House of Secrets

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“So?” Brendan whispered. “I’ll have a six-pack too when I’m old.”

“You wish.” Cordelia opened the freezer and pulled out an ice tray, but it was only filled with water. The shelves inside dripped with melted Häagen-Dazs. “I’m sorry, Will,” she said. “No ice.”

“Not a problem,” shirtless Will said. “Can you please come and help me fetch something?”

Brendan rolled his eyes. Cordelia walked to Will.

“It’s for my shoulder, in my right hip pocket. Can you—”

“Sure.” Cordelia tried to project an air of confidence, like she was an old pro at dealing with handsome young British pilots. She edged her fingers into Will’s pocket, blushing as she looked away from him, and felt something metal warmed by the heat of his body.

“Your gun?” she asked anxiously.

“No, no, gun’s on the other side. Go on, you’ve almost got it.”

Cordelia pulled out a sterling silver hip flask.

“There she is!”

It was slim and curved, with a Latin phrase etched on the front. Cordelia squinted at it. Even though she’d only known Will for about thirty minutes, she liked to think of him piloting fighter planes, not drinking. She handed the flask over disapprovingly.

Will took a long pull. As he drank, Eleanor came back to the kitchen from her mission securing the house. Her eyes went wide. When Will rested the flask in his lap, she ran up and grabbed it.

“Hey!” Will said.

Eleanor turned the flask upside down and let all the alcohol drain on to the floor.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Will yelled. He lunged at her, but sat right back down – his shoulder hurt too much.

Eleanor handed the now-empty flask back to him. “We used to have this uncle, Pete,” she explained. “I mean, we still have him, but he’s not the same. He started drinking way too much. One time he got crazy and threw a raw steak at our aunt. So I don’t approve of drinking, and you’re not allowed to drink if you’re in here.”

“But it’s my drink!” Will protested.

“But it’s our house,” said Eleanor firmly.

Will sighed and looked at his shoulder. “Then how exactly do you expect me to manage my pain? If you haven’t noticed, I’ve got an arrow sticking out of me!”

“Right,” said Cordelia. “We have to take that out. Any idea how?”

“No! I was trained for war with Huns, not barbarians.”

As Will got worked up, his face got pale. Beads of sweat lined his brow. Cordelia felt his forehead with the back of her hand. It was burning up. She became deadly serious.

“Your wound is getting infected. Nell, come with me. Brendan, stay with Will.”

“What? What do you want me to—”

“Keep him calm, relaxed. We’re going to find out how to treat him properly.”

She grabbed Eleanor and left the kitchen.

“You really do like him, don’t you?” Eleanor asked in the hall.

“No.”

“Yes. You’re doing that thing where you look away when you answer my questions. That’s how I know you’re not telling the truth.”

“I just want to keep him alive. He’s good with a gun and he—”

“Looked away again,” Eleanor smirked.

They went to the living room and picked up all the books that had been blown in during the Wind Witch’s attack. They brought them to the library (it took a few trips) and tossed them on the floor so all the books in the house were in a central location. It was a mess. Books lay on the floor in literary dunes. Some were open; some had had their covers ripped off. Mixed in with them were the splintered ladders and broken table of the library.

“Now we have to separate the books,” Cordelia said. “Put the ones by Denver Kristoff by the door; give the others to me.”

“Why are we doing this exactly, Deal?”

“Because maybe one of those books is a medical manual! Can you help? Just look for a K—”

“I can read ‘Denver Kristoff’!”

“Don’t get mad, Nell—”

“I just searched this whole house by myself to make sure it was safe, and you’re treating me like a little kid!”

Cordelia smiled to herself. She and Brendan had known the house was OK when they’d let Eleanor go off exploring; they had each checked a floor when they’d gone to the bathroom upon arrival. (Unfortunately, after testing the sinks and determining that the plumbing was as busted as the electricity, they had been forced to go outside.) “I’m sorry, Nell,” she said. “Tell me if you find anything interesting, and I’ll tell you if I need help.”

