A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic (2 page)

N
OBODY HAD EVER TOLD
Kai that she should hold her breath when passing by a graveyard, but she did it anyway. She held it and gripped the door handle of the massive powder blue 1987 Dodge pickup as her great-aunt barreled bat-crazy past a large iron gate and up the driveway. Kai gaped through the smudgy truck window at ancient crosses and crumbling white grave markers that hunched, lurking, behind the sagging iron gate. “You live by a graveyard?” she asked, squeezing the door handle like she might just jump out.

“Quiet neighbors!” Great-Aunt Lavinia yelled so Kai could hear her over the Jay-Z song blaring through the radio. The Big Ol' Truck spat gravel as Lavinia slammed the brakes, lurching to a stop. She leaned against the
steering wheel and turned to face Kai. “And they never complain about my music.” Lavinia cranked up the volume for a moment, rapping along, then switched it off with a wink. “Most people round here like country, but I can't stand it.”

“Okay,” Kai said, because she thought she should say something. Conversation wasn't really her strongest subject, to tell you the truth.

“You like country?”

“Uh, no.”

“Well, all right, because you ain't gonna hear much of it in my house.” Lavinia yanked open the door and spilled out. With a deft move, she put one foot on top of the rear tire and hauled herself over the edge of the cargo bed, grabbing Kai's bag and violin case.

Kai wasn't nearly as swift—or as smooth. Gingerly, she pulled back the handle and looked down at the gravel driveway. It seemed like it was about forty feet below her.

“Do you need me to come and get you, sugar?” Lavinia called from the front steps.

“Coming.” Clinging to the door, Kai managed to awkwardly half swing, half sprawl onto the pavement. She
dusted off her hands and slammed the truck door, giving it a pat as she hurried toward the house.

And what a house!

It had a high peaked roof, and a front porch that had been nearly swallowed up by creeping vines and aggressive shrubbery. A bush with flowers big enough to sit in bloomed just beyond the vines' reach. Everything seemed to join together at odd, tilted angles, as if the house had come home late and rumpled from a particularly wild House Party. A tired picket fence lined the property, and a crooked gate complained at every breeze. The whole place looked like it belonged in a book, but perhaps one that wasn't very nice. I'm talking one where the children get gobbled up in the end.

A mailbox crouched at the end of the footpath. A name was painted on the sign in elegant silver letters.
Quirk,
it read.

You got that right,
Kai thought.

So far, her great-aunt Lavinia was a bit . . . odd.

“Your father always called her Auntie Lavinia, but she's actually your great-great-grandfather's cousin, so she must be eighty or ninety years old by now,” Kai's mother,
Schuyler, had said right before putting Kai on a plane. “She probably needs a lot of help around the house, the poor, frail old thing. You'll try to be helpful, won't you?”

Let me tell you that Great-Aunt Lavinia was about as frail as a Sherman tank. Kai was never good at judging heights, but I am, and I can tell you that Lavinia was over six feet tall. She carried Kai's suitcase like it was a pocketbook. Kai guessed that she was sixty, but this was one thing that Kai's mother had right: Lavinia would turn eighty-seven at the end of the summer. She had a few wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes, and she had gray hair. But the gray hair was long, almost down to her waist, and held back in a thick braid. Lavinia wore jeans. Not the grandma kind, either, but dark-wash skinny jeans, and red Converse sneakers. Her fingers were full of chunky turquoise jewelry. She looked hip and fashionable, despite the fact that she was shaped a bit like a turnip and one of her eyes was bigger than the other.

This lady,
Kai thought as she trotted after her great-aunt,
does
not
need my help around the house.

Kai hesitated in the doorway a moment, but Lavinia was already jogging up the wide wooden staircase, calling,
“Your room is up here, sweets!”

Kai followed, but she didn't hurry. She ran her hand along the dark banister. It was the kind she had always wished for—perfect for sliding down. Back home, Kai lived in a square gray apartment building with an unreliable elevator.

