He remembered the way Jaide had looked right through him on the stairs the previous night, and how he had seemed to disappear from the drawing room mirror while playing with the pogo stick. He thought of how well he could see in the dark, when there was no light at all, and how he had escaped the creatures before, when the light had cast such dark shadows across the tunnel. And there was the whole talking-cat thing.
Powers, thought Jack. It says I have powers . . . so maybe I do!
It wasn’t such a weird thought. Since coming to Portland, he had seen far weirder things. And if it meant that the voice couldn’t get inside his head, and the rats could no longer see him, he was more than happy to accept it without explanation.
Jack slipped off his sneakers so they wouldn’t squelch, and tiptoed up the pipe. The rats grew excited as he came nearer and they raced about sniffing – but he edged past without alerting any of them. Further along, there were great mounds of ants and cockroaches, the building blocks of the worm-creature. But he got past them, too, holding his breath and creeping as silently as he could manage.
Now I’ve got to find a better tunnel, he thought. One that goes uphill.
He chose one and started along it, pausing to stifle a yawn. It was only then, the energy lent by fear fading from him, that he realised he was very, very tired. Whatever he was doing to keep himself hidden was also wearing him out.
At the back of his mind whispered a very small voice, his own, warning him that he was running out of the frying pan and into the fire. If the voice was right, and Grandma X was evil, escaping from the tunnels might be the very worst thing he could do . . .
Once at home, Grandma X appeared older and more exhausted than ever, but Jaide, still feeling hot blood burning in her face, felt the need to defend herself.
‘Look at it from our side,’ she said. ‘The bugs – the hot chocolate – the cards —’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Grandma X. ‘I understand. I would have told you everything earlier, but too much foreknowledge can send a troubletwister’s Gifts astray. Even more astray than normal. Obviously, I misjudged that. When this is all behind us, I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to make it up to both of you.’
‘Okay . . .’ said Jaide reluctantly. She wanted an apology less than she wanted answers. ‘But what about —’
‘No time for that this second. Come on. We have work to do! I’ll explain what I can as we go.’
With renewed energy, Grandma X hurried her out to the car, which had somehow started while they were in the house and was waiting with its front doors open.
‘It can’t drive itself,’ Grandma X said. ‘But sometimes inanimate objects gain a certain liveliness when they are long associated with one of us.’
‘One of what?’ asked Jaide. ‘A witch?’
‘I am not a witch!’ exclaimed Grandma X. The car’s wheels spun as they exited the gravel drive and shot out into the lane. ‘The proper name for what I am is a Warden. I was born with a Gift that I have spent my entire life trying to control. You’ll be a Warden, too, one day, if you can get your Gift properly under your command.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because it’s hereditary, Jaidith dear. Your father is a Warden, I’m a Warden, my mother was a Warden, her father was a Warden . . . and so on unto antiquity.’
‘But Mum’s not one, is she?’
Grandma X’s foot went down on the accelerator and the car rocked as they hurtled around the corner of Watchward Lane and Parkhill Street.
‘No, she is not. It is one of the trag — difficulties of a Warden’s life that we must marry non-Wardens in order to have the chance of Gifted children. It can make life very . . . tricky.’
‘Oh,’ said Jaide thoughtfully. That explained a lot about her father. Knowing Jack would be really interested to hear this, she felt yet another pang of fear for her brother.
‘Where are we going, Grandma?’ she asked, realising they were heading away from the place Jack had been captured, not toward it.
‘To the lighthouse.’
‘What are we going to do there?’
‘We’re going to raise the tide rather more than usual and flush The Evil out of the old tunnels, into the open, and Jackaran with it.’
‘But what if Jack is trapped? He’ll drown!’
Grandma X glanced at her as the Hillman shrieked past the cemetery. ‘Don’t worry. The Evil won’t let your brother drown. It needs him alive to get at us.’
‘Why?’
‘If The Evil takes over Jackaran, it will use him to attack us. Troubletwisters are particularly vulnerable to The Evil, and particularly prized by it, because if it succeeds in taking one over, then it can take over his or her Gift as well.’
‘Why do you call us troubletwisters?’ asked Jaide. ‘Mum thinks it’s just an old word.’
