Chapter 18

With Icky’s help, Cordelia caught hold of the bottom rung of the ladder. With her other hand, she passed Cabal up to Gregory, who was still hanging upside down, his hat long gone, his hair a curtain over his face.

Then, hand over hand, Cordelia climbed, even as the rope ladder swayed through the open air, whipping past slate roofs and stone towers. Higher and higher the balloon climbed. Wind stung Cordelia’s cheeks and made tears spring up in her eyes.

“Go on,” Gregory shouted, when she had reached his level. He had righted himself. Icky was still clinging to his back and Cabal was tucked inside his jacket, so Cordelia could only make out his eyes and the tufted white hair on his ears. Gregory reached out, put a hand on Cordelia’s back, and pushed. “You go first.”

She didn’t argue. Just looking down at the network of gray pavement flowing like rivers below her was enough to make her dizzy. The balloon swerved left around a church spire and Cordelia felt her stomach launch into her throat. She turned her attention upward, to the swollen purple balloon, and the solid basket suspended underneath it. Not too far now . . .

Both Cordelia and the balloon continued to climb. The dragon appeared on the lip of the basket, flapping his wings, squawking encouragingly, and then just as quickly withdrew. Her arms were shaking. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she slipped—the fall through open air, the long, hard tumble, the splat. Almost there . . .

At the end of the ladder she hauled herself into the basket headfirst, breathless and grateful. Gregory was right behind her and landed on Cordelia’s back. Cordelia groaned. Gregory grunted. Icky squeaked. And Cabal began barking.

“Very graceful,” said a girl’s voice. A familiar girl’s voice.

Cordelia wriggled out from underneath Gregory. For a second, when she looked up, she didn’t believe it; she blinked rapidly several times, thinking she must have hit her head. A girl with fat banana curls and a white dress the exact shape of a wedding cake was standing, arms crossed, beneath the small blue flame that kept the balloon aloft.

Still, the girl didn’t disappear, no matter how much Cordelia rubbed her eyes and wished for her to.

Which meant that she was really stuck in a hot-air balloon with Elizabeth Perkins, the girl she hated most in the world.

Cordelia had a sudden urge to launch herself out of the basket.

Gregory was the one to speak first. “What are you doing here?”

Elizabeth tossed her irritatingly perfect hair. “Is that your way of saying thank you?”

“Thank you for what?” Cordelia said. “You nearly squashed me.”

“I saved you, you mean.” Elizabeth turned her icy blue eyes to Cordelia. Once, Cordelia had envied Elizabeth’s eyes. That was long ago, when they’d been friends. Now Cordelia thought Elizabeth’s eyes were the color of mold on cheese. “If it wasn’t for me, a lion would be picking you out of his teeth by now.”

She was right, of course; but Cordelia would never admit it.

“I told you,” Gregory said, turning to Cordelia. “I told you someone was following us. Didn’t I?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t following you.”

“Oh yeah?” Cordelia said, crossing her arms. “Then how’d you end up at a circus all the way in New York?”

For a split second, Elizabeth hesitated, and in that brief moment, she looked just like the old Elizabeth: the Elizabeth who was afraid of lightning, who loved to play hide-and-seek but always forgot to check the cupboards next to the stove, who had once made matching friendship bracelets out of bits of an unraveled sock. Then the moment passed, and she looked as pinched and unpleasant as ever.

“It’s my birthday,” she said, with another hair toss. Cordelia wondered how she didn’t have a constant crick in her neck. “Daddy said I could have anything I wanted. I wanted to go to the circus in New York.” She shrugged. “When I got bored, I decided to . . . explore backstage. Good thing I did, too, or you’d be mincemeat. You owe me now, Cordelia. Remember that.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Cordelia said, when Elizabeth smirked. Elizabeth could have taught a master class in smirking.

Elizabeth ignored her. “So,” she said, “where are we heading?”

“We?” Gregory nearly choked on the word.

“We are not heading anywhere,” Cordelia said sternly. “You’re going home.” She peeked over the edge of the basket and instantly regretted it. They were skimming the rooftops now, the shadow of the balloon leaping over shingle and shale. Cordelia spotted several children gaping at them from an attic window. Up ahead, a bright copper clock tower gleamed in the moonlight. Cordelia quickly turned away from the dizzying view. “How do you land this thing?”

“I’m not telling you,” Elizabeth said.

“Don’t be a priss,” Cordelia said, which was like telling Icky not to fart, but still. “Go on and bring us down. Then you can go running back to Daddy.”

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. “You listen to me. I’m the captain of this balloon—”

“Balloons don’t have captains,” Cordelia scoffed.

“This balloon has a captain, so you better be nice to me, or I’ll make you wish that lion had sunk his teeth into you instead.”

“Oh, really? Are you going to bat me to death with your eyelashes?”

“Cordelia,” Gregory said warningly.

The balloon was rocking a little, picking up speed, and she struggled to keep her footing. “Or maybe your daddy will give me a time-out.”

“Cordelia,” Gregory said, a little louder.

“Shut up.” Elizabeth was staggering too, as the balloon rocked back and forth in the wind. “You don’t know anything. You’re nothing but an ugly, smelly, stupid—”

“CORDELIA!” Gregory roared.

She whipped around to face him. “What do you—?” The words evaporated in her throat and turned to a squeak. The clock tower loomed only a few feet in front of them.

They were heading directly for a collision.

“Get down!” Elizabeth shoved Cordelia, hard.

