THIS WAS FUN! While I was stalking Grayson and Henry, I felt like Catwoman. Or James Bond. Or a cross between the two of them. Coolest of all were my improved powers of vision. There wasn’t a streetlight switched on anywhere, and even the moon wasn’t shining in the sky, but I could still see everything. I could avoid overhanging branches and stones lying on the path. The soles of my fluffy socks meant I was walking so quietly that I could get really close to the two of them, keeping an eye open all the time for the nearest hiding place. I was just surprised that I hadn’t woken up yet. Normally the phase of a dream when I knew for certain I was dreaming never lasted long, particularly not when it was as entertaining a dream as this one.
“There you two are!” The beam of Grayson’s flashlight had found two more figures: Arthur and Jasper, I assumed. With a judo roll worthy of the movies, I hid behind a gravestone, just in case they, too, had developed catlike powers of vision. I cautiously raised my head so that I could peer over the top edge of the gravestone. Like I said, I was having fun.
“You’ll never believe it, but Jasper was standing right outside the gate and couldn’t get in.” That was Arthur, if my guess was right.
“It was locked.” The rather fretful voice of Shaving Fun Ken, who, to my delight, was wearing plaid flannel pajamas. At least I wasn’t the only one unsuitably dressed. I’d also seen the other boy, Arthur, in school that morning. He was the one with the blond curls who looked like an angel. Positively uncannily beautiful.
“I was going to climb the wall, but a night watchman with a dog came along, and there was barbed wire.…”
“This is a dream, Jasper!” said Henry impatiently. “You don’t have to come in through the gate. And you don’t have to be afraid of night watchmen, because everything you see while you’re alone is only a figment of your own imagination. How often do I have to explain that to you?” He looked around, and I quickly ducked my head. “I hope your night watchman won’t bother us here. We’ve just had to shake off other … er … distractions.”
I supposed that meant me. What a cheek!
“Don’t worry. We dealt with the man and his dog,” said Arthur.
“Yes, it was cool,” said Jasper. “Arthur made a fireball appear out of nowhere and—”
“We’d better hurry,” Henry interrupted. “We’ve already lost too much time, and for all we know Jasper will wake up again before we have our answer.”
“Not this time,” said Jasper, with some pride in his voice. “I took one of my mother’s migraine tablets. They always knock her out flat for two days.”
“All the same, let’s start,” said Grayson. “The fact is, I’m not sure whether I closed my bedroom door properly, and around three in the morning Spot is always scratching at the carpet like mad, wanting to go out … Did you see that?” He pointed into the mist. “What was it?”
“Only the wind,” said Henry. A gust of wind had indeed set the branches of the trees moving, but for a moment I felt as if I’d seen a scurrying figure in the drifting mist.
“I only thought…” Grayson stared into the darkness.
“There’s enough room here.” Arthur had gone a few steps farther, into the shade of an old cedar tree. The others followed him. Suddenly their mood seemed to be rather apprehensive. I was all agog, biting my lower lip. What was going to happen now? I very much hoped there wouldn’t be any skeletons or half-putrefied zombies in this dream, because that sort of thing always terrified me in movies. On the other hand, we were in a cemetery, so I supposed it was only to be expected. For a moment I wondered whether my dream was straying too far into the realm of cliché, but never mind. Just as long as it went on being exciting. (But if possible without any spiders.)
“Five have broken the seal, five have sworn the oath, and five will open the gate, as it is written. We have come, as on every night of the new moon, to renew our solemn oath.” Arthur had picked up a stick and was drawing something on the ground with it as he walked around in a wide circle. Where the end of the stick touched the ground, the grass went up in flames.
I was impressed.
The others stood around the fire. Then, in an unctuous voice, Arthur intoned a kind of singsong. From behind my gravestone, unfortunately, I could catch only fragments of it because the flames were crackling so loudly: “… custos opacum … know that we have aroused your anger … you rightly have doubts of us … swear that Anabel is sorry for what happened … she is suffering … do everything in our power to fulfill our oath … do not punish her any more…”
“Or us, either,” said Jasper. “We can’t help it.…” He fell silent when he noticed the disapproving faces of the others.
“Come and speak to us,” Arthur went on, and the flames burned higher. “Foedus sanguinis … interlunium … you who have a thousand names and are at home in the night … we need…” The rest of it was lost in the crackling.
