The Wishing Game(44)

“The promise I made when I told you I would be all right if and when you finally left the island and moved on with your life.”

Hugo tensed. “You know?”

“I know. I know you’ve had one foot out the door for years. And I know,” he said as he placed the clock back on its nail, “the only reason you stayed.”

“Care to enlighten me?”

“Because I’m like a father to you. You know how I know that?” He straightened the clock on its hook.

“Because I’ve said it?”

“Because you resent me. Just like a son would.”

Hugo felt his heart deflate like a popped balloon. “I don’t—”

The song sparrow began to sing. “That’s our cue,” Jack said. “You should get some sleep, son. I’ll see you at the crack of the Eastern bluebird for breakfast. The red-winged blackbird at the very latest.”

Jack started for the library door. He paused and turned back.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I know exactly what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.”

Hugo wanted to believe that. Like a clock with invisible gears, Hugo could see the work of Jack’s hands, but he never figured out quite what made the old man tick.

“At least one of us does,” Hugo muttered as Jack turned to go. “Jack?”

He looked back at Hugo, who stood up to face him.

“I don’t resent you. It’s the bloody world I resent. Look at you. You create stories children love and donate wads of cash to hospitals and children’s charities and commit no crimes but the crime of caring too much sometimes, trying too hard…and when I leave, you’ll end up alone in an empty house with only a bottle of wine and an elderly raven for company.”

Jack scowled at him. “Let’s hope Thurl didn’t hear you call him elderly. You know he’s very sensitive.” Then his face softened. “I don’t want to see you alone either. And I do like that new scarf,” Jack said, laughing quietly to himself as he walked away.



* * *



—

Lucy woke with a start. Heart racing, she listened for something, anything, to explain what had jolted her out of a deep sleep. She glanced at her phone for the time—almost one in the morning.

“Hello?”

Someone knocked softly on her door.

“Who is it?” Lucy’s voice shook. Why would someone be knocking on her door this late?

No one answered. She flipped on the bedside lamp and got out of bed to check the door. A white envelope lay on the rug. Someone had slipped it under the door?

Lucy picked it up, then unlocked the door.

The hallway was empty and dark.

She shut the door, locked it again, then sat on the bed. She pulled a card from the envelope and read it.

Meet me at the City of Second Hand if you want to win a prize.

What was this? She knew the City of Second Hand from the books, a tiny town that seemed to disappear and reappear at the whim of the Mastermind. Whoever left the note had drawn a map for her. Apparently the City of Second Hand sat in the very middle of the island.

Was this a game? One of Jack’s mysterious challenges he’d warned them about? She couldn’t think of what else it could be, though it seemed strange to be playing in the middle of the night. Maybe they thought she’d still be awake? One a.m. in Maine was only ten p.m. in California.

Lucy decided to go just in case. She wasn’t about to let a little cowardice and jet lag keep her from winning.

Lucy threw on her clothes—jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, socks, shoes, and then, finally, the coat Hugo had lent her. When she wrapped it around herself, she smelled the salt of the ocean, the salt of sweat, and a more subtle scent like pine or cedar, like an evergreen forest. It must have been from his soap or his shaving cream.

She took the lantern from the closet. Quietly, she slipped out of her room and into the hallway, then down the stairs. She smiled at the ancestral paintings in their gilt frames on the wall. She remembered those from last time. A plaque on one painting read, I have no idea who this man is.

Nice to know Jack Masterson was as strange and whimsical as his fictional alter ego, Master Mastermind.

The bottom step creaked loudly. Wincing, she froze and waited, but no one appeared to send her back to bed. She went to the front door, opened it carefully, and slipped out into the night feeling like that brave and wild child who’d run away from home to seek her fortune here on Clock Island. Now she was doing it again. Maybe this time, she’d find it.

With a push of a button, her lantern came on. Warm yellow light cast a fairy circle around her feet. She followed the cobblestone walk to where it wound around the house, then past the garden gate.

Back when she’d lived with Sean, she’d spent a little time among the rich and famous. She’d visited her fair share of country estates and mansions and seen their overly manicured lawns with their infinity pools, fake Roman statues, and massive fountains. Nothing like that here. No infinity pools. No Roman fountains. No weird shrubs trimmed to look like no trees in nature should ever look.

There was nothing there but a forest, a real forest, deep and dark.

She was shivering, but Lucy followed the path into the trees toward the center of the island. She felt like Astrid with her flashlight, sneaking around Clock Island. At thirteen she would have killed to be here. She wished she could go back in time and tell her younger self to just wait, she would get her chance someday.