His mother threw the tea towel up at the insect. It missed by a foot. Oz couldn't stand it anymore.
“Mum, how about if I do it?”
He grabbed a chair, stood on it, and captured the daddy longlegs gently in his fist. He walked past a cowering Rowena Hilditch and out into the back garden, where he let the wispy insect go. As he stepped back into the kitchen, he felt two arms engulf him in a hug, and suddenly he was almost choking in a haze of strong perfume.
“Thank you. Thank you,” Rowena Hilditch said.
“Any time,” Oz said, disentangling himself quickly and offering her a stunted smile.
“Another cup of tea, Rowena?” Mrs Chambers asked.
“No, I must be off. Now that Oz here has rid the room of the deadly creature, I think it's safe for me to leave. I don't want to be late for my ear candling class.”
Oz frowned but kept quiet. A bit of him wanted desperately to know what ear candling was, but if it meant delaying Rowena Hilditch's departure, he'd rather live in ignorance. Before leaving, she took a small bottle out of her carpetbag. “This will help your headaches, Gwen; I guarantee it. Tincture of hemlock.”
“Isn't hemlock poisonous?” Oz asked in alarm.
“Ah, yes. But this tincture is made from a hemlock leaf that has been photographed and imprinted onto rice paper, which is then dissolved to one part per million. It is the spiritual essence of the leaf that is captured. I'm sure it will work like a charm.”
Oz did not reply. He stood aside to let Rowena Hilditch pass and caught another nose-full of
Essence of Vampire Moon
, or whatever hanging Goth pong she was wearing. The thought that some dissolved rice paper bearing the image of a hemlock leaf could cure anything was, he found, a little beyond him. How anyone could be so scared of a fly, even if it did look a bit like a spider, was beyond him, too. He grabbed his backpack from the hook in the hall, shook his head, and turned for the stairs. Some people were very odd. Why they all seemed to end up visiting Penwurt, he had no idea. In the hallway, he heard the tail end of a conversation.
“â¦have to speak to my landlord. I expect he'll want a month's notice. But you have no objection if I call now and then?”
“Come any time after ten. I'm here most mornings.”
Oz didn't like the sound of that. On first impression, the prospect of Rowena Hilditch becoming a regular part of Penwurt life did not fill him with enthusiasm. Neither did the idea that Penwurt could be transformed into a B & B for ghost hunters.
Oz saw the door to the orphanage was still open. He stood on the threshold and looked into the atrium. There was no denying it; the place
was
old and
was
pretty spooky, even on a bright April afternoon. All the walls had needed painting after being blackened by the basement fire, and now they gleamed a silky pale yellow. New varnish glinted on the handrails of the sweeping staircase leading to the first floor, and even the weird chandelier, with a hunting falcon at its centre, had benefited. When they'd lowered it to the ground to clean and paint it, Oz had sneaked in for a look and been astounded by the intricacy of the wrought ironwork. Beneath the magnificent falcon, interspersed between the chandelier's fifteen candle sconces split into two tiers, small iron birds perched on the interwoven rim in the shape of a twig wreath. Two birds between each light fitting on the smaller tier, one on the larger. Each sconce was also marked with an inscribed alchemical symbol, confirming its pedigree as a uniquely Penwurt piece, thanks probably to Squire Worthy. Now back in its rightful placed hanging from the ceiling, it gleamed magnificently.
Oz closed the door. Next to it was another staircase, this one descending and far less grand. With a little shiver, Oz stepped down into the basement.
Once, long before it had passed into his mum and dad's hands, it had been a storage space full of iron bed frames and old orphanage furniture. Somehow, the Chambers had never got around to clearing it out.
Fire had gutted the basement. Crews of workmen had cleared the rubble and finally scrubbed away the soot, once the insurance money was available. Now, devoid of decorators' ladders and dustsheets for the first time in months, it was just a very large, very empty, very fresh-painted cavern, whose gratifyingly thick stone and concrete walls had protected the rest of the house from the flames.
Oz still felt his scalp contract at remembering when he'd last been in this room, the night before Soph had made herself known to him. He could still vividly feel the cold seat of the steel chair he'd been strapped to. Still feel the electric cable brush against his face. Still feel his utter helplessness as one of Gerber's men tried to power up the obsidian pebble, knowing that, once they'd established a connection, he'd be expendable.
