“Yes’m.”
She fished the trim white card from her apron pocket. It had been given her in the morning by a woman with a long fur coat. The script across its front was elegant, and it smelled vaguely of expensive perfume. She checked the name on the card briefly. “You are to find the Lady Premiere and tell her we have news of the runaway children. Tell her that they are on their way to the Red House. Say it back to me.”
“They are on their way to the Red House,” the boy repeated dutifully.
Mrs. Snout nodded. “They should reach Evergreen by tomorrow evening. Tell the Lady Premiere to be prepared.”
“Yes’m.” The boy mashed his hat on his head determinedly and prepared to set off.
“Not so fast!” Mrs. Snout glared fixedly at his nose. “This is most important. You must demand the reward she offered. Two whole gold pieces, and no less. Do not return without the money.”
Mrs. Snout sighed as the boy scrambled out the back door. She passed her fingers once more along the little white card, then slipped it back into her apron.
Desperate times, she thought, called for desperate measures.
Chapter Twenty
LIESL AND WILL ATE THEIR POTATOES GREEDILY even before they reached the old barn—so quickly they barely tasted them, and burned their tongues and fingers in the process. The potatoes made only the tiniest, barest dent in their hunger, but they were better than nothing.
In the corner of the barn—which was, as the innkeeper had said, dry and relatively warm, and which smelled only the very smallest bit like animal droppings—they found a single wool blanket.
“We’ll have to share,” Liesl said, yawning, and placed the wooden box carefully on the floor. Then she and Will lay down beside it and pulled the blanket up to their chins. “You’ll keep watch, won’t you, Po?” she said drowsily.
“Yes,” Po said. “I’ll wake you at dawn.”
Neither Will nor Liesl said thank you. Under the blanket, both of their small chests rose in unison, like swells in the ocean, and after only a minute the barn was filled with the quiet sounds of snoring.
Po, watching them, felt a twinge, as though a large hand had reached out and pinched its Essence. The ghost was startled and bothered by the feeling. Distant memories tugged at Po: a ring of children, chanting something (game, the word appeared to Po suddenly), and Po standing on the outside, left out.
Left out: two more words the ghost had not thought of for the longest of long times. What did belonging mean to a ghost? What did it matter? A ghost belonged to nothing but the Other Side, and the air, and the deep, dark tunnel of time that has no walls or ceiling or floor, but only goes on forever.
We’ve been too long on the Living Side, Po thought to Bundle, and as usual Bundle mwarked his approval. “We don’t belong here.”
Mwark.
“Come on. We must go back to our place and get away for a bit.” And Po felt the living world—with all its corners and boundaries and hard, sharp edges—disappearing as it crossed back into the Other Side.
Po only intended to stay away a minute or two. No harm would come to Liesl, the ghost was sure of it.
But time is not easy to measure on the Other Side, where infinity is the only boundary, and seconds do not exist, nor minutes nor hours nor years: only space and distance. And so on the Living Side, Liesl and Will slept soundly, and minutes added up to an hour, and just after midnight the door creaked open and the black-haired man slipped silently into the barn.
He was, as Mrs. Snout had guessed, a career criminal. His nickname was Sticky, and he was a thief. He would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down: money from church collection plates, candy from a baby, the shirt off the back of a beggar. The reputation of his long, pale fingers, which attracted wallets, coins, and earrings like a magnet attracts steel filings, had earned him his nickname.
He had seen the little girl clutching the wooden box protectively to her chest and, like Mrs. Snout, suspected she was lying when she had claimed there was nothing inside.
Why would she be carrying an empty box with her?
And not just any box, Sticky thought: a jewelry box. Standing in the dark, listening to the two children snoring, he allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction, imagining the beautiful jewels he would find winking in its rich velvet interior, the gold and silver, the tiny flashing stones.