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Jack took his sister’s arm and guided her through the house and up the stairs to the top floor, both of them carefully avoiding the creaky floorboards that they had memorised from frequent practice.
They paused on the uppermost step, listening automatically for the sound of Grandma X’s snoring. But that night there was only silence. Grandma X was in a hospital bed on the other side of town – they wouldn’t be up in the middle of the night otherwise. The top floor of the house was empty.
Even as they took the final step, however, they heard a faint voice calling, ‘Rourke!’
‘Did you hear that?’ hissed Jaide.
‘Yes,’ whispered Jack. ‘I wish I hadn’t.’
‘Rourke!’
Jaide felt her brother’s hand tighten on her arm.
‘Maybe it’s the old man’s ghost?’
‘Why . . . why would he be calling his own name?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Rooooourke!’
‘Where’s it coming from?’
Jaide pointed at the door on the top landing. It looked like an ordinary door, but it wasn’t. Although it should have opened onto a north-facing bedroom, against all laws of geometry and space it actually led to the house’s basement, where Grandma X maintained the secret workshop that was the heart of her mission in Portland.
Called the blue room, it contained talking skulls, silver swords, living chess sets, and a thousand other things that defied easy description. There was also a huge mahogany writing desk that had no obvious special powers, but was the home of A Compendium of The Evil, the repository of knowledge collected by Wardens down the centuries. A thick folder full of notes, drawings, and often incomprehensible essays, it was kept safely away from Susan while she was in the house. They saved their true education for the three days of every normal week when their mother was stationed in Scarborough.
The only other entrance to the basement was from the front of the house, through a blue door that was hidden from the eyes of non-Wardens. The lock on that door could only be opened from the inside, and although the twins had worked out how to manage that during their first days in Portland, it was much easier to take the stairs.
‘Rooooourke!’
The distant cry came again.
‘I suppose we should check it out,’ said Jaide, but she didn’t move.
‘Maybe we should wake up Mum?’
‘We’ll never get the Compendium if we do that,’ said Jaide. She took a deep breath and then forced herself to step forward.
Nervously, one synchronised step at a time, they crossed the landing and opened the door.
‘Rooooourke!’ cried the voice again as they stepped through the door. It was much louder than before, and Jaide jumped, rising six feet off the ground and almost colliding with the ceiling before she got her Gift under control.
Jack felt an urge to run back to their bedroom, but instead he pulled Jaide down and led the way onwards.
The blue room was dimly lit by the eternal candle flames of two crystal chandeliers. Little was visible in the gloom, even to Jack’s night vision. There were so many competing shadows, a few of them quite dissimilar to the objects that cast them. A hat rack cast a shadow that bent into a right angle in the middle. The broken grandfather clock cast no shadow at all.
Atop a coffee table balanced on one slender leg sat something new: a cloth-covered shape that was round about the middle, like a barrel, and domed at the top. The silken cloth shone in the candlelight, patterned with red and gold hibiscus flowers. Tassels along the bottom swayed gently, as though in a breeze.
‘Rourke! Rourke! Rourke!’ shouted the voice, startlingly loud in the gloom, and this time both twins nearly hit the ceiling.
‘Who’s there?’ asked a different, sterner voice from the other side of the cloth-covered shape, which was now rocking furiously from side to side. ‘Come forward, where I can see you!’
The twins knew that voice, and they obeyed it instantly.
Sitting in a chair shaped like a dragon’s mouth was a regal, blue-grey cat.
‘Jack and Jaide,’ Kleo said with the slow decision of a judge. ‘What are you two doing down here?’
‘Oh, Kleo,’ said Jaide, ‘we came to look something up in the Compendium, and then—’
‘Rourke! Rourke!’ shrieked the voice.
‘What is that?’ asked Jack.
Kleo nodded at the cloth-covered thing.
‘Take a look. She won’t hurt you.’
Jaide reached out with one tentative hand, grabbed the cloth by a dangling corner, and swept it aside.
Both twins stepped back in surprise.
Beneath the cloth was a big brass cage. Inside the cage, running back and forth on a thick, wooden perch, was a very grouchy-looking parrot.