The man who'd done all that had tricked his way into Penwurt by pretending to be a student lodger. Rollins had done such a good job of hiding in plain sight that he had become his mother's favourite fixit man. Yet all the while he had been spying, acting on Gerber's instructions, and searching for the artefact, which had been under his, and Oz's, very noses, in Michael Chambers' study. Of course, as far as the police were concerned, there had been no proof Rollins was anything but a lone operator bent on robbery and violence; Gerber was far too careful and powerful an opponent to allow the authorities to believe anything else.
Oz shuddered. He would not have survived had it not been for Soph's help, yet it was still difficult to believe that someone had been so intent on doing him so much harm.
Oz picked the milk up on his way back upstairs, threw his backpack on his bed, and pulled the obsidian pebble from his pocket, letting his thumb rest on the little silver genlock button in its base. Soph appeared instantly. She would stay visible until he told her to go away or, like the power-saving mode on his laptop, disappear if he didn't talk to her for ten minutes. She was also quite good at disappearing when other people, other than Ellie and Ruff of course, came around.
“Right. Mum's new friend, Rowena Hilditch, is terrified of daddy longlegs and says they're spiders and that they have the most lethal poison. Right or wrong?”
Soph tilted her head. “The daddy longlegs is a crane fly, Oz. It is not a spider. She may be confusing the crane fly with the daddy longlegs spider,
Pholcus phalangioides
, which is venomous and has fangs. The venom is mild, however, and does not harm humans.”
“Thought so. She's mental and sounds like a quack, end of. Let's hope she gets fed up with the leaks and the drafts and zooms off on her broomstick before she turns this place into the Freak Hotel. I don't know where Mum finds them, I really don't.” Oz began sorting through his books. “Umm, I need some stuff on the Norwegian fjords for Gingell.”
Soph's amazing grey eyes brightened momentarily before she said, “I have uploaded some information to your laptop.”
“Don't fancy writing five hundred words for me, do you?” Oz asked. “I've got loads of stuff to do.”
Soph tilted her head once more. Being a superintelligent avatar, she was incapable of emotion, but the way she tilted her head like that sometimes made Oz wonder.
“You agreed with your mother that I would not do your homework, Oz. I can assist but not provide the end result.”
Oz groaned. Soph's existence had finally convinced Mrs Chambers that the artefacts were more than just figments of his dad's imagination. And she was more than happy to get Soph to help with the house accounts and the odd piece of research for her proofreading work. However, when it came to Oz and school, Mrs Chambers had put her foot down and drawn up a series of commandments. And at number one was “You shall not use Soph to do all your school work for you.”
“It's a stupid rule,” Oz muttered.
Soph looked at him impassively. The silence was broken by Oz's phone beeping.
“Great, Caleb's home. Right, I need to talk to him about some stuff. How about you at least find me some sample essays on the importance of fjords in Norwegian commerce?”
“I will be able to provide some examples, naturally.”
“Terrific,” Oz said, shaking his head and wondering for the hundredth time why he'd let his mother talk him into not letting Soph do at least skeleton essays. He left her to it and hurried over to the other wing of the house, where Mrs Chambers rented out rooms.
Dr Caleb Jones was busy packing a suitcase in his bedroom when Oz entered. Through the bay window, one could look out and see the rooftops of Seabourne below. In the distance, the huge dockside cranes reared their gantries like the necks of giant wading-birds.
“Hey, Oz,” Caleb said, looking up from the notes on the desk. “What's up?” As a lecturer in the history department at the University, Caleb had been a friend and colleague of Oz's father. He'd lodged at Penwurt almost since the Chambers had inherited the place. More importantly, he was also a member of Obex, the secret society sworn to keep the artefacts from falling into the hands of the Puffers at all costs.
“Geography homework,” Oz said.
“Isn't Soph helping you?”
“A bit. But, as usual, Mum says it's good for me to do it myself.”
“Maybe she has a point.”
Oz made a face and threw himself into a battered armchair, his expression set. “Guess who's providing prizes for the year eight science project.”
