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Jack had seen it: a perfectly white fluffball of a cat with part of its tail missing. The same one that had attacked Kleo.
‘This is where they come from,’ Jack said.
‘Exactly. They must be riding the trains in and out of Portland.’ Jaide noticed more cats arriving as the train readied itself for departure. Ari had said there were rumours of a big fight that weekend. There, right in front of them, was the army assembling!
‘We have to do something,’ Jaide said.
‘Do what?’ said Tara. ‘They’re only cats.’
‘It’s just Jaide got attacked by stray cats once,’ said Jack, with a warning glance at his sister. ‘They make her nervous. But we’re fine here, right?’
‘Uh, yeah,’ said Jaide. She made a conscious effort to look normal. ‘Thanks for having us, Tara. We really enjoyed it.’
Tara brightened. ‘I did too! Do you think you’ll come and stay again?’
‘Sure,’ Jaide said. ‘Why not?’
‘Great! Sorry about my dad being so grouchy just then.’
‘That’s OK. I hope you don’t get in too much trouble.’
‘Don’t worry. He doesn’t stay angry.’
‘Good,’ said Jaide. ‘Hey, there’s even more cats!’
She pointed towards the station. There were more cats there, but Jaide just wanted to make Tara turn away. In that moment, she reached down and unclipped Fi-Fi’s collar. The collar fell off and Fi-Fi launched herself at the assembling cats once more, barking like a mad thing. The train cats scattered, hissing and spitting.
‘Fi-Fi!’ shouted Tara in dismay. She took two steps to run after the dog, but stopped suddenly as the train’s steam whistle screamed out its departure warning.
‘You go,’ Tara told the twins. ‘If you miss the train, you’ll never be allowed back! Go! Fi-Fi, come back!’
‘Thanks,’ Jaide yelled as the train’s whistle sounded again. Jack was already running on to the platform. ‘See you at school tomorrow!’
Tara didn’t reply. She was too busy trying to retrieve Fi-Fi, who had chased the fluffy white cat and at least a dozen others underneath a parked minibus. Tara’s dad and several members of the public were trying to help, but the dog kept running round and round the minibus, dodging humans and lunging at any cat that dared show its head.
Jaide hid a smile as she waved at Tara through the window of the carriage. Thanks to the cat-hunting Fi-Fi, not one feline had got on the train. That crisis, at least, had been averted.
‘You again,’ said the portly conductor, coming up to punch their tickets. ‘Looking more cheerful than before too. Does that mean your trip to Scarborough was a success?’
‘Not really,’ said Jack. Without really thinking, he added, ‘We thought we’d find something there, but we didn’t.’
‘If that’s the worst thing that ever happens to you, then you’ve reason to be cheerful.’
The conductor moved on to the next person in the train, leaving Jack to ponder this echo of Custer’s advice. If he had felt cheerful, maybe he would have agreed. But The Evil excision was still roaming about Portland, and so was the monster – unless they were the same thing, which seemed unlikely, since the legends of the monster went back so far – and they had come no closer to finding anything that would tell them what was really going on.
But much worse than that, he his Gift was still lost.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dead End
Ari was waiting for them by their bikes when the train arrived at Portland Station.
‘Where’s Kleo?’ asked Jaide.
‘It’s nice to see you too,’ Ari replied huffily. ‘Clearly you didn’t miss me at all.’
‘Seriously, Ari, where is she?’
‘Patrolling,’ he said. ‘The attack hasn’t come yet.’
‘We know, and we know why it won’t. We found out where the cats are coming from and stopped them coming today.’
Ari looked from Jaide to Jack and back again. ‘What have you done?’
‘We helped,’ said Jaide.
‘I know we weren’t supposed to,’ said Jack, trying to buck his own spirits as much as Ari’s. ‘But I really think this time we have helped.’
‘This is not going to end well,’ said Ari grimly. ‘You’d better tell me on the way, troubletwisters. Your grandmother is waiting for you at home.’
They saddled up and rode out, with Ari in Jaide’s basket again. It didn’t take them long to tell Ari about the train cats and the way the attack had been foiled. By the time they had reached the sawmill, the cat was completely up to speed.
‘From Scarborough, you say – by train? Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Jaide. ‘We saw that fluffy white cat there, the one who attacked Kleo.’
‘That’s Amadeus. He’s Kleo’s main rival.’
‘It was definitely him.’
‘The train won’t go back to Scarborough again today,’ said Ari. ‘This may work out. But let me tell Kleo, will you? There are ways to present this kind of news –’
‘Wait!’ interrupted Jack, coming to a sudden stop in the middle of the road. ‘That wasn’t here yesterday.’
Jaide jammed on the brakes, almost throwing Ari from the basket.
There, on the road in front of them, was a series of thick red-brown spatters.
‘Is that . . . blood?’ Jaide’s gorge rose at the very thought.
r /> ‘Looks like it,’ said Jack, following it with his eyes across the verge to the building site’s main gate. ‘I think we should have another quick look,’
‘No, no, no!’ wailed Ari. ‘Not again!’
The cat jumped out of the basket and on to the road, in order to sniff the spatters. He pulled a sour face.
‘It’s not blood. It’s some kind of oil. And what else did you expect? This is a building site. It’s full of machines. You humans love your machines, but they never seem to work very well. They’re always breaking down – and that’s clearly what’s happened here. Why do you have to see The Evil everywhere? Can’t you accept that sometimes some things in Portland are perfectly ordinary?’
The twins gaped at Ari. He had never spoken to them this way before.
‘Well,’ said Jaide, ‘if it really is oil . . .’
‘Do you accuse me of uttering a falsehood?’ Ari challenged, glaring at them with his fur standing on end.
‘I don’t know, but –’
‘I would never lie about something like this. I might bend the truth where missing meals are concerned or suchlike. But never about Warden matters!’
‘Maybe we’ve been jumping to conclusions,’ Jack said slowly. They had lost control of their Gifts, defied Grandma X, accused innocent people . . . and for what? To chase mythical monsters and fleeting shadows all across Portland and beyond, to no end at all.
Troubletwister, know thyself.
‘All right,’ Jaide said. ‘Let’s just leave it . . . for now. If Grandma really is home, we can talk to her and see what she says.’
‘She’s there,’ Ari said. ‘I promise.’
He hopped back up into the basket, muttering so softly under his breath that Jaide barely heard him say, ‘She’d better be!’
Grandma X was home, bustling about in the Blue Room, lifting objects and looking under them, one after the other.
‘Welcome back, Jaidith and Jackaran. How was your trip to Scarborough? Did you find what you were looking for? No, I guess you didn’t – or else it would have found you too, and you wouldn’t be here now, looking at me that way.’
