House of Secrets (27 page)

“Isn’t fatal?!” screamed Brendan. “The head’s where you shoot when you
want
it to be fatal!”

“You were grazed!” said Cordelia. “You can barely tell there’s anything missing!”

“There’s something
missing
? What’s missing?”

“A tiny, minuscule part of the tip of your earlobe.”

“The tip? That was my favorite part!”

“Get ahold of yourself, Bren!” shouted Eleanor. “You don’t even wear earrings! We gotta do something!”

“You’re right,” said Brendan. The pain was intense—a huge red buzz that filled his head—but fighting against it was a surge of adrenaline way more powerful than anything from lacrosse. He grabbed the wine cellar’s heavy metal door. It wouldn’t budge, but when Cordelia and Eleanor pitched in, pressing their feet against the wall and shoving, it swung closed through the water. The Walkers slid the bar and locked it as Gilliam banged on the other side.

“If yez come out now, ye’ll get to join Gilliam, aye! It’ll be adventure on the high seas for all of ye!”

“Adventure?” screamed Brendan. “You shot my ear off, dude!”

“Sorry, matey,” said Gilliam. “If it’s any consolation, I lost one of me butt cheeks last year!”

“Good!”

The vanity where Cordelia had found the picture of the Lorekeepers floated by. Cordelia had an idea, opening one of the drawers (which now came out vertically instead of horizontally) to salvage a book of matches she had seen before. She lit the torches around the room, illuminating the scared faces of her siblings.

“So are yez gonna come out?” asked Gilliam.

“Never!” said Eleanor.

“So be it,” Gilliam said. “Cap’n Sangray may want yez alive, but he can’t account fer nothing that happens in the heat of battle. Son, I’d cover yer other ear if ye want to leave a halfway decent-looking corpse!”

Brendan, Cordelia, and Eleanor exchanged a stunned look, right before they heard Gilliam call out, “Boys?”

The Walkers realized that the sloshing they were hearing outside wasn’t just
one
pirate. A bunch of others barked
“Aye!”
before they all opened fire on the door.

T
he Walkers dove—the water in the room was getting cloudy with Brendan’s blood—but they didn’t need to. The door held. Countless bullet indentations scattered the door’s surface, popping out like instant metallic acne.

“Good thing these pirates have outdated technology,” said Brendan. “The morons are shooting balls of lead at a steel door.
Nice try, guys! Too bad Denver Kristoff made you historically accurate!”

“When I gets in there, I’lls be chewing off the rest o’ that ear!” promised Gilliam.

“I’m not afraid of you,” said Brendan. “How can I be scared of someone with one butt cheek and a dolphin tattoo on his face?”

“Bren! Stop!” Cordelia said. “We need to find a way out of here so we can rescue Will and Penelope, remember?”

Outside the door, Gilliam looked at his fellow pirates, who were now studying his dolphin tattoo. He turned back quickly and said to Brendan, “What, may I ask, is yer problem with my tattoo?”

“It’s lame,” said Brendan from the other side of the door. Cordelia shook her head and started looking for a second exit.
We have to get to Will and Penelope. They’ve probably been taken to the pirate ship by now!

“Lame?”
Gilliam growled.

“Especially for a pirate. I would expect something scary, tough . . . maybe a snake or a spider, even a scorpion. But a dolphin? That’s so
tween
!”

“I’ll have yez know,” said a furious Gilliam, “that a dolphin’s the fiercest, meanest creature in the ocean! I been told! A dolphin’ll tear a man’s flesh from his bones in seconds!”

“You idiot! You’re confusing a dolphin with a shark,” said Brendan.

Eleanor whispered angrily, “Bren! Stop arguing! It’s not helping!”

“I am not confusing anything! Dolphins are man-eaters! Killers! Predators!”
screamed Gilliam. But all the other pirates were now looking at one another and mumbling and raising their eyebrows.

“What are yez lookin’ at?” Gilliam demanded. One of the pirates cleared his throat. “We’ve been meanin’ to tell ya, Gilliam.”

“What, Scurve?”

“Dolphins are sweet, good-natured, intelligent-like creatures. It was a trick Kit and Phenny played on you, to give you that instead of a shark—”

Gilliam interrupted Scurve’s explanation by punching him in the nose. Scurve kicked Gilliam’s torso—and in a moment the two were in a heated, clumsy fistfight.

On the other side of the door, Brendan grinned in triumph. “See? All part of the plan.”

“That wasn’t a plan!” Cordelia said. “Help us find another way out!”

Brendan started swimming with his sisters, looking for a back door to the wine cellar—but they all stopped when they heard the familiar, booming voice of Captain Sangray.
“What’s going on? What’s all this fighting?”

“Scurve called my tattoo a trick, Cap’n!” said Gilliam.

“It
was
a trick, you mindless gnat. I’ve half a mind to maroon you for falling for such an idiotic prank! We want to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies—that tattoo makes us look ridiculous!”

“Oh,” said a dejected Gilliam. “I understand, Cap’n. I’ll have it changed into a proper shark—”

“You may not need to. Perhaps I’ll simply remove it for you.” The Walkers heard the
shink
of a knife being drawn. “But now’s not the time! Here I am wading through a hallway like a lungfish to find men of the
Moray
fighting with one another and wasting gunshots on a magic door! Did I not tell you this house was enchanted?”

