AT JUST AFTER TEN O’CLOCK, THE WEATHER turned. The wind snorted and kicked its hooves, raising dust, and it put its head down and began storming through the streets of Howlfair. Rusty, squeaking signposts swung. Trees applauded. Above the Ethelhael Valley, a single sponge-like cloud wiped the sky clean. The moon dazzled the town and gave the streets a mercury hue. The wind inflated the jacket of a tall, athletic girl on a bike as she flew wobbling madly over the dark cobbles, a carrier bag full of clothes bouncing as it hung from her handlebar. The wind carried the girl down Stayhand Walk, towards the junction where it collided with the Circuit, and nearly dashed her into a wall; she braked, skidded, and stopped inches short of a lamppost. She had her father’s cloth locksmith’s bag slung over her shoulder. It clanked when she shrugged to adjust its position.
She scowled. What was all this blue mist? Felicity Quick set off again on her urgent business, while behind her a cat scrambled from an alley, chased by a wafting whoosh of fog – and a huge hound.
Felicity rode on.
What a chase took place! Through the cobbled streets the hound pursued the cat under the blue moon’s ghastly grin, down grim, depressing Mine’s End Road, sometimes overtaking and blocking the cat’s path, as though steering it towards a pre-decided destination.
Around Moon Crescent they sprinted, and back to Pennythief Lane, knocking over a tin dustbin, then down Ghulfost Street and onto The Cobblings, claws clattering.
Down Bonebroth Avenue with its famous soup kitchen. Heading towards Sellheart Road, the night’s eerie blue mist spewing slowly from the alley and crawling down the streets. The cat sharply rounded the corner, its little face determined and tired, and the dog closed the distance just as Felicity Quick was approaching the top end of Sellheart Road. The shadowy hound finally caught its prey outside a grey-windowed, abandoned shop.
The hound’s amber fangs caught the cat’s collar. Chomp! A swing of the dog’s dire head pitched the poor cat high into the air. The collar flew; the little silver disc bearing the cat’s name spun into the air and landed in a groove between the cobbles. If you’d looked, you would have seen the name: GABRIEL.
Gabriel landed badly, and lay motionless. The dog picked up the floppy feline in its teeth.
A nearby doorway hissed.
The dog looked left, looked right, then padded towards the doorway of a boarded-up house.
It dropped the limp body and sat down obediently.
Eyes glowed from the dark recess.
“Good girl, Hecate,” said the man in the black doorway. He began to emerge from the darkness. But before he could step into the street’s dim lamplight, a girl’s shout echoed down the quiet lane.
“Hey! Shoo, dog! Leave that cat alone!”
A perfectly pitched stone arched through the night air and clipped the dog’s head. The dog sprinted away, hurt, slipping down an alley. The tall figure in the doorway scowled hatefully and receded into the darkness as Felicity Quick, captain of the school rounders team, pedalled over through the thickening blue mist.
Felicity jumped from her bicycle and approached the twisted moggy, one hand pressed against her heavy locksmith’s bag to stop it swinging around. She saw that the cat was still alive.
“A stray,” she muttered, noticing the lack of collar. “Hey, cat, it’s OK, the dog’s gone.”
She knelt, and Gabriel glanced up at the girl’s jagged fringe.
The cat remembered Molly’s warning.
Only feet away, the figure in the dark doorway was silently drawing a weapon. Then he frowned with surprise as the cat, summoning its last bit of energy, hissed and swiped at the girl, sharp claws carving the air.
“Hey! I’m trying to help, you stupid cat!”
But Gabriel, forewarned against Felicity Quick, was putting up a desperate fight.
“Fine – be like that!” Felicity backed off and picked up her bicycle. “Ungrateful mammal.”
The moment Felicity cycled off, the man in the doorway put away the cruel weapon he’d drawn and re-emerged from the shadows, a jute sack draped over the crook of one arm. Benton Furlock (for the figure was he) snapped his fingers, and a boy in a parka coat slipped from a nearby alley and trotted over. Furlock lifted Gabriel by the scruff of his neck and dropped him into the sack.
“I’ve got the cat,” Benton Furlock told the boy. “You get the girl.”
