Shadow Spell (8 page)

Her stomach did a slow roll and a chill spread down her back in prickles.

‘Jonas!' Although she shouted, her voice sounded horribly reedy and thin, floating on the empty air. Even the ghosts had gone quiet.

‘JOOONAAAS!' she yelled.

There was no reply.

She was alone.

It was early afternoon and while Ninevah Redstone wandered Dark's Mansion looking for Jonas, far over the other side of the Drift Jibbit had taken refuge on the lower left roof of the Terrible House. He was huddled against an outcrop of chimneys, trying to look like wall. He had been there all day.

He tensed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement, a grey shape slinking towards him over the sloping roof. Yellow eyes glowed as the shape passed through the shadow cast by a block of chimneys. Giving up on the disguise, Jibbit ran, scampering over the tiles on all fours and hooting with fright. The grey shape came after him, also on all fours, managing the steep rooftops almost as easily as the gargoyle. Soon, any advantage Jibbit gained from his agility was lost because the grey shape was just as fast, and also much longer, so it could cover the tiles more quickly. It was gaining on him, its yellow eyes shining with the chase.

Jibbit screamed as a thin hand shot out and grabbed his foot.

‘Got you,' said Mrs Dunvice. ‘Come along, Mr Strood wants a word.'

Jibbit struggled and thrashed, gouging marks in the tiles and hooting like crazy. The half-werewolf housekeeper dragged him easily towards her, bundled him into her pinafore, tied the strings and picked the whole bundle up in her teeth. Then she set off, still on all fours, heading for the roof door.

‘It wasn't my fault!' wailed Jibbit, still struggling. ‘It was the bogeyman! He made me! I never missed an Evebell till now. Is not FAIR!'

‘Shtop making shuch a fush,' snapped Mrs Dunvice through a mouthful of apron. ‘You're caushing me bother. If you break my teesh you're gravel, got that?'

The door on to the roof of the Terrible House was in one of the lesser attics towards the back. Once inside, she stood upright and smoothed her skirts and hair, then swapped Jibbit to one hand and started downstairs.

Jibbit screamed. ‘NOT DOWN!!!!'

‘Oh, for Galig's sake,' muttered the housekeeper. She hoisted the gargoyle up so that they were face to face and her yellow, werewolf-Grimm eyes glared straight into his grey, stony ones. A lifetime passed.

‘
Shut
,' she said, very quietly, ‘
up
.'

The gargoyle gave a tiny nod and they went on in silence.

In the Sunatorium, the scene was like something out of a bizarre dream. Even allowing for Mr Strood's armchair, the Mortal Distillation Machine and so on, the
Sunatorium was unrecognisable, and the thing that had really made the transformation was the crowsmorte.

It was everywhere. The path through the woodland walk had gone and so had the shrubs and ferns. Now, crowsmorte covered the ground in a dense carpet of purple flowers touched with scarlet. Wiry stems twined and twisted up the trunks of the trees like ivy, coating them in a thick growth of soft blooms and vivid leaves. They were laced around the table legs, draped over and inside the Distillation Machine, and even growing up the back of Strood's chair.

Here, a long way east and north of Dark's Mansion, there was no rain. Sunlight poured in through the crystal windows, throwing some nice dark shadows under the canopies of crowsmorte. Shadows that could hide things. Like a bogeyman for instance.

‘So,' Strood said, leaning back in his chair and taking a few more sips of his afternoon cup of tea. ‘Tell me, why is it quivering like that?'

‘It's downphobic,' explained Mrs Dunvice, ‘and we're on the ground. But I stopped it screaming. It also thinks you want to punish it for missing the Evebell.'

The watching Skerridge felt an inner twinge that might have been guilt but was probably down to indigestion.

‘Shoulda spat the collar out too,' he mumbled to a particularly large bloom pressing against his nose, or at least, where his nose would have been had he not been in Dark Space Underneath The Crowsmorte form. He
had been there since mid-morning, just as Strood had finished growing his first tiger-man.

‘Missing the Evebell?' Mr Strood was saying with a frown. ‘Did it? Oh well.' He went back to looking thoughtfully at Jibbit. He leaned forward. His quartz eye glittered eerily. ‘So, erm, Giblet, can you fly with those wings?'

