But as appealing as kiwi fruit sounded, she decided to go with the familiar. She picked up a boiled egg, keenly aware that Bertram was examining her every move. Her stomach growled as she took the shell off and as she bit into the egg she thought she heard a tiny whimper from Bertram.
‘What’s it like?’ he asked, licking his lips.
Jem looked at him, feeling awkward, with a mouth full of egg. The oddness of the question took her by surprise. She started to munch quickly.
‘How would you describe the taste?’ he said, wrestling a notebook and pencil from his waistcoat pocket.
Jem was at a loss for words. ‘Eggy?’ she said.
‘Eggy! Wonderful!’ said Bertram, almost bursting with excitement as he scribbled in his notebook.
‘Uncle! Please!’ Mirabelle protested.
Bertram’s mouth and face twitched, and he looked away guiltily.
‘Of course, of course. My apologies,’ he muttered. He moved towards the door. ‘I would just like to point out that every element of this delicious repast has been sourced by my nephew, Odd. He assures me everything is of the highest quality.’
Bertram left the room.
‘You can stay in this room. There’s a bathroom through that door,’ said Mirabelle, pointing to a door set into the wall on the right.
Jem nodded, unable to speak because her mouth was now crammed with bread.
Mirabelle lowered her voice and looked at her grimly. ‘You can’t leave this room at night under any circumstances, especially after midnight. You must stay in here from the moment it gets dark until morning.’
The tone Mirabelle used stopped Jem in her tracks. She was aware that her mouth was open, but for some reason she couldn’t seem to close it. She only half chewed the wodge of bread and swallowed it. She felt it almost stick in her throat.
‘Why?’ she said.
Mirabelle shook her head. ‘Just please don’t leave this room. Promise me, no matter what you hear.’
Jem felt a tremor of unease at Mirabelle’s tone, but she managed to nod.
Mirabelle looked relieved. ‘Thank you.’ She headed for the door. ‘I’ll speak with my uncle and ask him to let you both stay a little longer.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jem. ‘Thank you so much.’
Mirabelle left the room and closed the door behind her. Jem was grateful because she was feeling overwhelmed again, and she covered her face with her hands in an effort to fight back the tears.
She barely heard the whisper behind her.
‘Jem?’
Tom was trying his best to sit up in bed. He looked even more deathly pale than before. Jem ran to him and pushed him gently back by the shoulder. Tom swallowed and looked at the bed canopy above him in confusion.
‘Where . . . ?’
‘We’re in the house. They’re letting us stay. You need to rest.’
She gave him some water from a glass, which he drank thirstily, then she gave him a beef sandwich, but he only nibbled at it. She saved it for later on a plate by the bed. She gave him some medicine as per the instructions on the bottle. It seemed to make him drowsy and he drifted off to sleep, looking almost serene now, and less like a boy who’d been burning up from within for days.
Jem organized her own bedding. The couch was huge and looked comfortable. The blanket smelled as if it had been stored in mothballs for decades. Jem fussed over Tom a little, then settled herself on the couch for the night. She left the drapes open just a crack so that a sliver of moonlight could light her way should Tom need her during the night. She looked up into the dark, her mind fizzing with the sights she’d seen. Whenever she tried to close her eyes, she could see the mass of ravenous flowers, the red eyes of the enormous bear. It took a while, but the exhaustion she’d been battling, coupled with the events she’d experienced that day, finally drove her into a deep, deep sleep.
Jem dreamt.
In her dream, she was too terrified to move beneath the heavy blanket. A shadow had passed over the sliver of moonlight, and somewhere far away she heard a sound like the flapping of leathery wings.
Mirabelle
‘No one is eating anybody,’ growled Mirabelle.
She glared across the dining-room table at Daisy, who smirked in response.
‘It was a reasonable question,’ said Daisy, pouting at Mirabelle.
‘Was it a reasonable question?’ asked Bertram a little too hopefully as he looked at Enoch sitting at the head of the table with Eliza.
‘They can leave as soon as the boy wakes,’ said Enoch.
‘Dr Ellenby said he needs a week to rest,’ said Mirabelle.
‘Can we eat them then?’ asked Dotty sweetly.
Mirabelle slammed her palms down on the table. ‘I told you already!’
Dotty’s eyes brimmed with tears and her lower lip started to quiver. Gideon, who had been gnawing on a bone in a corner of the room behind Mirabelle, looked up and frowned.
‘Absolutely not. Mirabelle is right,’ said Bertram. ‘It would be rude.’ He nodded and looked very gruff and serious, then he seemed to reconsider. ‘Would it be rude?’ he asked, looking hopefully again at Enoch.
Mirabelle could feel a tightness in her chest. She glowered at the twins and Bertram.
‘We used to hunt humans,’ said Daisy gleefully.
‘This is true,’ said Eliza.
‘And they used to hunt us,’ said Dotty, looking cowed and miserable.
‘Which is why we have the Covenant to maintain balance and peace between us. We do not encroach on them, and they do not encroach on us. We stay within the confines of the Glamour. That is the agreement we made with the humans generations ago, and we must respect it,’ sighed Enoch.
‘The agreement was made between us and the village. They’re from beyond the village, and I know the Covenant extends to not hunting anyone in the outside world too,
