The Crooked Sixpence

by Jennifer Bell

  ‘Candidates Promise Fallen Guild Crackdown,’ she read, her voice echoing through the hall. ‘In the final push before tomorrow’s elections, the two leading candidates in the race for Quartermaster of the Great Cavern – Octavius Wrench and Mr Punch – have been speaking in the Market Cross. Wrench today promised to drive out corruption within the underguard by bringing in his own team of investigators to help deal with the Fallen Guild.’

  Seb looked up at the portrait. ‘Octavius was running for Quartermaster,’ he said. ‘I guess he must have lost. Didn’t you say that Mr Punch is the Quartermaster now?’

  Before Ivy could answer, she spied Valian scuttling up the main stairs towards the gallery. ‘Aren’t you meant to be our bodyguard?’ she called.

  Valian turned round, his face flushed. ‘I thought we should probably split up to search the place for clues. It’ll be quicker.’

  Ivy exchanged a suspicious look with Seb.

  ‘Let him go,’ Seb said quietly. ‘It’ll smell better without him around.’

  Once Valian had disappeared upstairs, Seb folded up the edition of the Barrow Post and stuffed it into his hoodie pocket. Ivy searched through the chest of drawers. There were a number of other items – a pair of polished brogues, a horsehair hairbrush, some unopened letters addressed to Master Norton – but nothing of any real interest, until . . .

  Ivy gazed at the bottom drawer. Unlike the others, it had a keyhole. She gave it a yank but it didn’t budge. If only I still had that uncommon string. ‘It’s locked. Do you think you can break it open?’

  Seb rolled up his sleeves and got down on his knees. ‘Maybe.’ He looked underneath the chest and gave it a thump, then pulled hard on the drawer handle. Eventually the drawer snapped open and a cream paper envelope fluttered out. Ivy snatched it up off the floor. Her fingers sizzled with heat immediately. On the front, in scratchy black ink, was written:

  Send to:

  The Private Study of Octavius Wrench,

  The Wrench Mansion

  There was a slightly smudged ink stamp on the top right corner that said DIRECT MAIL.

  ‘It’s uncommon,’ Ivy said.

  Seb went still. ‘How do you know that? You did it before with the fountain. Am I missing something?’

  Ivy pushed a tangle of curls behind her ear. She had to tell Seb; he was her brother. She looked at him seriously. ‘Promise you won’t make me feel like a freak if I tell you?’

  Seb frowned. ‘Uh, OK . . .’

  ‘The thing is,’ Ivy said quietly, ‘well – when I touch something uncommon, I can kind of sense it. First my skin goes really warm and tingly where I’ve touched it and then’ – she hesitated – ‘I hear these whispers coming from it.’

  ‘What? How does that—?’ Before Seb could formulate a question, Ivy recounted everything Scratch had explained to her that morning.

  ‘Whispering,’ Seb repeated when she’d finished. ‘Right.’ He gave her a thin smile. ‘And there’s me thinking this couldn’t get any weirder. I mean, I’m no expert, but hearing voices in your head—’

  Ivy stamped her foot. ‘Seb! They’re not in my head! And anyway, you promised not to make me feel like a freak.’

  He held up his hands. ‘OK, OK.’ He pointed to the envelope. ‘Well, look, if it’s definitely uncommon, then what do you think it does?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She turned it over. It wasn’t sealed. ‘Maybe we should read what’s inside? It might be a clue to what happened on Twelfth Night.’ She slid her fingers under the flap on the back and opened it.

  And suddenly the room was spinning.

  ‘Seb!’

  ‘Ivy?!’

  The hallway – with its grand staircase and dark oil paintings – was swept away. Ivy felt herself rotating. She didn’t want to reach out with her arms in case she hit something.

  After a few seconds the spinning slowed down and a new room came into focus. Ivy fell to her knees and closed her eyes to let the dizziness subside. Her stomach was doing somersaults.

  ‘Ivy?’ Seb’s hand was on her shoulder. ‘You need to see this.’

  Slowly she opened her eyes and struggled to her feet.

  They were in a lavishly furnished room lined with mahogany bookcases and glass cabinets. Pale silvery light fell from a set of uncommon milk jugs hovering in the centre of the ceiling.