At the top of the landing, Kai found a long hallway. “This one here is the guest room.” Lavinia's voice floated to her from a room on the right. Kai followed the sound and stepped into a lovely white room with a dark wood four-poster bed and matching bureau. An old, smoky mirror reflected gentle light, and crammed bookshelves lined an entire wall. An overstuffed chair lounged in the corner near a window seat that overlooked the front lawn. At home, Kai slept on a mattress on the floor, and shoved her clothes into oversize plastic storage boxes. Her mother didn't believe in spending money on furniture—every spare penny went to Kai's college fund. To Kai, this seemed like a room from a magazine, or a pleasant dream.

“Two other bedrooms up here. Mine's across the hall. One next to it's my office.” Lavinia looked around, searching for a good place to put the luggage. “This here room's
probably thrilled to have a guest.”

“Pretty,” Kai said.

“Ain't it?” Lavinia put the suitcase down by the bed and turned to face Kai. “So, listen. I don't know how to say this, so I'm just gonna come out and say it. I can't help it if it hurts your feelings.” Lavinia's fingertips dipped into the smallest pocket of her jeans. “I never did have kids. No husband, either. That's 'cause I never wanted to, not 'cause I didn't have offers.” Her larger eye bulged out knowingly and her eyebrows danced.

“Okay.”

“I don't know what to do with kids.”

“Me, either.”

Lavinia cocked her head, as if she couldn't tell whether or not Kai was teasing her. She wasn't. Kai really didn't get most kids. They didn't get her, either.

Unlike her peers, she didn't care much about gossip or crushes or screaming worship of the latest boy singer or movie star. She didn't even have
time
for friends, anyway. Not really.

That was something none of her schoolmates understood: that Kai had something else that was more
important than friends. She had a goal.
Or at least,
she thought,
I used to.

In fact, the last week of school before summer vacation, someone had posted flyers all over the sixth-grade hall:
The Cedar Creek Stealthy Awards!
Anika Walters won Hottest Girl (of course), Mr. Anderson won Hottest Teacher (surprising), Claire McGowen won Most Likely to Rob a 7-Eleven (duh—she probably already had), and Kai Grove won Weirdest (sigh). When she saw the list, the principal flipped out, and said the class trip to the amusement park would be canceled unless someone came forward to confess or rat out the person who made up the awards. And so Kai was publicly insulted
and
punished along with everyone else, which, according to the principal, “Should teach you all a valuable lesson about life.”

“All right, sugar.” Lavinia gave Kai a pat on the arm. “I'm just going to do . . . what I do. I'm not going to entertain you.”

“Fine. Great, actually.”

Lavinia stood perfectly still for a moment. So did Kai. Around them, the house was enormous and silent. “Okay, then,” Lavinia said at last. “There's food in the fridge. I
don't keep any soda or junk, though. If you want that stuff, you can go walk to the Walgreens.”

“By myself?”

“Why not? You're twelve, ain't ya? I was walkin' to the store by myself at age five.”

The thought of walking around in a strange town all alone made Kai feel fizzy, like a can of soda that's been shaken up. “Where's the Walgreens?”

“Five blocks.” Lavinia yanked her thumb over her shoulder, toward the window behind her, which overlooked the yard. “You can go wherever you want, as long as you're home for dinner. I don't want to have to call your mom and tell her that I lost you.”

Excellent point,
Kai thought as the fizzy feeling swooshed down to her toes and out to the ends of her hair. “What time is dinner?”

“Six.”

“Can I poke around the house?”

“Suit yourself.” Lavinia fussed with a curtain for a moment, and then she walked out of the room.

