Ghosts of Greenglass House Page 2

  But none of that was the truly awful part. The truly awful part was that all of these things, taken together, made Milo feel as if the phrase “actual Chinese person” didn’t actually apply to him.

  Mr. Pine leaned his elbows on his knees. “I’m guessing after that, it didn’t feel like you could explain to him why it was upsetting.”

  No. After that, it had been all Milo could do not to burst into tears, and he’d gotten out of the classroom as fast as possible the minute it was time to go to lunch, where he’d worked hard to tamp down the panic attack he could feel coming on.

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t think of anything to say.” Also: tears. Also: panic attack.

  “I think I’d have felt the same way.” His dad glanced at the dictionary and notebook on the floor. “I guess that explains those. Getting some vocabulary work in?”

  “Yeah.” They sat together for a moment, watching the twilight darken across the glittering lawn. In the living room behind them, the new wood crackled in the fireplace, and the smell tugged at Milo’s heart. It’s vacation, that smell said. It’s almost Christmas. You can be happy. Just let yourself be happy.

  Mr. Pine put an arm around him, and Milo leaned into his shoulder. “Hey, speaking of vocabulary, I have some new words I looked up this week. I need to double-check pronunciation, but here goes.” Milo’s dad held up his index finger. “First: bridge. Either qiáo or qiáoliáng, although I think qiáoliáng might mean a metaphorical bridge. Second: broken, meaning falling apart—​that’s cánpò. Then there’s ferry, meaning the boat, which I think is dùchùan. Lastly: late. Wǎn.”

  Milo grinned. “So what you’re telling me here is that you didn’t make it on time to that meeting you were going to today.”

  “I did not,” Mr. Pine confirmed, “but let’s focus on the fact that I can almost explain why in Mandarin. What’ve you got?”

  Milo picked up his notebook. “Winter is dōngtiān. A covering of snow is jīxuě. Frost is shuāng. Annoying is nǎorén. That’s as far as I got.”

  Mr. Pine chuckled. “Tell me how you really feel.” Then his expression sobered. “Listen, you don’t have to make a decision now, but I want you to think something over. It sounds to me like Mr. Chancelor thinks he’s finding interesting things about the Chinese in Nagspeake, and he’s just excited to share them. He doesn’t realize how uncomfortable it makes you to be singled out, and he doesn’t understand that he shouldn’t make assumptions about you based on how you look. I think most people know they shouldn’t make bad assumptions about people, but they don’t always get that making any assumptions is probably not a good idea. And he probably knows you have a language tutor. Teachers do talk with each other. That could be why he thought you might know the Mandarin, anyway.”

  “I guess.” It might’ve been logical, but it wasn’t precisely comforting. Milo could barely even deal with the idea of being talked about by people he loved and trusted, and Mr. Chancelor definitely fell outside that category.

  His dad made a sympathetic face. He knew. “I think it’s time your mom and I talk to him and just explain things. I bet you anything we can straighten it out, and then you won’t have to worry anymore.” He held out his right pinkie. “But we won’t do it unless you say it’s okay.”

  Milo linked his pinkie with his dad’s. Pinkie-swears were unbreakable vows. “If I say yes, you have to make him understand that I’m right about the Bluecrownes who built Greenglass House.”

  “Well, obviously. Are you kidding?” They shook their linked fingers. “Now maybe, if you can, try not to think about it anymore for a while. Because when you think about this kind of thing, you worry, and worrying just makes you feel worse.”

  That much was true, even if it was easier to say you were going to stop worrying than to actually do it. “I’ll try.”

  “All right. We’ll revisit this closer to New Year’s, and in the meantime, if you want to talk more, you can come to Mom and me anytime. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Great. And may I also compliment you on your choice of dinner menu?”

  “You may.”

  Milo’s dad got up and went off to do whatever parents did to keep themselves from bugging you when you plainly wanted space. And while Milo was trying to decide whether he felt better or not, the unthinkable happened.

  The bell rang.

  two

  The Bachelorette Party

  EVERYBODY FROZE. There was a distinct rattle of dishes in the kitchen: Mrs. Caraway had dropped something in shock. Milo turned slowly to look warily at his parents.

  “Was that what I think it was?” Mrs. Pine asked.

  The bell rang again. It had a slightly tinny, buzzing edge to its tone. “I believe it was,” Mr. Pine said, setting down the coffee he’d just brought to the dining table. “I guess I’d better go.”

  “Does that mean someone wants to come up?” Emmett asked.

  “Not up,” Milo’s father said as he headed for the door. “That’s not the railcar bell.”

  “I’ll come too,” Milo said, darting for his boots and coat.

  Greenglass House had two bells these days. There was the big old one that had hung on the porch almost since the house had been built, which was connected by a series of cords to a pull way down at the dock at the bottom of the hill. Usually this was the bell that announced guests, since most of them arrived by boat. But there was a second, newer bell, one that Milo’s father had put in only this year. It, too, was an antique, but it was electric, and instead of connecting to the dock, its lines ran up the hill and into the woods. It hadn’t been used since the Pines had tested it back when it had first been installed.