The sisters went to different corners of the library. Every time Eleanor came across a non-Kristoff book, she handed it to Cordelia. Cordelia was looking for something like Gray’s Anatomy, but she wasn’t having any luck. She wondered how she could open up Will’s shoulder, pull out the arrowhead, and sew it back up without a book to guide her. At least she had her memories of her father. She remembered how he used to sit her down at the kitchen table and show her how he performed surgeries, with a plate of lasagne for a patient and a butter knife for a scalpel. “The most important thing,” he told her, “is to think of your hands as tools. They’re the greatest and most precise tools in the world, but they’re just as dumb as a hammer. They’ll perform as well as you command them to.”

They searched for twenty minutes. Cordelia found books about Scottish armour, Polynesian occult practices and mushroom cultivation, but she didn’t find anything that would help Will. Eleanor, meanwhile, pretended that Kristoff was a neighbourhood in Denver, Colorado, and so she was looking for books about Kristoff restaurants and shops; that helped her read the covers fine. For fun she tried to read all of them, and soon she came across something that jogged her memory.

“Hey, Deal! Wasn’t this the book you stole from the library?”

Cordelia immediately recognised the first-edition copy of Savage Warriors… and then something clicked in her head. The memory that had eluded her when she was captured by Slayne.

Cordelia took Savage Warriors and began flipping pages.

“What? What are you doing?”

When she hit page 17, she screamed.

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“Brendan! Brendan!” Cordelia ran into the kitchen, waving Savage Warriors. Eleanor was close behind. Cordelia was momentarily silenced by the sight of Will, propped up on the kitchen table with some pillows, playing Brendan’s PSP.

“What?” her brother asked.

Brendan sat next to Will. The pilot’s skin was sickly and pale, but he looked happy. “We’re relaxing,” Brendan said. Then, to Will: “Get him!”

“Oh!” Will yelled. “How do I get him?”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea for him to play… Red Dead Redemption?” Cordelia asked.

“He likes it! Gaming is good for people in pain. What’s it called? Tempur-pedic?”

“Therapeutic.”

“Whatever.”

“Give me that.” Cordelia snatched the PSP from Will and turned it off.

“Beg pardon!”

“Bren, you need to preserve the batteries in this thing.”

“Why?”

“We may need them. And how about you, Will? How are you feeling? Still think you’re in France?”

“I’m not sure where I am, Miss Walker.”

“I have an idea.”

Cordelia opened Savage Warriors to page 17.

“Listen: ‘They came forth from the forest then, seven men. Born majestic but transformed by time and blood into rootless killers. They rode on great steeds in armour that covered them as casts of steel. They were the Savage Warriors, who lived to sow mayhem and reap plunder. They killed men quickly… and women specially.’ Remind you of anyone?”

“Yeah, the dudes who just almost murdered us!” Brendan said.

“That’s not all. I knew those warriors seemed familiar. Their leader in the book… his name is Slayne.”

“Like the guy whose face I messed up!” exclaimed Eleanor.

“Guys: we’re trapped in a Denver Kristoff book.”

“The writer who built this place,” Brendan said to Will. “Wait – Deal, shouldn’t you have figured this out before? Didn’t you read that book?”

“I skimmed it, Bren, OK? I have a lot of books to read.”

“This is preposterous,” said Will. “Whoever heard of being trapped in a book?”

Instead of answering, Cordelia handed Will another book.

“The Fighting Ace,” said Will. “What’s your point?”

“Open it and read. Out loud.”

Will started with page 1: “‘He was destined to end up as rugged as they come, but as he walked across Farnborough Airfield on April 22, 1916, Officer Cadet Will Draper was nothing more than a boy who wanted to fly.’ Now hold on a minute! What’s the meaning of this?”

“Uh, you?” Cordelia said.