Kai turned to her bags. “Stop looking at me,” she muttered as she nudged her violin case with her foot, pushing
it into the closet and shutting the door. Sighing, she hauled her suitcase onto a low table but left it closed. She stood beside the window for a moment, just smelling the air in the room. It smelled like clean, old things. White linens lay crisp across the bed. She walked over and scanned the books on the shelves. They didn't seem to be arranged in any order. Paperbacks and hardcovers comingled, with a title about art seated beside a cheap crime novel. A leather-bound book with gold lettering on the spine caught her eye.
The Exquisite Corpse,
it said. Kai pulled it out. She didn't mind creepy titles. She kind of liked them, in fact.

The title was stamped in gold on the front cover, in that curlicue-style writing that people these days think of as “old-fashioned.” Below the title was the image of a skeleton hand holding a plumed pen. Instead of an author, it listed Exquisite Corpse Co., Kalamazoo, MI. She flipped through the book, but the thick, gold-beveled pages were blank.
Hm,
she thought,
peculiar
.

Flipping through more slowly, she realized that there was a proper title page (again, no author) and one page of print.

Greetings, salutations, and welcome to the Exquisite Corpse! Just as your grandmother and grandfather used to play the old parlor game in which one person would draw a head, and then fold it over, and another would draw a body, and another would draw legs, and so on—you will breathe life into a creature of your own making. You are about to embark on a journey of magic beyond your powers of discernment, imagination, and belief! All it takes is one person bold enough to set the story in motion!

Let the magic begin!

Beneath this, someone with excellent handwriting had written the name Ralph T. Flabbergast.

There was something about the book that made her shaken-up feeling come back again. And then Kai did something that she never really understood. She pulled a pen from her pocket. After
Ralph T. Flabbergast
, she wrote,
was a complete fool
.

She looked down at the page, dread pricking across her skin on little insect feet.
I shouldn't have done that,
she thought.
That was rude
. Not that Ralph was likely to care. He'd been dead for almost fifty years.

Kai shut the book and put it back onto the shelf. She stared at the gold letters on the spine for a moment, and then turned away.

Outside, the sun shone bright and high. She had been sitting in an airplane for almost four hours, which made her restless. There was no reason to stay indoors. Kai decided to go explore the neighborhood.

It was her second mistake.

I
T WAS NOT GRAND,
but Leila thought it was the most elegant room in the world. She had never been in a private library before. The closest thing at her house was the basement, where there was a sagging bookshelf, a TV, and a decrepit Ping-Pong table. Her mother preferred reading on a Kindle. Her dad only read articles online. They were not romantic people. Leila doubted they would have appreciated a classy room like this one. She wondered if everyone in Pakistan had a library in the house.

Yes, you heard me: Pakistan.

I know, I know—you're thinking,
What? We were just in the United States! Has this narrator lost her mind? Why is she going off on a whole new story?

Well, that's my own business. Maybe you'll figure it out.

Maybe you won't.

That all depends on you, now, doesn't it?

The walls were curved, as if the library were in a tower, and there was a lovely window seat that looked out onto the garden. Leather- and cloth-bound hardcover books, as still and straight as soldiers, lined the dark wood shelves. A massive wooden desk, richly carved with lions and men in turbans astride horses, stood to one side of the bay window.
I could write a novel at that desk,
Leila thought.
A really thick novel!

The whole thing was old-fashioned and charming and absolutely not what she had expected to find. She felt like a princess, or like one of the characters in her favorite book series, Dear Sisters. In fact, she felt
exactly
like Elizabeth Dear, the bookish (yet still beautiful) sister, in the story where the two girls went to England and Elizabeth fell in love with someone who she
thought
was a stable boy, but who was really the son of an earl.

“Oh, I do
so
adore a library,” Leila said aloud in a truly awful English accent, thinking about how much she would love to have an adventure like Elizabeth's. And in Pakistan, maybe she would! At least here, she had a
chance. Back home in the suburbs, it was impossible.

Leila perused the shelves, hoping to discover a few
good
books. Most of these looked dead boring, like the ones her “academically gifted” younger sister, Nadia, liked to read.
Depth of a River. Tom Wickersham. The Pealburl Papers.