Cordelia rolled to the left, taking Gregory down with her. The basket tilted wildly under their combined weight. Icky and Cabal tumbled after them. The ropes groaned as the basket tipped. Suddenly she couldn’t see. Cabal had landed on top of her, his soft belly splayed across her eyes. Cordelia pushed him off. Elizabeth was standing, pale-faced, gripping the thick ropes that connected the balloon to the basket.

“What are you doing?” Cordelia shrieked. Icky screeched in fear. As the basket once again tilted, Cabal came tumbling down toward Cordelia, landing in a heap at her feet.

“What’s—it—look—like?” Elizabeth huffed out. She was leaning all the way back, her slick leather shoes slipping a little on the floor of the basket, as the balloon shuddered and bucked at the end of the line like a dog resisting its lead. “I’m steering.”

She was right: slowly, slowly, they began to change direction. The balloon swelled with the wind. They turned a circle in the sky like a humongous ship carving through the frothy clouds. And suddenly Cordelia understood: Elizabeth had used Cordelia and Gregory’s weight to help change the balloon’s course at the last minute.

Finally the basket stopped bucking like a wild horse. Cordelia felt safe enough to stand. Elizabeth let go of the rope. It snapped into place, tight and taut as a pulled bowstring.

The clock tower was safely behind them; they had left New York City behind, and all around them was nothing but deep navy sky, and wispy clouds touched by moonlight.

Elizabeth had saved them. Again.

Gregory stood up, coughing. “Icky puff hif foot in my mouv,” he said, sticking out his tongue and revealing patches of filch fur.

Elizabeth’s eyes landed on the filch and she recoiled, as though she were seeing him for the first time. “What is that thing?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It smells like a dirty dishcloth.”

Icky, no doubt thinking he had been complimented, chattered delightedly. Cordelia sucked in a deep breath. She thought of the horrified faces of the circus performers.

Fortunately, before she could speak a word, the dragon settled the problem for her. With a sudden, furious flapping, he rose off the floor of the basket and settled on Elizabeth’s shoulder. She shrieked and stumbled backward.

“Get your lizard off me!” she cried, trying to swat the dragon down. The dragon, thinking it was a game, let out a delighted caw and dug his claws more firmly into the fabric of her dress.

Cordelia couldn’t repress a smile. “It isn’t a lizard,” she said. “It’s a dragon.”

Immediately, Elizabeth went totally still. Her face lost all color. With her ringlet curls and white dress, she looked like a porcelain doll come to life. “A—a what?”

“A dragon,” Cordelia said matter-of-factly. “A member of the northern ridged species, and a baby. Probably two or three months old.”

Elizabeth was trembling like a brittle leaf in the wind. Her eyes settled on Icky and Cabal. “What are—what are those?”

“That’s a filch.” Cordelia pointed. “He’s all right, just a little temperamental. And he snores, especially when his allergies kick up. And that”—she pointed to Cabal—“is a zuppy.”

“A zombie puppy,” Gregory said, with a certain degree of pride. “That means he’s not exactly alive. And he has to eat blood.”

“Blood,” Elizabeth repeated dully. The dragon was happily chewing on the ends of her curls.

“Only for the first few weeks,” Cordelia said. “Zuppies have very sensitive stomachs when they’re newly turned.”

Elizabeth was still motionless. It was as though she had been frozen in place. Only her eyes moved, rolling back and forth with a kind of suppressed panic. Taking pity on her, Cordelia moved forward and detached the dragon from her shoulder. Elizabeth gasped, as though she’d been released from underwater, and backed up as far as she could go without hurling herself into the air.

“Tell me,” she said, still panting. “Tell me everything.”

There was no point in trying to conceal the truth. “There are more of them,” Cordelia said. “Not just dragons and filches and zuppies, but hufflebottoms and squelches, slints and cockatrices. My father cares for injured monsters. That’s what he does.” When Elizabeth’s lips curled into a sneer, she added defensively, “Someone has to help them.”

“But now all the monsters are gone,” Gregory finished. “Someone stole them, and dad-napped Cordelia’s father.”

Elizabeth looked to Cordelia as if for confirmation. Cordelia swallowed down the sudden pressure of grief and reached into her pocket for the note she’d retrieved from her father’s closet.

“I found this in his room,” she said.

Elizabeth accepted the note wordlessly, and seemed to take a very long time to get to the end of the fragment. As she read, she seemed to go very green. In fact, she turned the exact shade of a particularly pickled pickle.

But finally, she looked up.

“Let me get this straight,” Elizabeth said, speaking very slowly, as if each word had a physical shape she had to work her way around. “You’re telling me that all those horrible creatures—the slints, the hufflesquelches . . .”

“Hufflebottoms,” Gregory corrected her.

Elizabeth ignored him. “You’re telling me they’re all . . . lost? You’re telling me they might be anywhere?”

“They’re not horrible,” Cordelia snapped. “And they’re not lost. They were taken by a man—”

“Or a woman,” Gregory interjected.

“Or a woman,” Cordelia agreed. “With the initials of HP. It says so right in the note.”

“And it’s our job to find ’em,” Gregory said cheerfully.

Elizabeth’s eyes took on a cloudy look that Cordelia couldn’t decipher. Then she tossed her hair over her shoulder and gave an exaggerated sigh. “It’s lucky for you I’ve no imminent plans,” she said. “Now you’re really going to need me.”

“Need you?” Cordelia repeated. “We don’t need you. We don’t even want you.”

Elizabeth smiled thinly, the way a cat smiles at the mouse between its paws. “Well, then, I suppose you don’t want to know what HP stands for.”