The Storm Tower Thief

by Anne Cameron

  It took seven awkward trips to and from the Octagon to deposit the entire collection of storm bellows with Catcher Merriweather, who insisted on checking each one over for damage before allowing them to leave.

  “Come on!” Dougal urged, taking the lead as they made their way back through the department for the last time. “If we hurry up, there might still be some dessert left . . . unless the Vellums have eaten everything!”

  Angus could hear his own stomach rumbling loudly. Indigo had shared a small packet of mint humbugs with them earlier, but the effects had worn off ages ago. He was just wondering if he’d be able to fit a double helping of dessert into one bowl when something caught his eye. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned back to gawp at one of the doors. It looked exactly like every other door in the supplies department, with a black handle and rusty hinges. They’d already walked past it fourteen times in the last hour without giving it a second glance. But now . . . it shone out at him like a wondrous beacon of hope.

  “What is it?” Indigo asked, dragging Dougal back with her to see why Angus had stopped.

  Angus pointed to the sign on the door, excitement rising inside him. “Lightnarium supplies! Do you remember when Catcher Sparks stopped here on the way to the Antarctic center on our first day back?”

  “Yeah, so?” Dougal shrugged, looking mystified. “What’s so interesting about the Lightnarium supplies room all of a sudden?”

  But Indigo understood Angus instantly. “Oh!” she gasped, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “You mean the Lightnarium, lightning—”

  “The lightning heart!” Dougal gulped, catching up quickly.

  “Do you really think it could be in that room?” Indigo asked.

  Angus nodded, his imagination already running away with him. “It could be a valuable piece of equipment used in the Lightnarium or something really old and rare they discovered in the lightning vaults! It could be sitting on the other side of that door right now, just waiting for us to grab it.”

  It was the first real idea any of them had had in weeks. Angus was desperate to try anything, especially as there was no way they could sneak into the actual Lightnarium itself to poke around.

  “Well, don’t just stand there staring at it,” Dougal urged. “Try the door; see if it’s locked.”

  Indigo checked up and down the corridor, but the rest of the department was deserted.

  Angus knocked quietly first. Then he slowly opened the door. Inside, the room was dark and empty.

  Angus flicked on a light fissure overhead as Indigo closed the door behind them. The supplies had been arranged in a very orderly fashion on neatly stacked shelves. Labeled drawers told them exactly what each contained. There was a whole rack of lightning deflector suits and some intriguing wooden boxes that reminded Angus of treasure chests. They looked extremely promising.

  “Hey, those are silver lightning moths!” Dougal said, hurrying over to an interesting box on the shelf closest to them.

  Angus frowned. “What are lightning moths?”

  “They get sent up into live thunderstorms,” Dougal explained. “They’re used to attract lightning strikes on purpose, to help calculate the strength of the storm. They use them all the time in the Lightnarium. They’re self-winding, they can see in the dark, and they’re attracted to movement. Look.”

  Dougal bent down and picked up a solitary moth that had fallen out of the box and had obviously been trampled on. Its six razor-sharp wings looked crumpled and bent. Its body had been squashed and was leaking some kind of oily fluid. Angus, however, was more concerned by the large red warning label that he’d just spotted on the side of the box. It read DANGER! BOX SHOULD BE OPENED ONLY UNDER STRICTLY CONTROLLED CIRCUMSTANCES BY A TRAINED MOTH HANDLER.

  “Er . . . I’d watch out if I were you. Those things sound dangerous,” Angus warned.

  “Exactly.” Dougal dangled the moth by one of its wings. “And if this is the kind of thing they’ve got stored in here, then we’re bound to find the lightning heart!”

  “Let’s split up and look around,” Indigo said, already rolling up her sleeves. “Search for anything heart shaped or—”

  “—seriously dangerous looking?” Dougal finished. He darted to the far end of the room to inspect a large collection of cardboard boxes that had been stacked into a precarious-looking tower.

