SIX MONTHS AGO, Marzana’s one and only other adventure had taken her to Greenglass House. There, of course, she’d met Milo. And somewhat after that, in a rather dramatic reveal, she’d met his friend Meddy, who, it turned out, was the child of one of Mrs. Hakelbarend’s famous smuggler colleagues who had lived in Greenglass House, too. But that had been long ago, before both the smuggler and his daughter had died.
And here Meddy was again, looking like any kid on the street.
“What are you doing here?” Marzana demanded, hopping down the last steps as she fumbled in her pocket for the vial. She held it up. “Is this—did this—?”
If there was anything stranger than meeting a ghost over Christmas vacation, it was having that ghost arrive on your doorstep by mail six months later.
“Yes. And now that I’m here, you’d better give it to me. It’s what lets me move around away from Greenglass House, though I’m still figuring out how.” Meddy plucked the vial from Marzana’s fingers.
Marzana snapped her fingers. “It’s a reliquary! Like in Odd Trails—what’s the thing that can move away from the character that summoned it using a reliquary?”
“A scholiast.” Meddy sounded pleased. “Exactly. By the way, I should remind you that right now, to the world at large, it looks like you’re talking to yourself. So maybe pretend to tie your shoe or something and talk quietly.”
“Right.” Marzana dropped to fumble at her laces so fast, she banged her knee on the pavement. “Hey—can anyone else see you right now?”
“I think just you,” Meddy said. “But it seems that once I show myself to people, they can see me from that point on, which is why I wanted to wait until you were outside to manifest. Otherwise your mom would’ve seen me, since I showed myself to her and to your dad back in December.” She squatted and watched Marzana work loose the double knot in her right shoelace as she spoke. “Milo figured out the hack with the vial right after you all left Greenglass House in December. I—ghost me, anyway—I’m tied to the inn because . . . well, because I died there. But Milo found this”—she held up the vial between forefinger and thumb—“in the attic at Greenglass House. And we already had this.” She shook the little owl-girl figurine out onto one palm. “My dad had it made especially for me, so it’s able to represent me, like a relic; and the vial, which must’ve been in the house for ages and ages, works as a reliquary. I don’t know how much you remember about scholiasts in Odd Trails . . .”
“Not much,” Marzana admitted as she began to slowly retie her shoelaces. “I’ve never played a harbinger, and only harbingers can summon a scholiast, right?”
“Right. And usually scholiasts are tied pretty closely to their harbingers. They have a range of a hundred feet. Unless you have a reliquary, that is, in which case you can do an exploit called Spooky Action at a Distance. The harbinger can give the reliquary to someone else, and the scholiast follows the reliquary rather than the harbinger.”
“And that’s real?” Marzana asked in quiet disbelief. “I mean, it works for ghosts?”
Meddy sighed. “I understand so little about myself as a ghost, you’d be amazed. I sort of have to piece the rules together as I go. And I thought Milo was crazy for thinking you could apply role-playing-game rules to the real world. But he pointed out that Odd Trails is based on legends and folk stories, so there could be some underlying truth to it. There usually is, you know, with folklore. So we decided to give it a try, and much to my personal shock, it works. Mostly. I’m still sorting out the details.” She winced and rubbed her nose. “There have been some . . . painful surprises.”
Marzana grinned as she finished retying the knot. “Meaning you occasionally walk into walls?”
“That’s precisely what I mean.” Meddy glanced at a giant watch on her wrist. “Were you on your way somewhere?”
Oh, right. School. “Yeah, actually.” Marzana got reluctantly to her feet.
“Great. I’ll walk with you, and you can fill me in on exactly what the heck is going on.”
“But I’m going to look like I’m talking to myself, right?”
“True, but unavoidable. Maybe make it look like you’re doing it on purpose. Practicing a speech for school or something.”
Marzana, who often discovered that she’d been talking to herself while working out what to say or what she should have said during some social interaction real or imagined, nodded. “I can do that.” She started down the sidewalk, and Meddy fell into step at her side. It was rush hour on Crossynge Street, with a steady flow of passersby on foot and on bicycle, but none of them seemed in any way interested in a middle-schooler apparently talking to herself. “So you were at camp with Milo?”
