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‘You’ve got him well trained,’ said Rodeo Dave. ‘Not like my Kleopatra. I think she’s trained me.’
‘Any luck?’ Jaide whispered as they climbed into Zebediah, whose roof seemed to have opened itself now the rain had passed.
Ari jumped onto her lap. ‘Just bones and old feathers.’ He stuck out his tongue. ‘All I can taste is dust.’
Rodeo Dave put on his hat and started the car. Zebediah rumbled deep in its belly and the castle fell away behind them. If Jack concentrated, he could imagine that Zebediah was perfectly still and the world was moving around it. The gates of the estate, the outskirts of town, the town hall, the fish markets, Watchward Lane …
Susan was standing on the steps by the front door as though she had been expecting them. She waved as they drove up the drive, and came down the steps to meet them, then she waved again as Rodeo Dave drove back down the lane, minus his passengers.
‘How was your day?’ she asked.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jaide. There was an odd look in her mother’s eyes that told her there was something up. ‘Is there something wrong with Grandma?’
‘With Dad?’ added Jack, feeling his heart suddenly thump hard in his chest.
‘Why would you think that?’ Susan asked them in return. ‘All I did was ask you how your day was.’
‘It was . . . fine,’ said Jack slowly. He looked down at his mud-streaked clothes, wondering if that was where the problem lay. ‘We got pretty dirty, though. All that dust and grime in the books.’
‘Nothing a bath and laundry won’t fix.’
The twins took a step forward to go inside, but Susan didn’t move out of the way. She stood there as if waiting for them to confess something.
Jack and Jaide just stared at her, completely at a loss. Which part had she guessed? That Grandma X’s accident was the work of The Evil? That Rodeo Dave was a sleeper agent? That their father was not on the other side of the world at all, but in their very neighbourhood, fighting to keep them all safe?
Susan did something entirely unexpected. She took her hand from behind her back and held up a small black box with an electric cord dangling from it.
A phone charger.
‘Perhaps one of you could tell me what this is and who it belongs to?’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Multiplication and Division
THE TWINS STARED AT THE charger with their mouths open. Jaide felt a wild urge to laugh hysterically. This was about nothing more than the secret of the mobile phone?
‘It’s the charger for our phone,’ blurted out Jack in relief. ‘Dad gave it to us – ow!’
Jaide kicked him in the shin. One secret led to another. If they started down the path to the truth by telling where the phone had come from, it would all come out and they would never be allowed to keep looking for the card, no matter how much they wanted to help.
Luckily, Susan didn’t believe them.
‘Your father and I agree that you’re much too young to have a phone. And besides, how could he give you a phone when he’s in Italy? Tell me the truth this time, or you’ll be in real trouble.’
They had to say something.
Jaide opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Fortunately, this time Jack was closer to the mark.
‘We know you told us you weren’t going to give us a phone,’ he said, ‘but we really need one to text Tara about homework and stuff, and everyone else our age has one, so we got it for ourselves from one of the kids at school. It’s an old one that doesn’t do very much. See? They would’ve thrown it out if we didn’t take it. We’re not wasting time or money on it. We pay for the credit out of our allowance.’
Susan looked at the phone in Jaide’s hand, clearly weighing up the veracity of their explanation. She had no reason to suspect that the phone came from their father, though it was clear she was still not entirely satisfied.
‘Please, Mum, please we can we keep it?’ asked Jaide.
Jack’s heart sank as Susan shook her head.
‘I don’t like you going behind our backs like this,’ she said. ‘It sets a bad precedent. If you’re good, maybe you’ll get it back one day, but not today.’
The twins argued, but they had no choice but to hand over the phone. It joined the charger in Susan’s back pocket, firmly switched off, and eventually she raised her hands to bring their pleas for clemency to an end.
‘All right, enough! Go inside, both of you. I’ve got some homework for you to do, after you’ve had a shower. I’m just going to the shops to get ingredients for dinner. There’s a recipe I saw on the internet at work – it sounds delicious.’
‘That’s my cue to go elsewhere,’ said Ari, who had watched the confrontation from the sidelines. ‘If it’s anything like last week’s chilli con carne with white chocolate, I’d rather be patrolling with Custer in the rain.’
He sprang off into the dusk, leaving them to their fate.
Jack and Jaide slouched up to their room as their mother scooped up her keys and bag and headed out to the car.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Jaide. ‘This is a disaster!’
‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘But what else could we have said to Mum to make her change her mind?’
‘You could have told her the truth,’ said a muffled voice from inside Jack’s backpack.
The twins had completely forgotten about the death mask. When they peered in the bag, they found that Professor Olafsson was indignantly tangled up in old plastic wrap and a damp sock.
‘She’d never believe us!’ said Jaide.
‘Not about the devices you people employ to avoid talking face to face,’ he said. ‘About everything. You should tell your grandmother, too.’
‘We can’t,’ Jack told him. ‘Mum wouldn’t want to know about it and Dad told us not to worry Grandma.’
‘Do you trust him?’
‘Of course,’ said Jaide. ‘He’s our father!’
‘And he’s a Warden, too,’ Jack added.
‘What kind of father knowingly puts his children into danger?’ Professor Olafsson asked them. ‘What kind of Warden keeps the near presence of The Evil secret from the Warden in charge of the wards?’
‘He hasn’t really put us in danger . . . has he?’ said Jack.
‘I guess he has, kind of – if Rodeo Dave ever finds out what we know. But he won’t,’ Jaide told Professor Olafsson. ‘We’re good at keeping secrets.
‘Secrets, like lies, multiply in the keeping,’ said the professor. ‘Have you never thought to ask why this card is so important?’
‘Of course!’ said Jack again. ‘But there hasn’t been time, and we keep getting interrupted.’
‘And we’re just troubletwisters,’ said Jaide miserably. ‘No one tells us anything.’
Professor Olafsson’s expression softened.
‘I, too, was once excluded from Warden activities,’ he said after a moment, ‘because I argued too strongly for my theories to be tested. You know your father best. Perhaps you are right to do as he says, and I am wrong to question him. As a fellow Warden, I will keep the secrets he has asked you to keep, and I will help you find this Card of Translocation for him.’
‘But how are we going to find it?’ asked Jack. ‘If we can’t go back to the castle tomorrow, Rodeo Dave will beat us to it.’
‘Was that Rodeo Dave you were talking to earlier, when we left the castle?’ asked Professor Olafsson. ‘Talking about someone called Kleopatra?’
‘That’s his cat,’ said Jaide, ‘although she’s not anyone’s cat, really. She’s Grandma’s other Warden Companion.’
‘Odd. I recognise his voice from somewhere, but I can’t recall where.’
Jaide zipped up the backpack and headed to their room.
‘I want to check on Cornelia,’ said Jack, continuing on up the stairs. He needed to do something other than stew over the lost phone.
‘Okay,’ she called after him, ‘but don’t think I’m doing your homework for you!’
/> Jack found Cornelia and Kleo sitting in the blue room exactly as they had been last time. The macaw’s royal blue head came up as soon as she saw Jack, and she began walking rapidly from side to side as though pleased to see him. He crossed to the cage and fed a nut through the bars.
‘Hello, Cornelia. How are you doing today?’
‘Shipshape and Bristol fashion,’ she declared, taking the nut.
‘Is that good?’ he asked Kleo.
‘I think so,’ said the cat, extending her chin so Jaide could skritch under it. ‘But she still hasn’t said anything sensible. Maybe she will now that you’re here.’
‘You can trust us,’ said Jack to the bird. ‘Whatever you have to tell us, we’ll believe you.’
Cornelia bobbed up and down, sending bits of nut flying in every direction.
