Free Amber House: Neverwas by Larkin Reed Tucker Reed Kelly Moore Page B

slipper.
    62 O
    As if she could sense my intentions, the spider was off and
    scuttling, freaky-fast. I went after her, bent over, smacking the
    floor with my slipper, missing, missing again. I clenched my teeth
    to keep from shrieking. She darted under the darker shadow of
    the bureau, then dashed out into the open space beside the bed.
    I swung the slipper again, but she leapt up onto one of the legs of
    the bed’s headboard and ran up its curves. At the top of the bed-
    post, almost at eye level, she paused. She was staring at me.
    I raised the slipper again.
    The spider jumped onto the wall, and scrambled up it, duck-
    ing behind the wide wooden crucifix. Standing as far away as I
    could, I nudged the bottom of the cross with my slipper.
    Two things fell loose and down behind the bed’s headboard.
    One was the spider. I bent, looked below the bed, and saw her
    running for the far side. I darted around the end of it, only to
    spot her scuttling up the wall into the window curtains. I gave
    up then. I wasn’t poking around the curtains in search of a poi-
    sonous spider. I’d probably find a few.
    I stopped on my way out the door. Walked back to the bed.
    Bent down to look for the other thing that had fallen from behind
    the crucifix.
    And found a slip of paper with a familiar spidery script.
    Fate is in thy hands.
    I stared at it. Again the sense of a poem tugged at my mind,
    like a singsong nursery rhyme I couldn’t quite hear. “We chase . . .
    drawn on . . . toward mystery . . . hushed . . . wake” and “rise to meet.”
    It seemed like my fragments should be in it too. I could almost
    hear it.
    I went back to my room and opened the little dollhouse. I
    spread out the paper pieces already there, nudging them into
    a column, adding the piece from behind the cross. I changed
    them up, and changed them up again, until I was satisfied with
    my ordering:
    o63
    seek the point where past and future meet
    Fate is in thy hands
    Make all good amends
    choose it all again
    That’s right , I thought, but didn’t know what I meant.
    The missing pieces hovered, like a name on the tip of my
    tongue — almost ready to be spoken, but somehow always slip-
    ping away. Why had all these fragments come to me? It couldn’t be
    just a coincidence, could it? There had to be some meaning there.
    But then I rolled my eyes. Are you out of your mind? Someone is
    sending you a message? Get a grip.
    I closed the little house and headed for the kitchen. And
    noticed with another flicker of irritation at the perversity of it
    that now the door to the Captain’s rooms had been closed.
    The walk down the stairs and through the entry was oddly
    silent without the constant tick of the grandfather clock, ban-
    ished to the east wing. It seemed as if the house was missing its
    heartbeat. The more I listened, the more the silence massed
    around me. I felt alone, like the world had emptied while I slept,
    and I had been left behind.
    It’s just the house and me , I thought irrationally.
    I paused at the kitchen’s swinging door, my hands pressed
    against the wood, hoping Sam was on the other side.
    The door swung into me and I screeched. “Lordy, child,”
    Rose exclaimed, jumping back a little, “don’t stand behind a
    push-through door.”
    “Sorry,” I said, recovering myself.
    She held the door open for me. “Come in. Saved you some
    johnnycakes.” She went to the oven, pulled out a plate, and put
    it on a mat on the table.
    “Thank you,” I said. “That was really nice.”
    She snorted. “Didn’t want you making a fresh mess in my
    clean kitchen.”
    64 O
    “I try to clean up after myself, Mrs. Valois. I hope I’m not —”
    She shook her head and leaned against the counter, not look-
    ing at me but speaking with sudden gentleness. “You do fine,
    child. You always have. I shouldn’t have suggested otherwise.”
    It was another one of those moments — seeing a person from a
    whole different perspective. Like the prickly Rose