CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Phineas Toogood’s Kiss

You know how to get to the roof?” asked Elizabeth. I shook my head. “No, of course you don’t—this is your first time here, isn’t it? Griffin better show you.”

She put two fingers in her mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle. A minute later, an enormous nose pushed the door open a crack and an eye peered in. “Griffin, can you take Sukie up to the roof?” Elizabeth leaned around a pile of stuff on her desk and held out her hand to me. “It was good to see you again. Nice to meet your sister, too. Get home safe.”

“Thanks for all your help.” I zipped up my parka, picked up my broom and backpack, and squeezed through the door.

The gigantic dog set off down the corridor, his nails clicking. He stopped expectantly in front of the elevators, so I pressed the up button. When the elevator came, he gave a little bark. It sounded like “Roof!”

I looked for a button marked roof but there wasn’t one, so I just pushed the top button. “Is that what you meant?” I asked.

He sniffed.

Kitty thought it was ridiculous of me to have a one-sided conversation with a dog.

The top floor was way fancier than the floor with Elizabeth’s chimney office. We passed rooms paneled in oak and mahogany, rooms with mural-painted ceilings, a room lined with card-catalog drawers, and a big room with rows of tables and fantastic stained-glass windows on all four sides. I wanted to stop and stare, but Griffin bounded ahead, making me run a little to keep up.

At the end of a hallway, a ladder hung halfway down the wall, with a trapdoor at the top. Griffin stood on his hind legs, hooked his front paws around the bottom rung, and pulled. The ladder slid down. He bent his head, stuck his nose in the small of my back, and nudged me up.

“Thanks, Griffin,” I said, reaching behind me to pet his gigantic floppy ears. Then I tucked the broom under my arm and hauled myself up the ladder.

• • •

The sun had set. The roof stood in a grove of tall, twinkly-windowed city buildings, with glimpses of Central Park peeking through. Andre was waiting for me, wearing his hiking boots. They made him even taller.

“So what happens? Do your boots let you fly?”

“No, they’re seven-league boots. They make me go seven leagues a step.”

“How far’s that?”

“About twenty-four miles.”

“So, what, you just walk off the roof?”

He nodded. “Don’t worry, I’ve done it before. Lots of times.”

“Carrying a person?”

“Carrying a person, carrying a dozen eggs, even carrying a haunted harp one time. Now, that was heavy! How do you want to do this—piggyback or fireman’s lift?”

“I don’t know—which way are you less likely to drop me?”

“I’m not going to drop you.”

“I thought you said you were so unathletic?”

“I never said I’m unathletic! I’m just bad at sports. Big difference. Fine, fireman’s lift. Ready?” He took me under my arms and swung me around his shoulders, draping me like a scarf. “Comfortable?”

I wiggled a bit to even myself out, feeling very awkward. “More or less.”

“Hang on to that broom,” he said. “That way if you’re worried I’m going to drop you, you can catch yourself.” Then, without bothering to warn me again, he stepped off the roof.

I managed not to scream—I didn’t want to startle him. With my head hanging down and everything blurring together, I started to get motion sickness, so I screwed my eyes shut and hung on tight.

At least it was over fast. “Okay, Sukie!” said Andre eight or nine steps later. “We’re here. I’m gonna put you down now, all right? You can let go.” He shook my arm.

I opened my eyes. He was standing in the field behind my cousin’s mansion, where I’d practiced my flying. He swung me off his shoulders, gently but clumsily. I landed on my butt. He held out a hand and pulled me up, then reached out as if to brush the dirt off my backside. Apparently thinking better of it, he dropped his hand.

“Thanks,” I said. “That was quick. So, um . . . do you want to come in for dinner?”

“I’d like to, but my dad’s expecting me home.”

“Okay. . . . Bye, then.”

“Bye!” He waved over his shoulder, took a step, and disappeared.

Flying broomsticks! Magic boots! I wondered how I would travel next. On that magic carpet, maybe? A pirate ship?

I thought about the dim portraits of my ancestors hanging on Cousin Hepzibah’s walls—the men in top hats and the ladies in frilly lace caps with their serious faces. They must have flown around on broomsticks themselves. I wished I could have seen it.

• • •

Once Kitty and I were alone together, she let me know how furious she was. How could I trust those awful people and their monster dog? They weren’t family! They weren’t friends! I didn’t even know them! They were dangerous—and they could see her! How could I have let that awful giant carry me like a sack for hundreds of miles? How was she supposed to keep me safe if I was going to go running around with people like that?

“Kitty O’Dare, I am not a baby!” I yelled, just as I had yelled a thousand times when I was a baby. “I’m older than you are, now! You can’t tell me what to do anymore, just because you always did!”

I thought of what Cousin Hepzibah had told me—that ghosts don’t change and can’t understand when we do. But I couldn’t stop myself from ranting. “You know why kids treat me like a freak? Because I am a freak—I’m a freak because of you! And I’m not the one who needs protecting. I’m perfectly fine! You’re the one who’s DEAD!”

Kitty’s eyes blazed white lightning. She reared up like a tree in a gale. She was enormous. I’d never been afraid of her before, but now terror seized me. I tried to run, but my feet were rooted to the ground. “Stop it, Kitty! Stop it!” I screamed. A wind tore through the trees, and I couldn’t hear my own voice. “Stop it, Kitty! Go away, go away!” I hid my face in my arms.

When I looked up, she was gone. Everything was still and cold and dark. The last time I had felt so alone was the day Kitty died.