The ghost girl nodded. “I haven’t been able to leave Greenglass House in decades. It was good to get away for a while.” She looked around, then up at the tall, narrow houses looming overhead. “And this is the Liberty of Gammerbund, huh? Why, exactly, am I here? Milo said someone was kidnapped, but that’s pretty much all.”
“I think that’s all I managed to tell him,” Marzana admitted. Then, pausing whenever it felt like any particular person or group out on the street was too close for comfort, she relayed the key points as briefly as possible. “I can fill you in on the rest later. We’re all meeting after school at Lucky’s bookstore—you remember Lucky—but Emilia can probably find us a private place to talk during our study period.”
“I’d like to help,” Meddy said, sidestepping a kid who nearly zoomed a toy plane right into—through?—her. “I’ll do whatever I can. But I’m not . . .” She hesitated, looking for the right word. “Powerful. I can walk through walls and stuff . . . sometimes, anyway.” She took the vial from her pocket and rattled it in her palm. “The reliquary lets me move through space almost like you do, which is good for, say, leaving Greenglass House, but bad for maximum mobility through solid objects. If you hold the reliquary, I can pass through things, and carry stuff with me too. Objects, clothing, whatever.” She looked happily down at her T-shirt. “This is new, for instance. That guy Sylvester who came to Greenglass House with you at Christmas had the same shirt, and I really liked it, so Milo found one for me. But I can only go so far from the reliquary before I’m tugged back. If I’m holding the reliquary, I can go any distance, but the reliquary won’t go through solid surfaces, so neither can I. It’s really taking some getting used to.”
“So you can’t go and find the Belowground conductor for us, for instance,” Marzana said glumly. “Or at least, not any faster than I could myself if I went down into the city proper.”
Meddy pointed a finger. “Bingo. And you understand, of course, that I don’t have, you know, magic or anything.”
Marzana snorted. “That’s okay. We have a magician.”
Meddy gave her a sideways look. “A magician like a sortileger or a mage or something? Or like a dude who does birthdays?”
“I suspect he’s at least done his own birthday.”
The ghost grinned. “This is gonna be great.”
Impulsively, Marzana grinned back. “Yeah, I think it is.”
Nialla was pacing beside Marymead’s front stairs when Marzana hurried up to her with Meddy in tow, panting from having basically speed-walked the entire two and a half miles from the Viaduct. “Oh, my God, Mars,” she breathed, grabbing Marzana’s arm. “You guys did it! I can’t believe you guys did it!”
“I take it Ciro managed to drop off some goodies last night.”
“Yes. I have everything here.” Nialla was incandescent with impatience as she shook her satchel meaningfully at Marzana.
“And did you take a look?” Marzana asked.
“I took a look at everything,” Nialla replied. “Not that I understand it all, but I can give you a rundown before class. Let’s go to your locker first.”
Marzana looked around. She and Meddy had made really good time getting to Marymead, and the schoolyard was still pretty quiet. The kids who’d come for before-school commitments had gotten there half an hour or so earlier, and the big rush of students arriving for the regular start of the day would begin in about ten minutes. Nobody was looking their way. She turned to Meddy. “Can you . . . ?”
“Can I what?” Nialla asked, confused, at the same moment that Meddy nodded and replied, “Sure thing.” The ghost girl leaned sideways, pointedly sticking her face between Marzana and Nialla.
There was nothing else to see, but something happened, because Nialla did a thing Marzana had not realized could truly, actually happen: she jumped out of her shoes. Nialla staggered backwards, leaving her slip-on sandals on the pavement where she’d been standing a second before. “What . . . who . . . what just . . . ?”
Meddy flung her arms wide. “Tarncap Reveal!”
“Nialla,” Marzana said, “this is Meddy. She’s joining the crew. Meddy, this is my best friend, Nialla.”
Meddy waved a hand. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Nialla replied weakly. Then, “Meddy?” she repeated. Recognition flickered on her face. “From winter break? But . . . you mean that was true? Literally true? All of it?”
