The Greenstone Grail by Amanda Hemingway

Author:Amanda Hemingway
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-05-24T21:58:11+00:00

NATHAN LEFT after lunch, his mind so full of new ideas, new understandings, new questions, he thought they must be spilling out of his ears. "What on earth am I going to tell Mum?" he asked Bartlemy.

"What do you want to tell her?"

"The truth, of course, but . . ."

"Then do it."

He was trying to work out how to begin when he ran into Hazel. He was conscious of a pang of guilt: he had excluded her, without meaning to, from too much that was important. But at least filling her in wouldn't be difficult.

"Where've you been?" she demanded. "I've been looking for you all over. Your mum said you rushed off early somewhere—she thought you were with me."

"Sorry. I had to take Eric to Uncle Barty. I knew he'd be safe there. Is something wrong?"

"It's Great-Grandma." Hazel's expression was at once worried and shut in, the look he knew from her reserved, up-the-tree moods. "She's disappeared. She went into the attic on Monday—I saw her—and she never came out."

"Knock on the door."

"No, stupid. I mean, we did. Mum and I. We broke the lock and went in, but she wasn't there. She never came out, but she wasn't there. She isn't at her cottage. She's just—gone."

"She's awfully eccentric," Nathan offered doubtfully. He had a feeling there was something more, something Hazel wasn't telling him, lending an edge of panic to her anxiety. "She's bound to turn up."

Hazel jerked her head impatiently and tugged her hair over her eyes. "Something's happened to her," she insisted. "Something bad."

"Why should anything bad happen to Effie? I know we asked her about other worlds that time but she isn't involved. She doesn't know anything about . . . anything. She's the kind of old lady who's been around forever and will probably go on being around forever." Hazel flicked him a curious glance between strands of hair. "She's as tough as . . . oh, I don't know. Something old and tough."

"You don't understand," Hazel said. "She's been doing things—charms—in the attic. Charms for watching people. Magic."

"But you don't believe—"

"I don't want to believe, stupid. I don't want it to be true! I don't mind the other-world stuff, that's science, but magic—if it's real, it has no rules, it's dangerous . . . But Great-Grandma thinks she's a witch, she thinks she's old—a hundred, two hundred—she says she has power. She's been mixing with stuff—and I think it's backfired on her."

"What haven't you told me?" Nathan demanded.

He could see her withdrawing from him, into one of her moods, behind the tangle of her hair. "There's a lot you don't tell me," she said.

"We need to talk."

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