Jibbit quivered. He opened his mouth and dribbled on the crowsmorte.

‘Well, it is made of stone, I suppose,' Strood sighed. ‘So, Dunvice, do you think it will be of any use?'

‘Absolutely none, sir, while it's in that state.'

Strood thought for a moment. Then he beamed. He fixed Jibbit with his glittering eye. ‘So, you don't like Down, eh? And I bet you think you can't get any more Down than the ground, eh? But you can. So if you don't stop shaking and start talking, I'll BURY YOU!'

Jibbit's eyes went wide. For a moment he froze. Suddenly, he had a new worst nightmare.

‘I c-can climb,' he croaked suddenly, in between panicstricken hoots. ‘And I c-can s-sit totally s-still …'

Strood didn't look impressed.

‘… and I can go for days and days …
forever
without food or drink, though the odd crow is nice tooo chew. And I don't need tooo breathe …'

Strood sighed and raised a dismissive hand. ‘Cross the bellringer off the list and send him to the gardener for the rockery, then bring in whoever's next,' he said, waving a hand at the large Grimm guard hovering by the door.

‘AND I CAN KILL PEOPLE WITH MY FREEZING RAINWATER SPIT, AND SPLIT THEIR HEADS BY FALLING ON THEM …'

Strood's hand stopped mid-wave. ‘Now that's more like it. What do you think, Dunvice, shall I let the gargoyle join my army, or shall we bury him anyway?'

Dunvice smiled, her yellow eyes fixed on the agonised stone.

‘I think he might be useful, sir,' she said.

While Mr Strood was occupied interviewing other candidates for his army, Jibbit had managed to climb on top of the Distillation Machine and the relief of being up again was so deep it made his spine tingle. He drew a shuddering breath.

Around the Sunatorium, a few chosen servants were harvesting the rest of the crop. When they had a basket full of the best, largest blooms they carried it over to the far corner of the Sunatorium where the trembling Scribbins was injecting each flower with a tiny drop of the essence created from the original tiger-man.

A purple bloom dangled over Jibbit's eyes. He tore it off his head and bit it angrily. It tasted foul.

‘Wanna lift?' muttered a voice in his ear.

Jibbit stifled a hoot. There was no need to look round because he knew who it was.

‘Yooo!'

‘Can it, will ya. I'm doin' ya a favour. Wanna lift?'

Jibbit nodded speechlessly, then wished he hadn't as the air around his ears grew hot and everything got so blurry he thought his eyes were going to implode.

Skerridge came to a halt halfway up the main stairs where he had a good view of the central hallway and the rooms off it. They were on a nice, high stair, so Jibbit leaned over to peer through the banisters.

If the scene inside the Sunatorium had been strange, the one in the House knocked it into a cocked hat.

The Terrible House of Strood, once so quiet and orderly, was now bedlam. Strood was growing crowsmorte, and crowsmorte, like any other plant, needed sunlight. The once bricked-up windows had been smashed open to the world and it looked like someone had done it in a hurry, with a sledgehammer, and without worrying about bringing down large parts of wall.

On top of that, there was crowsmorte everywhere, or at least everywhere that wasn't covered in freshly grown tiger-men. The stuff was growing up the walls and out of the smashed-in windows, it was wound around banisters and cupboards and even hanging off the wall-lamps. Skerridge suspected it covered the floor too, but since it was being used as a comfortable bed by the tiger-men, he couldn't quite tell. Their golden velvet bodies, striped with bands of purple and fringed with ivory claws and needle teeth, curled and coiled over every inch of ground. Eyes gleamed here and there, slits of eerie purple that somehow managed to glow red.

Terrified servants scurried around and over all the obstacles, their faces white with fear, laden down with plates of meat and bowls of blood for the tiger-men to eat and drink. Skerridge knew that the servants were part-mouse and so the tiger-men (which were, when you got right down to it, great big cats) must be giving them the horrors. Still, they were Strood's servants and so they had no choice but to do their job.

