For several days Gabriel had intended to tell his father what he had learned about the Chamber of Runes and Corax, but he kept putting it off because he would have to admit that he had paravolated.
You’re in far too much danger now, Gabriel, Paladin said. You must tell him.
I know, agreed Gabriel. I’ll do it tonight.
But dinner seemed to go on forever. Adam had made chocolate pudding for dessert, and Trudy took only the tiniest spoonful from her little bowl. “Oh, this is just too much,” she said, shaking her head.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Adam.
“It’s all that…chocolate,” she replied with a grimace.
“It’s perfect!” said Aunt Jaz, who had been savoring each spoonful. She looked curiously at Trudy. “You used to be crazy about chocolate. Remember when you baked constantly and made those delicious cookies and cakes for all the pastry shops in the neighborhood?”
“That must have been when I was in love,” said Trudy. “Chocolate is different when you’re in love.”
“Hmm. Perhaps it is,” said Aunt Jaz softly.
Amused, Gabriel kicked Pamela under the table.
“Mom?” said Pamela. “When did you stop liking chocolate?”
Trudy just sighed.
“Was my dad still around?”
Trudy’s eyes darted this way and that, suddenly aware of everyone’s curiosity. “I’m sure I can’t remember!” she snapped. “Why are you all staring at me?”
Gabriel turned to Aunt Jaz. Though she said nothing, he detected a hint of secrecy in her expression. At once, he felt sure that Aunt Jaz knew something about Trudy’s missing memory.
There was no chance to talk to his father in the kitchen. Gabriel helped clear the table and do the dishes, then padded upstairs to find him in the study, already snoring in his big leather armchair. A huge leather-bound volume lay in his lap, open at a page full of confusing Gutnish hieroglyphs.
Gabriel shook his arm. “Dad?” he said, but Mr. Finley continued to snore. Finally, Gabriel gave up and trudged to his bedroom.
When he reached the landing, Pamela looked out the doorway of her bedroom. “Gabriel, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Did you notice Aunt Jaz just now?”
He nodded. “Yeah, with that weird expression on her face, right?”
“I think it’s all connected. My mother, love, chocolate, my dad. Do you know what I think? It’s another Finley secret.”
Gabriel gave a weary nod. “There are a ton of them.”
“She knows something, and I have to find out what.”
“How?”
Pamela gave a faint shrug and a smile. “Good night.”
When Gabriel entered his room, he saw Paladin sitting on the bed knob. The raven hopped onto his shoulder and nuzzled his ear. A soothing melody from a violin swelled from Pamela’s room. Paladin cocked his head to listen.
She plays very well, he remarked.
“Yeah,” agreed Gabriel.
If I didn’t have you as my amicus, I would choose Pamela.
“Abby would be very sad to hear that,” Gabriel replied. “She really wants to bond with a raven.”
Paladin rearranged a feather in his left wing, then tucked his beak thoughtfully into his chest. Finding a raven—or a human—is as tricky as finding a best friend. You can’t plan it; you can’t predict it; it just happens.
On this evening full of secrets, there was another meeting going on at the top of Cemetery Hill. Hundreds of dark figures with dim yellow eyes were perched upon every statue and tombstone, waiting to hear a robin speak.
“This is outrageous!” cried Snitcher to the valravens. “Why haven’t you brought me the Finley boy?”
The robin paced along the shoulder of a great white statue of an angel. He glanced up at its gentle marble eyes, wishing this heavenly messenger would come to life and take over where the valravens had failed. But the wish was not granted. The torc held no power over angels.
“We almost had him,” muttered one valraven.
“How could you possibly fail when there are so many more of you than him?” the robin replied.
“We didn’t expect the girl to have such a fearsome weapon,” muttered another valraven.
“What weapon?” replied the robin. “You are immortal! Nothing can kill you!”
This question prompted a grudging silence; no valraven would admit that he’d been defeated by potatoes and tights.
The robin’s eyes darted back and forth with annoyance. “Can’t one of you do what I asked?” he snapped. “Seize the boy when he is unprotected!”
