Read Online The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 by Jacqueline West - Free Book Online

teetered to its feet.
    “Olive!” Mrs. Dewey called out. “Would you like to come inside for some cookies and milk with Rutherford?”
    “No thank you, Mrs. Dewey,” said Olive, stomping even faster. “I have to get home.”
    The smile on Mrs. Dewey’s face folded into a look of concern as her grandson slumped closer. “I take it you told her,” she whispered to Rutherford.
    “I told her something, ” Rutherford whispered back.
    Then the two Deweys stood together at the edge of their yard, staring after Olive’s retreating form.
    Olive pounded up the porch of the old stone house and slammed the heavy front door behind her. She threw her backpack onto the floor with such force that it skidded across the floorboards, knocking over an antique coatrack. She leaned back against the door, fuming.
    Rutherford was going to leave her . For the first time, she’d had a friend at a brand-new school, and he was going to abandon her. This was even worse than starting from scratch. Now, where only a blank sea of strangers would have been, there would be a hole—a great big gap where something important used to be, and she would have to dodge around it, day after day, trying not to fall in.
    Olive kicked the door with her heel. The noise thundered away through the empty house.
    She stomped along the hall into the kitchen, yanking the wastebasket from its place under the sink.
    Stupid Rutherford. That traitor, she thought, ripping the sketch of Annabelle into smaller pieces with each angry thought. The pieces fluttered down into thewastebasket’s mess of coffee grounds and soggy napkins. Sneaky—Untrustworthy—Secretive—TRAITOR.
    For good measure, Olive grabbed the bottles of ketchup and mustard from the refrigerator and squirted them generously over the shreds of Annabelle’s face. Then she stuffed the wastebasket back into its spot.
    She didn’t need Rutherford. She had other friends—friends that wouldn’t leave her. She still had the cats. She still had Morton. For now.
    Olive swallowed. Annabelle had been telling the truth about more than one thing, apparently: Olive had no more time to waste.

8
    W HEN OLIVE CLIMBED through the frame and into the painting of Linden Street that afternoon, she knew immediately that something wasn’t quite right.
    The rest of the house was as it should have been. The empty, dusty rooms greeted her one after another, like the pages of a book she’d read a hundred times. Through an upstairs window, she’d spotted Agent 1-800 watching over the backyard from the branches of a towering maple tree, with his fur painted yellow to match the changing leaves, and this had made her feel a smidgeon safer. But here, in Morton’s world, something had changed.
    At first, she couldn’t figure out what it was. Everything looked the same. All the houses were where theyshould have been, every tree and shrub stood in its place, every fallen leaf and acorn sat in its assigned spot. And yet, something strange hung in the air, even thicker than the mist, which in some places was as thick as marshmallow fluff.
    Olive trotted warily up the street. Empty lawn after empty lawn greeted her. The houses loomed, sleepy and silent as ever. But from somewhere in the distance came the trace of an unfamiliar sound.
    Frowning, Olive trotted a bit faster.
    As she reached the crest of the hill, the sound grew clearer, louder, more real, until at last Olive could tell what it was.
    It was the sound of voices. A lot of voices. More voices than Olive had ever heard speaking all at once in the muffled world of Linden Street.
    Olive sped from a trot to a gallop. The sound of voices grew louder until she reached the edge of Morton’s lawn. There she stopped in her tracks.
    The porch of Morton’s tall gray house was absolutely packed with people. All of his neighbors—the woman in the lacy nightgown, the man in striped pajamas, the old man with the beard, the young woman Olive had only glimpsed in an upstairs