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‘Rourke!’ The macaw was a blue speck staying just out of reach of the monster.
Jaide was amazed. ‘Why is she still herself? Why hasn’t The Evil taken her over?’
‘The card must be protecting her,’ said Jack. ‘We have to help her!’
Cornelia was struggling to stay out of reach of The Evil. With the gold card heavy in her claws and her feathers full of water, it was amazing she was flying at all. But without their Gifts, what could the twins do?
‘What’s happening?’ asked Kyle, his eyes wide with horror.
‘I remember,’ said Tara in an amazed voice. ‘How could I forget? These guys are like superheroes. Kyle, wait until you see what they can do!’
‘We’re not anything at the moment,’ said Jack, thinking furiously. They couldn’t attack The Evil directly, but there might be another way, by luring it to the cross-continuum conduit constructor. If they could get The Evil to touch it, it would be sucked into the painting and there might be a way to trap it.
‘Cornelia,’ he called, ‘go to the library! We’ll meet you there!’
‘Aye-aye,’ she squawked back, banking sharply towards the window they had left open on the second floor. The motley creature lunged for her, lost its balance, and toppled with a roar into the moat.
‘That’s our chance,’ said Jaide. ‘Let’s go!’
They ran across the drawbridge, dodging mutated limbs that reached up for them from below. They passed under the portcullis, which Jaide briefly considered trying to close. It looked merely decorative, though, so she kept running. When they were through the front door, Jack slammed it behind him and locked it with the skeleton key.
‘What . . . what was that thing?’ asked Kyle, his face pale.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Jack. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Don’t worry about it? If my dad was here, he’d go mental. So would the Peregrinators. They’d never stop talking about it! That’s if it didn’t kill everyone first.’
‘You can’t tell them,’ said Jaide. ‘It’s a secret.’
‘There’s this guy,’ said Tara. ‘Big beard . . . deep voice . . .’
She was getting vague and sluggish again. Jaide tugged her down the corridor after Jack, with Kyle bringing up the rear.
‘Is this something to do with the treasure?’ he called after them. ‘Did you find it?’
‘We’ll tell you later,’ Jaide lied.
As they ran for the library, they heard the distinctive tramp tramp of marching metal feet.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jack. ‘That’s just a booby trap to stop people stealing the, uh, treasure. Rodeo Dave must’ve switched it back on again.’
But as they rounded the last corner, it wasn’t the usual sort of armour they saw at the far end of the corridor. It was one of the leather suits from the hidden basement, covered with golden serpents. A ghostly white light shone from its eyepieces.
++Your father is ours,++ said The Evil. ++He has been all along. Join him now and give us the Card of Translocation, and we will spare your friends. If not, they will all die.++
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Wrong Gifts
‘IT’S LYING,’ SAID JAIDE.
‘I know,’ said Jack.
‘That voice,’ said Tara with a shudder. ‘I dream about it sometimes . . .’
Jack judged the distance to the library door. If they were quick they might just make it, and if they got there first they could retrieve the golden card from Cornelia and start fighting back. ‘Let’s go!’
They sprinted for the door. Jack, normally the fastest runner, took the lead, but he was soon overtaken by Tara, thanks to her slightly longer legs. Once again Kyle fell behind, and Jaide slowed to help him along even though she could see the armour lumbering rapidly towards them, picking up speed with every step. Jack felt as though he was running right for the waiting armour, its arms opening wide to catch them, but when it was still some yards away he and Kyle took the turn through the doorway, feet skidding on the dusty floor, barely staying upright.
Jack looked wildly around for Cornelia.
The library was exactly as they had left it, with the two ordinary suits of armour standing on either side of the painting, the cross-continuum conduit constructor directly in front of it, and books scattered everywhere.
‘Cornelia!’ Jack shouted, struck by the sudden fear that someone – or something – had got her.
His torch picked out a flash of blue wings fluttering towards him.
