13
Caw jerked back out of sight. “It’s Jawbone!” he said in a whisper.
Quaker’s whole demeanor changed at once. He seemed to transform from an eccentric hermit to a creature of stealth, moving like liquid to press himself against a wall. He shot a glance down the stairway and made a clicking sound in his throat. Instantly, his cats sprang up to gather at his side, releasing the crows. Glum let out a pained squawk, and the dogs below growled.
“Looks like you’ve grown lazy in your old age, Quaker,” said Jawbone. “You don’t want to let guys like me get into your hideout. Now come out, little kitty. I know you’re here. My pretties can smell you.”
Felix Quaker pulled Caw’s ear up to his lips. “You’ve done enough damage. Now get out while you still can!”
“But—” Caw began.
The sound of the snarling dogs grew closer.
“Come on!” said Lydia. She darted downstairs into the room with the glass cases, and Caw followed with his crows.
“Don’t bother running from us, Quaker!” bellowed Jawbone. “You’ll only make them angry!”
At the door of the room, Caw stopped. Lydia was already on the window ledge. But something made him drag his feet. The blade—it was calling to him. He had to have it. “Go on without me!” he yelled to Lydia, turning back.
“Wait!” she called. “Where are . . .”
Her voice died as Caw dashed past Quaker and his cats and up the stairs. He bounded into the turret room. Caw, leave it! cried Glum, flapping around the room.
Caw frantically examined the locked case. Nothing to break it with . . . Quaker must have the key. . . .
From below, he heard the screeching of the cats as they attacked, muffled by growling and snapping dogs. “You’ll pay if you hurt a single one of them!” shouted Quaker.
The growling stopped suddenly.
“Now, time for a little chat,” said Jawbone. “You thought you had us fooled, didn’t you? Acting like some doddery old madman. But we know what you’ve got locked away. Scuttle’s roaches crawled into this dump and found it.” His voice went dangerously quiet. “So no more games now. Take me to the Crow’s Beak.”
Caw heard a couple of heavy thumps. Quaker howled. “Get out of my house, you mangy brute,” he spat, his voice twisted with pain.
Caw’s eyes fell on the sword. The Crow’s Beak. This weapon—this was what Quaker was hiding. The words spoke to something deep within him. It was his, this blade. The crow talker’s sword.
“Quit stalling, Quaker,” said Jawbone. “Or shall I call Scuttle in? His friends will burrow through your ears and eat your brain. You’ll be able to feel them long after you can even scream. Or Mamba? One bite from her snakes and you’ll be paralyzed. I swear to you, Quaker, if I have to skin every cat in this house, one by one, I’ll do it. Whatever it takes to make you talk.”
There was a pause.
“Up there,” the cat feral replied, his voice suddenly flat.
Caw’s skin went cold. There was nowhere to run. He climbed onto the chair, then reached for the window. Too high. Even if he jumped, he wouldn’t be able to reach it.
Screech flapped onto the wardrobe. He didn’t need to speak—Caw understood. He hurried across the room as Jawbone’s footsteps thumped up the stairs. Caw threw open the door and leaped inside. The crows slipped in as well, and Caw quickly pulled the door shut. He brought his eye to the crack.
Jawbone shoved Quaker into the room, and the man’s monocle fell loose and landed on the floor with a brittle ping. The dogs stopped at the door, sniffing the air. The cat feral was bleeding from both nostrils, and an angry welt had risen under his eye.
Caw swallowed thickly as he saw that one of the dogs had blood around its sagging black lips. Clearly one of Quaker’s cats had been unlucky.
If they smell me, it’s over, thought Caw.
But the dogs seemed cautious—almost fearful. Their tails hung between their legs, and they didn’t cross the threshold. All three were staring at the Crow’s Beak.
Jawbone walked around the room, the timber floorboards creaking with every step. He circled the glass case. “Where’s the key?” he snapped, holding out a shovel-like hand.
“It’s downstairs in my study,” said Quaker, wiping blood from his nose with a handkerchief. “If you want it, you can fetch it yourself.”
Behind the cat feral, the three dogs growled.
Jawbone grinned, his tattooed face transforming into a hideous mask. He folded his open palm into a fist and lifted it high above Quaker’s head like a wrecking ball. Caw could barely watch. Was the convict going to crush the old man’s skull right in front of him?
Then Jawbone turned on his heel and brought his hand down onto the glass case. It splintered with a crash, throwing shards across the room. “Looks like I don’t need it,” he said.
As Jawbone reached in and seized the hilt of the Crow’s Beak, Caw felt a stab of anger mixed with something else—envy. He had to stop himself from leaping out and attacking the dog feral on the spot.
Jawbone turned the blade in the meager light from the bulb above, examining it closely. A shimmer passed along the metal, illuminating the strange letters. “Doesn’t look like much to me,” he said. “A child’s toy.”
