by Lauren Child
Suddenly the searchlights swooshed across them and for a split second the players were caught in its glare. Then darkness, but there was a gasp from the crowd and then applause.
‘They won’t be clapping when you tumble to your death.’
What the crowd saw was Margo Bardem walking across the wire, her kidnapper invisible. She was spotlit now; the crowd gathered in awe to see what they thought was all choreographed, a wonderful finale to the film festival, all building up to the world premiere of the lost classic Feel the Fear, featuring Margo Bardem.
‘My, what a spectacle,’ said Brant Redfort. ‘I gotta hand it to them, they know how to put on a show.’
‘Who knew Margo Bardem had it in her – how old is she?’ said Sabina.
‘If only Ruby could see this,’ said Brant.
Ruby was doing exactly what Hitch had told her to – she was standing on the very edge of the hotel’s parapet and reaching a toe to the high wire. She sent a message through the steel:
tap, tap, tap.
She could feel the tension in the wire change, she knew he had registered her presence. He was invisible, but she could feel his fear. ‘Hello Claude,’ she shouted, ‘looking good.’
Another searchlight caught hold of a small figure standing on the very edge of the Circus Grande building.
‘Goodness, this is fabulous, how do you think they manage in this wind?’ Sabina was finding her dress hard to control. ‘Ruby told me to wear the brocade dress, but would I listen? No siree Bob.’
‘I know what you want,’ shouted Ruby, her voice carrying on the wind. ‘You want recognition for the Little Canary. I found the loyalty cards, and I happen to agree with you – she should be seen.’
He definitely heard that. She couldn’t see him, but she could see poor Margo Bardem, edging ever further out onto the thin cable. Claude was presumably in front of her, holding her hands waiting for the right moment to let her go.
‘George Katsel took everything from her, he broke her, he might just as well have pushed my mother from that wire himself,’ shouted Claude.
‘So why punish Margo for Katsel’s crime?’ shouted Ruby.
‘Because she took my mother’s place, stole what was rightfully hers, stole her from me – and made her disappear. No one even knows her name. She is invisible to this world.’
‘If you kill Margo then all anyone will ever remember is how the Little Canary’s son became a murderer. No glory in that little tale.’
Silence.
‘You know, you don’t strike me as the murderous type,’ shouted Ruby, ‘and trust me I’ve met some psychopaths in my time and what I know about those guys is they don’t go around catching people who are falling through floors – it was you who saved my life, wasn’t it Claude?’
‘You were in the way, a coincidence not a choice, just an accident of fate.’
‘There’s no such thing as coincidence,’ shouted Ruby. ‘You saved me because I can change your destiny.’
‘You?’ shouted Claude. ‘What can you do?’
‘I can make Celeste visible again.’
‘What are you? Supergirl?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. I know people, is all. I have a hotline to superwoman. She’s on the Film Festival committee. Say the word and your mother will be celebrated for all time. . . they’ll be commissioning sculptures of her. Trust me.’
‘How can I?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruby stepping both feet on to the steel cable. ‘But I’m trusting you, I’m standing on a high wire 300 feet in the air – you jump up and down and I fall.’
The wind was getting up – the storm was about to break. She needed to get him down from there. More importantly, she needed to get Margo Bardem down from there.
‘You have to let Margo go – just walk her back to the roof and I will keep my promise.’
If the stakes had not been so high, this exchange between girl and invisible man would have been comical, but the stakes were VERY high, could not have been higher – a steel wire was all that separated life from death.
‘Do I have your word?’
‘Girl scout’s honour,’ she shouted.
‘I think they lost the sound on this,’ said Brant. ‘I can’t hear what they are saying.’
‘The little one is very good,’ said Sabina. ‘Do you think she is a professional actress? She is very small, almost looks like a child.’
And as Claude turned, preparing to lead Margo back to safety, the most almighty crash resounded.
A huge gust of wind had caught the Pagoda’s fragile spire, knocking it from the roof and sending it scudding down the jade tile roof. It hit the carving that held the cable, sent a shock wave through it.