So remarkable, her sister,
everyone gushed.
So talented! Nadia Awan is the most brilliant girl at school!

Ugh,
Leila thought.
Nadia Awan is so dull.

She scanned to the end of a shelf, where her eye fell on one with a catchy title,
The Exquisite Corpse
.

A corpse sounds promising
, she thought. She liked mysteries, especially if they involved a girl detective. She reached for the spine, and then hesitated. After all, this wasn't her house. It was her uncle's house, but he probably wouldn't mind.
Then again, what if he does? Maybe I should ask. . . .

“Yes or no, girl? Don't stand about like an indecisive sheep!”

Leila screeched, whipping around. “W-w-what?” she stammered, staring at the man who had suddenly appeared behind her.

The man pursed his lips, pointing his silver mustache
at the bookshelf. He wore a brown three-piece suit and brown bowler hat, and was definitely not her uncle. Her jaw dangled as she struggled to make sense of this man's presence, his outfit, and his accent, all at once. To her jet-lagged brain, the man's accent had sounded like, “Don stun aboo lie an indessclive ship!”

“I'm sorry, I don't speak Urdu,” Leila told him.

“For heaven's sake!” The old man huffed, straightening his blue tie. “Don't you understand English when you hear it? Idiot!”

“What?” Leila asked again. She had understood the words “English” and “idiot,” but that was it.

The man leaned on his cane and flashed his dark eyes at her. “Don't just stand there like a fool,” he said, deliberately and slowly. “If you want the book, then you should take it!”

Well, once he slowed down, the words finally managed to reach something deep in Leila's brain. “Oh!” she said. “You
are
speaking English.”

The man looked as if he had a very low opinion of her. “If you want a book,” he said again, “take one.”

“I don't really want a book.”

He scoffed. “Of course you do.” He rapped on the floor with a silver-handled cane. Leila looked back at the book. She looked at the old man. She had no idea who he was, but she was fairly certain of one thing—he did not live in this house. Yesterday, the entire family had come to pick her up at the Lahore airport: her uncle, Babar Awan; his wife; and their three children. And now, here was some old man in a three-piece suit in the family library.
Should I call 911?
she wondered. Could she even use 911 in Pakistan? (Just to let you know: the number is 1122. But if you can't remember that, and you're having an emergency in Pakistan, just yell real loud.)

It finally occurred to her to yell real loud, but Samir—her cousin who was only five months older than she was—walked right in and said, “Oh, hi, Leila. I see you've met Mamoo.”

Mamoo
is the Urdu word for “uncle.” Actually, it's the Urdu word for “my mother's brother.” There's a different word for “my father's older brother” (
taya
) and “my father's younger brother” (
chacha
). With a mother, there's just mamoo.

This mamoo looked disgusted. “She's too shy to take a book!”

Leila squirmed.

“What sort of book would you like?” Samir asked.

“I don't really—”

“Where's your father?” Mamoo narrowed his eyes at Samir. “The man spends all of his time ignoring me.”

“He's at work, Mamoo,” Samir replied. “It's Wednesday. He'll be home at dinnertime.”

“Oh, he will, will he?” Mamoo stroked his mustache. Leila thought that he sounded like he didn't believe it, which—I can tell you—he did
not
. “I'll be back at nine o'clock sharp. But don't tell him I'm coming!” He scowled at Leila.

“
I'm
not gonna tell him,” she said.

“He really isn't avoiding you, Mamoo,” Samir called down the hallway.

The old man shook his cane, but didn't turn back.

Samir faced Leila. He pushed his rectangular glasses farther up his long nose. One of his thick black eyebrows was permanently arched, which made it look as if he was mocking the world. People often took that eyebrow
personally. Right now, Samir was looking at Leila's hair, which made her smooth it self-consciously. “What sort of book were you looking for?”

