by Garth Nix
Almost, but not quite.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Pride of Cats and Humans
Jaide was woken two hours later by the most awful noise she had ever heard.
It sounded like a choir of ghouls wailing right outside her bedroom window, holding long, wavering notes in tortured harmonies, then sliding up and down the scales in something like unison. It was chilling and horrible and utterly alien. She didn’t know what was making such a sound, but she knew it couldn’t possibly be coming from a human throat.
‘Jack!’
The moon was up, and she could just make him out, unconscious with a book lying limp over his face.
‘Jack, wake up!’
He snorted and jerked upright. The book fell to the floor with a thud.
‘Where? Who?’
‘Shhhh!’
‘Yow. Are you making that terrible noise?’
‘Of course not. But I’m glad you can hear it too. I thought I was dreaming!’
‘I wish you were. What on earth is making it?’
‘What do you think? It must be the monster!’
A stab of ice went through Jack’s stomach. It was one thing to speculate about a hideous figure from Portland’s folklore, quite another to have it rampaging about the house.
‘It can’t get in, right?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. But Jack knew the look on her face really meant I hope not.
‘But we can’t just sit here,’ Jaide continued. ‘This might be our one and only chance to find out what it is – and when we know that, hopefully we can convince Grandma to do something about it.’
That was true. Nerving himself to see something horrible beyond belief, Jack knelt on his bed and peered out of the window.
The front garden was empty.
‘See anything?’ Jaide asked.
‘No. We’ll have to go up on the widow’s walk.’
‘All right.’
The hideous wailing got even louder and more penetrating. Jaide wanted nothing more than to dive under the rug and cover her ears, but instead she forced herself to swing her legs out of bed and hunt across the shadowy floor for her father’s old dressing gown. She tied it firmly round her waist and slipped on a pair of woolly slippers. When she was ready, Jack was waiting for her by the door with trainers on and an anorak pulled untidily over his head.
The door opened without a sound, and they slipped out into the hallway. Tiptoeing across the creaky floor, they crossed the stairwell, but before they could begin to ascend, Jack tapped Jaide’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Wait a sec.’
Jaide heard him move off, but couldn’t see him. At night he was almost invisible to her more ordinary eyes. Something squeaked to her left, and she saw their mother’s door inch open for a second, then click closed again.
A second later, Jack whispered, ‘Mum’s asleep,’ into her ear, and Jaide stifled a soft scream. ‘How is that even possible?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, barely hearing the words over the hammering of her heart. ‘But let’s go before she does wake up.’
They hurried up the stairs as quickly as they dared. The empty eye sockets of the masks on the next floor watched them blankly as they reached that level. For the first time, Jaide wondered why anyone would make masks of real people, not owls or devils or the like. Perhaps, she thought, they were based on real people. That would explain why none was exactly the same . . .
‘Grandma’s not here,’ Jack said, ‘and she’s not in the Blue Room.’
Again Jaide started with fright. She hadn’t even noticed him leave to check out the Blue Room, or come back. ‘Where could she be?’
‘I don’t know. Up on the roof already, perhaps?’
Jack took the lead, guiding Jaide along the narrowing staircase to the very top of the house. The wailing was muffled, but still piercing through the closed door ahead of them. Jack could feel it growing, building up to some incomprehensible crescendo. Whatever was making it was getting ready for something big.
His sure fingers opened the latch. Jack stepped out into the cool night air. There was no sign of Grandma X on the widow’s walk. They were alone.
Jaide rushed to the rail and looked down.
‘I can’t see anything big,’ she said. ‘Not as big as an elephant anyway. Can you?’
Jack joined her and searched the shadows for signs of anything – human, animal or Evil.
‘I can’t see a monster,’ he said, frowning. ‘Uh . . .’
‘What?’ asked Jaide urgently.
‘All I see are a bunch of cats.’
‘Cats!?’
Jaide strained her eyes until she could just make out a dozen or so feline forms prowling back and forth across the back garden. ‘Oh, cats! That’s what the noise is. I’ve never heard so many yowling all at once though.’
