The librarian smiled. The smile was as crooked as his hunched shoulders. “Of course. It is. Come back. Soon.”
Jonathan hurried through the lightless hallways, the lantern swinging from his leading hand. He didn’t slow to look down other halls for Colin. He was ready to be back to normal voices, to daylight and people.
He was almost jogging when he turned the last corner and stumbled, blinking, into the light of the dining room, so bright after the blackness of twisting stone and shadow.
“There he is!” he heard Sebastian’s voice bark. He squinted and saw the older boy standing on a chair with the sword pointed right at him. “Grab him!”
Rough hands grabbed him by both arms and dragged him over to a chair in the middle of the dining room. Sebastian stood before him, his face white with anger. His eyes glittered like twin flames.
“Where were you, Johnny? His hideout?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What were you two doing? Giggling and shoving them in your mouth as fast as you could?”
Jonathan looked desperately around at the other faces. They all looked nervous. Walter held his hands up in a little shrug and crinkled his eyebrows sympathetically.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sebastian, really—”
“Oh, cut the crap, Johnny. I know you were with him. Tell us where he is. Or it’s gonna get ugly.”
Jonathan opened his mouth to argue. Then closed it. He looked steadily into Sebastian’s eyes. “What happened?”
“Like you don’t know!”
Jonathan kept his voice calm. “What happened?”
“Fine. Let’s all play a little game of pretend with Johnny.” A rotten, ugly half smile rose to Sebastian’s face. “We’re all eating lunch. You, too. And somehow, while we’re all down here, all the chocolates just—disappear! All my chocolates. And I find this in the basket.” Sebastian fished in his pocket and pulled something out and threw it on the ground at Jonathan’s feet.
It was a little paper crane. Carefully folded. And all crumpled up.
“And I come back down here and, surprise, Johnny’s gone! And what do we find under his pillow?” Sebastian rummaged through his other pocket and threw something else to the floor. Without looking, Jonathan knew it was his parents’ letter, folded neatly into a perfect bird.
“So, Johnny, you tell me … how stupid do you think I am?”
Jonathan looked back and forth between the two paper cranes, then back up at Sebastian.
“I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re mad. And I think you’re right. Colin took your chocolates. I know you’re right. But I don’t know where he is. That’s the truth.”
“You already told me that if you did know, you wouldn’t tell me.”
Jonathan nodded and pinched his top lip between his teeth. He looked away, out the window at the storm clouds piled atop one another above Slabhenge’s crumbling walls.
“Yeah. And I wouldn’t.” Then he looked at Sebastian. “I won’t. But I haven’t seen him. I promise.”
Sebastian licked the angry spittle from his lips. He blinked and blew out a breath and looked away. He opened his mouth to say something, but Benny butted in first.
“You can’t trust him, Sebastian.”
Jonathan’s hands balled into anxious fists. He didn’t like the eager edge to Benny’s voice. The way his eyes were shining and his mouth opened and closed. Like a snake coiled and about to strike.
“Shut up, Benny, I—” Sebastian started to say.
“You can’t trust him,” Benny said again. “I know why he’s here.”
Sebastian’s head turned slowly to look at Benny. His eyebrows scrunched together.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t,” Jonathan said quietly, his eyes locked on Benny’s.
“I peeked at his papers. In the Admiral’s office, when he first got here,” Benny said. His eyes stayed with Jonathan. The corners of his pudgy mouth teased toward a smile. “You can’t trust him, Sebastian. Do you know what he did?”
“Don’t,” Jonathan pleaded again. He rubbed at his arms with his hands.
“What?” Sebastian asked. The whole room hung in waiting silence. Only the windows shook and spoke, straining to hold back the storm that fought to rush inside.
“I know why he doesn’t like fire,” Benny said, his smile ripening into a sickening sneer.
Jonathan shook his head.
“Little Johnny here,” Benny said, savoring every bloody word like a vampire, “is a murderer.”
Jonathan’s jaw clenched down to steel.
“No,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh, yes. A murderer. And do you know who he killed?”
Jonathan tried to stand up, but hard hands on his shoulders held him down.
“You shut up,” he said, his voice cracking. Already, Benny was blurred, standing before him.
“He murdered his little sister. Sophia. Set a fire and burned their house down, with her trapped inside.”
“Shut up!” Jonathan screamed, fighting at the hands that held him down.
“It’s true!” Benny shouted back, stepping toward him. “Show them your arms!”
“No!” Jonathan howled. “Don’t!”