The Cats of Silver Crescent by Kaela Noel

Author:Kaela Noel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

The Haunted Library

Elsby walked home slowly. She lingered on the front lawn for a minute, trying to look cool as a cucumber, as her language arts teacher Mrs. Parker would often say. She hoped the cats were watching and could see how unfazed she was. So they had given her job to Penelope instead. So what? And Penelope thought she was naïve. So what?

Aunt Verity’s car was back in the driveway. When Elsby went inside, the house was silent and muggy with heat. In the kitchen, the blueberries were piled up everywhere in bowls and little paper punnets. Elsby tried not to look at them. It hurt to look at them.

She plucked an apple from the fruit bowl and slowly washed it, watching the water run down the drain.

“I like being naïve,” she murmured. “And I don’t think the cats are my pets. Penelope is wrong.”

She headed upstairs to her own room to think.

When she reached the second-floor landing, she saw that her aunt’s bedroom door was open. Bars of golden afternoon light speared through the gaps between the curtains and lit the floor. Aunt Verity stood before what looked like an altar. There was a statue of an angel on it, and some flowers. A thin curl of sweet-smelling incense rose from a brass dish beside it. She was holding a strand of beads and chanting something under her breath.

Elsby took a step toward the attic stairs. A board creaked.

Aunt Verity turned around.

“Elsby, my dear, how long have you been standing there? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No, it’s not that. I—”

Aunt Verity stepped toward her, clutching her chest. “Oh my goodness. Did something happen to your mother? Did you get some kind of bad news?”

Elsby shook her head. “No, no . . .”

Aunt Verity put a hand on Elsby’s shoulder. “I know how hard it must be for you to be apart from your mother.”

Elsby’s eyes filled with tears. She hadn’t been thinking about her mother, not at all. But her aunt’s words, and her touch, were like a flashlight suddenly illuminating a dark corner she had been avoiding.

“I know what makes me feel better when I’m glum. Baking! And we have all those blueberries. I’ll come downstairs.” Aunt Verity smiled.

Elsby tried to smile back, still thinking about the puzzle of what Aunt Verity had been doing, and her worries about her mother. The hallway smelled like incense.

“It’ll be fun!” said Aunt Verity.

The truth was, Elsby hated baking. The measuring, the mess, and the way almost anything she made turned out dry as a cracked sidewalk or gloopy as fresh cement. And then all the cleanup. It hardly ever seemed worth it.

The oven itself was terrifying, too. The pilot light in their gas oven back home was always going out. It was Elsby’s job to hold down the knob and pray while her mother got on the floor with matches and tried to relight it. Elsby was supposed to visualize it turning on again without

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