Obsidian Pebble (37 page)

S and S exchanged glances, their eyes large and solemn. Savannah reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out something wrapped in a paper handkerchief. Sydney slowly peeled back the dirty paper to reveal something solid nestling there, something dark and soot-encrusted. She wiped it in the tissue and held it out to Oz.

“Is this what you mean?” they said in unison.

Oz looked down. In Sydney's hand was a black oval pebble with a small bump on its surface that looked very much like the back of a scarab beetle.

S and S had long gone by the time Mrs. Chambers got back, but Oz was having difficulty hiding his change of mood and the fact that the artefacts were now under his pillow.

“My, you are feeling better, aren't you? What was in that water, I wonder?”

Oz shrugged. “Just looking forward to getting out of here. Did you bring me any clothes, Mum? I don't want to go home in my pyjamas.”

“I did, indeed. Clean jeans, T-shirt and a hoody. Standard Oz uniform.”

“So, can I change now?”

Mrs. Chambers took the hint and made herself scarce, while Oz changed and quickly tucked the fused pebble and dor into a zipped inside pocket of his sweatshirt. All his blood tests turned out to be normal, and by eleven-thirty Oz and his mother were on their way home.

As they drove through a damp December Seabourne, he borrowed her phone to text Ellie and Ruff and, plucking up as much courage as he could muster, asked, “Mum, can Ellie and Ruff come over later?”

His mother's expression was not encouraging. “I'm not sure that's such a great idea, Oz.”

“But we've got loads to talk about. And they'll definitely want to make sure I'm okay,” he pleaded, and then added hurriedly, “Not to stay the night or anything.”

Mrs. Chambers sighed. “Okay, but it's early to bed for you tonight, with no arguments.”

Oz grinned and began texting furiously again.

Penwurt looked none the worse for wear from the front, but an acrid stench hung in the air wherever they went. Oz and his mother took a stroll around the side of the house to inspect the damage. What was left of the basement's charred contents had been dumped outside in a soggy black mess. All the doors to the orphanage were open to let the air in, and the ground level windows had all been blown out. Streaks of black soot smeared the walls and windowsills like blood from a wound.

Seeing it sent a shudder through Oz and he didn't linger; too many what-might-have-been thoughts crowded in. Instead, he went to the warm kitchen, made tea and toast with extra jam and took them up to the library. The panel door was closed and, using Essence, Alum, Soap, and Tin, he opened it up again just to see if it still worked. It did. Inside, the passageway was dark and uninviting and the acrid aroma drifting up from below seemed even stronger, so he suppressed a shiver and shut the panel again quickly. He spent a pleasant hour or two decorating the library with old-school paper chains and cardboard snowmen he'd found in a cupboard, as well as a miniature, nine-inch high, silver tinsel Christmas tree, complete with a glowing star at its apex.

Ellie and Ruff arrived mid-afternoon, but Oz didn't go down to meet them. Instead, he asked Mrs. Chambers to send them straight up to his room and threw himself into bed, feigning sleep. Through a millimetre slit of barely open lids, Oz watched as they tiptoed into his bedroom. He saw them exchange shocked, worried glances, and then he sat bolt upright and yelled “Surprise!” They were so startled that Ellie actually screamed.

“You total armpit, Oz,” she said, clutching her hand to her chest. “We were really worried about you.”

“And so you should be, letting yourselves be tricked by Rollins like that,” Oz tutted behind a wide grin. He was well pleased with his surprise.

“The git tricked you, too, mate,” Ruff said.

“You are such a gonk,” Ellie said, still not having quite recovered from Oz's prank. She threw a pillow at his head for good measure, but laughed and shook her head as she did so. Oz jumped out of bed, opened the drawn curtains to let in what little afternoon light there was and saw that huge, charcoal-coloured storm clouds were gathering in the west.

Oz looked at his friends and smiled. But the smile he got in return looked a touch forced and uncertain. A little bubble of awkward silence grew as Ellie and Ruff just stood there, looking oddly uncomfortable and glancing at one another.

“What's up with you two?” Oz asked when he could stand it no longer.

Ellie let out a tremulous sigh. “We've been talking and…”

“We just wanted to say sorry,” Ruff blurted out.

