Читать книгу: «The Beast»

Dedication

For me old mucker, Tommy Donbavand, aka Wobblebottom.

Sorry for nailing you to that ceiling in the last book.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

PROLOGUE

THREE DAYS EARLIER...

Chapter One - The Night Bus

Chapter Two - This Old House

Chapter Three - The Stakeout

Chapter Four - Cop Out

Chapter Five - Toes in the Sugar

Chapter Six - Cop Killers?

Chapter Seven - The Screechers

Chapter Eight - Trapped in the Maze

Chapter Nine - Blame it on Baby

Chapter Ten - The Not-So-Supermarket

Chapter Eleven - Damsel in Distress

Chapter Twelve - Rosie’s Story

Chapter Thirteen - Taking Stock

Chapter Fourteen - Lily the Pink

Chapter Fifteen - A Moment Like This

Chapter Sixteen - Surrounded

Chapter Seventeen - Facing the Beast

Chapter Eighteen - Alone Together

Chapter Nineteen - Battle of the Beasts

Chapter Twenty - The Final Straw

Also available in the Invisible Fiends series:

Copyright

About the Publisher

hat had I expected to see? I wasn’t sure. An empty street. One or two late-night wanderers, maybe.

But not this. Never this.

There were hundreds of them. Thousands. They scuttled and scurried through the darkness, swarming over the village like an infection; relentless and unstoppable.

I leaned closer to the window and looked down at the front of the hospital. One of the larger creatures was tearing through the fence, its claws slicing through the wrought-iron bars as if they were cardboard. My breath fogged the glass and the monster vanished behind a cloud of condensation. By the time the pane cleared the thing would be inside the hospital. It would be up the stairs in moments. Everyone in here was as good as dead.

The distant thunder of gunfire ricocheted from somewhere near the village centre. A scream followed – short and sharp, then suddenly silenced. There were no more gunshots after that, just the triumphant roar of something sickening and grotesque.

I heard Ameena take a step closer behind me. I didn’t need to look at her reflection in the window to know how terrified she was. The crack in her voice said it all.

‘It’s the same everywhere,’ she whispered.

I nodded, slowly. ‘The town as well?’

She hesitated long enough for me to realise what she meant. I turned away from the devastation outside. ‘Wait... You really mean everywhere, don’t you?’

Her only reply was a single nod of her head.

‘Liar!’ I snapped. It couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be happening.

She stooped and picked up the TV remote from the day-room coffee table. It shook in her hand as she held it out to me.

‘See for yourself.’

Hesitantly, I took the remote. ‘What channel?’

She glanced at the ceiling, steadying her voice. ‘Any of them.’

The old television set gave a faint clunk as I switched it on. In a few seconds, an all-too-familiar scene appeared.

Hundreds of the creatures. Cars and buildings ablaze. People screaming. People running. People dying.

Hell on Earth.

‘That’s New York,’ she said.

Click. Another channel, but the footage was almost identical.

‘London.’

Click.

‘I’m... I’m not sure. Somewhere in Japan. Tokyo, maybe?’

It could have been Tokyo, but then again it could have been anywhere. I clicked through half a dozen more channels, but the images were always the same.

‘It happened,’ I gasped. ‘It actually happened.’

I turned back to the window and gazed out. The clouds above the next town were tinged with orange and red. It was already burning. They were destroying everything, just like he’d told me they would.

This was it.

The world was ending.

Armageddon.

And it was all my fault.

woke up screaming. This, of late, was not unusual. The seats beneath me creaked in complaint as I sat upright and tried to shake away the memories of the nightmares before they could fully take hold. No such luck.

The faces of the fiends I’d fought leered at me – vague, half-formed shapes tormenting me from the deepest recesses of my own mind:

Caddie, make-up smeared across her bone-white skin.

The Crowmaster, his empty eye sockets alive with maggots.

Doc Mortis, scalpel in hand, blood spattered across his filthy white coat.

Other images, too. The blubbery remains of the dead man on the train; Marion’s flesh-stripped skeleton; my mum, unconscious on a hospital bed.

For a long time I’d tried to resist them, to fill my brain with other thoughts until there was no room left for monsters and horror. It never worked. If anything, it just prolonged the whole ordeal. I’d eventually learned not to fight them, to let them wash over me instead, paying them as little attention as possible.

