The House of Months and Years by Emma Trevayne

Author:Emma Trevayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

CHAPTER NINE

Swords & Secrets

BOTH THINGS COULD BE TRUE. Amelia sat in class, pretending to work on her multiplication. Horatio had said that the dinner was outside of time, so perhaps that was why the ice cream hadn’t melted. The other places they had gone weren’t outside of time, just at different times, so maybe for those he had been worried that her parents would begin to miss her. She hadn’t thought to check what the clocks said before they left.

Not that clocks were trustworthy things. The one on the wall of the classroom was moving far too slowly; she must have been sitting here for more than twenty minutes. A few feet away, Owen’s head was bent over his paper; his pencil was scribbling furiously. Hmph. Math was not Amelia’s favorite subject, but she wasn’t about to let Owen be better than her at anything. Quickly she wrote down all the answers, counting on her fingers under the desk, where no one could see. Then she went back to thinking about Horatio and Madame Roseline and the strange dinner where the plates had been bare and the glasses empty but everyone had eaten and drunk.

But they hadn’t been bare or empty to Horatio and the others. Amelia wanted to eat what they ate, drink what they drank, do what they did.

The final bell rang far too many hours later. Amelia was packing her books away when another girl—Amelia couldn’t remember her name—stopped beside her desk.

“I’m having a birthday party on Saturday,” she said. “Mum said to give you an invitation.” The girl dropped a folded card on the desk, a cartoon mouse on the front. Christina, that was her name.

“Oh,” said Amelia. “Um. Thank you. I might be busy that day, though.” She hoped she would be busy adventuring somewhere with Horatio.

“That’s all right. See you,” said Christina, sauntering away. Amelia stuffed the invitation into the bottom of her bag and ran from the school to the car, the bag banging painfully against her ribs, and waited even more painfully for Owen and Matthew to hurry up. They were so slow, lingering there by the doors, chatting to their friends. Amelia answered her mother’s questions about how her day had been without really listening to them. It was only school, and even though it had been just a few months earlier, she could barely remember the time when school had been the best, most exciting part of her day.

School was always the same place, the same time. Behind the twenty-fourth door could be anything, anywhere. Amelia was the first to jump from the car when it stopped at the top of the long drive, the first to run through the front door her mother hadn’t bothered to lock. Perhaps she thought she didn’t need to, the house being so far away from everything else.

Perhaps—although Mrs. Howling couldn’t possibly know this—Horatio protected the house and made sure no terrible harm came to it or inside it. And maybe that protection only

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