by Garth Nix
This time it was Jaide who glimpsed the long, feline figure of Custer prowling through the estate’s bushes and trees. The Warden didn’t acknowledge her, and neither did the smaller feline shape following at his heels. Ari kept up with Custer only by running at full pelt. Even as Jaide watched, he fell back into a winded lope and wiped his face with a paw, giving up the chase.
‘All finished?’ asked Thomas Solomon. Jaide turned. The security buggy had been the first to arrive.
‘Far from it, I’m afraid,’ said Rodeo Dave. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow first thing.’
‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’
Rodeo Dave didn’t smile. ‘It appears not.’
‘Guess I’d better do my rounds,’ Thomas Solomon said self-importantly. ‘Can’t stand around talking here all day.’
The golf buggy whizzed off and Jaide suppressed a smile, imagining what would happen if he bumped into Custer.
Susan’s car swept to a halt in front of them.
‘Right on time,’ she said as they clambered inside. ‘How was your afternoon?’
‘Very educational, I think,’ said Rodeo Dave. ‘The children learned that a castle’s solar has nothing to do with a solarium, and that being a second-hand bookseller is more about dust and cobwebs than actual books.’
Jack got in last. An orange shape slipped in with him, almost getting tangled in his feet along the way. He bent down and skritched the fur between Ari’s ears to cover him whispering, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been patrolling with Custer,’ the cat said. ‘He’s been restless all day, like he’s sensing something suspicious. I thought he could use my help.’
‘Your help?’
‘On Kleo’s orders.’ The cat’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Nothing. I’m sure Kleo knows what she’s doing.’
Tara reached down and pulled Ari up into her lap.
‘Oh, hello there,’ she said. ‘You look hungry. I wish I had something to give you.’
‘I like this girl,’ said Ari, though all Tara heard was a purr. ‘She should come round more often. Tell her to pack lunch next time.’
‘He’s always hungry,’ said Jaide, only half concentrating on the conversation. Susan was accelerating back along the drive. Soon the castle would vanish behind them. They had to find a way back to complete the search.
‘Rodeo Dave is coming back tomorrow, Mum,’ she said. ‘The library is really enormous. He could be there for weeks and weeks.’
‘Hmm? Oh, not quite that long,’ said Rodeo Dave. He seemed distracted, as if his mind was elsewhere.
‘It doesn’t seem fair that Dave should have to do it all alone,’ said Jack, following Jaide’s lead. ‘He’s got his bookshop to run. What’s going to happen if he’s not there?’
‘I thought Rennie was helping out,’ said Susan.
‘That’s true—’ Rodeo Dave started to say.
‘Yes, but it’s not the same,’ said Jaide. ‘Can we help, Mum? It would only take a couple of days. And it’s not as if we do anything interesting at school, anyway. We’ll learn many more interesting things in a castle than Mr Carver’s classroom.’
Susan glanced at them in the rear-vision mirror.
‘You’re as persuasive as your father,’ she said. ‘Both of you. What about you, Tara? Are you trying to skip school as well?’
‘No . . .’ said Tara. ‘I don’t think my parents would let me, and anyway, that place has lots of rats and mice. I hate rats. Even Mr Carver’s nose-flute music is better than rats.’
‘So it hasn’t been all fun and games, then,’ said Susan. ‘And you certainly look like you’ve been put to good use.’
‘We have,’ said Jaide. ‘We’re exhausted.’
Susan’s gaze shifted to Rodeo Dave. ‘Have they really been helpful?’
Rodeo Dave didn’t answer for a moment, as if the question had to travel a long way to reach wherever he had gone.
‘What? Oh, yes, I’d have to say—’
‘I guess it’s okay, then. They’re all yours.’
The twins cheered. Ari put his paws over his ears, and Susan raised a hand for silence.
‘Just for tomorrow,’ she said. ‘After that, you must return to school.’
‘We will, Mum,’ said Jack.
Jaide promised, too. ‘Thanks, Mum!’