So there, in the darkness, I closed my eyes, sat still, pulled the collar of my stolen coat tighter around my neck, and let the monsters do their worst.

Several minutes later, I blinked my eyes open. I spent a few more seconds steadying my breath, watching it roll from my mouth as shaky white clouds. Only then did I begin to pay attention to my surroundings.

It was dark, but then it was January and it was early. I never slept late any more. I was on the back seat of a bus that was parked up at the depot. We’d been sleeping here for the last few nights. Not the same bus every time, but the same depot, sneaking through a hole in the fence long after the place had been locked up for the night.

We took it in turns sleeping on the back seat. It was a padded bench, designed to take five or six passengers. This made it much longer than the other seats, and so more comfortable to sleep on. Not comfortable, but more comfortable.

Last night had been my night up the back, so tonight I’d be on one of the two-seaters. I was dreading it already.

‘Ameena.’

Her name came out as a whisper of white mist. Sometimes, my early-morning screaming fit would wake her up, but more and more often these days she was able to sleep through it. Maybe she was getting used to it, or maybe she was just too tired to respond. Either way, she hadn’t reacted this morning.

‘Ameena,’ I said again, louder this time. It was too early for anyone to be at the depot, but there was still part of me that was too afraid to talk at normal volume, in case it attracted attention. Ameena had laughed when I’d told her that. Everything we’d been through, and I was scared of a telling off from a bus driver.

I didn’t want to risk raising my voice any more, so I took hold of the cold metal handle on the back of the seat in front and leaned over it.

‘Ameena?’

No. Not Ameena. Not anyone.

I looked to the seat across the aisle. Empty. I looked along the aisle itself, squinting through the gloom. No shape curled up on the floor. No legs stretched out across the gap. No signs of life anywhere.

I’d woken up alone. This was very unusual.

We’d been on the run for two weeks. Well, technically I’d been on the run, and Ameena had just been keeping me company. The police thought I’d killed my mum’s cousin. They also thought I’d attacked my mum, beating her so violently she’d been left in a coma, barely clinging to life.

I hadn’t done either of them. But I’d confessed to both.

Long story.

I’d had to fake taking Ameena hostage to get past the police at the hospital. Amazingly, it had worked, and we’d managed to get away without being caught.

For days afterwards, our faces were all over the newspapers. The TV too, probably, although I hadn’t exactly had time to tune in. We’d kept moving, never settling in one place for long, sleeping in alleyways and in doorways and, on one particularly stormy night, a bus shelter.

It was the bus shelter that had given Ameena the idea of finding the bus depot. We’d been spending the night there ever since, going to sleep together every night, and waking up together every morning.

Until today.

‘Ameena.’

I said her name again, more for the comfort of hearing it spoken out loud than anything else. She wasn’t on the bus, and that raised one very obvious question: where was she?

The windows were thick with frost, making it impossible to see anything but the hazy glow of the streetlights on the pavement beyond the depot fence. There was nothing else for it. If Ameena wasn’t on the bus, I’d have to go out and find her.

Go outside.

In the dark.

Alone.

Recent events told me this probably wasn’t a great idea, but what choice did I have? Had I been the one missing, Ameena wouldn’t hesitate before coming to find me. I owed her the same, at least.

I headed for the door, checking each row of seats, hoping I’d find her curled up on one of them, snoring softly. By the time I made it to the front, all my hopes were dashed.

She was out there somewhere, and I had no idea where or why. I pulled my coat tighter, took a steadying breath, and reached for the door.

Before my fingers were anywhere near it, the door opened noisily, folding inwards like a concertina. I stepped back, tripping over the step and landing heavily on the floor as a figure stepped from the darkness, bringing with it a cloud of cold, frosty air.

‘Morning, kiddo,’ Ameena said. Her teeth were chattering as she pushed the door closed and held up a flimsy white carrier bag. ‘Say hello to breakfast.’

I ran my finger along the inside of the plastic sandwich-pack, scooping up the last few stray crumbs. We’d had half the sandwich each, washed down by swigs from a one-litre carton of milk.

Only when we’d finished the lot did I ask where it had come from.

‘Petrol station,’ Ameena replied, crushing the milk carton and stuffing it back in the now-empty bag. ‘Found some money on the floor when I was going to sleep. Thought I’d give us a treat.’