‘Rourke!’ it said, fixing them with first one baleful eye, then the other, swivelling its head from side to side as it did so. Its curved beak was black and sharp-tipped. Even in the gloom, the colouring of its feathers was magnificent, a deep royal blue, apart from a dash of bright yellow around each eye and another on either side of its beak. It was easily the largest bird Jack had ever seen, its tail feathers so long and pointed that they stuck out the side of the cage.
‘Rourke!’ it said, and Jaide suddenly felt like giggling. Was it saying ‘Rourke’ or just squawking?
‘Rawk?’ she said back at it.
The bird took a step away from her.
‘Cut and run,’ it said in a hoarse but clear voice. ‘Parrots and children first!’
‘What is it?’ asked Jack, coming around to look at it from the other side.
‘She is a Hyacinth Macaw,’ said Kleo, licking a paw and smoothing down the fur behind her ears.
‘What’s she doing down here?’ asked Jaide.
The macaw clicked loudly with a thumblike tongue and glared at her again.
‘Cornelia is here because I am guarding her.’
‘Guarding her from what?’
‘Ari, partly,’ said the cat. ‘Can you imagine what he’d do with a giant bird in a cage? He has no self-control with food. Begging your pardon, Cornelia.’
Jack could imagine Ari eating Cornelia for sure, even if the cat felt really bad about it afterwards. But the parrot also had a very large beak and a wicked eye. Jack smiled. Perhaps the protection was for Ari as well.
A series of sudden understandings had come to Jaide, too, along with a suspicion or two. Ari had been hearing the macaw’s voice long before they had, which meant the bird had been in the blue room for some time, perhaps all weekend – and the town vet had mentioned a macaw that had escaped from the old man’s menagerie and was still on the loose . . .
‘What else are you guarding her from?’ Jaide asked.
‘I’m not entirely sure. Cornelia doesn’t want to talk about it yet. But she was at the estate the night the old man died, and it’s possible she saw something.’
This was a juicy revelation.
‘So you think he didn’t just die of a heart attack?’ Jaide asked. ‘You think it might be murder?’
‘Which means Cornelia’s under witness protection until Grandma comes back?’ added Jack excitedly.
Kleo raised a calming paw.
‘Don’t jump to conclusions, troubletwisters. We don’t know that she saw anything at all. She arrived here Saturday, just after midnight, in a terrible state. She won’t talk to me because I’m a cat, no matter how much I try to persuade her that I am no ordinary cat, and she won’t talk to Custer, either, because he turns into a cat. She just gets agitated and shouts the old man’s name over and over. All I know is that something frightened her, and frightened her very badly.’
‘Custer was here?’ asked Jaide.
‘After the accident,’ Kleo explained. ‘He came by to collect some of your grandmother’s things, and he set up the cage for Cornelia while he was here.’
‘Did he say anything about Grandma?’
Kleo’s ear flattened in regret. ‘O
nly to keep an eye on everyone in this house, and to keep Ari away.’
Cornelia was watching them with her big black eyes, rimmed with yellow so they looked permanently startled.
‘Rourke,’ she chirruped quietly.
Jack felt sorry for her. He didn’t know much about parrots, but he knew they lived for a long time. Cornelia might have been in Young Master Rourke’s menagerie for decades. Maybe they had been friends. Now he was gone.
‘Perhaps we could try talking to her,’ he said, edging closer to the cage.
Kleo stood up on all four legs, as though about to intervene, but all she said was, ‘Perhaps, Jack, but be careful.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I read once how a parrot bit the leg off an eagle.’
Jaide watched curiously as Jack bent over so he was eye to eye with Cornelia. The macaw studied him warily, too, leaning with her weight mainly on her left clawed foot. It had a metal ring around it, he noticed for the first time, as though she had once been tagged by a scientist. Her head bobbed up and down, not encouragingly, more as though she was reassuring herself of something.
‘Rourke?’
‘I’m not Young Master Rourke,’ Jack said, ‘but I’d like to be your friend, if you’ll let me.’
Cornelia tilted her head one way, then the other.
