by Gill Vickery
For Mary Hoffman, who also loves cats
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Back to Franklin’s Emporium
Chapter Two
The Invisible Cat
Chapter Three
Mirror, Mirror
Chapter Four
Paws 4 Thought
Chapter Five
Fading Away
Chapter Six
The Poltergeist
Chapter Seven
The Seven Mysteries of Golden Bay
Chapter Eight
The Magicians’ Battle
Chapter Nine
The Installation
Chapter Ten
Disaster!
Chapter Eleven
Brothers
Chapter One
BACK TO FRANKLIN’S EMPORIUM
‘I’ll see you again, soon.’
The voice echoed in my head as I waited for the lift in Franklin’s Emporium.
When the old liftman had said those words to me eight months ago I’d almost laughed. I knew there was no way – ever – I was going to come back to the seaside town of Golden Bay and its huge, run-down old department store, Franklin’s Emporium. Yet here I was, with my mum, waiting to get into the lift.
The lift pinged and the doors slid open. The liftman pulled aside the black metal grille and Mum went in, trying and failing to see over the pile of Fran’s Fancies cake boxes in her arms. I stuck as close as possible to her and stared at the floor. I did not want to make eye contact with the liftman.
Mum nudged me with an elbow. ‘Move over, there’s plenty of room.’
I shuffled grudgingly away, about five centimetres.
‘Top floor, Terrace Restaurant, please,’ Mum said in her chirpy way.
The lift glided upwards. I sneaked a glance at the liftman. He didn’t look any different from how I remembered him. He still wore a smart blue uniform with gold epaulettes and a pocket embroidered with three gold crowns. He stood, tall and gaunt, in his corner, bright eyes peering at me from under huge eyebrows like a hedge in need of trimming. I thought he might say, ‘Nice to see you again,’ but he didn’t speak a word until we got to the top floor.
‘Terrace restaurant,’ he announced and opened the doors on the busy restaurant.
I nipped in front of Mum. ‘I’ll guide you.’ I steered her out.
‘Thank you,’ she called over her shoulder to the liftman.
‘You’re welcome, Madam,’ he said in his cracked old voice. The doors shut and the lift glided downwards.
‘Strange old man,’ Mum said.
‘Too right,’ I muttered, leading Mum through the tables to the counter at the far end where a jolly, fattish man was sifting through papers.
He beamed with a grin like a half-moon when he saw us. ‘Ah, the cakes – the wonderful cakes!’ He trundled out from behind the counter.
‘To the kitchen with these.’ He took the boxes from Mum and whisked away, backwards, through a pair of swing doors. ‘Come!’ he bellowed.
Mum shook her head in amused exasperation. ‘You don’t need to stay. Charles wants to sort out orders for tomorrow and it’ll take a while. He’s very particular about my cakes.’
She rummaged in her purse for some money. ‘Get some treats for Cesare.’
Cesare is her new kitten and she’s besotted with him.
‘Get a toy for him as well. There’s plenty to choose from in the pet shop unit.’
When Franklin’s Emporium closed long ago, it became neglected and run down. Then it was sold, re-opened and let out in units. There were all kinds: cafes and coffee shops, second-hand book shops, furniture and toy shops. There was once a haberdashery, though that disappeared last summer. The pet shop unit, Paws 4 Thought, was on the ground floor but there was no way I was going to take the lift. I walked down all seven flights of stairs so as to avoid the liftman. He was a kind of wizard and I wasn’t going to risk getting involved in his magic, not after what happened last summer.
I came out in the grand, marble-floored lobby supported by pillars sculpted with nymphs and fauns. Right in the middle of the vast space was a huge cube of red fabric. It was covering scaffolding that stuck out at the top. As I passed it I heard my brother Ben’s voice and a lot of hammering and banging. My brothers were artists and this was one of their installations. I grinned. The inhabitants of Golden Bay were going to get a surprise when the covers came off.
