Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [54]
Aaron handed me the map. “Hold on to this,” he said. “I’ll put the others back.”
“Hang on,” Mandy said, reaching into her pocket and looking in her purse. She rifled through it and pulled out a card. “Got it!” she said, smiling. “My library card.”
Mandy passed me the card and went over to help Aaron put the other maps away.
“Don’t forget to bring the shell,” I said. Then I turned around — and walked straight into someone. “Ooh, sorry, I —” I stopped.
Mr. Beeston.
“What are you doing here?” I burst out.
“Whatever do you mean?” he blustered. “I’ve every right to come to my local library, I should think.” He scanned the three of us slowly with his beady eyes. “I might ask you the same thing,” he added.
“And I might give you the same answer,” I said, folding my arms.
“Touché, child, touché,” he said with a little laugh. I relaxed a bit. Mr. Beeston didn’t scare me anymore.
“Look, we’re just helping Mandy with some homework,” I said. He might not be a threat to us, but that didn’t mean I was going to start telling him what we were really doing here.
“Of course, of course, you carry on now,” he said lightly. He waved a hand to let me pass him. But as I did, he grabbed my arm. “What’s that?” he hissed.
I followed his eyes. He was looking at the table. More specifically, he was looking at the shell lying on it. His face had turned as white as the shell.
“It’s — we’re — I —”
“We found it on the beach,” Aaron said quickly, looking up at Mr. Beeston with what was probably meant to be a casual smile. “Pretty, isn’t it?” he added.
Mr. Beeston took a couple of steps toward him. He reached out toward the shell. His hand was shaking. “Isn’t it just,” he said. “Mind if I have a look?” he added in a voice that had as much forced casualness about it as Aaron’s smile.
Aaron glanced at me. I shrugged. We couldn’t exactly say no, could we? Mr. Beeston didn’t know anything about what we were doing, or how significant the shell was. Where was the harm in letting him see it?
“Sure.” Aaron held the shell out.
All three of us held our breath as we watched Mr. Beeston study the shell. He turned it over and over in his hands, holding it close to his eyes with the concentration of a watchmaker examining the workings of a particularly complex mechanism.
Aaron broke the silence. “I — er, I think we need to get going now,” he said. He held his hand out for the shell.
Mr. Beeston looked up. “What? Oh, yes, of course,” he said. He held out a reluctant hand to pass the shell back to Aaron. “Right you are,” he said to no one in particular. He seemed to have gone into a trance.
“Mr. Beeston, are you OK?” I asked.
He turned back to me, nodding vaguely. “Gosh, don’t you worry about me,” he said, flapping an arm as if to swat me away. “You be on your way now.” But then he froze. He was looking at my arm. Or rather, the map underneath it. Glancing from the map back to the shell in Aaron’s hand, he took a step closer toward me. “The maps,” he said. “What are they for?”
“They’re for my mom,” Aaron said quickly.
Mr. Beeston spun around. “I thought you said you were helping Mandy with her homework?”
“They are,” Mandy said. “Aaron’s mom is going to help me. It’s for geography. She knows a lot about the subject we’re doing at the moment.”
I could feel my face heat up. It was so obvious we were lying. I felt like a criminal — until I remembered something. We hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Then I remembered something else. Shona! If we stood any chance of saving her, we had to get to the island, find whatever it was that Melody had lost, and get the shell back to the sirens before she noticed it was missing.
“Come on,” I said, heading for the counter and passing Mandy’s library card over to the librarian along with the map. “We need to get going.” I looked at Aaron and added pointedly, “Your mom will be wondering where we’ve gone.”
And with that, the three of us shoved past Mr. Beeston,