The Road to Nevermore (15 page)

Screwing his eyes up, Mr. Bones lowered Grim back down. “Sorry, Brother.”

“Fleggs is gone and so is Billy.” Mrs. Bones rubbed her ivory brow, the way Millicent often did. “He must have escaped to
the Afterlife.”

“Most likely he’s looking for Pete, but the old rascal has more hiding places than we have bones.”

“Bones? Didn’t Mr. Benders mention the Boneyard?”

“The Boneyard … yes, but it’s anyone’s guess where that is. And we’ve no way to get there.”

Mrs. Bones’s fingers flitted worriedly across her mouth, and then she stumbled to a chair and sat down. Mr. Bones reached
after his wife, sad to see her brave front crumble.

“Someone say Boneyard? I could do with a little hair of the dog.” Speaking thickly, Liam Slackbones sat up. “Gooo, I’ve a
doozy. Feels like my head’s split in two.”

“You know the Boneyard?” Mr. Bones asked.

“Who doesn’t? Drained many a glass there.” He rubbed his head and looked around. “Where’d that shadowy gent go? A real troublemaker
he was. Got in my way of getting back to the Department of Fibs and Fabrications.”

Liam reached for his official D.F.F. pocket watch, mumbling, “Head’s packed full of the worst kind of nightmares. Saint Bastian’s
Bones! I best get up there right now before it’s too late!”

“Hang on a minute, Liam,” Mr. Bones suggested. “Perhaps I can hitch a ride as long as you have a pass.”

“Excellent idea, Bones!” Headley boomed, then grew thoughtful. “But how are you going to get around in the Afterlife without
any golden wishes?”

Mr. Bones fingered his vest pockets. “I’m not sure, but being there has to be better than being here. Maybe I can get to Oversecretary
Underhill’s office… .”

“Maybe you should get to Fleggs instead,” Mrs. Bones fretted. “It could be the fastest way to Billy.”

“Good idea, but we’re not sure where Fleggs is. And it will take more wishes than I have to find him.”

“Whatever you’re going to do, Mr. Bones, I wish you’d hurry.” Liam glanced toward the bed and frowned. “With my charge gone,
my pass is about to expire, and then I’ll be stuck at Stonehamm Cottage for good.”

Mr. Bones looked desperately from skeleton to skeleton, searching for suggestions. One by one, they shrugged their shoulders,
except for Mr. Bunyon. He was studying Grim. “Dunno, Mr. Bones, but isn’t your brother rather well off in the Afterlife? …
I should think he has a few golden wishes jingling his coin purse.” He leaned down for a closer inspection.

Mr. Bones swept past Mr. Bunyon and rifled through Grim’s pockets.

“Brilly-frilly-ill-iant, Mr. Bunyon!” Mr. Bones cried seconds later, holding up a palmful of golden wishes.

“Nicely done!” Mr. Headley pounded Mr. Bunyon on the back.

“No time to celebrate. We’ve got to crack on.” Mr. Bones wrestled Grim’s body up and wedged it under an arm. “Liam, grab hold.”
His legs buckled under the strain. Grim was terrifically heavy for a skeleton, particularly one without a head. Not surprising,
though, with the responsibility for every soul on Earth weighing him down.

“Once we locate Fleggs, I may need your services at the Boneyard,” Mr. Bones grunted.

“I’ve no problem with that.” Liam rubbed his mouth with the back of a bony hand. When Grim’s body was secure, Liam held up
a piece of parchment. A thin line of silver light worked its way from the edges into its center. The D.F.F. document collapsed
into flakey ashes as a purple glowing portal opened before them.

The last sight Mr. Bones saw of Stonehamm Cottage was the luminous eyes of his wife, pleading for him to be careful.

The sentinels bundled Billy, Pete, Roger, and Uncle Mordecai into Shadewick Gloom’s vestibule, then took up guard positions
on either side of the door. One of them had taken Pete’s sword. It looked like a knitting needle in the demon’s massive hand.

Opposite the prisoners stood a table holding Gloom’s prize possessions. And tucked into alcoves, bookcases, and wall sconces
were more. Altogether his bell jar collection numbered fifty heads: some from ghosts, others were skulls, and there were even
a few ex-heads of state. But the center of the rambling table was reserved for the collection’s crown jewel.

“Uncle Grim!” Billy cried, bounding forward, but a quick flick of a sentinel’s spear pole sent him sprawling. If he hadn’t
been buttoned tight in his raincoat, his bones would have scattered everywhere.

“Hold fast, Billy,” Pete whispered.

The disturbance woke several heads. Their muffled wails vibrated among the crystal domes, waking others. Grim blearily opened
his eyes, his blue glow guttering like a nearly spent flame. “Hurry,” he mouthed to Billy, and then his eyes flickered shut.

Billy couldn’t tell if this was so he could concentrate, or if Grim had passed out. Sitting up, he shouted, “We will!” not
having the faintest clue how he would go about hurrying anything along. Still, it was good to see his uncle again—even so
tiny a portion of him.

Billy’s relief lasted only as long as the time it takes to open a shadowport.

“Oooooh, presents for me? How thoughtful,” Shadewick Gloom’s warbling voice echoed as he strode up the hallway.

The sentinels snapped to attention. “They said you were expecting them, so we brought them here,” one explained with a salute.

“And we found the prisoners with these.” The larger sentinel held out the golden wishes.

