Obsidian Pebble (20 page)

“I'm off to the supermarket. Will you and the gang be here for lunch?” said Mrs. Chambers as she cleared away breakfast.

“Doubt it. I'm meeting them in town.”

“Anything interesting planned?”

“Not really. Ellie still needs to get something for Macy's birthday, that's all.”

“Is she really sixteen in a week's time?” Mrs. Chambers asked incredulously.

Oz nodded. Ellie's big sister was doing her GCSE's this year and the only way she was likely to pass was if the examining board suddenly decided to offer one on “how to make boys chase you,” or so Ellie kept saying with exasperation.

Oz planned on catching the ten o'clock bus, so he had time to check his emails before heading out. He'd placed the trinket box on top of the laptop the night before and once again found himself examining it as he waited for the computer to boot up. The maker's mark stood out on the bottom now that he'd cleaned it up, but he gave it a little polish with his thumb anyway, and as he did so, the most extraordinary thing happened. The silver mark glowed under the pressure of his thumb. Not a trick of the light this time, but a definite pulse of yellowish light.

That was nothing compared to what happened inside Oz's head at that same precise moment, though. As clear as day, the image of a girl's face appeared. It was a pleasant, quite pretty face, although when Oz was asked to provide details by Ellie when he tried to explain the dream to her, he found that he couldn't. At least, not with the thorough recall he would have liked. The one thing he did remember was that she had startling grey eyes and dark hair cut short in a bob. He excused his poor memory on the fact that the image lasted just a few seconds before it blinked out. But what he did remember was that the face spoke. And, like a poorly received radio signal, he was only able to pick out a few words.

“Hello, Oscar. I am silly…”

* * *

Oz was late getting to Ballista's. More road works had delayed the bus and the café was packed with thirsty shoppers when he got there. So when he managed to work his way through the crowd, having warned Ruff that he'd be late, he was not at all prepared for what was waiting for him in their favourite alcoved corner.

Ruff was not alone.

“Thought you said you were busy,” Oz said, trying to stop the grin that had instantly spread over his lips from breaking out into a laugh.

“Changed my mind,” Ellie said.

“Ok,” Oz said.

And that was it. Nothing more was said about it. If Oz did wonder if volunteering for charity work or defending your disabled brother had anything to do with improving people's understanding of one another, he kept it all to himself. He wasn't about to press the point or demand explanations. Yet, when Ellie excused herself to go to the loo, he couldn't resist the urge to ask Ruff just one question.

“I did tell you that Ellie's little brother Leon was born with just one hand, didn't I?”

Ruff stared at him in disbelief. “Uh, no. You never said…” his words trailed off as slowly his eyes widened in recollection of the little exchange in room 33 the day before. “Wow. I don't think I'd want to be in Jenks' or Skinner's boots the next time they meet Ellie on a football field.”

“You can say that again,” laughed Oz.

And when Ellie came back to her seat, Oz couldn't help but sense that something had definitely changed. Both boys were looking at her, Oz with a quiet little smile, and Ruff with renewed interest. But she gave them both identical, trademark, feisty glances and said, “Whatever it is you've been discussing, I do not want to know. Now, can we please get on with why we're here?”

But the smile didn't leave Oz's lips, because he noticed that the faintly amused, indulgent look that had appeared just after her speech had been given to them both. It was the first time that there hadn't been that little smidgen of mistrust in the way she looked at Ruff. He supposed he ought to thank Jenks and Skinner for that, and almost laughed out loud. As candidates for sealing friendships, they were an unlikely pair. But if there was one thing that was going to make Ruff and Ellie friends, it was having common enemies like Jenks and Skinner.

Still with an odd, intangibly warm feeling inside him, Oz launched into telling them about the voices he'd been hearing.

“I know how weird all this sounds, but I'm sure I've heard it somewhere before in my dreams, twice. Once the night before the second maths test, and again last night.”

Ellie and Ruff listened in open-mouthed astonishment.

“Whoa, Oz, what are you saying?” Ruff said with furrowed brows. “That this girl is tied up with the trinket box, and she told you how to do maths in your dreams?”

“Told you it sounds mental.”