The pet shop unit was tucked away in a corner, on the other side of the lobby. A lot of the units and pop-up shops arrived overnight like mushrooms and disappeared just as suddenly. Paws 4 Thought had appeared like that, materialising the day before Cesare sauntered up our garden path and turned my mum’s brain to mush.
Mum had picked the kitten up and done the cooing thing. I knew he’d cast a spell on her when she instantly forgot about her new bakery project and went hunting for food to stop the kitten’s tragic mewing. Up till then Mum had been totally obsessed with setting up her cake and bakery business, Fran’s Fancies. That was one of the reasons we’d come to live in Golden Bay.
She was going to call the kitten Misty but Dad called him Cesare after some evil old Italian duke, and it stuck – for good reason. Cesare was a complete tyrant: he tore the curtains, scratched the furniture, weed on the carpets and even chewed up my school project. Mum had to write a letter to my teacher saying the cat ate my homework.
For a creature that was adorable – all round blue eyes and smoky grey fur – he had an evil heart. It was the cutesy-pie kitten’s fault that the invisicat came to stay and refused to budge.
Paws 4 Thought was bigger than it looked from the outside. The main part was stacked with sacks of cat litter and dog biscuits, birdseed and racks of collars, poop-scoops and bird feeders. The rest was divided into four separate areas: one for fish, one for rodents, one for birds and a private, curtained off area at the back.
The pet shop owner was poking around as if he was trying to find something. When he saw me he flapped his hand irritably, said, ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ and started pulling boxes off a shelf and peering behind them.
I didn’t mind. It was the Easter holidays and I had time to waste.
Like some other units in Franklin’s, Paws 4 Thought was strange. It was gloomy, lit by dismal, dusty bulbs. The only bright illumination came from occasional flashes of coloured light from around the edges of the sagging black drapes at the back of the shop.
The pets had fresh food and water but their roomy cages were made of curly, wrought iron metal with bolts and cogs and elaborate locks on the doors. If they’d had wheels they’d have rolled about on their own as if a mad scientist had wound them up. Inside their ornate cages the animals and birds were creepily silent.
In the shadowy aquarium, fish sailed monotonously back and forth in illuminated tanks, occasionally diving down to ruined gothic castles, sunken airships and skulls with jaws that opened and shut. I liked those. I picked up a display skull and was feeding it a simpering mermaid when a jingling noise made me turn.
It was the pet shop owner. He was short and thin with an ordinary face except for the fact it was very, very pale and he had huge ears. An earring, shaped like a snake eating its own tail, hung from the left lobe. He wore a sort of saggy dressing gown in balding black velvet. He was clutching a blue cat collar with three large bells on it. That’s where the jingling noise came from.
‘Have you lost a cat?’ I asked, putting the mermaid back on the shelf.
‘None of your business,’ he snapped through a mean little mouth. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m looking for cat toys,’ I said.
‘You
won’t find any in here. Try over there.’
He pointed to a rack near the counter. His finger was encircled by a large ring embossed with another snake.
I went over and browsed. I chose a treat dispenser shaped like a mouse’s head. It had a giant pink nose and ears, and holes in the sides for biscuits to fall out of when the cat batted it around. Cesare would like that – he was keen on battering things. I picked up a box of meaty snacks as well.
Two customers came in and I went back to the fish room while the owner was serving them. I thought about feeding the mermaid to a plastic shark. Maybe set up a tug-of-war with the skull?
Maybe not. I didn’t want to get a bad reputation, not now Mum and Dad had units here and it was only a couple of days to the boys’ exhibition.
I bent down and looked at a blue and gold Siamese fighting fish drifting aimlessly round and round its tank. Staring at me from the other side of the tank was a pair of slanted yellow eyes. I nearly leapt out of my skin.
The eyes vanished.
Strange.
As I leaned forward for a closer look I dropped the box of treats. It rattled. Instantly the eyes appeared again. I picked up the box and shook it experimentally. The eyes moved around the side of the tank to the front, stopped and looked right at me.