I suspected Ameena wasn’t telling me the whole truth, but I wasn’t about to start asking questions. The sandwich had been the only thing I’d eaten in the last 24 hours, and I was beyond caring where or how she’d managed to get her hands on it.

‘I was worried,’ I admitted. ‘Thought someone had...’ I left the sentence hanging there, not quite sure what I’d thought had happened to her.

‘Kidnapped me?’ she said.

I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Murdered me?’

‘Well...’

‘Fed me to their evil crow army?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

She shook her head. ‘Nope. Just buying sandwiches.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘That’s OK then.’

We were both on the back seat, facing each other, our feet almost touching. She slid backwards and leaned against the window. I did the same, then leaned forward again when the frosty glass began to bite at me through the thin coat.

‘So, what’s the plan for today? Some fine dining? A shopping spree?’ Ameena asked. ‘Roaming the streets for hours, then legging it every time we see a cop? The decision, Mr Alexander, is you—’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Oh. Right.’ She blinked, and I could almost hear her brain processing this information. ‘I dunno...’

‘I just...’ I lowered my head and looked at my hands. They were knotted together for warmth, so I couldn’t tell which fingers belonged to which hand. ‘We won’t stay long. I just... I want to see it.’

It was Ameena’s turn to lean forward. ‘She won’t be there,’ she said, her voice taking on a soft edge she hardly ever used. ‘Your mum. The papers said she was still in the—’

‘I know,’ I said quickly. ‘I know that. But that was three days ago, and it’s...’ I untangled my hands and stared down at my open palms. ‘I just need to see it.’

‘It’s a long way.’ Ameena looked around at the inside of the bus. ‘And we’ve got it good here. Roof over our head. Something to sleep on. It could be a lot worse.’

I didn’t say anything. Ameena wasn’t going for the idea, I could tell.

‘Of course, we could have it even better,’ she continued, ‘if someone would use his magic powers to—’

‘Stop it,’ I said flatly. ‘They’re not magic powers. And I told you already, I’m not using them again. Not unless it’s an emergency.’

‘But you could—’

‘We don’t know what I could do!’ I snapped, and I realised I was standing up now, glaring down at her.

I’d first discovered my “magic powers” while fighting Mr Mumbles. It started with an itchy tingling across my scalp. Next thing I knew, things I imagined started to become real. I’d used the power to defeat Mr Mumbles, but I’d since found out that it was more dangerous than I could’ve guessed.

‘The Crowmaster told me that every time I use my, my... abilities, I’m playing right into my dad’s hands.’

‘The Crowmaster said a lot of things,’ Ameena shrugged. ‘Don’t think he was the most trustworthy of sources, to be honest.’

‘Well, I’m not taking the chance. Not unless there’s no other choice,’ I replied, lowering my voice again. ‘My dad told me that one day I’d help him kill everyone on Earth, and I don’t want to risk proving him right.’

Ameena shook her head, then gave another half-hearted shrug. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘But you could just conjure us up a cake or something. I mean, it’s not like anyone’s ever been killed by a French Fancy.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but then saw the smirk playing at the corners of her mouth.

‘Shut up,’ I said, smiling on the inside, if not the outside. ‘So, are we going home or what?’

Down at the front of the bus, the door slid open with a soft hiss. We ducked at the same time, dropping to the floor behind a row of seats. The bus dipped to the left a little as someone heavy climbed inside.

Ameena mouthed something to me from the other side of the aisle. I had absolutely no idea what it was, so I just shrugged in reply. She shrugged back, leaving me even more confused than I had been. As I tried to guess what she’d said, the door of the bus hissed closed.

There was silence for a moment, before footsteps clacked along the aisle, slow and steady, like the ticking of an old clock. With every step the floor beneath us gave a slight shake. The vibrations got worse as the steps drew closer and closer, until...

‘Ruddy Nora!’

The voice was sharp and panicked. I looked up into the wobbly face of a grey-haired man. ‘Oi!’ he cried. ‘Who are...? What are...? Why...?’ His voice trailed off. ‘Oi!’ he said again, although you could tell his heart wasn’t in it this time.

Ameena stood up first. I was a second or two behind her. The man took a step backwards, eyeing us nervously. He was slightly shorter than Ameena, a little taller than me, wider than both of us combined. He wore a light blue shirt with a dark blue tie and a badge identifying him as “Dave Morgan, Driver”.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, his eyes constantly flitting between us. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’

‘Says who?’ Ameena demanded.