  Seb took a few steps forward. ‘Where are we?’ He ran his fingers along the top of a studded green leather chair tucked under a desk. They came away covered in grey fur.

  Everything in the room was covered in such a thick layer of dust and cobwebs that Ivy could barely make out individual objects – a crystal decanter and matching glasses; an ivory tusk displayed in a glass cabinet. No one had been there for a very long time.

  She scanned the walls and spotted a single portrait hanging between two bookcases. ‘Octavius Wrench,’ she said, recognizing him from the portrait in the entrance hall. She re-read the front of the envelope. ‘The Private Study of Octavius Wrench. Do you think this is it?’

  ‘Must be. The books are all about the history of Lundinor or uncommon stuff.’ Seb looked around the room. ‘It’s weird that there isn’t a door anywhere. That envelope must be the only way in or out. Maybe if you open it up, it takes us out again . . .’

  Ivy considered the envelope carefully. Seb could be right. Common envelopes open, so uncommon envelopes might just open different kinds of things. ‘Let’s look around for more clues before we go,’ she suggested. ‘We might be close to something.’

  Seb nodded and headed towards the bookcases on the other side of the room.

  Ivy took a few shaky steps forward. She leaned against a wooden chair back, trying to steady herself. She could be imagining it, but the walls still looked like they were spinning . . . or maybe it was just the wallpaper.

  The wall beside her was covered in thick, emerald-green paper decorated with vine leaves. Ivy traced one of them with her fingers. There was a loud pop! and the vine she had been touching sprang out of the paper and reached for her.

  She jumped back. ‘Seb! Over here!’

  As he scurried over, a sound like the popping of a hundred champagne corks filled the room, and every vine started crawling out of the wall, unravelling and twisting itself into a rope.

  Seb raised an eyebrow. ‘Cool. Even better than the origami wallpaper in our room.’

  The ropes had soon formed a large rectangular door with an oval doorknob. Eventually they creaked to a stop and, with a click, the door fell ajar.

  ‘Not another doorway,’ Ivy groaned. She felt like they’d had their fair share already. They’d better take a careful look before they stepped through.

  Seb laid a hand on a leafy green frond. ‘Seems OK. Let’s see where it leads.’

  ‘Wait—!’ Ivy started, but it was too late. The vines scratched and crackled as the door opened and Seb stepped through.

  A cloud of rust-red dust rose into the air and Ivy put a hand over her mouth. ‘Seb!’ she spluttered.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he coughed. ‘You can come in.’

  Ivy heaved a chair over from the study and used it to wedge the door open before tentatively crossing the threshold. ‘Where are we?’

  They had emerged into a small circular room. It appeared to be empty. ‘I don’t know,’ Seb said. ‘But there’s loads more doors here.’

  Ivy squinted, wiping the dust out of her eyes. Through the haze she could just see that the room wasn’t in fact circular. It had straight walls, with a door in each. She turned slowly on the spot, counting. Altogether, there were . . .

  ‘Six,’ she said. Her voice ricocheted around the chamber, making her jump. Two of the doors were made of stone, one was stainless steel, while another was crafted from old splintered wood. The fifth had been carved from some kind of glittering rock that Ivy had never seen before. Each door had the same design drawn upon it. A dinner-plate-sized image of a coin – the crooked sixpence.

  ‘The Dirge,’ Ivy realized, with a
shiver.

  Seb’s shoulders tensed. ‘What did you say?’

  Suddenly Ivy was spotting clues everywhere, like spiders waiting in the shadows – six doors, for the six members of the Fallen Guild, each door with a word engraved above it.

  ‘The code names,’ she said aloud. A sense of dread swelled inside her as she read them. ‘Monkshood, Ragwort, Wolfsbane, Nightshade, Hemlock . . .’ She froze. ‘Seb – Ethel told me about this place. It was called the Hexroom. It’s where the Dirge used to meet.’ The very thought made Ivy’s skin crawl. She wondered what number of evil, whispered conversations had taken place here years ago.

  She stopped when she was facing the open door they’d come in through – the one made of vine leaves. She slowly pushed it to, just enough to see behind it. The reverse of the door was crafted from stone and bore the image of a crooked sixpence, just like the others. The head on the sixpence was the same one she’d seen on the coin from Granma Sylvie’s house – a hooded face with a large square jaw. A mask covered the person’s eyes and nose, ending in pointed tusks at each side of the mouth. Chiselled into the bricks above was another code-name: Blackclaw.

