Part 24 (1/2)

'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 s.h.i.+fted 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?'