“Maybe not,” Ellie said softly, stirring her latte. “I don't mean the maths thing. That's just silly. I mean the trinket box. Maybe she's the missing link. What if she is the ghost, and somehow the trinket box allows her to communicate?”

“So she haunts the trinket box, you mean?” Oz said.

Ellie sat up. “And maybe she's the one that put those images on your laptop, and wants us to find the artefacts?”

“And maybe there's a van outside with lots of men in white coats waiting to take you two away,” Ruff said, shaking his head.

“I know how mad it sounds,” Oz said, “but it makes a weird kind of sense, too. Look, Caleb said that my dad went to Egypt on the trail of Morsman's artefacts. He sent me the box from there and all this weird stuff has only really started to happen since I found it.”

“Except for the footsteps. We heard them before you found the box,” Ellie corrected him.

Oz wrinkled his nose in disappointment; he'd forgotten about the footsteps for a moment.

“Well, I've found some stuff out, too,” Ruff said, taking a big gulp of hot chocolate, which left him with a cream-coated upper lip. “I was playing some online
Phantom Vamp-busters 3
, and I remembered that if you got to level five you got a password that allowed you to access an online magazine called the
Woolcote Gazette
.”

Ellie snorted. “Sounds like a farming magazine.”

“And that's where you'd be dead wrong, Miss Know-It-All. The
Woolcote Gazette
is ancient, and it's full of all this really great weird stuff like hauntings and actual alien sightings. It's the bees' buzzard knees, I tell you.”

Ellie and Oz exchanged knowing glances.

“Why have I never heard of it, then?” Ellie asked.

“Because they stopped publishing it in 1960-something. But it goes back ages longer than that. Hundreds of years, maybe. Anyway, I got to level seven two nights ago, so I logged on with my free password and searched for Morsman on the
Woolcote
site, and guess what? There was an interview with Morsman's housekeeper in a 1948 edition. Someone was researching Morsman and dug her up like journalists do. She said that the reason he'd spent his whole life searching for the artefacts was because of something he'd found in the orphanage. Something that changed his life.”

“So, what was it?” Ellie asked, sitting up excitedly.

“Ummm, it didn't say.”

Ellie's shoulders slumped and she threw herself back into the armchair in exasperation. “Fat lot of good that is, then, you total gonk.”

“But it proves that there's something there, though, right?” Ruff said before Ellie could protest again. “She also said that his obsession started when he went on an expedition abroad with an old friend called…” He took out a folded-over Post-It note from his pocket. “Uh…Tanner, to find the fifth artefact, which he was really excited about.”

“Sugar. A fifth artefact? They must be breeding,” Ellie said, spooning up the froth from the bottom of her cup.

“No, wait,” Oz said, sitting up. “I read about this Tanner bloke, too.” Oz had forgotten until now about Tanner. He'd been mentioned in the Morsman article his dad had written. But he didn't want to steal Ruff's thunder, so he just sat back and listened.

“Everyone thought Morsman was completely barking, because the expedition was to France and they were at war with Germany at the time,” Ruff said.

“Was there anything about his death?” Ellie asked.

“That's a bit weird, too. No one understood why Morsman died in London, 'cos he hated the place and hadn't been there for, like, forever. And he was in the docks. I mean, how unlucky is that? To go to a place you've avoided all your life and then get bombed for your trouble.” Ruff emptied his cup in a couple of deep gulps.

Oz finally spoke. “We may never find out what happened to him, but I still think we've got a great chance of finding the artefacts, because someone or something is trying to help us. Maybe it's the trinket box or the grey-eyed girl, or maybe it's whoever the footsteps belong to. There is only one way to find out.”

They both stared at him.

“Look, my dad was trying to find the artefacts, too, so we've got to keep looking. It would sort of make what happened to him mean more, somehow. And if we found the artefacts, it would be one in the eye for Heeps. I've got a feeling that's why he took everything from my dad's study. And,” he added darkly, “I really would like to see him and Pheeps squirm.”

“What has she done now?” Ellie asked warily, sitting up again.

So, after one big, deep breath, Oz told them about what had happened when Dr. Mackie had come to call. And it all poured out, the argument with his mother, the chat with Caleb, everything. Oz couldn't stop it, even though he could feel himself flushing with remembered anger.

