Chase Tinker & The House of Magic (34 page)

"Get off me!" he gasped, struggling to free
himself. "What's wrong with you?"

"All this magic is wasted on you people,"
said James. "I'll use it for better things!"

"You're nuts!" With one thought, Chase sent
James soaring across the room like a floppy, straw-filled
scarecrow. He crashed into the closet doors, breaking and
splintering the wood, and lay sprawled in the wreckage.

Chase staggered to his feet. He looked across
the room at Grandfather, who was lying on the floor with a bluey
glow surrounding him. The bright barrier flickered as it grew
dimmer and dimmer until it had completely snuffed out.

"What did you do to him?" Chase yelled,
darting to Grandfather's side.

James lurched from the closet. "The same
thing I'm going to do to you, stinker!" he growled. He reached for
Chase, who did a nimble sidestep to get out of the way of the
stretching arms.

"Missed me. Ha!" Chase taunted, staring into
his cousin's glowering blue eyes. Squinting in concentration, Chase
quickly twisted and twirled James's long rubbery arms. They went
round and round, over and under, until they were a huge ball of
tangled knots. The two snarled arms thudded to the floor.

"My arms…" whimpered James. "You…!" With one
last glare at Chase, he staggered from the room, dragging his
clumpy arms behind him, and disappeared down the hall.

"Good riddance," Chase muttered as he dropped
to his knees beside his grandparent. "Grandfather?" Chase leaned
over and saw that Grandfather was barely breathing and his face was
now a strange shade of blue. "Hold on. Just hold on!" he cried,
scrambling to his feet. "I'll be right back with Doctor Dan."

He sprinted through the house, vaulting
several stairs at a time, bouncing off walls and hurtling around
corners. He smashed into Clair as he skidded into the study, and
then almost fell face first into the chocolate cream pie Mrs.
Periwinkle was setting on the table.

"Chase! What's going on?" cried Clair,
plucking herself out of the potted plant.

"Sorry, Aunt Clair, but I need Doctor Dan!"
Chase wheezed. "Hurry! It's Grandfather! He needs your help."

"Where is he? Take me to him!" exclaimed
Doctor Dan. He leaped from his chair.

"He's—he's in James's room," said Chase, his
voice shaking. "We have to hurry!"

He wheeled around and darted from the study.
Everyone followed close behind.
Please let him be okay
,
thought Chase as they stampeded through the house, their loud
footsteps echoing down the long hallways.

Grandfather was right where Chase had left
him. Doctor Dan dropped to the floor and felt the inside of
Grandfather's wrist. "His pulse is weak, but it's there. I believe
it's his heart, but I have to get him to my clinic to run some
tests."

"We need to take him to Thomas's bathroom to
teleport him," said Clair. She grabbed a blanket off the bed to
wrap Grandfather in to help them carry him through the house.

"What happened in here?" whispered Janie to
Chase as she gaped at the crushed closet doors and the bashed
dresser.

"Some dark, shadowy thing attacked
Grandfather. It ended up being James. I'm stumped as to how he did
it, though." His head snapped around at Janie's sharp intake of
breath. "What?" he asked.

"That's the power of the room," she
whispered. "The ability to turn into a solid shadow. But why would
he hurt Grandfather with it?"

Chase hesitated, not sure if he should tell
her everything that had happened with James. He knew Janie wasn't
close to her brother, but he didn't know how she would react if he
told her the truth about him.

Janie and Chase followed the others from the
room as they carried Grandfather between them.

Chase waited until they were out of earshot
then said quietly, "James wants to be Keeper of the House." His
face was grim. "And it looks like he won't stop until he gets
it."

"Are you saying that's why he supposedly hurt
Grandfather?"

"There's no supposing about it," answered
Chase. "James attacked him."

"No way!" she cried, shaking her head.
"That's crazy! James wouldn't do that on purpose."

"I'm not making it up. And it was no mistake
when he tried to drown me either," said Chase.

"Drown you? When?"

"When we were out fishing this afternoon, of
course," he said impatiently.

"Maybe…maybe you said something to get him
really mad. You do that, you know. You can be pretty heartless
sometimes."

