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Ari took a running leap for the macaw but only succeeded in knocking over Jack’s bedside lamp.
‘What are you doing?’ Jack asked, skidding to a halt with his sister at his side. ‘Ari, what’s going on?’
With one last squawk, Cornelia landed on the top of Jaide’s four-poster bed frame.
‘She started it,’ said Ari, looking up at Jack with slightly addled eyes. He looked that way sometimes on a full moon, but this time he didn’t have that excuse. The old moon was barely a sliver in the evening sky.
‘Started what, exactly?’ asked Jaide. ‘Have you been trying to kill each other?’
‘I’ve been trying to make them stop,’ said the death mask from where it had been tipped into a half-empty bin.
‘Professor Olafsson!’ Jack fished him out and put him upright next to where his lamp normally went.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jaide, before turning on Ari and Cornelia. ‘You two should be ashamed of yourselves. What were you thinking?’
She sounded very angry. Even Jack was scared of her when she was like this. Ari stood behind him with only his tail and his face showing.
‘Were you trying to eat Cornelia?’ Jaide asked him.
‘A fat old bird like that? No, thanks.’
Jaide ignored Cornelia’s squawk of indignation. ‘So what were you doing?’
‘She was calling me names,’ Ari said, scuffing at the ground with one of his front paws.
‘Sound the bell, Mr Dingles!’
‘See? Why, you—’
Ari ran for the bed, but Jack caught him. Cornelia danced from foot to foot, cackling, ‘High and dry, high and dry.’
‘Cornelia, stop it,’ said Jack. ‘That’s not very nice.’
‘I tried to explain to your furry friend here,’ said Professor Olafsson, ‘that Mr Dingles was probably a ship’s cat Cornelia once served with, but he won’t listen.’
‘I don’t even know who you are!’
‘He’s a former Warden,’ said Jaide. ‘We found him in the castle. You should do as he says.’
‘Why, when she won’t?’
‘Is that it, Cornelia?’ asked Jack. ‘Do you think Ari is Mr Dingles?’
Cornelia looked down at him with one yellow-ringed eye, and slowly nodded her head. Jack didn’t know if Cornelia genuinely misunderstood or not, but that was something.
‘Ari, if I let you go, will you leave her alone?’
‘Oh, all right,’ said the cat, going limp in his arms. ‘But why does she get to call me anything at all? What’s she even doing here? I’m the Warden Companion, not her.’
Jack and Jaide exchanged a glance. It hadn’t occurred to either of them that he might be more jealous than hungry when it came to the new animal in their midst.
‘You are one of Grandma’s Warden Companions,’ Jack said, ‘and you’re still our friend. Having Cornelia here doesn’t change that one bit.’
‘Jack’s right, honest,’ said Jaide, bending down to give him a hug.
‘You promise?’ he said into her neck.
‘We promise,’ said the twins together.
‘Okay, then. You can let me go now.’
Jaide stood back, and Ari put his rear down and began licking his fur flat again.
Only then did Jack realise that they couldn’t talk to Professor Olafsson with Ari in the room. Grandma X may have given them permission to go back to the estate when they’d visited her in the hospital, but if she knew the full story about Rodeo Dave and The Evil, it would only make her upset, which their father had told them not to do.
‘Erm, Ari, we need to talk in private,’ he said.
‘About what?’
‘I can’t tell you . . . it’s private.’
Ari narrowed his eyes and looked from one twin to the other.
‘But the bird gets to stay?’
Jaide glanced at Cornelia, who looked back at her innocently.
‘I guess not,’ Jaide said, holding out her arm for Cornelia to climb down.
One swift jab of the beak made her reconsider the wisdom of doing that.
‘Jack, could you . . . ?’
He coaxed Cornelia down from her perch and took her out of the room, putting her on a banister. Once she was outside, Ari followed, taking a seat a foot or two away from Cornelia. They did nothing but glare at each other as Jack closed the door behind him. He hoped it would stay that way.
Jaide was crouched down at eye level with the death mask in the wreckage of their room.
‘We’ve done it, Professor Olafsson,’ she said. ‘We’ve found out where the card is, and we think it’s in one of your weird universes.’
‘Really? How absolutely marvellous!’ Professor Olafsson grinned from ear to ear. ‘Well, the first thing we must do is get back there and apply the cross-continuum conduit constructor to the portal.’
‘I know,’ said Jack, ‘but—’
He stopped at a shrill noise coming from the chest next to Jaide’s bed.
‘That’s the phone!’ she cried.
Jack couldn’t believe it. The phone was sitting on a piece of paper covered in Susan’s neat writing, charger plugged into the wall, as though it had been there all day. They both lunged for it at the same time, but Jaide got there an instant before her brother’s grasping hands. Susan’s note fluttered to the floor, unread.
‘Dad? Dad? Where have you been? We’ve got good news!’
‘How can you have good news?’ Hector Shield said, voice harsh through some kind of heavy interference, perhaps even rain again. ‘I’ve been calling you all day and you didn’t come to the castle even once. I’m beginning to wonder if I made a mistake entrusting this mission to you. Perhaps it’s not too late to give it to someone I can truly rely on.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Fields of Gold
THE TWINS ROCKED BACK ON their heels, feeling as though they had been punched in the guts. The lights flickered and the air swirled around them as their Gifts reacted. They had never heard their father speak so cruelly before, not even when he was mad at them. He was never mean to anyone, really, and only ever raised his voice when certain household appliances didn’t behave as they were supposed to. Which was pretty much everything with an on/off button, all the time, for him.
‘But we couldn’t come today,’ said Jack, feeling sick to his stomach. ‘Mum wouldn’t let us. And she took the—’
‘Your mother has nothing to do with this. The Card of Translocation is what’s important, no
t the petty rules and regulations of the ordinary world.’
‘We tried, Dad,’ said Jaide, fighting hard not to stammer. ‘And we know where the card is now. All we have to do is get it.’
‘Why should I believe you?’ The static was so thick they could hardly hear him.
‘Because it’s true!’ Jaide stamped her foot, something she hadn’t done since she was five years old. It wasn’t fair that he should treat them like this, not when they were so close to getting the card. ‘It’s in a painting in the library. And we know how to get it out. We can do it – I know we can!’
‘I gave you a simple task,’ Hector Shield said through the background noise. ‘. . . I’m really disappointed . . .’
‘We just need a little more time,’ said Jaide.
‘. . . no time left . . . can’t hold it back much longer without the card . . . taking all our energies just to protect the wards . . .’
Behind their father’s distant voice they heard the sound of a wolf howling. Jaide shuddered, and Jack reached out to take her hand.
‘We can do it,’ Jack told him. ‘Mum’s not here but we can leave her a note—’
‘But what if she calls Tara’s parents?’ Jaide asked, seeing the flaw in that plan immediately. ‘She’ll know we’re not where we’re supposed to be.’
‘Yes, but she won’t know where we are, right? As long as we find the card, we can deal with her afterwards.’
Jaide groaned. Success was dangling just out of their reach, but to attain it they would have to play one parent off against the other. It would be so much easier if they could just talk to Susan about what was really going on!
There was a moment’s roaring silence over the phone.
‘Dad? Are you there, Dad?’ she said. ‘We can do it. I know we can.’
‘All right,’ he finally said. ‘But you mustn’t fail me! This is your final chance.’
‘You can trust us,’ said Jaide. ‘You really, really can.’
‘We honestly won’t let you down, Dad,’ said Jack.
‘Be sure you . . . I mean, we’re counting on you . . .’
