B00JX4CVBU EBOK (3 page)

 ‘Yes, yes. I mean no, I enjoy the shopping really. Excuse me, Mrs Winslow I need to keep going …’

Turner saw his chance, and taking a deep breath, turned and said to the girl, ‘Uh, excuse me,’ he began, ‘I saw you at the pasta sauces, could you … uh, recommend a good one?’ Turner mentally face-palmed. Jesus, what a stupid line!

The girl's eyes widened, and without a word tried to push past both Turner and Mrs Winslow, who now stood arms crossed, staring hard at Turner.

Mrs Winslow snorted through her nose, which wrinkled upwards, pig-like. ‘What do you want from Mrs Ashton young man? Are you after her money or something?’

‘Mrs Winslow!’ said the girl.

Turner was confused. ‘Money? No. What?’ Trying to ignore the old busybody, he noticed the girl had a dragon tattoo beneath her left collarbone and said, ‘I like your dragon by the way …’

Turner wasn't prepared for what happened next. The girl jumped as if zapped with an electric prod, and leaving her half-full trolley, scurried off down the pasta aisle.

Mrs Winslow’s left eye twitched madly and she went red in the face. 'Help! Help! Get the manager! There’s a pervert here! Security!'

Several other shoppers started walking towards the commotion. Turner had no idea what was going on. His head whipped between the bellowing fat lady and the retreating young woman. This is why I don't try to pick up girls, he thought.

The girl had reached the front of the store. Turner realised with a shock she hadn’t reverted back to an old woman. ‘Wait!’ he yelled, and ran after her.

‘He's after old Mrs Ashton's money!’ Mrs Winslow yelled from behind him.

The girl strode quickly to the store entrance. Turner raised his hand, palm out. ‘You can't leave!’ Incredibly, she stopped; the sliding doors wouldn't open.

The girl stepped back, and then forward again trying to make the doors open to no avail. Abruptly she spun on her heel and glared at Turner, her eyes wide and fierce. She then flung her arms together as if pulling giant curtains closed. Packets of pasta and rice erupted from the shelves. Turner ducked and covered his head, just as a loud crash came from the front of the store. Someone nearby screamed, and from further away in the store the cry, ‘Get down! Get down!’

Turner rose up on his knees to see the girl walk over the blown out remains of the front sliding doors, and run into the car park.

‘Was it a bomb?’ asked an old man who had been standing next to Turner, but who now knelt on the floor. He grasped at two long strands of spaghetti that stuck out of his neck, like some misplaced insect antennae. His hand came away smeared with blood. ‘Oh,’ he said faintly, ‘neck spaghetti blood,’ and fainted to the ground. Turner dived and grabbed the old man’s shoulders just in time to stop his head from hitting the floor. 

When he gently lowered the old man’s head onto the tiles, Turner noticed the mess. The old man was covered in pasta and rice, and there were piles of packets, boxes of rice and pasta strewn across the floor. Turner wondered how he had escaped being struck by anything. For although the shelves around them were empty, where Turner had been standing there was an empty circle, completely devoid of even a grain of rice. 

 A state of chaos gripped the supermarket. People pointing, yelling, running. Many had tentatively began to gather around the remains of the front doors. Half a dozen customers and staff now stood around Turner and the old man on the floor.

Turner’s head spun. Shopping. Potatoes. Pretty girl. Old lady. Pasta and ... bang? Something astonishing had just happened, but for the life of him he had no idea what it was.

‘That's him! That's the terrorist!’ Turner looked up to see the fat old woman stab her chubby finger at him. He hardly knew her, but Turner already hated Mrs Winslow. A lot.

*

Ember ran across the car park, startling people who had never seen an octogenarian sprint like that. Chloe, who had been sitting in the Land Rover disguised as the male gardener, was already running towards Ember. ‘What the hell is going on, Em … Mrs Ashton?’

‘No time, Chloe. Skorn! Get in. Drive!’ Ember ran past her sister to the car and yanked open the passenger door.

She was so glad her sister didn’t stop to argue, but jumped straight back into the driver’s seat. Within moments they sped from the car park, just narrowly missing a woman pushing a stroller, whose scream of abuse could be heard even over the screech of the tyres. Safely out onto High Street, Chloe, eyes straight ahead, knuckles white on the steering wheel said, ‘A Skorn? You sure this time?’

Ember leant hard back into the seat, and let out a long breath. ‘Yes. No. I think so. It was the same guy, and he saw through my fell. He saw through my fell, Chloe! And he had powers. I’ll tell you all about it when we get home.’

