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Susan looked up as the twins entered. “Oh, hi, kids. Guess what? I’m having a cooking lesson.”
“Seriously?” said Jack.
“From … him?” asked Jaide.
The twins looked from their mother to Stefano in amazement. Stefano raised the spoon and twirled it like a wand. His cheeks were pink, perhaps from bending over the steaming pot for so long.
“It’s just something simple we cook at home,” he said. “Anyone can learn it.”
“Even me,” said Susan, “I hope.”
Jack hoped so, too, because if the dish tasted as good as it smelled, he never wanted to eat anything else.
“I hope you made a lot,” he said.
“It’s very filling,” Stefano said. “Perfect for a growing boy.”
Jack bristled at the suggestion that he was only a boy. Jaide, too, was resentful at Stefano’s implied criticism of their mother’s cooking. Yes, it was awful, but she was their mother and only they were allowed to complain about it.
But the smell was so amazing they were able to swallow their pride and willingly set the table in preparation for what they hoped would be an amazing feast.
They weren’t disappointed. The risotto was thick and flavorsome, with mushrooms (which Jack normally hated) and lots of pepper (which normally made Jaide sneeze). Ari relentlessly meowed and head-butted everyone’s shins until Grandma X relented and dished him a small saucer, which he lapped up in two gulps. Kleo was more dignified, waiting until offered her own dish and then eating it in several small mouthfuls. She licked her lips appreciatively and glanced at the pot as though hoping for seconds.
Everyone had seconds, and Jack might have gone for thirds if he hadn’t been so full. He sat back in his chair, fingers laced over his distended stomach, and sighed contentedly. That was the first really wonderful meal he had had since arriving in Portland.
“That was awesome,” said Kyle, scraping out the last morsel from his bowl.
“Super awesome,” agreed Tara.
Stefano dismissed their praise and thanks.
“It was nothing,” he said. “We eat like this all the time.”
Jaide couldn’t decide what irked her most: his modesty, the boastful way he professed it, or the hint of criticism behind it — what, you don’t eat this way all the time? But she, too, was lulled into a state of passive irritation by the meal. When Grandma X reminded her that it was her turn to do the dishes, she didn’t put up even a token protest. If Stefano could teach their mother to cook like that every night, she was prepared to do her chores in exchange. Besides, it was much easier with Tara and Kyle to help.
While the dishes were being put away, Grandma X gave Jack his own chore.
“Stefano and I will have extra lessons tonight,” she said. “Would you like to see to Cornelia now?”
“Sure,” he said, not minding at all. It seemed like ages since he’d seen Cornelia. Normally, she’d sit with him while he was doing his homework and try to eat his notebooks. Or she’d interrupt dinner with raucous comments about hard tack and rum.
Hanging up his dish towel he went up the stairs, detouring to his room to retrieve a crust he had saved from lunch to give to Cornelia as a treat.
The door to the blue room was unlocked, and he slipped through with practiced ease.
“Hello, Charlie,” Cornelia said as he came down the stairs. She was sitting on top of the cage, walking slowly back and forth.
“I’m not Charlie,” he said. “I’m J —”
He stopped dead on the bottom step. There was a glowing woman standing in the center of the blue room. She was young and blond and looking around as though lost. Although he could see her clearly, she seemed slightly fuzzy around the edges. Like a ghost, Jack thought, made of jelly-ish ectoplasm.
Her pale eyes caught sight of him.
++Help us,++ she said, and her voice was as pale and watery as she was. ++Save us.++
And suddenly he knew her. She was the Woman in Yellow, the subject of the painting from Rourke Castle that he and Jaide had entered using the cross-continuum conduit constructor. She looked exactly like Grandma X did when she cast her spectral form. She was Lottie Henschke, and she was reaching out from the Evil Dimension once more to call for help.
“Grandma!” Jack called. “Come here!”
“Charlie-Charlie-Charlie,” said Cornelia in a singsong voice. Her head bobbed up and down in the bird equivalent of excitement.
++Please help us. You must help us.++
Jack instinctively backed up a step as Lottie approached him. Although he was glad to see her, the apparition’s appearance made him nervous, and it wasn’t just him. The mechanical bear was shifting restlessly on its pedestal, and the barometer needles were twitching. If the way to the Evil Dimension was open, The Evil might not be far behind.
Jack yelled again, putting all his voice into it. “Grandma! Anyone!”
++Don’t let us die,++ said Lottie.
“Man overboard!” squawked Cornelia, flapping her wings.
“Grandma, quickly!”
At last Jack heard footsteps on the steps behind him, a thunder of footfalls suggesting that the entire house had come in response to his panicked call.
“What is it, Jack? … Oh my.”
Grandma X was suddenly next to him, her expression shocked. Lottie’s glowing face turned, but her expression was enigmatic, as though she wasn’t really seeing them. Jaide felt a small shudder course through her as that ghostly gaze passed across her. Th
e cats leaned heavily against her calves, for solidarity. Kyle and Tara stared with wide eyes at the apparition, while behind them, Susan gasped. For although her children saw and experienced strange things on a regular basis, things far outside normal human experience, she was rarely exposed to them herself.
++Please,++ said the apparition. ++Please save us!++
“How, Charlotte?” said Grandma X in a voice so soft Jack could hardly hear it. “How?”
Stefano pushed past Susan, Tara, and Kyle, over Ari, and between Jack and his grandmother.
“Why can’t you do it yourself?” he asked the apparition. “You’ve come this far.”
Lottie shook her head and looked mournful.
++Too hard. Too far.++
“It won’t be any easier for us, you know.”
“Stefano,” said Grandma X, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“No,” he said, shrugging her off. “She needs to hear this. If she didn’t want to be there, she shouldn’t have gone!”
++Please … please …++
“She’s putting us all in danger by opening a breach to the realm of The Evil,” Stefano said, his mouth a cruel line. “Help yourself, Lottie, or stay away from us!”
++Very well, then … We will!++
Lottie’s face crumpled — literally crumpled, like a statue made of stone dissolving into smaller pebbles. Only these weren’t pebbles. They were glowing leeches, and each of them had white eyes. The leeches squirmed, released from their pretense of Lottie, and launched themselves at Stefano like tiny, Evil bullets.
He fell back with a howl, his hands flung over his face. At last, the mechanical drum sounded.
“Behind me!” cried Grandma X, grabbing Stefano by the collar with her left hand and yanking him backward. Her right hand came up and the light of her moonstone ring struck the dissolving apparition. It exploded, sending leeches flying everywhere. Cornelia squawked and took off, flapping around the chandeliers in a startled panic.
“Yaahh!” said Jaide as one hit her cheek with a solid splat. She went to flick it off, but it clung to her with slimy determination, not biting her but sucking at her skin with a powerful force. Inside her mind she felt a tiny thread of The Evil frantically wriggling.