Everything was a terrible mess too, the floor (what you could see of it) was covered in blood, mud, fur and worse. There were horrible stains on the wallpaper, not to mention claw marks, and the furniture was beginning to look frayed and battered. There were smells all over the place, some of them very nasty and some of them the usual ones to do with cooking and fresh air. On top of all that, the racket was dreadful. Everyone shouted orders or replies, the tiger-men yowled or snarled, doors banged, feet scurried or plodded and, when the tiger-men got bored with waiting their turn for dinner, there were the screams of those servants near enough to provide them with a timely snack. Luckily, the crowsmorte was there to clean every last scrap off the bones or things could have been very unpleasant indeed.

Just below Skerridge and Jibbit, Guard Floyd walked past, looking gloomy. On impulse, Skerridge left his perch on the stairs and fell into step behind the goblin-Grimm. Feeling the bogeyman start to move, fortunately at normal speed, Jibbit did a sideways flip and scrabbled on to Skerridge's back. Judging by the direction
Guard Floyd was going he was heading out of the House. Jibbit was finding the cacophony of sound, sight and smell almost unbearable after the lonely quiet of the rooftops, and although Mrs Dunvice had forbidden him to go back to the roof, she hadn't said anything about outside.

‘'Ullo,' said Skerridge cheerfully, as soon as they had stepped through a gap in the broken walls, ‘whatcha doin'?'

Floyd came to a sudden halt, realised who it was and got walking again without even looking around.

‘Well, well, if it ain't Bogeyman Skerridge,' he muttered to the empty air in front of him. ‘Yew've gotta cheek!' He stomped on down the overgrown path.

‘Come on, mate, I only arsked. Carn' a feller arsk?'

‘We're musterin' an army, tha's what,' snapped Floyd. It was a polite snap. After all, Skerridge might be a traitor, but he was still Fabulous. ‘An' now Mr Strood's recruitin' …'

‘Press-gangin' more like,' snorted Skerridge.

Floyd glared at him, his brow creased. He was partly puzzled by the fact that Skerridge had a gargoyle on his head, and partly by some nameless worries that had been nagging at him all day and had suddenly got a lot worse, though he wasn't sure why.

‘I'm off ter ask Lord Greyghast if 'e'll kindly pop up an' 'ave a chat wiv Mr Strood,' said Floyd at last. ‘Yew ain't gonna tell me we'll be doin' any browbeatin' there!'

Skerridge's heart sank at the name of one of the most
powerful Fabulous left in the Drift. Lord Greyghast wasn't a lord. There weren't any nobles left in the Drift these days, but Greyghast thought his name sounded good with ‘Lord' in front of it and since nobody was prepared to argue with a Fabulous werewolf, that was what he was called. And he was going to join Strood's army, Skerridge would bet on it. There was killing involved and werewolves always felt at home where there was killing.

They crossed the remains of a once-smooth lawn and walked through a tangle of dark trees. Jibbit could see the large folly looming ahead and made ready to jump. He could hang about out here where it was quiet until somebody came looking for him.

‘Look,' Floyd went on with exaggerated patience. ‘We work fer Strood, an' that means we follow 'is orders, see? We don' worry about consequences. If some dumb kid 'as t' go an' get up Mr Strood's nose, then it's 'er lookout ain' it? If Mr Strood wants t' pull the Drift apart bit by bit an 'ave 'is cruel revenge on ev'ry livin' fing then that's jus' 'ow it is. If we don' do it, someone else will an' we'll jus' end up on the side what suffers an 'orrible fate, or gets eaten or whatever. See? Common sense. Believe me, yer picked the losin' side.'

The guard stopped in his tracks, thinking over what he had just said. Seeing Floyd's face crease up with the effort of working it out, Skerridge gave him a nudge in the right direction.

‘Yer right. It's only common sense,' he said cheerfully,
patting Floyd on the shoulder as he spoke. ‘On the balance o' probabilities, the Redstone kid's gonna croak along wiv all 'er friends, the remains of the Seven an' an awful lot o' innocent Quick. So, wanna know why I'm on the ovver side?' Skerridge leaned close. ‘Yore the ones tha's gonna live …' he paused just long enough to give a bit of dramatic effect, ‘…
wiv the consequences
.'