What did they need? Who was Anabel, and what was she sorry for? And what oath were they going to fulfill? I was almost bursting with curiosity, but I dared not get any closer in case they discovered me. Particularly as Henry was looking straight in my direction. The flames reflected in his eyes looked really scary. No, I couldn’t steal any closer to them. Not unless I really was a cat … Just a moment! This was a dream, after all. I could be anything I liked, even a cat. I’d often turned into an animal in a dream. (Not always of my own free will. I shuddered to remember the dream when I’d been a mouse and Lottie had chased me with a broom.)
“Custos opacum … we humbly ask you to show us who is to fill the empty place … non es aliquid absconditum … please…”
I narrowed my eyes and thought as hard as I could of the barn owl I had once been allowed to hold in a wildlife park in Germany. Owls could see at night even better than cats, and above all they could fly without a sound. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself at an airy height several yards above the ground, with my claws around a branch of the cedar tree.
This was a great dream! It had missed the part where I’d have had to learn to fly and taken me straight to the right place, at the perfect observation post. I squinted past my beak and down to the ground. The four boys were standing just below me, and now I could also see what Arthur had been drawing on the ground: a large, five-pointed star, a pentagram with a circle around it. The grass was still burning half a yard high in some places; in others the flames were already going out.
“We have come together on this night of the new moon, O Lord of Shadows and Darkness, so that you can tell us the name of her who is to complete our circle again, so that we can keep our part of the pact,” cried Arthur.
O Lord of Shadows and Darkness—well, now it all sounded somehow more menacing and less ridiculous. But I was glad that he was speaking English and not Latin. It meant that at least I could understand him. I couldn’t wait to see whether the Lord of Shadows and Darkness was going to turn up now in person.
At first the flames only burned higher, and then the earth rose up in the middle of the pentagram and, with a dull growl, something pushed up out of the ground. Okay, so now it was getting really creepy. My cedar tree was shaking. Terrified that some kind of zombie was going to crawl out of the ground (you could bet that the Lord of Shadows and Darkness didn’t look cute), I instinctively closed my eyes and wound my arms around a branch. I was entirely forgetting that I was an owl and didn’t have any arms. A stupid mistake. When I opened my eyes again, I no longer had claws and feathers, and I was crouching rather awkwardly in human form in the branches of the cedar, complete with nightie, hooded sweater, polka-dot socks, and the certainty that my weight was far too much for the thin branches. They cracked, giving way under me, and although I reached for anything that came my way as I fell, I dropped like a stone into the middle of the pentagram and right onto what had come up from the ground. It wasn’t a zombie, only a polished stone slab about the size of a kitchen table.
By all the laws of nature known to me, I ought to have broken every bone in my body when I hit the stone slab, but luckily the laws of nature didn’t seem to apply in this dream. A few cedar needles trickled down onto my head, and a cone landed in my lap, but I hadn’t suffered any harm at all.
I could move without any pain and look at the totally astonished faces of the boys around me as they looked at me, wide-eyed.
All the same, it was rather embarrassing and kind of beneath my dignity. I didn’t feel a bit like Catwoman now, which was not a good way for my dream to turn out. Far from it. I quickly closed my eyes, hoping that I could simply turn back into an owl and fly away. Unfortunately I couldn’t manage to concentrate on owlishness—no wonder, with everyone staring at me like that. In frustration, I pulled the cedar needles out of the sweater and tugged my nightie down over my knees.
The four boys were still looking horrified. Henry and Grayson maybe a little less so than the other two.
“I was a barn owl a moment ago, honest,” I assured them.
Shaving Fun Ken put out his hand and briefly touched my arm.
“I … I don’t understand this,” he said. “What does it mean? I thought he’d give us a name and not throw a whole girl on the altar just like that.…”
“Who are you?” asked Arthur. At close quarters, and in this light, he looked more than ever like an angel come to life. An eerie angel.
A sudden gust of wind rustled the leaves of the trees standing around and blew Arthur’s fair curls out of his face. “Tell me your name or … abeas in malam crucem!”
Or … what? Disappear in a bad cross? What a shame I’d spent so little time learning Latin. Stupidly, I’d thought no one ever needed it. For a moment I was tempted to answer in an equally unctuous tone (and neatly show off by slipping in the only Latin saying that I knew), something along the lines of “I, O unworthy one, am the cousin of the Lord of Shadows and Darkness, and in dubio pro reo,” but unfortunately Grayson and Henry knew who I really was.
Jasper seemed to remember me, too.
“That … that’s the missionary’s daughter who was being shown around school today by Pandora Porter-Peregrin’s little sister!” he said, sounding quite agitated. “Don’t you recognize her, Henry? Imagine her with heavy black-framed glasses and a ponytail.…”
Henry said nothing. Grayson sighed. The wind blew through the branches of the cedar tree, bringing more cedar needles and cones down on me. Lightning flashed on the horizon, and for a split second I had the feeling, once again, that I could make out a figure in the mist.
