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The static rose up, cutting the call off. The twins sagged, feeling emotionally drained. Their father must have been under incredible pressure to speak to them like that. Whatever was going on out there in the fight against The Evil, it was their job to help their father, as well as Custer, and whoever else was involved.
‘You write the note,’ said Jack, leaping to his feet, grabbing the phone and the death mask, and putting both in his pack. ‘I’ll get torches and – is there anything else we’ll need, Professor Olafsson?’
‘Perhaps some rope,’ he said. ‘The way through the portal may not be in the same horizontal plane.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack.
‘It might be the top of a hole, for example. Or you might come out on the side of a wall, a hundred feet up a tower.’
‘Okay. Rope.’
Jack opened the door to find Ari and Cornelia exactly where he had left them. Ignoring them, he ran downstairs to the ground-floor cupboard, a dark and cobwebby space full of all sorts of domestic odds and ends. Coiled up at the back was a length of slender, green nylon rope, which he scooped up and stuffed into his bag.
Jaide looked for a piece of paper on which to write the note telling Susan that they would be going to Tara’s house for dinner, and found the note the phone had been sitting on. She started to read the message from Susan explaining that, on further thought, maybe Jack and Jaide were old enough to be entrusted with a phone, provided they understood that it was a responsibility . . .
Jaide’s eyes crossed. There wasn’t time. Turning it over, she wrote: Going to Tara’s for dinner Thanks Mum Love J & J.
Running downstairs, she left the note on the kitchen table where Susan was sure to find it. When that was done, she turned and found Ari watching her.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
She didn’t have the heart to lie to him. He was their grandmother’s Warden Companion. He was one of the protectors of Portland. He deserved to know at least part of the truth, didn’t he? The only thing stopping her was the promise she had made to her father.
‘Find Custer,’ she said. ‘He’ll tell you.’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ he said. ‘Like how he told me how useful I was yesterday?’
‘Forget about that,’ she said. ‘This is a whole different thing. This is important.’
‘My feelings aren’t important?’
She threw her hands in the air in frustration. ‘I don’t have time for this!’
Jack was already outside, untangling their bikes. ‘All okay?’ he asked when she appeared.
‘I hope so,’ she said.
They put their heads down and rode furiously up the lane.
As they turned into Parkhill Street, a blue blur whizzed overhead in a flurry of feathers and wings.
‘Rourke!’ cried Cornelia, settling onto Jack’s shoulders.
‘Yes,’ he said with a grin. ‘This time we’re going to the estate. Are you sure you want to come with us?’
The macaw bobbed her head up and down. ‘All parrots on deck.’
‘Okay. Let’s go!’
Behind them, the weathervane turned against the wind to point north-east, directly at the Rourke Estate.
Clouds gathered overhead as they neared the castle. Sunset was still some way off, but the light failed steadily, until it seemed more like twilight than late afternoon. There was no rain yet, but Jaide had no doubt that it was coming. There was a thick, heavy feeling to the air, as though a storm was brewing. Somewhere nearby, Jack was sure, The Evil and the Wardens were doing battle.
They rode cautiously up the long drive past the lake, watchful for Rodeo Dave or Kyle and Tara, but the only person visible was Thomas Solomon. He held up a hand as they approached and drove the golf buggy out to meet them.
‘You’ve missed him,’ he said as he came alongside them. ‘Rodeo Dave just left.’
‘I know,’ said Jack, thinking fast. ‘We saw him, and he said he’d left something behind.’
‘We volunteered to get it for him,’ said Jaide. ‘It might take us a while to find it, though.’
‘Okay, I guess. But I’ll be closing the gates at six, so don’t take too long.’
‘We won’t,’ said Jaide. She hoped that this was true.
Barely a minute later, they reached the moat and trundled their bikes over it. A rising wind whipped around them and made Cornelia grip Jack’s shoulder tighter. Apart from that she was quiet and still, looking all around her as though nervous. The shadowy courtyard appeared to be empty, but that was little consolation.
Jaide put the skeleton key into the lock, despite the serious mismatch in size, and turned it as hard as she could. She needed both hands but eventually the door groaned open, and Jack and Cornelia slipped inside.