Tucked up in a narrow bed in the children’s ward of Howlfair Infirmary on the night of the blue moon, Lowry Evans lay fretting and wondering if she was about to become a werewolf, while her fellow patients slumbered and the loon-faced moon leered through the silver-lit window.
Suddenly she heard something moving outside in the darkness.
Jolting upright, Lowry looked over at the window to see—
The face of a monster!
The face, that is, of Felicity Quick.
Scowling, Lowry padded to the window in her hospital gown. Felicity gestured for her to open the window, but it was locked. Rolling her eyes, Felicity unslung and opened the bag containing her father’s locksmith tools, and within moments the lock was mastered.
“What in the name of Beelzebub’s bathrobe are you doing, breaking in here?” Lowry hissed.
Felicity threw her plastic bag full of clothes through the window while the children of the ward looked on with alarm. “Put these on and come with me.”
“Felicity, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m in hospital.”
“Are you still ill?”
“Well, not particularly, but—”
“Good. I’m going to set Thompson free and I need you to convince her to come with us.”
“Come with us where?”
“I’ll explain everything on the way.”
Lowry folded her arms. “You’ll explain some of it right now – or I’m not going anywhere.”
Felicity sighed angrily. “My granddad got permission to build his houses. Benton Furlock smoothed over the problem with the plague pit.”
Lowry shrugged. “So?”
“So it turns out that Benton Furlock has been blackmailing my granddad. Furlock forced him to buy that land. He wants Granddad to build houses over a plague pit.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know! Because he’s a sicko,” said Felicity. “Or maybe he thinks it’ll be good for tourism if he builds a load of houses that he can pretend are haunted. I was telling Granddad tonight about the weird thing I’d seen in the museum – long story short, Molly set fire to a painting and it mended itself – and when I described the painting, he had a complete breakdown and confessed everything. He said that Furlock’s been blackmailing half of Howlfair, threatening to set ghouls on people if they don’t give him money and do what he says. He’s trying to get control of the whole town. Granddad says that Furlock sends people letters with his demands, and if they don’t give him what he wants, he sends ghouls round to scare them. After that, he sends ghouls to hurt them. If they still won’t play along, he sends ghouls to kill them.”
“No way!”
“Furlock desperately needs money – not just for the campaign, but for something massive he’s going to do as soon as he becomes Mayor of Howlfair. Granddad’s got this mad idea that Furlock’s going to send ghouls out to kill all the people he’s been blackmailing now that he’s bled them all dry. I tried to tell him that ghouls aren’t real – that Furlock’s probably just hired actors to pretend to be ghouls – but Granddad’s convinced that actual ghouls are going to come out during the blue moon and murder everyone who knows what Furlock’s been up to.”
“But … tonight is the night of the blue moon.”
“Exactly! Now tell me straight – has that annoying best friend of yours been investigating all this stuff?”
Lowry felt a twinge of pride. “She’s Molly flipping Thompson – she investigates everything. She was planning to break into Loonchance Manor to get evidence of the evil things Benton Furlock is doing so she can stop him from becoming mayor.”
Felicity chewed her lip anxiously. “I need her to tell me everything that she knows. Get dressed – we’re going to the Excelsior Guesthouse to bust Molly out, and we’re going to stop Furlock tonight.”
Lowry put on the tracksuit Felicity had brought, and after swearing the other children in the ward to secrecy and saluting them farewell, she climbed through the window and got onto the back of Felicity Quick’s bike (she never imagined she and Felicity Quick would be sharing a bicycle) – and off they rode, fleetly flying over the cobbles.
Lowry noticed that Felicity had a wooden bat strapped to her back.
“Are you planning on stopping to play rounders?” she asked as they careened through the streets.
“I’m gonna do some batting practice,” Felicity growled. “As soon as I get my hands on Benton Furlock.”
If Felicity hadn’t stopped to rescue a strange cat that night, she and Lowry might have reached the Excelsior in time. But while the two girls were speeding down Poorhouse Lane, Molly was watching with excitement from her temporary bedroom as Carl Grobman, standing on a thick branch of the oak tree, picked her window lock to set her free. By the time Felicity and Lowry reached the guesthouse, Molly was gone.