“Sorry?” Oz stared at them. “Why?”

“Because…” Ellie faltered. “Because if I hadn't just blundered into the passages like I did, or made Lucy Bishop go ape 'cos I kicked her brother when all you were trying to do was make friends with him, maybe none of this would have happened.”

“And if I hadn't been so buzzardly convinced that there was treasure to find so that I could get rich,” Ruff said, “I wouldn't have been so keen to solve the symbols and…”

“Ruff's right. I am like a cow in a crystal maze,” Ellie added miserably. “Oh, Oz, if you'd been hurt or…or…” She trailed off, her lip trembling.

“And I swear, I'm going to give up the Xbox after this,” Ruff said, his face pink. “Dad says it's filling my head with so much weirdness that I can't tell what's real and—”

“You're right,” Oz said softly, interrupting Ruff. “If it hadn't been for the two of you, I wouldn't have ended up in hospital. But if it hadn't been for you, Ellie, Lucy Bishop would have brained me with a hammer. You saved my life in that room. And if it hadn't been for you, Ruff, we'd never have solved the puzzle, treasure or no treasure, because I know I didn't have a clue. We're in this together. We're a team, aren't we? That's what's important. That's all there is to it.”

They were quiet, and for a while all Ellie and Ruff did was study their shoes.

“Think it'll snow?” Ellie asked eventually as she glanced out of the window and dabbed at her eyes.

“Too warm,” Oz said.

“Anyway, who cares?” added Ruff. “If Oz doesn't tell us what went on in that basement soon, I'm going to explode. Before you do, though, I don't know if it's just me, but is anyone else starving?”

Ellie made eyes to the ceiling, but they went down to the kitchen anyway, because Ellie's mum had made mini pizzas and a cake in celebration of them all having come through their ordeal relatively unscathed, and Mrs. Chambers had laid them out on the table in readiness. She fussed over the three of them as usual, making sure they had enough of everything as they piled the food onto paper plates.

Oz had watched his mother carefully since they'd come back from the hospital. Perhaps it was just tiredness on her part, but he couldn't help noticing that her hands trembled as she handed out the cutlery, and her smile seemed a little forced. He glanced at the calendar and felt a tiny shiver of relief pass through him. The black dog was completely hidden. But it had been a hard couple of days for his mother as well, he told himself. Maybe what he was seeing was simply a bit of nervous reaction.

Mrs. Chambers issued strict orders that the orphanage was off-limits, but that was an unnecessary warning. None of them wanted to go back there yet. Instead, they took the food and sat in the library's comfy chairs.

“Festive,” Ruff said on seeing the Christmassy effort Oz had made.

“Brilliant,” Ellie agreed.

They munched pizza and listened in awe as Oz gave them a blow-by-blow account of what happened. When he got to the bit where S and S had revealed the pebble and the dor and produced them with a “ta-da” flourish, even Ruff stopped chewing to gawp in disbelief. Ellie ran her finger over the slight protuberance the dor made in the pebble's smooth surface and shook her head. “I would never have said it fitted there.”

“And you say that Rollins was trying to pump it full of electricity?” Ruff asked, his brows knitting.

“That's what it looked like to me,” Oz said.

As if on cue, the first distant boom of thunder rolled out over the sky to the west and a few spots of rain spattered against the turret panes.

“So, how did you two get out of that room?” Oz asked finally, feeling like he'd been the only one talking for what seemed like hours.

“Firemen,” Ruff said. “But they smashed down the real door, not the secret passage one.”

“I expect they'll all be boarded up now,” Ellie said wistfully.

“You reckon?” Oz smiled. “All the more reason to explore them again, then, once they repair the basement.”

“Buzzard,” Ruff said, grinning. “Chuck us a slice of cake, Ellie.”

Ellie sighed and handed him another slice. “I don't know why, but I feel really sorry for Lucy Bishop.”

“Yeah, know what you mean,” Ruff said through chipmunk cheeks. “I generally feel sorry for loonies that come after me with hammers, all the while screaming blue murder.”

