BEYOND the doors was the largest chamber yet.
It was so large that it made the other chambers look tiny. It was larger than any cathedral or concert hall Van had ever seen. Its stone floor dwindled away into the distance like a narrowing carpet. Its walls were so high that they seemed to lean inward. Its ceiling, instead of being arched stone like the others, was a mosaic of glass shards, which let in a wash of silvery light. Its size and its light, shot through with the smells of metal and spice and smoke, were dizzying.
Van forced his eyes to focus. The towering walls were filled with shelves: rows and rows and rows of shelves, rising all the way up to the ceiling. Ladders and scaffolds and spiraling iron staircases chased the shelves upward, metal rungs twisting and crisscrossing like spiders’ threads. People in dark coats bustled up and down the ladders. More people filled the floor below, scribbling in ledgers, making notes on string-tied paper tags, knotting or pasting labels onto glass bottles of all sizes, shapes, and colors.
Because that was what filled the shelves.
Bottles.
Green and turquoise and indigo bottles. Bottles that sparkled. Bottles that were thick with dust. Bottles as large as milk jugs; bottles small enough to fit inside a closed mouth. Their glitter was dazzling. But Van couldn’t make out what was sealed inside.
And there wasn’t time to get closer. The girl with the squirrel was rushing toward the center of the room.
Van hurried after her, ducking for cover behind stairs and ladders. None of the dark-coated people seemed to notice him. As Van watched from behind a spiral staircase, the girl made her way toward a high podium, where a spectacled man the size and shape of an emperor penguin was scribbling in a massive book.
The girl stopped at the podium. The little man nodded. The girl passed something small and soft and silvery to a dark-coated woman at a table to the right. The woman slipped the silvery thing into a blue glass bottle. A man beside her tied a tag to the bottle’s neck. A third person, a woman with what looked like an opossum draped around her collar, grabbed the bottle and hurried toward the back of the massive room.
Van scurried sideways, keeping the bottle in sight. He skirted a mound of tarnished pennies that covered a patch of the stone floor, and a pile of what looked like small, shattered bones, and watched as the woman set the bottle on a low shelf. Van waited until she had hurried away again. Then he lunged.
The bottles on the shelf before him were small, about the size of his hand. Some were tinted with color, some were icily clear; some were spotless, and some were muffled with blankets of dust. The emerald-green bottles were shaped like mason jars, and each of them held something that glowed like a small golden coal. The tag dangling from one green bottle read, in faded black ink, Elizabeth O’Connell. August 12, 1900. Perseid meteor shower. Even through the thick layer of dust, Van could see the golden coal glowing inside.
But Van was looking for a different bottle.
And there it was. On the edge of the shelf just in front of him stood a small, sparkling, indigo-blue bottle. A silver wisp spun gently inside.
Van read its paper tag. Then he read it again, making sure the words and numbers were still there.
Peter Grey. April 8. Twelfth birthday.
Van’s memory replayed the last moments of the party. The spaceship cake. Peter blowing out the candles. The squirrel with the silvery wisp in its teeth.
Van stretched his fingers toward the bottle, and the silvery wisp spun faster.
It was like the raised arm of the spaceman buried in the park. It was like every other forgotten, ignored little object that Van had found and saved. It was waiting for him.
With such small motions that only someone watching closely would notice them at all, Van grabbed the bottle and slipped it into his pocket, along with the miniature china squirrel.
The weight of a hand landed on Van’s shoulder.
“What are you doing?” said a voice in his ear.
Van whirled to the right.
No one was there.
No one but a silvery, tufty-tailed squirrel, who was perched on Van’s shoulder, watching him with bright eyes.
“What?” Van whispered.
The squirrel blinked. “What?”
“Did you just say, ‘What are you doing’?”
“Maybe. Probably.” The squirrel’s eyes coasted past Van’s face and landed on a sparkling bottle. “Ooh, blue! Blue’s my favorite color. And green. And brown. And pink. And blue. Ooh, look! Blue!”
Van held his breath. His whole body trembled. He wasn’t sure which thing was more impossible—that the squirrel had just talked to him, or that he had heard it speak so clearly that its voice seemed to come from inside his own head.
“Am I imagining this?” Van kept his voice to a whisper. “Like I imagined hearing the squirrel in my pocket?”
The squirrel on his shoulder looked surprised. “You have a squirrel in your pocket?”
“I—”
“Which one? Cornelius? He’s small. Or Elizabetta? Or Barnavelt? Wait. No. I’m Barnavelt. Is it Cornelius?”
“Are you . . . ,” breathed Van. “Are you actually talking?”
“I’m not talking. You’re listening.” The squirrel cocked his head. His tiny nose quivered. “Do you smell popcorn?”
