“That must be Evergreen,” Liesl said. “We’ll rest there for the night.”
Nobody argued. It had been a long, exhausting hike. Even Po was tired—not physically, of course, but from a deep ache in its Essence, from flitting ahead and doubling back all the time, and having to wait for the others to catch up, and keep itself from speaking out when yet again Will had to stop and shake a pebble from his too-large shoes.
It was very quiet and very still as they set off across the frost-coated ground toward the house. With every step, Liesl grew happier. Soon they would have soft beds to sleep in, and perhaps a meal. And they were close to the Red House now, she was sure of it—it was only a mile or two beyond the end of the hills. Tomorrow they would finish their journey, and her father’s soul would be at rest. And then . . .
Well, the truth was, she was not sure what would happen then, but she pushed the thought out of her mind. Po would come up with something. Or she and Will would go to work at Snout’s Inn, where the woman had been so kind.
Will, too, felt he could not get to Evergreen fast enough. The box was heavy—Liesl had not lied—and he was so hungry it was painful, as though there were a small animal scrabbling around in his stomach, sticking him with its claws.
When they were thirty feet from the house, Liesl got a last-minute burst of energy and broke into a run. “Come on, Will!” she called. “Almost there!”
Will tried to run and felt a sharp pain in his heel. “Daggit.” He had gotten another stone in his shoe. “Be there in a minute!”
Liesl had already reached the house and was knocking firmly on the door. Will sat down on a large rock, rolled up his pant leg, and wrestled his shoe from his foot, muttering curses as he did.
“Hello,” he heard Liesl say as the front door opened. “We have come from Gainsville. Mrs. Snout said we might find lodging here.”
Dimly, distantly, Will was aware of a large rectangle of light spilling out into the night, and the blurry, dark figure of a person silhouetted within it.
The silhouette crooned, “Of course, dearie, come in, come in!”
Panic shot through Will like a sudden jolt of electricity. All at once he forgot his exhaustion and the pebble in his shoe.
There was something wrong with the voice—something wrong with its sweetness.
It was too sweet, like flowers laid over a corpse.
He recognized it.
“Thank you,” Liesl was saying, even as Will found his voice and screamed, “No, Liesl! No!”
Liesl turned, alarmed. But at that moment the Lady Premiere stepped out onto the porch and seized Liesl with both arms, snarling, as she did, “Come here, you nasty little creature!”
“Run, Will!” Liesl screamed as she was dragged backward into the house. “Don’t stop until—”
He did not hear the rest of her sentence. The door swung shut, and there was nothing but silence.
Chapter Twenty-Four
LIESL WOKE UP FEELING AS THOUGH SHE’D BEEN clubbed over the head—which, in fact, was almost exactly what had happened. During her frantic struggles against the Lady Premiere, she had smacked her head against the doorjamb and gone as limp as a lettuce leaf.
The Lady Premiere had thus made two important discoveries:
1. She much preferred children when they were unconscious.
2. The girl did not have the magic, which meant that the boy must have it.
Liesl was lying in a narrow bed in a plain white room. She was quite alone. She did not know what had happened to Bundle or Po, and she shivered a little underneath the thin wool blanket that was covering her.
From beyond the door she heard the muffled sounds of arguing: a man’s voice she did not recognize, and the voice of the woman who had captured her.
“He can’t have gotten far with it,” the man was saying. “It’s dark as pitch outside, and he’s got nowhere to go.”
“Then it should be easy for you to find him and bring him back!” the woman retorted. Liesl heard footsteps, and their voices receded, though she heard the man mutter “useless” several times.
Liesl looked around the room more closely. There was a small oil lamp burning in the corner, a plain wooden table next to the bed, and next to that, a chair. Otherwise the room was empty.
Liesl sat up slowly. As she did, the pain in her head intensified. For a moment she had to sit gripping the edge of the bed and repeating the word ineffable over and over.
At last she felt well enough to stand. She did not have to check the door to know that it was locked. Instead she went to the window. Her heart soared as it slid open effortlessly, then her heart immediately plummeted again. She was very high up—on the third or fourth floor, she thought, though it was hard to tell exactly—and the ground below her window was rocky and uneven. The nearest tree was twenty or thirty feet away—too far to reach, or jump to.