Tara looked as though she might be regretting her decision, and surprisingly Rodeo Dave didn’t look entirely relieved, either. Jaide had thought he would be glad for the help, but instead he said nothing, his posture tense and unmoving, even as Tara got carried away with a story about the ‘giant killer rat’ that had leaped out at them in an attic.
As they came into town, Susan said, ‘Now, Dave, I’ll drop you home first, then I’ll take the kids to see their grandmother.’
The twins sat up straighter, excited by the thought, and Rodeo Dave started out of his daze, too.
‘She’s well enough for visitors?’ he asked.
‘I hope so. Doctor Witworth said we should swing by on the way through, just in case.’
‘May I come with you?’
‘Family only, I’m afraid. Tara will have to stay in the waiting room. You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked Tara. ‘They won’t be long.’
‘No problemo.’ She cupped Ari’s face in her hands and gave it a smooch. ‘Ari will keep me company.’
‘Kill – me – now,’ the cat forced out.
‘I don’t think Ari will be allowed in the hospital, Tara,’ said Susan.
‘Cats and booksellers,’ said Rodeo Dave, reaching around from the front seat to save Ari. ‘We’ve got to stick together, eh? Never mind. I’ll give you a snack when we get back to the shop. Maybe Kleo will be there to keep us company.’
‘If she’s not,’ Ari said, ‘can I have her snack, too?’
Rodeo Dave, perhaps understanding without hearing the actual words, smiled and tickled him under the chin.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Sleeper
SUSAN DROPPED OFF RODEO DAVE and Ari at the Book Herd, then turned the car around and drove across town to the hospital, where she parked under a chestnut tree whose spreading arms easily covered the car, and several others besides. The hospital was an uninspiring single-storey building with none of the glamour and excitement hospitals sometimes had in movies. It seemed completely full of old people. Even the nurses were old.
Susan walked up to the nurses’ station. ‘Is she . . . ?’
‘Very restless this afternoon, Sue,’ said a stout nurse with a beard that looked far from sanitary. ‘Doctor Witworth prescribed a stronger sedative. It’s probably taking effect now, but you can go through and see how she is.’
Susan nodded and led the children deeper into the hospital until she reached a closed door with a low bench outside.
‘Wait here,’ she told them. ‘I’ll just check.’
She ducked through the door, leaving Tara and the twins standing awkwardly outside. None of them said anything. Jack and Jaide strained to hear what was going on inside the room, but could hear only mumbled voices.
Susan returned. ‘Go on,’ she told the twins. ‘She’s a bit groggy but awake.’
Jaide took a deep breath and walked through the door. Jack followed more hesitantly. He didn’t know what to expect. Would Grandma X look as she usually did, or would her head be bandaged? Would there be horrible bruises . . . or worse?
In the end, she looked unchanged, apart from the fact that she was in a hospital gown and was lying propped up in a hospital bed, with her pure white hair spread out on her pillow. She looked much smaller than usual – and that, somehow, was far worse than anything Jack had imagined. The room was dimly lit and smelled of antiseptic. It looked like a place someone went to die, not get better.
‘Come here, dear troubletwisters,’ Grandma X said, waving them closer, one on either side of the bed. She hugged them tightly, her arms just as strong as ever. ‘The doctors, blast them wi
th a thousand curses, insist on keeping me calm and relaxed, not realising that keeping me here is having the exact opposite effect. I’m sorry your studies have been interrupted. I hope there have been no’ – she glanced at the door – ‘unexpected catastrophes?’
They assured her there hadn’t been. And apart from the matter of one small bridge, that was the entire truth.
‘We’ve been out at the Rourke Estate with Rodeo Dave,’ Jaide said.
‘Really?’ Grandma X said. ‘Kleo sneaked in earlier but she didn’t say anything about that. She tells me you’ve been in the blue room, helping our feathery guest to sleep.’
Jack hadn’t thought of it that way, but he supposed it had been exactly like that.
‘I like her,’ he said. ‘Can we keep her?’