“What?”
“Maybe somebody wished for popcorn. I love popcorn.” The squirrel’s eyes focused on Van again. “Hey! What are you doing with that bottle?”
Van put a telltale hand over his pocket. “What bottle?”
“The one in your pocket. With Cornelius.”
“Oh. I . . .” Van stammered. “It belongs to a friend of mine. Kind of. I’m just keeping it safe for him.”
“But Pebble said—” The squirrel’s body stiffened. “Hawk!” he screamed, lunging inside Van’s collar.
Van glanced up. A broad-winged bird coasted over them, its shadow dimming the rows of bright glass.
The squirrel waited until the hawk was out of sight. “I don’t like hawks,” he whispered, inching back out onto Van’s shoulder. Then his body stiffened again. “Hey! Pebble!”
Van spun around, ready to duck from any little rocks that were flying in their direction.
Behind him stood the girl with the ponytail.
Her mouth hung open. Her mossy penny eyes were wide.
“Pebble!” the squirrel gushed. “It’s so good to see you! It’s been ages!”
Pebble didn’t answer. She just stared at Van. Van stared back. They stared at each other for so long that Barnavelt grew distracted and started loudly grooming his paws.
“What are you doing here?” Pebble finally asked.
“What are you doing here?” Van blurted, at the very same second. “What are all of you doing here? Why are you collecting old pennies and smoke from birthday candles?”
Pebble’s eyes grew even wider. Over her shoulder, Van spotted a man at the podium pulling a handful of coins out of his pocket. As he raised the coins one by one, a round, glimmering light emerged between the man’s fingertips, as though it had come from within the coin itself. There was a greenish flicker as the man passed the tiny lights to another man, who slipped each one into a pale blue bottle and sealed the top with a cork. Then the first man tossed the coins onto the pile and strode away.
“I’m pretty sure I smell popcorn,” said a small voice in Van’s ear. “Does anyone else smell popcorn?”
“No, Barnavelt,” said Pebble and Van at the same time.
Pebble’s eyebrows shot up. Van sucked in a breath. Before he could move or speak or even think of what to ask next, Pebble’s hand lashed out and grabbed his arm.
“You need to get out of here right now,” she growled. Then, still holding tight to Van’s arm, she shot toward the double doors.
“Why?” Van asked as Pebble dragged him toward the doorway, Barnavelt still clinging to his shoulder. “Why can’t I be here?”
“Because someone could see you,” Pebble hissed. “I can’t believe they haven’t already.”
“What would happen if they saw me?”
“I don’t know.” Pebble yanked him through the doors, into the dark of the staircase. “But it would be bad.”
Van stumbled up the steps behind her. “Would they hurt me?”
Pebble paused in a way that made Van’s stomach twist. Then she climbed faster, mumbling something he couldn’t hear.
“Yeah! Come on!” cheered the squirrel on Van’s shoulder. “Giddyup!”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Van, which was almost not a lie. The thought of the bottle in his pocket made his stomach twist again. “I just looked.”
“That’s bad enough!” said Pebble, her voice echoing in the dimness. “. . . Supposed to see any of this!”
“Why not? What are you . . .”
But the rest of Van’s words were lost in a rising roar.
The same terrible sound he’d heard before came crashing up from below, filling the darkness and the inside of Van’s head until everything rang. The steps beneath his feet began to shake. Van ripped his arm out of Pebble’s grasp and grabbed the stone banister. It was trembling too. Van squeezed his eyes shut and held on tight.
Finally, with smaller and smaller tremors, the sound died away. The chilly air went still.
Van pried his hands off the banister. He looked up at Pebble, standing just beside him. “What was that?”
Pebble blinked. “What was what?”
“That sound.”
“What sound?”
“You have to have heard it. That sound. That huge, roaring, howling sound!”
Van looked from Pebble to Barnavelt. The squirrel stared back at him. Then it took a flying leap toward Pebble’s shoulder.
“I think it’s coming from below us.” Van craned over the banister. Darkness fell away beneath him, endless and empty. “Are we above a train tunnel or something? Or is there some giant animal down there?”
Pebble’s voice sounded funnily strained. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That sound,” said Van, exasperated now. “I felt it. I—”
He whirled back toward Pebble.
But it wasn’t just Pebble anymore.
A knot of people in long, dark coats surrounded them.
Someone grabbed his arm. Van glanced up, straight into the eyes of a large black bird.
The bird was perched on the shoulder of a big man with dark eyes and long black hair. The man wore a coat covered with straps and hooks and small leather bags. Just below his collarbone, a vicious-looking knife gleamed in a sheath.
He lifted Van by two handfuls of his shirt.
“Little boy.” The man’s voice was deep and hard. “You have made a serious mistake.”