‘Jesus, Ember. You better be right. You completely blew your cover back there.’

Ember winced and tried to think of anything she could have done differently. She put her head in her hands and then pulled her hair back from her face.

‘I know. But I had to get out.’

Chloe patted her sister’s arm. ‘If it really was a Skorn, thank God you did. But using our powers in public is a big no-no remember. Your story had better be good—or Celeste will tear you apart.’

Ember bit her lip and thought about how her eldest sister would react to all this. An angry Celeste. On reflection, the Skorn at Tesco’s didn’t seem so bad.

*

Ember could tell Chloe was worried by the way she sped down the long driveway.

 Chloe punched the steering wheel softly. ‘You realise if what you say is true, we will probably have another Scather battle on our hands?’

Ember closed her eyes. ‘I know, I know.’

Nobody answered their calls of hello as they walked through the house. Ember and Chloe found the other three sisters out the back of the manor house. They sat on picnic rugs in the shade of a large elm.

Ember and Chloe exited through the sunroom and walked down the back steps.

 Celeste waved. ‘Over here.’

Celeste sat, leaning against the tree reading, Brooke was lying on her stomach with her legs in the sun, and Skye was stretched out on the other rug, drawing a picture of a rabbit, surrounded by a scattering of blue pencils.

Ember marched across the short green lawn to the edge of the rugs and put her hands on her hips. ‘I was right!’

Brooke mumbled into her arm, ‘What are you screeching about?’ 

Ignoring Brooke, Ember spoke to Celeste. ‘The Skorn. I saw him … it again.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Brooke.

Celeste frowned, and placed a brown leaf in her book as a bookmark. ‘Chloe?’

Chloe placed an arm around Ember. ‘I think it’s something. We should listen to what she has to say.’

Chloe sat up straight. ‘OK, Em. Tell us about your Skorn.’

‘What about Skye? Should we talk somewhere else?’ asked Chloe as she and Ember sat down next to the little girl. Ember placed a hand on Skye’s back.

‘Maybe hearing about Skorns and Scathers will shock her back,’ said Celeste.

‘Celeste!’ said Chloe.

‘What? We’ve tried everything else. Look,’ said Celeste, as she counted on her fingers. ‘Our twenty-two year old sister is a mute eight-year-old girl. She can’t fight. We are not a full Vordene. Skorns bring Scathers.’ She ticked off the last finger on her left hand. ‘So, if we fight, we’re done for.’

‘I can still fight. And there
are
four of us,’ said Ember.

‘As a foursome we’re hardly stronger than as individuals. We need the power of the five. Without Skye we aren’t really a Vordene—we haven’t been for over three years. 

Chloe looked at her hands. ‘Maybe it’s time we …’

Celeste shook her head, her gaze intense. ‘No, Chloe. We’ve talked about this. We are going to give it another year. If Skye doesn’t come back to us by then, that’s when we start talking about the succession.’

Yeah, thought Ember, ‘succession’ meant babies. And apart from Chloe, none of them were ready to go down that road quite yet.

‘But we might not have a year if Ember’s right,’ said Chloe, bringing the conversation back on track.

Frowning, Celeste turned to Ember. ‘Tell us.’

Ember took a deep breath. ‘It was the same guy, but this time in the supermarket. Chloe was waiting for me in the car. I started the shopping, as Mrs Ashton of course, but then I saw him in the rice and pasta aisle, looking at me all weird again. Just as I was about to get the hell out of there I ran into old Mrs Winslow.’

‘Ugh,’ said Chloe. 

‘Yeah. She started carrying on like she does, then the guy comes up and asks me about what sauce I like or something. Mrs Winslow accuses him of being after my money, but the guy ignores her and get this … compliments me on my dragon tatt.’

Celeste leant forward. ‘What?! He saw through your fell?’

‘Yep.’ Ember brushed hair from her face. ‘So I ran … well walked quickly to the front doors. Then, he yelled out “Stop” or something and the doors wouldn’t open.’

Brooke sat up. ‘Jesus.’

‘So that’s when I spun around and, using a little bit of power, made stuff from the shelves fly at him. Then, no other choice, I blew out the doors and made a run for it.’

‘Damn,’ said Celeste, ‘damn, damn, bloody damn.’

Ember bit her lip. ‘I know Celeste, I know. But I was trapped. Trapped in the same building as a Skorn. Possible Skorn.’ 

