Mr Pheeps closed his eyes and a trembling took hold of his whole body.
‘I’ve been saving her,’ he growled.
He uncorked the jar with trembling fingers, and Freddie almost screamed as Mr Pheeps put the jar to his lips and opened his mouth. As his jaws opened wider and wider, it seemed as if the blue-white heart of light tried to back away towards the bottom of the glass, but there was no escaping its fate.
Her fate.
Freddie thought he heard something. It sounded like something fading just as you woke from a dream.
It sounded like screaming.
The light slipped into Mr Pheeps’s mouth. His lips closed around it, he gobbled it, chewed it, swallowed it down. For one horrific moment his throat ballooned outwards like that of a bullfrog, the light pulsing blue underneath the skin, and then it was extinguished, and Mr Pheeps’s throat receded.
The screaming had stopped.
Mr Pheeps tottered backwards. He dropped the jar, which hit the floor with a clunk and rolled towards Freddie. Mr Pheeps supported himself against the bed rail, gasping and licking his lips. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth and threw back his head and laughed at the ceiling.
‘The thing is, you see, each time I consume one of them I become stronger. The problem is finding these creatures with the souls that burn so bright.’ Pheeps’s face wrinkled into a sneer. ‘They call themselves the Family. They are such rare delicacies these days. And they hide so well, protecting themselves with their little sorceries, or hiding in ruins. I’ve had to ration the last two I found over the course of two hundred years.’
Freddie picked up the jar. There was a yellowing label on it, with letters that had faded with age.
‘What was that?’ he said, wiping his eyes.
Mr Pheeps turned and looked at him and gave a deep sigh of satisfaction. His eyes seemed out of focus.
‘That was proper food, boy. That was a living soul.’
Mirabelle
‘We’re being watched,’ said Mirabelle.
They had just passed through the gate of the outer wall to the estate. She could sense the birds above them in the dark sky. Their quick bobbing heads, sudden whirring wings and muffled caws occasionally punctured the silence. There seemed to be more ravens on the walls than she’d ever seen before: over a dozen, with more swooping down and landing silently with each passing moment. It was eerie to see them at night.
After spending time in the garden, she and Jem had returned to the house to wait for nightfall. Mirabelle could barely contain herself, knowing that they were heading to the village later that night. She felt excited, nervous, but most of all she felt defiant. Her excitement had grown as night drew in.
But then the ravens had started to gather.
It had started with some of them idly tapping their way along the roof at sunset. Then the one-eyed raven had started to flit erratically above the driveway, cawing madly, as if trying to attract attention. Eventually the other ravens joined him, wheeling about together before finally settling along the walls. Now it was as if they were waiting for her and Jem as they made their way down the driveway.
‘What are they doing?’ Jem asked.
‘They like to huddle together at night,’ said Mirabelle, keeping her tone light. She was already aware that Jem was nervous, and she didn’t want her to feel any more frightened. She didn’t admit to Jem that she’d only ever seen the ravens huddle together during the day, and definitely not out here at night, not like this.
She thought about what Odd had told her once when he’d seen her coming out of the Room of Knives. He told her he’d visited some cultures where ravens were portents of doom, harbingers of death.
Mirabelle put these thoughts to the back of her mind and decided to concentrate on keeping Jem as calm as possible, although she had to admit she was impressed with how Jem had handled things these last few days. She remembered how beaten down she’d looked when they’d first met, but looking after her brother seemed to have made her stronger, and she now took the strangeness of the house and its inhabitants in her stride.
They’d left Tom in his room. He’d been resting again, and though he looked healthier, more at peace, he still needed to think about his experience with Piglet and try to take it all in. Whenever he and Mirabelle looked at each other, a silent understanding passed between them. Thanks to Piglet, they now understood each other in a way they never could have done before. She’d seen him at his worst. She’d seen him scrabbling for survival, taking beatings, stealing. There was no judgement on her part, and she could tell he was grateful for that.
These were the things she thought about that gave her strength.
But then she remembered that Piglet was still silent, and the ravens were watching, and she felt that cold, creeping unease return.
She looked at Jem and tried to remember that she was with a friend.
‘The tear is still there,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Uncle Enoch still hasn’t found the right magic to close it, so until he does we can pass through.’
‘How far is it to the village?’
‘Three miles, so I’m told,’ said Mirabelle, trying not to smile as she saw Jem’s face drop.
Of course she could have asked Odd for help, but that would have meant risking him reporting her to Enoch, and, besides, she wasn’t entirely sure Odd was that comfortable with others travelling with him through his portals. The night they’d chased Piglet had been a unique case. Also, Odd seemed to be in the house even less since that night, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the simple fact that he couldn’t face her.
Good, she thought. He should be ashamed. He has good reason to be. They all do.
When they reached the edge of
