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‘Jaide!’ he called, waving. ‘Jaide! Come back!’
Jaide ran out of breath. For a moment she thought that this would stop the wild, ferocious wind that had blown the birds away and sent her into the sky. But it didn’t. She was still surrounded by a jet stream that was driving her straight up like a rocket.
Far below her, she heard a faint cry.
‘Jaide! Focus! Fly down here!’
Jaide didn’t feel like she could focus. She felt like throwing up. The world was spinning, the wind was blowing madly, and she was suddenly freezing cold.
‘Jaide!’
But Jack’s voice was like a lifeline. Somehow, she did manage to focus on it. She tried to imagine that his voice was a real lifeline, and visualised the remnant sunshine wrapping around his words, weaving a rope that would hold her down.
‘Aim for the house, Jaide! Aim for the house!’
Jaide’s rapid ascent slowed as she concentrated harder on being pulled back to the ground by her lifeline. The wind faltered and began to dart in different directions, as if it had lost heart. Jaide was jerked and shoved around, but she knew she was winning the battle for control.
‘Down,’ she said firmly to the wind, and, amazingly, the wind ebbed. Jaide began to spin and flitter down like a leaf falling from a tree.
‘Faster, Jaide! The birds are coming back!’
Jaide ignored the warning. The last thing she wanted to do was go faster. Her hold on the breeze was tenuous and she thought if she tried to change anything, she would plummet like a stone.
Immediately she wished she hadn’t thought about falling, because then she couldn’t think of anything else, and all of a sudden she was falling, the wind had dropped, and all her weight returned.
But she was almost at the roof of the house. Jaide hit the topmost turret hard, bounced off, and then, with a despairing cry and a wild grab, reached up and caught the moon-and-stars weathervane.
The birds swooped in but did not press their attack. Jaide clung to the weathervane and shut her eyes for several very long seconds.
‘Can you move?’ Jack was calling to her again. ‘Creep around to your right. There’s a ledge there. If you climb down a bit, then across to the chimney to your right, I’ll pull you in.’
Jaide did as she was told with her eyes tightly shut. She didn’t want to look down, and she never wanted to fly again. Not until she had her Gift completely under control, anyway.
Jack’s hands caught her and pulled her over the rail.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Though you do look like you’re about to throw up.’
Jaide gave him a furious look, rushed back to the rail, and vomited over the side. Jack patted her on the back as she said, ‘I would have been all right if you hadn’t said anything.’
‘Sorry,’ said Jack.
Jaide was sick again, then she stood up straight and wiped her mouth.
‘There goes that plan,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do now?’
‘I had a thought,’ said Jack. He had remembered the odd little jump he had taken in the tunnels, from inside a mound of rats and bugs to safety inside a shadow. What if he could do more than just move his mind along a shadow – what if he could move the rest of him as well? It would have made getting into the blue room a lot easier than it had been, for a start. ‘The sun is going down. There are a lot of shadows. I can go and look for the brass plate instead of you.’
‘But I lost the flower,’ Jaide pointed out. She felt very down and defeated, an emotion made stronger because of its sharp contrast to how great she’d felt when she’d first flown off the house. ‘How will you know if you’ve found the ward?’
‘Ari, Kleo, do you know of anything else I could use to find the ward?’ asked Jack. ‘Something I can use as a shadow?’
Ari shut his left eye and stared out with his right, then shut his right eye and stared with the left. Then he opened both eyes and said, ‘No. I’m afraid not. Though a full Warden would just recognise the ward —’
‘There is something,’ interrupted Kleo. ‘You remember the Warden Nickolanci, Ari? She came to see Grandma X last year and stayed for three days?’
‘Yes,’ said Ari. ‘She brought rollmop herrings. You ate most of them.’
‘She is a Shadow Walker, like you, Jack,’ said Kleo. ‘She could manipulate and shape shadows, and she said something once, that she could use the memory of a shadow, if something had cast one long enough in the same place.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Jack. His mind was racing, thinking of the possibilities of manipulating and shaping shadows. He was very keen to give it a go.
‘Nicki could use the shadow of an object when she herself was a shadow,’ said Kleo. ‘She could, for example, take the shadow of a sword and wield it. But I’m thinking that the flower was in that silver case for a long time, its shadow with it —’
‘You mean I could take the memory of the shadow of the flower and use it to find the right brass plate!’ interrupted Jack. ‘Though it wouldn’t change colour —’
‘It would change tone or density,’ said Jaide, who was more into art classes than Jack. ‘I guess it would go black. But I’m not sure you should go out, even as a shadow. Who knows what The Evil can do to you? I mean, rats and birds might be nothing compared to what it can do with shadows.’
‘You tried your way,’ said Jack. ‘It’s my turn now.’
‘It’s not about turns,’ said Jaide.
‘Can you think of anything else?’ Jack pointed to the approaching storm. Below, the dogs had fallen silent again and were watching the house with creepy intensity. ‘We can’t just wait until the storm blows the house down and The Evil walks in!’
Jaide looked at the clouds.
‘I guess you’re right,’ she said.
‘All I need is a shadow to start with,’ said Jack.
They circled the widow’s walk, looking for a point where the shadows intersected the house. There weren’t many tall trees to the west, but there was a shapely elm behind one of the shops on Dock Road. Its shadow reached far across the front yard, just touching one of the drawing room windows.
‘That’ll do,’ Jack said, and he headed for the stairs. Jaide followed, glad to put the widow’s walk behind them. She had got cold up in the high, thin air, the last of the sun was fading fast, and she no longer trusted the wind or her ability to use it.
Jack pulled back the drawing room curtains and looked out.
‘The rats are back,’ he said. ‘A few of them at least. Over by the wall.’
Jaide looked out, too. There weren’t many of them, as Jack had said, but they had the milky eyes she had learned to fear. She saw a couple with normal eyes and was relieved for a moment, until she realised they were not really rats, but rat-shaped composites made up of cockroaches, earwigs, and other insects.
‘Sentries,’ guessed Jack. ‘I wonder what the rest of The Evil is up to?’
‘Be careful,’ said Jaide. ‘It’ll be waiting for us to try something else.’
‘Hey, I’ll be a shadow. What can go wrong?’
Jack regretted saying this the second it came out, but it was too late. Jaide looked as if she was going to go all Kleo-vs-Ari on him.
‘I mean I’ll be very careful,’ Jack said seriously.
‘I wish Dad was here,’ said Jaide.
‘Yeah,’ said Jack. ‘But he never is, is he?’
Ari opened his mouth as though to say something, but shut it again with a snap at a sharp look from Kleo.
Jaide didn’t notice. She had gone back to looking at the watching rats as Jack settled himself on a chair. He opened the silver cylinder and put it on the floor, then placed his hand into the shadow of the elm where it fell through the window. He closed his eyes, even though he wasn’t sure
if that made a difference.
‘Good luck,’ whispered Jaide.
Her voice grew faint as Jack’s mind found the tree’s shadow and slipped into it, like a fish into a stream. Following it was as easy as wishing. The world slid around him, grey and blurry, and when he looked up, he saw himself in the chair.