Marzana took Nialla’s arm. “It’s okay. Put your shoes on and let’s go inside. In the meantime, tell me about Ciro’s prints. And remember that only you and I can see Meddy, so be subtle about talking to her.”
Meddy took out the reliquary and handed it to Marzana. “Take this for now, would you?”
Marzana zipped it into the purse that held her adventuring kit. “Of course.”
They walked up the stairs, Nialla tripping on every other step as she tried to simultaneously watch Meddy out of the corner of her eye and maneuver her own feet, all while holding in the questions she was clearly burning to ask. She hauled open one of the front doors, held it for Marzana and Meddy, and followed them into the nearly empty front hall. “I don’t even know where to start. A lot of the notes describe what you told us already—the stuff what’s-his-name, Emmett, told your parents.” She looked to Meddy. “Did she tell you everything already, or should I go over it?”
“I think I’m caught up as far as possible, not including whatever new stuff you have,” Meddy replied.
“Okay, well, in addition to the old stuff, there’s a lot I don’t understand, which I think must be their potential leads. It’s a bunch of names I don’t recognize. But you might, Mars.”
“What about the ransom note?” Marzana asked quietly. “Will it be helpful for the theory you had?”
Nialla’s expression sharpened. “Yes. I think so. It still might be nothing, but the copy gives me what I need to test it. We’ll see. Ciro said your parents were questioning somebody last night,” she added in an undertone.
Marzana swallowed her reply and stifled a startled yelp as they turned the corner around the stairs and nearly walked into someone leaning against the end of the first row of lockers. Then she stifled another squeal, this one of relief. “Emilia!”
“Top of the morning,” Emilia said, her expression deadpan as ever. “Thought the two of you might show up early.”
“It’s the three of us, actually,” Marzana told her.
Meddy waved from beside Emilia, whose head snapped around, nearly whipping Nialla across the face with one of her braids. Her poker face didn’t crack, but she spat out a very evocative swear word. “What the heck is going on? Where did she come from?”
“This is Meddy,” Marzana said for the second time. “Meddy, Emilia.”
“She’s dead,” Nialla blurted. “A ghost.”
“Awkward,” Meddy said, “but accurate.”
“Um.” Emilia extended a hesitant palm. Meddy shook it, and Emilia stared down at their clasped hands. “Interesting. Nice to meet you, I guess.” She took her hand back and examined her palm. “Where did we come by a ghost? You’re not from Marymead, are you?”
“Camp care package,” Meddy replied. “In reverse.”
Emilia tilted her head, considering. “I have so many questions.”
Meddy raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem particularly surprised, though.”
“Yeah,” Nialla added, frowning at Emilia. “What, exactly, does that mean: ‘You’re not from Marymead’?”
Emilia shook her head. “Later, Nialla. We don’t have time for me to blow your mind right now.”
Well, if there were ghosts at Marymead, Marzana figured, the Commorancy Kids would know. Marzana made a mental note to come back to that another time. Emilia was right; they were on a tight timetable. “Hey, where were you yesterday?” Marzana asked her. “We were worried stiff!”
“Really?” Emilia gave her a curious look. “Why didn’t you come up? I faked sick because I spent all night doing stuff. But I’m fine.”
“We can . . . we can just come up?” Nialla asked dubiously. “Just like that?”
“You can if you’re visiting someone.” Emilia turned to Meddy. “I live here,” she explained. “Me and a handful of others. Anyway, for future reference, my room is 7R2. Back of the house, overlooking the knot-garden side of the courtyard.” She straightened and tossed her head at the locker bank. “Need anything before your first class? You have Topham for homeroom, right?”
“Yes to Topham, and I guess I can skip my locker,” Marzana replied. “Nye?”
“I’m good.”
“Let’s go, then.” Emilia led them away from the lockers and down the hallway between the gym and the back wall of the saloon again, toward the far side of the house.