  Seb gasped. ‘Wait – does that mean what I think it means?’

  Ivy nodded slowly, still in a daze. She glanced towards the study. ‘There’s only one reason why Octavius Wrench would have a secret door that led to the Hexroom.’

  Seb turned towards her, his eyes wide. ‘He was a member of the Dirge . . . Granma’s dad was a member of the Dirge.’ He started pacing. ‘I don’t get it. Do you think she knew? Do you think anyone knows?’

  Images swept through Ivy’s mind: six hooded figures emerging from the shadows, each wearing a different mask . . . She grabbed her brother’s arm. ‘Seb, we need to get out of here.’

  He went still. ‘Yeah, yeah we do.’ He headed towards the door of vines, pushing the chair away. Ivy took one last glance around as she followed. She looked down at her wellies, which had left footprints in the dust. It lay in an unbroken sheet across the Hexroom – except in two places. There was a bare triangle at the foot of two of the six doors, as if they’d recently been opened. One was the stainless steel one belonging to Wolfsbane; the other was the wooden door belonging to Ragwort. Ivy barely had time to register the information, let alone figure out what it meant, before Seb called out urgently to her.

  ‘Come on! Quickly.’

  At that very moment, the air was pierced with a long, high-pitched howl. The sound bounced off all six walls of the Hexroom and echoed around Octavius Wrench’s study. Every hair on Ivy’s body stood on end. ‘What was that?’ she whispered. It sounded like an animal, an angry one. As the howl filled her ears again, she tried to pinpoint where it was coming from.

  Seb tugged her sleeve. ‘There.’ He pointed over at the Wolfsbane door. There was a line of sickly green light around the edges and Ivy could hear scratching behind it. Her mouth went dry as the smell of damp dog crept into her nostrils. She thought she recognized it.

  ‘Whatever’s behind that door,’ she said, ‘I think it might have been there yesterday morning, during the break-in at Granma Sylvie’s.’

  Seb grabbed her arm and they ran.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Ivy scrambled back into the study, tripping over the thick carpet. She grabbed Seb’s sweatshirt with one hand and tore open the uncommon envelope with the other. The room spun. Mahogany bookcases and silvery milk jugs disappeared – until the murky hallway of the Wrench Mansion zoomed around them.

  Ivy bent forward, heaving air into her lungs. That had been way too close. Whatever was down there, it had almost caught them. She looked up into the gloom of the hallway, surprisingly relieved to be back there. She and Seb had reappeared at the foot of the stairs. Valian was nowhere to be seen. Ivy wondered what he’d been getting up to.

  For a moment she stood there while she tried to think. She and Seb were still panting for breath. It was the only noise breaking the silence until—

  ‘I’d bet my claws you thought I couldn’t follow you here, didn’t you?’ asked a voice.

  Ivy spun round.

  Standing on the other side of the hall was a giant wolf. Its pelt was shiny black with flecks of silver, and there was a diamond-encrusted pet collar hanging loosely around its neck. Ivy stiffened. The beast’s eyes were blood-red with a small white pupil, like that of some demon robot.

  ‘Now, isn’t this interesting,’ the wolf purred. It curled thick, leathery lips around each word. ‘I wonder what you’re both doing back in your ancestral home . . .’

  A prickle ran between Ivy’s shoulder blades. It can talk. The wolf can talk.

  ‘Have you hidden it here? I wonder.’ The wolf’s voice was expressive but hoarse, like a Shakespearean actor with a sore throat.

  Ivy forced her shaking hands into fists. ‘L-leave us alone,’ she stammered.

  Seb lunged in front of her. ‘Shoo! Get out of here! Go on – go!’

  The wolf raised a tufty eyebrow. ‘Shoo?’ It threw back its head and opened its considerable jaws, laughing. Ivy couldn’t help but notice the rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  ‘Ivy—’ Seb stumbled on the carpet.

  She looked frantically around the hall. There was no way out. The wolf was standing between them and the front door. Their only option was to run up the stairs and hope it wasn’t fast enough to catch them.

