A lantern hung just inside the clock tower door—still warm. Someone had just been here. Poppy’s heart began to pound a heavy drumbeat in her chest. She looked at Mack … then Nula. “Do you think…”
Mack stared into the black, his face fierce.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Nula growled, disappearing into the dark.
Poppy fumbled with a match, trying to light the lantern with shaking hands.
“There are stairs back here,” Nula called softly.
At last the match flared to life and Poppy lit the lantern, holding it high. She and Mack moved to look up the narrow stair that twisted up into the tower.
The steps looked rickety, and the first one Poppy stepped on creaked as though it feared for its life. Nula stepped aside to let Poppy pass, she and Mack following behind.
The whole scaffold shivered and rocked from side to side as though it hadn’t been used in an age. Poppy could see in the glow of the lamplight that the stairs weren’t dusty, even though everything else was thick with cobwebs. Someone was using them. She moved faster.
A family of bats flapped past, and Nula muttered a curse that made Mack blush. They got higher and higher, following the creaking steps as they curled around the inside walls of the tower. At the top was a platform, and there they found another narrow door, its curling black iron handle the only decoration.
Poppy took a breath and gave it a yank that echoed through the tower. “Locked.”
Nula crouched low to look beneath the handle. She rose with a grin. “They never learn.” Then she was gone, and the tail of a thin green snake vanished under the handle.
Mack bent to look. “She went through the keyhole,” he confirmed.
The door swung open a moment later, and Nula swept them in.
Poppy froze. She couldn’t take a breath against the weight on her chest. Across the room, tied into two cushioned chairs, were her parents. Their eyes were closed, and they were both gagged.
Were they dead? Her stomach lurched. A scatter of dirty dishes had been pushed to the side. No. Not dead. Nobody fed dead people … and they don’t gag them either, her brain supplied a moment later. She gave a sharp inhale as her mother opened her eyes.
Poppy crept forward, her heart in her throat, each of them staring wide-eyed at one another—then tears sprang into her mother’s eyes, and Poppy was wrapping her arms around her.
A grunt from the other chair spun her around. Her father, staring at her with amazement—and, love? She laughed in relief, and moved to hug him. Mack was busy taking the cloth off her mother’s mouth as Nula untied her father’s wrists.
“Poppy,” her mother gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you,” Poppy laughed again as she took the cloth from her father’s mouth.
“But how did you find us?” he asked with wonder in his voice.
Nula piped up from behind him. “Poppy’s an amazing human.”
Poppy’s cheeks heated. “I had a lot of help.” She smiled.
Mack rose from untying her mother and came to her side. “Who did this to you?”
“It was the governor,” her father said through gritted teeth. “Him and his pack of zealots.”
“He wanted us to tell him how to destroy the Grimwood,” her mother added, rushing to throw off the ropes on her father’s ankles. “To help him do it! As if we could tell them anything they don’t already know.” Her face darkened. “As if we would.”
“We should leave,” Mack said, his voice low.
“Are you all right?” Poppy asked them. “Can you walk?”
“Yes,” her mother started, “but Poppy…”
“There’s lots to tell you, but it will have to wait. We need to get out of here before they catch us.”
Her father rose from the chair, bending to rub the cramps out of his legs. “I think we should listen to Poppy, love. I think she knows what she’s doing.”
“Well, she’s her father’s daughter,” her mother agreed. “Lead the way, Poppy Sunshine.”
They moved as fast as they could, but with so many of them on the delicate scaffolding, the stairs had begun to sway in earnest, creaking and cracking in a way that made everyone jumpy.
Poppy reached the bottom and gathered them all together to check that the coast was clear before heading out into the dusky dawn to make their way home.
As they turned a corner, though, Poppy came face-to-face with a crowd of angry looking men and women—all waiting for her and her family with torches in their hands. She spotted the woman she had seen crossing the square, and standing next to her, his face pale and full of shadows, was Governor Gale. His expression contorted into a mask more frightening than any monster’s. “Going somewhere?” he asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Before Poppy could say a word, Nula had reached into Poppy’s pocket, pulled out the whistle, and blown a loud, shrill blast across the square.
For a split second everyone froze. Poppy stared at her.
“What?” Nula said. “Better too soon than too late.”
An instant later, the townsfolk had them.
“You think you’re beyond justice,” Governor Gale snarled, as one of his burly followers grabbed Poppy’s arm in a grip that was sure to leave bruises. “You think, because your family serves the Grimwood, that you’re safe—never mind what happens to the rest of us. Well, the tide has turned. We humans are coming to our senses. It’s time to make our world safe and clean at last. And you’re just in time to watch it all burn.”
“You can’t do that,” Poppy said. “You don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand, little girl. I understand that you and your family are in league with monsters.”
“Leave Poppy out of this,” her father shouted, and she looked over her shoulder to see that he had shaken off one of his captors. “She has nothing to do with the Grimwood. It’s her mother and I that hunt maledictions.”
“So, you admit it.