“The best time to catch him would be when he merges with his raven, Paladin,” said a gravelly voice. The one-eyed phantom, Hookeye, spoke from his perch upon a mausoleum.
This idea pleased all the valravens. It would be much easier to gang up on a single raven. They uttered caws and throks of enthusiasm.
“But the boy rarely does that,” interrupted the robin. “I know, because I’ve watched him for hours through his window. He would only do it if…”
The robin looked confused, as if his dim bulb of a brain couldn’t manage another thought. But the torc suddenly quivered around his neck, and his voice took on a deeper, more commanding tone.
“He would do it if one of his friends was in grave danger.”
“An excellent point, Your Eminence!” said Hookeye, guessing that Corax had found a way to speak through the robin. “The boy cherishes his friends,” he remarked with a sneer. “It is one of his weaknesses. Leave the rest to me.”
Abby couldn’t sleep. Her mind was full of the day’s adventure, and she had an uneasy feeling that it was not over yet. A shrill wind made the oak tree outside her window sway and creak. Breezy gusts blew twigs against the sill. The night felt rebellious; it didn’t want to settle. She pulled up the blind and peered outside. The waning moon in her backyard cast deep shadows. Then something silky and black fluttered upon her windowsill.
Abby put on her eyeglasses, and raised the window. Standing before her was a black bird with a blunt beak and satin wings. Its bold presence made her giddy with excitement. “A raven?” she gasped. “A raven at my window! Hello!”
It answered her in a deep and raspy voice:
“What has substance but no soul,
Needs neither air nor food
Yet flies in the sky?”
Her heart started to beat faster. Calm down, she told herself. And yet it was hard to relax when she knew what this opportunity meant.
“Let me think,” she said. But when she looked at the bird, she hesitated.
Ravens are tidy by nature, but this bird’s feathers were oddly tattered, and its beak was chipped from age. There was a gaping socket where one eye should have been. Abby couldn’t see its other eye because the bird kept its profile to her.
Shame on you, Abby! she thought. A raven finally invites you to answer its riddle and all you can do is criticize its appearance? It was probably attacked by a hawk or a great horned owl. The poor thing!
Blinded by desire, she imagined being the raven’s amicus. This bird would be her friend for life! She would be able to merge with it and fly across the city, coast across cloud prairies, and swoop through billowing white canyons.
“Hmm,” she said. “Let’s solve this riddle. Whatever this is has a body but no soul. Doesn’t need to breathe or eat. Yet it flies. Well, if it doesn’t breathe or eat, it can’t be alive….Wait a minute, I know what it is!”
She looked at the bird thoughtfully. “My answer is…a kite.”
As the words left her lips, she had a queasy feeling that her answer was wrong.
The bird turned to face her and revealed its other eye.
It was yellow. A sickly mustard tint. Yellow as bile, as curdled milk, that awful yellow you see in a polluted pond when the edge of the water froths into ghastly bubbles and leaves a vile stain. It was the jaundiced eye of a—
You’re a valraven, Abby thought.
You’ve answered my riddle and opened your mind to me, replied Hookeye. And until I release you, we are one!
In a horrible flash Abby felt herself wrenched out of her body and squeezed within the awful, musty, cramped insides of the centuries-old valraven. It was like being buried in a coffin full of dust, ash, and rotten food. She could smell everything the creature had devoured in the last hundred years—mouse skins, rat tails, grubs, beetles, lice and snake flies, maggots, cobwebs, fuzzy blackened fruit, and moldy cheese.
In the next instant, they were hurtling upward. Abby felt nauseated from the stench of the phantom’s insides. The higher they flew, the more sickened and revolted she became, but she was determined to keep her wits about her.
Please, Mr. Whatever You Are, she began. Where are we going?
To see your friend Gabriel, replied Hookeye.
Why?
Perhaps he’ll be moved by your cries to rescue you.
Oh, so that’s it. This is all a trap to capture him, said Abby. Well, I won’t do it. I won’t say a word; I’m not going to help you trick him.
You have no choice, my dear, replied Hookeye. Now that you’re inside me, I can use your voice any way I choose.