‘Of course it is,’ said Jaide in the bossy voice that reminded him of their mother. ‘And whatever it is, Grandma doesn’t want us to know anything about it. That’s why she made us forget.’
‘How?’
‘The hot chocolate. It must have been. Just thinking of it makes me feel dizzy.’ She passed a hand across her eyes and pressed on. ‘We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again, Jack. We have to remember, and we have to find out what she’s up to. Don’t let her give us anything that could make us forget.’
‘But we have to eat and drink,’ said Jack. Lunchtime felt like days ago already. ‘How do you know it’s her making us forget, anyway? It could be someone else.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Jaide. ‘Like who?’
‘Uh, the cats?’
‘How could it be the cats?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe someone’s controlling them,’ he said, flailing for an explanation that wouldn’t sound mad. Clearly Jaide hadn’t heard Ari talk, which meant he probably was mad, after all. ‘The same someone controlling the insects and the dog.’
An idea went off in Jaide’s head like a firecracker. ‘What do you call the pets that witches keep?’
‘Familiars.’ Jack’s eyes widened. ‘You think Grandma X is a witch?’
‘Have you got a better explanation? She’s up to something, and we’ve got in the way by coming to live in her home.’
Jack frowned. He didn’t like this explanation at all. If Jaide was right, it could be the gingerbread house all over again, and mad or not, he didn’t fancy being Hansel . . .
‘But she’s our grandmother,’ he said weakly. ‘I mean, she’s Dad’s mother . . .’
‘Dad isn’t exactly reliable himself, is he?’ said Jaide bitterly.
‘Troubletwisters!’ came their grandma’s voice from the ground floor. ‘Come down for dinner!’
Jaide checked her watch in disbelief. ‘It’s only five o’clock!’
‘Old people always eat dinner early,’ said Jack, hoping the stab of fear he felt wasn’t warranted. The hunger he had felt a moment ago had quite evaporated.
‘Troubletwisters?’
‘Don’t ask any questions or act suspicious,’ Jaide reminded him forcefully. ‘I guess we’ll have to eat what she gives us, but don’t drink any more of her hot chocolate, no matter how much you want to.’
Jack swallowed his concerns and nodded. As Jaide left the room and he got dressed, he realised the mystery of Ari would have to wait. If they didn’t survive the night, it would be irrelevant, anyway.
Dinner was laid out on the table for them: two innocent-looking hot dogs each with equally innocent-looking buns and a selection of decidedly non-suspicious mustards and ketchups. The smell made even Jaide’s stomach rumble, but she forced herself not to eat too much, and to carefully examine every mouthful before she swallowed it. She had never before paid such close attention to the inside of a hot dog, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Grandma X, watching them pick their slow and painful way through the meal. ‘I thought all children enjoyed hot dogs.’
‘Uh, we do; it’s just, we’ve been thinking about becoming vegetarians,’ Jaide improvised. It wasn’t entirely untrue, thanks to a particularly large piece of gristle caught between her front teeth. ‘We were learning about it at school back home, you see. . .’
‘You didn’t mention it before. And yesterday you ate a ham sandwich. Still, it’s not a bad philosophy, as long as we make sure your diet is balanced.’ With a heavy silver spoon, Grandma X indicated the bowl in front of her. It contained a strange-looking broth of lumpy green and orange vegetables, to which she now added a further layer of pungent herbs. ‘Lately I myself have been . . . not at my best . . . and I am hoping this will help.’
‘What do you call your diet?’ asked Jaide in as innocent a tone as she could manage.
‘Nothing in particular, dear. There are simply occasions when certain foods are beneficial, particularly for cleansing the mind. Would you care to try some?’
Both twins quickly shook their heads.
Grandma X smiled as though she rather enjoyed their reaction. ‘No, I didn’t think so.’