Then the people below heard a spine-chilling scream as Margo Bardem fell from the wire and into the night air.
Ruby cried out.
The crowd gasped as the woman flailed in the sky, and then they gasped again to see a figure all in black fly across the spotlight’s beam to snatch her from the dark. It all happened so quickly that no one could really quite understand what they had seen.
‘Was it just me,’ said Brant, ‘or did that guy look a lot like Hitch?’
‘I wish!’ said Sabina. ‘I’m telling you, Brant, if Hitch ever catches me when I fall off a roof, I’m giving him double pay.’
The force of the wind that had torn off the spire had flung Ruby backwards lifting her from the wire to the roof. She was lucky; always lucky. She got to her feet and peered over the parapet.
‘You see, Hitch,’ she said out loud, ‘I’m still not dead.’
‘Not dead – yet.’
Ruby spun around. She knew that voice.
‘Nine Lives?’
The figure laughed. ‘Who else?’ she said as she grabbed Ruby’s arms, wrenching them behind her back – click, click, she snapped her wrists into handcuffs.
‘Geez, not you again,’ whined Ruby. ‘How many lives you got?’
Chapter 53.
Finest Italian Leather
WHAT RUBY SAW WAS A WOMAN DRESSED TO KILL. She was clad in a black cat suit, long red hair loose and blowing across her face, skin of ivory and eyes of blue, in her hand something twinkled brightly.
Ruby remembered that laugh, that voice, the cold weight of that tiny diamond revolver. She remembered Nine Lives Capaldi very well indeed.
She also remembered, distinctly, her being dead.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Ruby.
And Nine Lives laughed and tossed back her beautiful red hair, and just for a second revealed the scar that ran across one eye and disfigured her elegant face. ‘Do I need an invitation? Is this a private rooftop showdown?’ she drawled in her slow Texan drawl.
‘What I mean is, why are you not dead?’
Nine Lives smiled. ‘Being dead is boring – you’ll find out for yourself soon enough.’
‘I’ll just take your word for it,’ said Ruby. ‘So what are you here for?’
‘Not for you, little girl, you can be sure of that, though I’m happy to kill you just for old time’s sake. But no, I’m here for the very thing that your Department of Defence and your little spy guys are so busy looking for.’
‘The invisibility suit. . .’ said Ruby.
‘The suit, the skin, bravo,’ drawled Capaldi. ‘The skin’s the thing, little girl. That amazing prototype stolen from under your own sophisticated high-security noses. My gosh, how secretive Spectrum are – they really should have kept you in the loop when the skin went missing from the Department of Defence. It mighta made your task a little easier had you known what you were looking for.’
‘How do you know they didn’t?’ countered Ruby.
‘A little bird told me,’ Nine Lives laughed.
‘So Claude stole it? But how?’ She needed to keep Nine Lives talking – she didn’t have a plan, she was just buying time. RULE 44: WHEN IN A TIGHT SPOT, BUY YOURSELF SOME TIME: ONE MINUTE COULD CHANGE YOUR FATE.
‘T
he security room is made of steel, without clearance the only way in is via an air vent so small that you would—’
‘Have to be a contortionist? That’s right, he’s quite the little circus act. He could get in through a crack in your door. Isn’t that right Claude?’ Nine Lives laughed again. ‘Then once he had the skin, he was able to get his hands on the main attraction.’
The main attraction? thought Ruby. What’s the main attraction?
Nine Lives turned and looked at the wire. ‘Hello, Birdboy!’ she called in a false-bright voice. ‘I’ve come for what’s mine!’
The wind was picking up again and the sound of its whistling only added to the theatre playing out on this twenty-nine storey stage. Whistling: the very soundtrack of fear.
Ruby heard footsteps on stone: Claude, stepping invisibly from the wire to the parapet. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him, just behind her.
‘There you are Birdboy, I smell you now.’ Capaldi was sniffing the air. ‘That skin may be invisible but you should have stood downwind; its odour is such a giveaway.’ She aimed the little diamond revolver.