‘Sorry,’ I said quickly. Ameena had a lot of strengths, but diplomacy wasn’t one of them. ‘We didn’t... It was freezing. We didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

Dave Morgan, Driver, kept his gaze on me. ‘What,’ he began, ‘you homeless or something?’

I nodded.

‘Bloody Hell,’ he mumbled. His round shoulders seemed to sag. ‘How old are you?’

‘Thirteen,’ I told him.

His eyes opened wide. ‘Thirteen? And you’re...’ He shook his head. To his credit, he looked genuinely concerned. ‘Bloody Hell. That’s not right. That’s not right, that. There must be somewhere you can go?’

Neither of us replied.

‘We could get you to the police,’ he suggested. ‘They’ll find a—’

‘No!’ Ameena and I both said it at the same time. The driver must’ve heard something in our voices, or spotted something in our eyes, because he took another step back, suddenly suspicious. He looked at Ameena for a long time, then back to me. A flicker of a frown crossed his face.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, his eyes narrowing. ‘I know you. You’re them kids from the news, aren’t you?’ He glared at me. ‘You’re the one what killed that woman.’

Ameena swung out from behind the seat, slamming her shoulder into the driver’s bulging belly before he had a chance to react. He stumbled backwards, then thudded down on to a seat as Ameena gave him a sideways shove.

‘Barney!’ he bellowed, his fat fingers grabbing for Ameena. ‘Barney, get in here!’

He moved to get up, but Ameena pushed him back down. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ she cried, shooting me one of her looks. ‘Leg it!’

did as I was told, racing along the aisle, bounding over the driver’s legs, then hurrying to where Ameena was already opening the door. She jumped the steps, landing silently on the ground. I leapt after her, then yelped as my feet slid in opposite directions on the icy road surface.

Ameena caught me by the wrist, pulling me up and on through the grey, early-morning light. We ran along the side of our bus and sped down a narrow alleyway between two more parked coaches.

‘Barney!’ We could still hear the driver shouting. ‘Barney, where are you?’

A shape, impossible to make out clearly, moved through the gloom up ahead of us. Ameena ducked low and we froze, waiting for whoever it was to pass.

‘Come on,’ she urged when the coast was clear. We continued through the maze of parked coaches, keeping low. When we finally reached the last bus, Ameena poked her head out and looked around. The fence we usually entered and left the depot through was only fifteen metres ahead, but to get to it we had to cross an empty stretch of car park. If anyone was nearby, they couldn’t fail to spot us.

‘It’s safe,’ Ameena whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

We scurried, doubled over, towards the fence, eyes searching the darkness for any sign of movement. The driver was no longer calling for help. I guessed that meant Barney – whoever he was – had turned up.

Without the shouting, and with no traffic on the road beyond the fence, there was only the soft sound of our feet on the tarmac to disturb the eerie silence.

But no. That wasn’t quite true. There was another sound too. A rapid clicking, far away, but getting closer. Ameena heard it at the same time I did. She straightened up, mid-run, and looked behind us. Even in the dark, I saw her face go pale.

I glanced back in the direction of the clicking. Dave the driver stood over by one of the coaches, watching us. He was talking into a mobile phone, probably calling the police, but that, right now, wasn’t the problem.

The problem was about halfway between him and us. The problem was a large brown-and-black dog. And the problem was racing across the depot, its paws clicking against the road with every bound.

‘Get ’em, Barney!’ Dave cried, taking the phone away from his ear for just a moment.

Ameena and I doubled our speed as Barney the Rottweiler opened his jaws and let rip with a frenzy of angry barking.

‘Hurry!’ Ameena cried, before realising I was already in the process of overtaking her. We hit the fence mid-sprint, slamming into the chain-link metal and making the whole thing shake. Down at our feet, the hole was only big enough to take one of us at a time. Behind us, Barney’s barking rose to fever pitch.

Ameena glanced upwards at the fence, which stood about three metres high. She flexed her fingers, reached up as high as she could, and began to climb.

‘Go under, I’ll go over,’ she said. ‘Move!’

The clicking and the barking were almost on me as I dropped to my knees and pushed at the broken chain-link. It folded outwards, then snagged on the grass verge on the other side.