‘Mind the yardarm,’ she squawked, letting the gold card drop heavily into his hands, then flew to her usual perch on top of the statue of Mister Rourke.
Jack caught the card with both hands and turned it over to examine it from all angles. Now what? He’d got this far, but what could he do next? He didn’t have a Gift anymore. Would the card even listen to him?
There was more skidding behind him as the others followed in his footsteps. Tara and Kyle turned to look at the armour as it reached the doorway and came to a complete halt.
Only Jaide didn’t stop. She kept running, following a wild guess, right up to the nearest of the booby-trapped suits of armour. Without hesitation, she rapped twice on its chest.
‘That thing’s Evil and it’s after us,’ she said, pointing, ‘and we’re troubletwisters so you have to help us!’
The armour came grindingly to life. It looked at its neighbour and seemed to confer with it.
‘Don’t take too long. It’s right behind us!’
The armour inclined its head, and the other nodded, too. Clenching their fists, they moved forward to tackle The Evil head-on.
Armour clashed with a sound of metal meeting leather. Jaide stepped hurriedly away from them, leading the others to the base of the spiral staircase.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Tara to Kyle. ‘They can do anything!’
Kyle was staring at the card. ‘Is that real gold?’
Tara’s confidence washed away Jack’s uncertainty. Gift or no Gift, they were still troubletwisters. And now that they had the Card of Translocation, he could get their Gifts back.
He raised the card. Symbols were flicking across its surface, almost too quickly to see.
‘Give me my Gift back,’ he told it.
Something crackled through the skin of his fingers and rushed up his arms, making his hair stand on end and his legs go weak. He felt instantly complete, but weirdly, his eyesight didn’t change. The shadows were still impenetrable. Maybe it took time to settle back in, he told himself.
‘Did it work, Jack?’ asked Jaide.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. Things did look a little different, but not in the way he had expected. Everything around him seemed to be growing taller, including Jaide, Tara, and Kyle.
‘I think I’m shrinking,’ he said.
‘No, you’re not,’ said Tara. ‘You’re sinking!’
He looked down at his shoes, which were already up to the laces in the library’s stone floor, as if he was being sucked into quicksand. He lifted one foot, and then put it down and lifted the other. All that happened was that he sa
nk even further, up to his shins.
‘You’ve got the wrong Gift,’ said Jaide.
‘What use is this?’ Jack gasped out in frustration. The floor was up to his knees now. If it continued, he would soon be in the basement – and what happened if he kept falling? Would he go right down to the centre of the Earth?
With a weird, slippery sensation, the gold card fell through his fingers and clattered to the floor. Jaide snatched it before Kyle could.
‘Here,’ said Tara, offering Jack a hand. ‘I’ll pull you up.’
But her hand went right through his without even slowing down.
Panic was rising in Jack as fast as the floor. He told himself to keep calm and breathe slowly. This was a Gift like any other. He could presumably learn to control it. Someone must have, after all, before it had ended up in the card.
He concentrated on making himself solid again, but a sudden pain warned him off that route. What would happen if flesh and stone tried to occupy the same place at the same time? Instead he thought about just his hands, and bent down and pushed against the floor. That worked. He could feel the stone distinctly against his skin. With an awkward push-up move, he brought his legs up out of the stone, concentrated on his feet, and managed to stand without slipping down again. It took constant focus, but he could do it.
Jaide studied the symbols flashing by on the card.
‘You obviously have to pick the right one,’ she said.
‘Can I have a Gift, too?’ asked Tara. ‘I’d love to be able to walk through walls.’
‘I’d like to be invisible,’ said Kyle.
‘Hang on,’ said Jaide, concentrating on a symbol she recognised: two connected curves like a kid’s drawing of a bird, with squiggly lines underneath that might represent air. She had seen something like that the first time Grandma X had shown them the cards.
That was the best lead she had to go on, so the next time she saw it, she tapped the card like The Evil had and cried ‘Give me that one!’ in a loud voice before it could flash away.
