More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“I knew you wouldn’t be satisfied with a little visit…not with so much fun still to be had.”
Stew-Cat was still there, staring at him. “What is it?” he said. The cat took off toward the stairs, then stopped and cast a backward glance.
He might have declined to descend had Stew-Cat not hurried on past him, down into the murk.
Her fingers went up to her face, and touched the tears. “I thought…I thought I’d never cry again,” she said. “Look what you’ve done!” “I’m sorry,” said Harvey. “Oh no, my sweet, don’t be sorry. It’s wonderful.” She smiled through her tears. “You’ve broken his curse on me.”
“You know how this House works, don’t you?” Harvey nodded. “It gives you whatever you think you want.”
“And I wanted cats, and a home, and—” “What?” “Another father.” She shivered with fear, remembering the horror. “I met Hood that night. At least, I heard his voice.”
He already had Blue-Cat murdered, for showing you the way out.”
“Yes,” said Harvey. “What do you dream of being?” “I never dream,” she said defiantly. “You should try it,” Harvey told her. “If you can change me into a worm, or a bat, what could you do for yourself?” The defiance on her face became bafflement, and the bafflement turned to panic. Her outstretched fingers began to retreat into themselves. Harvey reached for them like lightning, however, interweaving his fingers with hers. “What do you want to be?” he said to her. “Think!” She started to struggle, and he felt her magic surging through her fingers into his, attempting to work some change on
...more
Mrs. Griffin glanced back at the heap of clothes that marked the place where Marr had vanished into thin air. “Maybe you can,” she said, with astonishment in her voice. “Of all the children who’ve come here, maybe you’re the one who can beat Hood at his own game.”
His face, when his teeth no longer dazzled, was like a mask made of dough. Two thumb-holes for eyes, and a blob for a nose.
and he was carrying a plate of apple pie and ice cream.
The pie was golden brown and dusted with sugar, the ice cream melting in a sweet, white pool!
“But I know what it’s made of,” Harvey said. “Apples and cinnamon and—” “No,” said Harvey. “I know what it’s really made of.”
the gray dust and ashes from which this illusion was made.
“You shouldn’t have eaten that pie,” he said. “It’s reminding your belly of what you’re made of.” “What’s that?” Jive said. “What the boy says,” Rictus replied. “Dirt and ashes!”
His legs crumbled beneath him now, but he refused to give up. He started to haul himself up the stairs, still yelling
and the hiss of dust as it ran away down the stairs from the emptying sack of his body.
The dying creature reached up with an almost fingerless hand, still hoping—even as its life drifted away—that its creator would come to save it.
his pursuit of Hood was almost at an end. The Vampire King was near. Who else but a master of illusions would live in a place so bereft of them? The attic was all the House was not: filthy, murky and cobwebbed.
“Come out,” he yelled, “I want to see what a thief looks like.”
“I only took the days you didn’t want,” Hood protested. “The rainy days. The gray days. The days you wished away. Where’s the crime in that?”
“I didn’t know what I was losing,” Harvey protested. “Ah,” said Hood softly, “but isn’t that always the way of it? Things slip from your fingers and when they’re gone you regret it. But gone is gone, Harvey Swick!”
“You came because you knew you’d find a home here,” Hood said. “We’re both thieves, Harvey Swick. I take time. You take lives. But in the end we’re the same: both Thieves of Always.
“Perhaps I should take you under my wing. My west wing.” He laughed mirthlessly at his own joke:
“You’ve got a streak of the vampire in you already.”
“Boy! You’re a difficult guy to please, Harvey Swick!”
Tears started to cloud his eyes. He wiped them away with his fists. They were both useless, fists and tears.
“Haven’t you guessed yet?” Rictus replied. “He is the House.”
One or two slates slid from the roof and smashed on the ground below.
He looked up from the feast at the door to the facade and saw that his plan to drain the House of its magic was indeed working. Many of the windows were now cracked or broken; the doors were peeling and hanging from their hinges; the porch boards were twisted and blighted.
The lake’s dark water still soaked her from head to foot, but as it ran from her body and into the ground the last traces of her silver scales went with it. When she opened her arms to him, they were human arms.
In the high times of his evil, Hood had been the House. Now, it was the other way around. The House, what was left of it, had become Mr. Hood.
His eyes were made of broken mirrors, and his face of gouged stone. He had a mane of splinters, and limbs of timber. He had shattered slates for teeth, and rusty screws for fingernails, and a cloak of rotted drapes that scarcely hid the darkness of his heart from sight.
threatening to toss them both into the maelstrom. Even now, Hood was determined to claim his rags back from Harvey, and conceal the void in him.
to find out who they were and why they’d wandered into Hood’s grip. Had they been orphans, with no other place to call home; or runaways, like Wendell and Lulu; or simply bored with their lives, the way he’d been bored, and seduced by illusions?
Lulu sighed heavily. “Have you ever wanted two things at the same time,” she asked Harvey, “but you knew you couldn’t have both of them?” “Once or twice,” said Harvey. “Why?” “Because I’d like to grow up with you, and be your friend,” she replied, “but I also want to go home. And I think in the year that’s waiting for me on the other side of that wall, you haven’t even been born.”
“I guess we do have one thing to thank Hood for.” “What’s that?” “We were children together,” he said, taking hold of her hand. “At least for a little while.”
“Let’s go together as far as we can,” Harvey said. “Yes, I’d like that,” Lulu replied, and hand in hand they walked toward the wall.
Then they stepped into the wall. For the first stride he felt Lulu’s hand in his, but by the second stride it had grown faint, and by the third—when he stepped out into the street—it and she had gone completely, delivered back into the time from which she’d stepped, all those seasons ago.
but they were all three agreed on one thing: that it was fine to be together again.
Time would be precious from now on. It would tick by, of course, as it always had, but Harvey was determined he wouldn’t waste it with sighs and complaints. He’d fill every moment with the seasons he’d found in his heart: hopes like birds on a spring branch; happiness like a warm summer sun; magic like the rising mists of autumn. And best of all, love; love enough for a thousand Christmases.