• • •

It was just as well Andre hadn’t come in for dinner. Mom was sitting in the kitchen looking upset, and Dad was comforting her.

A year ago I would have gone away before they saw me, to give them privacy. But now I was older. Hadn’t I just told Kitty that? Maybe I could help somehow.

“Mom! What’s wrong?”

They both looked up, startled.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. It’s nothing.” Mom wiped her eyes.

“It can’t be nothing. Can’t I help?”

“It’s nothing new. Not really. I’m just worried about Cousin Hepzibah. She’s pretty strong for ninety-one, but . . .”

I knew what she meant. Mom loved Cousin Hepzibah, but it wasn’t just her health she was worried about. “It’s us too, isn’t it?” I said. If something happened to our cousin, where would we go? “I’ll help you, Mom. I can do more.” I could sell that jewelry online. I could get Cousin Hepzibah to teach me how to make those lace barrettes and sell them at school. Lola and Amanda had liked them—I bet a lot of the girls would buy them. Or I could sell them online on that craft site.

Who was I kidding? I couldn’t support our family selling barrettes.

Dad said, “We’ll be okay, Sukie.”

Mom said, “You don’t need to worry. We’ll be fine. We’re building up our savings. We’ve saved a little even just in the time we’ve been here.”

A little would never be enough. I really needed to find that treasure.

• • •

I tossed and turned that night, falling at last into a long, muddled dream. I was at the bottom of a pit, which was really a chimney, with a clock ticking far away overhead, its pendulum swinging back and forth, sharp as a blade, getting lower and lower, only it wasn’t exactly a pendulum, it was the evil letter from the evil clasp. Darkness began to close in on me, pressing against my skin like dense, wet, choking wool until I felt I was being buried alive. Then the bottom dropped out beneath me. One by one all my arms and legs dropped away separately, as if I’d somehow come apart like a skeleton, and each bone went crashing down, down, down, each bone screaming for all the other bones that were no longer me, just scattered pieces of something that had once been somebody.

I choked on a scream, trying to catch my breath.

Then someone was holding me, rocking me. Andre, I thought, shaking with relief. He had promised not to drop me, and he hadn’t. “Hush now, my own one,” said a voice, a man. “Hush now, my Hepzibah. Japhet can’t hurt you now. I’ve got you safe.”

I opened my eyes and saw that it wasn’t Andre at all, but a familiar-looking stranger. His long, silky black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing sharply contoured cheekbones above a taut jaw. He was looking at me with storm-gray eyes full of anxiety and love. He pulled me closer, then kissed me.

The kiss was like nothing I’d ever imagined. It was cold, colder than the ocean in winter, and stronger and wilder too. The world spun and crashed, broke and foamed around that kiss like waves in a storm. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. The storm was tossing ships to their doom against rocks, sweeping barrels off deck and smashing them, but I wasn’t a sinking ship. I wasn’t a broken cask. I was the storm itself, wild and exultant—and somewhere deep in the center, cold and still.

Then a bell tolled—a church bell? A bell buoy?—and the kiss ended. He lifted my left hand. “Your ring! You’re not wearing your ring! Did you lose it? Did you leave it in the desk drawer again? You must wear it. Promise me you will.”

“I promise,” I whispered.

“I’ll come back to you, Windy,” said the man. “I promise too. Nothing will stop me. Not even death.” He took my hands in his cold hands and squeezed them. The bell stopped tolling, and he was gone.

I sat up in bed, shivering. What a dream! I rubbed my eyes.

My finger felt empty, the way it does when you’ve been wearing a ring for a few days and then you take it off. I got out of bed, wincing at the cold floor, and went over to the desk. What drawer? I opened them all in the moonlight, more and more frantically. My ring! I needed my ring! What ring? I thought with part of my mind, but some other part seemed to know. That was the part that found the false bottom in the left-hand drawer and pulled out a little leather box. A silver ring gleamed inside. I slipped it on and sighed.

• • •

I was chilled through and too freaked out to stay in my room, so I pulled on my bathrobe and crept downstairs, the bare wood floor cold and creaking under my feet.

Cousin Hepzibah was sitting by the kitchen hearth. She had her lap full of the grandmother pants I’d gotten from the woman at the house sale.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d see if I could alter these for you. I noticed your own trousers were getting a little short,” she said.

“Thank you, Cousin Hepzibah! You’re the best.”

“Well, I like to sew. It’s soothing. Here, hold these up to your waist. Yes, that looks about right. You couldn’t sleep either?”

I shook my head. “Crazy dreams.”

“Warm milk?” She started to get up.

“Thanks, I can get it.” I reached down a mug and poured some milk from the saucepan on the stove. “Want more?”

“Yes, please.”

I took her mug and refilled it. As I handed it back to her, she touched the ring.

“This looks antique. May I take a closer look?” she asked. I slipped the ring off my finger. She looked it over and read the inscription inside it: “P.B.T. to H.T.T. Your Heart is my Home.”

“Why, that must be Phineas and Windy! It’s their initials,” she said. “Where did you find it?”

“That’s the weird thing. I just knew where it was—in a secret compartment in the desk drawer. Phineas Toogood was in my dream—if it was a dream. He . . . he kissed me.” I stood still, my fingers to my lips, remembering the kiss.

Cousin Hepzibah shook her head. “Be careful, Sukie,” she said. “It’s dangerous to get too close to a ghost.”

Thinking about Kitty, I knew she was right.