A sudden thought struck her.
‘They’re not . . . they’re not part of The Evil?’
‘They don’t have white eyes,’ said Jack. ‘Just normal cats, I think.’
Jaide felt a mixture of relief and embarrassment at waking Jack for no reason. Nothing was attacking the house.
‘Come on,’ she said, tugging him away from the rail. ‘Let’s get back to bed.’
‘Wait,’ he said, pointing. ‘I think that’s Kleo down there, with Ari. And it looks like a fight is about to start.’
Jaide strained again. There was a ginger blob in the centre of the lawn that could indeed be Ari, and a grey blob that could be Kleo. But it could equally be a cat-sized rock, for all she could tell.
Jack suffered from no such ambiguity. He could see the animals below with perfect clarity. The other cats were a mixture of tortoiseshells and Siamese, with one perfectly white fluffball standing out like a patch of snow among them. The white one and Kleo were the ones making most of the noise, with Ari and the others providing dissonant back-up vocals.
‘I don’t recognise any of the others,’ he said, watching how Ari and Kleo stood firm while the rest slowly circled them. ‘But it’s twelve to two, with Ari and Kleo against everyone else.’
The wailing reached an entirely new pitch. Now Kleo and the white cat stood nose to nose, their backs arched and all their hair standing on end. Ari spat at a fat tortoiseshell that had dared come too close, and it backed away with tail upright and wide. Two more joined it, and they prowled around Ari, yowling menacingly. Jack could sense that the fight was about start any second.
‘Jaide, they’re outnumbered, and Grandma’s not here – we have to help them!’
Jaide couldn’t tell what, exactly, was going on, but the sound was so piercing now it felt like the night was going to split in two. If Jack said that Kleo and Ari needed their help, she was ready to believe him.
‘How?’ she asked. ‘I mean . . . twelve enemy cats . . . that’s a lot.’
‘We’ll have to use our Gifts,’ said Jack.
‘Let’s do what we did before,’ she said. ‘I’ll create a tornado and you can kill the light. That’s bound to stop the fight.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘Are you sure we can control it?’
‘Pretty sure, unless . . . have you got anything belonging to Dad on you?’
‘No,’ Jack said, ‘but you have.’
Jaide had forgotten the dressing gown. ‘Thank goodness you reminded me. Anything could have happened.’
She tugged off the dressing gown and dropped it and was about to lean back over the railing when Jack pulled her back.
‘We’d better get closer,’ Jack said. ‘Your aim’s not the best, particularly when you can’t see.’
‘OK. But come on! I don’t want Kleo and Ari to get hurt.’
They ran down the stairs, slowing only to tread quietly as they went past their mother’s room. She slumbered on, utterly oblivious to the drama unfolding around her.
Grandma X never locked her front door, as far as the twins had ever noticed. They rushed outside and ran round the house, too w
orried about their feline friends to feel the cold.
The fighting chorus came to a screeching climax just as they rounded the corner. What had been a tense stand-off suddenly became an all-out brawl.
‘Stop!’ shouted Jaide as Ari and Kleo vanished under an avalanche of whipping tails, slashing claws and sharp teeth. ‘Leave them alone – or we’ll make you!’
‘No, troubletwisters, don’t!’ yowled Ari. ‘We can handle it!’
‘Yeah, it really looks like it,’ muttered Jaide, clenching her fists tight. What she needed to do was very clear in her mind. Already the still night air was circling breezily around her. She was certain she could do this. ‘Jack?’
Jack was already working on his own side of the plan. His Gift stirred at his command, and he felt himself ease smoothly into the darkness. It was like putting on a cloak, one he could flip and twirl at will. He raised one hand and a shadow fell across the moon. The stars remained, and so did the street light at the end of the lane. Cat’s eyes were as good as his, maybe better, so he reached out another hand and snuffed out that light too.