“Well . . . but . . . what do yez like us to do, Cap’n?” asked Gilliam. “The ankle biters are in there!”

“Then we shall blow the door with black powder,” Captain Sangray said.

The pirates murmured in agreement, except Gilliam. “But howzat gonna work, Cap’n? If’n it’s a magic door?”

“Nothing can resist black powder!” snapped the captain. “Fetch it, before I decide to take off your tattoo right now!”

Gilliam and a few other pirates splashed away on the far side of the door as the Walkers gathered by the wine rack.

“What
is
black powder?” Cordelia asked.

“Gunpowder,” said Brendan. “Like a whole barrelful.”

“But that won’t break the door, right?”

Brendan didn’t answer.

“Right?”

“I have no idea,” Brendan said, taking off his shirt and tying it around his head to stop the bleeding, “but it’d probably be better if we weren’t here to find out.”

“Little whelplings! I can hear you in there!” Captain Sangray called. “So far your floating wreck has provided little of interest for me and my men, so I do hope you’re guarding something of value!” His high-pitched laughter pealed against the door, making them wince.

“Hey, Captain!” said Brendan. “Your laugh’s even more girly than Gilliam’s tattoo!”

“Girly?”
asked the captain.

“Yeah,” said Brendan. “You and Dolphin Boy should open up a nail salon!”

“Brendan,” whispered Cordelia. “Enough.”

“Son,” asked a furious Captain Sangray, “are you familiar with the practice of live human vivisection?”

“No . . . ”

“Oh no!” Eleanor said. “Bren, this is what I was talking about. He’s—”

“When I get through this door, I am going to take you apart piece by piece. I am going to use a saw for your bones. And I am going to take hours,
days
, just so I can hear your ‘girly’ screams of agony.”

“At least if he’s threatening us, he’s not
doing
any of that stuff to Will and Penelope,” Eleanor said.

“What if he already killed them?” asked a worried Cordelia. “We have to find another way out of here!”

“Here!” said Eleanor, swimming behind the wine rack.

Brendan and Cordelia joined her, but all they saw were three brick walls covered in faded tapestries illustrating scenes of ancient wine making. One had half-naked, buxom women smashing grapes with bare feet; one had men in elaborate costumes gulping wine from wooden barrels. . . .

“
Where
is the exit, exactly?” Brendan asked.

“I don’t know
exactly
, but it’s here,” said Nell. “It’s gotta be. Press against walls and stuff. Or maybe it’s under one of the rugs.”

The bottoms of the tapestries trailed in the salt water, so it was easy to pull them aside and look under them. There was nothing there.

“Hurry now, before the water gets too high,” said Captain Sangray. The Walkers heard the pirates push something against the door outside. Something wooden. Something big.

“They’re about to blow the door!” yelled Cordelia. Sure enough, splashes echoed down the hall as the pirates retreated from the wine cellar, leaving the hiss of a burning fuse.

“We’re goners!” said Brendan. “What do we do?”

Wait,
Eleanor thought.
That’s what we do. Don’t freak out. Wait. Think.

Eleanor knew that the idea she had must be right. There was something missing, though. The hiss of the fuse got louder in her head as she looked up and saw a small track against one of the walls, mounted in the brick, like the tracks in the Kristoff library that the ladders went on. It ran from the wine rack to a tapestry with a huge drooping grapevine. . . .

Eleanor grabbed the tapestry and yanked it down.

At water level, where she was, there was nothing. But three feet up, above where the track ran? There was a tiny metal door.

The dumbwaiter.

“Guys! Look!
I knew it was here! This is where Kristoff must have passed his bottles up to the kitchen! There was a ladder, see, but now it’s gone—”

“No time, Nell! Great work!” Brendan leaped out of the water and hit the dumbwaiter door with the side of his fist. It swung open and fell into the water, damaged from Kristoff House’s many adventures. Brendan hooked his fingers on the brick below it and pulled himself into the shaft.

The dumbwaiter box lay crumpled at the bottom. Above Brendan the shaft went straight up, like a chimney, with light shining down. It was going to be a tight fit, but he could do it. Cordelia was next, grabbing Brendan’s hand. He pulled her into the dumbwaiter shaft. It was too close for comfort—as in her face was pressed against his bloody head—so she climbed over him, pressing her hands against the shaft like Spider-Man. Brendan knelt down to grab Nell.

She leaped out of the water, reached up—and just missed his hand. She splashed back down.

“Try again!” Brendan yelled.

Eleanor’s breath came in fast, panicked gasps. She was alone now, the only one treading water in the room. It was terrible to think that the door would blow open and Captain Sangray would get her—but it was even worse to think that she would lose Bren and Deal.
I can’t. I won’t.

Eleanor jumped again, held Brendan’s hand for a moment . . . then slipped and splashed back in the water.

“Come on, Nell! I’m not letting my sister get vivisected!”

Eleanor pumped the fear from her stomach into her legs as she propelled herself out of the water—

And this time Brendan grabbed her wrists. And held. Eleanor screamed in triumph, her feet still dangling—but it became a different kind of scream as a deafening blast rocked the wine cellar and a spray of burning ash exploded onto her legs.