  Angus headed straight for the treasure chests, his heart suddenly thumping loudly against his rib cage. If they somehow found the lightning heart, and he could figure out how to use it, he could stop the ice diamond storms before Dankhart could do any more damage.

  He took a deep breath and lifted the lid on the first chest. It was completely empty, except for a dried-up apple core. The second chest was stuffed full of boring paperwork. The next two were locked tight, with no sign of the keys anywhere. By the time he reached the last one, he was beginning to lose hope. He raised the lid, peering inside . . . and swiftly slammed it shut again.

  “Have you found something already?” Indigo asked, staring at him from between two shelves.

  Angus shook his head. “Giant earwigs!” he croaked, and moved away from the chests without looking back.

  He headed next for a display cabinet that held an impressive collection of antique fulgurites and other curious objects, none of which looked as if they could be the lightning heart. There were mountains of spare parts for the lightning generators and some shockproof clipboards with rubber-coated pens. There were long, flat drawers full of complicated maps. And short, fat boxes stuffed with faded photographs.

  Most of the pictures had been taken long ago, inside the Lightnarium, and displayed the results of various lightning experiments. A few, however, captured the lightning catchers, past and present, who had worked in the dangerous department.

  One photo in particular caught Angus’s eye. It was dark and blurry, but it showed a much younger Valentine Vellum shaking hands with another lightning catcher. His name, according to the writing underneath, which was partially obscured by a smudged thumbprint, was Adrik Swarfe.

  “Hey, come and have a look at this,” he called quietly. Indigo appeared instantly, brushing cobwebs out of her hair; Dougal followed close behind. “Swarfe and Vellum look pretty chummy, don’t you think?” he said, handing the picture to Indigo first.

  Indigo stared at it for a few seconds, then thrust it at Dougal, suddenly turning pale.

  “What’s up with you?” Dougal asked.

  “Nothing.” Indigo swallowed hard, looking shaken. “It’s just . . . What if Swarfe and Vellum never stopped being friends?”

  Dougal stared at the fuzzy photo. “You think Vellum’s been helping Dankhart and his monsoon mongrels all this time?”

  Indigo looked uncertain. But Angus decided she might have a point. He folded the photo carefully and stuffed it into his pocket, deciding to have a closer look at it later. “Have you two found anything yet?”

  “Only this . . .” Dougal took an ornate teacup from one of his pockets. It was decorated with lightning bolts and was sealed with a lid. “I’ve been trying to open it just to see if there’s anything interesting— There! Got it!”

  Loud rumbles of slightly tinny-sounding thunder suddenly echoed all around them, rattling the glass in the cabinets.

  “Shut that thing up!” Angus hissed as the storm grew louder still. “We’ll have the whole supplies department in here, wondering what’s going on.”

  “I’m trying, I’m trying!” Dougal struggled, desperate to force the lid back onto the cup.

  But Angus was no longer listening. Another even more frightening sound had caught his attention. Footsteps were approaching down the corridor outside.

  “Quick, someone’s coming!” he whispered, flicking the light fissure off hurriedly. “Get the lid back on that teacup, now!”

  “I can’t— Oh, drat!” The cup suddenly slipped between Dougal’s fingers and smashed on the floor with one final thunderclap.

  “Just leave it!” Indigo h
issed. “There’s no time to clear up the mess!”

  Dougal fled, squeezing himself in among the lightning deflector suits, his feet poking out the bottom. Indigo disappeared into the dark. Angus crouched down behind a stack of boxes, listening with dread as the voices grew louder. He felt a sudden wave of panic as he realized whom one of the voices belonged to.

  “—really can’t be expected to run your supplies department for you, Merriweather. This is extremely inconvenient.”

  Valentine Vellum’s familiar voice drifted through the closed door.

  “When I placed an order with you for twelve pairs of tinted safety goggles, I expected it to be ready on the day I specified.”

  Angus peered around the boxes and watched the tiny gap under the door in horror . . . as two sets of feet stopped right outside it.

