The Earl's Childe (32 page)

“We only just saw Prince Joseph today,” Lily frowned. “Your imagination is getting away with you!”

“No,” Chris added. “It makes sense, actually.”

“On what, Fourteen-year-old Boy Planet?” my sister scoffed.

Jared folded his arms and smirked. With an elbow to Sara-Not-Beth, he said, “Methinks she doth protest too much.”

Livy crossed her arms “I don't get any of it.”

“It's simple.” Chris picked up where Jared left off. “The prince's whole family has been hiding here all along since the revolts started happening in Princess Maryan's home country. There are always places we're not allowed in the castle, and Mrs. MacArthur's draconian-strict rules this year—”

“And the story about those rabid dogs or something?” Sara-Not-Beth added.

“Exactly! And I'll bet Heather's whole family was sworn to secrecy. And Mrs. MacArthur couldn't cancel Horse Camp
again
without looking suspicious after putting it back on, which is why she went all toeing-the-line on the lot of us.” Chris looked at Lily and me. “I mean, really, you've got the coolest mum ever. There's
nothing
like her camp anywhere else! We stay overnight for a whole fortnight, go out on the trails every night, hang out in the stables just to hang out, have campfires and roast marshmallows, and don't get an ounce of sleep. This year it's all, ‘curfew' this and ‘no going out without an adult'
that
. We
knew
that
something
was up.”

Even Lily was at a loss for words at this development. Which, of course, meant they read our silence as a whole “not wanting to say anything and get in trouble” agreement to their completely mental idea.

Granted, was it any more mental than an evil faerie wanting to take over our land and enslave us all, secretly, without the human government intervening? I really couldn't say at that point.

“So, let's go find Max and see if he'll tell us what's going on,” Livy suggested.

“Let's
not
and just stay in the common room and wait for my mum—” I tried to argue. Actually, I wanted to find Max and talk to him myself, but I couldn't think of a way to accomplish that, either.

“You two should.” Jared gave Lily and me a worried look. “If your family gets in trouble ‘cos you're getting involved, it's not worth it. He's a fourteen-year-old punk. We can handle this.”

“His dad's an earl—” I began.

“I heard his dad disowned him and his mum and he's living with a mistress somewhere. I bet this is why some group targeted him. Easy pickings,” Jared said. Where on earth was Jared even
hearing
all this gossip? Jared lived outside of Manchester with an aunt and uncle whose pictures you could find in the dictionary under “boring old people.”

“Or maybe, he's doing it to get
back
at his dad!” Chris suggested.

“Stop it, both of you!” I said. “Max is nice. He's not some terrorist, so just drop it!”
He may be nice, but is he human?
asked an annoying little voice in my head.
And if he's not human
, is
he really nice, or could the boys be onto something?

Chris gave me a wicked grin. “What? Does Heather actually
like
Max back?”

“What?! No! I'm freaking eleven. I don't
like
anyone!” Okay, the boys were definitely not “onto something” with
that
dumb idea.

Sara-Not-Beth punched Chris in the shoulder. “You can tease her later. If Max
is
up to something, we're running out of time before he
does
something. 'Cos I haven't seen Prince Joseph anywhere, either.”

“We checked all the bathrooms and public places and the whole museum,” Livy said. “You think Max is maybe where Heather and Lily's family live?”

“No,” Jared said. “I think he went where Mrs. Macarthur made such a big deal that none of us go. I bet he's got some
rendezvous
point in the reserve.”

“Right! And I bet the reason we all couldn't go out there was because they suspected that!” Chris slapped Jared's arm. “C'mon, let's go!”

“No! Wait!” Lily and I protested, trying to grab them, but the four of them were already running to the back door.

Lily mouthed a death-by-grounding cuss, looked at me, drew her knife, and said, “You get Mum,” before running out after them.

Mum still wasn't back in her office, so I ran upstairs. Nothing.
What the H, Mum?

I pulled out my phone and, on a whim, tried to see if a text inside the castle would work. No. The red triangle of rejection said it wasn't sent. I ran back to her office to see if I could find a clue.

Joe met me there…coming out from the secret passageway behind my parents' bookshelf. “Heather! There you are! Your Mum said to find you and let you know to check all the passages into the house and make sure the lines of salt are intact. Abigail—” I shivered just
hearing
the ghost's name “— found us and led us down to another secret door into the castle that looks like it was salted, but then the salt was scattered. It looks like someone might've gotten in!”

Or out!
My stomach churned thinking of Ermie's warning and Chris and Jared's theory. Max had been sick every time I'd seen him come into the castle, and the castle would have the strongest protection against faerie because Dad had salted it when he was wicked, wicked manic. And he'd probably redone the castle's immediate perimeter since. Just in case.

Max was affected by the salt. He really wasn't human! At least not totally…maybe Ermie had never smelled a half-human before and that was what confused him. And Max rode a half-kelpie. And he'd totally disappeared after Lord Calbraith had said no salt or spell would keep out his red caps!

“Heather, what is it? You look like you've seen a ghost, and last I checked Abigail was still with your mum.”

“I think Max Drummond did it! I think he's a spy for Calbraith!”

“What? I know his family. He's not a spy. He's a little odd…” Joe stopped speaking and snapped his mouth shut.

It was my turn to demand, “What?”

“His dad separated from his mum because he said she cheated and Max isn't even his son, but she swears she didn't.” He looked at me. “You know how daoine síth can mess with your mind and make you forget things, right? Maybe…”

I cringed at how everything was starting to make awful sense, and what that meant about Calbraith and Max.

