Paula loved romantic historical novels. Her favourite was Heart of a Highwayman by Crystal McNabbs. When she played Ray-Chay, she always found herself in a forest at night, her arms wrapped round the handsome, masked highwayman Will Carey, galloping along on his black stallion. Sometimes they climbed trees or abseiled down canyons in pursuit of enteos, daredevil feats that would have terrified her in real life. Sometimes, if there was time, they might stop for a little kiss.
Every morning, once Griff’s dad Evan had left for work and Griff for school, Paula enjoyed her precious Ray-Chay time. Before long, she was very good. She could tell a racer from a chaser in a heartbeat. She defeated peak-strength destroyers with ease. Although it felt a tiny bit like cheating, she had found some great spawn locations, which meant she was really pushing up through the levels. Will Carey always stood by and watched her deal with the fearsome enteos, muttering encouragement in his deep, manly voice. It annoyed her that she made the decisions while he just stood there, but that was the game.
This time, she and Will were walking hand in hand beside a moonlit lake. Will’s dark eyes glimmered behind his highwayman’s mask. Over his shoulder, Paula noticed a peppermint-green, wispy shape floating at the water’s edge. It was twice as big as any of the enteos she’d seen before. The stats around it made a kind of sense to her and she felt a pang of excitement.
‘It’s a collector,’ she whispered. ‘A rareio. I can’t believe it!’
‘Retrieve it, my dear,’ Will muttered in his eighteenth-century way.
Paula took a few steps forward. The rareio raised its head and pulsed with an inner light, its golden mask giving nothing away.
‘Collector!’ Paula’s voice rang out determinedly. She folded one hand inside the other, like a double fist, and placed them over her heart.
The rareio pulled back a little, resisting. Paula called it out again and again, feeling herself growing in strength. Finally, reluctantly, the enteo removed its mask to reveal its telltale collector face, rotating eyes glowing like two small suns, and a mean, downward-curving mouth. She’d been right!
A strong, bright-pink bolt of lightning surged from her hands straight at the rareio, which exploded into a waterfall of peppermint gloop. Paula leapt to catch the solid mask as it fell. The cold, pale-green custard splattered up her arm. The mask was as big as a real shield and it still contained a strong energy, Paula could feel it throbbing. She had to store the rareio in her cache as quickly as possible before it could regain its strength and challenge her.
‘Come, dearest love,’ muttered Will Carey.
‘No, you come with me,’ Paula snapped back. ‘Fat lot of help you are.’
Paula’s avatar, Lady Cora, lived in an enormous mansion on a hill. At the top of its main staircase was a locked room where she kept her cache. Breathless from riding and running up the stairs, Paula as Lady Cora took an enormous key from her skirt pockets, placed it in the lock and turned it.
The door swung open with a forbidding creak. The cache room looked like a long picture gallery, except the ornate frames on the walls were all empty. There were rows of thrones along all sides. The thrones held the sixteen enteos she’d collected so far, back behind their masks. They all turned to look at her.
She placed the latest mask on the nearest throne and it rose into the air as the space filled with the huge rareio’s body. The rario seemed to understand where it was. It snarled and struggled to be free. The other enteos joined in and soon the whole room pulsated with a dark, angry energy. Paula noticed one of the frames now held a picture of the rareio, which proved she had captured something really special.
Sometimes she worried what might happen if these nasty, creepy creatures managed to escape, but that was silly: Ray-Chay was only a game.
5
Lonely
The whole world seemed to be playing Ray-Chay. At least when his dad returned Ant could play his favourite Kismet Cosmos undisturbed. Lia and Lance moved out, and Snoz insisted Ant take the bedroom while he took the sofa bed. Snoz had made good money driving Death Spanners around Europe. With more gigs in the pipeline, he told Ant they could start looking for a bigger place soon, one where they would both get a bedroom. And now that Lia and Lance had saved up enough money for the deposit on their flat, whenever Snoz was away on tour with Death Spanners, Ant could stay with them.
Ant often called by at Lia and Lance’s flat on the way home from school. One Wednesday, after his cookery class, he took his tropical flapjacks round as a present. Wednesday was Lance’s half day, so he was at home.
‘You into Ray-Chay yet?’ Lance asked through a mouthful of flapjack.
‘Not really,’ said Ant. ‘I tried, honestly.’
‘Oh ma-an,’ said Lance. ‘You have to give it more of a chance. It’s brilliant once you get into it, I swear.’
‘Are you really into it then?’ Ant asked absent-mindedly. He was amazed at how well his flapjacks had turned out. He wrapped one up in a piece of kitchen roll and put it in his pocket to take home to Snoz.
‘Yeah, I have to play. It’s research, for work.’ Lance helped himself to a third flapjack.
‘Oh yeah “research”. That’s what you call it!’ Lia said sarcastically, carrying in a pile of coursebooks, which she dumped in front of the sofa. Ant carried over a mug of the tea Lance had just made and sat on the sofa beside her.
‘Hey, you’ve got your own suit,’ said Lance. He pretended to aim a piece of flapjack at her,