She has quite a nose, thought Ruby, who couldn’t smell a thing.
‘Give me what I came for or you can make the skin your shroud,’ spat Nine Lives.
‘Let the girl walk,’ hissed Claude.
Nine Lives threw back her head and laughed her Texan laugh. ‘Claude, baby, I knew you were sentimental about the past and your dear dead mama, but are you really about to give up everything to save one raggedy little girl?’ She tutted. ‘Honestly, I am disappointed, you have lost focus, honey.’ Then she laughed some more.
This was an odd situation – here was Ruby, her fate in the hands of a murderer, and the person pleading for her life was a thief and a would-be assassin.
‘Let the girl go, Capaldi, or your treasures will be lost forever.’
‘I don’t think you are in the best position to make deals,’ Nine Lives snarled, dragging Ruby to the parapet. ‘So looks like you’ll be waving bye bye to your little friend here.’
‘You want this?’ shouted Claude. He ripped the invisibility skin from his body, and there he stood – the skywalker, a mere mortal dressed in black, the son of an acrobat. ‘And this?’ He produced, from his pocket, a small object that Ruby couldn’t quite make out.
‘You look so much taller when you’re invisible,’ said Nine Lives, and she shoved Ruby another step towards the edge. ‘Hand them to me! Or watch her fall.’
Claude did the only thing he could – he held out his hand – and as Nine Lives stepped towards him, so Claude looked into Ruby’s eyes, and shouted, ‘Catch.’
And as he tossed the invisible thing into the wind, so he threw something else – a slight shimmering as it flew – and Ruby heard a clink as it landed somewhere in the darkness. Nine Lives’ scream was of fury and frustration, both things flying from her grasp. She lunged at what she could not feel, desperately grabbing at nothingness, as the skin whirled away unseen.
In that split second while Capaldi clawed the air, Ruby Redfort lost no time, her wrists still cuffed behind her, she ran along the parapet, tic-tac’d off the stairwell housing onto some piping, then ran along it before somehow leaping onto the roof and ducking into the darkness behind an air-conditioning vent. From the safety of the shadows she scanned the rooftop, willing herself to lay eyes on the small shiny object Claude had thrown. She slipped her feet over her handcuffed wrists so now at least she held her arms in front of her, and then she began to caterpillar her way forward on her stomach.
‘Where are you, bubblegum girl?’
Lorelei? said Ruby to herself. Of course you’re Lorelei!
Nine Lives was not Nine Lives because Nine Lives was dead. This woman was Lorelei von Leyden – the woman of a thousand faces; the perfumer.
But what did it matter? This woman, whether Nine Lives Capaldi or Lorelei von Leyden, was an assassin and Ruby was not feeling fearless.
Just find whatever it is and get out of here.
She closed her eyes, took a breath and blinked them back open and then she saw it – a small thing like a clear plastic rectangle attached to a cutting-edge key of some kind. A small thing just like the thing she had seen in LB’s hand that day when she was debriefed at Spectrum. It was lying on the roof just a yard or so away.
Was this the ‘main attraction’ that Lorelei had talked about?
If Ruby could grab it then she could run, if she could run then maybe she could drop to a safer rooftop, let someone else tackle the undead. She reached out her hand, almost able to close her fingers round it. She felt she was nearly home free when she heard a familiar sound – a sound that sent cold fear shooting through her veins.
The tap tap tap of the finest Italian leather shoes.
Chapter 54.
Staring into the void
SHE DIDN’T WANT TO TURN HER HEAD, she didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t help herself, and when she did, when she stared into those cold black eyes, she gasped to see the void.
The Count raised a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh, Ms Redfort, let’s not get Ms von Leyden in another of her tempers. I’m only here for this.’
He stooped to pluck up the tag attached to the silver thing. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘all that fuss, all that hanging around waiting for that unreliable girl to bring it to me. . . but if you want a job done, well, then do it yourself, isn’t that what they say?’ He smiled. ‘Let’s catch up soon, Ms Redfort, don’t go dying until then.’ He turned and stepped over the edge of the building.