When I said, ‘the eyes moved,’ that’s exactly what happened. The eyes. No body, only the eyes. And a loud throbbing purr.
Chapter Two
THE INVISIBLE CAT
I opened the box and shook a few treats onto the ledge in front of the fish tank. The eyes lowered in their direction and I heard a faint, ‘sniff, sniff, sniff.’ After a brief pause the biscuits disappeared, one by one. When they’d gone, the eyes floated upwards and turned back on me. The purring grew louder.
Very cautiously I stretched out my hand. The eyes retreated sharply. I put a couple of treats on my palm and held it out. The eyes approached and hovered above my hand.
Rasp, rasp. It was all I could do to stop myself from shrieking. A rough tongue – a rough, invisible tongue – had licked up the food and carefully lapped up the fragments.
I held out more treats and while the eyes and tongue were busy I felt the space around them. I touched fur. I stroked it and felt a furry head, a furry back, a long furry tail, a happily vibrating throat. The only problem was, I couldn’t see any of them. I was stroking an invisible cat.
It began to sniff at my jacket sleeve and the purr got louder. I think it could smell Cesare – he’d chewed my cuff that morning.
A hand gripped my shoulder and pulled me away. It was the pet shop owner still holding the jingly collar. He must’ve been trying to find the invisible cat.
‘What are you up to?’ he said.
I shook off his hand. I wasn’t going to have a conversation about an invisible cat. Invisibility was impossible and if I was wrong about what he was searching for I’d look a complete fool.
‘I was watching the fighting fish while you were busy. What did you think I was doing?’
‘Messing around in my shop. Get out.’
That was harsh. If I hadn’t been worried about my family working in Franklin’s I’d have argued my corner. Instead I just shrugged and left.
Outside, I turned to look back at Franklin’s Emporium. It rose high above me; seven storeys of white stone with blue granite carved into archways above the doors and windows. Blue and white paintwork sparkled in the sun, though this didn’t hide the fact it was cracked and peeling. I still loved Franklin’s, inside and out, for looking like something out of a fantasy novel – all that marble, alabaster and gilt – all those soaring columns and ethereal statues. The only reason I didn’t love it as much as I used to was because I knew that if you weren’t very careful weird things happened to you inside. Like meeting invisible cats – which were impossible.
I thought about the cat as I walked home and hardly noticed passing the pier and the harbour. As I turned onto a narrow cobbled street leading up to my house, a sudden furious barking made me jump.
‘Stupid dog,’ I muttered at the springer spaniel bouncing up and down behind a garden wall like a demented jack-in-a-box. Its brown and white head kept appearing, mouth open, pink tongue flapping – boing, boing, boing. Its wide eyes, rolling like marbles, focussed on the top of the wall. There was nothing there. It had got itself all worked up over nothing.
I ran the rest of the way home and burst through the door, stomach rumbling.
I checked my watch. Lunchtime already?
There was nobody about. Mum and Ben were still at Franklin’s, Dad was in his workshop at the bottom of the garden and Sam was in the studio on the top floor.
We had two kitchens at home. One was for Mum’s business; that got regularly inspected to make sure she was following all the hygiene and safety rules. Only Mum went in there. It was even out of bounds to Cesare. I went into the family kitchen, made two mugs of tea and a pile of tuna and mayo sandwiches. I loaded them on a tray, added a couple of fat wedges from one of Mum’s buttercream cakes and went down the garden to Dad’s workshop.
It was a big garden – really big – with a huge pond and a hedge maze. There was also a small wood with a kitchen garden behind it. Dad’s workshop was there, built over the site of an old shed that burned down last year. I got the blame even though it was my horrible cousin, Maisie, who did it. We didn’t talk about it.
I liked the big workshop. It smelled of varnish and paint, and motes of golden sawdust floated in the light streaming from the windows in the roof. Dad did his woodturning and carpentry in there. He’d stopped for a while to fit out Mum’s unit, now he was busy building up stock. He made bowls and goblets, little stools and coffee tables, and polished up driftwood to sell in his unit at Franklin’s.