  “Are you trying to tell me that if I walked into this supply room right now, I wouldn’t be able to find a single pair?”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to explain to you, Valentine,” the other voice said with a weary sigh. “A party of lightning catchers from Norway totally wiped us out of goggles before they left. Took the whole lot without asking and left me with nothing but a thank-you note and a box of pickled herring. It’ll take weeks for a new supply to be delivered. But come in and see for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

  The light fissure flickered on suddenly, and the two men entered the room. Angus scuttled farther back into the shadows, trying not to breathe too loudly. Dougal’s feet, which were clearly visible beneath the clothes rack, twitched with a spasm of fear.

  “Oh, goodness!” Catcher Merriweather stopped suddenly as he crunched through the remains of the shattered teacup.

  “What is it now, Merriweather?” Valentine Vellum asked impatiently.

  “Someone’s dropped a storm in a teacup. Rogwood placed the order—a novelty gift to be handed out at this year’s graduation and prize giving. But we can’t get the wretched things to shut up once they’ve been opened. Someone must have been rummaging about in here without permission.”

  Angus shrank behind the boxes. If Vellum realized something was wrong and came to investigate, not even Jeremius could save them.

  “I’ve warned everyone to keep the door to this supplies room locked at all times, but does anyone listen? Moths!” The man darted across the room and scooped up the box of silver lightning moths that Dougal had left on the floor. “It’s far too hazardous to leave these lying around; they must be safely stored on the correct shelves. I’ll be having words about this!”

  “Your storage problems do not concern me, Merriweather.” Vellum sounded irritated. “Either you have the safety goggles or—”

  “I have already told you once, Valentine,” the other lightning catcher snapped. “I have nothing but a box of pickled herring.”

  “Then you are wasting my time. I shall be informing Principal Dark-Angel about the shoddy way you run this supplies department.”

  “Now listen here—”

  Vellum turned on his heel and swept back toward the door. Merriweather followed, hurriedly dropping the box of moths. He flicked off the light fissure, closed the door as they left the room together, and locked it from the outside. The sound of their angry voices faded slowly until the corridor outside was silent once again.

  Angus sank back onto his heels, letting out a long, slow breath.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said as Indigo emerged from the gloom. “Before Vellum changes his mind and comes back again.”

  “But what about the lightning heart?”

  Angus stared around the supply room. Everything in it was dead, shriveled up, dried out, or made of cold, hard steel. And the lightning heart . . . He had a strong feeling that whatever it was, it had to be more alive somehow.

  “Forget it. It isn’t here.” And he knew it was true as soon as he said it. “Come on.”

  “Hey, wait for me!” Dougal whispered loudly. He fought his way out from his hiding place, his foot catching clumsily, and before Angus or Indigo could do anything to stop it . . .

  “Argh!”

  Dougal tripped and lurched across the room. He collided with a box of repair kits and sent the lightning moths flying.

  “Oh, no!” Dougal squeaked as dozens of silvery creatures rose into the air at once.

  The moths did not look friendly. They hovered with the buzz of an angry swarm, their mechanical wings flapping furiously.

  Angus backed away slowly. The moths followed, in one fluid motion.

  “Stand still!” Dougal warned, scrambling onto his feet again. “The moths are drawn toward movement, remember?”

  “Then how are we supposed to get out of here?”

  “I don’t know, but whatever you do, don’t make them angry.”

  Thwack!

  Indigo swatted one of the moths with a handy box lid, sending the rest of the swarm into a frenzy.

  “I said don’t make them angry!”

  But Indigo stood her ground bravely, taking another big swing and smashing several more moths with one blow. “RUN!” she yelled over her shoulder, already sprinting for the door.

  Angus didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed Dougal by the sleeve and dashed across the room. A spare, rusty key was hanging on a hook beside the door. He grabbed it.

  “Get down!” Indigo dropped like a stone beside him.

  The lightning moths had turned as one sleek, silver wing and were now diving at breakneck speed, their wings flashing ominously. Angus grabbed a bewildered-looking Dougal and pulled him to the ground as the creatures swooped low overhead, missing their ears by millimeters.

