AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her expression changed so suddenly Jack almost jumped off the bed.
“It tricked me!” she snarled, squashing the bug and leaping to her feet, sending her duvet flying. Her fists clenched, and a dark disk of air swirled around her head like a crown, shooting out thorny sparks of electricity. The four-poster bed rocked and swayed under her like a ship on stormy seas. “It tricked me!”
++So close!++ cried The Evil, all attempt at pretense abandoned now. She could hear the cold absence of anything human in its voice now. ++You are so close — just open the way and we will come to you!++
++Never!++ replied Jaide. To Jack she said, “Where’s it coming from? How did it get in here? We can’t get rid of it until we know where it is.”
Jack turned on the lights and looked around for the weevil he had brushed off his hand. He couldn’t see it, but he did see an ant on the floor by his feet, a tiny black spider high in one corner, a fly parked on the wall next to the window, and a millipede inching up one bedpost. All had glowing white eyes.
“It’s everywhere,” he said, raising one bare foot to squish the ant. “We need an exterminator!”
Behind them, the door crashed open. Stefano stood there, framed in bright blue light. His hair was blowing wildly and his expression fierce.
“You called?”
He raised the iron rod he held in his right hand.
But before he could do anything with it, Grandma X pushed him aside, dressed in her nightgown with hair in curlers.
“Not in the house!”
She raised her moonstone ring and pointed palm out at the spider. Cold white light flashed, and the insect curled up and dropped to the floor.
“But you are,” said Stefano, red-faced.
“Do as I tell you and don’t argue!”
The ant made a run for it, but Jack put his foot down. Jaide bashed the millipede with one curled fist. When Stefano lunged for the fly, it buzzed away from him, right into another white flash from Grandma X.
“What’s going on?” asked Susan, stepping on the weevil as she burst into the room. “What’s all this racket?”
“The Evil,” said Grandma X shortly. “The early warning system went off. I’ve been searching the house for the source and finally found it in the children’s bedroom.”
“What was it doing to you?” asked Susan, turning pale and gathering the twins to her.
Jaide struggled, but her mother’s arms were too tight.
“Nothing, Mom. Just talking.”
“We’re okay,” Jack assured her. “Did we get all of it?”
They looked around at the walls, ceiling, and floor, wondering if anything was left. From the blue room came the continuing sound of clocks chiming and a mechanical bear banging its drum. Jaide’s sudden rage had faded, but she could’ve kicked herself for not recognizing those sounds. The house had several means of alerting its inhabitants to the presence of The Evil. As well as the clocks and the bear, several special barometers were sure to be showing stormy readings and the weathervane on top of the house would be spinning like mad until The Evil was completely gone.
“There must be a small piece remaining,” Grandma X said. “We can’t rest until we’ve rid the house of it.”
“What can I do?” asked Susan.
“Get the vacuum cleaner,” she said. “I’ll call the cats and get Cornelia out of her cage so they can help. You three” — she turned to the troubletwisters — “search the house from top to bottom. Stay in sight of one another, and don’t use your Gifts unless it’s an absolute emergency. I’m sorry I was sharp with you, Stefano, but there was simply no need to go overboard. Talking is all The Evil can do in such a small form.”
The twins nodded. Stefano looked resentful, but nodded, too.
“Words can be enough,” she added. “Don’t listen to any rapports you might hear, unless you’re sure they’re from me.”
“Grandma,” said Jaide, “how is it getting in? The wards are still working, aren’t they?”
“They are. Don’t worry. It’s nothing you’re doing.”
They split up to pursue their separate tasks, and for the next hour the house was full of the sound of vigorous pursuit, as cockroaches, moths, worms, even a sleepy bee were shaken out of their hiding places, many of them innocent, but some decidedly Evil. Ari took no chances and ate all the bugs he found. Kleo was both more elegant and economical in her Evil-killing, skewering bugs with a single claw as they tried to scurry away. Cornelia snapped her beak with uncanny accuracy at anything flying.
Every now and again, Jack and Jaide caught a hint of The Evil’s voice as they went through the house. Mostly it just repeated what it had said earlier, but once, when they had a white-eyed mosquito cornered in the bathroom, it tried a different tack.
++One of you will join us,++ it said. ++One always does. Why do you think she isn’t trying to rescue the one she calls sister?++
“Be quiet,” said Jack, swatting at the insect with a rolled-up towel. “I’m not listening.”
++She knows how it must be.++ The Evil’s mental voice was thin and whiny like a mosquito’s buzz, but that didn’t make its words any less horrible. ++You will join us, or your sister will. Open the way and I will leave her alone.++
“He said, be quiet!” Jaide used her Gift to lift herself up so her towel was in range of the whispering bug. One well-timed swat saw it smeared on the ceiling, silenced.
Stefano peered in from the corridor, where he was sweeping cobwebs with his iron rod. He saw her land on the tiled floor in a swirl of air.
“Your grandmother said —”
“I know what she said.” Jaide wasn’t going to be told off by him. “I barely used it at all. How are you doing with those spiders?”
Gradually, the banging and chiming from the blue room subsided and the house was quiet. The hunters reconvened on the first-floor landing, dusty, tired, and somewhat deflated. Fighting The Evil had never been so … tedious.
“To bed,” said Grandma X. “Unless anyone has anything to add.”
Jaide was tired and tetchy enough to think that Jack’s plan from earlier had a lick of sense. Perhaps it was time to be blunt.
“Why aren’t you doing anything to rescue your sister?” she asked.
If Grandma X was surprised by this question, she kept that surprise well hidden. “Is that what it said to you?”
“One of the things.”
“Well, you know better than to believe anything The Evil tells you.”
“Does that mean you are trying to rescue her?” asked Jack.
Grandma X turned to him. “I would never disobey Aleksandr or the wishes of the Grand Gathering.”
Jaide put her hands in her hair and pulled at her scalp. “So which is it? Is The Evil lying or are you?”
“I think we’re all getting a little overexcited,” said Susan. “Now’s not the time to talk about this.”
“Tomorrow?” asked Jaide.
“It already is tomorrow,” said Stefano, yawning hugely.
“Exactly,” said Susan. “To bed, all of us.”
Jaide collapsed face-forward into her pillow and went straight to sleep. This time it was Jack’s turn to lie awake, thinking about everything their grandmother wasn’t telling them. First on the list was Lottie, of course, but there was also Project Thunderclap, what Grandma X was doing with Stefano, and how The Evil was getting through the wards.
After six months of stability and peace, it suddenly felt as though the twins’ lives were being turned upside down again. Only this time, Jack suspected, they would have nowhere safe to land.
Tuesdays were never terribly interesting in Portland, except when The Evil was attacking. And even then, if it was a school day, Mr. Carver had a manner that made anything exciting instantly boring or weird. He insisted on reading everyone’s poetry homework for them, adopting an overly dramatic voice that bore no resemblance to the way anyone normally spoke. No wonder, Jack thought, there was a rumor going around that
Mr. Carver was such a bad actor even the Portland Players wouldn’t let him join their group.
