“Of course. Although I did wonder if there would be someone clever enough to avoid the scarecrows. I even had my hound warn you. I wanted to know if there were any clever children. I thought you might be the one.” He bowed, and the movement looked old-fashioned but strangely natural, despite his flannel shirt and jeans. “Although, little thief, I suppose Beth’s book helped.” His face showed a flash of malice.He really wanted that book destroyed,Ollie thought.
“I don’t want congratulations,” Ollie snapped. “I just want to go home.”
“Of course,” said Seth, surprising her. “You have made it to the center of the maze. Don’t you want your reward?”
“Sure,” said Ollie. “Send us home. All of us.”
Seth smiled at her, a charming, boyish smile. Then his grin stretched and stretched again, wide as the cat inAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland, so wide it literally stretched from ear to ear. Like dead Beth Webster.
Ollie screamed at him, screamed with a mix of terror and rage. “Don’t you dare try to scare me! Don’t youdare!”
Seth stepped back, laughing. “Lighten up! Why not, when it’s fun? I’ve been scaring you for days. I’m not tired of it yet.” He sobered. “See, girl, you say you want to get home. I know you do. But it’s not the thing you want most in all the world. I know it. Tell me what you want most, Olivia Adler. I’m not in the business of granting second-rate wishes.”
Before Ollie could answer, two things happened. Ollie’s watch chimed. It was night. And from below the platform came the sound of two people shouting.
Ollie’s breath seemed to fail in her throat. She looked over the platform edge just in time to see the huge dog that had been the bus driver herd Brian and Coco into the center of the maze, snapping and growling. The scarecrows clicked their garden-tool hands together. Like they were applauding. And then they seized Brian and Coco and held them tight.
“Let them go!” Ollie cried. How dumb was she, trusting the beast who’d been a bus driver just because he liked her dad’s cooking?
Seth smiled at her sweetly this time, not with a skull grin like before. “Gladly,” he said. “But isthatreally what you want most, clever girl? Decisions, decisions, Miss Adler. Do you want to go home safely with your little friends? Or do you want—?” He trailed off, head cocked, as though listening.
“I—” Ollie began, but then words failed her. A voice called from the corn. A voice she had known she would never hear in her whole life again.
“Olivia!” it called. “Olivia, where are you?”
Ollie froze. Brian and Coco were thrashing in the scarecrows’ grip, but Ollie stopped seeing them. She couldn’t see anything at all. She could only listen, listen for all she was worth. “Mom!” she cried. She spun toward the edge of the platform.
“Not so fast,” came Seth’s voice, sharp now from behind her. Ollie whipped back towards him, panting. “You’ve seen I have the goods. Now let’s bargain, Olivia Adler. What will you give to have your mother back?”
Below her, both Brian and Coco were shouting her name. But she ignored them, straining to hear that other, beloved voice. “Sweetheart, please. It’s so dark.” Her mother. Her motherright there.
For a moment, Ollie forgot Brian and Coco, even forgot her father waiting for her somewhere beyond this nightmare. She just wanted her mom.The smiling man brought Caleb back. Seth brought Caleb back.He could do it. “What do you want?” she asked.
“For you, brave girl?” Seth said gently. “Not much. Not much at all. I’ll let you go, you and your mother. You can even take your two friends with you. Four lives. Not bad, hm? But you can’t have the rest. Mustn’t be greedy. Leave the rest, and you drop the book in the river. I’m tired ofBeth Webster’s ghost. And one day, a long time from now, when I knock on your door, you have to let me in. That’s what I call a good deal.” His eyes were earnest, kind.
Wild thoughts whirled through Ollie’s brain. Brian. Coco. They could all escape together. She would come back from this nightmarish place holding her mother’s hand.
Beth Webster’s book lay heavy in her pocket. She thought of Caleb and Jonathan.A drowned man breathed back to life would look like him.Ollie swallowed hard. Then she turned back to the smiling man. “Okay,” she said shakily. “Fine. Say I say yes. How do the four of us get home?”
He smiled. “The maze is the door. One of the exits will take you back into your own world. But only I know which. Make a deal and I’ll show you the way. Is it a deal, Olivia Adler?” He put out his hand.
“Olivia, Olivia!” called her mother’s voice.
Ollie didn’t take the hand. “I don’t want Brian and Coco,” she said. “They’re annoying. I want Jenna and Lily. But they’re scarecrows. How do I take them with me? You promised me four lives.”
Seth shrugged again. “Mist for capturing. Water for freeing. Lethe Creek runs through my world and yours. Let the scarecrows touch the water and they’ll be as they were. Now shake.”
Until the mist becomes rain,Ollie thought.
She was gripping the watch on her wrist, white-knuckled. Tears still ran freely down her face, but shemanaged a smile. “No thanks,” she said. Seth stilled. The whole field seemed to hold its breath. “But now I know how to get out of here,” Ollie added. “So thanks for that.”
The cat yowled. “Olivia!” screamed her mother’s voice, loving, desperate. It sounded like she was directly below her.
Ollie was clasping on her watch on her wrist so hard, the metal bit into her palm.
“That’s not my mother,” Ollie said to Seth. She held up her wrist with the watch. “My mother is already with me. Helping. Maybe she’s a little easier to hear in this weird ghost world of yours. But I’m pretty sure she never left me, not at all, just like Cathy Webster never left her kids. Soyouare a liar and a fraud and we are going home!” She was sobbing as she spoke.
“Olivia!” cried her mom’s voice once more, faint now.
