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Hector Shield nodded, and pointed urgently at something behind Jack, stabbing the air with his finger.
Jack whipped around, squinting against the rain. Even through the downpour he could see what his father was pointing at so emphatically.
A thick, black twister was rising up over the castle like a supernatural cobra gathering its strength to strike.
A tornado.
Jaide’s Gift had gone out of control.
‘No, no,’ she hissed into the wind. She’d forgotten about trying to be unobtrusive, and was making wild hauling-in motions with her hands. ‘That’s way too much!’
The twister didn’t listen to her. It sucked in the rain and blew it out sideways like a fire hose, knocking a council worker upside down and sending him sliding across the mud with the speed of an ice-hockey puck. Then it swooped down and picked up the bridge, raising it high up above the heads of the cowering workers.
‘No!’ shrieked Jaide. ‘Listen to me! Obey me!’
The twister slowed and bent forward, towards Jaide, the bridge still spinning thirty feet up in the air. The huddle of council workers suddenly split, everyone running in different directions.
Jaide felt the tension in the tornado, the built-up energy that just had to go somewhere. It needed to do something.
‘All right,’ said Jaide sternly. ‘Just don’t hurt anyone, and then you really have to go back to normal.’
The tornado spun faster still, crouched down like a discus thrower about to throw, and then the bridge suddenly flew out of it, sailing across the field and smashing into the distant pyramid, broken pieces of timber sliding down the reinforced concrete slope.
Downstream, Jack watched open-mouthed as the twister reared up even higher, got thinner, and then winked out of existence.
He had to shut his mouth as he suffered a massive raindrop straight down his throat. Coughing, he turned back towards his father, shrouded in rain on the other side of the creek. The water level had suddenly risen, now that the fallen bridge was no longer blocking the creek upstream, so there was no chance for either of them to get across.
‘Jack! Mmmm the mmmmm.’
‘What?’ shouted Jack, as loudly as he could.
‘Catch – the – phone!’
The twins’ father pulled back his left arm and threw something small and black high across the creek bed. Jack stepped back, stretched, and caught the object. In the next instant his feet slid in the mud and he went over backwards, landing with a jarring thud.
‘Ow,’ said Jack. ‘Major ow.’
He looked at the phone clutched tightly in his hand. It was in a plastic bag, with a charger. The screen was lit up, showing a message.
I heard about Grandma. Will call you later. Don’t tell your mother I was here!
Jack looked across the stream. His father was backing away, disappearing into the darkness of the torrential rain.
‘Wait! Don’t go!’
A hand tugged at his shoulder.
‘Jack? Are you all right? Did the tornado get you?’
It was Tara.
‘Yeah, no, I just slipped.’
‘Well, come on. Don’t just stand there! You’ll drown.’
The creek was rising with incredible speed. The rain was phenomenal – it had to be some kind of cloudburst. Jack staggered to his feet, slipping the phone and charger into his pocket as Tara helped him up. She tried to hold her umbrella over him, but one last, errant remnant of the twister blew past, smashing the umbrella’s ribs and turning it inside out.
‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Tara. ‘That was Mum’s! This weather is crazy!’
‘You can say that again,’ said Jaide, who had just run up. She looked apologetically at Jack, but there wasn’t time to say anything more before Tara’s father bore down on them.
‘Are you all right?’
He pulled Tara into a hug. Tara’s dad had been much more protective of her since The Evil’s last attack, when she’d been caught up in a train wreck. Tara had told the twins she both liked and disliked his new attention. This time, she let him keep his arm around her.
‘Do you three want to go home?’ he asked. ‘I can come back later by myself. You’re soaked, and this rain, this amazing wind . . .’
‘I think it’s easing,’ said Tara. ‘I’m not cold. And I don’t mind being soaked. I want to see the rest of the estate.’
The rain was easing, at least near the castle. Further off, towards the woods where the twins’ father had gone, it was still bucketing down.
‘What about you two?’
‘We’re fine,’ said Jaide. ‘Lead on, McLin!’
She fell back a few paces as they headed for the pyramid.
‘Did you speak to Dad?’ she whispered to her brother. ‘What did he say?’
Jack retrieved the message and held the phone out to her, keeping it cradled in his palm.
Jaide stared at it, her pale brow creased, the rain trickling down her face like tears.
‘Is that all?’
‘He didn’t have time for more. If someone saw him and told Mum—’
‘But still—’
‘We can ask him when he calls us. Besides, look, Jaide – he gave us a phone.’
The upside of their brief encounter with their father only occurred to her then. The twins had been hankering for a phone for months, but neither their mother nor their grandmother had given in. It was hard to play them off against each othe
r when they agreed so absolutely, if only on that single point. But now their father had given them one, and they hadn’t even had to ask!
Despite the circumstances, it was a welcome development.
‘Let’s call him,’ Jaide said.
‘The number he texted us from is blocked . . .’
Tara glanced over her shoulder to hurry them up, and Jack hastily put the phone away again. Whatever their father had to say to them would have to wait a little while longer.
CHAPTER THREE
The Mission
THE PHONE BURNED A HOLE in Jack’s pocket all the while they were on the castle grounds, following Tara’s father from place to place as he inspected the other structures for their market potential. None of it was all that interesting, because a lot of the rooms were locked. Even the pyramid was a let-down, although Jack was kind of impressed that the bridge hadn’t even dented the outer face.
Ordinarily, the twins would have been interested in the makeshift menagerie and its unhappy occupants, but by that stage they just wanted to get home and find out how Grandma X was.
Most of the animals were being patched up by Portland’s vet after being recaptured. The vet was a slender woman with surprisingly big hair, even with the rain weighing it down. She explained that several animals were still missing, including a grey wolf and both chimpanzees.
‘There’s a macaw, too,’ she said. ‘If you see it, leave it well alone. Parrots can have a nasty bite.’
‘No problem,’ said Tara. ‘All I want to do now is get out of the rain.’
‘Agreed,’ said Jack. ‘Can we go?’
Tara’s father was staring at the porter’s lodge, no doubt thinking about how it could be redeveloped or knocked down.
‘What? Oh, sure. I’ve seen enough.’
Susan was waiting for them when they got home. Dinner was on the stove, a stir-fry whose vegetables had been cooked so long it was hard to tell the chicken from the carrots. Neither twin cared about that, though. The appearance of their father at the estate had thoroughly rattled them. His presence suggested that Grandma X was sicker than anyone was telling them.