‘It is a very old word, Jaidith, and a meaningful one. Young Wardens just coming into their Gifts are often unconscious causes of magical trouble, and they twist and complicate any existing trouble as well. And believe me, there’s always trouble somewhere.’
‘You’ve been fighting The Evil a long time, haven’t you?’ said Jaide with sudden insight.
‘All my life,’ said Grandma X. ‘Ever since I was a troubletwister like you. The Wardens are the enemy of The Evil. We stop it from getting into this world, and we have done so for centuries. If we ever weaken, all that we hold dear will be destroyed. We cannot let The Evil win, no matter what the cost. Do you understand?’
Jaide sat up straighter.
‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. She knew very well what Grandma X was saying. They were going to try to save Jack, but his life was less important than stopping The Evil in its tracks. If Grandma X had to choose between them, Jack would lose.
THE CAR SKIDDED TO A halt in the lighthouse car park. Grandma X turned off the engine and pulled on the handbrake before leaning over to cup Jaide’s chin in one old hand, just for a second.
‘You’re a brave girl, Jaidith, and one day you’ll make a good Warden. Remember that, no matter what happens here.’
Then she was sliding out through the car and waving for Jaide to follow. Long brass rods had been rattling around inside the trunk like giant toothpicks, and it took a moment to gather them.
A restless wind sent Jaide’s hair dancing, and she felt the urge to jump up into it, up into the sky with its scudding clouds, to join a solitary seagull that was struggling to maintain a stationary position as it looked for food among the jagged rocks of the reef.
But the moment passed, and the seagull dropped down on a fish or crab with a predatory keee!
‘Bring as many rods as you can carry,’ Grandma X told Jaide, who briefly wondered if they had also come there to fish. ‘We have to stick them in the ground between the lighthouse and Dagger Reef in this shape.’
Using the tip of one of the rods, she drew a U in the ground with a vertical line down the middle:
‘This side,’ she said, tapping the open end of the U, ‘points out to sea.’
‘What’s it for?’ asked Jaide.
‘A spell, I suppose you could call it, that speaks to the ocean, asking it to bring in a storm surge of wind, wave and tide.’
‘Isn’t this going to look weird to normal people?’ asked Jaide as she hurried around the base of the lighthouse, loaded with
rods.
‘There will be no “normal” people about,’ said Grandma X with great certainty.
‘Okay.’ Jaide still felt like someone was watching her, even though she couldn’t see anyone, not even when she looked up to the top of the lighthouse and the observation rail around the light at the top.
The door at the bottom of the lighthouse was padlocked three times on the outside, so no one could be inside. Jaide wondered if anyone ever did go in, except for the workers who looked after the automatic light. It wasn’t open to the public, like some other lighthouses she’d visited.
The ground was soft after the rain of the weekend, so sticking in the rods wasn’t difficult. Jaide and Grandma X put in nine, then ran back to the car to get more. Even with only half of the trident shape completed, Jaide could see it starting to have an effect. Out to sea, the water was growing dark as the wind came, and a line of black clouds was rolling in from the horizon.
By the time the next lot of nine rods was in place, great booming green waves were smashing into the reef below, sending plumes of spray high enough for the rising wind to blow them across the lighthouse, thoroughly saturating Jaide.
‘Go and wait by the car,’ shouted Grandma X, even her powerful voice barely audible over the wind and crashing surf. ‘I have to go do something. Think heavy thoughts!’
Jaide went back to the car, fighting with every step to stay on course, not to be picked up by the wind despite her thinking extremely heavy thoughts. She was shivering and wished she’d brought her coat. But it was undoubtedly colder where Jack was, and soon would become a whole lot wetter, so she told herself not to complain.
The seagull that had been fishing at the reef was sheltering in the lee of the car. She didn’t blame it. Inside the car, Jaide wiped the condensation off the window so she could see what Grandma X was doing. The old lady was standing at the closed end of the trident symbol they had made out of the rods, one hand raised up to the sky and the other holding one of the rods. The spray from the waves below whipped around her, almost like a tornado, and the first, heavy drops of rain came spearing down, as if aiming right at Grandma X’s head.