Chapter 1 Harbortown, 1934 Peter balanced on the tilting fire escape behind the schoolhouse. The rusting iron platform overlooked the alley, and if he leaned out far enough, Peter could see the intersection of the alley and the busy street. His twin stepbrothers, Larry and Randall, still loitered there. Larry leaned against a streetlamp, tossing something up and down. He squinted upward from beneath his flat cap, caught sight of Peter, and waved. Rats, thought Peter. A tin bucket sat at Larry's feet. There couldn't be anything good in it. The hulking Randall was hunched over beside his twin brother and poking a stick at something on the brick sidewalk. Peter's gangly teacher, Miss Baker, banged open the classroom door. Peter began clapping together the forgotten erasers vigorously. The air filled with floury chalk dust. "Thank you for volunteering to clean up, Peter," Miss Baker said, smiling. "Everyone else seemed in a hurry to begin summer recess." "I don't mind, ma'am," said Peter honestly, though he could feel the prickling crawl of sweat gathering at his temples. Lately, he'd been experiencing a kind of creeping expectancy, an uneasy apprehension that had him flinching at shadows. He supposed it was the cumulative effect of his stepbrothers' pranks, or dread of the summer to come. "Well, I appreciate it." Miss Baker's head bobbed on her long neck in a nod of approval. She ducked back into the classroom. Some of the other kids in his class made fun of Miss Baker--they called her the Ostrich--but Peter liked her. Earlier in the year, she'd seen Peter sharing his noon dinner with Tommy Barclay, whose family could not afford even the penny lunch. The next day, she'd asked Tommy to help her with classroom setup every afternoon in exchange for school luncheon. Peter was pretty sure she didn't really need Tommy's help. Best of all, Miss Baker had never given Peter that phony speech like every other grown-up, about how nice it must be to have a stepmother and siblings now, a real family. Miss Baker seemed to know it was about as nice as being tied in a sack with a couple of feral weasels. Peter loosened his school tie and cast one final glance over the iron railing. He'd hoped if he took long enough to leave, Larry and Randall would tire of waiting for him and go find someone else to torment. No such luck. "Is there anything else I can do?" Peter asked Miss Baker hopefully, back in the classroom. "We've finished. I'm just going to take a last look around and lock up." Peter went downstairs to the lobby and dawdled inside the windowed schoolhouse door. He gazed out past his pale reflection at the motorcars and trolleys and occasional horse passing on the street. He couldn't see his stepbrothers from here, but he knew they were around the corner. Just once, he'd like to walk past the twins with a friend at his side. No one was brave enough. Since baseball season ended, his stepbrothers had had nothing better to do after school than lie in wait for Peter. Randall was built like a buffalo. Larry, the cleverer of the two, was bony and hard-hearted. They both had the manners of animals. Miss Baker descended the steps, carrying a milk crate full of students' misplaced items. She peered down at them. "What a shame. Ginger left her beautiful new coat and hat." Miss Baker held up a yellow flowered raincoat. Peter quickly saw an opportunity. "I'll take them to her," he said. "That's very kind, thank you." Miss Baker handed him the coat and wide-brimmed matching hat, and Peter made a show of neatly folding the coat and placing it carefully in his knapsack. They parted ways at the bottom of the steps. Peter pretended to tie his shoe until Miss Baker melded into the busy throng on the sidewalk. Then he unbuckled his bag and withdrew the coat. He wished it were less girlish. The bright daffodil pattern was discouragingly eye-catching, and the coat was inappropriate for this cloudless day. Still, as a disguise it might work. His stepbrothers would be scanning for Peter's familiar school clothes. All Peter needed was to get by them; he was faster than the twins, and with a head start he'd beat them over the bridge and back to the brownstone. Peter pulled on Ginger's raincoat. The sleeves were too short and the armpit seams snug. He tugged the hat down as low as possible and joined the crowd waiting to cross at the traffic light. He felt as silly as a walking banana and prayed he wouldn't run into anyone he knew. Once on the far side of the street, he hurried up the block in the twins' direction. At the very least, they'd have to cross traffic to reach him. In recent months, that had helped, sometimes. Peter didn't dare look over to where Larry and Randall were lurking. Instead, he turned toward the notices posted in the shop windows, walking at a