The Man in the Box (The Box book 1) Read online

  Chapter Nine

  “He wants you to open the bag,” Al continues. “He can’t take the magic directly, so he needs you to regain your power so he can strip it from you.”

  “Lesson is, don’t open the bag,” Cindy adds.

  Her irritation at Al for telling me about the bag is obvious, so neither Al nor I say anything more in hopes of her cooling down. It makes for a long drive, especially once my adrenaline starts to wear off and exhaustion takes over.

  “The turn’s coming up,” Cindy says after a long silence. I’d almost fallen into a stupor while staring at the pavement ahead of us. “A few more minutes and I’ll be safe from your driving forever.”

  I take in everything around me for the first time in a while and realize we are only minutes from Gran’s house. It seems unreal we’re so close to our destination. Soon we’ll be able to figure out a way to get Al back home and everything can go back to the way it was.

  Exactly what I want.

  Isn’t it?

  “Thank you,” Al says, interrupting my thoughts

  “For what?” The heat of a blush warms first my face and then creeps down to my chest. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “You’re trying.”

  I shake my head at the misplaced gratitude. “Anyone would try to get you home. But most people wouldn’t nearly get you killed in the process.”

  “Most people would have put me back in the box and left me to die.”

  I shift uncomfortably as I remember the idea had crossed my mind. The only reason I’m doing anything at all is because of Cindy. If not for her, I’d still be sitting in a corner of my room, rocking back and forth while staring at him on my night table. I glance at the clock on the dashboard and notice it’s after six in the morning. Well, I suppose right now I’d actually be at rehearsal.

  “Rehearsal,” I groan.

  “What?” Al asks.

  “Nothing, it’s stupid.” I sigh. “There goes the lead, that’s all.”

  Before Al can ask what I’m talking about, Cindy cuts in. For once I’m actually grateful. I’d have felt like an idiot explaining to Al about dance. He’d probably lose respect for me, like all guys do.

  “There,” she says while pointing out the window to a carved wood community sign. “Don’t forget to slow down for the turn this time. And maybe signal. Or not. Whatever.”

  “Shut up,” I say while turning my signal on a little too late. “I’m not so bad.”

  I switch lanes and pull into the suburban area extra carefully to show how awesome a driver I am. As soon as we’re inside the development, however, I get lost. There are too many side roads and similar-looking houses to remember the right directions.

  Cindy takes over navigation without a single snide comment, a miracle in itself, until I finally spot Gran’s house. It’s well back from the road, completely at odds with every other home in the neighborhood. Row after row of residences, all with perfectly manicured lawns and meticulously maintained exteriors, make up the subdivision. All of the buildings are new and there are only half a dozen designs repeated in an irregular pattern.

  Gran’s house on the other hand is old, and not afraid to show its age. Mismatching grey paint covers the outside of the house in patches, and the pavement of the driveway is broken and starting to grow overrun by weeds and grass. It looks like one of the neighbors must have become frustrated with the hay length front yard and cut it back. Otherwise the place looks completely untouched since the last time I visited several months ago.

  I shift the car into park and stare up at the house for a minute. We’re actually here. I should be ecstatic. So, why don’t I want to get out?

  As soon as the car stops, Cindy leaps out and runs around to my side. Before I have a chance to unbuckle myself, she throws the door open, reaches around me and takes the keys from the ignition. Without a word, she shoves them into her pocket and heads toward the front door.

  “I’m really not so bad a driver,” I grumble while getting out of the car. “We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

  There’s a tiny chuckle from Al, but when I look at him, he carefully keeps his face, and smile, hidden.

  When I reach the door, Cindy’s still there, though I have no idea why she hasn’t gone in already.

  “You remember there are potentially people following us, right?” I tap my toe nervously on the overgrown stone walkway. “If they happen to drive by they can see us standing here.”

  “They’d be able to see our car either way,” she says as though it’s not a big deal.

  I contemplate moving the car into the back yard and hiding it behind the house before I’m distracted when Cindy kneels down and pulls a bobby pin out of her hair.

  “Really? You know how to pick a lock?” I’m impressed. Until I remember we’re not in a movie. “Who has those kinds of hobbies?”

  “Shut up, I’m concentrating.” She straightens the hairpin and shoves it into the lock. “Besides, I’m not the criminal you and Mom seem to think I am. I’ve never actually done this before. Usually I leave lock picking to my date.”

  “Of course you do.” It wouldn’t surprise me if she wasn’t joking. “Don’t you have a copy of the key to this place? Couldn’t you have thought things through for five seconds and have grabbed Mom’s key? But no, you never think anything through. You do whatever you feel like.”

  She ignores my rant and absently says, “Don’t see you with a key either, princess,” while continuing to fiddle with the lock.

  I look back at the road to make sure the bad guys haven’t caught up. No sign of Stewart, but there are a lot of cars around in the driveways along the street. Kids are out playing in the morning sun while parents fuss over their lawns and gardens and take their dogs for walks. All we need is one of those people to grow a little too suspicious of a couple of teenagers hanging out at an empty house and the cops will be here in minutes.

  “Didn’t Gran keep a spare?” I ask a bit louder than necessary. I’m half hoping people will overhear and realize we aren’t actually thieves or hooligans or whatever they’re thinking.