Shadewick Gloom brushed past Billy and snatched the coins. “Naughty, naughty.” He turned to the prisoners, flipping a coin
off his ivory thumb. It spun in the air, held in place by Gloom’s magical gaze. “Didn’t anyone tell you you’re not supposed
to bring these over to the Dark Side?”

Tossing up the rest of the coins, the shadowy skeleton dispatched them with a squiggling purple arc of energy. Flecks of gold
drifted slowly like wounded snowflakes and melted into the floor. Pete grabbed for his empty scabbard, Roger grimaced at the
squandering of perfectly good gold, and Mordecai looked as if he wanted to melt away himself. But Billy was surprised by the
weakness of the blast. Back at Stonehamm Farm, Shadewick Gloom’s bolts had rocked the cottage.

“Seems I was wasting my time on Earth,” Shadewick Gloom mused as he sidled toward his bell jar collection. With a sharp finger
bone he plinked the crystal holding Grim. “A lucky stroke you were the perfect bait.” Shadewick Gloom’s gaze circled the room,
then landed smack on Billy. “Not a totally useless trip, though. I did get reacquainted with your dad.”

The look on Gloom’s face would have made a shark blanch.

“Reacquainted?” Billy croaked. His heart felt as if it were trying to climb into his throat even though it wasn’t there.

“Oh yes! Lars Bones, expert secrets keeper, master of fibs and fabrications. I didn’t just tuck him away when he was last
in Nevermore. No. He was one of my favorites. You should have seen him squirm when I introduced him to a few of my favorite
interrogation techniques. Too bad the Investigative Branch was forced to release him. I did hate tossing him back.”

“You … you’re the one who gave him that scar,” Billy gasped.

“Well, in a roundabout way, yes. But
you
are the one who really deserves the credit.” Gloom glided toward Billy, his shadow robes wafting like smoke. “He squealed
out the whole story. How you’d come to the closet … how he, your mother, and your uncle conspired to break so many of the
Afterlife rules—especially when your uncle brought you back to life. I didn’t put all that together until I saw your dad a
few minutes ago.”

Billy blinked as if he’d been stunned by a photographer’s flash.

Gloom’s eyes brightened when he saw remorse sweep across Billy’s face. “Delicious! Guilt makes for the best nightmares. I’ll
suck yours out like marrow from a bone.”

“That’s where yer wrong.” Pete shot Shadewick Gloom a look that
should
have sent him to the Realms Below. “Ye are the one who made Lars grovel, all right, but he stood up to yer blasts until the
bones of his skull smoked. Ye are the one who stood behind yer powers, afraid to face him skeleton to skeleton.” He strode
up to the shadowy skeleton until they thumped belly to empty belly. “Yer the one that tortured Lars Bones … not Billy!” Pete
backed Gloom off with another bump and then turned to Billy. “Ye gotta swear off guilt right now, boy. It weren’t yer fault!”

But Billy wasn’t feeling the slightest guilt—something much darker filled him now. Rage. He clamped his bony fingers into
fists.

“Silence, pirate!” Shadewick screamed, then fired a bolt at Pete. It was little more than a fizzle. Pete sidestepped the sparks
easily, but he seemed more concerned with the look in Billy’s eye.

“Ye have to let go of that, too, me boy. It’s worse than guilt. Let’s see if we can find some justice here. It’ll do us both
better than revenge.”

Billy spun away from Gloom’s next shot as Roger joined Pete’s advance. Uncle Mordecai glanced from Pete to Roger to Billy
and then to Gloom. His crotchetiness must have got the most of him, because he joined in too, shouting, “Leave the boy be,
ya great rollicking git!”

Everyone looked at Mordecai as if he’d just dropped out of a nut tree.

“Looks like yer spent, Gloomy,” Pete chuckled. “If I had me sword, ye’d be bone bits by now.”

“Restrain them!” Shadewick Gloom commanded, and then, sliding by the obliging sentinels, he headed toward his bell jars. He
paused in front of Grim’s jar, his shadow robes gathering round him like a storm. “Hmmm, I’ve been going about this all wrong.”
He strode to his darkroom with the bell jar. “March the prisoners this way.”

The sentinels herded Billy and company to the rear of the palace. When they arrived, Shadewick had already set Grim’s head
on the workbench and was heading toward a wall-sized aquarium at the back of the room. Blobby shapes slapped against the glass,
spreading like hands on a windowpane. Gloom fished one out with a small net. The creature’s tendrils sparked purples and reds
as it tried to wriggle away.

Across the room, the sentinels took up positions on either side of a shadowport. A key hovered in its center as the black
vortex swirled, humming a tortured pitch.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Gloom mumbled. “Should have done this long ago. Pop a dread onto Grim’s head; he no longer
controls his own thoughts. Then,
voilà
, time starts, and I’m the new master of death!” He shimmered with self-congratulations.

Time starts… . This might be it for Millicent!
Worry jangled through Billy like a clock alarm.

Gloom grabbed the bottom of his net and flipped the dread over. It flopped out onto the workbench with a sickening
smack.
Tentacles snaking to Grim’s head, the dread fitted itself over as if it were wiggling into a pair of tight trousers.

“That should do it,” Shadewick gloated.

Inside the dread’s gelatinous body, Grim’s jaw was thrown open—locked in a scream. Billy closed his eyes, not in disgust,
but in the deepest kind of concentration. Blue light flared around his bones. Dark sparks of eternal energy glittered over
his lids.