Ruby didn’t have time to wonder where he had gone, she didn’t have time to think what next, because what she heard was this.
‘Oh there you are – so it looks like it’s just you and me, bubblegum girl. And I’ve got nothing left to lose.’
‘Long time no see Lorelei,’ said Ruby. She backed up against the air-conditioning vent as Lorelei walked slowly and deliberately towards her.
‘Oh, bravo, so you actually figured something out. I thought you were never going to get there.’ Her Texan drawl was gone in a second. ‘Did you really think dear Valerie had returned from the dead?’
The storm was whirling in and the gale was battering the roof, noisily lifting and dropping anything that it found. But Ruby could feel something else, a strange vibration, more rhythmic than the wind.
‘Well, I have to hand it to you,’ said Ruby, ‘you are quite the mistress of disguise.’
‘And you the smart kid’s smart kid,’ said Lorelei. ‘I’m flattered, really I am.’
‘Oh don’t be,’ said Ruby, ‘I’m merely buying time.’ She glanced above her and saw them, like black beetles in the air.
‘Ah, time,’ said Lorelei. ‘Invisibly it slips through the fingers. . .’
‘Rather like Claude,’ said Ruby.
‘Rather like you,’ said Lorelei, and hauled Ruby to her feet.
The beetles were hovering, suspended by threads.
‘Come enjoy the view,’ said Lorelei von Leyden, shoving Ruby to the edge. ‘A cliché I know, but don’t the people look like ants?’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Ruby glancing up.
Now the beetles looked more like humans as they silently landed on the roof.
‘DROP YOUR WEAPON AND HIT THE DECK!’
Lorelei spun around to see a dozen or more armed Spectrum agents advancing on her.
You took your time, thought Ruby. She couldn’t see Hitch, but he’d obviously rallied the troops.
Lorelei turned her head anxiously, looking for an escape route where there was none, her eyes blazing and her fists clenched, but what could she do when faced with an army?
Well, she did the only thing she could – she got her revenge on the kid who had screwed it all up for her.
And Ruby
fell
through
the
sky.
Chapter 55.
Falling
RUBY’S HANDS WERE CUFFED, no ch
ance to grab, no chance to discover if it was possible to fly.
She fell fast.
Plummeting down through the cold air, the concrete sidewalk waiting to greet her.
She closed her eyes. Not invincible after all. All that Redfort luck used up.
Then the strangest thing – she felt a weird sensation sort of around her shoulder blades, like she was sprouting wings, which was a coincidence because she seemed to be flying. . . well, gliding, but the effect was the same since the sidewalk was not getting nearer and the people outside the Scarlet Pagoda were becoming more ant-like again.
As the wind carried her, Ruby thought about the jumpsuit – a gift from Hitch, a gift that as she had so correctly predicted had a lot more to it than at first met the eye. Boy is he some butler!
She drifted down from sky to sidewalk, almost without incident, except for the final fifteen feet when the wind ripped one of the wings off, and had it not been for the dumpster full of garbage bags Ruby would have no doubt broken another limb.
She climbed elegantly out from her landing place, not easy to do when exiting a trash can, then she jumped from the top of the dumpster and landed with a perfect parkour roll.
People were bustling by, but few offered her more than a glance. A school kid had fallen from the sky, but Twinfordites took things in their stride, shrugged and walked on.
It was probably a stunt, something to do with the film festival – ignore and go about your business, it was no big deal.
Chapter 56.
The night-mayor returns
THAT NIGHT THERE WAS A HUNT LED BY SPECTRUM to recover the invisibility skin, but given that it was impossible to see, it proved impossible to find. It was only when Ruby, unable to sleep, switched on the radio and caught a TTR five am news story about the theft of the mayor’s statue – which had seemingly gone missing from its Skylark Building plinth located just down the street from the Hotel Circus Grande – that she figured out what might have happened.
Not stolen, she thought. Just shrouded.
After all, the statue was heavy – compressed stone – and without a tow-truck, which no witnesses had seen, there was no way the mayor’s unfortunate likeness could have been carted out of there.