  It swished its long tail. ‘I’ll ask you once more, little children.’ It lowered its head and its voice deepened. ‘Where have you hidden it?’

  Ivy cried out. She couldn’t help it. The creature was monstrous; whatever she’d been expecting to find here, it wasn’t this.

  The wolf’s ears pricked up like great hairy antennae. ‘Oh dear, are you crying because the big bad wolf asked you a question? How does the story go . . . ?’ it asked, chuckling. ‘The big bad wolf will blow your house down if—?’ It shook its head. ‘No, no, that’s not the one. How about: the big bad wolf will eat your grandma if—? Nope, that’s not it. Ah, yes, I know. What about: the big bad wolf will skin you alive if you don’t tell him where you’ve hidden his mistress’s property?’ It bared more teeth. ‘Now, that’s much more accurate.’

  Ivy gulped in terror. She wanted to move – she knew she should move – but she just couldn’t. If she turned and ran, the wolf would catch her – it was twice her size, with rippling muscles and long claws; of course it would. She remembered measuring the paw-prints in Granma Sylvie’s kitchen against her hand and decided that she was definitely facing their owner.

  Something clattered on the gallery. The wolf looked up as a dark figure shot across the landing.

  Valian.

  Ivy recognized his nimble figure, but his face was unusually puffy and red and the sleeves of his leather jacket had been pushed up to the elbow. He launched himself off the stairs and landed in a crouch. In his hand he was swinging what appeared to be a large brown elastic band.

  ‘Ivy, Seb!’ he yelled. ‘The door!’

  Ivy hesitated. How could they get to it? There was no way—

  Valian released the elastic band. It shot towards the wolf like a dart, snapping into different shapes as it did so. First it made a circle, and a pair of brass cymbals appeared in the centre; then it formed a long curved shape, and a trombone appeared. Instruments continued popping out of it – drums, trumpets, violins. They crashed into the wolf in a screeching, squawking, tooting riot, and then started playing on its body. The cymbals clashed around its head; the drumsticks beat its back. The wolf thrashed to and fro, and Ivy wondered whether she and Seb might manage to run past before it got free.

  Seb was obviously thinking the same thing. ‘Ivy – go!’

  He pushed her, and suddenly she was running as hard as she could. Valian and Seb reached the front door first and opened it so she could go straight through.

  They sprinted down the hill towards the gate without looking back. Ivy’s wellies slapped down on the path, resonating out into the night.

/>   Valian threw open the iron gates, and they hurtled through – only to meet a brick wall on the other side. Rebounding off it, Seb turned and shut the gates with an almighty clang. For an instant Ivy thought she glimpsed a wet black nose fading through the gates like a ghost, but perhaps it was just a shadow.

  The gate-posts vibrated before sinking back into the bricks, and within seconds the pale-green fountain had re-formed.

  Ivy eyed Valian as the three of them leaned over, panting. She remembered that he’d been out of breath even before the wolf showed up.

  She straightened and looked around. The fountain was back in place, the basin full of dry leaves, as if there had never been any water in it. The alleyway appeared to be in a different part of Lundinor. There was no one around.

  She tried to gather her thoughts.

  Granma Sylvie’s father, Octavius, was Blackclaw, a member of the Dirge . . .

  She didn’t know what implications that had for getting her parents back.

  A giant talking wolf was there during the break-in at Granma Sylvie’s . . .

  Which meant that it probably worked for the Dirge. Ivy wondered if it had been following them.

  Valian was up to something at the mansion . . .

  She couldn’t figure him out. One minute he was saving them, the next he was abandoning them. And he kept disappearing. It was like that was the only thing he knew how to do.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the thin black hands of the uncommon alarm clock ticking away. All she knew for certain was that she didn’t have much time to work it all out.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Cabbage Moon Inn was quieter than it had been at breakfast. The dining room smelled of lemon washingup liquid and tea. A few members of staff were mopping the floor, or wiping down tables.

  Still weary, Ivy slumped into a chair in the far corner. As Seb and Valian took a seat opposite, the innkeeper, Mr Littlefair, came over.

  ‘What can I get the three of you, then?’ he asked in a jolly voice. ‘You look like you’re thirsty.’