Dead Voices

“How’s your stash of peanut butter?” her dad was asking brightly.

“Thanks for breaking the mirror,” said Ollie awkwardly to Mr. Voland. “It—whatever it was—didn’t let me go until you did.”

Mr. Voland was shaking out a blanket.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “You were very brave.”

“We’ve seen worse,” said Ollie. They had. The mirror had been bad, but the scarecrows behind the mist had been worse.

Mr. Voland’s eyes narrowed. But he didn’t ask. Ollie was glad he didn’t. He put the blanket down next to the fireplace and flexed his cut hand. “Although,” Mr. Voland added with a faint smile, “I do not know how I am going to explain the broken mirror to Sue.”

“Say it was a ghost,” said Ollie.

“I guess I’ll have to,” he replied, and they both laughed a little.“The three of you should stay downstairs and stay together for the rest of the day,” Mr. Voland added to the whole trio. “Promise?”

All three promised. But then Brian, scowling, headed over to the front desk and grabbed the whole bowl of candy. “Okay, but I need some candy,” he said.

“Are we allowed?” asked Coco.

“Today we are,” said Brian, plunking the bowl down on the hearth by the fire and starting to make himself a blanket nest to sit in. “No skiing and ghosts? There is no limit to the peanut butter cups that I am allowed to consume.”

“Seconded,” said Ollie, and reached for one. “I just had a ghost grab my hand.”

Coco shrugged agreement and ate a Snickers. She’d brought her travel chess set downstairs with the blankets. “Ollie, want to play?”

Ollie didn’t really feel like chess, but it was better than peering into the shadows or sitting and watching the light fade out of the dining room windows.

Ollie and Coco played for a while, trading matches back and forth, neither of them trying very hard. Brian watched them play and read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Ollie kept stealing glances at the dragon-headed ship on the book’s cover. She wanted to be on a ship right then, with no walls, only water, and a hot sun overhead.

Mr. Voland had settled down at one of the dining room tables—with a view through the archway to the stairs. Sometimes he wrote in a little notebook, but mostly he stared through the archway. Once Ollie lifted her head from the chess game, after she’d just checkmated a distracted Coco, to see him watching the three of them.

“Do you play chess?” Ollie asked Mr. Voland.

“You can play, if you want,” Coco chimed in. She was always hunting for new opponents.

“Yes,” said Mr. Voland. “I play.” He smiled at them both. “I like games. But I fear I’d be too much for you. Enjoy your fun.”

Coco looked like she wanted to challenge Mr. Voland to a chess duel then and there. But before she could say anything, Ollie’s dad made an entrance from the kitchen with a huge plate piled high with graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows.

“S’mores!” cried Coco, distracted.

“Hm,” said Ollie’s dad, “you three can’t possibly be hungry after all that candy.” He cast an eye on the floor, which was scattered with wrappers.

“Dad—” said Ollie.

“But I’ll leave this here anyway,” her dad went on, depositing the platter by the fire. “Keep it safe for me?”

“No worries there,” said Brian, and they all gathered around the fire. Making s’mores was always fun. Carefully, they skewered their marshmallows. Ollie and Coco laughed at Brian, who could never manage to toast a marshmallow without catching it on fire. “It’s fine,” Brian insisted. “Catching it on fire cooks it just as well.” To illustrate, he sandwiched his blackened marshmallow between slabs of graham cracker and chocolate and took a giant bite. Ollie and Coco, still laughing, hurried to toast theirs too.

They ate until they couldn’t eat any more. S’mores took their minds off things. But eventually they put the last of the graham crackers and chocolate aside. When the fun stopped, the twilight seemed to rush in.

The light outside was blue-violet, and somewhere beyond the mountains the sun sank. The day shuddered to a gray and strange close.

Ollie’s dad and Ms. Zintner had been in and out all afternoon, messing with the generator, checking on the fire. If they’d seen anything strange, they hadn’t said. And it didn’t seem like they had. Mr. Adler was just as cheerful as usual. It was only Ollie, Brian, Coco, and Mr. Voland who seemed to have noticed anything wrong.

Even though Mr. Voland had carefully nursed the fire along, the lodge kept getting colder.

“Why is it so cold?” Ollie asked Mr. Voland. All that afternoon, when he wasn’t feeding the fire, he’d barely taken his eyes off the lobby stairwell. She was pretty sure the other grown-ups were annoyed with him. He hadn’t offered to help bring in firewood, and he wasn’t hunting for ghosts, like he said he meant to. But Ollie thought he was doing something. He was keeping watch.