chapter 11
“I would have done anything he told me,” said Alex, putting down his pen and bringing everyone’s work to a halt. It was the next day, Tuesday. The first Pumpkin Show was that evening, and the ball in three days’ time. He, Paul, Minhi, and Sid sat at an enormous round table in the New Aubrey House study, working on homework and stories for the Pumpkin Show.
Sid was writing furiously, a stack of books in front of him, opened and laid across one another as he consulted each and scribbled away on long yellow legal pads. “The Skein says you should use recurrent phrases to drive the reader along,” he said as he wrote. “The Skein says if you introduce a gun on the first page you have to use it before the end.”
Paul asked, “Does The Skein recommend you measure twice and cut once?”
Minhi offered, “Does The Skein recommend you not let anyone else get any work done?”
But for Sid, the ideas were flowing. Alex himself hadn’t managed to get anything down. He turned instead to studying, and finally he had spoken up, haunted by the events of the night before.
Minhi laid down her own book and sighed, as though relieved that he wanted to talk about it. Alex had given them a brief run-down and then asked them to drop it. But now he found he just couldn’t not talk. That was unusual for him. It was true, though: He would have done anything the vampire—Ultravox, of course—had suggested.
“You say that now,” Minhi observed, “but you didn’t, did you?”
Ultravox and his retinue had disappeared, either in the tunnel or somewhere along the track. The only positive side to Alex’s excursion had been that Alex had seen him, and even now his description was being studied by the guys with the computers. But it was a good bet that Ultravox was at this point safely inside the protective walls of the Scholomance.
“Do you think it’s true?” Paul asked, getting back to something that was bugging Alex even more than the fact that he had been about to throw himself off a moving train. “That your dad knows everything you’ve been up to?”
“Obviously it’s not a perfect secret,” Alex said. “It’s hardly a secret at all. There are Polidorium people who know, there’re all of you—”
“Like we’re gonna be calling your mom and dad,” Sid said, and snorted.
“There’s my sister, and of course there’s the fact that my dad isn’t an idiot. He was a part of the organization.”
“May I . . . ,” Vienna spoke, as if unsure whether to go on.
“What’s that?” Alex said.
“This is none of my business,” she demurred.
“Seriously, that never stops these guys.” Alex smiled. “Hey, you’re the one who got sideswiped by Punk Elle. Go ahead, tell me what you’re thinking.”
“This man, Ultravox, he told you things in order to get you to do what he wanted,” Vienna said. “My father is a negotiator and I know what such a man is like. That treaty he’s working on? I’ve seen him talk people into supporting it even though they were dead set against it. Changing people’s minds is not about bending them to your will. It’s about getting them to bend their own will. What I mean is, the fact that what Ultravox said made you want to do things does not make what he said true. It just makes it something you could believe. In fact, the best lies always sound like truth. So—you really can’t count on any of it being true.”
Alex looked at Sid and Paul with a pursed frown. Not bad.
“Mate,” said Paul, “you would do well to talk to your parents.”
“Really talk to them,” emphasized Minhi.
“I will,” Alex said.
“Really?” she said, laughing.
“I think so.”
“Hang on,” Sid said, thinking of something else. Alex watched the boy seem to scan invisible letters hanging before him in the air. As if possessed, Sid opened up The Skein, ran a finger down a page, and then shut it again. Sid wrote down a few words and said, “Okay.”
Paul asked, “Okay, so you’re with us again?”
“Yeah,” Sid said. “I think I’m good to go with the first story.”
“Already?” Alex asked. “That’s amazing.”
“I wouldn’t say amazing.” Sid sat back, looking pleased. “For years I’ve been doing character descriptions. Now that I’ve learned to put a story around them, it’s—well, I think I followed the advice pretty well.”
“I’m not surprised—he could tell a vampire story in his sleep,” Minhi said.
“Oh, my story isn’t about vampires,” said Sid, shaking his head. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Minhi looked shocked. “Why not? That’s like your subject.”
“I think maybe it’s too close,” Sid said. “Anyway . . . I’m not sure I’m looking forward to the reading part.”
“When’s the first Pumpkin Show again?” Alex asked.
“Tonight,” Minhi said. “It’s not too late to sign up.”