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Jack wanted to run back to the estate and find his father, to be told the truth of the matter and comforted. Instead, he settled for fleeing upstairs and flinging himself onto his bed, clutching in one hand the ruined photo that, for a reason he could never admit to himself, he was unable to look at.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Cornelia Conundrum
DOWNSTAIRS, JAIDE FELT SIMILARLY STUNNED. Cornelia quieted when Jack left the room and eyed Jaide warily, as though sizing her up.
‘You’re a weird old bird,’ she said. ‘Maybe your eyes are going.’
‘Walk the plank! Keelhaul the landlubber!’
‘All right, I’m sorry. But I just don’t see how you could be right. I mean, it can’t be Dad.’
But for the life of her, Jaide couldn’t think why Cornelia would pick out her father and screech ‘Rourke! Killer!’ like that, and she couldn’t talk about it with the parrot.
‘I’ll keep guard,’ said Kleo, heading for the front door. ‘You do what you can to make it look like nothing happened here.’
Jaide sighed in frustration and confusion. There was nothing else to do until Jack came out of his funk, so she took the dustpan and broom from the laundry cupboard. Watched by Cornelia every second, she tipped the remains of the picture frame into the bin and brushed up every last splinter of glass as best she could.
Kleo came running back in. ‘She’s here!’
Jaide met Cornelia’s beady eye.
‘You’ve got to go back to the blue room,’ she said. ‘After the business with the phone, I have no idea how to explain where you came from. Either you go now, or I’ll throw a rug over you and carry you there. That way you won’t be able to bite me.’
The parrot bobbed her head and made a low clicking noise, as though considering her options.
‘I’m serious,’ Jaide said, doing her best Grandma X impersonation.
‘Rourke!’ Cornelia came up to her full height and flapped her wings. Two mighty sweeps saw her in the air, and a third sent her swooping for the door. The front door opened as Cornelia vanished up the stairs to the top floor and through the door leading to the blue room.
‘Finished your homework already and doing your chores?’ asked Susan, seeing Jaide with the dustpan and broom. ‘That’s a step in the right direction.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Jaide. ‘Do you think we could have—’
‘Your phone back?’
‘Yeees,’ replied Jaide slowly, thinking she might be pushing her luck too far.
Susan frowned.
‘I’ll think about it. Now, I couldn’t find all the ingredients I needed so I got us stuff for sandwiches instead. How’s that?’
Sandwiches at dinnertime might have been a bit weird, but it was better than the alternative. ‘Great, Mum.’
‘Don’t look so pleased. I know that when it comes to cooking, I make a great paramedic.’ She gave Jaide a quick hug. ‘Where’s Jack?’
‘Upstairs finishing his homework.’
‘Okay. I’ll make him something and you can take it up to him later.’
Jaide put the utensils away and helped her mother unpack. The thought of eating dinner led to the unexpected discovery that she was actually hungry. Susan had bought fresh bread with sliced meat, cheese and vegetables, creating a spread almost identical to the first meal they had ever had in Portland. Jaide made herself a lettuce, ham and tomato sandwich, and contemplated all the things that had happened since that first day. They had learned about their Gifts and The Evil. They had made several new friends, two of them cats. They had been in danger many times, and would certainly be in danger again. Maybe they were in great danger at that moment and didn’t know it. She thought of her father and wondered how he was doing, but there was no way to find out unless Hector called their mother or Custer dropped by.
‘Can we go back to the castle tomorrow?’ Jaide asked, figuring she might have better luck on that front.
‘That wasn’t the deal,’ said Susan. ‘You’ve missed enough school for one week.’
‘But Mum—’
‘No buts. David Smeaton’s been very good to put up with you two, but I think it’s time you let him get on with his work.’
Jaide wanted to protest that this was exactly what they didn’t want him to do, but she couldn’t say anything like that. If Grandma X had been there, maybe they could have talked her around.
‘Is Grandma any better?’
Susan sighed and looked down at her plate. ‘Doctor Witworth has her under heavy sedation in the hope of reducing the pressure on her brain. Maybe we can go see her tomorrow, if she improves.’
Jaide put down the rest of her meal, her appetite gone.
Susan made Jack a sandwich and Jaide took it upstairs to him, but not before detouring through the blue room to pick up the Compendium on the way. The chances of finding anything in it were slim, but she had to try.
Jack was lying facedown on his bed and didn’t look up when she entered.
‘Are you hungry, Jack?’
‘No.’ He rolled over onto his side, his back to her.
‘Well, here you are anyway.’ She put the plate next to him and sat on her own bed, setting the Compendium down in front of her. Concentrating briefly on the notion of Warden Companions, she opened the folder and began to read.
After a minute or two, Jack stirred.
‘Where’s Cornelia?’ he asked, still without looking up.
‘Back in the blue room. Do you want me to get her? I could probably sneak her in here without Mum noticing.’
‘No. I never want to see her again.’
One hand reached out and snared half the sandwich. The smell of it had reminded him that there were more immediate concerns than what a mad old parrot thought of his father. The first mouthful went some way towards filling the aching void inside him. The second mouthful did more.
‘Listen to this,’ said Jaide. ‘One of the earliest steps towards inviting an animal to be your Companion is to spend three days in their mind, experiencing everything they do. That means Grandma X has been inside Kleo’s and Ari’s mind. I wonder if they got to be in hers in return.’
‘It doesn’t work that way,’ said a muffled voice from Jack’s bag.
‘Professor Olafsson!’ Jaide jumped off the bed to rescue him. ‘We forgot you again. I’m sorry.’
‘No apology necessary,’ he said when released from captivity and placed on the chest beside Jaide’s bed. ‘But it is nice to be part of the conversation again.’
‘So what does happen when a Warden makes a Companion?’ Jaide asked him, putting the Compendium aside.
‘May I ask why you’re asking?’
‘Well, I thought that if we made Cornelia Jack’s Companion, she’d be able to talk to us properly about what she saw that night.’
Jack rolled over.
‘No way!’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t want anything more to do with that treacherous old bird.’
‘Calm down, Jack. It’s possible we’re still misunderstanding her, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t think this could be a misunderstanding.’ Jack held up the photo, pointing to where Cornelia had bitten a hole right through Hector Shield’s head. ‘She kept saying killer.’
‘That does seem most definite,’ said Professor Olafsson. ‘But in any case, I assure you that enlisting the services of a Companion takes a great deal of time, energy, and trust – three things I fear you entirely lack at the moment.’
It was Jaide’s turn to flop hopelessly onto the bed.
‘We can’t just lie here and do nothing,’ she groaned.
‘I want to talk to Dad,’ Jack said. ‘I’m sure he could tell us what really happened to Master Rourke. I mean, we know Rodeo Dave went over there that night. It’s more likely that he was the one who did the frightening, if The Evil told him to.’
‘I don’t want to think about that,’ said Jaide. ‘It’s too horrible, and besides, there’s no way to talk to him without the phon
e. We just have to find the gold card first. Then everything will be all right.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, but it will be!’
‘I mean, how are we going to find it? We tried a witching rod. We used a skeleton key. We got Ari to look around for us. We’ve found nothing, and now I’m out of ideas.’
‘The solution might be right in front of you,’ said the death mask, ‘or behind you, or above you, or all around you. If it’s in the universe next door, it could be anywhere, and nowhere.’
‘But how does that help us?’ asked Jack. ‘If it’s in another universe, we can’t get to it because it’s . . . in another universe, right?’