“Calbraith did say he'd not be stopped by the salt and spells. Let's get back to your mum.” Joe headed back down the staircase, pulling out a torch.

I followed him, noticing far less debris than last time we'd snuck down here. “We have to, anyway. Jared, Chris, Sara-Not-Beth, and Livy took off to find Max in the reserve and Lily went after them.”

“What? Why would they do something mental like that?!” He turned around, his whole body tense. On our last trip down these stairs, I'd learned Joe was a bit claustrophobic and afraid of the dark.

“Because they think he's a spy out to get you and your family who, allegedly, we've been hiding here since the revolts broke out in Bahrain.”

Joe stopped at the foot of the stairs and spun to face me, fury on his dimly lit face. “What?”

“It was Sara-Not-Beth's theory as to why everything was so weird since they got here, which Lily and I neither confirmed nor denied because what were we going to say? A pack of evil faerie wants to enslave us but will settle on torturing and eating us if they have to?”

“My family's reputation is
not
up for theorizing
anything
about.”

“I didn't! It was—”

“You let them. Don't!”

“All right, sorry, but is it worth you ripping me about it now when they are all out there and could be getting attacked for all we know because Ermie's not even here to cover them?”

He spun back around. “There's a hall this way, past the alchemy room. Behind
yet another
secret wall,” was all he said, though I could still hear the hurt and anger in his voice.

I followed him past the “alchemy” room where Abigail had taken us to find the special rope that would hold the kelpie. Joe pushed aside a facade of stones into a dank hall and broke into a jog.

“Mrs. MacArthur! I found her!” he called.

No answer.

After a turn, I saw dim light from outside. “Mum? We need to get Lily and the whole group! They ran—”

Joe and I stopped outside a door that looked like a stone set into a bank. We were beside one of the streams that separated our property from the nature reserve. Mum wasn't there.

“Where did they go?” he asked.

“How should I know? Were they here?”

“Yes!” he answered impatiently. “Just here when I ran to come get you.” He turned around and sighed, pulling me back into the doorway, careful to step over what looked like a recently poured line of salt.

From the distance, we heard screams from the horses. A
lot
of screams. And what might have been shouts.

Joe grabbed my arm, tightly, to keep me from running out to the stables there and then. “Maybe that's where your mum went.”

“Then why are you stopping me?” I shook my arm but couldn't break his hold.

“We need more weapons if we're going out there. If Max, or someone, broke this line, he might have broken the lines everywhere.” He pulled me back into the tunnel. “I bet we'll find more stuff in the alchemy room.”

We ran full out down the winding hall. Joe ducked into the alchemy room and went straight for the chest we'd gotten the kelpie-catching rope from. I slipped my fingers into its grooves and felt the sting of tiny needles. It only unlocked for someone with MacArthur blood.

As we pulled it open, Joe's torch grew almost as bright as a halogen bulb.

“Abigail, is that you?” he asked, and a good thing, because I felt all my blood freeze and my lungs stop working. It was fortunate I didn't have to use the toilet, either, because I totally lost it the first time she surprised me.

The light flickered.

“Can you direct us to something useful?” Joe continued talking to her like it was nothing to chat with a ghost. I clenched my fingers around his arm, ducking behind his shoulder.

Joe gasped, and the torch jumped from his hand. It seemed to bounce a bit, as if she was getting a grip. Then the beam pointed inside the chest to some round, glass canisters that looked like they had tubes and a whole lot of sparkling rust inside them.

“Anti-faerie splash grenades!” Joe's voice was full of awe even as he wriggled from my hold and picked one up.

“Huh?” Oh, good, I had a voice now. Looking at the stuff in the chest rather than the hovering torch helped. I still hugged my arms around myself tightly.

“The tube inside has something that reacts with water, like sodium or something—like how they did in
The Da Vinci Code
—and I'd bet anything that inside the water are iron filings or something like that! Throw it hard so the inside tube breaks, and it explodes, throwing iron at them.” He paused. “Someone in your family had it in for the faerie.”

“I guess so.” I had to agree. I now had a voice and words! Planning a faerie assault—definite distraction. Maybe the lack of Abigail's apparition helped, too. The torch pointed to a messenger bag by the workbench. Joe carefully placed the four canisters into the bag. Swallowing and staying wide from the torch, I retrieved the silvery rope my dad must have put back in the chest after we'd captured Ermie.

The torch pointed into the chest again. Beneath some cogs and tools that I didn't recognize was a canvas bag. I tried to pull it out. “Crap! This is heavy. Give me a hand, here?”

Leaving the grenade satchel on the workbench, Joe came back to me, and the two of us hefted out what looked like an old-fashioned duffle bag. A glint of dark metal shone as we opened it.

“Score!” Joe snatched up a blade that looked too long for a dagger but too short for a sword. In other words, just about the right size for him. I pulled out another, though mine had a curve and jagged tip. “Let's go.”

Abigail seemed to agree, because the torch headed right for the door and the new, secret
secret
exit.

Holding the blade I chose in my hand, I grabbed a few smaller pieces and tucked them into my jeans' belt. They weren't very sharp, but I had a good feeling they were iron, which was something.

After grabbing the grenade satchel, Joe ran towards the outside, behind the flying torch. With a sort-of plan in mind, I found I could finally address the ghost. “Abigail! If you see my mum, let her know where we are and what's happening! Can you?”

The torch flickered again, and then dropped to the floor a few feet from the stone door. I took that as a
yes
and assumed she was saving her energy so she could relay the message.