"What are you doing?" said Fabian. "We need to go back to the woods, now!"
Warwick threw open the door to the den. "Get in there!"
Fabian stepped forward hesitantly. Never before had his father allowed him anywhere near his workroom, let alone inside it, but as Warwick shoved him between the shoulder blades he fell through the door and all became clear.
The far wall was stacked with cages from top to bottom, one on top of the other. Inside the cages were fairies. In the largest cage at the bottom of the stack were two of the ugliest creatures he had ever seen. The taller of the pair, who had a somewhat toadlike quality about him, grasped the bars and grinned.
"Don"t just stare," he said. "The key"s over there!"
"Where"s the other goblin?" Fabian asked, feeling dazed. "Tanya said there were three of them."
"Brunswick poses no threat. He"s half human. A changeling. He simply mimics these two because it"s all he knows."
Fabian surveyed the rest of the cages. There were easily a dozen, each containing one or more fairies. In one a wizened little creature with a cane sat clutching a teabag as if its life depended on it. The hearthfay was in another a tiny, ugly girl in a dishrag dress peering out from behind a curtain of long hair. Her face brightened as he looked at her and she gave him a shy, pleading look before huddling into herself once more.
Warwick grabbed his air rifle from the opposite wall and began loading it.
"Why are they in cages?" Fabian whispered.
"Because that"s what I"m paid for!" said his father. "And one of them has betrayed us!" He grabbed a bunch of keys from the mantle next to which was a large vat of a familiar-looking grey-green liquid.
"But how . . .?" said Fabian, suddenly starting to feel very sick. "How come they haven"t escaped?"
"The cages are iron. They can"t escape until I release them."
"All this time," said Fabian. "You knew what really happened to Morwenna Bloom."
Warwick slipped his hunting knife into his belt.
"And all this time the hair was there, right under my very nose. Florence always suspected that Morwenna might have been clever enough to leave something behind to preserve the pact and herself." He examined the lock of hair carefully, then folded it and put it in his pocket. "The pact was created in the woods where the magic is strongest. Only there can it be destroyed."
"But it"s nearly midnight!" Fabian cried, almost beside himself with panic.
"There is still time," said a voice that Fabian did not recognise.
"Raven," Warwick exclaimed.
Fabian spun round and saw three small figures standing on the ledge of the open window; one male, one female, and the other a mangy creature with moth-eaten wings. It was the female who had spoken. He took in her feathered gown and her chiselled features. The raven.
"She"s in the forest," said Warwick. "We"ve got to leave now."
Raven nodded. "There"s no time to waste. But there"s something you need to know Feathercap is gone."
"We have not seen or heard from him since yesterday," said Gredin.
Warwick"s lips were pressed into a thin line.
"How do you know you can trust them?" Fabian asked. "Why aren"t they in cages?"
Warwick had already left the den. "They"re on our side."
Fabian ran outside. He was starting to feel strangely detached from reality, as if he had stumbled into an alternate universe where nothing was what it seemed. His father was not a groundskeeper, he thought numbly. His father was not a caretaker. His father was a fairy hunter.
Warwick sprinted to the mud-spattered Land Rover. "Get in!"
Fabian fell into the pa.s.senger seat with barely enough time to shut the door before Warwick released the handbrake and sped towards the open gates of the manor, spraying grit into the air behind them.
"I just hope we make it in time."
In her room at the back of the house, Florence"s eyes fluttered open at the screech of the Land Rover speeding urgently through the night. It sounded like Warwick, she thought drowsily but her eyes closed again as sleep pulled at her. Muttering softly, she shifted position. It couldn"t be, she reasoned. Warwick watched the woods and guarded the house most nights but he always went by foot. Always.
She drifted further away, to a place free of thought and worry. She was tired, dog-tired. Sleep had never come easily when her granddaughter was in the house. Tonight though, irritable and exhausted, she had finally broken the seal on the bottle of sleeping pills prescribed to her a month ago, emptied two into her palm and washed them down with a mug of hot malted milk.
Ironically, this was to be the best night"s sleep she"d had in a long time.
25.
ANYA"S LIMBS WERE ACHING. Every inch of her was tired from fighting, but her bonds had not given in the slightest. Finally her body sagged against the tree in despair. Red wasn"t coming. No one was coming.