clip past advertisements for Croft Ale and the new 1934 Ford Deluxe. Then one poster in particular caught his eye. Across the top it said missing: dorothy james. Beneath it was a description: "Ten years old, curly dark hair, brown eyes, heart-shaped birthmark on left forearm. Last seen May 14, at the Harbortown Fairgrounds' Mummies of Ancient Egypt exhibit, wearing a light blue dress and matching ribbon headband." Peter had overheard some of his classmates who'd gone to the fair. Everyone agreed that exhibit was eerie. One boy said even though he was alone in the mummy tent, he'd felt like someone was waiting in the shadows. Peter was thinking about this when he spied what was written across the bottom of the notice: $1,000 reward offered for information leading to dorothy's safe return. "A thousand dollars!" Peter said aloud. Whoops. No need to draw attention; he pulled the rain hat lower and resumed his march. I would do almost anything for that money! His father was leaving soon to conduct studies on alkaline batteries with some other engineering professors in New York City, and his stepmother mostly ignored him. With school out and only the short-tempered housekeeper, Miss Cook, to look out for him, he'd be at the twins' mercy all summer. He'd have only his robot, WindUp, for company. For the hundredth time, Peter wished he were leaving for Camp Contraption, a residential summer camp in the far-off Blue Ridge Mountains. When he'd discovered it, he'd pleaded with his father to send him. Two and a half months of nature hikes and engineering--the campers even built their own automatons!--sounded like a dream come true. But a dream it was--a $200 dream his family couldn't afford. It was settled. Peter would stay home with the twins for what he had begun to think of as the Summer of Doom. "Hey!" A sharp, high voice interrupted Peter's thoughts. With dismay, Peter looked up into the wide green eyes of none other than the redheaded Ginger Hall, whose yellow flowered coat and hat Peter was currently modeling. "That's my coat!" She looked Peter over, aghast. "It looks terrible on you!" Peter's face grew hot. Ginger was causing a small stir on the sidewalk. A barber and his client watched them through a window. A tall man in a porkpie hat who'd been walking his dog regarded Peter and frowned. Ginger's mother opened her mouth but seemed unable to think of anything to say. "Shh! Here! Sorry!" Blushing, Peter awkwardly tore off the coat and hat, thrusting them into Ginger's hands. "I was bringing them to you, I just . . ." Both Ginger and her mother looked appalled, but Peter had no time to explain. There was a squeal of tires, and Peter saw his stepbrother Randall vaulting over the hood of an automobile toward them, his broad face the very picture of wicked glee. Peter took flight. His stepbrothers dashed after him. "Excuse me! Pardon! Coming through!" Peter shouted. He dodged pedestrians on the fenced sidewalk portion of the bridge, and squeezed past a large man in a bowler who'd paused to observe the boats on the river. Peter didn't dare look back. His knapsack thumped against his spine as he pelted down the last stretch of the bridge and onto the street. Whizz! A stinky projectile flew past Peter's peripheral vision. Peter turned the corner at full speed, nearly knocking over a postman. Something smashed into the tree branches near his head, and Peter ducked. "Dog bombs away!" Randall shouted with unrestrained joy as what appeared to be a brown snowball exploded near Peter's feet. Dog bombs were Larry's invention, a mixture of mud and dog droppings, rolled into apple-sized balls. Their odor was atrocious. Peter was only one block from their brownstone, but an Oshkosh truck with a bed full of fruit crates blocked the intersection. He had no choice--he would have to use his emergency plan. He veered left down the block and into a semi-vacant lot where the charred remains of a burned-out bakery stood. Behind him, Randall tripped on the nearly invisible fishing line Peter had stretched between a fallen beam and a metal pole. Randall sprawled, dirt billowing up into the air around him. Larry stepped over the line, picked up a rolling dog bomb, and continued the chase. Peter sprinted away and back across the now-empty street. Their brownstone was in sight. He leaped up the stairs. The front door swung open just as he reached the top step. A dog bomb splattered on the sidewalk in front of the stoop. Larry had an impressive throwing arm. Peter's father frowned and peered up at the sky absentmindedly. "Forgot to get the morning paper," he said, leaning down to pick up the newspaper from the step. "There's a letter on the hall table for you. Make sure you stop in and say hello to your stepmother." Peter wiped the sweat from his forehead and