Not that it bothered Emily at all. When Henry had left, she turned to Grayson. “I thought Mrs. Harper had dealt with that problem?”
“Em!” said Grayson with a strange sideways glance at me.
“What’s the matter?” Emily had shaken her head as if baffled, while Grayson took her by the elbow and led her into the next room.
“That problem”? What problem?
That was when I realized it was high time for me to talk to Henry. It was one thing that I knew so little about my boyfriend. Or rather that he told me so little about himself. But the fact that even Emily was better informed than I was hurt me more than I liked to admit. Now and then I’d thought of probing, asking Henry all the questions that had come into my head as time passed, but then I didn’t ask them after all. In movies and books, the hero’s girlfriend who always wants to know everything usually turns out to be a silly cow and a control freak, and pretty soon she’s the hero’s ex-girlfriend. Or, depending on what kind of story it is, she’s the victim of a terrible crime and everyone is secretly pleased. But control freak or not, I was beginning to feel I just had to know where I stood with Henry.
The corridor into which he’d turned seemed to be empty, but I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor branching off to the left behind an imposing red door, so I went faster. I’d soon catch up with him.
Talking, no making out, I reminded myself again to be on the safe side. Repeating it like a mantra couldn’t hurt.
“Ouch!” I’d bumped into something hard, or rather into someone turning the corner, just like me but in the opposite direction. At first I thought it was Henry.
“Good heavens, Liv!” exclaimed the someone, obviously as startled as I was.
It wasn’t Henry; it was Arthur Hamilton. The Arthur Hamilton whose jaw I had broken and whose crazy girlfriend had tried to cut my throat last fall. The Arthur that I’d seen only at school since the disaster in the cemetery, and then I’d kept my distance. If our paths did happen to cross, we’d stared at each other like two enemy generals meeting off the battlefield, demonstrating strength and lasting hostility.
I jumped away from him as quickly as I could. However, it was too late to assume an intimidating expression—I was afraid I was gawping at him more like poor scared Bambi.
Arthur had recovered from the shock faster than I had, because he was smiling.
No doubt about it, he was still the best-looking boy in the universe, with his symmetrical features, big blue eyes, his porcelain complexion, and his angelic golden curls, but something in him had changed. Not outwardly; there wasn’t even a scar left from his injury, although his jaw had been wired for several weeks. No, the damage was under the surface, as if last fall’s events had affected the mysterious aura of a born winner that used to surround him. And his smile had clearly lost something of its hypnotic charm. “Very smart outfit, Liv Silver.”
I didn’t have to look down at myself to know what I was wearing—it was what I actually had on at that moment: a pair of baggy pajama bottoms with blue polka dots on them, and an old T-shirt of Grayson’s that I had rescued from the donation bag because I thought the panda in a pink tutu on the front of it was funny. The wording under the panda said TOO FAT FOR A BALLERINA.
Hell. Why was I roaming around these corridors in pajamas? I ought to have turned into a jaguar. Then maybe Arthur would have shown a little more respect. “Thanks,” I said with all the dignity I could muster up. “Have you seen Henry? He ought to be somewhere around here.”
“I wonder why I’m not surprised to find you still haunting this place?” Arthur smiled faintly. “Well, it was obvious that you weren’t going to give that up. What are you after? Getting into your teachers’ dreams in the hope of better grades?”
Not a bad idea. “As a matter of fact, I’m not so fond of spying on other people.” I could sound condescending myself if necessary. Even in pajamas. “How about you? What are you doing here yourself? Paying a visit to your old friend the demon? What was his name again? Something beginning with L. Sounded like more water on the sauna stove in Finnish. Lelula? Lilalu? Luleli?”
That was really funny—l?yly? actually does mean “pour more water on the sauna stove,” as I knew from a nice Finn called Matti who was friends with Lottie when we were in Utrecht. He taught us any number of things that we didn’t really need to say in Finnish. But Arthur wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Oh, I remember,” I said slowly. “Of course, the demon wasn’t real. Just an invention of Anabel’s.”