The cats didn’t need light to fight. They could smell each other and hear each other hissing and spitting. Jaide remembered where the two huddles were, and drawing in a deep breath she exhaled two skinny whirlwinds that shot straight into the cats, sending half of them twisting and turning through the air before depositing them at random across the garden. The cats immediately tried to get back to the fight, but Jack was ready for that.
‘To your left!’ he called, and Jaide swept them aside again.
The attacking cats howled and bared their teeth, knowing it was the twins behind this strange new development. Two abandoned the fight and rushed at them, sharp claws drawn, ready to scratch their legs. With Jack’s help, Jaide knocked them aside, but other cats instantly followed.
The whirlwinds grew stronger and threatened to get out of control, the cats ducking between the twisted gusts as Jaide flailed them around.
Something ran up Jack’s back and sank its teeth into his ear. He flailed wildly about his head, but couldn’t shake his attacker. His grip on his Gift was slipping. The whole area was flickering between light and dark, as though someone was playing with a light switch.
‘Stop this now, Jack,’ said the cat into his ear, muffled but clear. ‘It’s me – Ari. Listen to me!’
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Just get off me – let me concentrate – I can do this!’
The teeth sank deeper, drawing blood that trickled down his neck.
‘No, Jack! Jaide! This is wrong – you must stop!’
The light returned. With it, Jaide was able to get control of her two twisters, calling them back and diminishing their size. Cats leaped and jumped to get out of the way, running back to reform into a line behind the white cat, who was clearly their leader.
Kleo and the white cat faced off against one another, backs arched and fur standing upright as stiff as a brush. Kleo’s snarling seemed especially horrible coming from a cat that Jaide knew could talk like a human.
The white cat feinted to its left and lunged from the right. Jaide reacted without thinking, sending the nearest twister driving straight at it. The white cat easily dodged aside. It looked at Jaide, spat on the ground, and stalked away into the night, with its followers close behind.
With shaking hands, Jaide calmed the twisters, slowing their spinning down until they fell apart and became small drifts of unsteady air that soon dissipated.
Only then did she look at Kleo, who came towards her like an angry mother cat finally locating a lost kitten, her eyes narrowed and tail whipping furiously from side to side. The same hissing noise she had made at the white cat was coming from her throat. She looked like she was going to pounce on Jaide and scratch her eyes out.
‘Kleo,’ Jaide stammered, ‘wait –’
‘Nobody asked you to come,’ Kleo spat. ‘This is cat business! My business! Stay out of it!’
With that, she ran off, leaving Jaide staring after her, shocked and hurt.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Jack.
Ari released his ear, jumped from his shoulder, and stood between the twins with his legs spread wide and firm. He had lost some hair, but he didn’t look bothered. Not by that, anyway.
‘I tried to warn you.’ Ari’s voice was missing all of its usual rough friendliness. ‘But you never listen to me. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’
‘We’ve helped,’ said Jaide, feeling tears pricking in her eyes. Just moments ago she had been feeling proud of the way she and Jack had used their Gifts to stop the fight. ‘Haven’t we?’
‘No, you haven’t!’ Ari shouted. ‘You’ve made Kleo look as if she needs human help to fight her battles. So now she’s going to have to fight them all over again. And it’ll be even harder next time because she’ll have lost that much more respect in the pride.’
‘Like a pride of lions?’ said Jack.
Ari turned to him. ‘The proper name for a group of cats is a kindle,’ he said. ‘An old word that has been taken over by others in more recent times. But Kleo only ever calls us her pride. Does that help you understand what this means to her?’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Jaide, feeling awful. ‘I really didn’t.’
‘How could we?’ said Jack. ‘All we wanted to do was –’
‘I know, I know,’ said Ari. He sat on his haunches and licked a gash on the back of his left front paw. ‘You meant well. Kleo will understand that eventually. If she’d only told you, like I wanted her to . . .’
He broke off, as though his tongue had suddenly frozen solid.
‘Told us what?’ asked Jaide.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Don’t make us go through this again, Ari,’ said Jack.
Ari grimaced.
‘Does this have something to do with the monster?’ asked Jaide, quick to pounce on the possibility.
