirling around on its heinie as Annie, Jamie, and Bloom watched the statue slide to one side, leaving a big hole where the base once was. The hole led to a small chamber.
Rushing, Annie led them across the room, away from the door. “It’s a secret room! Hurry!”
Annie leaped into the hole, pulling Jamie after her. Eva, Bloom, Tala, and the bunny followed.
She felt all around the wall. “How do we close it again? Help me find a lever or something.”
Frantically, the children slid their hands over the cold rock surface. The light was dim, and it was hard to see anything at all. The sound of the gigantic crow cloud echoed in the house above them.
“What is that thing?” Annie whispered.
“I don’t know. We’ve got to find a way to shut the hole or it’ll find us …” Bloom’s voice was eight times higher than normal.
“Did you see Mr. Nate?” Jamie’s words were so hurried and broken that Annie had a hard time understanding them. She tried to give him a reassuring pat on the arm.
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Suddenly, the hole above them slammed shut, blocking out the only light illuminating the area.
Everything was terribly, terribly dark and terribly, terribly quiet.
“Um … Hello?” Annie whispered.
“Shhh! It will find us,” someone answered.
“What will find us?” Jamie asked.
Annie reached for him blindly. Five fingers wrapped around her own. Tala’s body pressed against her legs.
“The beast.” It was Eva’s voice, only much higher, much more frightened sounding. “It’s freaking freezing people up there. It’s—it’s horrible.”
Annie imagined Miss Cornelia, brave Mr. Nate, and the little pixies all frozen. She shuddered. That couldn’t happen.
“Someone should fight it,” Annie said.
“We can’t. There’s no way to fight it. Didn’t you see Mr. Nate? He couldn’t stop it,” Bloom answered. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Says who?” asked Annie. When he didn’t answer, she pressed, “But what about Miss Cornelia? The others?”
“Gone,” Eva answered. “Like we’ll be if that freaking thing finds us here.”
“Stop talking,” Bloom insisted in a terrified whisper, as if he thought even the slightest noise could lead the bird to them. “Everyone breathe more quietly.”
Annie held her breath as her heart broke … Miss Cornelia …
Even Tala seemed to understand the need for quiet, and his doggy pants were considerably softer, but Eva wasn’t listening and she rambled in a panicky tone. “It’s ’cause the gnome’s gone. Anyone can find us. Even if that crow-cloud thing don’t kill us, the trolls will probably come get us soon. Everyone’ll be frozen, nobody will be able to fight, and they’ll just pick us off one by one. We’ll be goners. They’ll suck the marrow out of our bones and—and—”
There was a huge thud on the floor to Annie’s right.
“Eva passed out,” Bloom said. “She always does when she’s overly frightened.”
“She told me dwarfs don’t get scared,” Annie whispered, squatting down and feeling around for Eva. Annie’s hand grabbed a pigtail. She lifted the dwarf’s head and rested it on her lap.