The Graveyard Book

“I’m going in,” said Mr. Dandy. “Mr. Tar, you’re with me. Nimble and Ketch, get that girl. Bring her back.”

“Dead or alive?” asked Mr. Ketch, with a smug smile.

“Alive, you moron,” said Mr. Dandy. “I want to know what she knows.”

“Maybe she’s one of them,” said Mr. Tar. “The ones who done for us in Vancouver and Melbourne and—”

“Get her,” said Mr. Dandy. “Get her now.” The blond man and the hat-and-mustache hurried up the hill.

Mr. Dandy and Mr. Tar stood outside the door to number 33.

“Force it,” said Mr. Dandy.

Mr. Tar put his shoulder against the door and began to lean his weight on it. “It’s reinforced,” he said. “Protected.”

Mr. Dandy said, “Nothing one Jack can do that another can’t fix.” He pulled off his glove, put his hand against the door, muttered something in a language older than English. “Now try it,” he said.

Tar leaned against the door, grunted and pushed. This time the lock gave and the door swung open.

“Nicely done,” said Mr. Dandy.

There was a crashing noise from far above them, up at the top of the house.

The man Jack met them halfway down the stairs. Mr. Dandy gri

“I did,” said the man Jack. “He got away.”

“Again?” Jack Dandy’s smile grew wider and chillier and even more perfect. “Once is a mistake, Jack. Twice is a disaster.”

“We’ll get him,” said the man Jack. “This ends tonight.”

“It had better,” said Mr. Dandy.

“He’ll be in the graveyard,” said the man Jack. The three men hurried down the stairs.

The man Jack sniffed the air. He had the scent of the boy in his nostrils, a prickle at the nape of his neck. He felt like all this had happened years before. He paused, pulled on his long black coat, which had hung in the front hall, incongruous beside Mr. Frost’s tweed jacket and fawn mackintosh.

The front door was open to the street, and the daylight had almost gone. This time the man Jack knew exactly which way to go. He did not pause, but simply walked out of the house, and hurried up the hill towards the graveyard.

The graveyard gates were closed when Scarlett reached them. Scarlett pulled at them desperately, but the gates were padlocked for the night. And then Bod was beside her. “Do you know where the key is?” she asked.

“We don’t have time,” said Bod. He pushed close to the metal bars. “Put your arms around me.”

“You what?”

“Just put your arms around me and close your eyes.”

Scarlett stared at Bod, as if daring him to try something, then she held him tightly and screwed her eyes shut. “Okay.”

Bod leaned against the bars of the graveyard gates. They counted as part of the graveyard, and he hoped that his Freedom of the Graveyard might just, possibly, just this time, cover other people too. And then, like smoke, Bod slipped though the bars.

“You can open your eyes,” he said.

She did.

“How did you do that?”

“This is my home,” he said. “I can do things here.”

The sound of shoes slapping against the pavement, and two men were on the other side of the gates, rattling them, pulling at them.

“Hul-lo,” said Jack Ketch, with a twitch of his mustache, and he smiled at Scarlett through the bars like a rabbit with a secret. He had a black silk cord tied around his left forearm, and now he was tugging at it with his gloved right hand. He pulled it off his arm and into his hand, testing it, ru

“We just need you to answer some questions,” said the big blond man, Mr. Nimble. “We’re on official business.” (He lied. There was nothing official about the Jacks of All Trades, although there had been Jacks in governments and in police forces and in other places besides.)

“Run!” said Bod to Scarlett, pulling at her hand. She ran.

“Did you see that?” said the Jack they called Ketch.

“What?”

“I saw somebody with her. A boy.”

“The boy?” asked the Jack called Nimble.

“How would I know? Here. Give me a hand up.” The bigger man put his hands out, linked them to make a step, and Jack Ketch’s black-clad foot went into it. Lifted up, he scrambled onto the top of the gates and jumped down to the drive, landing on all fours like a frog. He stood up, said, “Find another way in. I’m going after them.” And he sprinted off up the winding path that led into the graveyard.

Scarlett said, “Just tell me what we’re doing.” Bod was walking fast through the twilit graveyard, but he was not ru

“How do you mean?”

“I think that man wanted to kill me. Did you see how he was playing with that black cord?”

“I’m sure he does. That man Jack—your Mister Frost—he was going to kill me. He’s got a knife.”

“He’s not my Mister Frost. Well, I suppose he is, sort of. Sorry. Where are we going?”

“First we put you somewhere safe. Then I deal with them.”

All around Bod, the inhabitants of the graveyard were waking and gathering, worried and alarmed.

“Bod?” said Caius Pompeius. “What is happening?”

“Bad people,” said Bod. “Can our lot keep an eye on them? Let me know where they are at all times. We have to hide Scarlett. Any ideas?”

“The chapel crypt?” said Thackeray Porringer.

“First place they’ll look.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Scarlett, staring at Bod as if he had gone mad.

Caius Pompeius said, “Inside the hill?”

Bod thought. “Yes. Good call. Scarlett, do you remember the place where we found the Indigo Man?”

“Kind of. A dark place. I remember there wasn’t anything to be scared of.”

“I’m taking you up there.”

They hurried up the path. Scarlett could tell that Bod was talking to people as he went, but could only hear his side of the conversation. It was like hearing someone talk on a phone. Which reminded her…

“My mum’s going to go spare,” she said. “I’m dead.”

“No,” said Bod. “You’re not. Not yet. Not for a long time.” Then, to someone else, “Two of them, now. Together? Okay.”

They reached the Frobisher mausoleum. “The entrance is behind the bottom coffin on the left,” Bod said. “If you hear anyone coming and it’s not me, go straight down to the very bottom…do you have anything to make light?”

“Yeah. A little LED thing on my keyring.”

“Good.”

He pulled open the door to the mausoleum. “And be careful. Don’t trip or anything.”

“Where are you going?” asked Scarlett.

“This is my home,” said Bod. “I’m going to protect it.”

Scarlett squeezed the LED keyring, and went down on her hands and knees. The space behind the coffin was tight, but she went though the hole into the hill and pulled the coffin back as best she could. In the dim LED light she could see stone steps. She stood upright, and, hand on the wall, walked down three steps, then stopped and sat, hoping that Bod knew what he was doing, and she waited.

Bod said, “Where are they now?”

His father said, “One fellow’s up by the Egyptian Walk, looking for you. His friend’s waiting down by the alley wall. Three others are on their way over, climbing up the alley wall on all the big bins.”

“I wish Silas was here. He’d make short work of them. Or Miss Lupescu.”

“You don’t need them,” said Mr. Owens encouragingly.

“Where’s Mum?”

“Down by the alley wall.”

“Tell her I’ve hidden Scarlett in the back of the Frobisher’s place. Ask her to keep an eye on her if anything happens to me.”

Bod ran through the darkened graveyard. The only way into the northwest part of the graveyard was through the Egyptian Walk. And to get there he would have to go past the little man with the black silk rope. A man who was looking for him, and who wanted him dead…