"The poem was a clever touch. You knew we"d try and solve the mystery, didn"t you?"
Morwenna stepped towards her, the motion reminiscent of a snake slithering towards its prey. "Yes, I did. Though I would never have thought of it if it were not for my guardian.
"What guardian?" said Tanya, fear creeping back into her. "What are you talking about?"
Morwenna laughed. "All born with the second sight are appointed a guardian from the fairy realm whether they are aware of it or not. I suspect that you were not?"
Tanya shook her head.
"The guardians I speak of serve the purpose of protecting our best interest. My best interest was finding you."
"Then who is my guardian?" said Tanya. "Why weren"t my best interests protected?"
"Oh, they were," said a familiar voice. "You were protected. Or at least, for as long as I allowed you to be."
"You!" Tanya whispered.
Feathercap emerged from the shadows.
"It took a long time for me to get you here. I delivered the poem. I took the newspaper cutting from Amos"s room and put it into the book for you to find. And I gave you a reason to hold on to the witch"s compa.s.s. Without my interest, you would have discarded it."
"It was you," Tanya realised. "On the bus that day. You wanted to buy the compa.s.s from us."
"No, I pretended to want to," said Feathercap. "Because I knew then that you would keep it. It was easy. All of it, so very easy. I knew you wouldn"t be able to resist following the clues, trying to solve the mystery of the missing girl. You and your silly little friend."
"So this is what you"ve all wanted, all these years? To lure me here, for this? For her?"
"No, not all of us," said Feathercap. "Just me. The others were working to protect you but I fooled them. I wormed my way in, earned their trust. With the division of the realm I managed to convince them I was loyal to the Seelie Court and to them. Gredin never fully trusted me. But I was too clever for him . . . too clever by far. You see, when Morwenna left the mortal world, n.o.body dreamed that her guardian would remain behind. It was my most closely guarded secret." He gave a triumphant smile. "The secret that would lead to your downfall."
"So who is my guardian?" Tanya demanded.
"Gredin is your guardian," said Feathercap. "Raven is your grandmother"s. Both were agreed that it was in your best interest and Florence"s to protect you from the truth."
"And the Mizhog?"
Feathercap sneered. "Let"s just say the Mizhog was saved by your grandmother many years ago from an unpleasant fate similar to the drain-dweller"s. It"s been loyal to her ever since."
"If they"re protecting me then why don"t they come?"
"Because they are outnumbered. And because it"s too late," Morwenna told her. "In just over a minute, I will be free and you will take my place. Feathercap will remain here to ensure that you do not escape. I"ll finally have the freedom that"s rightfully mine."
A white-hot rage took hold of Tanya then, possessing her in a way she had never before experienced. "You don"t deserve to be free."
"What did you just say?" Morwenna"s voice was dangerously quiet but Tanya no longer cared.
"You"re selfish, and cruel, and you don"t deserve to be free!" she shouted. Her whole body was trembling. "All these years, you"ve festered with hatred. Blaming my grandmother, when the only person to blame for all this is you. You had a choice and you chose this. My grandmother chose her family. She stayed. Her freedom is her own. She"s suffered for it."
"I don"t care!" Morwenna shrieked. "We had an agreement! Florence betrayed me she deserves to be here now, the coward! Not me! Not me!"
"You don"t care!" Tanya cried in disgust. "Of course you don"t! Why should you when other people have paid dearly for your mistake? Not just my grandmother but Amos, too. His reputation was ruined because of what you did. But you don"t care!"
Morwenna started to walk away, weaving between the trees like a ghost. "The exchange has already begun."
Tanya thrashed violently in the bonds. She could only watch as Morwenna"s form glided from sight . . . and listen as Feathercap jeered at her attempts to escape. Terror engulfed her. She heard herself sobbing before she even realised she was, before she felt the hot tears cascading down her cheeks. Oberon jumped up at her, whining in terror and confusion. An image flashed in her mind the image of her own face on futile posters with one empty, awful word: MISSING.
I don"t want to be the girl who vanished in the woods. I don"t want to be another of Tickey End"s missing.
Something was moving through the darkness, coming towards her in a dark blur. Feathercap noticed it a split second after Tanya.
Red.