Caleb shrugged, brows raised in a way that highlighted the deep furrow that was always there. Oz knew he'd probably shaved that morning, but it still looked like he needed to again.
“
JG Industries
.”
“What?” Caleb drew himself up, his long brown hair falling back from where it had tumbled onto his face.
“And worse than that, Skelton has even got Heeps to be the judge.”
“I think you'd better explain.”
Oz quickly ran through what Skelton had announced that afternoon about the science project and Heeps' offer of prizes to the winning team. Caleb listened intently, the lines in his forehead deepening as Oz proceeded.
“And you think they're up to something?” he asked finally.
“Well, yeah,” Oz said, before adding in a more hesitant tone, “though Ellie thinks I'm just being paranoid.”
“We both know that you have good reason to be suspicious.”
“So, what do you think?”
“I think you all need to be very, very careful,” Caleb said, his voice a low rumble.
“Trouble is, we think we're in with a great chance of winning.”
“Are we talking about that goldfish tank you've been fiddling with for months?”
“It's a working model of the water cycle, actually,” Oz said, piqued. “It's totally brilliant, and Ellie and me could both do with new laptops, which is what the prize is. But if Heeps is judging, we've got no chance.”
“Hmmm,” Caleb said, going back to stuffing socks down the side of his case. “You never know. Maybe you winning is exactly what Gerber and Heeps want.”
Oz frowned and let out a long exhalation through his nose. Not knowing what was going on in Gerber's mind was one of the things that Caleb and he quite often discussed.
There was a long beat of silence broken only by the distant noise of traffic on the street below and the eerie call of a gull above.
Oz stood and walked to the window. At the junction of Magnus Street and Lockheed Avenue, a van was turning right. It had a giant antenna on the roof and a blue JG Telecom logo emblazoned on its side. Oz was seeing them everywhere these days now that JG Industries had branched out into satellite dishes and TVs.
“Oh, and Ruff and Ellie have decided that we've been ignoring Soph and the missing artefacts for too long,” Oz said, turning back to face the room. “So we've finally decided to go back to Mr Eldred to see if he knows anything about the ring or the pendant.”
“Eldred?” Caleb said, adding a mildly scoffing laugh. “What could he possibly know?”
Oz shrugged. “He knew all about the dor. And anyway, we've run out of other ideas. I just hope he'll see us. After what happened, I mean.”
“I don't think your mother's going to be very happy at the thought of you bothering him,” Caleb said, rubbing at the stubble on his chin.
Oz frowned. There was no doubting the truth of Caleb's warning. Though Mrs Chambers had accepted Soph as proof positive of the artefacts' existence, she was adamant that Oz not pursue the quest his father had been preoccupied withâsearching out the remaining two. His father had died on returning from Egypt, where he'd been engaged in exactly that activity. In his mother's mind, the two things were inextricably linked. On the one occasion Oz had enthusiastically shared a piece of research he'd found, her response had been taciturn and full of wary warning.
“Oz, I don't mind you having Soph; she's wonderful, and I know if she's with you, you'll be safe. I think that keeping her secret is very wise, too. The fewer people that know about her, the better. I can just imagine what the authorities might do⦠But digging around for these other artefactsâ”
She'd shaken her head. “It's too dangerous, Oz. If anything happened to you, I'd never forgive myself.” To Oz's horror, she'd emitted one convulsive sob and started to cry. “Your fatherâ¦your father was just the same. Desperate to find out things, and just look what curiosity did for him.”
It was a difficult memory to ignore, but he had to. He didn't want to do anything to upset his mother, but Ellie was right; he owed it to Soph and his father to find out the truth.
“Yeah, I know,” Oz said. “But Ellie thinks it's worth a shot.” He hesitated, studying Caleb's wary face before saying, “So, I was wonderingâ¦maybe if you would talk to him?”
There was another awkward, drawn-out silence, which ended with Caleb shaking his head. “I don't know, Oz. Mr Eldred is an old man. His memory might not be what it used to be. Besides, I'm not going to be around for a while.” He turned back to folding shirts in readiness for the bag, his long hair hanging forward, his thin frame silhouetted against the window.