‘Get him, Barn!’

‘Move!’ Ameena cried. ‘Move, move, move!’

I shoved harder and the bottom of the fence pinged free. The ground froze my belly as I dropped down and wriggled my way through. I barely noticed it, or the scratching of the metal fence down the whole length of my back.

The teeth, though, I did notice. They were hard to miss. They bit into my jeans, just above my ankle. I felt the dog’s hot breath against my skin, heard it growl deep down at the back of its throat.

‘Good boy, Barney!’ the driver called over. ‘Good boy. Keep a hold of him, now.’

Ameena dropped on to the grass just a few centimetres from my head. I tried to kick the dog away, but my legs were pinned between the fence and the ground. I felt Ameena’s hands around my own as, just a few streets away, a siren began to scream.

‘Cops,’ Ameena groaned. She pulled hard on my arms, almost popping them from their sockets. ‘Come on!’

‘I’m trying!’ I told her. I twisted and the dog lost his grip. Ameena managed to drag me forwards a few more centimetres before those jaws were at my leg again. I hissed in pain as the teeth scraped against my ankle bone. An all-too-familiar tingle buzzed through my head.

‘N-no!’ I gasped, but I was too late to stop it. Fuelled by my fear, my abilities took control. I heard Barney yelp as an invisible wind sent him bouncing backwards across the tarmac.

Ameena pulled harder, dragging me through the fence and up on to the strip of grass that ran alongside the pavement.

‘Don’t want to use your powers, eh?’ she asked, breathing heavily.

‘Didn’t do it on purpose,’ I wheezed, checking the back of my leg for damage but finding no real harm done.

‘You so could have made us that cake,’ she muttered. She looked along the street, to where we could hear the police car drawing ever closer. ‘You know,’ she said, zipping up her jacket and marching quickly away from the approaching siren, ‘maybe heading for your place isn’t such a bad idea after all.’

I’d expected the journey home to be a long, difficult one with lots of walking and hitch-hiking involved. It turned out I was wrong.

Ameena had produced some more money she’d just “found” lying around, and we’d taken the bus most of the way. It was the same bus company whose depot we’d only just escaped from that morning. Fortunately, it wasn’t the same driver. This one barely gave us a second glance when we got on at the station, even though we must’ve looked a right state.

We dozed most of the way, the shuddering and shaking of the seats beneath us rocking our exhausted bodies to sleep within minutes of the engine starting.

It was the driver who woke us up, nudging us to let us know we’d reached our stop. I sat upright and looked out of the window, blinking away the sleep and trying to figure out where we were. It didn’t look familiar, and I was about to let the driver know this wasn’t our stop when I remembered we’d decided to get off at the next town over, rather than at my village itself. If the police were still looking for us – and they would be – stepping off the bus right outside my house probably wouldn’t be a very wise move.

And so, we’d hopped off the coach and taken the long way round to my village, walking through woodland and long grass, keeping as far away from the road as possible. It was slow going, and – thanks to my frequent need to rest – took us almost as long as the bus journey.

Which is why it was getting dark again by the time we reached our destination. Not home. Not quite. Not yet. We made instead for the old abandoned house just across from mine. The house where my childhood imaginary friend, Mr Mumbles, had almost killed me. Twice.

The Keller House.

It was the same height as all the other houses on the street, but it seemed impossibly tall, like a tower or castle stretching up into the cloudy night sky. I stood on the pavement, looking in. There was the garden Mumbles had chased me across. There was the pool house, where I’d almost drowned. And up there, the roof, where both Ameena and I had almost died of cold.

‘You OK?’ Ameena’s voice came at me from nowhere, snapping me back to the present.

‘Fine,’ I said, trying to smile but forgetting how. I clambered over the fence. We were round the back of the house, well out of sight, but I still felt too exposed. ‘Come on, someone will see us here.’

The grass crunched beneath our feet, brittle with frost. The last time I’d been in this garden it had been slick with mud. I’d struggled to keep my footing as I ran from Mr Mumbles. Even now, I had an overwhelming urge to look behind me. I half-expected to see him there, striding slowly across the lawn, his eyes glaring hatred at me.