“Would you look at these sourpusses?” Meddy said, staring up at the portraits above the lockers as she brought up the rear of the group. “Though these names are magnificent.” Now Meddy’s voice was coming from above. The other three girls turned sharply, and Marzana looked up to see the ghost girl leaping across the tops of the banks of lockers, pausing after each soundless, loping jump from one little bank to the next to read the labels on the frames. “Ophelia Anella Cotgrave, Nadia Almiretta Cotgrave-Cormorant, Maurice Worcestershire Cotgrave . . . Everybody going by all the names they have, apparently . . . Ezra Montcalvo Cormorant, Maeve-Alice Cotgrave . . . But so crabby-looking.” Meddy jumped down, and even Emilia winced as she landed, but the ghost girl hit the floor without so much as a whisper.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” Emilia observed. She glanced up at the portraits with a half-smile. “Funny you should mention those. The Cotgraves used to own this house. These are all previous owners and trustees and so forth.” She cocked her head, and Marzana heard the creak of the front doors, along with a murmur of voices. The school day was about to begin. “Time’s short,” Emilia said. “This way.”
Just past the gym, a narrower hallway met the one they were following. Tucked into the right angle formed by these passages were the administrative offices, and Emilia paused there for a quick glance to be sure they were still alone. “The principal will be there already,” she whispered, starting forward again and leading them down the narrow hall between the offices and the back wall of one of the staircases, which was lined with more lockers. “And probably the guidance counselors—they always show up early—but not Miss Palkowick, and that’s the only person we care about right now. School secretary,” she explained to Meddy. “Quick, now.” The voices of incoming kids were impossible to ignore. Somebody with a locker in this row was going to pop around the corner any minute.
The hall ended at a pair of swinging doors covered in green leather. Emilia hurried through them and into a service hallway with faded blue wallpaper, smooth stone floors, and occasional overhead fixtures with bulbs that gave light in mismatched tones of yellow and blue. It was a door and a passage Marzana had seen a million times during her years at Marymead. Now, as she and the others followed Emilia through, she realized she actually had no idea where the passage went.
Emilia steadied the swinging doors, then nodded to the left, toward the front of the school, where a narrow staircase led downward and the hallway beyond it ended in the entrance to what Marzana’s mental map of the school told her had to be the dining hall. “The cafeteria’s that way, and the stairs go down to the kitchen and pantry and whatnot,” Emilia explained to Meddy in a whisper. “The science labs and music rooms are down there too, but students use a staircase on the other side of the house to get to those.” She turned and pointed toward the back of the building. “What we want is over here.”
At that end of the hallway, on the right-hand side, the wall-paper was interrupted here and there by what looked like dark wooden cabinets with dull gold drawer pulls near the bottom edges. Nialla got it first. “Dumbwaiters?”
“Yup.” Emilia walked down and hauled up on the handle of the nearest one to reveal the cabinet inside. “In we go.”
“What?” Marzana blinked. “In there? All of us?”
“I don’t actually take up any room,” Meddy put in. “It looks like the three of you’ll fit with no problem.”
“But will it support three of us?” Marzana asked.
“We’re just climbing in to climb through,” Emilia said. “But it’ll hold. These dumbwaiters have been safety-tested by generations of Commorancy Kids, with necessary adjustments made where needed. Look.” Emilia reached in and pointed to a handle that had been fitted on the inside of the dumbwaiter, opposite the one she’d used to lift the door from the outside, and then to a button that looked like it had to have been installed by someone other than a licensed electrician. “I’ve seen these things hold five kids at once.” She climbed in and scooted over. “Get in.”
“I’m trusting you on this one.” Marzana squared her shoulders, put both hands on the lower edge of the dumbwaiter, and hoisted herself inside. The inner cabinet shifted, but not enough to make her doubt Emilia’s assurances. Nialla followed, and Marzana looked past her into the hall for Meddy. “Already in,” the ghost girl said, her face looming pale out of the shadows an inch in front of Marzana. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle.”
“Keep your voices down,” Emilia whispered. “And can one of you pull the door shut?” Meddy did, while on the other side of the cabinet, Emilia leaned against a second door for a moment. She gave a satisfied nod and hoisted it open, revealing nothing but another dark surface. But this surface swung easily outward at a touch, opening into a room that seemed immediately familiar, even though Marzana couldn’t quite place it.