  Milo and his father bundled up and marched out into the cold. “You know what this means,” Mr. Pine said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah,” Milo replied. “I wonder who’s with him.”

  They crossed the crunchy, frosty lawn and headed into the trees that covered the slope of the hill, all blue-green firs and bare bone-colored birches, passing the assorted red stone outbuildings scattered throughout the woods until they came to one that looked like a small, ramshackle house. In actuality, it was a train station. The doors were open, and a familiar tall, thin figure stood in the entrance: Brandon Levi, the sole conductor on Nagspeake’s all-but-defunct and mostly secret Belowground Transit System.

  “Oy, Ben. Hey, Milo,” he said as they approached. “Bell worked, I take it.”

  “Like a charm,” Mr. Pine said, shaking Brandon’s gloved hand. “Was this a test?”

  “Nope. Got a couple dubious characters looking for a place to lie low. Wanted to make sure the coast was clear.”

  More guests. Milo sighed.

  And yet, he thought with a glimmer of excitement twitching to life in his gut, this is how it started last year. And last year had actually turned out to be more than just frustration and a bunch of changes to his beloved holiday routine. Last year he had discovered Odd Trails, a role-playing game that had helped him find a more heroic version of himself in the form of a character called Negret. Negret was an escaladeur, a kind of blackjack or trickster who specialized in reconnaissance and stealth—​a nimble, capable, less anxious Milo-and-yet-not-Milo that he’d been able to turn to for a while when things got unpredictable or began to feel out of control. As Negret, he had played a sort of real-world version of Odd Trails last year, a campaign waged within Greenglass House itself, and in the course of that campaign he’d worked out the secrets that had brought eight unexpected guests to his home.

  But all of that had been because last year, among those strangers that had turned up, there had been one special stranger in particular, the one who had introduced him to Odd Trails and Negret. He had waited and waited all year for her to turn up again, but she had never come back.

  Meddy.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Pine made a face. “We’ve got one guest—​a Skellansen enthusiast, a student of some kind—​and I’d say he seems pretty nonthreatening, for whatever
that’s worth. He’s leaving day after tomorrow.” He craned his neck to peer over Brandon’s shoulder. “Who’s with you? Anyone we know?”

  “It’s a surprise,” Brandon said drily. He leaned back into the station. “You guys catch all that? Want to chance it?”

  “Like we have anywhere else to go, Brandon.”

  “Can we just go in? I’m freezing my tail off here!”

  Milo hadn’t heard those voices in a long time, but he knew them both right away, and he felt his face break into a wide smile.

  Milo’s dad recognized them too. “Come on out, the pair of you,” he laughed.

  Brandon stood aside, and two women in their twenties burst out of the station. “Ta-da!” sang the one with a fringe of red curling out from under her black stocking cap.

  “Merry Christmas,” said the other, who wore a black beret over bright blue hair. “With apologies for the lack of notice.”

  Despite how little Milo relished the idea of more guests, these two were different. They’d been part of the bizarre and unexpected group of strangers who’d shown up last winter break, although back then they’d come as adversaries. Now, it seemed, they’d come as friends.

  “Hi, Clem. Hi, Georgie,” Milo said, waving. “It’s nice to see you.”

  “What’s this waving stuff?” red-haired Clem Candler demanded. “Next you’re going to try and shake hands. Get over here.” She wrapped him in a big hug.

  “I’d hug you too,” said blue-haired Georgie Moselle, “but I’m going to die of hypothermia if we don’t get inside fast.”

  It was cold, but not that cold. Milo took a closer look at Georgie and realized she was practically swimming in a coverall suit that had to have been made for somebody over six feet tall. Someone like Brandon. Who, Milo realized (now that he was paying attention), wasn’t wearing anything over his jeans and shirt and looked plenty cold too.

  “Is your hair wet?” Mr. Pine asked.

  “And my shoes,” Georgie grumbled. “And my clothes, which is why I’m drowning in Brandon’s. For which I am extremely grateful,” she added as they all started walking toward the house.

  “Why is your hair wet?” Milo inquired.

  “And what are you doing here?” Mr. Pine added. “Not that we aren’t delighted to see you, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Clem said, grinning. Then her usual good humor faded. “These two questions are not unrelated.”

  “We’re on the lam,” Georgie said grimly. “But if anyone asks, this is Clem’s bachelorette weekend and I’m treating her to a cozy winter getaway.”

  “Bachelorette weekend?” Mr. Pine repeated dubiously. “Is this just a clever cover, or is there some truth to it?”

  “The best covers always have some truth to them,” Clem said. “Yes, Owen and I are getting married. Just before New Year’s. That is . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “If I didn’t just go and screw it all up beyond repair,” Georgie finished.

  Clem touched her shoulder. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “I know you weren’t. That’s why I said it. But it’s true.”

  “It’s not true, and if I were going to say anything like that, I would have said if I didn’t just go and screw it up.”

  Milo glanced at his father. Mr. Pine caught his eye, winced, and glanced at Brandon, who put both hands up in a Don’t ask me gesture.

