Page 57 of Emerald Green (The Ruby Red Trilogy 3)

D. Clarkson, archivist (sorely tried!)

FIVE

“OH, NO, you’ve been crying again!” said Xemerius, who was waiting for me in the secret passage.

I simply said yes. Saying good-bye to Lucas had been very hard, and I wasn’t the only one who had had to suppress a few tears. We wouldn’t see each other again for thirty-seven years, at least from his point of view, and that seemed an unimaginably long time to both of us. I felt like traveling to the year 1993 right away, but Lucas had made me promise to get a good night’s rest. If you could call it that—it was two in the morning, and I’d have to get up again at quarter to seven. Mum would probably have to use a crane to haul me out of bed.

As Xemerius didn’t answer back, I shone the flashlight on his face. I was probably just imagining it, but I thought he looked a little sad, and I realized that I’d neglected him all day.

“Nice of you to wait for me, Xemi … Xemerius,” I said, suddenly feeling a wave of affection. I’d have liked to stroke him, but you can’t stroke or pet ghosts.

“I wasn’t waiting, I just happen to be here. I’ve been looking around for a good place to hide that thing.” He pointed to the chronograph. I wrapped it in my bathrobe again and got it first balanced on my hip, then tucked under my arm.

Xemerius flew upstairs beside me. “If you break through the back of your wardrobe—it’s only plasterboard, you can do it easily—you could crawl into the space behind it. There are all sorts of possible hiding places there.”

“I think I’ll just put it under my bed for tonight.” I felt so tired that my legs were heavy as lead. I had switched off the flashlight; I could find the way to my bedroom in the dark. I could probably even do it in my sleep. I was half-asleep anyway by the time I was passing Charlotte’s room, so I almost dropped the chronograph when her door suddenly opened and I was caught in the light from inside.

“Oh, shit,” muttered Xemerius. “Everyone was fast asleep just now, honest!”

“Aren’t you a bit too old for Peter Rabbit pajamas?” asked Charlotte. She was leaning in the doorway, looking very pretty in a nightie with spaghetti straps, and her hair fell in glossy waves over her shoulders. (That’s the good thing about braided hairstyles—the braids act as built-in curlers, so you look like a Christmas tree fairy when you undo them.)

“Are you crazy, scaring me like that?” I whispered so that Aunt Glenda wouldn’t wake up as well.

“Why are you slinking along my corridor in the middle of the night? And what’s that you’re carrying?”

“What do you mean, your corridor? Do you expect me to climb up the outside of the house to reach my room?”

Charlotte moved away from the door frame and came a step closer. “What’s that under your arm?” she repeated, threateningly this time. It sounded even worse because she was whispering. And she looked so … well, dangerous that I didn’t dare to pass her.

“Uh-oh,” said Xemerius. “Someone has a bad attack of PMS. I wouldn’t want to tangle with her today.”

I had no intention of doing any such thing. “You mean my bathrobe?”

“Show me what’s inside it!” she demanded.

I stepped back. “You are crazy! Why on earth do you want me to show you my bathrobe in the middle of the night? Now let me by, please. I want to go to bed.”

“And I want to see what you’re carrying,” hissed Charlotte. “Do you really think I’m as naive as you? Do you think I didn’t notice those conspiratorial looks and all that whispering? If you want to keep something secret from me, you’ll have to be more subtle about it. What about the little chest that your brother and Mr. Bernard took up to you? Was what you’re carrying under your arm inside it?”

“She’s not stupid,” said Xemerius, scratching his nose with one wing.

At any other time of day, and if I’d been less sleepy, I’m sure I’d have thought up some story on the spur of the moment, but right now, my nerves just weren’t up to it. “None of your business!” I snapped.

“Oh, yes, it is,” snapped Charlotte back. “I may not be the Ruby and a member of the Circle of Twelve, but unlike you, at least I think like one! I couldn’t hear everything you lot were saying up in your room, the doors in this house are too thick, but what I did hear was quite enough!” She took another step toward me and pointed to my bathrobe. “So show me that this minute, if you don’t want me to take it.”

“You were eavesdropping on us?” I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. How much had she found out? Did she know that that was the chronograph? And it seemed to have doubled its weight within the last minute. I gripped it firmly in both hands for safety’s sake, dropping Nick’s flashlight on the floor with a clatter. By now I wasn’t so sure that I wanted Aunt Glenda to go on sleeping.

“Did you know that Gideon and I were trained in Krav Maga?” Charlotte took another step closer to me, and I automatically took one back.

“No, but did you know that at this moment you look like that crazy rodent in Ice Age?”

“Maybe we’re in luck and Krav Maga is just some kind of harmless smut,” said Xemerius. “Like Kama Sutra. Ha, ha, ha!” He giggled. “’Scuse me, I always think up my best jokes in desperate situations.”

ached the library unnoticed, and when Lucas had closed the door and locked it behind us, he breathed a sigh of relief. “We made it!” The room itself was much the same as in my own time, except that the two armchairs by the fireplace had different covers, a Scottish plaid pattern in green and blue instead of the present cream roses on a moss-green background. There was a teapot on a warming plate on the little table between the chairs, plus two cups and—I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again it was true, it wasn’t a hallucination—there was a plate of sandwiches! Not dry biscuits, but real, nourishing sandwiches! I couldn’t believe it. Lucas dropped into one of the armchairs and pointed to the other one.

“Do sit down, and if you’re hungry, help yours—” But I already had helped myself. I was digging my teeth into the first sandwich.

“You’ve saved my life,” I said with my mouth full. Then something occurred to me. “They’re not pastrami sandwiches, I hope?”

---