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A car pulled up the lane, and the twins recognized the distinctive decal flames of Grandma X’s new car. They waved, and Susan waved back from the passenger seat. The car pulled up on the gravel by the front porch. Susan got out but Grandma X didn’t; the car stayed running.
“I hear you did well,” Susan told them, giving them both a quick hug. “Your grandmother wants to take you somewhere, so go on and do that while I think about dinner. You’ve earned a night off from homework.”
Jack beamed. “How did you know we passed?”
“The usual way. She always knows everything.” There was no bad feeling in Susan’s voice. It was just a statement of fact. “Go on. Showers before bed tonight. You look like you’ve been rolling in dirt, Jack. You, too, Jaide.”
“It’s called soccer, Mom.”
“Either way, we need to get it off you. Where’s Stefano?”
“In his room,” said Jack. “Being grumpy.”
“Go easy on him,” said Susan. “You two don’t know how lucky you are.”
Jaide wanted to ask what she meant. It bothered her that Susan now knew more about certain things to do with Wardens than they did. It had been much easier in some ways when being troubletwisters was a secret they kept from her.
The engine of the Austin revved and the twins took the hint. Both went for the front door and, after a brief tussle that Jaide won, Jack settled into the broad back seat. Jaide loved the Austin even more than the old Hillman. Everything about it was smaller, making it feel more kid-friendly, and there was a compass mounted in the dash that had words in what looked like Latin rather than East-West-North-South. There was no rhyme or reason to the direction it pointed — or at least none Jaide could make out.
“Belts on,” said Grandma X, and with a quick wave to Susan they were off. “You both did very well. I’m proud of you.”
Praise from Grandma X meant a lot. The twins basked in it for a moment before curiosity got the better of them.
“Where are we going, Grandma?” asked Jaide.
“Somewhere very special,” she said. “Two somewheres, actually. I think it’s time you officially met the remaining wards of Portland.”
Jaide glanced excitedly at Jack, who was leaning forward intently. This was big, and it said more clearly than words that Grandma X was impressed by their progress. The first two wards they had only discovered by accident, and they had never been able to confirm what the other two were, although they had their suspicions.
“I bet it’s the cactus and the giant at Mermaid Point,” said Jack.
“What makes you say that?” asked Grandma X.
“There was that time you took us on a tour when we first arrived, when The Evil was attacking. You looked at the lighthouse, where the Something Read Ward is, then you looked at the cactus in Founder’s Park, and you told us about the giant. They must be the Something Growing and Someone Dead wards.”
“Is that what you think, too, Jaide?”
Jaide nodded, although something about Grandma X’s tone made her doubt. She felt as though she was being tested again.
“Are we wrong?” Jaide asked.
“Have patience. You’ll soon find out.”
They drove over the iron bridge and down Main Street, through the heart of Portland. It was a short trip. The Austin stopped at Founder’s Park and Grandma X killed the engine.
“It must be the cactus,” said Jack, unbuckling, and opening the car door. “There’s nothing else out here but grass.”
“Is it the grass?” asked Jaide.
Grandma X just smiled.
The cactus garden was in the center of the park, and resembled a miniature spiky forest. Some of the cactuses were over twenty feet high. The tallest had pink flowers at the top that always seemed to be in bloom. The twins crossed the grass until they were standing at the forest’s edge, within touching distance of the nearest spikes.
“We’re here,” said Grandma X.
“Which one is it?” asked Jack.
“You tell me.”
Jaide had half expected this. They were being tested again, but more playfully, she suspected, with no real consequences if they failed. No consequences except for embarrassment, anyway. She was determined to succeed, and before her brother did, too.
The twins split up and circled the cactus garden in opposite directions. None of the cactuses stood out, except for the largest, and it seemed unlikely that the Wardens would make the Growing Ward something so obvious.
But weirdly, none of the other cactuses stood out as anything unusual, either. Both twins had learned to trust their instincts when it came to things like this, and they were getting no twinges or odd signals that one was different from the others in any significant way.