‘I don’t think so, Jackaran. Technically she belongs to the estate, and when the lawyers agree on who will inherit what, we should really let her go.’ She went to pat his hand, but missed. ‘I hope you’ll understand.’
‘Have you spoken to Dad?’ Jaide asked.
‘Yes, of course, dear.’ A nurse entered the room and fussed about, tightening the sheets and adjusting the pillows whether Grandma X wanted them so or not. ‘He’s very busy.’
‘So it’s okay if we . . . go back tomorrow?’ Jack persisted. It was impossible to talk openly with someone else in the room, but they had to try. There was no way of knowing how long they had before Susan took them home again.
‘I don’t see why not,’ she said. ‘David will look after you. You can trust him completely.’
‘He doesn’t seem very happy about us being there,’ said Jaide, remembering Rodeo Dave’s moody silences on the way back from the estate.
‘I think he’s just sad about Young Master Rourke,’ Grandma X said. ‘David was the closest friend he had – perhaps George’s only friend. At the funeral on Friday, he’ll be delivering the eulogy, and that’s a very hard thing to do. Particularly because it would have been George’s birthday.’
She looked sad, too, for a moment, and then brightened when the nurse left the room, as though consciously willing herself to do so.
‘Kleo says the weather has been odd,’ she said. ‘Storm clouds and rain and yet no lightning, all confined to one area. It strikes me as altogether strange.’
‘Could it be The Evil?’ asked Jaide, still wondering if the car crash had been the work of their grandmother’s ancient enemy. ‘Like that storm, the first time?’
‘I don’t think so. Wardens are trained to recognise The Evil in many forms. This doesn’t feel like any of them. It does have a familiar flavour, though – one I haven’t felt for some time. If I could only remember what it was . . .’
Her voice trailed off and her eyelids drooped closed. The silver ring she wore on her right hand, with the moonstone tucked safely into her palm, looked dull and tarnished in the room’s yellow electric light.
‘Is she asleep?’ Jack whispered after a minute’s silence.
‘If she is, she’s not snoring.’ They sometimes heard their grandmother at night, even though separated from her by several walls and an entire floor. On a quiet night she sounded like a medium-sized jet aircraft having trouble starting up.
‘What do we do now?’
Jaide sneaked a look at the hand-scrawled sign above the end of the bed, but instead of a name there was just a Patient Number with seventeen digits.
‘Beats me. Leave her, I guess?’
The twins went to step back from the bed, but suddenly Grandma X’s eyes flew open. She lunged for them, catching their forearms in an alarmingly tight grip.
‘Something is going on, troubletwisters,’ she said, in a voice that lost none of its power for being barely a whisper. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it started the night Young Master Rourke died. The wards will protect you, as they have these last weeks, but I want you to be . . . to be . . . very . . . care . . .’
Her fight to stay conscious was taking its toll. The grip on their arms was already weakening when a lab-coated doctor entered the room, followed by the same nurse who had fussed with the bed before.
‘I think that’s enough excitement for one night,’ said the doctor, a woman in her fifties with grey hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her nametag said WITWORTH. Her voice brooked no dissent. ‘If you’ll step outside, please.’
The twins retreated, dismayed by the sight of their grandmother in such a confused state. Or was she confused? What if everything she’d said was right? The twins had never had reason to mistrust her judgement before. If she was worried about something going on in Portland, maybe something was going on in Portland.
But what?
Susan and Tara were waiting for them outside. The doctor followed them, and took Susan by the arm to talk to her privately for a moment. Tara surprised both Jack and Jaide by taking their hands and giving them a squeeze.
‘I remember when my Po Po was sick,’ she said. ‘There was a lot of hanging around hospitals as well, watching grown-ups talk in whispers.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Jack. ‘Did she . . . get better?’
‘Oh yeah. She comes to visit every year and makes my life miserable.’
Her grin was infectious, and it made Jaide feel a little better.
‘Off we go,’ said Susan, indicating that it was time to leave. Doctor Witworth nodded as they passed, not smiling, as though glad to see the back of anyone under forty.