“That's awful,” Ellie whispered when he'd finished. Oz thought he saw a wetness in her eyes that hadn't been there before.

Oz took another deep breath and sent a couple of darting looks at the two of them before saying, “So neither of you knew, then?”

“Oz, I swear, if I'd have known…” Ellie said, shaking her head, white-faced.

“I'd have told you, mate,” Ruff said earnestly.

Oz nodded. That was good enough for him.

“And you think Pheeps has known this all along?” Ruff asked, sitting forward.

“Her father must have.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Maybe Arkwright knows something that you don't? ‘Careful, you might do yourself an injury? Runs in the family?'” Oz repeated the poisonous phrases Pheeps had hurled at him in a very unflattering, if not altogether inaccurate, impersonation.

“That's disgusting,” Ruff said.

“But how can we get back at her?” Ellie asked, fuming.

“Well, like I said, my dad sent me that trinket box for a reason. I think that reason has to do with Morsman and Bunthorpe. If it turns out that my dad had found something…” He let his voice trail off and smiled. “Imagine how that would make Heeps feel.”

Ellie and Ruff exchanged tight-lipped glances, then they both looked at Oz and nodded. It made sense.

“So, let's go and find the black dor,” Ellie said, pushing back her chair.

“I though you were shopping for something for Macy,” Oz said.

“That can wait,” Ellie said as she stood up.

“Think we should maybe have lunch first?” Ruff blurted. “I'm starving.”

“It's only half-eleven,” Oz said.

“Exactly,” Ruff replied. “I hate eating late.”

* * *

Garret and Eldred Antiques was not in the main part of town. They had to wind their way through a couple of shopping arcades, past the Seabourne International Arena, and walk the length of St Beade's Street to a less familiar area. Here, what once had been a thriving shopping area now had an abandoned, slightly scruffy air. Ruff, who always seemed to know his way about, led them past a shut-up pub and down a dingy side street where every other property had “for sale” signs in the windows, until at last they stood outside a double-fronted shop, where an old-fashioned sign hanging from a brass pole above the door indicated their destination. The grimy shop window was overflowing with dark furniture, bric-a-brac, stuffed animals in glass cages, and books, all coated with thick layers of dust.

“You're sure this is the place?” Oz asked doubtfully.

“Garret and Eldred,” Ellie said, pointing to the sign as she pushed open the door.

An old-fashioned brass bell above the door rang as soon as they entered, but once they were in, the large room fell into a dusty, murky silence. Inside, it was even more jumbled than the shop front had suggested. Over in one corner, behind a hurdy-gurdy machine, lurked a taxidermy array with foxes and weasels piled on top of birds and fish.

In another, Oz saw a tower of ornately decorated chamber pots, and in between was a minefield of occasional tables, old chairs, wall clocks and bed heads. But that was only as far as Oz could see, because the shop seemed to stretch back for a considerable way.

“Where do we start?” whispered Ellie.

“Perhaps if you indicated what it is, exactly, you are after, I might be of assistance,” suggested a voice from the shadows.

Ellie, Ruff and Oz all turned at once. Tucked behind a huge mounted moose head sat a wizened old gentleman, immaculately dressed, with a red spotted bow tie and a pair of half-glasses bridging his nose. He perched on a stool at a small workbench lit by a single desk lamp. Spread out on the bench, on a white cloth, was a bewildering array of tiny cogs and springs and shiny metal cases and glistening pearl dials. The man smiled and stood up stiffly. He wore a clean, navy-blue apron with “Garret and Eldred, Watchmakers and Purveyors of Fine Antiques” emblazoned on the breast. He moved towards them with some difficulty, eyebrows arched in enquiry.

“Uh, well, we're actually looking for a dress clip brooch,” Ellie said.

“Well, you've come to the right place, my dear. We have a large assortment. Now let me see, do you have a particular style in mind?” He moved past them and Oz smelled a pleasant waft of after-shave, reminding him of cut grass and heather. They followed him deeper into the shop to a bank of glass cases. The shopkeeper ran a bony finger along the brass mouldings on one of the cases and peered at the faded label stuck to the glass. “Dress clips, yes. Here we are.” He looked up. “A gift, is it?”