Smallish, old-fashioned wooden desks were scattered around the space, along with green embroidered brocade chairs that looked suspiciously like they might once have been part of a bigger set in someone’s fancy dining room. Mentally mapping what they’d passed right before Emilia had led them through the dumbwaiter, Marzana snapped her fingers. “This is the back office, isn’t it?” That meant the outer surface Emilia had pushed open to let them into the room had to be the big portrait of Jane Agatha Marymead in its ornate gilt frame.
She glanced out at the office’s door, which was presently closed, its frosted window dark.
“Miss Palkowick opens up her office at eight on the dot,” Emilia said, following Marzana’s eyes. “Which means we only have a few minutes, because she’s absolutely never late.” Emilia hopped out, gesturing at the dark window in the door. “If she’s early, we’ll see the light go on in the outer office first, and then we’ll have about thirty seconds to get back to the dumbwaiter while she starts a pot of coffee. Forty, if by some miracle it’s unseasonably chilly out and she has a sweater to take off. Is it chilly today?” she asked hopefully as first Nialla and then Marzana dropped lightly down into the office.
“Not really,” Nialla said, glancing around.
“I’ll keep watch,” Meddy said. She strode across the room and straight through the door without bothering to open it.
“Holy moly, that’s weird,” Nialla mumbled.
Marzana nodded, wondering how Milo had played it so cool when Marzana had visited Greenglass House, not giving Meddy’s presence away for days. Focus. “What are we doing here? Mr. Otterwill’s records?”
“He doesn’t have much.” Emilia headed for a small bank of battered lateral files. “Employee records are here.” She dragged the top drawer open, plucked out a manila folder, and opened it. Marzana and Nialla looked on as Emilia moved the very small pile of papers around. “Name, address, the usual stuff. Copies of his ID documents and his Liberty work warrant. Notes that they called the principal at Watermill for references, blah blah. But this might be useful.” She pointed to a page mostly covered in handwriting, along with a single sticky note that read Watermill/R. Burroughs, 4pm, along with a phone number with a Printer’s Quarter exchange.
Marzana scanned the notes on the page: Employee in good standing, advises on two extracurricular clubs, currently teaching science but can easily handle general and specialized math at secondary school level . . . This was probably the Watermill principal’s phone reference. “What am I looking at?”
“Two things.” Emilia pointed to a line near the top. Recomm. Victor Cormorant. “This is the person who recommended Mr. Otterwill as a substitute.”
Nialla tapped her fingers on her cheek. “Why does that name sound familiar to me?”
“The portraits back in that hallway,” Marzana said immediately. “The one’s whose names Meddy was reading. I don’t remember a Victor, though.”
“There isn’t a Victor in the portrait hall,” Emilia said. “But yes, there are a handful of Cormorants—they married into the Cotgrave family at some point. The thing is, I think Victor Cormorant specifically sounds familiar to me, but I can’t place it. I was hoping the name would ring a bell to somebody else.”
Nialla stared down at her feet, then back up at Emilia. “I do think I might have seen that name somewhere else—Victor specifically—but I honestly can’t think of where it might’ve been.”
“Keep thinking about it. Maybe it’ll come to you. If we both recognize the name, then we both must have seen it around the school somewhere. I’ll try to track down the Cotgrave genealogy today during study period. There’s a ton of that stuff in the Library, and if all else fails, the school historian will know.”
Meddy poked her head—only her head—directly through the surface of the door to stare at them. “You have a school historian? What school has a historian?”
“The Cotgraves made it a condition when they bequeathed the house,” Emilia said. “One condition of many, all of them weird. I’d give my right big toe to see the actual documents.”
“How loudly were we talking?” Marzana asked nervously.
“Not loud at all. I was leaning right against the door.” Meddy’s head popped back out of sight.