“You mean this girl really exists?” asked Arthur. “And she goes to our school? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Jasper firmly. “She’s new. The funny thing is that when I heard she’s a missionary’s daughter, it made me think at once she must still be a virgin. Is that right, Henry? You were talking to her as well. Don’t you recognize her?”
Henry still said nothing. He and Grayson were looking at each other as if they were having a silent conversation. Lightning flashed across the sky once again.
“That’s a sign,” said Arthur. “She could be the Chosen One! Anyone know her name?”
Thunder rolled in the distance.
“The Chosen One,” I repeated, injecting as much contempt as possible into my voice. “Oh, very original. Although I have to admit that this trick with the stone slab was very … By the way, who pushed it up out of the ground?” I slid off the slab of granite, because I got the impression that Arthur was staring under my nightie. In fact, I felt as if they were all coming rather too close to me. The fitful flames bathed their faces from below in orange light and sent shadows dancing over their skin.
Yet another flash of lightning. And another crash of thunder, closer this time.
“We can easily find out her name tomorrow—Pandora’s little sister will be thrilled if I ask her.” Jasper laughed in a self-satisfied way. “She’s always practically fainting away with delight if I even look at her.”
Grayson muttered something, but so quietly that it was swallowed up by Jasper’s laughter, the rustling of the leaves, and the crackling of the flames.
Meanwhile, Arthur was solemnly holding his stick aloft. “We understand, Commander of the Night. We thank you for your answer. And we will not disappoint you again.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur, but she is definitely not … er…,” said Grayson, rather louder than before. He rubbed his forehead, and by now I knew him well enough to realize that he always did that when he felt embarrassed. “It’s all my fault that she’s here. Her name is Liv, and she is my father’s girlfriend’s daughter. And obviously…” He paused for a moment, shooting me a nasty look. “Obviously I can’t stop thinking about her. I’m sorry I wrecked our ritual.”
Arthur did not reply to that. He lowered his stick, put out his hand, and reached for a strand of my hair, then let it slide slowly along his fingers. I flinched away.
“You really mean it?” asked Jasper. “Your dad’s girlfriend is a missionary?”
Grayson sighed again.
Henry was looking at me thoughtfully. “It really is a strange coincidence that she fell into the middle of our circle during the ritual, Grayson,” he said quietly as another flash of lightning lit up the sky.
“Sorry,” said Grayson, with a remorseful shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe we ought to just start all over again.”
“No need to apologize.” Arthur ran his thumb over the strand of my hair that he was holding. Normally I’d have rapped his knuckles, but for some reason I couldn’t move. This dream had clearly gone out of control. Any moment now, I realized, it would change into a nightmare. And I didn’t like that idea a bit.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Arthur.
“Nor do I. Not since…” Jasper’s self-satisfied look had gone away. He looked anxious now instead. “Not since, well, you know what happened,” he finished quietly. “If you know her well, Grayson, all the better. Then it will be easier for us—”
A mighty crash of thunder yet again. That did it. I had to do something before all this mystic playacting in the cemetery finally became a nightmare and my cousin the Lord of Shadows and Darkness emerged from the mist and struck me down with Lottie’s hatchet.
“Take your paws off me, Gandalf,” I said firmly, snatching my hair away from Arthur’s fingers. “All this stuff is extremely interesting, but now I really have to go. I’m not supposed to be out in a thunderstorm.” I meant that to sound casual, but sad to say, it didn’t. Even Jasper, dim as he was, had to realize that I was frightened.
Only then did I notice how tall they all were. Over six feet, every one of them, and as I watched them they seemed to be growing taller every second.
Lightning bathed the cemetery in glaring light. I swallowed. The outer flames of the pentagram were flaring up again, and out of the corner of my eye it looked as if the drifting mists in the dark were growing arms and legs.…
“I’m warning you, I can do kung fu,” I said. An even mightier roll of thunder followed my words, the ground shook again, and I lost my balance and fell over.
“Ouch,” I said out loud, rubbing my hip bones. My feline powers of vision were gone in an instant. I’d landed on a hard marble floor. Somewhere to the left, I saw a small, formless something in the dim light. I groped for it and held it before my eyes. It was one of Mrs. Finchley’s stupid, grinning ballerinas. I had pushed it under my bed so that I didn’t have to keep looking at it. But now I was amazingly glad to see its blurred shape in front of me.
I was awake.
Thank heavens.