Jack tried his best to smile back, thinking that at least Grandma X wasn’t turning into a Hansel-and-Gretel type of witch. Or at least not yet. He couldn’t help glancing at the big old oven, though. It was huge, much larger than any normal person could need, particularly if she lived alone.
A child could fit in that oven. Even two children, in a pinch.
Jack shuddered and looked away. What was he doing? Staring at ovens, talking to cats—
Grandma X burped with surprising volume and waved her hand rapidly in front of her face.
‘Pardon me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m very sorry about that. Well, if you’re not going to eat any more, you can dispose of your leftovers and clean up your plates. And then, if you like, I’ve fished out a stack of your father’s old toys for you to play with. They’re in the lounge, by the ottoman.’
Jack didn’t know what an ottoman was, but the thought of toys his father had owned as a child was very nearly sufficient to drive all his anxieties from his mind. He raced through his chores, then hurried to the lounge, Jaide hard on his heels.
What they found, next to a bursting footstool, was a pile of dusty old board games. They browsed disappointedly through them, recognising titles like Scrabble, which Hector notoriously beat everyone at, but finding many others they had never heard of. What their father had seen in them, Jack didn’t know.
‘I’ll just be in here, tidying up, all right?’ called Grandma X from the drawing room.
Conscious of her proximity, the twins settled in for a game of Park and Shop, which proved to be no more exciting than its name suggested. As Jaide moved her token listlessly across the board, from Bakery to Women’s Wear via something called Hay Grain Feed, she saw the old lady fiddling with the compass she had brought out the previous day, turning it from side to side and holding it upside down above her head. Whatever Grandma X was doing, it didn’t look like tidying.
As the twins played, the cats moved restlessly through the house, padding softly up and down the stairs and peering closely into every room. To Jaide they seemed to have a purpose of some kind. They were patrolling, or searching for something. Or maybe, she thought, they were like guards in a prison, doing the rounds. And if that was the case, then she and her brother were no doubt the prisoners . . .
Every time Kleo looked at Jack, he twitched guiltily back to the game. Luckily, however, neither Kleo nor Ari said anything more comprehensible than a meow the whole evening, and by the end of it he was convinced that he must have imagined Ari talking before. Maybe it had been oxygen deprivation from running so fast, Jack thought. His brain had become starved of air and had started hallucinating.
Then, a
s Jack and Jaide were packing up the game, the cats came back with something that indicated they had been on another mission entirely: Kleo strolled into the lounge with an apparently unharmed mouse wriggling about in her mouth.
Jaide ran forward in interest, trying to see how the cat was holding the mouse without killing it. Jack stayed back and watched from a distance.
As they studied it, Grandma X loomed up behind the cats.
‘What is it?’
‘A mouse!’ Jaide pointed at the tiny creature in Kleo’s mouth. It was staring around, obviously terrified. ‘Make her let it go!’
‘You’re not frightened of mice, are you?’ asked Grandma X.
‘No, but Kleo shouldn’t play with it. That’s torture.’
‘Take it from her, then. Kleo will give it to you. You can wash your hands afterward.’
Jaide pulled a face. ‘Can’t she just drop it outside?’
‘I’ll take it,’ said Jack. He came forward and crouched down and held his hands under Kleo’s mouth. She blinked up at him and opened her jaws. The mouse fell into his hands. It lay there for a moment as if stunned.
‘Hello,’ said Jack softly. He didn’t close his hands for fear of crushing the tiny animal. But the mouse wasn’t quite as shocked as he thought, and with a sudden twitch and twist, it leaped from his hands and scurried rapidly off.
As Jack grabbed at it, the cats tried to pounce, and they all got in one another’s way. Grandma X stood in the doorway, her feet planted wide apart, and the mouse ran straight between her heels and crossed the hall like a rocket into a tiny hole at the corner of the stairs.
‘Interesting,’ said Grandma X, dusting her hands on her jeans. ‘I had thought you might like mice more than Jackaran, Jaidith, but I see it is quite the opposite.’