dutifully went to the parlor. He greeted his stepmother in a rush. "Hi, Stepma," he said, using their agreed-upon name. She was rocking baby Lucy, whose eyes were pinched with wailing. Peter spied Lucy's favorite stuffed bunny under the tea table. Still trying to catch his breath, Peter threw off his knapsack, dropped to his knees, and grabbed the bunny. He held the ratty toy up to Lucy's soft arms. "Here you go, Luce," he said. She grasped the bunny and stuffed it into her mouth, blinking at him. Peter ran out the door and was halfway up the stairs when he realized he'd left his knapsack in the parlor. Peter hurried to retrieve the pack, bolted back up the stairway, and was outside the door to his room when Larry emerged from across the hall. Rats! Larry's thin face was coated with a fine layer of dirt. He narrowed his pink-rimmed eyes and lunged for Peter. "Gotcha!" Larry said with an evil sneer. Chapter 2 Tunie stopped at the back door of Eleanor's Elegant Sweet Shoppe and tugged up each drooping kneesock. The socks had once been white but now were tinged gray from wear. She lifted her pet bat, Perch, from her shoulder and set him gently on a dripping pipe that stuck out from the building. Perch spun until he was hanging upside down, his black wings closing around him. He did not look pleased to be left behind in the dank alley, which smelled like ripe old garbage and mop water. "Sorry, Perch, but you know how it is. Not everyone loves a bat." He closed his eyes, indignant. Perch was unusual to a spooky degree. Most people wouldn't believe Tunie if she told them what he could do, or that she had a sort of sense for such unusual things. She sighed and smoothed back the hair that had slipped from her brown braid, tucking it under the light blue ribbon headband Perch had found. There was no time to plait her hair again; she was late already. She opened the back door to the kitchen. "What are you doin' here?" A round-cheeked new baker looked Tunie over, taking in the sagging socks, the broken shoelace, the frayed hem of the skirt. The baker lifted a wooden spoon. "Out! Shoo!" she said, for all the world, as if Tunie were a pigeon. Tunie took a step back, and as she tried to explain, Miss Eleanor strode into the kitchen. She shut the door to the shop behind her, keeping the fancy customers out of view. "It's all right, Marge. This is Petunia. She is our calligraphist." Miss Eleanor turned and climbed the flight of stairs to the business office, expecting Tunie to follow, which she did. Marge's sour expression said what she thought of Eleanor's taste in calligraphists. Tunie resisted the urge to stick out her tongue and scrambled to keep up with Miss Eleanor's fine silk skirt. "You're late," Miss Eleanor said sternly over her shoulder. "I'm sorry, ma'am, there was--" "Never mind," Miss Eleanor interrupted. "I'm in a rush. Clean your hands and I'll show you today's work." "Yes, ma'am." Miss Eleanor stacked ivory cards on the glossy wooden desk that nearly filled the closet-sized office. She hunted around in a stack of papers while Tunie washed her hands at the small sink. It was one of Tunie's favorite parts of the job--washing with the sweet, rose-scented soap. Tunie carefully dried her hands and rolled up her sleeves. Miss Eleanor impatiently waved Tunie to the padded leather desk chair. "I've left the cards and the list here. I'll be back in half an hour to check on your progress." Miss Eleanor departed in a swirl of skirts. Tunie took a moment to breathe in the delicious smell of blueberry scones baking below and to appreciate the vine-patterned wallpaper. Then she bent over the thick rectangular cards and began carefully copying the names of next week's specials: Strawberry Torte, Powdered Lemon Drops, Chocolate Hazelnut Wafers. Before she died of cholera, Tunie's mother had been an artist. She'd taught Tunie how to sketch, how to paint, and--most valuably--how to write in beautiful, elegant script. This last skill was what Miss Eleanor paid Tunie to do. She'd spied a help wanted sign in Miss Eleanor's shop window a few months earlier. For writing out the names of the bakery specials for the store display, Miss Eleanor gave Tunie a few coins and a bag of day-old baked goods. It wasn't much, but there were times when the stale biscuits and hard scones were all Tunie and her father had to eat. Tunie had just finished the last mouthwatering flourish on Bacon Cheddar Scones when she heard a screech at the window. Tunie glanced up in time to see Perch, his black wings flapping frantically against the pane. He dove away just as a large striped tomcat on the rooftop pounced, hitting the window with a thud. Excerpted from Horus and the Curse of Everlasting Regret by Hannah Voskuil All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
