Читать книгу The Gold Thief - Justin Fisher, Justin Fisher - Страница 12

he bike’s metal frame rattled noisily as it careered through the streets of Grittlesby and on to neighbouring Clucton. Three thirty and it was already getting dark. Pedestrians yelled at the blur of speeding metal, cars honked their horns and Ned’s mind became a whirlwind of all-encompassing panic.

Where his dad had trained Ned with the ring at his finger, his mum had taught him circus skills. High-wire, tumbling, fencing, juggling (either knives or flames) and all-round acrobatics. Everyone who worked the borders of the Veil had to know them, to be able to fight, or get out of danger, and there was no better teacher than Olivia Armstrong.

She had not taught him how to ride a bike – that much he had already known – but she had honed his reflexes and kept him fit. Even so, he thought his lungs were going to explode by the time he finally made it to his house, though not as surely as his heart. Training only works, no matter how thorough, when you remember it. Ned could barely remember how to breathe.

He didn’t notice the blaring car alarms, or that the lawnmower from number 39 was floating several feet off the ground. His powers were spiking again. He approached the front door and let out a sigh of relief. The lights were on and everything looked quite normal from the outside. He even heard “White Christmas” playing on their kitchen radio again.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …”

It was only when he pulled out his keys that he noticed the front door hanging very slightly ajar. That, in and of itself, would have been more than enough to make Ned worry, but it was the movement in his own shadow that made his hair stand on end. It spilt out across the ground, oozing with a will of its own. The shadow became a shape and then the shape rose up to greet him. Within it were two minuscule eyes, like a pair of stars on flowing black velvet.

Ned’s undulating familiar, the shadow-dwelling Gorrn, was a difficult creature, prone to taking offence over the smallest issue and also uncommonly lazy. Gorrn usually only came to Ned if he was summoned. The only time he showed himself without being asked was if there was very clear and very present danger nearby.

“Gorrn, is something wrong?”

“Arr,” groaned back the shadow.

Gorrn was a familiar of few words. “Roo” was either a question or a “don’t know”, “Unt” a flat refusal to help, but “Arr”?

“Arr” nearly always meant yes.