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‘Who in an orchestra is most likely to be struck by lightning?’ he called to his children. ‘The conductor. Get i —?’
He vanished into a flash of bright blue energy, and once again deep thunder rocked the town.
On the other side of the house, a car door slammed. The sound acted like a starter’s pistol for the twins. They sprinted back inside and up past Grandma X, the cats jumping aside to make room. They ran to the bathroom on their floor and stripped off their wet clothes, towelled their hair dry, and leaped into pyjamas.
‘Is that you, Susan?’ Grandma X’s voice floated up to them. ‘What’s going on?’
The cats came into the bedroom as Jack and Jaide hurled themselves into their beds and mussed up the covers.
‘She woke up when the ward was restored,’ said Kleo to the twins. ‘I didn’t have time to tell her everything.’
‘Are congratulations in order?’ asked Ari, his penetrating gaze darting from one twin to the other. ‘Or was it your father’s work?’
‘We did it, but there’s no time to tell you about it now,’ said Jack. He was more worried about his mother and what she might say to Grandma X.
Right on cue, Susan came in. She was wearing her emergency services uniform, and a radio squawked at her belt, but she ignored it. Grandma X followed her. Her feet were bare under her dressing-gown, and for the first time Jaide noticed she had silver rings on her toes.
‘Are you all right?’ Susan asked. ‘Was it . . . was it something to do with . . . did you make it happen?’
‘Make what happen, Susan?’ asked Grandma X. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You know very well!’ The words tumbled out of her in a rush. ‘They’ve declared a natural disaster in the town. Some kind of localised hurricane, they said, but I knew better.’
‘We’re fine,’ said Jaide. Jack nodded and gave a very unconvincing yawn.
Susan dragged them out of their beds into the middle of the room, where she drew them into a very tight hug.
‘I’m so glad you’re all right. I’ve been so worried. You don’t have to be afraid now. You’re safe.’
They returned the hug, feeling in its tightness the panic their mother had suffered. They wanted to tell her the truth, but knew she would never understand.
‘It’s okay, Mum,’ said Jaide reassuringly. ‘Just a big storm. We slept through most of it.’
‘Really, we did,’ said Jack, catching Grandma X’s eye over his mother’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t scary at all.’
‘Really?’
Susan pulled back slightly and looked each child directly in the eye. They knew that procedure: she was looking for any sign of fibbing. It was only then that both twins realised that they were fibbing – to protect her from worrying, but also to stop her from taking them away from Portland and their grandmother, where they needed to be if they were ever to get their Gifts under control.
‘Honest, Mum,’ said Jack.
Jaide added, for the appearance of it, ‘You’re such a worrywart.’
‘I had no idea this morning, Susan,’ Grandma X said calmly, ‘that the weather would turn like this. Otherwise I would never have let the kids out of my sight.’
‘Of course not,’ Susan said, letting the twins go at last. ‘I heard they closed the school.’
‘Not to worry. I was happy to pick them up when Mr Carver called. Come to the kitchen, Susan,’ Grandma X said. ‘You look frozen through. I’ll make you something hot.’
‘Well, all right, but I can’t stay long. I’ve volunteered to help out the local squad. The flood has ripped up trees and washed cars away, and a couple of roofs have come off . . .’
The twins followed their mother, the cats and Grandma X to the kitchen. Grandma X turned on the radio, then bent to light the stove. The twins and their mother listened to a very excited voice reporting that an enormous pile of sea life had been deposited near the lighthouse by a freak waterspout.
‘I hope life isn’t always this . . . interesting . . . in Portland,’ said Susan with a weak smile.
‘The twins will be safe with me,’ Grandma X promised.
The voice on the radio carried on about the town’s sole missing person, who had just been found near the lighthouse and who, though apparently injured, had refused treatment before hurrying away. Jaide hardly registered the woman’s name, Renita Daniels, before Susan turned the volume down and gave her children another hug.
‘Back to bed for you, I think,’ she said to them. ‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’
‘I’ll fix you some hot chocolate, Susan,’ said Grandma X, with a knowing glance at the twins. ‘Good night.’
The twins kissed their mother and dutifully headed upstairs to the room they guessed they should now think of as their own. A dose of Grandma X’s memory-erasing potion might not ease their mother’s anxieties about Wardens and Hector and their house blowing up, but it would at least make her forget about that morning.
The less she knew about their new life in Portland, the better.
THE CATS FOLLOWED THE TWINS back to the bedroom and jumped up onto the beds, Ari at Jaide’s feet and Kleo at Jack’s.
‘Don’t think you can go to sleep without telling us exactly what happened,’ said Kleo bossily.
‘We really would like to know,’ said Ari, in more conciliatory tones.
‘All right,’ said Jaide.
They were still talking when Grandma X tapped quietly on the door and then poked her head around.
‘Well done, troubletwisters,’ she said.
‘How are you feeling?’ Jaide asked.
‘Considerably better than I did earlier, thank you, Jaidith.’
Grandma X came in and picked up their dirty clothes, wrinkling her nose as she lifted Jack’s shirt.
‘That singed smell is so distinctive . . . It is such a pity Hector couldn’t stay. But that’s the way it must be.’ She pulled a regretful face, and the twins knew that she missed her son just as much as they missed their father. ‘Now, I see you have been in my antique shop.’
‘We only went in to —’ Jack began, but Grandma X held up her hand.
‘You did what was necessary, in the grand tradition of Wardens, and you did so in a very messy way, in the less grand tradition of troubletwisters.’
‘What happened to the music box?’ asked Jaide. The cats had already told her that when it had stopped, The Evil had attacked the house, but the rats and insects hadn’t got in before the ward was replaced.
‘It is now merely a very fine early eighteenth-century music box, and nothing more,’ said Grandma X. ‘So I will sell it on eBay.’
‘That crocodile skull took off the end of my finger,’ said Jaide, brandishing her bandage. She’d forgotten about it in the events of the night, but now it was starting to really hurt again.
‘The Oracular Crocodile is something of a trickster,’ said Grandma X. ‘You only need to give it a drop of blood, dripped from a spoon or the like. Never let it actually bite you. We’d best have that seen to in the morning, in case it festers. You might need a stitch or two.’
Jaide pulled a face. She was generally brave when it came to doctors, except where needles were concerned.
From the pocket of her dressing-gown, Grandma X pulled the brass compass the troubletwisters had played with in the drawing room the day she had tested them to see where their Gifts might lie.
‘I can also tell from this that there has been a change in the wards. Didn’t you get my message about the plaque?’
‘We did,’ said Jaide, ‘and we tried to fix it.’