Jack and Jaide met back where they had started. Grandma X watched them with an amused glint in her gray eyes.
“Give up?” she said.
“No,” said Jack. He was as stubborn as Jaide, in his own way, and if nothing had caught his eye on the outside of the cactus garden, then the ward had to be on the inside. Carefully appraising the fleshy branches and their long, tapering needles, he chose a path least likely to snag his clothes or skin and continued his exploration.
It was like a maze inside the garden, and much denser than it seemed from the outside. Jaide took the same way in but made a left turn where Jack had gone right, at a fat-bellied cactus that looked like a prickly snowman. That wasn’t the ward, and neither were any of the others they passed, but Jaide and Jack both felt a growing sense of something in the forest, something definitely out of the ordinary.
As they spiraled into the center, that feeling grew stronger.
“Ouch,” said Jack, catching his left forearm and leaving a tiny drop of blood behind on the thorn that had scratched him. Ahead, through the tall, greenish trunks, he saw what looked like a small clearing, and on the other side of it was Jaide, trying to find a way in. Throwing caution to the wind, he turned sideways and pushed through.
Jaide had a long, red weal across the back of her right leg, but she wasn’t letting that slow her down. She ducked under a curving spiked branch and stepped into the clearing at exactly the same time as Jack.
“I was first,” said Jack. It wasn’t true but saying it first was a kind of victory.
“No way! I’ll give you a tie at the very most.”
There were more important matters at hand. “What is this place?” Jack asked.
Jaide didn’t know, but it felt important. The clearing was seven feet across, and roughly circular, with cactuses pressing in on all sides. The floor was covered in fallen needles, and mostly level except for a low mound that crossed the ground between the twins. The feeling of significance radiated from that mound, but Jaide couldn’t see any living thing on or near it. Jack looked for mushrooms or, skimming the top with his sneaker to clear away the needles, some other kind of fungus, but there was nothing. Just bare dirt.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s nothing here.”
“No,” said Jaide. “Nothing growing, anyway.”
“Maybe we’ve got the wrong ward,” Jack said. “Maybe it’s not the Growing Ward at all.”
&n
bsp; “You think it’s Someone Dead? Here?”
Both twins took a step back from the long, low mound, which, they both realized at the same time, did look a lot like a grave.
“Oh. Sorry,” said Jack, feeling a need to apologize to the person buried here, even though he hadn’t really done anything wrong. Grandma X would have been sure to stop them if they weren’t supposed to be there. It just seemed disrespectful to have been arguing on top of someone’s dead body.
“Who do you think it is?” asked Jaide, staring solemnly at the mound. That was definitely the ward. She had no doubt of it. “Could it be Grandma X’s father?”
“We can ask when we get back out.”
“After you,” said Jaide, happy to get moving now that they had a partial answer to the mystery. It creeped her out a little, the idea of a secret grave in the heart of Portland. Like a lot of Portland’s secrets, she suspected it had a sad history, and that made her think of Lottie, who was still trapped in the Evil Dimension and likely never to get home, unless her twin sister helped her.
“Is it your father?” Jaide asked Grandma X when they emerged from the cactuses, somewhat scratched and sobered by the experience. “We know his name was Earl Joseph Henschke, but people called him Joe, and he died in the house next door to yours the night Lottie disappeared. I don’t remember him being in the Portland graveyard, though, where Grandpa is. Is that him back there?”
If Grandma X was surprised by how much the twins had learned about her family, or by Jaide’s challenging tone, it didn’t show.
“It’s not Father,” she said, “but that’s a good guess.”
“Who is it, then?”
“Hester Bright. She requested to become one of the wards when she died. Such interment is not usual, but it has been granted in special cases, in return for extraordinary service. She was Warden of Portland for seventy years, and died when I was a girl. I remember her clearly. She could turn into three red foxes that each contained part of her, a very rare Gift that made her the terror of chickens for miles around. I’m not aware that she ever ate one, though; she just thought they were stupid and liked giving them a fright.”
