“Lucy Hart, meet Hugo Reese,” Jack had said. “Hugo Reese, this is Lucy Hart. Hugo’s a painter. He’s going to be the new illustrator for my books. And Lucy’s come to be my new sidekick. Would you mind showing her how to draw the Mastermind’s house? She’ll need to know that.”
Did she believe that? Did she fall for it? Did she genuinely believe that Jack Masterson was going to let her stay in his house? Be his sidekick? His daughter? His friend? She’d wanted to believe it, so she held out her shaking hand to Hugo Reese.
Hugo only looked at her hand, then at Jack Masterson. “Have you gone soft in the head, old man?” His accent was British. Not fancy British like a prince, more like punk rock British.
Jack Masterson tapped the top of his head. “Hard as a rock.”
Hugo rolled his eyes so dramatically that Lucy imagined he could see inside his own skull.
“Take your time,” Jack said. “I’ll be right back.”
They were alone then, she and Hugo Reese. He made her incredibly nervous and not because he was scowling, not because he was the new illustrator of the Clock Island books, but because he was the best-looking guy she’d ever met. Usually she didn’t pay too much attention to boys, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Lucy Hart, eh?” he said.
She was suddenly very very very nervous. There were cute boys at her school. But Hugo wasn’t a boy. He was a man. A really really really handsome man.
“You ran away from home? To here? Do you know how incredibly stupid that is? You could have been killed. Did your parents drop you on your head?”
Lucy was taken aback by his anger. She’d expected him to be as nice as Jack.
“Maybe,” she said, on the verge of tears. “They don’t care about me, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Hugo looked away. “Sorry. My brother’s about your age. I’d have kittens if he ran away from home.”
Have kittens? She liked that expression. “But Jack said—”
“I don’t care what Jack said. You nearly gave him a heart attack showing up at his front door.”
Lucy giggled. Hugo glared.
“Sorry, sorry. Just…my last name’s Hart. I thought you were making a pun. Hart attack.” Lucy looked at the floor, then back at him again. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes softened. The storm of his anger had passed. She wasn’t used to getting chewed out by, well, anyone, much less sexy punk artist guys. It was actually kind of nice that he seemed to care about her safety so much.
“All right, sit down,” he said. “And pay attention. Drawing is a skill like driving or roller-skating. You aren’t born knowing how to do it. You have to learn it, and if you want to learn it, you can learn it. But if you don’t want to learn, don’t waste my time.”
Nobody ever told her that before, that things like art could be learned. She assumed she didn’t draw because she couldn’t draw, and here was an actual artist saying she could learn? Wild. Lucy sat down, paid attention, and did everything Hugo Reese told her to do. She screwed up. She started over. She tried and tried again. And thirty minutes later, she had a passable drawing of a spooky-looking house covered in ivy and weird windows like watching eyes.
Not just any house…the house on Clock Island.
When she was done with her drawing, Hugo Reese took a long look at it and said, “Not bad, Hart Attack. Keep it up.”
She hadn’t kept it up, but she never forgot that drawing lesson he gave her or how much she liked being called Hart Attack in that funny way by the best-looking guy she’d ever seen.
Safe to say, she was a little in love with him by the time the lesson was over. And it was over way too soon. Thirty minutes or so later, the office door opened again. She’d looked up, smiling, expecting to see Jack Masterson. Instead, it was a police officer in uniform followed by a woman who said she was a social worker. They were there to take her home.
“Here we go, toots. Boat’s waiting.”
Mikey’s voice dragged her out of the past and into the present.
He carried her bags over to the boat, where the skipper took them and helped Lucy aboard. He settled her in a chair with some hot coffee. She was the lone passenger on the small blue-and-white ferry.
While she still had a few minutes, she checked her phone. Theresa had replied to her text with lots of love, hugs, and well-wishes. Mrs. Bailey replied with a text that Christopher was glad she’d made it safely. That was it.
She put her phone away before she did something pointless like trying to call Christopher and telling him the news about Hugo Reese. All those wild, strange, mesmerizing paintings of the fictional animals that lived on Clock Island or the ghosts that haunted it or the train that stopped on it—though how a train could make it out to an island, the Mastermind could never fully explain…Hugo made those. Christopher loved the pictures almost as much as he loved the stories.
Lucy knew she ought to stay inside the cabin with her hot coffee. She couldn’t sit still, though. Careful of her land legs, she got out of her seat and went to the door. She pushed it open and went to the railing, clinging tightly to it as the ferry bobbed in the water and sputtered and churned its way to the island.
Breathing deeply, she brought the ocean breeze into her lungs. She couldn’t believe how much she missed cold spring nights and the sweet salt air of the Atlantic Ocean. If it were a perfume, she’d buy a bottle and wear it every day. If only Christopher was with her. He dreamed of living by the ocean and swimming with sharks, and they were out here in the water, right under her nose. Sand tiger sharks. Blue sharks. No hammerheads, sadly, but there were great whites, which would certainly impress him. Oh, she’d have to warn him not to feed the seagulls and never pet the seals, but he would love it here. This would be his heaven.
She felt thirteen again, scared to death but excited beyond words. Was she excited about meeting Jack Masterson again? Of course. He was one of her idols. Maybe the one idol who had yet to disappoint her. But more than anything, this was her chance, her one chance, to make something happen for her and Christopher. If she won.
There was the catch. If.
The dark sky lightened. The engine changed pitch. The boat slowed.
Up ahead, not too far away, was a house—a big beautiful Victorian house covered in climbing ivy with strange towers that looked down over the beach and the dock and the water.
Her heart pounded like the beat of a drum.
There it was. Clock Island.
In her head, she heard a mechanical voice speaking.
Tick-tock. Welcome to the Clock.
She was back.
Riddles and Games and Other Strange Things
He was there, but Astrid couldn’t see him. All she saw was the outline of a face in the shadows by the fire. The Mastermind.
“Sir? Mister, um,” Astrid began, and Max coughed. “I mean, Master Mastermind. My brother and I were hoping we could maybe get a wish?”
“A wish?” said the voice from the shadows. “Do I look like a genie to you?”
“Maybe?” Astrid said. “I don’t know what a genie looks like, so maybe a genie looks like you.”
He said nothing to that, but she saw the shadow that was his face almost smile.