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‘In a moment. Do you two know if there was anyone else on the train?’
‘We were the only passengers,’ replied Jaide. ‘There was a conductor . . .’
‘OK,’ said Susan. ‘Well done.’
She kissed the twins and gave them another hug each.
‘Call me if you feel any pain developing, headaches or stiffness in the neck. Anything out of the ordinary. And clean those scratches up. I will be back as soon as I can.’
‘We will,’ promised Jack and Jaide. Tara smiled dreamily and yawned.
‘Just when I thought Portland had gone quiet again,’ muttered Susan.
Another paramedic trundled a stretcher up, and he and Susan bent down over Tara again, Susan shining her penlight into Tara’s eyes. Other emergency workers were picking through the wreckage, looking for anyone else who might have been injured.
‘They already found the driver,’ said Grandma X as she led the twins to the idling Hillman Minx. ‘He broke a leg, but he’s fine.’
‘What about the conductor?’
‘He was unconscious through the whole thing. Custer made him comfortable, and the paramedics will find him in a minute or two.’
‘He’ll forget too, won’t he?’ asked Jack.
‘People always forget what they don’t want to remember.’
‘Especially if they’re helped,’ added Jaide.
Jack thought of the old Living Ward, and the stories of monsters that had leaked out despite how secretive it had been.
‘But where there’s fire, there’s smoke, right?’
Grandma X put a finger to her lips.
They got into the car, Jack and Jaide together in the back.
‘Poor Rennie,’ said Jaide. ‘Just think of everything she went through.’
‘And now she’s the Living Ward,’ said Jack. ‘I mean, how’s that going to work out for her?’
‘Very well, I imagine,’ said Grandma X. ‘It will give her a vital purpose to live, something that she had lost and never thought to find again. She will not be a builder again though, I fear. Phanindranath is a wonderful healer, and a fine . . . ah . . . mundane surgeon, but even a Warden cannot replace a missing hand.’
Jack was about to ask a question about what a Warden healer could do when they were suddenly beeped from behind, by a van that also flashed its lights to high beam.
‘Ah, that will be Mr McAndrew,’ said Grandma X. ‘We are so close to home I think he can meet us there.’
When they arrived at Watchward Lane, Martin McAndrew’s van pulled up behind them. He jumped out and ran to the car, desperately peering through the windows to see his daughter, who wasn’t there.
Grandma X wound down the window. She spoke at the same time as he did, their words overlapping.
‘Tara!? Where’s Tara? I’ll never forgive myself –’
‘Tara is perfectly fine, Mr McAndrew,’ said Grandma X.
‘But where she is?’
‘She is perfectly fine,’ repeated Grandma X sternly. ‘However, she has been taken to the hospital to be absolutely sure.’
‘Perfectly fine,’ echoed McAndrew. ‘At the hospital. Uh, thank you. Thank you.’
He turned to run back to his van, stopped, spun round and leaned in through the window to attempt to give Grandma X a clumsy hug.
‘Thank you,’ he said, with a kind of dazed expression. ‘If you say she’s perfectly fine . . . she must be . . .’
‘Indeed,’ said Grandma X, gently pushing his hugging arm back with one long finger. ‘Off you go.’
‘Yes,’ muttered McAndrew as he backed away. ‘To the hospital. Perfectly fine. Perfectly fine.’
‘I wonder if this will make him think more about his family,’ said Grandma X as she climbed out of the car. ‘Come along, troubletwisters.’
Grandma X took Amadeus’s body from Jaide and led them back inside. The twins’ heads were whirling with their new understanding of recent events.
‘So there weren’t any vandals next door. It was actually the Living Ward coming and going,’ said Jaide, ‘except for that day we were locked out because you had it here while the excision was next door, watching us?’
‘And that needle you were looking for was to stitch up the Living Ward’s wounds,’ said Jack. ‘And what I saw you washing that day was bandages, not clothes?’
‘And the snake skin we saw was left by the monster as it healed from the first attack?’
‘All correct,’ said Grandma X. ‘I kept the ward in the cellar next door, and was careful to replace the cobwebs when I was done. There wasn’t time to repair the damage, though, before Martin discovered it.’
‘I guess that’s why Mum has been so sleepy lately too,’ said Jaide, adding one more secret secret to the list. ‘You’ve been knocking her out to stop her hearing anything in the night – such as the monster when it was hurt.’
‘True.’
‘But why do you and all the other Wardens look so young when you appear as spirits?’ Jack asked, thinking more generally.