‘Hi Dad.’ I put the tray of tea and sandwiches on a bench and perched on it.
Dad switched off his lathe and wiped his enormous hands down his leather apron. ‘I was getting a bit peckish. Thanks, Alex.’
We munched in silence for a bit then I asked him, sort of, about the invisible cat.
‘I was thinking about invisibility. . .’
‘As you do.’
I ignored him. The whole family thought my passion for fantasy was hilarious. ‘Is there any reason why eyes can’t be invisible if the rest of you is?’
‘That’s a sensible question,’ Dad said.
‘Is it?’ It wasn’t often I was called sensible. Usually it was ‘daydreamer’ or, at school, ‘easily distracted’.
Dad nodded. ‘In order to see, light has to bounce off the retinas at the back of the eyes. If the retinas were invisible then light would pass through them and you wouldn’t be able to see.’
That was interesting.
‘What’s brought this on?’ Dad asked.
I shrugged. ‘It’s a new fantasy book I was reading, about being invisible. It got me thinking.’
‘That can’t be bad,’ Dad said. He put his empty mug on the tray. ‘Back to work – things to do.’
I could take a hint. I took the tray back to the kitchen. I decided to stock up on more cake and then go to the library on the other side of town and look up invisibility. It was a long walk. I needed energy reserves.
‘No!’ I stared in shock. The cake lay smashed on the floor. All the buttercream had been licked off and jammy red paw prints led to the hallway.
‘Cesare!’ I yelled.
He was nowhere to be seen. I went to look for him.
Chapter Three
MIRROR, MIRROR
I searched every room on the three floors of the house and didn’t find Cesare. That meant I had to try the boys’ rooms. They each had a bedroom in the attic, one at either end, and the space in between was their studio. They still grumbled about it being way too small, and way too far from London, but they couldn’t afford to live there.
I knocked on the door. ‘Can I come in?’
‘OK,’ Sam’s voice called. ‘You can tell me what you think.’
&n
bsp; That was a surprise. Usually Ben and Sam liked to keep their work private till it was ready to show. I opened the door, feeling honoured, and stared at the structure rearing halfway up to the ceiling. It was hung with mirrors turning at different speeds, capturing the light and splintering reflections into hundreds of pieces. Sam was up a stepladder, adjusting the mirrors.
It was pretty spectacular even though it was only a small-scale version of the proper thing going up in Franklin’s. I usually didn’t encourage the boys – they were big-headed enough already – but this time I couldn’t help saying, ‘Wow!’
Sam jumped down, his daft grin appearing in flashes of mirror as he dropped to the floor.
‘You like?’
‘Yes. What’s it called?’
‘The Perception of Imperceptible Things,’ Sam said, adjusting one of the mirrors.
‘I have no idea what that means. I still like it. Is the real installation exactly like this?’
Sam’s loopy grin got wider. The boys’ art might be weird but their enthusiasm always made you look twice.
‘The artwork proper’s a lot bigger and more spectacular. We’ve had a delay with the scaffolding.’ Sam shook his head in exasperation. ‘Ben’s sorting it now. As soon as it’s done we’re going to add more to the framework – extra mirrors, lights and. . . other things.’
I knew better than to ask what they were. Sometimes the ‘other things’ scared even me. They did an installation on war once that gave me nightmares for a week.
‘What sort of lights?’ I asked.
‘Fairy lights.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Course I am. We’re using neon. And holograms.’
Sam’s grin faded and his eyes sort of unfocussed, which meant he was seeing stuff in his mind’s eye.
He blinked and re-focussed. ‘Were you being nosey or did you want something?’
‘Charming. I’m looking for Cesare,’ I said. ‘He knocked one of Mum’s cakes on the floor and ate all the buttercream. He’ll probably be sick.’