Free Emerald Green by Kerstin Gier Page A

time.”
    “And I haven’t had a moment to wonder whatto do next. I was just beginning to get over your visit and thinking about it all.” He examined me with his head to one side. “Yes, you do look different. You didn’t have that barrette in your hair earlier, and somehow you seem thinner.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “It wasn’t a compliment. You look as if you were in rather a bad way.” He came a little closer and scrutinized me critically. “Is everythingall right?” he asked gently.
    “Everything’s fine,” I meant to say cheerfully, but to my horror, I burst into tears. “Everything’s fine,” I sobbed.
    “Oh, dear,” said Lucas, patting me clumsily on the back. “As bad as all that?”
    For several minutes, I couldn’t do anything but let the tears flow. And I’d thought I was back in control of myself! Fury at the way Gideon had behaved seemed the rightreaction—very brave and adult. And it would look much better in a film than all this crying. I’m afraid Xemerius was only too right to compare me to an indoor fountain.
    “Friends!” I finally sniffed, because my grandfather had a right to an explanation. “He wants us to be friends. And for me to trust him.”
    Lucas hunched his head down and frowned, looking baffled. “And that makes you cry because…?”

    “Because yesterday he said he loved me!”
    If possible Lucas looked even more puzzled than before. “Well, that doesn’t necessarily seem a bad way to start a friendship.”
    My tears dried up as if someone had turned off the electricity powering the indoor fountain. “Grandpa! Don’t be so dim!” I cried. “First he kisses me, then I find out that it was all just tactics and manipulation, and then hecomes out with that let’s-be-friends stuff!”
    “Oh. I see. What a … what a scoundrel!” Lucas still didn’t look entirely convinced. “Forgive me for asking silly questions, but I hope we’re not talking about that de Villiers boy, are we? Number Eleven, the Diamond?”
    “Yes, we are,” I said. “That’s exactly who we’re talking about.”
    My grandfather groaned. “Oh, really! Teenagers! As if all this weren’tcomplicated enough already!” He threw me a fabric handkerchief, took my schoolbag out of my hand, and said firmly, “That’s enough crying. How much time do we have?”
    “The chronograph’s set for me to travel back at ten P.M. your time.” Funnily enough, crying had been good for me, much better than the adult, being-furious variant. “Do you have anything to eat? I’m feeling a bit peckish.”
    That madeLucas laugh. “In that case we’d better go upstairs, little chicken, and find you something to peck at. It’s claustrophobic down here. And I’ll have to call home and say I’ll be late back.” He opened the door. “Come along, and you can tell me all about it on the way. And if anyone sees you, don’t forget that you’re my cousin Hazel from the country.”
    *   *   *
    ALMOST AN HOUR LATER, we were sittingin Lucas’s office, thinking so hard that the steam was practically coming out of our ears. In front of us we had piles of paper with scribbled notes, mostly consisting of dates, circles, arrows, and question marks, as well as thick leather-bound folio volumes (the Annals of the Guardians for several decades back) and the usual plate of biscuits. All through the ages, the Guardians seemed to haveample stocks of those.
    “Too little information to go on, too little time,” Lucas kept saying. He was prowling restlessly up and down the room, ruffling his hair. In spite of the stuff he put on it to keep it smooth, it was beginning to stick out in all directions. “What do you think I can have hidden in that chest?”
    “Maybe a book containing all the information I need,” I said. We had passedthe young man on guard by the stairs without any difficulty. He had been asleep, the same as on my last visit, and the fumes of alcohol he gave off were enough to make any passerby