‘We appear exactly as we did when we became Wardens,’ said Grandma X, ‘for that is the day we attained our true selves.’
‘So we’ll be like that too, one day?’
‘Yes, Jaidith.’
‘But why?’
‘I’m afraid that’s one of the mysteries, Jackaran.’
‘Almost everything is a mystery,’ Jack complained.
‘True,’ said Grandma X. ‘I am pleased that you realise it. Now go and wash.’
They trudged upstairs and took turns in the shower. When they came out, Grandma X painted bright yellow ointment on Jaide’s scratches, which made them sting anew. Neither of them was hungry, but, remembering Custer’s advice about taking sustenance after using their Gifts, they forced down some leftovers for dinner.
By the time that was done they were both practically nodding off at the table.
‘Your mother could be hours yet,’ said Grandma X. ‘Do you want to go to bed or lie down in the living room and wait for her there?’
‘Down here,’ said Jaide.
‘All right. You go on in and I’ll get some pillows and blankets.’
The twins stretched out in their own very different fashions. Jaide lay on the room’s only couch, and Jack curled up on the floor with his back against the base of the couch, studying the pattern on the carpet. Like so many other decorations in the house, it featured a four-pointed motif, not unlike a compass.
‘What ward was the Living Ward?’ he asked Grandma X when she returned. ‘South or West?’
‘West, Jackaran.’
‘And what was it? The monster, I mean. Where did it come from?’
‘It was a pet.’
‘A what?’
‘The previous Warden of Portland kept an axolotl. It was much smaller then of course. Becoming a Living Ward initiates change, though it is not always physical. It is similar, though more pronounced, to the way inanimate things take on special characteristics when they’re around Wardens. This is also true of some living things. Companions, for example. I think you’ve noticed this too, in recent days. Although perhaps in ways you’d rather not.’
Jack puzzled over this for a second, then remembered. ‘The insects? I thought that was The Evil . . . the excision –’
‘They are drawn to your Gift as moths are to a candle, with similar results. It’s not your fault. It may extend beyond insects too. You might find animals acting oddly around you in the coming weeks as your Gift settles – but they won’t die. Only the tiniest minds are completely overcome by the power we possess.’
Jack thought of Fi-Fi the dog and was glad. Imagine if he’d patted her and she’d dropped dead!
‘Now shush
,’ she said. ‘Your sister is already asleep.’
Jack sat up to look. Jaide’s eyes were indeed tightly shut. Grandma X laid a blanket over her and put a pillow by her, in case she woke up and looked for one. Then she gave Jack the same, and he arranged himself back down again, resting his head more comfortably against down and cotton.
Grandma X crouched next to him and brushed a lock of brown hair from his forehead.
‘You look just like your father did when he was a boy,’ she said. ‘So serious. What are you thinking about, Jackaran?’
He hadn’t known he was thinking of anything, but it was there in his mind when he looked.
‘What did The Evil mean when it said “One always falls”?’ he asked.
‘It said that, did it?’
‘Yes, and I suppose it’s one of the mysteries, too . . .’
‘No, it’s not a mystery, but it is something I hope you won’t need to learn about for a good while yet.’ She smiled. ‘No more questions now. You’ve earned a rest, don’t you think?’
Jack nodded, even though she had blatantly dodged his question. He was tired, and they had saved Portland for the second time in a month.
‘Yes,’ he mumbled. ‘I reckon we have.’
Young Master Rourke sat upright in his armchair, startled awake by a sudden noise. Despite his name, he was actually an old man, only a few days short of his eighty-fifth birthday. He was known as ‘Young Master Rourke’ because his father had been the one and only ‘Mister Rourke’ in the area for many, many years. Old Mister Rourke had built Rourke Castle, he had bought up all the railways and shipping lines and the whaling stations for miles around, and in doing so he had become one of the richest and most influential men of his time.
All those railways, the ships and most of the riches were now gone, but Young Master Rourke still owned Rourke Castle. A vast, rambling palace that extended across two sides of a hill, it had towers and stables and three ballrooms, a Greek temple, a Venetian canal and a scale copy of an Egyptian pyramid that was a hundred feet high (it looked like stone on the outside but was in fact hollow, made of concrete slabs over a steel beam skeleton).
Rourke Castle was so big that it was spread across two territories. Half was within the bounds of a small town called Portland, the other half in Portland County. When the castle had still had staff, they’d used to joke about going to town, or going to the country, when crossing from one side of the castle to the other.
