Keeper of the Realms: Crow's Revenge (Book 1)

MARCUS ALEXANDER

Crow’s Revenge

PUFFIN

Contents

1. Mr Crow

2. Cookies, Croissant and a Dark Visitor

3. An Angry Giant

4. A High Dive

5. New Companions

6. An Education

7. Tree Song

8. An Introduction to K’Changa

9. Troubled Thoughts

10. Uninvited Guests and a New Arrival

11. The Delightful Brothers

12. The Passing of Friends

13. Sylvaris and the Jade Circle

14. The Truth

15. The Willow Tower

16. A Moonlit Chase

17. The Awakening

18. Questions and Answers

19. Lady Dridif, the Royal Oak

20. Two-faced

21. The Isiris Bracelets

22. The Spinnery

23. An Agreement

24. Betrayal on the Bridge

25. A Night to Forget

26. Where There’s a Will There’s a Way

27. A Glimpse of Trafalgar Square

28. The Morning After

29. The Breakout

30. A Midnight Trade

31. Nowhere to Run

32. A New Companion

33. Nibbler

34. Bad Debts

35. A New Master

36. Words of Wisdom

37. Penance

38. The Law Comes Knocking

39. A Courtroom Fiasco

40. A Dark God

41. A Case for the Jade Circle

42. Crow Gets His Wings

43. Planning Ahead

44. A Reunion of Sorts

45. An Education

46. Dark Schemes

47. A Conversation with Constantina

48. The Challenge

49. Confrontations

50. Words of Encouragement

51. Family Squabbles

52. An Ill-fated Zephyr

53. Tough Training

54. The Arrival

55. Crow’s Revenge

56. Farewells

57. Final Preparations

58. The Silent Duel

59. Unleashing the Will

60. Round Three

61. The Face-off

62. Battle Royal

63. The Long Scream

64. A Break Well Earned

65. The Next Step

66. The Portal

After several incident-filled years of travelling the world, Marcus Alexander decided to pack in all serious attempts at reaching maturity, and instead embraced the much more suitable world of parchment scribbling for a living.

Marcus has a fondness for causing mischief, knows how to run really, really fast when he’s in trouble and knows how to duck out of sight when someone points the long, bony finger of blame.

Find out more about him and Charlie’s adventures at

www.keeperoftherealms.com

For my parents and the naughty Moll,

for their burning love,

their devotion …

and for always picking me up when I stumbled,

tripped

or plummeted screaming

over the cunning tripwires and sneakily hidden booby

traps of life.

You’re the best.

xx

1

Mr Crow

The house sat at the end of the small London street and it looked wrong.

Not wrong in itself, although it was a peculiar-looking house, but wrong for the neighbourhood. Big, cranky and ancient, it squatted between its smaller neighbours and glared down the narrow backstreet as though daring anyone to say anything about its battered appearance.

Yet beneath the grime and bird droppings were small scraps of evidence that pointed to grander times. Worn silver lining could be glimpsed on the window frames, bronze gilt hung in shreds from the oak front door and carvings of dragons peered out from beneath the creeping ivy. The building had been old even when London was young, but was now in dire need of renovation. Or demolition.

Charlie Keeper was well aware of how it looked. As she gazed out of her small bedroom window, she knew that her house was a source of discomfort for the wealthy locals, and that her neighbours complained about its scruffy appearance. But she didn’t care. The place felt like home, felt like a part of her and, more importantly, reminded her of her missing parents.

Trying to put thoughts of her grumpy neighbours aside, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and did her best to pat her messy blonde hair into something that resembled a ponytail. Stuffing her feet into a pair of scuffed sneakers, she stomped her way to the bathroom to clean her teeth. She slapped some toothpaste on to her brush and began to scrub furiously.

Charlie wasn’t happy.

In fact, she wasn’t happy most days. It wasn’t that her neighbours were always rude to her – thirteen-year-olds knew how to put up with adult foolishness. It wasn’t even that she got bullied at school, returning home with new bruises every day. And it wasn’t that life appeared to be stacked so unpleasantly against her.

After all, there were good things going on too. She got to live with her grandma, and although her elderly relative suffered from amnesia she was, in Charlie’s mind, a wonderful woman with a kind heart. Her best friend, Tina, even lived down the street. And Charlie was, of course, a Londoner. She loved the grimy city. Her favourite afternoons involved sneaking off to watch the b-boys and freerunners practising along the south bank of the River Thames, and she got a secret thrill out of deciphering the twisted graffiti and loudly coloured street murals that decorated the capital.

Life would have been bearable. Really it would have … apart from one thing. One
person
. Mr Crow. Since her parents had gone missing, he was (according to her family’s estate, will and testament) her lawyer, her custodian and the house steward. He held all the purse strings, had control over her grandmother’s health care and sent Charlie to the strictest of schools. And, although Charlie couldn’t prove it, she
had a niggling feeling that Mr Crow had been selling antiques and furnishings from the house for his own financial gain.