The momentary distraction was the opportunity Oberon had long been awaiting. With a perfectly timed lunge, Feathercap was silenced forever.
The Land Rover screamed to a halt just short of the edge of the brook and then Warwick and Fabian jumped out and went dashing through the water towards the opening in the forest. A shrill sound pierced the night.
Fabian ran even harder.
"What is that?" Warwick panted, as they reached the edge of the woods.
"It"s the alarm on my watch! I set it to go off at midnight!"
Warwick fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the lock of hair, his hands shaking. "Take it! I"ve got some matches we have to burn it!"
Fabian held out his hand, but the hair slipped through his fingers and fell to the ground.
"Where is it?" Warwick yelled, striking a match in an attempt to light up the area. "Fabian, you idiot!"
Fabian dropped to the ground and began hunting desperately.
His watch continued to scream like a banshee foretelling certain death.
Red hacked violently at the bonds. Slowly but surely they began to loosen, until eventually the strands fell away and disintegrated. Her hands were dark and wet with blood. The Spidertwine had sliced her fingers as she had extracted the scissors from Tanya"s back pocket.
"What are you doing here . . . how did you know?" Tanya sobbed. "Where"s the baby?"
"He"s safe." Red continued to hack, speaking breathlessly. "I made the exchange, but the circus folk wouldn"t allow me to travel with them. Said the police had been sniffing around, asking questions. They know who I am I"ve seen the papers. So I decided the best thing would be to come back here and hide out for a bit longer. I was just about to go into the tunnel over by the church when I saw you and the boy coming out of the garden gate. So I watched and followed . . . luckily for you."
Finally, the last thread was broken. Tanya was free.
"We need to get out before midnight . . . she"s trying to switch places with me-"
Red silenced her with a nod of her head. "I heard everything. We need to move."
She grabbed Tanya"s arm, pulling her through the woods. Things rippled in the darkness. The fairies lurked just out of sight; waiting for the moment that Tanya would be surrendered to them. Oberon circled them protectively and Red pulled her knife out and held it aloft. Then she began to run. Tanya sprinted after her, running for her life, zigzagging through the trees.
"We"ve got to get you out of the woods," Red panted. "Before Morwenna leaves. We"re nearly out of time . . ."
Her words echoed meaninglessly in Tanya"s head. Something was wrong.
"Stop," she moaned. A strange humming had begun in her ears, like a swarm of insects.
"We can"t stop!" Red hissed. "Move. I said MOVE!"
"I can"t," Tanya whispered, staggering to a halt despite Red"s attempts to support her. Gradually the humming evolved into a whisper of voices all around her. Faces within the trees awoke. Gnarled fingerlike branches reached out to her. Vines disentangled themselves from tree barks and snaked towards her. The forest stirred with life.
Tanya understood what was happening. The switch was taking place.
Her strength left her. She sank to the ground, her eyes clenched shut and her hands clamped tightly over her ears. A strand of ivy was beginning to work its way up her leg. Red sliced it away with her blade, only for it to be replaced with another. She heard Red telling her to get up, Red pleading with her to move but Tanya could not. She thought of her parents and wished she could see them one last time. She thought of her grandmother and wished that things could have been different between them. She thought of Fabian and Warwick and what would become of Amos. She wondered if Red would ever find her brother. She even pictured Spitfire, curled up at the foot of the grandfather clock with his bones jutting out of his mangy fur.
The last thing she thought of was Oberon, her beloved, faithful dog. He had stayed by her side until the end. Then all thought fell away, leaving nothing, only darkness. Oberon began to howl.
A sharp pain in her thumb brought her back. Tanya struggled into consciousness and looked down. Fresh blood ran from a new wound.
"How did I . . .?" she began drowsily, seeing Morag"s scissors in Red"s hand, but not understanding. She felt herself slipping away again, being tugged and pulled by the foliage wrapping itself around her but not before she saw Red"s hand.
Red"s poor, bloodied hand.
Red"s poor, sliced fingers. Red, whose blood was mingling with her own as she gripped her hand tightly. And Red was holding her, cradling her head. Willing her not to go.
"Take me," Red was whispering. "Take me instead. She has a life to go back to. I don"t. You took it from me. Take me instead."
Take me instead.