“Come on, come on.” Ivy stared at the dark opening of the Sack of Stars, willing Seb and the Jar of Shadows to come out in one piece. “What’s taking him so long?”
Valian fiddled with his gloves. “I don’t know.”
Ivy’s pulse was racing, but her body felt numb and heavy, as if the Grivens contest had sapped all her energy. She took a great lungful of air, trying to stay calm.
It was quiet in her dad’s office. The lights were off but moonlight crept in through the large bay window that looked out onto the street.
There was a scratchy rustle and the Jar of Shadows rolled out of the Sack of Stars onto the soft carpet. Ivy watched curiously as it enlarged from bag size to normal size….It gave her an idea.
Seb sighed. “That was the most nerve-racking bag journey of my life. We so didn’t think it through. The jar could have smashed at any point.”
“But it didn’t,” Valian said, giving him a hand up. Between the three of them they managed to right the jar.
Seb took a feather out of his rucksack. “I’m gonna send a message to Judy—let her and the others know we’re OK.”
“All right, but…” Valian scanned the piles of books, cardboard boxes and dusty microscopes in the room. “What are we doing here?”
“I thought of a way to protect the jar,” Ivy said. “It might be crazy, but I was thinking we could hide it in the museum.”
“Here?” Valian exclaimed. “But—the Dirge could easily breach the security in this building. It wouldn’t be safe.”
“But they’ll never know it’s here,” Ivy argued. “There are hundreds of jars just like it in the museum’s collection—I’ve seen them.” She turned to Seb. “Do you still have the tape measure that Granma Sylvie gave you?”
Seb stuffed a hand in his rucksack and rummaged around. “I think so, yeah….”
Ivy thought of the jar traveling in the Sack of Stars. “What if we shrink the jar so that it can’t be recognized?”
Valian rubbed his chin. “Go on…”
She went over to a large cardboard box that was sitting open on a desk. “Objects are added to the museum’s collection all the time,” she explained. “One of the things our dad does is date and classify everything before it’s put on display.” She peered inside. “All we need to do is stuff the small Jar of Shadows in some bubble wrap and put it in here. Dad will assume it’s been sent with all these other artifacts.”
She turned and examined the porcelain jar properly for the first time, running her fingers around the top. It didn’t have a lid. It was like a money box—the only way to open it would be to smash it. “It’ll be taken care of in here,” Ivy said. “They’ll think it’s priceless.”
“Technically it is,” Seb pointed out. “If Dad tries to date it, he’ll realize it’s thousands of years old. You know what—this is just crazy enough that it might actually work.”
Valian looked from one of them to the other and nodded. “All right, let’s do it.”
Ivy stood guard by the door while Seb and Valian resized the jar using the uncommon tape measure. It was quiet in the corridor that led into the museum when Ivy heard a scraping sound growing louder. She tensed as a shadow appeared behind the glass, and she stumbled back as the door opened….
“I came as soon as I got your message,” Judy said, skating inside. She stopped to catch her breath. “I hadn’t even left the Grivens stadium.” She caught sight of Seb, wrapping the miniature Jar of Shadows in bubble wrap. “Are you all OK?”
“Just about,” Ivy told her, smiling. “Thanks for coming.”
A line appeared on Valian’s forehead. “You came from the stadium? How did you travel here so quickly? You couldn’t have used a bag.”
“Er—no, obviously not.” Judy shook her head but didn’t volunteer an explanation.
“You must have snuck in really quietly too,” Ivy remarked. “There are security guards everywhere.”
Judy shrugged. “I guess I’m too fast on my skates. They didn’t seem to notice me.”
Ivy had heard the loud thrum of Judy’s roller skates out in the corridor; the security guards would surely have heard them too. Something didn’t make sense.
She ran through the different ways in which uncommoners got around and remembered being startled when Johnny Hands had arrived almost immediately after she’d called him using his business card.
But Judy couldn’t be dead, surely….
Ivy relaxed her senses and allowed her whispering to spread out to the walls of the room. She could hear the Jar of Shadows and several uncommon objects mumbling incoherently, but there was another voice present in the air, something energetic and warm.
Ivy’s jaw dropped. “You’re one of the dead, aren’t you? I can sense it with my whispering.”
Judy went very still. “What?” She tucked a strand of shiny hair behind her ear, her eyes flicking to Seb.
“That’s how you read Dead Man’s Code,” Valian said softly. “All the dead know how to read it.”
Seb coughed. “Sorry—dead?” The expression on his face was disbelieving. “No, you…you can’t be.”
Judy examined her tutu, her voice wobbling. “I was going to tell you, but I thought you wouldn’t trust me anymore.”
Ivy’s skin tingled with shock. She thought back to the times she’d been near Judy, trying to understand why she hadn’t sensed that she was dead. There were broken souls everywhere in Lundinor; perhaps Judy’s had got lost in the din.
Judy sniffed, trying to keep her emotions in check. “Look—the reason I came here was to warn you. At the end of the contest Selena was nowhere to be seen, and if the Dirge have been hunting for the Jar of Shadows this long, she’s going to do everything she can to get it back.”
“She can’t follow us here—she doesn’t know where we’ve escaped to,” Valian pointed out.
“That’s why I think she’ll do something to bring you to her,” Judy said. “Like use someone you love as bait, someone she can trace easily.”
“Granma Sylvie,” Ivy said, tensing. “Has she been in contact?”
Judy shook her head. “Ethel was trying to get a featherlight to her when I left the stadium. Your granma still has no idea that you were entered in the Grivens contest.”
Seb stopped glaring at Judy to refocus. “She must still be at the mansion. We have to go and check on her.”
Valian picked up the Sack of Stars. “There’s no time to waste.”
As he pulled the bag over his head, Seb scowled at Judy. “You can stay put. We don’t want liars coming with us.”
The lights were on in the hallway of the Wrench Mansion. The place held bad memories from Ivy’s last visit—of escaping from Selena’s grim-wolf and fighting a host of vile dead creatures in the basement. Her senses were still on edge after the Grivens contest, and the mansion was a dangerous place. She stuffed the Sack of Stars into her satchel and brought out her yo-yo.
With the weapon clutched in her hand, she took a few steps forward over the thick carpet. “Granma?” she called uncertainly. “It’s Ivy and Seb!”
“And Valian,” Seb added, slipping his drumsticks out of his inside pockets.
The house was full of cobwebs and shadows. Portraits of hard-eyed faces covered the walls—Ivy’s distant relatives.
She heard a rustle at the top of the grand staircase and began to climb. “Granma?”
There was a clatter, and then a door on the landing swung open. Silvery light came flooding out. Ivy almost tripped on the stairs. Seb and Valian stopped behind her.
“Ivy?” Granma Sylvie’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. Her voice was shaky.
The three of them hurried up the last few steps but approached Granma Sylvie with caution.
As the light fell across her face, Ivy realized that something serious had happened. Granma Sylvie’s eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. “What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her forehead. There was an unfamiliar edge to her voice.
“Before midnight,” Ivy answered. She wasn’t sure of the exact time; she only knew that the Grivens contest had started at eight. “Are you OK? Has something happened? You haven’t been in touch all day.”
Granma Sylvie sighed before two words slipped out of her mouth and everything changed.
“I remember.”