House of Secrets

Chapter 24

“That wasn’t a woman,” said Alyssa. “That was my brother. Having a tantrum.”

“He thought you were a girl!” said Nellie, laughing hysterically. “At least you woke him up.”

“It wasn’t a tantrum,” an embarrassed Jonathan argued, trying to lower his voice a few octaves. Will shook the cobwebs out of his head and stared at his shoulder.

“What have you done to me?”

Even in the dark blue light, Will could see that he hadn’t been the recipient of the most expert medical care. He sniffed his shoulder. “And what’s that smell?”

“Truffle,” said Nellie. “You can pick that off.”

Will started to, but then held off. “It actually makes a nice bandage. But crikey, it hurts. Do you have anything for the pain?”

Alyssa handed him two Aleve.

“What is this, ingestible morphine?”

“Sure.”

Will took the pills dry and checked that he still had his gun on his hip. Jonathan looked at it enviously.

“Can you walk upstairs?” Alyssa said. “We really need to get some sleep.”

“I suppose so, given a bit of help.”

Alyssa put The Fighting Ace under her arm so she would have something to read. Then she and Jonathan got under Will’s shoulders (Alyssa took the injured one) and eased him off the kitchen table. Will groaned and complained, but he could walk. Nellie ran ahead to make sure there was nothing on the floor that would trip him. As they all mounted the spiral stairs, Jonathan’s sneakers stuck to each step, their bottoms soaked with blood from the kitchen floor.

“Thank you,” Will said quietly. It was all he said before he entered the master bedroom and declared, “Now that’s what I call a bed!”

The king-size mattress with plush sheets and extra pillows did look very inviting, even though it was on the floor and the bed frame was broken around it. “Since I’m injured, I’ll take it,” said Will.

“Hey, hold on, we can all fit in that bed,” said Alyssa.

“Out of the question. Unseemly.”

“Where do you expect us to sleep, on the floor?”

“I’ve got an idea!” Nellie scampered away and returned with the mattress from her bedroom and a fluffy Hello Kitty sleeping bag. “Will can take the mattress and Jonathan can have the sleeping bag.”

They were too tired to argue. Will lay on Nellie’s mattress at the foot of the bed. Jonathanclimbed into the too-small sleeping bag. Alyssa and Nellie used the last of their energy to go through the upstairs rooms and open all the shutters, just in case the house traveled somewhere else at night and they had to get their bearings again in the morning. Then they got the big mattress, but not before Nellie aimed a kick at the RW trunk. “That’s for tripping me before.”

“Don’t do that . . . ,” managed Alyssa. “Not the trunk’s fault . . . We actually need to open that. Tomorrow . . . for sure . . . ” Her head sank into the pillow. She was asleep before the air seeped out of it.

It would be tempting to say that night passed quietly in the primeval forest of the book's fiction. In truth it was only the extreme fatigue of the Walters and Will that prevented them from being woken up every five minutes from the sound of a giant unknown beast howling or an oversize dragonfly buzzing by the window. They all had dreams, although only Alyssa remembered hers—tunneling nightmares where the Wind Witch blew her down a corridor as blood sprayed from the walls. When she awoke in terror, gray dawn light sifted through the windows.

Alyssa hated waking up too early. She could never go back to sleep. It had happened to her at a slumber party last year. She’d had a bad dream and woken up in a sleeping bag in a room full of five girls, not daring to go to the bathroom or get a book because the others would ask her why she was up so early. And then one of them would say, “Why are you so weird?”

Luckily Alyssa had The Fighting Ace. She opened it and started reading—fast. She could speed-read with the best, and she had the added motivation of really wanting to know what happened to Will Draper. She read about aerial dogfights and backroom army dealings, but most disturbingly, she read about a woman named Penelope Hope. A woman who was older, more beautiful, and more mysterious than she.

As Alyssa neared the end of the book, she heard, “You’ve been busy this morning.”

She turned. Will was smiling at her.

“How’d you know I was up?”

“I’ve been listening to you turn pages for an hour. Woke up early. Can’t get any kip in here. What are you reading?”

“Nothing.” Alyssa hid The Fighting Ace. She didn’t want Will to know she’d been reading about him. But thanks to the book she knew that kip meant “sleep.” “How’s your shoulder?”

“Feels like a tiny man built a campfire on me. But you did a wonderful job, Miss, um...Walter?”

“Alyssa Eleanor Cordelia Walter...Call me A--”

“Cordelia, from King Lear . . . ”

“Buffy, actually. My mother loves it.”

Will draped a hand off his mattress, inches from Alyssa’s. “Have you ever read King Lear?”

“No, actually. I’ve read most Shakespeare, but not that.”

“American education. Tragic.”

Alyssa was glad her siblings weren’t awake to see her turn beet red. Getting called out on a lack of literary knowledge was the worst—and besides, what was Will doing with his hand? Was he just going to leave it there as if she hadn’t noticed? She totally noticed.

“Cordelia,” Will declared, “was King Lear’s youngest daughter. At the start of the play, when the king asks his less-fit daughters what they think of him, they give flowery speeches. But Cordelia tells the truth and gets banished.”

“I actually think I remember that—”

“You’re a lot like her. I can see it in your eyes.”

He took Alyssa’s hand so smoothly that she found it hard to pinpoint when it happened.

“You’re controlled by your emotions. Ruled by your heart.”

“Actually, I like to think I’m ruled by logic,” Alyssa said, pulling her hand away.

“Then why is your heart beating so fast?”

Alyssa glanced at Will’s fingers. He’d been taking her pulse. She rolled over on her side, holding her hand close to her face, and felt the sharp shape of The Fighting Ace under her pillow. Will was brave in the book. And bold. And he had a lot of girlfriends.

“You know, all of a sudden, I am actually tired,” Alyssa said. “I’m going to try and get some sleep before everybody wakes up.”

“I understand. By the way, what’s a Buffy?”