13 Secrets (13 page)

She strode away from them, regret and anger pricking at her like spiteful pins. She could feel their eyes on her still as she approached the fortune-telling tent. Intending to duck inside to kill a few minutes, her bad temper deepened upon seeing that a long line had formed outside. With a sigh she continued past, but as she did, raised voices from inside stopped her.

“All I see is that the brooch never left your house.” It was a young, female voice, and one that was familiar. “It’s there still—it’s being hidden.”

“What are you suggesting?” The second voice was an older woman. She sounded flustered.

“That you need to look closer to home to find the thief,” the younger girl said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, the psychic strain has left me feeling faint. I must go and lie down at once.”

The whispering line hushed as the curtains were thrown back. With one hand pressed to her temple
and the other fanning herself, Suki theatrically swept out of the tent. Tanya, along with everyone else, stared after her.
Suki
was the fortune teller!

She was dressed rather differently from the previous evening, in an elaborately jeweled green gown that trailed after her. Her short blond hair was tousled and adorned with a flower garland that tumbled down her back. Her feet, padding nimbly away, were dirty and bare. She looked eerie and slightly crazy.

“Just a minute, young lady!”

Tanya’s head snapped back to the disgruntled, red-faced woman who emerged from the tent.

“You can’t just leave it there. That brooch is my inheritance—” The woman stopped abruptly, realizing she now had an audience, and that she was its sole focus. Suki was gone. A few seconds of craning her neck and one undignified huff later, the woman stalked away. As the line resumed its whispering over the exchange, Tanya watched a thin, surly-looking man come over to the tent and turn the wooden sign around.
FORTUNE TELLING CLOSED
, it said.
BACK LATER
.

As the crowd finally dispersed, Tanya stared at the sign. Tonight she had seen a different side of Suki. Her psychic ability was not only being used in the Coven, but also as an act in the circus. And “act,” Tanya thought, was a good way to describe it, for although Suki had certainly touched a nerve with an accurate reading for the woman, Tanya knew with conviction that Suki’s claims of feeling faint had been a convenient excuse to get away to Tino’s meeting.

Brooding, she wandered off to the Curiosity Cabinet and stepped inside, wondering what was happening in Tino’s caravan. Before long, as she wandered among stuffed creatures, ancient runes, and Egyptian death masks, her own heated exchange with Gredin also played on her mind. Her thoughts shifted to exactly how and when she would be able to broach the subject of guardians with her grandmother—and whether Florence would be willing to provide the answers.

When Rowan and Fabian arrived at Tino’s caravan, the door opened before they’d even finished knocking. Tino beckoned them inside and pointed them past racks of glittering costumes into the kitchenette, where there were a small table with a brightly colored mosaic top and a few chairs.

Tino joined them. He had changed what he was wearing, his performance clothes from the ring replaced by a loose tunic and dark brown trousers. His blond hair fell about his face, no longer tied back as it had been earlier.

“Where’s the other girl?” he asked, with a cursory glance at Fabian.

Rowan pulled out a chair to sit down. There was a grunt and a scrabble of claws, and Tino’s huge,
shaggy wolfhound, which had been lying under the table, got up and flopped down on the mat by the door.

“The girl?” Tino repeated, after Rowan had sat down.

“There was a complication,” she said, glancing at Fabian. His eyes were huge behind his glasses, and he looked as though he didn’t know whether he was excited or afraid. “She’s here with us, but she couldn’t… come.”

“Why not? I told you to bring her. Go and get her if she’s here, and be quick about it. The others will be arriving any minute.”

“I
can’t
,” Rowan repeated. “Her guardian turned up unexpectedly. He told her she wasn’t to come and threatened to punish her if she disobeyed.”

Tino’s face darkened. “
What?
If he forbade her then he must know something about us! What have you told him? What does he know?”

“Nothing!” Rowan insisted. “I never told him anything, and neither did she. He doesn’t know any details, or who’s involved, I swear.”

Tino pushed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and groaned.

“This is a disaster. Already they’ve brought trouble upon us. You should have made sure you weren’t being followed!”

“Just hold on,” Rowan snapped. “You were the one who insisted they be here tonight! I wanted to leave them out of it.”

Tino ignored the comment. “How do we know this guardian will keep quiet?”

“Because he doesn’t know anything. And because he was there, in the fairy realm, helping me when I was looking for James. He led me to the courts.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Tino muttered. “Damn guardians are more hassle than they’re worth, sometimes.”

“But surely the human members of the Coven have guardians too?” Fabian asked timidly. “Do they know about the Coven? And do they try to stop it somehow?”

A scowl marred Tino’s face. “Not all of the human members had guardians. Crooks didn’t, obviously, as he’s not second-sighted. Suki insists she never knew of having one. As for the rest, arrangements were made for them to be relieved of their duties, to a greater or lesser extent.”

“What do you mean, ‘relieved of their duties’?” Rowan asked, her tone sharp.

Tino shrugged. “Nothing sinister—just kept out of the way. The Coven used to incorporate the guardians in the past, but things got too messy. No guardian wants their human exposed to unnecessary risk. So any ties with guardians are quickly…
dismissed
.”

“Dismissed how?” Rowan asked. “And how come I knew nothing of this?”

