She could feel Hector’s hand shaking where he held her. Not only was he drenched, he looked and sounded as if he’d run a marathon. His glasses were askew on his nose. He pushed them back up as he hustled the children closer to the castle, bringing his eyes back into focus.
‘It’s not that simple, Jaide,’ he said. ‘The Evil already senses your grandmother’s weakness. That’s why it’s here, now, acting so openly against the wards. If she finds out that Rodeo Dave is an enemy agent, it could weaken her even further, and not even Custer could keep The Evil out then. What have you told her Companions?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jack. ‘We only just found out.’
‘Then we’d better keep it that way. Act as though nothing has happened, and let me and the other Wardens keep The Evil at bay. We’ll do our job while you do yours. Okay?’
‘Yes, Dad,’ said Jaide, even though it warred with her instincts. First Rodeo Dave was a traitor, then The Evil was actively looking for the card, too, and now they were keeping secrets from Grandma X and her Warden Companions. But it wasn’t their fault, she supposed. It was The Evil’s, for putting them in this situation.
‘I’m sorry we came out to see you,’ said Jack. ‘We should’ve waited for you to call.’
Hector shook his head.
‘Never mind, what’s done is done. It’ll all be over soon, once the Card of Translocation is in our hands.’
++Come back to us!++
Hector pushed the twins the last few feet, and they fell sprawling again. This time there was no tug from their wristbands. They were inside the boundary of the wards.
But their father did not follow.
++Come back to us now!++
‘Go! Find the card, quickly!’ Hector Shield shouted to them.
With that, he flung himself back into the rain. Back towards the wolf and the chimpanzee. Back towards The Evil.
‘Dad!’ cried Jack and Jaide together, but he was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Lady in Yellow
JACK STARTED TO GET UP to run after his father. Jaide grabbed him around the waist and pulled him back into the mud.
‘Don’t, Jack!’
‘This is not for troubletwisters,’ agreed the professor’s muffled voice between them. ‘Live to fight another day – thus we keep The Evil at bay. But could you get my face out of the mud first?’
‘What if he loses?’ Jack said, but he did stop trying to get up and instead took his bag off and began carefully scraping mud from the death mask. ‘What if The Evil beats him?’
‘It won’t,’ said Jaide, although she was worried about that, too. ‘It can’t.’
‘Jack! Jaide!’
The twins heard their names and looked around. It didn’t sound like Rodeo Dave.
It was Ari, running across the lawn with dripping, rain-flattened fur.
Jack flipped the professor around so that he could look the death mask in the eye.
‘Don’t say anything about what you just heard,’ he whispered. ‘We have to keep this a secret!’
‘Why?’
‘Because Dad says so!’
‘But—’
‘Maybe we’ll just put you back in the backpack for now,’ said Jaide, taking him from Jack and zipping the pack up tightly so the sound of his muffled protests was inaudible over the rain.
‘What are you doing out here?’ asked Ari as he came within earshot. ‘Custer sent me to bring you inside while he braced the wards. The Evil is about. It hasn’t breached the wards, so there’s no reason to panic, but you’re dangerously close to the boundary.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Jaide innocently, glancing anxiously over her shoulder. Behind them, in the thick of the squall, there was no sign of either their father or The Evil. ‘I guess we got lost in the rain.’
‘How did you get past me?’ asked Ari. ‘I’ve been watching the front door all day.’
‘We came out the back way,’ she said.
‘Oh. But what are you doing out here in the first place? Why aren’t you sensibly inside the castle, where it’s dry and you’re supposed to be anyway?’
Jack said the first thing that came into his head.
‘We, uh, came to shut the car’s roof to keep the rain off. And then we got lost.’
‘All you had to do was follow the castle wall around. Even a mouse couldn’t get that wrong.’
‘All right,’ said Jaide, throwing up her hands in mock surrender. ‘We were exploring.’
‘In the rain? I will never understand humans.’ Ari lifted his nose to sniff the air. ‘Hey, that smells like wolf. Wasn’t the vet looking for one of those earlier?’
That galvanised the twins into action.
‘If it is a wolf,’ said Jack, heading towards the castle at a brisk pace, ‘we don’t want to get any closer to it.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Ari, trotting close by his heels and looking nervously over his shoulder.
The three of them hurried back to the castle, the rain slowly petering out behind them. By the time they reached Rodeo Dave’s car – the roof of which was closed – there was little more than a drizzle. The damage had been done, though. The twins were soaked through, covered in mud, and felt exactly like Ari looked. Thomas Solomon waved from where he’d taken shelter in his golf buggy, wrapped up in a raincoat, but didn’t offer them a lift.
They stopped in the courtyard to try to clean and wring out their clothes. They managed to get most of the mud evenly distributed, if not actually off, and their clothes improved from sodden to no longer dripping. They particularly didn’t want to drip everywhere on the way to the library, or get any water on the books. Ari shook himself like a dog and sent a fine spray into the air around him.
When they were merely damp, they retraced their steps through the castle, past the chests, tapestries and suits of armour – which now seemed perfectly ordinary to them after the discovery of the secret cellar, or the dungeon, as Jaide had begun to call it to herself – back to where they had started that morning.
Rodeo Dave was waiting for them there. The twins had been nervous all the way back to the castle, knowing that they would have to face him again, the sleeper agent who had put Grandma X in the hospital. They braced themselves for what might come if he suspected they were seeking the card as well, but he seemed merely concerned, not angry. In fact, Jaide thought, she had never seen Rodeo Dave angry, or overly excited, or anything. It was almost as if he was never entirely in the moment – a watcher rather than a participant. He had obviously learned to keep his true self deeply concealed.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said. ‘Where did you get to?’
‘We heard the rain,’ said Jaide. ‘We were worried about your car.’
‘You left the roof open,’ added Jack, reviving the excuse he had attempted with Ari earlier. ‘It could’ve been ruined.’
Rodeo Dave put a hand on each of their shoulders. They held their breath. Did he know that they had in fact been out of the library for hours and that they had seen him in the dungeon?
‘That’s kind of you to think of Zebediah,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you got wet doing it. At least it washed off the dust, eh?’
‘I think it turned the dust to mud,’ said Jaide, thankful for one less thing they would have to explain away on their own. Her elbows and knees were brown from where she had fallen onto the ground outside.
‘I’d better take you home. You must need a warm shower and a change of clothes.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Jack, not yet ready to give up the chance to look for the Card of Translocation, impossible though that task seemed now. ‘We’d rather stay and help you.’
Rodeo Dave frowned and looked at them, then back at the library. Clearly he was torn between what he wanted to do, what he thought he ought to do, and what The Evil had told him to do.
‘I see you’ve made a dent in the work . . . I guess we could have lunch first and then see how you’re both feeling?’
?
?An excellent idea,’ said Ari to Jack. ‘I’ve had a small appetiser of mice, but I am still hungry. I don’t suppose you’d consider sharing what’s in your lunch box?’
They sat on some upturned tea chests and opened the lunch boxes Susan had given them. Jack fished out the ham in his sandwich and gave it to Ari, who swallowed it in two gulps.
‘So he followed us here, eh?’ Rodeo Dave tossed Ari a pickle, which he sniffed warily, then ignored. ‘Curiosity and cats. Imagine what he could find, digging around in here.’