several things that his two pals had in common. They were Ned’s only close friends outside the Circus of Marvels, and they had both lived on the same street as Ned, until the Waddlesworths (or Armstrongs – depending on which side of the Veil you lived) had decided to move to the neighbouring suburb.
“Only you two, out of the whole class?”
“Yup. He kept asking questions about how long we’d lived on our street; he had a really oily voice, sort of creepy. He said there was a very rare type of nit he was trying to track down and that he thought it had come from Oak Tree Lane.”
“That is weird,” said Ned, who did not like where the story was going at all.
“It gets weirder. So Gummy’s waiting outside and I’m sat on a chair in the school’s old meeting room. The inspector guy takes these plugs out of his nose and then shoves said nose right into my hair. Finally he pulls away, staggers backwards and looks like he’s going to be sick.”
“Well, who wouldn’t?” grinned Gummy.
“Then he looks at me and starts blathering on about the awful smell of children and how he finally has a lead. A second later he’s flying out the door past me, then Gummy, and clutching his nose like it’s been stabbed.”
Behind the Veil, there were many creatures, with many “gifts”. Ned had read about Folk with a sense of smell so acute they could follow a target, any target, for miles and once they had a scent, they never forgot it. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
“So after that, you went home and you and your mum and dad came over to mine, right?”
“Yeah. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You’ve led him straight to us, Gummy!”
At that moment, something inside Ned changed. The mistletoe and wrapping paper, the thin veneer of an ordinary life with its ordinary joys and its run-up to Christmas, all, suddenly, faded away.
Behind Ned’s friend, the two bulbs in his extraordinary mouse’s eyes started to flash a brilliant white. Cold fear ran up and down Ned’s back. His mouse, a Debussy Mark Twelve, had been top-of-the-range spy gear in its time, a mechanical marvel of spinning cogs and winding gears. It would never blink like that on this side of the Veil, not in front of “jossers” who did not know about the Hidden. Not, of course, unless it was a serious emergency.
The mouse had been adjusted by the Circus of Marvels’ resident boffin and could now communicate with Ned, albeit in simple Morse code. Longer flashes of the eyes were a dash, shorter blinks a dot.
Ned wondered who was sending him a message. Only a few people knew the correct frequency to contact Whiskers: Ned’s parents, the Circus of Marvels and the Olswangs at number 24. His dad had insisted that if they were to return to a “normal” life, they would have to have friendly agents to watch over their son. “Fair-folk” used glamours outside the Hidden’s territory to remain human in appearance, but Mr Olswang clearly had dwarven blood in his veins and “Mrs” had to have been elven to be anywhere near as tall as she was. Either way, neither Ned’s parents nor the Olswangs had ever had cause to use the system until today, in Mr Johnston’s shed.
Ned’s friends looked at Whiskers in complete and utter horror.
“What in the name of everything is your mouse doing?” marvelled Archie.
“Shh, it’s blinking,” said Ned.
“DON’T GO, H, O, M,” he translated.
A single dot.
“E.”
There are few things less likely to make a boy stay where he is, than telling him not to go home. Especially when it means that his parents might be in danger.
“Y-y-you need to do some explaining,” stammered Gummy. “I mean, that’s just not right, not a bit! Your … your blinking mouse, Ned, what on earth is it?”
Archie leapt to his feet.
“It’s magic, innit?” said Archie. “You’ve got some weird magical rodent, you’re like blooming Gandalf or something. O,M,G, that is AWESOME!”
But when Ned spoke it was in a whisper. A whisper so cold that it stilled his friends to their cores.
“Say nothing, not to anyone. Promise?”
Whether because of Whiskers’ flashing eyes, or the look on Ned’s face, both of his friends remained silent.
“PROMISE!” forced Ned with a shout.
“Promise,” they murmured back sheepishly.
And with that, Ned was on his bicycle and pedalling away from the Johnstons’ as fast as its wheels would carry him.
“Ned, wait! You forgot your bag,” called Gummy, but Ned was already gone.
Where his dad had trained Ned with the ring at his finger, his mum had taught him circus skills. High-wire, tumbling, fencing, juggling (either knives or flames) and all-round acrobatics. Everyone who worked the borders of the Veil had to know them, to be able to fight, or get out of danger, and there was no better teacher than Olivia Armstrong.
She had not taught him how to ride a bike – that much he had already known – but she had honed his reflexes and kept him fit. Even so, he thought his lungs were going to explode by the time he finally made it to his house, though not as surely as his heart. Training only works, no matter how thorough, when you remember it. Ned could barely remember how to breathe.
He didn’t notice the blaring car alarms, or that the lawnmower from number 39 was floating several feet off the ground. His powers were spiking again. He approached the front door and let out a sigh of relief. The lights were on and everything looked quite normal from the outside. He even heard “White Christmas” playing on their kitchen radio again.
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …”
It was only when he pulled out his keys that he noticed the front door hanging very slightly ajar. That, in and of itself, would have been more than enough to make Ned worry, but it was the movement in his own shadow that made his hair stand on end. It spilt out across the ground, oozing with a will of its own. The shadow became a shape and then the shape rose up to greet him. Within it were two minuscule eyes, like a pair of stars on flowing black velvet.
Ned’s undulating familiar, the shadow-dwelling Gorrn, was a difficult creature, prone to taking offence over the smallest issue and also uncommonly lazy. Gorrn usually only came to Ned if he was summoned. The only time he showed himself without being asked was if there was very clear and very present danger nearby.
“Gorrn, is something wrong?”
“Arr,” groaned back the shadow.
Gorrn was a familiar of few words. “Roo” was either a question or a “don’t know”, “Unt” a flat refusal to help, but “Arr”?
“Arr” nearly always meant yes.