He wasn’t there, of course. He was in the Darkest Corners, the hell-like alternate dimension where all imaginary friends go after they’re cast aside. And besides, he wasn’t after me any more. He’d saved my life when I’d been trapped in the Darkest Corners. He’d promised to look after I.C., the little kid I’d met over there. He’d changed. In some weird way, I suppose we were... no, not friends. Allies, maybe. Or no longer enemies, at least.

But none of that made the Keller House seem less frightening. I’d been terrified of it long before Mr Mumbles had come back, and I was still terrified of it now. But it was empty and it had a roof and it was close to home. Much as I hated to admit it, it was the perfect place to hide while we kept an eye on my house.

The front door was boarded shut, and had been for as long as I could remember. But the nails were rusty and the wood was weak and it only took two or three sharp tugs from Ameena to create us an opening.

‘Ladies first,’ she said, gesturing for me to go inside.

‘No, after you,’ I replied, and I really hoped she wouldn’t argue.

‘Chicken,’ she smirked. I took hold of the wooden board and pulled it back as she squeezed inside. ‘Whoa, it stinks,’ she coughed. ‘Looks OK, though. Come on through.’

Ameena braced her hands against the wood from the inside. I released my grip, screwed my courage up to a ball in the centre of my stomach, and inched my way into the house.

The smell raced to meet me as I crawled inside. It was the smell of the attic in my house – damp and stale – but ten times worse. I zipped the top of my jacket over my mouth and nose and straightened up. My hands felt sticky or wet – I couldn’t really tell which – from crawling on the carpet. I wiped them on my thighs, suddenly revolted at the thought of what I might have been touching.

Because I couldn’t see what was on the carpet. Nor, for that matter, could I see the carpet itself. Outside had been dark, but in the house, with the board back in place, the total absence of light left us blind.

I tried to speak, but my throat had gone dry. It was no surprise, really. For years I’d lived in fear of the Keller House, and now here I was, standing inside it in complete blackness. What made it worse was that when I was young I wasn’t all that sure if monsters were real. Now I knew they were. And most of them wanted me dead.

Something brushed against my back and I screamed – a high, shrill scream, with all the manliness of a three-year-old girl.

‘Easy kiddo,’ Ameena snorted. ‘Just me.’

‘Don’t do that!’ I gasped. ‘I could’ve... really hurt you.’

‘Yeah, in your dreams, maybe,’ she said. ‘Now follow me, I think I can see light.’

‘How am I supposed to follow you? I can’t see a thing.’

I felt her grab and fumble at my sleeve, then her hand slipped into mine. Her palm felt warm against my cold skin as our fingers interlocked. ‘That better?’ she asked.

I nodded, unable to speak again, but for different reasons. She couldn’t have seen my nod, but she took my silence as a “yes”.

‘Right, this way,’ she said, and I found myself dragged, unresisting, further into the room.

At first, I still couldn’t see anything, but as she led me across the floor, I began to make out little dents in the darkness. The outline of an armchair. The edge of a low-hanging ceiling light. A corner of a picture on the wall. It was enough to give the impression that Mr Keller, the house’s former owner, had just gone out one morning and never returned. In fact, that’s exactly what he had done, but I’d assumed the house would have been cleared out at some point since then. I’d assumed wrong.

Ameena stopped. Her warmth left my hand as she released her grip. Just ahead of us, a door creaked slowly open at her push, letting a dim orange glow seep through. A narrow staircase stood before us. The carpet that covered the stairs was tatty and threadbare. Floral-patterned wallpaper peeled in long sheets from the walls on either side.

The upstairs landing was bathed in the same orange light as the stairs. It was faint and watery, only barely lifting the blanket of shadow, but it was better than the darkness we’d just left.

‘Someone left a lamp on, you think?’ Ameena asked. She chewed on the knuckle of one of the fingers on her left hand. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her so nervous.

‘You should know,’ I said. ‘Was there a light on when you stayed here?’

She looked at me blankly for a moment, her eyebrows dipping into the beginning of a frown. It passed as quickly as it had come, and she gave a casual shrug. ‘Didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘But then I didn’t exactly hang around long.’

That surprised me. As far as I’d known, Ameena had been sleeping rough in the Keller House for almost two weeks after our encounter with Mr Mumbles. I wanted to ask her where she’d gone instead, but there was no time for questions.

With a final glance back at me, Ameena took hold of the old wooden banister, and crept cautiously up the stairs.