Emilia made a quiet throat-clearing sound. “There’s also this—”
“Oh, I see it,” Marzana whispered. She touched an arrow leading away from the phrase two extracurricular clubs. At its other end were the words math competition club, comics club. “Comics.”
“Exactly,” Emilia said with satisfaction. “What if Peony Hyde was in that club? Mr. Otterwill would for sure have known what she was reading, and maybe even about her breakup with her friend. And if he really was at the camp party that day . . . I think this makes him a serious suspect.”
Marzana glanced around the room, looking for the copier. “We should make a copy of this.”
“Can’t. The copier is loud.” Emilia closed the folder and dropped it neatly back into place in the drawer. “But I made notes last night. I’ll bring them this afternoon.”
Meddy appeared without warning from the direction of the office door. “Incoming.”
Marzana’s heart thudded into a higher gear. On the other side of the frosted window, a light clicked on, turning the dark square a dusty, dimpled yellow.
“Yup, that’s our cue,” Emilia whispered briskly, sliding the file cabinet gently closed. “Let’s go. We’ll be seen if we leave by the hallway, so we should take the dumbwaiter straight upstairs. Gotta get it moving before she comes in, because you can just barely hear the first lurch from the outside.”
They hurried back to the dumbwaiter, and Emilia waited without any apparent concern as Meddy vanished herself into the dark cabinet and Marzana and Nialla hoisted themselves up. Then she followed, pulling the painting in its frame back toward the wall as she went. It snapped into place with a soft click, and Emilia drew the inner door down and hit the button she’d shown them before. The dumbwaiter lurched upward, making Marzana and Nialla grab for each other. But after the initial jerk, the ride smoothed out, and Emilia’s voice, muttering rhythmically, could be heard over the soft creaks of the slow-moving contraption.
“Mrs. Kerwallow sometimes may follow her cows trotting over the hill,” she murmured.
The idea flitted through Marzana’s head that it was possible they’d just locked themselves in a moving box with a crazy person.
Then Meddy began to laugh, a strange, slightly out-of-control giggle. It reminded Marzana of babysitting for a four-year-old who’d laugh that way seconds before giving in to some ill-advised impulse like launching himself off the couch and onto the floor in a belly flop. Oh, my God, what if they’re both insane? Milo Pine, did you send me an insane ghost? Marzana and Nialla glanced at each other.
“What?” Meddy asked, wiping her eyes. “You guys can’t feel that? That is crazy.”
“Feel what?” Nialla demanded.
“Something about the way this thing is moving,” Meddy managed, speaking in gulps between laughs. “Crazy. Crazy crazy crazy.”
Oblivious to everything else, Emilia continued reciting: “But only on days when the old cow sashays, for she’s certain they dance a quadrille.” She poked the button crisply on the last syllable of quadrille. The dumbwaiter stopped. “Timing’s important,” she explained in a whisper. “It’s the only way to know where you are from the inside.”
She hit the button a second time. The dumbwaiter shot into motion again, and Emilia continued her recitation. “Mrs. Kerwallow takes walks in the hollow, in search of a creature that sings.” Meddy began giggling again as Emilia went on, “But only on nights with stars glowing bright, for the critter likes glittering things.” Emilia pushed the button and glared at the silently shaking Meddy. “All right, yes, it’s hilarious. Is the coast clear, or what?”
Meddy pulled herself together, gulping deep breaths. “I can’t believe you guys can’t feel that,” she wheezed. She disappeared through the door, then leaned her head back in and announced, “All clear.”
“Thanks.” Emilia pushed up the door and swung open another framed picture on the other side. This time Marzana recognized where they were immediately: Mr. Topham’s history room.
Meddy stood beside the dumbwaiter, shaking her head. “Your school is so weird.”
“There’s been a dumbwaiter behind this map all that time,” Nialla said wonderingly as she climbed past Emilia and down. “Who knew?”
Emilia’s expression cracked briefly into amusement. “Lots of us. Welcome to the club. All right,” she said crisply, sitting on the edge of the dumbwaiter with her legs dangling as Marzana followed Nialla out into the empty classroom. “I had a thought, but you guys will have to do it because I don’t have Otterwill for math. One or the other of you is reading Sidledywry, right?”