“Shut up, Ruff. And don't speak with your mouth full, it's disgusting. All I'm saying is that it must be awful knowing your brother has been turned into some sort of a…”

“Polecat. Rollins confirmed it.” Oz nodded. “My guess is that Gerber's used fifth artefact technology to find a way of capturing what it's like to be an animal…” He let his words trail off before adding quietly, “Rollins really enjoyed telling me that being a cheetah going in for the kill was the best experience he'd ever had.”

“Ugh,” Ellie said, making a face.

“Do you think that's what's happened to Gerber's driver?” Ruff asked. “You know, the one you said looked really weird?”

Oz remembered the sight of the chauffeur beginning to unfurl himself from the front seat of the Rolls Royce and let his voice drop to a whisper. “Maybe. I mean, if Edward Bishop thought he was a polecat, why not turn someone into a snake or—”

“A vampire bat,” Ruff said, his eyes suddenly very large.

No one said anything for almost a minute. It was Oz who finally spoke.

“When I was in the hospital, all I could think about was Gerber. Let's say he's covered his tracks with fake birth certificates and stuff, and that he's really as old as we think he is. I've seen him up close, remember, and whatever's happened to make him live this long hasn't stopped the ageing process completely, it's just slowed it all down. Just one look at him tells you that.”

“So, maybe being close to the artefacts affects the way time passes?” Ellie said.

Ruff was nodding. Drawing on his vast Xbox experience, he said, “In
Reanimator 12
, there are these time bubbles…”

“Ru-uff,” Ellie said crossly.

“No, listen,” Ruff argued. “All I'm saying is that maybe the artefacts bring a bit of wherever they're from with them. And maybe it rubs off, like…like a sort of dimensional bubble which lets you use up someone else's time and not your own. That's what happens in—”

“
Reanimator 12
. Yeah, we got that bit,” Ellie said, but although her words still dripped with sarcasm, she was looking at Oz a lot more pensively now.

“However it works, I bet Gerber's desperate to find a way to make it permanent,” Oz said. “That's why he wants the other artefacts so badly.”

“And since the artefacts are tied up with Bunthorpe and Penwurt, that's why he wants this place, too,” Ellie whispered.

There was another roll of thunder, at which Ruff snapped his head up towards the window. The storm was coming nearer. Rain started hammering on the panes with such ferocity they had to shout to be heard.

“Let's go down and play some Xbox. It's too noisy up here,” Ruff suggested.

“Thought you were giving it up,” Ellie said, and earned a withering glance in reply.

“First I need to hide this.” Oz took out the pebble and the dor and looked around for an appropriate spot.

“Could try the passage,” Ruff suggested.

“No,” said Ellie. “I know just the place.” She fetched the ladder, climbed up the bookcase and took down a heavy, black, leather-bound tome. Inside, a space had been cut out of the pages in the shape of a hip flask.

Oz laughed. “When did you find this?”

“First time we looked for Morsman stuff.”

“It's perfect,” Oz said. He slipped the artefacts in and read the spine. “
The Victorian Gentleman's Guide to Herbalism
. Don't think we'll forget that one very easily.”

In his bedroom, while Ellie and Ruff played Xbox, Oz fired up his laptop and Skyped S and S.

“Just wanted to thank you properly for everything,” he said when their faces appeared on the screen.

“We're glad you're home,” said S and S together.

Ellie shot Oz a look full of wary incredulousness and, off-camera, mouthed, “Are they for real?”

Ruff groaned as a bear-droid from Pluton 6 imploded on the Xbox screen. “I wish I could get past this Octodecimator. He gets me every time,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Is your friend playing
Death Planet Hub
?” Savannah asked.

“Playing and losing,” laughed Oz.

“We know how to beat the Octo-decimator,” Sydney said.

“What?” said Ruff, coming around to join Oz in front of his laptop. Half a minute later, Oz looked on, bemused, as Ruff perched the laptop so that the camera was on the Xbox screen and proceeded to take a master class in
Death Planet Hub
from S and S.

“I think I've seen it all now,” Ellie muttered, shaking her head in amusement.

The storm was gathering strength with the onset of darkness. Through the window, Oz saw a car's lights pull up on the street outside. A figure huddled inside a coat got out and hurried in through the gate.