“I . . . I just . . .” Leila blushed a little under Samir's gaze. If only she were Elizabeth Dear! Then she would have thought of something witty and charming, yet utterly unassuming, to say. Even Nadia could have spouted some kind of Noteworthy Quotation from a Literary Luminary about the Importance of Story.

But Leila was stuck being herself, and all she came up with was, “I like all different kinds of books. I wasn't looking for anything in particular.”

“Take any book you want,” Samir told her.

Leila's father was from Pakistan, and she knew one thing for sure about the culture—if someone thought you wanted something, be it a pancake or a bar of gold—they would insist that you take it from them. They would insist
forever
. Pakistani hospitality is an irresistible force and an immovable object rolled into one. There was really only one way to solve the problem. She grabbed
The Exquisite Corpse
from the shelf and mumbled thanks.

They stood in silence for a moment, as perfectly still
as the shelves around them. “Do you like reading?” Samir asked at last.

“Of course. I read all the time.”

“Kim's gun is on display here in Lahore, if you'd like to see it.” Leila's face was blank, so he added, “
Kim
, by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling used to live in Lahore. Have you read it?”

“No.”

“Oh.
The Jungle Book
? The
Just So Stories
?”

“I know
The Jungle Book
,” she said. She didn't want to admit that she had never heard of Kipling. She'd always thought that Walt Disney wrote the movie.

“They make us read Kipling in my school, since he lived here and won the Nobel Prize. What was the last book you read?”

“Sweeter than Sugar,”
Leila said. It was #32 in the Dear Sisters series. “It's really good,” she added, wondering if she sounded as intelligent as Elizabeth Dear.

“I'm sure it is,” Samir said with that arched eyebrow. “We could go see the gun, if you like.”

Now, Leila had about as much desire to go see a gun previously owned by Kipling as she had to mop up a hairball
made by her cat, Steve. But Samir's brown eyes were gleaming, and Leila sensed that this was some famous Pakistani thing she was supposed to be all excited about, so she said, “Okay. Sounds great.” Leila hated to hurt people's feelings.

“Oh, by the way,” Samir added as she started to turn away. “Rabeea was looking for you earlier. I think that she and my mom want to take you shopping. They said that you wanted some
salwar kameez
.”

“Yes!” Leila cried. “I love Pakistani clothes, but I never get a chance to wear them at home. Where's Rabeea?”

Samir directed her to the front sitting room, and she hurried away. Leila rounded the corner so quickly that she nearly ran into someone. “Oh, sorry!” Leila gasped.

This was Chirragh Baba, the cook. He said something sharp in Punjabi. He had the sort of face you would draw with heavy lines—wrinkles ran from his large, long nose to his puckered mouth, as if he had done a lot of frowning in his life. (He had.) His hair was dark orange—henna dye over gray—and his black eyes seemed to lead down a deep, deep well. They were eyes to nowhere. Leila had met Chirragh the night before, and he had given Leila an unwelcoming welcome.

“How long is she staying?” Chirragh had demanded,
scowling. He'd said it in Punjabi, of course, but seven-year-old Wali had helpfully translated for Leila.

Now, Chirragh's eyes glittered like something that just might bite you. It was his signature look. He reminded Leila of the evil butler in
Dear Sisters Super Special #8: The Case of the Creepy Castle
. That guy had been super-duper bad news.

“Uh, sorry,” Leila muttered again. She looked down at her shoes, avoiding that disturbing dark gaze.

Chirragh didn't speak another word, but continued limping down the stairs, supporting himself on his strong, right leg.

Leila looked up and watched him go.
I'd better keep an eye on him,
she thought, half hoping that he would turn out to be a major villain—maybe stealing spoons or spreading false rumors. That would open up a lot of adventure possiblities!

She stopped by her room and put the book at the edge of her bed.
The Exquisite Corpse
.
Definitely a mystery,
she decided. Leila knew that Elizabeth Dear wouldn't be in it. Still, she was hopeful that it would be both utterly romantic and moderately gruesome.

She couldn't wait to read it.