  “Shh. Concentrating.”

  “Wait! No, there is a spare.” I glance around the front yard, trying to picture the time Gran showed me the extra key. “I can’t...remember...”

  “Under the roof of the well.”

  I look down at Al who pulls himself half out of the lipstick lid to stare at the house.

  “The well?” Right, the old wooden structure in the back yard. It was filled in years ago when the whole area made the switch to the city water line, but Gran left the wooden structure surrounding the old hole. She said it was as much a part of the house as the roof, so it stayed. It’s completely useless except as one thing; a perfect hiding spot for spare keys.

  I take another look back toward the road before jogging around to the back of the house. There it is, half hidden among the long, scratchy grass. I reach my hand underneath the rotting roof and pull the set of keys off the rusted nail hidden in the shadows.

  Cindy steps aside as I open the lock on the front door and enter Gran’s house.

  “Yes, I’m sure you could have gotten it eventually,” I say to her when I notice the look she’s giving me. No, not me, Al. “What is it?”

  “How did he know where the key was?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. How had I not thought of that?

  I lift the necklace so I’m eye level with him. For the first time since he fell onto my shirt, I can see his face and every expression he makes clearly. He glances at Cindy first, as though he’s afraid to meet my eye. Which I can kind of understand. I must be humungous to him.

  Finally, he turns back to me. “I know this house. I’ve been here before.”

  “What?” I say.

  “What?” Cindy says a little louder. “I thought you weren’t from this world. How could you have been here before?”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me either.” He rubs his chin and stares off
in the distance while he thinks. “I’ve been to this house, but not to this place. Those other houses, those roads, the machine you travel in, none of it exists where I’m from. None of it except for this house.”

  He sounds too freaked out to be lying. I glance at Cindy to see what she thinks but she’s stopped paying attention and is headed toward Gran’s study at the back. I hurry to follow her since I don’t know what to say to Al and there’s nowhere else I can think of to look for answers.

  “Why were you here?” Cindy rifles through some papers in the sturdy wooden desk. “At this house.”

  “Exploring,” he answers after a second. “Kid stuff.”

  I expect Cindy to growl at him and demand he tell us more, but instead she moves to one of the many bookshelves lining the walls of the room. She checks a few old book covers before shoving them back into place. They’re all so old if there were ever titles on the spines, the words are long gone.

  “What are you looking for?” I ask.

  “This.”

  She pulls out a book and opens it to reveal its handwritten contents, though the cover looks like every other old book in the room.

  “A journal?”

  Cindy nods. “Gran never let me read it before. She said it was stuff I didn’t need to worry about.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “I don’t know,” she says while giving me a look like I’m a moron. “She never let me read it.”

  I roll my eyes and walk over to the shelves. Maybe I can find something useful on my own. Although I have no idea what I’m looking for.

  “Here,” Cindy announces with a smack of her hand on the table. “Bring him over here to look.”

  I go over to the desk and carefully unlatch the necklace, setting it down so Al can climb out. When I’m sure he’s safely on the desk, I turn my attention to the page Cindy’s so excited about. It looks like an old map. There’s not much on it, a few blobs with scratches beside each labeling them as things such as mill, blacksmith, and tailor. At the top, there’s a bunch of symbols a lot like the ones Cindy pointed out at the bottom of the box.

  “What is that?” I ask, pointing out the symbols. “Some sort of magic spell?”

  “I’ll show you,” Cindy says before turning to Al. “Step onto the book.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  I bite my lip while examining Al. It would be bad I managed to not hurt him this far, only for a spell to get him at Gran’s house.

  Cindy gives me a puzzled look, which quickly shifts to something more like disgust.

  “Of all guys for you to get your first crush on,” she says.

  “What?” I half laugh. “I don’t have a...” I laugh again to cover up the fact I can’t say the word. “He’s the size of my thumb. I don’t know him.”

  I don’t know why my heart started racing when she said that, or why I’m so flustered. It’s true he’s tiny and I don’t know him. But when my eyes flick over to him and I catch him turning away from me, I feel the heat rise in my cheeks.

  “Fine, whatever,” Cindy says. “It’s a harmless illusion spell. He’ll be fine.”

  He glances up at me at the same moment I sneak a peek at him to see how he’s reacting to Cindy’s accusation. As soon as our eyes meet, he turns and climbs onto the book, giving me no chance to read what he’s thinking.

  “Off the blotches,” Cindy tells him. “There. Don’t move.”

  She pulls enough dust from her pocket to cover the tip of her finger, and blows it so it spreads out over both Al and the book. Slowly the ink splotches on the page shift and grow and take shape until they’re no longer pen marks but ghostly tiny versions of buildings. Between the buildings are roads and grass and trees and everything else you might find in life-like perfect detail. It’s as though a real village was shrunk to match the size of Al.

  He turns in a circle and takes in everything around him. The grass shifts as though blown by wind and something like a cross between a butterfly and a bird unfolds from a flower and flies upwards until it vanishes. His face turns ashen as though he’s staring at a ghost.

  Cindy points to a familiar building. “That’s Gran’s house. But what’s with the rest? I don’t recognize anything else.”

  “I do,” he says. “It’s my village.”