CHAPTER THIRTY

The Cursed Development

The next morning, I beckoned Cole over on the bus. “You’ve been avoiding me,” I said. I noticed he was still wearing Phineas Toogood’s ring. I slid over to make room for him.

He sat down beside me. “No, you’ve been avoiding me.”

“Well, maybe. But I always did, and that never stopped you from pestering me before.”

He smiled. “You’re kind of hard to resist, Spooky.”

“I’m really sorry about my sister,” I said. “You don’t have to worry. She’s gone now.”

“That’s okay, Spooky. It wasn’t that . . . I mean, your sister was scary, and she did push me off a cliff. But it’s not about her. It’s you. I guess I’m not sure what you want.”

“I’m not, either. But now I want you to not avoid me,” I said. “Deal?”

“Deal. Is that all you want?” He glanced at my hand, where I was wearing Windy’s ring.

“Well, pirate treasure would be nice, but that’s not going to happen.”

Cole laughed. “Don’t be too sure, Spooky. Pirate Toogood’s Treasure can’t be the only novel with pirate gold buried in it.”

“You’re right. Hey, want to come down to the repository with me this weekend? I bet Andre has some ideas about where to start looking. Maybe we can bring Lola and Amanda, too.”

“Sure, but it’s going to be hard to fit all four of us on one broomstick. I wonder if my family has any broomsticks, or anything else like that?”

“Maybe Cousin Hepzibah can help you find them, if you do,” I said.

“Yes, or maybe we could borrow that flying carpet from the repository,” said Cole.

“Good idea! We totally need to check out those other collections in the basement! I bet there’s a ton of amazing stuff.”

“You know, Spooky,” said Cole, “I knew things were going to be interesting that day I sat next to you on the bus. You have to admit, I’m kind of a genius.”

“You’re kind of a lot of things, Cole, I’ll give you credit for that. And you’re right. I may have underestimated you just a little.”

• • •

In the months after I said good-bye to Kitty, spring came early, and everything changed. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m the same person I was a year ago.

I often go up to the top of Thorne Hill Road, where the old Thorne Mansion used to stand, to visit the grave of Windy, little Jack, and Phinny’s left hand. It’s peaceful up there, with the smell of the roses and the view of the water.

The developers have had a terrible time getting their resort off the ground: first permit problems, then union disputes, then a fire tore through the architect’s office, destroying the blueprints. They’re saying the project is cursed.

My parents rented an apartment over a laundromat in North Harbor for my family to stay in while Dad’s building the new house. It feels strange living with Internet and central heating again. Sometimes ghostly tremors make the glasses click together in the kitchen cabinets, but it’s only the big clothes dryers shaking the floor downstairs.

We haven’t found any pirate treasure yet, but I was right—Andre has lots of good leads. Lola and Amanda Pereira are helping us look, too. At first Andre wasn’t so crazy about us telling other kids about the repository, but Elizabeth brought them to meet Dr. Rust, who gave them some kind of test, which they passed. Now Amanda turns pink and giggles whenever she sees Andre. I think she has a crush.

The repositorians didn’t use a jinni or a walnut to transport the Thorne Mansion to the Poe Annex after all. Instead, they opened a portal in the graveyard and used a machine Leo Novikov had built to sort of twist the mansion through it. I was worried all the walls and furniture would shatter into toothpicks, but I should have trusted the repositorians. Whenever I visit Cousin Hepzibah—not with Leo’s machine, just the ordinary way, by flying down on a broomstick and passing through the creeping horror of the Lovecraft Corpus—the mansion stands as tall and crooked in the Poe Annex moonlight as if it’s been there for three hundred years, with every table and hearthrug exactly where it should be. Even the crows are still there.

And sometimes, when I shut my eyes, I can almost feel a ghost of an echo of Kitty.