Rory had been awake since dawn.
Hunger gnawed at his stomach, made worse by the absence of his mum and Izzy. Before he’d started at the manor, he’d seen both of them nearly every day of his life. They were a constant source of support and friendship, and he missed them dearly. But he couldn’t ask for a day off now, not after he’d nearly lost his job. He shifted his weight on the bed. Maybe he should just leave. He didn’t like the manor, and it was probably only going to get worse.
Rory spent the next several days doing his chores as directed by the notes tacked to his door. He swept the same rooms over and over, dusted and mopped, and made sure to steer clear of the red door. Since the night he’d been caught eavesdropping, he’d heard nothing from within the mysterious room.
Long live Arcanus Creatura!
He pictured the door in his mind, and the way the thin tree branches painted onto it seemed to have been moving. What could cause that to happen?
She is coming. I can feel her upon the wind.
Who?
He shook the dark thoughts away. Whatever was going on behind the red door was none of his business. If he wanted to keep his job, he had to put snooping behind him.
One late afternoon at the end of the week, after Rory had cleaned, polished, swept, and mopped what seemed like every room in the manor, he found Malvonius shuffling through some papers at a desk in the drawing room. Rory approached him rather quietly, perhaps too much so.
“Excuse me, sir?” Rory said.
Malvonius jumped in his seat, startled.
Rory gasped.
For a brief second, he thought he saw—knew he saw—something else.
Something that was not Malvonius Root.
The butler had a different face—a wild, animal face with birdlike features that disappeared as soon as Rory blinked.
“Yes?” Malvonius asked, regaining his composure, completely unaware, it seemed, of what Rory thought he’d just seen.
Rory swallowed. “I, um . . . well . . .”
“Spit it out, boy, for goodness’ sake!”
Rory shuddered. “We never talked about my day off, sir,” he started. “I’d like to see my mum. Maybe this evening? I’ve finished all my duties, sir.”
Malvonius leaned back in his chair and studied him. He looked down his long nose. “A day off? What’s that?”
“It’s, you know, when—”
“I know good and well what a day off is!” Malvonius cut him off. “But I’ve never found the need for one myself.”
Rory wanted to punch him right in his smug face.
Malvonius thrust out his chin. “And you ask this after being caught gallivanting around the house at all hours?”
“I wasn’t gallivanting.”
Malvonius raised an eyebrow.
Rory shrunk.
“Perhaps he doesn’t want the evening off after all,” the butler said in his menacing, quiet tone. “Perhaps he wants to work in the back garden, pulling weeds and chopping brambles.”
“No!” Rory blurted out, and then immediately regretted it and lowered his voice. “I mean, I just need a little time, sir. See, my mum lives on her lonesome and all, and . . .”
Malvonius waved his hand as if shooing a fly. He fished a pocket watch from somewhere within his suit and looked at it closely. “Be back at half-past nine, no later,” he declared. “If you’re late, the master will hear of it.” He clicked the watch shut. “Do you understand?”
Rory nodded.
There was a moment of silence.
“Is that quite all?” Malvonius asked, as if offended.
“Oh,” Rory said. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”
“Humph.” Malvonius sniffed, then lowered his head and went back to his work.
Rory turned around and headed out of the room. He swallowed a grin.
No matter how much Malvonius tormented him, it didn’t matter. He was going to see his mum and Izzy again.
Hooray! he wanted to shout.
But he didn’t.
Rory shut the door to Foxglove Manor and set off, resisting the urge to skip down the road. That was for kids. But he was happy. Happier than he’d been in days. He was going to see the two most important people in his life, and he couldn’t wait.
He looked left, then right, and went ahead and skipped anyway, smiling the whole while.
He decided to pay a quick visit to Izzy first before going home. He had so much to tell her and he couldn’t wait. He felt a little guilty for not seeing his mum first—if she was even home and not at work—but she’d want him to stay the whole time, and he definitely wanted to see his best friend before going back to that dreadful manor.
As he walked, happy to be free for even a short while, he wondered what, exactly, he had seen when he’d surprised Malvonius.
Maybe it really was just a trick of the eye, Rory told himself. After all, he was tired and stressed from all of the work and the thoughts of home swirling in his head. Whatever it was, it had sent a shiver right through him.
He made his way up the Strasse and turned onto Copper Street. The clouds above Gloom were even darker than usual. There was something strange in the air, he noticed, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Still, the familiarity of the neighborhood put him at ease—from the sharp tang of the leatherworks to the coppery smell of the iron foundry.