Marzana and Nialla nodded. “Both of us,” Nialla said.
“Well, you can test our hypothesis about Peony being in Mr. Otterwill’s comics club. Find some way to bring the series up. See if he reacts. It’s something to try.”
Nialla nodded. “I can do it.”
“Right. See you later, then. Lockers after school, same as before?”
“Yeah, we’ll—” Marzana stopped, confused, and looked around. “Wait.” This classroom, hers and Nialla’s homeroom, was at the front of the house. The administrative offices and the dumbwaiters were on the same side of Marymead, but they were at the back. “The back office and Topham’s classroom aren’t vertically in line with each other. Are they?”
“Nope,” Emilia said. “They aren’t. It’s all in the timing.”
Marzana folded her arms. “Come on. Are we in this together, or not?”
Emilia hesitated. “The easy answer is, there must be horizontal shafts between floors.”
There must be implied that Emilia didn’t actually know it to be true, and the existence of passages between the ceilings and the floors above them seemed like the kind of thing the kids of the Marymead Commorancy would make it their business to confirm or refute. “But you don’t think it’s the right one,” Marzana guessed.
“Yeah.” Emilia shrugged. “Well, we’ve never found any. But we do know that the dumbwaiters’ works are made of old iron. We think—in the Commorancy, I mean . . .” She paused again, her blank expression cracking briefly into something very interesting, a blend of defiance and vulnerability: You won’t believe this, but I don’t really care. “We think that the iron can reconfigure the house when it wants to. Open up new paths.”
“No way,” Meddy breathed as the words “Shut up!” erupted from Nialla.
Marzana gaped, trying to imagine moving tendrils of old iron shifting entire classrooms out of the way of passing dumbwaiters. “It would have to do more than open up new paths. It would have to move around—or just move—whole rooms.”
“Yeah,” Emilia said, with the Believe me or don’t challenge set firmly on her face. “That’s exactly what it would have to do.”
“But . . . but we’d feel something, wouldn’t we?” Marzana persisted.
Emilia shrugged. Then she glanced thoughtfully at Meddy. “Maybe some of us did. Shut the map after me, will you?” She swung her legs back into the dumbwaiter and pulled down the door. A very soft thump told them she’d hit the button and was off again.
Marzana shook her head as she reached out and swung the framed map back into place against the wall. Click. “I know old iron moves, but is it really possible that it can also manipulate space with well-timed nursery rhymes?”
Nialla turned on the light switch by the door, then walked back to her desk and sat, still looking dazed. “Ask Mrs. Kerwallow, I guess.”
“Well, I definitely felt something,” Meddy muttered. “So weird, your school.”
The classroom door opened, and Mr. Topham wandered in. He reached for the light switch, frowned to find it already on, then did a full-on double-take when he spotted Marzana and Nialla in their seats. He glanced at the clock on the wall, then at his own watch. “Morning, ladies. You’re here early.”
Marzana and Nialla waved as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Between the desks, Meddy waved too. Then she turned to face the two of them. “Hey, listen. Mind if I do a little exploring? Maybe I can shadow this Mr. Otterwill character. Marzana, tug your ear if yes; Nialla, scratch your chin if no.”
The two non-ghosts glanced at each other. Nialla shrugged. Marzana reached up, pretended to adjust a braid, and tugged her ear once.
“Cool, cool. I’ll meet you where we ran into Emilia at the lockers downstairs, if I don’t find you in class first.”
Marzana glanced at the teacher, but Mr. Topham was focused on unpacking his briefcase. She reached into her pocket and wiggled the gold vial just below the level of her desk. Will you need this?
“Probably a good idea.” Meddy plucked it from her palm. “Thanks, Marzana.” And with that, the ghost of Greenglass House pocketed her reliquary and sauntered past their oblivious history teacher and out into the hall.
Nialla glanced at Marzana. “Today’s an odd day.”
“Feels off, somehow,” Marzana agreed as she got out her folder.
“Yeah. Not in a bad way, just . . .”
Marzana nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”