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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.
On her left, sudden movement…A small herd of deer dashed through the woods. The lantern light revealed that a few were spotted white all over. The piebald deer Hugo had mentioned. It was like seeing a fairy in the forest.
She stepped back to give them room to run and nearly tripped when her foot hit something hard. Lucy lowered her lamp to see what she’d stumbled over. She expected to see a rock or tree branch.
Iron. An iron rail. And connected to it was a wooden plank. A crosstie.
Train tracks? Was there a train on Clock Island? She thought that was just in the books. Who installed a train on a ninety-acre island? The rails were narrow, however. These weren’t for Amtrak, that was for sure. Lucy followed the tracks for about a hundred yards or more until she came upon a wooden sign staked into the ground. Painted on it were the words Welcome to the City of Second Hand. Population: You.
Lucy smiled. She’d found it. She passed the sign and stepped onto a cobblestone road. The trees were sparse, so the stars and the moon illuminated the town as she walked deeper into it, waiting for someone to come out and ask her a riddle or give her a challenge to complete. But it seemed she was alone in the little city.
On her left, she found the little red post office where you could send a letter anywhere in the world. The stamps were all clocks. One of the books even came with a sheet of clock stamps. But the window was dark and the red door locked. On her right stood a narrow three-story building, which tilted a little to the left. The Black & White Hat Hotel, said the sign on the awning. Oh yes, she remembered this place. Sometimes the kids in the stories would have to go there to meet someone who could help them on their quest. The one rule of the Black & White Hat Hotel was that you had to wear a black-and-white hat at all times. According to the books, they served delicious gossip and even better chocolate-vanilla-swirl ice cream.
But it, too, was dark and locked up tight. And so was Redd Rover’s Treasure Hunt Supply Store （free shovel with purchase of one bucket） and the Clock Island branch of the Library of Almost Everything. Kids could go into the library and check out anything they might need for their adventure, including but not limited to Ms. Story, Clock Island’s seemingly immortal librarian. She was always happy to help if she wasn’t too busy feeding Darles Chickens, the library’s resident rooster.
Lucy peered into the windows of the library. She saw books turning to dust on the shelves, but sadly, no Ms. Story behind the counter. No rooster perched on a stack of overdue books.
The whole place was a ghost town. Could a town be a ghost town if no one had ever lived in it? The paint was peeling. The windows were clouded. Why had Jack given up on this place?
As she went deeper into the ghost town, she finally saw the train station. The building looked like the picture on the book cover, a pale green rectangle with The Second Hand Depot painted on the side in large block letters. The train was parked at the station—a black-and-yellow miniature locomotive with a couple of passenger cars hooked to the engine. It reminded her of those trains at children’s parks, only big enough for a dozen kids and their parents. The poor train was covered in bird droppings. A destination sign pointed down the tracks. Samhain Station. In the stories, a child might board the Clock Island Express for Samhain Station, where the Lord and Lady of October reigned and it was Halloween every day.
But the train didn’t look like it was going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it appeared the track had never been finished. The whole place had the feel of a lost cause about it.
It reminded her of the night her grandparents had taken her to live with them. She’d been at the hospital for hours by the time they finally arrived. Since she’d had no extra clothes with her, they’d had to run back to her house to pack her bags. In her attic bedroom, a puzzle lay unfinished on the floor—two kittens in bow ties. One of Angie’s cast-off toys. Lucy could have put the pieces into the box and taken it with her, but she didn’t. Her sister was going to be in the hospital for a long time, and Lucy had to go live with her grandparents. Kittens in bow ties suddenly seemed so stupid and childish.