“You didn’t need to know,” Tino replied. “Your guardian was already dead, killed in the accident that killed your aunt and uncle. And I’m guessing
you were so wrapped up in getting James back that you never gave a thought to whether the rest of the Coven had guardians, or indeed, what had happened to them.” He waved his hand in the air. “I didn’t need you distracted by unnecessary information. If you’d needed to know, then you would have. And if you’d wanted to know, you’d have asked—but you didn’t. All you cared about was yourself, and finding your brother. And as for
how
—”

A light tapping on the door interrupted them. Tino got up to answer it. He came back with Suki, Sparrow, and a small boy. It was the same boy Tanya had pointed out in the audience. His forehead was creased and damp with worry, his light brown hair curling over and sticking to it.

“We haven’t got long,” said Sparrow, sitting next to Rowan. He was more disheveled than usual. As he scratched at his head with long, dirty fingernails, the smell of greasy hair hit Rowan’s nose. He must have noticed her expression, for he gave an embarrassed smile and moved away a little. She felt mean then. Sparrow was her friend, and she was judging him for things that were out of his control.

Suki sat on Rowan’s other side, still wearing her fortune-telling garb.

“What?” she demanded of Fabian, who was ogling her curiously. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

Everyone turned to look at the boy seated between Suki and Tino. He cringed under their scrutiny, his
eyes darting from side to side like those of a trapped animal.

“I can’t stay long,” he said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “I left my dad in the Curiosity Cabinet. Said I was going to look for the toilets.”

“You can tell him you got lost on the way back,” said Suki in a honeyed voice Rowan had never heard her use before. “That’ll buy you some more time. Now, Jack. Did you manage to get anything that belongs to your mother, like I asked you to?”

The boy called Jack nodded and reached into his pocket. From it he withdrew a small, round object and placed it on the table.

“It’s her engagement ring,” he said. “One of the stones came loose, and she’s been meaning to get it fixed. I managed to sneak it out of her jewelry box last night.”

“Perfect,” said Suki, reaching for it.

“What’s it for?” Rowan asked.

“I’m going to see if I can pick anything up, anything at all about where Jack’s mother might be,” said Suki. “Sometimes an object belonging to a person can help me.”

“Can you sense anything now?” Jack asked, his dark eyes hopeful.

“It’s best if I do it later on, alone,” Suki answered, not meeting his eyes. “I can focus better. Can you leave it with me for tonight?”

Jack nodded, dismal.

“Good.” Suki pocketed the ring. “Now tell these people what you told me before, about your mother.”

Jack looked hesitantly around the table.

“It’s all right,” Suki coaxed. “We can help you.”

Jack gulped. “She started acting…
funny
about two weeks ago. Her voice sounded different sometimes. Sort of… scratchy, and deeper. She said she wasn’t feeling well, but she wouldn’t go to the doctor. I never see her eat anything. She says she’s lost her appetite. And she started forgetting to get me up in the mornings for school, so my teacher said I needed a note to explain why I kept coming in late. When she wrote it, she used her left hand… and that’s when I knew something was really wrong, because she’s right-handed. In fact, she’s been using only her left hand, and holding her other hand in a weird way sometimes… when she thinks no one’s looking. Like it’s hurting her.”

“Odd,” Tino said. “Did you make any sign that you’d noticed?”

Jack shook his head. “No.”

“What else?” Suki prompted.

“Scrounger—that’s our cat—won’t go near her anymore,” said Jack, sounding close to tears. “Her fur goes on end whenever they’re in the same room together.”

“And since you told me what was happening, have you noticed anything else?” asked Suki. “Anything different from what you’ve told us already?”

Jack nodded, his eyes downcast. “I started looking out for other things, like you said. I’ve noticed that every couple of days she keeps locking herself in the bathroom first thing in the morning. So three days ago I crept outside the door and listened. I could hear a snipping sound, like scissors. When she came out, I went in and looked in the trash. It was full of her hair—but when I went downstairs her hair didn’t look any shorter. This morning the same thing happened—her hair is growing fast.
Really
fast. But she’s cutting it so nobody notices.”

“How is she acting around the rest of the family?” asked Suki. “Have you noticed anything unusual?”

A tear rolled down Jack’s nose and dripped onto the table. He wiped his face quickly and took a deep, gulping breath.

“Until you told me to look out for it, I hadn’t noticed. But she seems more interested in Lucy, my little sister, than anyone else. She doesn’t like anyone picking her up, or taking her anywhere. Tonight, my dad had an awful row with her. She didn’t want Lucy to come.”

“What made her change her mind?” asked Fabian. Jack looked at him in surprise. “We noticed you in the audience,” Fabian explained quickly. “You looked worried, and we saw you were with your dad and a little girl—was that Lucy?”

Jack nodded. “She only let Lucy come after my dad got cross and asked her why she was being so possessive of her. She let him take her but after… after he’d left the room…”

“Yes?” said Tino.

“Dad went into the living room and started to put Lucy’s shoes on. Mum…
she
… was in the kitchen. I was in the hallway and I heard this weird crunching noise. I looked through the gap in the door and she was standing by the sink, grinding her teeth. She had a glass in her hand. Her knuckles turned white because she was gripping the glass so tightly. It broke in her hand and cut her. Dad offered to sweep it up and put a bandage on, but she just screamed at him to go. So we left.” Another tear slid down his face. “Now I’m scared to go home.” He looked up at Tino. “Can you help? Can you get my
real
mum back?”

Tino’s hands were pressed together over the lower part of his face. He regarded Jack over the top of them for a moment, then lowered them to speak. “I’m not going to lie to you. Whatever it is that’s switched places with your mother is dangerous. And it sounds like your sister caught its attention, which is why it’s moved in on your family. Whatever we do next has to be handled with extreme care, and you’re going to have to be brave, and continue to act normally. Do you think you can do that?”