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“Sorry. The wretched mobile doesn’t get a signal down there, of course. Thirty-four calls in my absence, oh, great! That can only … oh, God, my mother!” Gideon sighed heavily. “She rang me eleven times.”
I was feeling my way forward along the wall. “Look, either you take this stupid blindfold off or you’ll have to guide me!”
“Okay.” His hand was back again.
“I could say a thing or two about guys who blindfold their girlfriends so they can check up on mobiles at their leisure,” observed Xemerius.
I wasn’t too keen on it either. “Has something bad happened?”
Another sigh. “I suppose so. We don’t often call each other. Still no reception here.”
“Watch out, there’s a step,” Xemerius warned me.
“Maybe someone’s sick,” I said. “Or you forgot something important. The other day my mum called goodness knows how many times to remind me to send my uncle Harry a birthday card. Ouch.”
If Xemerius hadn’t warned me, the knob at the end of the banisters would have caught me in the pit of the stomach. Gideon still didn’t notice. I felt my way up the spiral staircase as well as I could for myself.
“No, that’s not it. I never forget a birthday.” He sounded harassed. “It must be something to do with Raphael.”
“Your little brother?”
“He’s always doing dangerous stuff—driving without a license, diving off cliffs, climbing without safety gear. No idea who he’s trying to impress. Last year he had an accident paragliding and spent three weeks in hospital with a brain trauma. You’d think that would teach him a lesson, but no, he got Monsieur Po-Face Bertelin to give him a speedboat for his birthday. Of course that idiot goes along with everything Raphael wants.” Once we were at the top of the stairs, Gideon quickened his pace, and I stumbled several times. “Ah, at last! Here we go.” Obviously he was listening to his voice mail as we went along. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear anything.
“Oh, shit!” I heard him mutter several times, that was all. He had let go of me again, and I was groping my way blindly forward.
“If you don’t want to run into a wall, you’d better turn left now,” Xemerius told me. “Ah—looks like it’s suddenly occurred to him that you don’t have built-in radar.”
“Okay,” murmured Gideon. His hands briefly touched my face and then the back of my head. “Gwyneth, I’m sorry.” He did sound sorry about something, but I strongly suspected it wasn’t me. “Can you find your way back from here by yourself?” He undid the scarf, and I blinked at the light. We were standing outside Madame Rossini’s sewing room.
Gideon fleetingly stroked my cheek and gave me a wry smile. “You do know the way, right? Your car’s waiting. See you tomorrow.”
He had turned away before I could say anything.
“And off he goes,” commented Xemerius. “Lacking in the finer feelings department, if you ask me.”
“But what’s happened?” I called after Gideon.
“My brother’s run away from home,” he called back, without turning or slowing down. “Give you three guesses where he’s heading!” But he had gone around the next corner before I could make even one guess.
“Well, not Fiji, I bet,” I murmured.
“If you ask me, you’d have done better not to roll about in any haystacks with him,” said Xemerius. “Now he thinks you’re easy pickings, so he won’t go to any more trouble.”
“Shut up, Xemerius. You’re getting on my nerves with all this talk about haystacks. We kissed a bit, that’s all.”
“No reason to go beet red, darling.”
I put my hands to my glowing cheeks, feeling cross with myself. “Come on, let’s go. I’m hungry. At least I have a chance of getting some supper today. And maybe on our way we can catch a glimpse of these mysterious men from the Inner Circle.”
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you. I’ve been listening in on them all afternoon,” said Xemerius.
“Oh, good! Tell me more.”
“Boring, boring, boring. I thought they’d be drinking blood out of skulls and painting mysterious runes on their arms. No such luck. They just sat about in suits and ties, talking.”
“What about?”
“Let’s see if I can still remember.” He cleared his throat. “Basically it was whether they could break their own golden rules to outwit Black Tourmaline and Sapphire. Great idea, said some of them. Nope, no way, said others. Then the first lot said, But we must, you cowards, or we’ll never get anywhere with saving the world, and the second lot said no, terrible thing to do, also dangerous, what about the continuum and morality, and the first lot said, Yes, but never mind all that if it means saving the world. Then there was a lot of unctuous waffle—I think I slept through most of that. But then they all agreed that unfortunately Diamond is inclined to act on his own initiative, while Ruby seems to be a little idiot, unsuitable for time-travel missions Operation Opal and Operation Jade on account of being too stupid. Are you with me so far?”