Ember knew Celeste was concerned about the Skorn, but she was probably just as worried about the girls’ secrets being exposed. Without their disguises, their fells, people would start to talk about the five sisters who lived by themselves in the large old manor. If it was one thing the girls didn’t need, it was attention.

‘Chloe,’ said Celeste, ‘have you come across anything like this? Skorns with those sort of powers? I thought they were sort of spies, on the lookout for people like us.’

Chloe shook her head. ‘I’ve never read anything like that. Skorns are just people infected by Scathers …’

‘Scather zombies,’ said Brooke.

Chloe didn’t even smile. ‘Yeah. We’re not even sure if their main purpose is to sniff out Vordenes or whether that’s just a by-product of having the spirit of a Grimshade creature inside you. I’m not even sure Skorns can see through fells. If they had too much power
we’d
be able to sense
them
.’

‘So what do we do?’ Ember asked Celeste.

Celeste stood up. ‘We go Skorn hunting that’s what. You, me and Chloe. Brooke, you stay here with Skye.’

‘Hey!’ said Brooke, ‘Why don’t I get to see some action? Make Ember stay home, it’s her turn to look after Skye.’

The little girl now sat cross-legged watching the conversation closely. Ember gave her small smile.

‘I don’t mind sitting this one out,’ said Chloe. ‘Talking about Scathers made me remember something I’d read in one of Great Aunt Rhea’s journals. Something about the Ring.’

Celeste sighed. ‘We’d all love to find our Ring Chloe. We’ve been waiting most our lives, haven’t we? But there’s a time and a place, and this …’

‘But it’s important, Celeste. Really. I’m going to talk to Aunt Lani about it too.’ Chloe pointed to the small chapel on the other side of a low stone wall, the home of their aunt.

Ember looked in the direction of the chapel and said softly, ‘She may not be much help, Chloe. She’s getting worse. Yesterday I found her lying on her back in the vegie patch. When I asked what she was doing she said she was learning Vegetablese.’

‘She’s gone a bit nutty, yeah,’ said Chloe, just as quietly. ‘But she’s still our Aunt Lani, and our only living connection to our other Aunts, Granny Ira and all that. Like I said, it’s important.’

Celeste put her hand on her forehead and nodded. ‘OK, fine. Brooke, you’re in.’

Brooke punched the air. ‘Woo! Gonna go skin some Skorn scum!’

As one, the other three sighed.

CHAPTER TWO

I
T
WAS
LATE
afternoon by the time Turner escaped all the commotion at the supermarket. After standing around with a dozen other customers for an hour, and finally giving a statement to the police and then talking to a reporter, he wanted nothing more than to get home.

Chaucer Street was a narrow road, tightly packed with rows of 1950s semi-detached houses, each fronted with a minuscule front garden. The inhabitants on this street seemed to be having a little war in trying to outdo each other in elaborate letterboxes. Turner passed a small castle, a football, a miniature pillar box and his favourite, the ceramic mermaid sitting atop a rock-like letterbox at number 6.

Carl, an exuberant border collie, met Turner half way down the street. Carl belonged to Mr Holt, Turner’s landlord, but unlike his owner, Carl always met Turner in a frenzy of enthusiasm. 

Turner bent down to ruffle the dog’s thick black and white coat. ‘Hello Carl. How did you get out, huh? Cheeky dog.’ In answer Carl gave a small bark and danced around Turner, his tail wagging vigorously.

Turner reached the gate of number 8 and not for the first time, shook his head at its small rusted metal letterbox. The house itself looked just as unloved. Heavy curtains were drawn across all the downstairs windows—windows in a desperate need of a wash—and weathered white paint peeled in scabby patches from the house, revealing the red brick underneath. 

Old Mr Holt knelt in his tiny front garden, and muttered to himself as he stabbed away at a flower bed with a garden trowel. Turner had been hoping to get up to his flat without running into the man, but no luck. In a blur, Carl ran through the gate behind Turner, and straight over the top of Mr Holt’s freshly turned soil.

‘Get off there, you bloody mutt!’ said the old man and flapped his hand at the dog.

Thinking this was a great game, Carl ran in a circle on the tiny patch of lawn, stopped with his head down, tail wagging frantically and barked happily.

Mr Holt threw a small clump of dirt at the dog. ‘Stupid animal. No food for you tonight!’

Taking advantage of Mr Holt’s attention being elsewhere, Turner was just about to slip through the front door.