Chase glared at her for bringing up the time
she attacked him because he wanted to leave Maxwell behind after he
thought the animal had drowned in the river. "I'm not heartless,"
he said between gritted teeth.

"And you probably misunderstood his
intentions. That has to be it," she said with a nod.

"
Misunderstood?
He tried to drown
me!"

"Well I don't believe you. You're lying
because you decided you don't like him!" snapped Janie. She looked
like she wanted to punch Chase in the nose. "I know he gets a
little carried away sometimes…but he's—he wouldn't, that's
all."

"I have no reason to lie to you, Janie!"
growled Chase, his face flaming. "Quit making up excuses for him.
You saw how he acted with the fighting powers."

"Yes, but he wouldn't try to—to
kill
anyone."

"I don't think you know what he would or
wouldn't do. You two aren't that close and you haven't spent much
time together, either. You have no idea what he's capable of. He's
a sick freak! Do you have to see it to believe it?"

Janie clamped her lips together. Chase sighed
and looked exasperated with her. Turning away, he ran to catch up
with everyone else, leaving Janie to trail alone.

When they reached the teleporting room, Clair
wanted the kids to stay behind.

"I'm going," said Chase, pushing his way into
the bathroom.

"You're not going without me!" cried Andy. He
jumped onto the toilet seat. "Grandfather might need us."

Janie and Persephone crowded into the
bathroom after the boys. They crossed their arms and refused to
leave.

"We can't
all
go!" said Clair. "Dan?
Miranda?"

Doctor Dan shrugged. "It's fine with me. But
we need to go now!"

"I'll stay here and keep an eye on things,"
said Mrs. Periwinkle from out in the hall. "Take good care of him,
Doctor."

"Fine!" said Clair. "Everyone hang on." They
each hastened to grab an elbow or a hand of the person next to
them. "
Doctor Daniel Brown's office.
"

Whoosh! They left the bathroom in a powerful
whirl of blackness and a rush of wind. Moments later, they hit the
floor with a loud thud.

"I don't know if I'll ever get used to that,"
said Doctor Dan, climbing unsteadily to his feet.

Chase reached out a helping hand to
Persephone who had also tumbled to floor and looked rather ruffled.
"Yeah, took us a while too," he said.

With his usually tidy hair standing on end,
Doctor Dan wobbled away. He returned pushing a tall, narrow bed on
wheels. "Quick, let's get him onto this bed." They lifted
Grandfather and settled him as comfortably as possible on the thin
mattress. "Please have a seat and I'll let you know how he's doing
when I know something."

Everyone watched the doctor wheel Grandfather
away, down the hall and through a pair of blue, swinging doors.

"What happened here?" asked Clair. She
straightened two chairs and righted a table. "It looks like some
kind of fight happened."

Shoulders drooping, Chase gazed at the
jumbled room. "I dunno," he mumbled.

He knew he should probably help to clean up,
except his whole body felt as though it were made of concrete. He
glanced at Andy, willing him not to say anything about their
afternoon scuffle. He really didn't want to talk about it. But Andy
had already pulled a chair into the far corner and was buried in a
sports magazine, ignoring everyone.

Persephone curled up in another chair and
stared off into space. Janie collapsed into the chair next to
Persephone's and closed her eyes. Chase studied her out of the
corner of his eye. Was she thinking about what he'd told her about
James? Was she going over and over it in her mind, trying to make
sense of it? Maybe believing?

The minutes ticked by. Clair moved around the
room clicking on lights as twilight turned to night. Chase trudged
back and forth across the room. His stomach rumbled with hunger,
but he ignored it. He was bone-tired, but his mind wouldn't stop
spinning. He was mad at James; mad at himself. Maybe this whole
thing might have been avoided if he hadn't been in such a big hurry
to rat on his cousin. Maybe Grandfather wouldn't be in that room
hovering somewhere between life and death. And they wouldn't be
here…waiting…

C
hase wasn't sure
how much time had passed when he noticed it. Something in the room
felt different. His nose twitched and tingled as the air tickled
his senses with some sort of thick, powerful magic. It drifted
around him like the rich, cinnamony scent of a hot apple pie. He
remembered feeling this way the first time he'd walked into
Grandfather's house.

