Free Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere by Jacqueline West Page A

the lemonade?” Mrs. Nivens asked at last.
    Personally, Olive thought it could have used about twice as much sugar and a lot less lemon, but she wasn’t about to say so. “It’s good. Thank you, Mrs. Nivens.”
    “Are you getting all settled into your new house?” Olive could feel Mrs. Nivens’s eyes on her face, even through the curtain of her hair. “It’s such a big place—there must be so much cleaning and organizing to do, so much old junk to clean out.”
    “It is big,” said Olive. “But we haven’t been getting rid of anything.” She thought of the painting buried in the backyard and of what was stuck inside of it. “Not really.”
    “Hmm,” said Mrs. Nivens. “I would think you’d want to remove some of the clutter. Have a yard sale, perhaps.”
    Olive took another tiny sip of lemonade. “Um, Mrs. Nivens . . .” she began, “. . . you lived next door to Ms. McMartin for a long time, didn’t you? I mean—a long time before we moved in?”
    “Yes,” said Mrs. Nivens stiffly. “Yes, I did.”
    “I was wondering,” said Olive, choosing each word very carefully, but trying to sound very cool and casual at the same time, “did you ever see anybody . . . take things out of the house, after Ms. McMartin died?”
    Mrs. Nivens let out a short, breathy laugh through her nose. “Nobody could have gotten into that house,” she said, tugging off her gardening gloves. “Even the ambulance staff barely made it through in one piece. Those cats, ” Mrs. Nivens emphasized, her eyebrows rising just the teeniest bit. “They wouldn’t let anyone through the door. And of course, soon the house was all locked up—and many of the valuables were stowed safely away, I’m sure. Annabelle was a very cautious person when it came to family heirlooms. Even though she had no family to leave those things to . . .” Mrs. Nivens trailed off with a skeptical little shrug. “I’m sure whatever was in there before is still in there now.”
    Olive let out a breath. See? she told herself. She’d felt quite sure that the spellbook was in there somewhere, just waiting to be found. Beneath the table, her feet began to tap impatiently.

     
    “Why do you ask?” Mrs. Nivens’s eyes were honed on her again.
    “I—I was just wondering,” Olive said, thinking fast. “There’s a whole set of encyclopedias in the library, but the one for letter C is missing, and I was wondering where it went, because I wanted to look up . . . carburetors .”
    If Mrs. Nivens thought Olive’s answer was suspicious, she didn’t let on.
    Olive gulped the rest of her lemonade and plunked the empty glass down on the table. “Well, I should probably get back home and help with lunch.”
    Mrs. Nivens stood and reached out to pick up Olive’s empty glass. For a moment her ungloved hand passed through a beam of sunlight, and Olive, glancing down, saw that there was something funny about Mrs. Nivens’s skin. She barely had time to wonder what it was before Mrs. Nivens had jerked her hand sharply back into the shade. Her eyes pierced into Olive’s like two icicles.
    “Good-bye, Olive,” said Mrs. Nivens, in a tone that made Olive hop up and back away. “Good luck finding—whatever it is you’re looking for.”
    Olive was already on the other side of the lilac hedge by the time Mrs. Nivens’s words sunk in. Whatever it is . . . ? Maybe Mrs. Nivens hadn’t believed the story about carbuncles. Or carburetors. Or whatever it was Olive had said. There was something strange about Mrs. Nivens, that was for sure—something even stranger than gardening in high heels.
    The many windows of the old stone house stared down at Olive as she crossed the shady, overgrown lawn. She stared back. She was so busy staring that she didn’t even notice the rumpled, mussy-haired boy in front of her until she’d nearly bumped into him.
    “Hello,” said Rutherford calmly as Olive let out a startled squeak.
    “What are you doing in my backyard?” she