As Jaide stepped over the threshold, a ginger shape darted out of the shadows and leaped onto her shoulders, clinging tight to her with what felt like hundreds of pinprick claws.
She fell forward with a scream that made Cornelia lift off Jack’s shoulder in a flurry of wing beats and squawks. Jack spun around to drive off the thing that had attacked Jaide, his Gift turning the dim light inside the castle even darker than before.
Ari rolled free of Jaide’s flailing limbs and stood upright with his legs apart and hair raised along his back.
‘I knew you were up to something,’ he said. ‘The note said you were going to Tara’s. What are you doing here?’
‘Something important,’ Jaide said, getting up and dusting herself off. ‘For Dad. You have to believe us, Ari. We wouldn’t sneak around like this without a reason.’
‘What counts for a reason among troubletwisters is notoriously unreliable.’
‘But this is different! We’re looking for a golden card – the Card of Translocation. Remember? You helped us look for it on Wednesday.’
‘Not intentionally! If it’s so important, why don’t I know about it already?’
‘Maybe Grandma just hadn’t got around to telling you about it yet,’ said Jack. ‘Young Master Rourke had only just died. And then she had the accident. And then Kleo was busy keeping you away from Cornelia – it’s been a mess, but I swear this is all we know!’
‘We can’t stand here arguing, Ari,’ said Jaide, feeling desperate. ‘The Evil is just outside the wards, trying to get in. We have to do this now.’
‘How are you going to find it if no one else has been able to?’
‘Everyone’s been looking in the wrong place.’ Jaide grinned triumphantly. ‘Come with us and we’ll show you.’
‘Oh . . . all right,’ he said, cat curiosity winning in the end, as it always did. ‘I’m all eyes. And nose and whiskers and tail.’
Jack called Cornelia back to him and together they walked up the corridor to the library for the third time that week. A wide line of footsteps marked the way through the dust. Jack took out the flashlights and gave one to Jaide, but they didn’t turn them on just yet. There was still enough light coming through the high windows to show the way.
The library was half empty. Many of the books had been cleared, and a stack of boxes rested behind the door, tagged with labels in Rodeo Dave’s handwriting. Whatever else he was up to, he had been genuinely busy.
‘So,’ said Ari, walking around the base of the boxes and emerging with his tail high, ‘where is it?’
‘There,’ said Jaide, pointing at the painting. It was still leaning against the wall where Rodeo Dave had cleaned it. The resemblance of the Lady in Yellow to a young Grandma X was more striking than ever, despite the old-fashioned clothes.
‘Behind the painting?’
‘Inside the painting,’ said Jack, putting down his backpack and taking out Professor Olafsson and the rope. ‘Tell us where you saw that constructor thing and I’ll go get it.’
‘On the second floor, two doors along on the left from the main flight of stairs,’ he said. ‘It’s a long, brass tube that looks a bit like a telescope. You’ll need both of you to carry it.’
/> ‘Okay,’ said Jaide. ‘We’ll be right back.’
The twins hurried through the castle, past all the chests they had uselessly searched before, the stiff-limbed suits of armour that contained nothing but wooden frames and cobwebs, and door after door of abandoned rooms full of dusty antiques. The room Professor Olafsson had identified was little different from the others, except for a tubular shape lying on a desk, six feet long and not tapered as a telescope would be. The sheet covering both tube and desk had pulled away, revealing one brassy end, capped with a smoky glass lens.
The twins uncovered it completely and took one end each. It was too heavy to be hollow, but not so heavy that they couldn’t lift it. Treading carefully, taking turns going backwards, they retraced their steps to the library, where Cornelia, Ari and Professor Olafsson were waiting.
‘Now what?’ asked Jack, mopping his brow.
‘Make two stacks of books three feet high,’ Professor Olafsson said. ‘Put the constructor on top of them so it’s lined up with the centre of the painting.’
Jaide hurried off to get some books from a pile that didn’t look particularly valuable.
‘How do we switch it on?’ she asked.
‘Switch what?’