He stopped pacing and glanced around the
room. Did anyone else feel it? His eyes flitted from face to face.
They looked the same as they had a moment before—except Aunt
Clair.

She had her eyes pressed shut and her arms
wrapped across her waist, and looked as though she was going
through some sort of inner struggle. She tumbled to the floor. "No,
no," she moaned, curling into a tight ball. "Please, I don't want
it."

For a split second, Clair's form changed—or
maybe, like a shimmering mirage, it had only been an illusion.
Chase blinked and shook his head. He really wasn't sure of anything
right now. The heavy, magic-laden air made it hard for him to
think. But for an instant, he thought he had seen his dad.

He stepped toward Clair, but Janie pushed him
aside. "Mom! What's wrong?"

Clair's eyes popped open. Chase stared
straight into them. She gestured at him to come closer. Frowning,
he crouched next to her. "Something is—happening—to your
grandfather," she whispered into his ear. "He's dying!"

Chase didn't ask how she knew this. He just
jumped up and bolted from the waiting room, his sneakers squeaking
on the shiny linoleum floor. He crashed through the swinging doors.
The scene that met his eyes was one he had seen on television,
never in real life. Whirring monitors and equipment surrounded the
narrow bed, while the doctor stood over his patient and held two
paddles to the patient's chest. A long, ear-splitting sound pierced
the air.

Chase watched Grandfather's body jerk as
Doctor Dan shocked him with the paddles; once, twice, three times.
The long note broke up into shorter ones: Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Beep!

"Wh—what's going on?" Chase stuttered over
the loud noise.

"Go wait outside!" snapped Doctor Dan,
without looking up. "Please!"

Chase backed clumsily from the room, his
heart pounding, a huge lump in his throat. He was barely aware of
the sharp pain that shot through his arm as he smacked his elbow on
one of the swinging doors. The strange feeling of magic in the air
was fading as he staggered back to the waiting room and into
another unbelievable scene.

"No! No! No! You're supposed to be dead!"

Janie stood in the middle of the floor, fists
clenched, tears flowing down her face. Persephone, her mouth
opening and closing like a large fish, was beside Janie. While
Andy, looking like a ghostly-white statue, sat in his corner and
goggled at the person across the room. It was the one person the
boys thought they might never see again—Benjamin Tinker.

Chase took a wobbly step forward. "What's
going on?" he panted. "Dad? How did you get here? Where's Aunt
Clair?"

"Don't you get it, Chase?
He's
Clair!"
shrieked Janie, pointing at Benjamin. "All this time…all this
time…WHERE'S MY MOTHER?"

Chase felt as if the earth and moon had just
smashed into each other. He hadn't been imagining things. He
had
seen his dad. For months he'd been living in the same
house with the man and had known nothing about it. Why hadn't his
father said anything?

"Dad?" he said again, sounding as if his
tongue were glued to the roof of his mouth. He took another
shuffling step toward Ben, who was perched on the edge of his
chair. His eyes were filled with regret and sadness. Even after
weeks of living well, his face and body still showed the signs of
all the terrible things he'd been through while he was
kidnapped.

"How long were you planning on lying?"
croaked Janie. She swiped her sleeve across her streaming nose and
eyes. "For the rest of your life? Didn't you care that you were
hurting us?"

Chase watched Benjamin run his hands through
his dark hair. It was the same move Chase made whenever he was
upset, or thinking, or just plain nervous. Which, come to think of
it, he'd seen Clair do plenty of times, but hadn't thought anything
of.

Chase shoved his shaking hands deep into his
pockets. Thoughts raced through his mind; all the clues he'd
missed: Clair's yelling and wild hand-waving the night they'd been
caught in the Bewitching Room, never showing the kids her ability
to walk through walls, and shopping with Janie and Persephone—his
dad hated shopping.

"I don't understand. Why did you do this?" he
demanded.

"Your grandfather and I thought it was for
the best," said Ben.

"Grandfather knew?" Chase wanted to punch
something. Instead, he grabbed Doctor Dan's check-in reminder sign
and flung it across the room. It shattered against the wall. "This
is unbelievable! How could you do this to us? And to Mom? She's
been worried sick about you!"