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‘Take it off me!’ Ari yelled. ‘I was just about to come out – honest!’
Custer clapped his hands together, once, and the vortex collapsed, depositing Ari on the ground.
‘Uh, I didn’t mean to do that!’ said Jaide. ‘I mean, I didn’t even know –’
‘You didn’t,’ said Custer. ‘I did. You have my apologies, Aristotle. I thought you were . . . another cat.’
Ari sniffed and licked his paws.
‘Apology accepted. I was coming to give you a message. She says it’s time to go, and I am to escort you to the railway station.’
Custer pulled a gold fob watch from his pocket, flicked the cover open and looked at it.
‘Indeed. The time has come for me to conclude my tuition. My thanks, Jack and Jaide, for your hard work today.’
‘Wait!’ said Jack in a panic. ‘You can’t leave now. I haven’t got my Gifts back!’
‘I sympathise,’ said the Warden, ‘but it’s not for me to return them to you. They will come, or not, in their own time.’
‘But – but –’
Custer put a hand on each of his shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Troubletwister, know thyself. Only then will you know your enemy.’
He turned to Jaide, bowed and left on foot as a human, not as a sabretooth, as she had half expected he would.
That suddenly their lesson was over.
‘Do we really have to go to see Tara?’ Jaide asked Ari.
‘I was instructed to give you no choice in the matter, but what I should do if you refuse, your grandmother didn’t say. She did tell me that she has packed your bags, and that they’re sitting on your beds, ready to go.’
They went inside and, sure enough, their backpacks were exactly as Ari described.
‘Where is Grandma?’ Jack asked, still stinging from the fact that Custer had left him powerless against the many threats that seemed to be inhabiting Portland at the moment.
‘I have no idea.’ Ari hopped on to the bed, circled a particular spot three times and sat down, resting his head on his paws.
‘What do you know then?’ asked Jack in exasperation.
‘The good news is that the rat-poisonings have stopped.’
‘Does that mean Kleo is OK now?’ asked Jaide. ‘She won’t be challenged?’
Ari tilted his head over, considering.
‘No. Although the poisonings have stopped, we lost some good friends and the balance of power has shifted. There are even more cats from outside to worry about now. There’s a rumour of a battle this weekend. If enough outside cats move in, Kleo could be ousted, possibly even run right out of Portland . . .’
Ari’s ears drooped as he said this. Jaide sat next to him and scritched him under the collar.
‘Do you know where they’re coming from? If we could head them off somehow, maybe –’
Ari butted his head up against her hand, slid between her arm and body and jumped to the floor, where he paced back and forth angrily.
‘Don’t even think it! If Kleo knew I’d told you this much, she’d have kittens with cod tails. Now, if you’re ready, put on your charms and let’s get moving.’
‘Our what?’
‘Charms,’ said Ari, pointing with his pink nose. ‘On your bags. Your tickets are there too.’
Jaide picked up an antique locket from the top of her bag. It was a plain silver disc you could open with a thumbnail and had a pale green ribbon to hang it around her throat. When she opened the locket, all it contained was some dry leaves, seeds and grit.
Jack found a similarly ancient pillbox on his bag. Its contents were the same.
‘You’re to wear these charms or carry them with you at all times,’ said Ari. ‘They’ll help hide you from The Evil should it come looking for you.’
‘But how could it do that?’ asked Jaide. ‘We’re protected by the . . . oh, right.’
For the first time, it occurred to her that they would be leaving Portland, and therefore leaving the protection of the wards behind.
‘Is this safe?’ asked Jack. ‘I mean, is it really all right for us to go?’
‘I guess it must be,’ she said, ‘or Grandma would never let us.’
‘You know, if you think about it, we should be safer outside Portland because this is where The Evil comes through. If the wards don’t work, I mean.’
‘It’s only one of the places,’ replied Jaide. ‘I wonder where the next nearest one is? And if The Evil came through there, how far could it go? I mean, could it travel all the way here?’
Ari opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Jaide continued.
‘I know you don’t know, Ari. I was just wondering. More things to ask Grandma.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ari. ‘And now we really must go or you’ll miss the train, and then I’ll be in trouble too.’
‘All right,’ said Jack, resigning himself to leaving the safety of Grandma X’s house and, perhaps even more horrifyingly, to having a sleepover with a pair of girls. ‘Are we supposed to walk there?’
‘Take your bikes,’ Ari said. ‘You can leave them up at the station. No one would dare steal them – or if they did, they’d never do it a second time.’
They shut the door behind them without bothering to turn the lock, following Grandma X’s example. Ari hopped into the basket on Jaide’s bike and braced himself for sudden acceleration.
The route to the station took them right past the old sawmill and the construction site. They saw no signs of moths or of anything to do with The Evil. The hole in the fence had been securely sealed. As they zoomed past, however, Jaide saw something that she hadn’t noticed before, partly because it had been shrouded in the g
loom, but also because she hadn’t thought to look.
Along the southern edge of the building site, just over the fence, was a narrow creek bed, the sides of which had been concreted over so it was more like a drain. Its eastern end vanished under the road and the businesses that ran along the seaward side of the street. The western end opened into a large pipe that led into the rising hillside that hid the railway line from the street, the hillside that to the south became Little Rock.
Jaide slowed as she went past, then put on the brakes, hard.
‘Hey!’ said Jack, almost crashing into her from behind. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘We can’t stop,’ said Ari. ‘The train is due to leave in five minutes!’
‘Hold on,’ she said, dismounting and giving the handlebars to Jack so the bike wouldn’t tip over. ‘I just want to check something.’
She ran off the road and down to the side of the creek bed. A thin trickle of clear water ran along the green-scummed bottom. There was surprisingly little of the junk she had seen built up in similar drains in the city. Maybe, she thought, it had all been swept clean by the floods of the previous week.
Maybe something more than rubbish had been swept out too . . .
She hopped down the sloping concrete wall, being very careful where she put her hands and feet, and making certain that she would be able to get out again afterwards. The mouth leading into the hillside would once have seemed impenetrably dark to her eyes, but now she had Jack’s gift as well as her own, she could see quite clearly the way the concrete walls gave way to natural stone, as though the drain connected to a series of caves that went much deeper underground.
She stepped right up to the opening and put her head into the shadow.
If she was a monster and needed somewhere to hide, she thought, this would be the perfect place. It didn’t matter how dark or dank it was. She had seen seaweed turn into a giant sea monster and climb out of the ocean with her very own eyes. If The Evil could do that, a little damp wasn’t going to be a problem.
Was there something lurking inside now, in the depths of the tunnel . . . something black and inhuman hanging from the ceiling . . . perhaps something monstrous?