  He was back on his feet again in seconds, forcing the rusty key into the lock. It scraped and groaned in protest as he tried with all his might to turn it.

  “Nothing’s happening!”

  “Try giving it a wiggle!” Dougal said.

  Angus gripped the key with both hands and desperately twisted it backward and forward.

  “Quickly, they’re coming back!” Indigo shrieked. “DUCK!”

  The moths flashed past and crashed headlong into a tower of flimsy boxes. They tore at the cardboard with razor-sharp wings, leaving nothing behind but a pile of powdered dust.

  “That’s what’s going to happen to us if we don’t get out of here soon!” Angus hissed. He leaped up again, determined to get the door open.

  His fingers felt slippery with sweat as he waggled, jiggled, and wrenched the key. The moths were almost upon them again.

  “Hurry up!” Dougal urged.

  “I’m trying! Just give me five . . . more . . . seconds—”

  Click!

  The door flew open. Angus bundled Dougal through it first, not caring if they ran straight into Valentine Vellum, Principal Dark-Angel, and every other lightning catcher on the planet. Indigo flew past him into the corridor, hair streaming behind her. Angus stumbled after her, slamming the door shut, only just in time.

  Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

  The door rattled violently on its hinges as the moths hit it hard. And then there was silence.

  “That . . . was the worst idea . . . you’ve ever had!” Dougal panted as he slumped against the wall. “I’m never searching . . . another supply room . . . ever again! They’re way too dangerous!”

  Angus slept badly that night, plagued by nightmares about giant lightning moths that all looked exactly like Valentine Vellum. One of the moths, a large, ugly, bearded brute, kept hissing his name over and over again.

  “Angussss!” it whispered, jabbing him in the arm with one of its wings. “Wake up! I need to talk to you. Angussss!” The lightning moth pinched him hard. Angus woke up suddenly. The skin on his forearm was burning. Indigo was leaning over him, her face creased with worry.

  “I-Indigo?” He sat up, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes. “It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”

  “I need to tell you something. It’s urgent!” She glanced over h
er shoulder at Germ and Dougal, who were both soundly asleep. “We can talk in the Pigsty. Bring the message from your dad and that photo of Adrik Swarfe.”

  “What? What for?”

  But Indigo had already gone. Angus carefully took the note and the photo from under his pillow, pulled on his slippers, and tiptoed across the room, accidentally colliding with a chair as he stumbled about in the dark.

  “Ow!” He grabbed his foot and hopped the rest of the way into the Pigsty. “Can’t this wait until the morning?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, Angus, but I just couldn’t sleep. I had to talk to you.” She bit her lip. “It was after you found that picture in the supply room, the one with the thumbprint.”

  “The what?”

  Before Indigo could explain, however, Dougal came stumbling into the Pigsty, half asleep. “What’s going on? Why are you two sneaking about in the dark?”

  Indigo stared nervously from Angus to Dougal and back again. Then she took a deep breath.

  “I overheard my mum and dad talking at Christmas. They were worried because of what had happened in the lightning vaults with Uncle Scabious, and then Principal Dark-Angel sent them a letter.”

  “Yeah, we all got one of those,” Dougal said, rubbing his eyes, glancing sideways at Angus.

  “Then Mum told Dad about a diary she’d written before she fled the castle, and I—I took it.” She removed a small blue book from her bathrobe pocket and showed them the worn cover. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to know more about the Dankharts, and Mum won’t tell me anything.”

  “So that’s what you’ve been hiding in your bag all this time,” Angus said, putting two and two together.

  Indigo nodded, looking thoroughly wretched.

  But Angus understood, even in his sleep-deprived state. Indigo was both fascinated and appalled by her family connections. And she wanted to understand everything she could about the Dankharts, even if the truth was uncomfortable. After all, it was the Dankharts who shared her fascination with the weather. But she also hated the idea of anyone’s finding out, so she’d hidden the evidence in her bag.