‘She’ll be okay,’ said Susan in the car. ‘She’s had a nasty knock on the head that would leave anyone a bit muddled for a while. We’ll have to take it slowly. And so will she. Some people just don’t have the patience to be a patient.’
‘How long until she can come home?’ asked Jack.
‘Doctor Witworth doesn’t know. A couple of days, maybe. Longer, if the swelling doesn’t go down.’
‘Swelling?’ said Jaide, alarmed.
‘Don’t fret about the details. The important thing is that she’s getting better.’
They swept up Watchward Lane with a rattle of fallen leaves. Susan parked in the yellow Hillman’s usual spot. She had dinner ready to roll: homemade hamburgers and chips, which was something she could actually cook well, with chocolate ice-cream to follow. That was what she usually cooked on her last night in Portland before going on shift. The twins knew she was spoiling them a little, and they were grateful for it.
Over dinner they gave their mother a more comprehensive but still edited account of their day, lavishly describing the suits of armour, the rooms full of sheet-shrouded furniture and the apparently endless corridors, but leaving out anything to do with Professor Jasper Frederik Olafsson.
‘I’m a little jealous,’ said Susan with a smile. ‘I’d love to take time off work and explore a haunted old castle.’
‘I don’t think it’s haunted, Mum,’ said Jaide, wondering if a talking death mask counted. ‘And most of the rooms are locked.’
‘Still, it’s good of you to help out,’ she said. ‘Mr Smeaton might even pay you, if you do a good job.’
‘He could pay you in books,’ said Tara. ‘He has enough of them.’
Dinner was soon over, and so were the dishes, which it was somehow their turn to do yet again, but with two sets of hands to dry it wasn’t so bad. Ordinarily the twins liked having Tara over rather than doing their mother’s version of maths homework, but tonight they had other things on their mind. Foremost among them was the knowledge that their father would call at nine. Luckily, Tara’s father came long before then, and it was something of a relief when they waved off their friend and ran back inside.
In their room they conferred quickly and quietly. Their mother was tidying her room, just up the hallway.
‘We have to get back into the blue room tonight, after Mum’s asleep,’ said Jaide, ‘and search for a skeleton key.’
‘What does it look like, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. A key, I guess. Probably not much like a skeleton. Let’s ask the Co
mpendium.’
‘All right. Cornelia will still be there. Maybe she’s ready to tell us something about the night Young Master Rourke died.’
Jaide nodded. They froze at the sound of their mother walking past their door, then heading down the creaky stairs.
When she was gone, Jaide shut the door and checked the phone. The time was almost nine o’clock.
‘Dad will call soon,’ she said.
‘I hope so. If only we had the number of the phone he’s calling from, we could call him instead of waiting.’
They fidgeted in silence until the phone rang. The number was hidden, but who else could it be? Jaide pounced on it and put it close to her ear, so Hector Shield’s voice was as clear as it could be.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Jaide. Is Jack there, too?’
There was the sound of heavy rain in the background again, clouding Hector’s voice, but it wasn’t as distracting as it had been the previous night.
‘I’m here, Dad,’ said Jack, listening in as best he could, his head close to his sister’s.
‘I’m relieved,’ Hector said. ‘I thought the phone had been discovered when I hung up on you earlier.’
Jack supposed it had been, technically, but not by anyone who mattered.
‘We didn’t find the card,’ Jaide confessed. She wished she had better news. ‘We looked in all the obvious places, but it just wasn’t there.’
‘We’re going back to the castle tomorrow,’ Jack said.
‘Well, that’s good.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier about a skeleton key. You should definitely look for your grandfather’s. But there’s something else you should look for, too, something I thought of after we talked. It’s a witching rod – like a divining rod for finding water, but it finds artefacts special to Wardens instead.’
‘Like Grandma has for The Evil, except the other way around?’ said Jack. ‘Cool.’
‘What does it look like, Dad?’ asked Jaide, nudging Jack away. He had got to talk to Hector last time, and now it was her turn.