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They nodded very seriously, wishing they could take back everything that had happened since Tuesday, when they had first come to the castle . . . except for seeing their real father for the first time in weeks.
He opened his arms and embraced them tightly.
‘Do you have to go?’ Jack asked, muffled by his shoulder.
‘I do,’ he said, ‘and you know I do. Your Gifts won’t stay still much longer. But you also know that I love you and miss you every second of every day. Maybe your mother will let you buy a new SIM card for that phone Harold gave you, so I can tell you so more often.’
Susan looked down at them, and after a moment she nodded.
‘This time the communication breakdown was not just at the troubletwister end,’ Hector said, standing and turning to Grandma X. ‘Harold was always angry at you for keeping secrets. That’s a mistake best not repeated, by all of us.’
Grandma X’s expression became very hard when her second son’s name was mentioned.
‘That, too,’ she said, ‘is a discussion that can wait.’
Mother and son embraced briefly in the rain. They separated with shining eyes.
Hector shook hands with Rodeo Dave.
‘Thanks for trying to keep the twins out of trouble,’ he said.
‘Ever a challenge, ever a reward.’ Rodeo Dave winked, stepping back.
Hector turned to Susan. ‘Are you sure you’re okay with this?’
‘Nothing you can say will make me feel any better about it,’ she said, kissing him firmly on the lips. ‘Just stay alive.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a lot to live for.’
Susan let Hector go.
‘All right,’ he said, patting his pockets as though looking for his car keys, ‘yes, now it’s definitely time to go. Goodbye, goodbye! Wipe that beer from your eye!’
The twins smiled at the latest of their dad’s weird sayings as he walked a safe distance from them and slipped the iron rod out of his coat pocket. He waved it in front of him, and the rain took on an electric smell. Jaide put her fingers in her ears. Last time she had seen Hector do this, her ears had rung for an hour.
Lightning stabbed out of the sky, striking the ground exactly where he was standing. The thunderclap felt like the world ending.
When light and sound had passed, Hector Shield was gone.
‘Whoa,’ said a voice from behind them. ‘Did you see that?’
‘I told you, Kyle. These guys are incredible.’
Tara ran to examine the smoking ground where the twins’ father had stood, then she looked straight up.
‘Gone, just like that! Amazing.’
‘Are the animals back in their pens?’ Grandma X asked in a calming voice.
‘All accounted for,’ said Kyle, ‘except for Nellie, here.’
Cornelia did her best to hide behind Jack’s head, but her tail feathers gave her away.
‘I don’t think she wants to stay here,’ Jack said. ‘Can she come home with us, Grandma?’
‘If that’s what she wants, I don’t know how we could stop her. Susan?’
‘Sure, but Jack has to feed her, and clean her cage whenever he’s told to.’
‘Easy!’
Cornelia bobbed up and down. ‘Nellie wants a nut.’
Pleased, Jack reached into his pockets to see if he had anything edible in there to give her, but found only a scrap of paper and something round and metallic.
Grandma X waved Tara and Kyle to her. ‘You two, I want to have a private chat with you about what you saw tonight.’
‘No way,’ Tara said. ‘This happened last time. I don’t want to forget. I want to tell everyone how incredible Jack and Jaide are!’
‘That’s exactly what we can’t have you doing.’
Grandma X raised the moonstone ring she wore on her right hand and held it before Tara’s eyes.
‘Oooh, pretty,’ Tara said in distant voice. ‘So . . . pretty . . .’
Kyle’s eyes crossed and his mouth drooped open.
‘Very good,’ said Grandma X. ‘Now, I can’t go erasing your memories every time you see something you shouldn’t. It’s bad for a young mind to be tampered with too often. Instead, I will silence you. Not completely; on every other subject you can speak as freely as you ever did. But on anything to do with The Evil and the Wardens and my two troubletwisters here, you can say nothing at all – unless it is to one of us. Do you understand?’
The pair nodded with solemnity beyond their years. Then Kyle sneezed with such explosive force that Cornelia took off with a squawk, dispelling the seriousness of the moment.
‘Let’s head back to the lodge,’ said Susan. ‘Much better than standing here, catching colds.’
She took Kyle and Tara in her arms and guided them down the hill, tailed closely by Grandma X. The twins and Rodeo Dave lingered a moment, looking up at the castle wall.
‘George wanted all this to go to the town, you know,’ said Rodeo Dave, ‘to be turned into a whaling museum. A memorial to the whales themselves, too.’
‘Do you think that’ll happen?’
‘Oh, the mayor will fight the idea of a memorial, and we both know that developers are already itching to get their hands on it, but I figure it will work out how George wanted. He had a stubborn streak, expensive lawyers, and a good heart. That’s a rare combination.’
He glanced at Jack, who was examining the two things he had found in his pockets. The paper was the scrap of dictionary Cornelia had given him in school earlier that day, with the word twister on it. Looking at it again, he saw another word, one that had a whole new significance after the night’s revelations.
‘Look.’ He showed Jaide. ‘Cornelia wasn’t telling us that she knew we were troubletwisters at all.’
She looked at the word he was indicating
. ‘Twin. She was telling us Harold was Dad’s brother, and we never realised!’
‘Rourke,’ said the macaw smugly, although now it sounded more like an ordinary squawk than anyone’s name.
‘Cornelia’s been in Portland a long time, and . . . and she belonged to someone else before Rourke,’ said Rodeo Dave, peering down at Jack’s left hand. ‘She would have met your dad and his brother when they were young, and parrots, like elephants, never forget. What’s the other thing in your hand?’
Jack held up the locket he had taken from the painting. He opened it, and the three of them looked inside.
‘I thought so,’ said Rodeo Dave. ‘Dear me, that takes me back.’
‘Is that . . . you?’ asked Jaide, recognising in the picture the phantom of a young man that had chased them across the estate. ‘With Grandma?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s your grandmother’s sister.’
‘Her twin?’ asked Jaide.
‘Of course,’ said Rodeo Dave. ‘I didn’t even recognise the painting of her until my memories returned.’
‘Was her name Lottie?’ Jack asked.
‘How did you . . . ? Ah, the inscription. Yes, that’s what we called her.’
‘That wasn’t her real name?’
‘No. It was—’ He stopped himself. ‘I know where this is headed. If I tell you, you’ll only try to find her in the Portland records, and then you’ll be one step closer to finding out the name your grandmother was born with.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, that’s none of my business. If she wants to tell you about that, she can do it herself. So you can forget about me giving you any help on that front. All right?’
The twins nodded. They hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort, but they were now. How many Lotties could there be in one small town?