  They had reached the lawn. “Clearly there’s more to this than we’re going to have time to hear just now,” Mr. Pine said. “Like I was telling Brandon, I’m pretty sure the guy at the house is as advertised, just a fellow who’s way into windows. But he’s staying until day after tomorrow, so for the moment, what do we call you?”

  Georgie and Clem glanced at each other. “Real names are fine,” Georgie said. “Aliases aren’t going to help us out of this one. They know who we are and what we look like.”

  Before anyone could ask what that ominous comment was all about, Mrs. Pine opened the front door. Georgie and Clem shouted hellos and took off at a trot for the warmth of the indoors. Then, just as everyone was crowding up the stairs, there was the sound of car tires on gravel behind them, and Lizzie Caraway honked and leaned out the window of her battered blue car.

  Apparently it was going to be a full house for a while. Milo couldn’t decide if he was about to freak out or not. Come on, Meddy, he begged silently. Where are you?

  After a quick flurry of hellos and hugs, with introductions for Emmett Syebuck’s benefit, Mrs. Pine took Georgie’s plastic bag full of wet clothes to throw in the dryer and Milo led her and Clem upstairs to the guest rooms. Neither had much in the way of luggage. Clem had a smallish backpack and a short document tube, and Georgie had a messenger satchel. Halfway up the stairs, Milo remembered his manners. “Want me to take those?”

  “Thanks, Milo, but there’s glass in mine again,” Georgie said with a half smile. Milo blushed. Last year he’d smashed a bottle of perfume while helping with Georgie’s luggage.

  “I’m fine,” Clem said. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Okay. Any preference?” he asked as they reached the third-floor landing.

  “Where’s the civilian?” Georgie asked.

  “This floor. Three E.”

  “Let’s go up to five,” Clem said tiredly.

  “So you can get your runs in again?” Milo asked. When she’d been a guest here last year, Clem had spent a lot of time running the stairs.

  But she shook her head. “Just looking for privacy. I don’t know if I’m going to feel much like running.”

  Milo frowned. This was totally unlike the Clem Candler he knew.

  They trooped up to the fifth floor, above which there was nothing but attic. Clem chose 5W, the same room she’d picked last year, and Georgie took the one next to it. Just as they were about to close their respective doors, footsteps drummed in the stairwell and Emmett Syebuck appeared from around the corner with his camera bouncing against his hip.

  “Wait,” he huffed. Both Clem and Georgie leaned warily out into the hall, still holding their bags. “Can I just—​there are two windows on this floor I haven’t sketched yet. Can I take some pictures before you settle in?”

  The two girls looked at each other, then, with similar curious expressions, considered the art student still trying to get his wind back.

  “Which ones do you still need to get?” Milo asked.

  Emmett took one last deep breath and pointed at Clem’s room. “The enameled window’s in there, right? I need that one. And the one in five E, I think.”

  Clem stepped aside and waved an arm. “Go for it. I picked a different room anyway. I was just having a look at the enameled glass myself.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Emmett glanced at Georgie. “What about you? Will I be in your way if I take some pictures?”

  “Nope,” Georgie replied breezily. “We’re both staying on four, but Milo said we shouldn’t miss the windows up here.” And without waiting to hear his reply, they headed back downstairs again.

  Emmett watched them go, looking a little confused. “Guess you don’t have to rush after all,” Milo said.

  “Yeah,” Emmett agreed. “It’s pretty dark already anyway. Still, as long as I’m up here . . .” He shrugged and disappeared into 5W.

  Milo descended to the fourth floor and walked down the hall until he heard movement in one of the rooms. He knocked on the door of 4W. “What was that all about?” he asked when Georgie peered out.

  “Job-related instincts,” she said as the door to the adjacent room opened and Clem came out to join them. “Probably unnecessary, but just in case.” She glanced at Clem. “What do you think?”

  “About young Mr. Syebuck?” Clem considered, then gave Milo a gentle push into 4W. She followed him and closed the door behind her. She looked at Milo, then around him, as if there might be someone else in the room. Milo turned to see if somebody had somehow managed to follow him without his noticing. “Is it just you, Milo?” she asked.

  Oh
. Milo slumped. “Yeah, it’s just me.”

  “Too bad. It would’ve been useful to have extra eyes and ears on things right about now.” Clem perched on the desk and clapped her hands on her knees. “So. Syebuck. I don’t get any particular vibe from him.” She glanced at Georgie, who sat cross-legged on the bed, still engulfed in Brandon’s coveralls. “You?”

  Georgie made a noncommittal noise. “What else do you know about him, Milo?”

  “Not much. He’s a student at City University, and he’s been sketching and photographing everything glass in the house. He’s nice enough. Super enthusiastic.”

  “If he’s at the university, then Gowervine would know him, right?” Clem asked. “I mean, since he studies glass and whatnot. How many stained-glass nerds could there be at one institution?”

  “I’ll try to get hold of the professor,” Georgie said. “I’ll feel a lot better if we can verify that this guy is who he says he is.”

  Clem nodded. She stood and started to pace.