Izzy’s house was just a half block down from his own, and he was there in a few minutes.
The door opened with a creak after he knocked.
“Rory?”
Izzy’s mum, Pekka, stood before him. She was a tall woman with hair as curly as her daughter’s. She held a small bowl and muddler in her hands. An earthy smell rose from the bowl. “Heard you’re up at the manor now, eh?” she said, grinding whatever it was with the muddler. “Making a little money on your own, then?”
“Yes,” Rory said, “for me and Mum.”
“Rory!” Izzy shouted.
She rushed past her mum and threw her arms around him. Pekka jumped out of the way, almost dropping her bowl. “I thought you’d never show up again,” Izzy said. “They got you locked in up there or sumthin’?”
Rory untangled himself, feeling a little embarrassed. They were best friends, but never really hugged each other. “I, um—”
But that’s all he had time to say, as Izzy grabbed his hand and pulled him away.
“Be back for dinner!” Pekka shouted to their retreating backs.
Rory and Izzy had another favorite place to visit besides the docks at Quintus Harbor and the Glades. The Narcisse River ran parallel to the Strasse and was really more like a creek. The water was green and brackish, with several dead tree limbs rising above the surface, as if trying to reach the weak light of the seldom-seen sun. Birds chirped in the surrounding trees. Rory and Izzy sat on the bank, which was covered in soft green moss. Rory told her everything that had happened at Foxglove Manor. “It’s odd,” he said. “The whole place is strange.”
“But you can leave though, right?” Izzy asked. “No one’s keeping you prisoner.”
Rory shook his head and fiddled with a broken twig. “We need the money, Izzy. It’s just me and Mum. You know that.”
The deep rumbling of a toad sounded through the swampy reeds below. “Tell me what you heard again,” Izzy demanded. “The words through the door.”
The strange phrases came back to Rory easily. He didn’t think he’d ever forget them. “I heard, ‘She is coming. I can feel her upon the wind.’ And, ‘Long live Arcanus Creatura.’”
Izzy nodded. “And the other words?”
“‘A great harvest is coming. We will need more. Much more.’” The words gave him a vague sense of unease in the pit of his stomach.
“That is strange,” Izzy murmured.
“Do you know what any of it means?”
Izzy twirled a corkscrew curl around one finger. A moment of silence hung between them. “You know the cards I use? You know what they do, right?”
“Yeah,” Rory replied. “They tell people’s fortunes.”
“Right, but it’s a system—the minor and major . . . arcana.”
Rory’s ears twitched. “Arcana? Is that the same as arcanus?”
“Yes. Arcana means secret or mystery.”
“And creatura?”
“I don’t know that one. But it sounds like . . . creature.”
Rory tensed. “Secret . . . creature?”
Izzy nodded.
The vision of Malvonius and the animal face flashed in Rory’s mind. He swallowed. “Before I left today, I walked up on Malvonius, and he didn’t see me coming. I surprised him, and for a second, he looked . . . odd.”
“Odd?” Izzy repeated. “Of course he’s odd. You already told me that.”
“I mean really odd.” Rory persisted. “His face. It was like, for a second, I thought I was looking at an animal face. I know it sounds crazy.”
Izzy’s brow wrinkled in concern. “An animal?”
Rory tried to conjure up the memory. “It happened so fast I can barely remember. It was like a bird of some sort, with sharp eyes. It just kind of shimmered and then disappeared.”
Rory relaxed his shoulders. Just telling the story had made him tense. A fly landed on his neck, and he swatted it away. A fishy smell rose off the river.
Izzy turned away from the water to face him. “Remember what I told you? When I read your cards?”
He did, but he didn’t answer. The air was cool on his face.
“The cards said to be careful.”
Rory looked past the water, into the bare trees on the other side. A yellow-eyed hawk sat on a limb, patiently waiting for prey.
“Bones,” Izzy continued. “Animal faces. Strange words from a locked room. Sounds like a mystery.”
“What should I do?” Rory asked.
“Don’t do anything right now,” Izzy replied. “Watch and learn. And if anything else weird happens, we’ll go from there.”
Rory nodded in agreement, but he didn’t want anything else weird to happen. He just wanted things to be normal. He turned to Izzy. “We?” he said.
Izzy smirked. “Of course, you urchin. You’re not getting involved in some adventure without me.”
Rory smiled despite the ball of fear beginning to form in his stomach.