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The Gift came in a rush that felt like going down a lift really fast, and for a moment she wondered if she might actually take off.
But she didn’t, and when she performed a quick, exploratory jump, she found that she weighed just as much as before. She wasn’t falling through the floor, but she hadn’t gained a new Gift, either.
‘Jack, I don’t think it worked.’
He didn’t answer, except with a long, drawn-out yawn.
She looked at him. He was sagging where he stood, eyes falling shut and arms dangling limp at his sides. Tara and Kyle were the same. As Jaide watched, Kyle drooped to the floor and started snoring.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Am I doing this?’
‘So . . . sleepy,’ said Jack, beginning to sink into the floor again. Tara slumped down next to Kyle, fighting but steadily losing the fight to stay awake. Jaide knew she had to do something before she was the only one left standing.
Like Jack, it was a matter of finding enough control over her new Gift to make it stop working. Concentrating on Jack, she willed him to stop falling asleep. To wake up, in fact.
‘Wake up now!’
Jack’s eyes flew wide open, and he shot up out of the floor so fast she thought he might keep on going, right up to the ceiling.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Wow, Jaide. What happened?’
‘The gold card happened,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair! You got a really useful Gift but all I can do is put people to sleep, like I’m really boring.’
A sudden crash returned their attention to the duelling suits of armour. One of the friendly ones had just been knocked to pieces. The other was still putting up a fight, but it was looking severely dented and its helmet had been wrenched off and was being used as a metal boxing glove by its attacker. A series of thudding footsteps announced the arrival of the third suit of armour from the library’s upper floor, but at the same time, a second suit of Evil armour appeared in the doorway, and up above, a window shattered. Something big and angry growled.
‘What are we going to do, Jack?’ Jaide asked. They were hemmed in on all sides, with Tara and Kyle slumped at their feet.
‘We’ll just have to get some more Gifts,’ Jack said, bouncing up and down on his toes and sinking a little bit into the stone each time. He felt a bit too wide-eyed and alert now, but that was better than the alternative. The wave of sleepiness that Jaide had hit him with had felt like being buried in a landslide of cottonwool. ‘One of them is bound to be useful.’
Jaide raised the card and randomly selected another Gift.
Nothing happened.
She tried another.
Still nothing.
‘Jack, it’s not working!’
‘Maybe we can only have one at a time.’
‘Fiddly thing! Translocate!’
She felt something, presumably the sleeping Gift, leave her and quickly shook the card and watched the symbols flash by. How to choose? At random, she supposed.
Meanwhile, Jack considered his original plan of luring The Evil into the painting. That trick might fix one suit of armour, but was unlikely to work on more than one, or anything else The Evil might throw at them.
‘Perhaps we could hide in the painting while we find a better Gift—’
The second suit of armour staggered backwards into the cross-continuum conduit constructor and tripped over it. The copper tube ended up in an L-shape, and the armour shattered into numerous pieces.
‘Or not.’
‘Lucky we didn’t,’ said Jaide, ‘or we’d be trapped now.’
‘Like we aren’t already – what the . . . ?’
Jaide was shootings sparks out of her hair. Her skin prickled and tingled with swirling electricity. She pointed her finger at one of the suits of armour, but instead of a lightning bolt, all she got was more sparks.
‘Try again!’ Jack cried, curling into a ball so he wouldn’t get scorched.
‘Translocate!’
There were two Evil armours versus one, duking it out in the doorway, and when Jack peered out from his ball, he saw two grey snouts nosing through the balustrade, sniffing for them.
With a flap of wings, Cornelia circled Jack’s head.
++Join us,++ she crowed.
Jack ducked back down as the hideous white gaze of The Evil swooped him at very close range.
‘No!’ he cried.
++Join us,++ growled the wolves, from the floor above.
‘Never!’ cried Jaide, blinking in alarm at a world that had suddenly gone inside out, thanks to her new and useless Gift of X-ray vision.
++Join us,++ said the two suits of armour. Tara and Kyle stirred, murmuring the same words weakly in their sleep.
‘Stop saying that!’ shouted the twins at the same time.
The suits of armour went still. So did the wolves. Cornelia turned a circle over Jack, and then flew back to the bust of Mister Rourke, where she twisted her head from side to side and ruffled her feathers. Her eyes were black again.
‘Out of the rain,’ she said, twisting around to face the doorway, where, with a clatter of metal on stone, the last surviving good suit of armour staggered and fell over, revealing someone new standing behind it.
++Join us,++ said Hector Shield. ++Don’t you want to be reunited with your family?++
Jack and Jaide drew together. Their father’s eyes were hypnotically bright, growing brighter and brighter the closer he came. The natural brown colour faded from them until two shrivelled contact lenses fell down his cheeks, revealing in full the terrible whiteness beneath. The light made his face look cold and cruel.
He held Rodeo Dave with an arm twisted behind his back, and with one painful wrench, walked him into the room.
‘You’re not Dad,’ said Jaide. ‘You’re The Evil.’
‘We’re never going to do what you say,’ shouted Jack.
++But you did, didn’t you? And so well, too. You found the Card of Translocation for us – you even rid yourselves of your own pesky Gifts. We are proud of you, troubletwisters. You are practically one with us already.++
Jack and Jaide shook their heads.
‘We’ll never give you back the card,’ Jack said. ‘We know what it does now.’
‘We know you lied to us.’
++Too late, troubletwisters. The wards are defeated. How long can you withstand us on your own?++
‘Don’t listen to him,’ gasped Rodeo Dave. ‘He’s not – ah!’
He gasped as The Evil viciously wrenched his arm higher up his back.
‘Leave him alone!’ shouted Jaide.
++Would you trade his life for one of yours?++ The Evil asked.
The twins glanced at each other, wondering if it was being serious. It had made a similar offer earlier, but they had had no doubt then that it was just messing with their heads. And they came to the same conclusion now. Besides, neither of them was going to let the other go. There had to be a way to fight The Evil, even now. Perhaps with their new Gifts . . .
++We didn’t think so,++ said The Evil with a sneer.
And with that, Hector Shield’s eyes began to clear as The Evil left him and all its other hosts, withdrawing from them so it could gather all its strength to move into the troubletwisters.
The weight of The Evil bore down on the twins. They had felt this before, the terrible, soul-sapping emptiness that wanted to get inside them and make them hollow and lifeless. It was the blackness at the bottom of the ocean, the coldness of winter at the South Pole, and the emptiness of deep space all rolled up into one. They fought it with all their willpower, but The Evil at its full strength was too powerful. The colours in Jack’s vision faded to white. Jaide felt her fear peak and then begin to dissipate – and that was the most terrifying thing of all. When she stopped feeling afraid, she would know that The Evil had her completely.
Hector Shield watched it happen with sad brown eyes.
‘Help us!’ gasped Jack.