‘The . . . er . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Ari said shiftily. ‘Like Kleo told you, this is cat business. Some of our best cats have been poisoned in unusual circumstances, and that has made Kleo vulnerable to a power grab from outside the town. That’s where those other cats came from. They’re not locals. No one here would be so disloyal . . . unless there was no alternative.’
‘How have the cats been poisoned?’ asked Jaide, keen to move on from their mistake.
‘Through the bodies of dead rats scattered across the town. That’s how it’s getting into us. It’s powerful stuff, and it doesn’t smell bad, not when the rats are only recently dead. One taste is all it takes. That’s why Kleo’s so worried. She’s our protector, our queen; it’s her job to keep us safe. She’s been trying to find out who . . . or what . . . is behind the poisoned rats, but she hasn’t had any luck so far.’
‘That’s where you were this afternoon, when we were looking for you,’ said Jack with sudden understanding. ‘You should have said something. We might have been able to help! Remember those dead rats we saw by the old sawmill? They looked really weird. I bet they were put there for some poor cat to eat.’
‘If they looked weird, they were old,’ said Ari. ‘The trouble is the fresh ones. What cat can resist just a little taste of a dying rat that smells perfectly fine?’
‘If they were old rats, maybe they were like a test, done in secret in the old sawmill,’ Jaide theorised. ‘I bet he’s behind it – that guy, Mr McAndrew, working for The Evil . . .’
Even Jack thought she might be stretching a bit with that one. ‘Why would The Evil care about cats?’
‘Because it knows Kleo is one of Grandma’s Companions of course,’ she said. ‘Anything that weakens her will weaken the Wardens.’
‘Oh yeah, that makes sense.’
‘But Grandma won’t listen to us,’ Jaide said to Ari. ‘Will you talk to her for us?’
‘We’re supposed to listen to her, not the other way round.’ Ari got up and paced out a small circle on the back garden. �
��I don’t see how it could be The Evil. It was repelled when you fixed the East Ward and the combined protection of all four wards fell back over Portland. It was like a door slamming shut, and now nothing of The Evil can get in. You’ve got no reason to worry on that score.’
‘Isn’t there any way it could get past the wards?’ Jaide asked, frustrated that her theory kept crashing against such a fundamental roadblock.
‘Not a chance, unless the wards are damaged again, which they haven’t been. I think you should look for a more everyday explanation. Humans are mad enough on their own, believe me. They don’t need The Evil to cause trouble for cats.’
Jack looked around the back garden, at the tufts of multicoloured fur and scratched earth. Now that the action was over, he was beginning to feel cold.
‘What about Kleo?’ he asked. ‘Will she forgive us?’
‘Give her time. Once the poisonings stop, I expect . . . I hope . . . matters will return to normal. But if I were you, I’d stay out of the reach of Kleo’s claws for a while.’
Jaide still heard Kleo’s voice, cutting through her confidence like a knife. Nobody asked you to come. This is cat business! My business! Stay out of it!
Ari came over and headbutted her on the leg. ‘When Kleo’s herself again, she’ll know that you meant well. For now you’d better go inside and get back into bed.’
‘All right.’
Jaide turned away, hugging herself, and walked briskly round the side of the house.
‘Good night, Ari,’ said Jack.
‘Good night, Jack. And remember: that was bravely done, even if it was the wrong thing to do.’
‘Thanks, I think.’
Jack hoped Jaide had overheard. He could tell that Kleo’s words had stung her. Hurrying to catch up, he found her not at the front door, as he had expected, but listening at the blue door that only the two of them and Grandma X could see. It looked black under the moonlight, and the sign hanging above it was barely legible:
ANTIQUES AND CHOICE ARTICLES FOR THE DISCERNING
The sign had been there the day they arrived in Portland, and had reappeared when the threat of The Evil had passed. They had yet, however, to see a single customer pass through the door and into the basement beyond. If Grandma X was the only Warden in Portland, it was hard to imagine the shop ever having any customers.