She didn't even see the other one until it dived in from the side and snatched the crumb from her fingers with an impact that stung.
Lucy snatched back her stinging hand, but then she had to laugh as the first gull-thing, deeply indignant, launched itself off the light pole with a lot of heavy flapping. The other one fled to the nearest rooftop, with the first in hot pursuit. Lucy heard two voices raised in furious shrieking as they both vanished behind a chimney pot.
"They really are like gulls," she said under her breath.
Then she looked up the street and saw Hendricks.
Time seemed to freeze.
He wasn't looking her way; in fact he was looking up at the roof, his attention drawn by the squabbling gull-griffins. In some accidental way, they might have saved her life by distraction him.
Lucy's heart was pounding so hard that she thought he must be able to hear it from there. Could he smell her? She still had no idea what her uncle's beast-minions were capable of.
Slowly she began backing down the street. She had to find somewhere she could get out of sight, or something she could hide behind.
All of a sudden she had a stroke of luck. A large woman with two huge shopping bags, one in each arm, came down the street. Lucy moved so that the large lady was directly between her and Hendricks. Then she began walking down the street as fast as she could without actually running.
Right before turning the corner, she looked back. The lady was just turning to cross the street, giving her a full-on view of Hendricks. He still wasn't looking in her direction, but Lucy saw him sniff the air, turning his head slowly.
A rush of cold sweat prickled her skin. It felt as if the hair on the back of her neck literally stood on end.
They're tracking me by smell!
As soon as she turned the corner and could no longer be seen, she broke into a run. She had no specific destination in mind. She only wanted to get away.
After about a block, she slowed to a walk, gasping. The steep streets made it a lot less easy than running on flat ground.
They couldn't have tracked her to St. John's by smell, she reminded herself as she began to calm down. Not all the way. She had been on a boat. They must have found out the destination of the boat and gotten there somehow, in a car, maybe, to try to beat her there.
So she had to get on another boat. It was the only way. This time she needed to try to do it without being seen. They couldn't track her down if they didn't know the name of the boat—right?
Luckily, although she couldn't remember which way she had come, the harbor wasn't hard to find. She caught glimpses of it between the buildings. All she had to do was head in that direction.
Along the way, she came around a corner and very nearly ran directly into Andy. He was sniffing too, and where he was sniffing was in front of the shop where she had looked at the T-shirts and fingered a few of them.
Lucy fled down a side road. By the time she got to the harbor, she was sweaty and panting and terrified, trying to look in all directions at once, even though she knew it was making her more conspicuous.
She had to get on a boat. Any boat, it didn't matter. She looked over the harbor at random and decided on a smaller boat this time, one with somewhere to hide so she didn't have to be on deck.
There was one boat that seemed to draw her. It was a bright blue and white one, with script letters readingThe Codfathermarching along its neatly painted hull.
Lucy dashed across the dock and jumped onto the deck that rocked under her.
The door wasn't locked. She went into a control cabin of some kind. There was nowhere to hide here, but she saw a short flight of steps going belowdecks, and hurried to descend. She found herself in a cramped and dim space in the boat's interior. The only light came from a single porthole-shaped window above the waterline. Lucy tried to feel her way forward, and immediately crashed into something with her legs. She reached out to steady herself and stumbled into something else that set up a steady wave of deafening clattering.
"Stop!" Lucy whispered desperately. She clutched at the clattering things, which turned out to be some cookware hanging on hooks above a tiny kitchen range, and finally got them to hold still.
Panting with reaction and fear, she felt her way to a narrow bunk built into the hull of the boat.
Now she felt a little bit like Goldilocks. This was obviously someone's bed. However, it was the closest thing to a hiding place that the boat had to offer.
Lucy was just tucking herself nervously into the very back of the bed cubby when she felt the boat rock and creak, and boots clattered on the deck above her.
Oh no.
She withdrew until she was pressed against the hull, feeling every vibration transmitted through the boat's timbers.
If they came down here ...