Brendan Walker knew the package would be there by eight a.m. It had to be. He had selected “FedEx First Overnight” on the website; he had confirmed that in his zip code (in Sea Cliff, San Francisco), “First Overnight” meant eight a.m.; he had even woken up continually during the night to hit Refresh on the FedEx tracking page. If the package didn’t arrive at his house by eight, how could he go to school?
“Brendan! Get down here!”
He turned away from his laptop and went to the trapdoor that was the only exit out of his room. Sometimes he thought it was strange that his room was actually the attic of a three-storey, Victorian-style house, but mostly he thought it was cool. Besides, it was one of the least weird things about his life.
He hit the latch. The trapdoor swung away, unfolding into steps that led from the attic to the hallway below. He hopped down and folded the steps back behind him, tucking the rope that hung from the trapdoor inside, so it dangled down several centimetres less than normal. This way, if anybody entered his room while he was at school, he would know.
“Brendan! Your breakfast is getting cold!”
He ran towards his mom’s voice.
In the hallway, Brendan passed three photos of the home’s former owners: the Kristoffs. They had built the place in 1907. Their pictures were faded, overlaid with pastel colours that appeared to have been added years later. Denver Kristoff, the father, had a grim face and a square beard. His wife, Eliza May, was pretty and demure. Their daughter, Dahlia, was a cute, innocent-looking baby in the photos – but Brendan knew her by a different name, with a different set of skills.
She was the Wind Witch. And she had almost killed him half a dozen times.
Fortunately, she hadn’t been a problem for six weeks. She was … How would the cops put it? “Missing and presumed dead”, Brendan thought. Brendan’s little sister, Eleanor, had used a magical book to banish her to “the worst place ever” and they hadn’t heard from her since. Which meant it was probably time to take down her picture. But whenever Brendan’s parents brought up that idea, Brendan protested, along with Eleanor and his older sister, Cordelia.
“Mom, the house is called Kristoff House. You can’t take down the pictures of the Kristoffs,” Eleanor had said the other week, when Mrs Walker showed up in the hallway with pliers and putty. Eleanor was nine; she had strong opinions.
“But we own the house now, Eleanor. Wasn’t it you who suggested that we start calling it Walker House?”
“Yeah, but now I think we should respect the original owners,” replied Eleanor.
“It gives the place historical integrity,” Cordelia agreed. She was three years older than Brendan, about to turn sixteen, although she sounded like she was in her thirties. “It’s like when they change the name of a baseball stadium to Billionaire Corporation Field. It’s fake.”
“Fine,” Mrs Walker sighed. “It’s your house. I just live here.”
Mrs Walker left, allowing the Walker siblings to speak more freely. Just looking at the pictures brought them back to the fantastic adventures they had been on in Kristoff House – the certifiably crazy, never-talk-about-them-because-you’ll-be-put-away adventures. The adventures about which Brendan thought: If any of us ever gets married, and we tell people, “The best day of my life was when I got married,” we’ll be lying. Because the best day of our lives was when we got home safe, six weeks ago.
“It really does make sense to keep the Kristoffs up,” Cordelia said. “They’re the ones responsible for this whole … situation.”
“What situation? The situation where we’re rich?” Eleanor asked.
It felt weird to say. But it was true. At the end of the Walkers’ certifiable adventures, when Eleanor had made the wish in the magical book (or cursed book, really) to banish the Wind Witch, she’d also wished for her family to be rich. The Walker parents had ended up with ten million dollars in their savings account as a “settlement” for Dr Walker. Now the family was living very comfortably because of it.
“There’s that,” Cordelia said, “and there’s the situation where we live in mortal fear because the Wind Witch could come back.” She looked at Denver Kristoff’s picture. “Or the Storm King.”
Brendan shuddered. He didn’t like to think about the Storm King, the persona Denver Kristoff took for himself after he became a wizard warped by The Book of Doom and Desire. The book – the same book that had given the Walkers their newfound wealth – was blank, but if you wrote a wish on a piece of paper and slipped it inside, the wish came true. As one might imagine, prolonged use of such a magical artifact had terrible effects on the body and mind, and, in Denver Kristoff’s case, had turned him into the monstrous Storm King. All of that was scary enough, but the real problem was that the Storm King was AWOL – the kids had no idea where he was.
He might be living in Berkeley.
“Here’s what I think,” Brendan said. “For the month or however long it’s been since we got home, those pictures have stayed up, and we haven’t had to deal with the Kristoffs in real life. Is that a coincidence? Probably. But in this house, you never know. So it’s safer to keep them up.”
Eleanor grabbed his hand. He grabbed Cordelia’s. For a brief moment, they all made a silent wish that it was really over.
Now Brendan rushed past the pictures down the spiral stairs to the kitchen. The room had been nice when the Walkers bought Kristoff House, but