A Box of Gargoyles by Anne Nesbet Read Free Book Online

across the salamander’s head again, however. The bronze was so smooth and cold, and she could feel the little patterned ridges above its inscrutable eyes.
    â€œLots of interesting stuff in there still, probably,” said Valko. It sounded very convincing, when Valko said it. “Some pretty cool items . . .”
    â€œValko!” said Maya sternly. “That’s where he lived. That’s Fourcroy’s own house. You know what’s in there!”
    Valko more or less laughed, but Maya thought she saw the faintest trace of cloud in his eyes, a few curling tendrils of fog.
    â€œOh, it’s so ridiculously obvious!” she said. It really was. She couldn’t believe they had been walking around a minute ago as if everything were completely normal. “The writing desk ! His writing desk! Just the number-two thing the letter wanted us to go find, and here we were about to slide through the door and march right up to it. Sheesh.”
    â€œWe weren’t going in for any desk,” said Valko. “We were going to look at all the other neat stuff—”
    â€œThe letter thinks it’s got us,” said Maya. She had to give Valko an impatient tug, away from the iron eyes of that door, away from the watching, waiting head of the salamander, but when she stepped away, the itch in her fingertip flared up for a moment. She stuffed that hand deep into her pocket and frowned. “I mean, it almost did have us. And you said letters couldn’t boss us around. Ha!”
    â€œAll that weird laboratory equipment up there,” said Valko with longing.
    â€œThat’s it,” said Maya. “We’re leaving. Look at me, I’m leaving.”
    Her feet didn’t very much want to go, but she kicked a leg forward and made herself take a step. Away. And then the left leg. Away. The hand pulling Valko along behind her felt strange, too, for that matter. Was he really that heavy? And the finger on her other hand sat there deep in her pocket and itched and itched.
    â€œWe would need,” said Maya, and then stopped to catch her breath and force her leg forward again, “a really good reason ”—take a breath/move a leg—“to go anywhere near”—breath/leg/tug on Valko—“that desk!”
    They were ten feet away from the door. It was getting easier to move again.
    â€œA really, really, really good reason,” she said. She was exhausted.
    Valko blinked and shook his head, his smile slowly coming back as he did so.
    â€œYou know what, Maya?” he said. “It’s too much. You totally need a vacation. I can tell.”
    Twenty feet away, maybe more. They were walking like human beings again, not like underwater divers or people stuck in nightmares where the air has turned to sludge.
    â€œYes, I do,” said Maya. “Without shadows, please. And no more letters making me do stuff.”
    â€œSo far, nothing’s actually made you do anything,” said Valko. “Just pointing that out.”
    Maya looked at him.
    â€œYou were ready to close your eyes and dive in through that door,” she said. “Still feel not trapped, not trapped, not trapped?”
    â€œJust because I wanted to do some intelligent exploring—”
    â€œYou saw the shadow following us. You felt how weird everything got.”
    â€œBut we didn’t go in, did we? We walked right on by. We did. All the rest is just—I don’t know—us getting sort of hysterical, maybe. Like kids telling each other spooky ghost stories.”
    So there it was. It turns out that there is something quite maddening about the very person who has just been at your side while you were chased through Parisian streets by a shadow and then hypnotized into potentially dangerous behavior by a letter on snakes-for-hair stationery then insisting that . . . nothing much had happened. That it was all in your mind.
    It put a bad taste in