“It’s priceless,” hissed Felix Quaker. “In the wrong hands—”
“Spare me,” said Jawbone. “I know what it is.” He shoved the sword down through his belt. Caw gritted his teeth.
“You have what you came for,” said Quaker, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “Now leave.”
Jawbone nodded thoughtfully, but then his head jerked down. He stooped toward the floor. “What’s this?” he said.
As he stood again, Quaker’s eyes shot for a split second toward the wardrobe. Jawbone was holding a black feather.
A scream of fear lodged in Caw’s throat.
“The crow talker is here,” said Jawbone. It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.
Quaker shook his head.
“You’re a bad liar,” said Jawbone. “My colleagues will find her soon enough.”
Quaker frowned, and Caw realized the cat feral was confused as well.
Her?
“You won’t find her!” said Quaker suddenly. Jawbone shoved him out of his way and strode toward the door. Then he paused and spoke without turning around.
“They say you cat ferals have nine lives. Let’s see, shall we?”
“What?” said Quaker, darting back. There was a crunch as he trod on his own monocle.
Jawbone laid a hand on each of the dogs’ heads in turn. As he did so, their ears went back and they lifted their tails. “Finish him off,” he said, and left the room.
“No!” Quaker cried.
The dogs entered, fanning out. Caw saw Felix Quaker snatch up the chair and brandish it in front of him. It only made the dogs growl with more menace.
“Orion!” said Quaker, swishing the chair back and forth. “Vespa! Monty! Claws out!”
One of the dogs leaped up toward his face, and Quaker sidestepped it deftly. An instant later, a second dog’s teeth fastened over his sleeve and tore a section away.
Caw pushed open the wardrobe doors, letting out a yell to distract the dogs. At the same time, he willed his crows to attack. They flew out, raking their talons at the dogs’ eyes and stabbing with their beaks. Caw grabbed Quaker and pulled him out of the room. The crows swooped after them, and the moment they were through, Quaker slammed the door closed.
On the other side they heard the dogs snarling and throwing themselves against the wood, shaking the door in its frame. Three cats finally darted up the stairs, hissing, but they stopped as Quaker wearily waved a hand.
“Some use you three were!” he said.
The cats responded with a series of indignant purrs.
“Well, you would say that,” said Quaker. “Lucky for me, the crows were here.” He turned to Caw. “What I can’t understand is why Jawbone called the crow talker her. . . . I was only too happy to assist in misleading him, but—”
“Lydia!” interrupted Caw. “They must think Lydia is the crow feral! We need to find her.”
“Now hold on,” said Quaker, but Caw was already starting down the stairs.
Lydia’s shouts cut through the house, making Caw’s heart jolt. He took the stairs two at a time, leaving his crows behind and vaulting over the turn in the banister, light as air. It felt as though a wind was carrying him along, giving him a speed he wasn’t used to.
On the landing, he saw a cat lying dead in a pool of blood.
Wait! called Glum.
Caw took the next flight to the first floor in two bounds and hit the ground running. He sped through the front door, which hung askew on its hinges. Screech shot ahead of him, flapping hard.
At the bottom of the driveway, Jawbone was striding toward a van. Mamba sat in the front seat, while Scuttle bundled Lydia in through a sliding side door. She kicked madly, screaming, “Let me go! Get your hands off me!”
Jawbone slid the door closed behind them.
Caw ran as fast as he could, but Jawbone was already climbing into the front seat. They hadn’t even seen him.
“Stop!” Caw yelled.
But the van’s tires spun, kicking up gravel and smoke. Then the van sped through the busted-open gates and away down the hill. Caw sprinted after them, his hopes vanishing as the vehicle’s rear lights faded into the distance. With his chest on fire, he stumbled to a halt in the middle of the road.
“No . . . please . . . ,” he said.
Not Lydia too.
Milky fluttered out of the sky and landed on his arm, and then Glum and Screech descended too.
“They think she’s the crow talker,” said Caw.
And they’ll discover soon enough that she isn’t, said Glum.
Caw picked himself up. “What will they do then?”
Glum didn’t speak for a long time.
We should go back to the house, he said finally. The cat talker must be able to help.
Caw nodded, but he noticed that Glum hadn’t answered his question.
Caw found Felix Quaker in the hallway, carrying the dead cat in his arms. He glanced up as Caw approached.
“They took her,” Caw said in a hollow voice. “Please . . . she’s the only friend I’ve got. Help me get her back.”
Quaker regarded Caw for a moment and then looked back at the cat in his arms. He stroked her bloodied fur gently. “She was called Helena,” he said. “It’s been fifteen years since I found her as a stray.”
“I’m sorry,” said Caw. “I know what it’s like to lose someone.”
“Yes . . . I suppose you must,” said Quaker.
“Please don’t make me go through it again,” Caw pleaded. “Lydia is still alive. We can still save her.”
Quaker’s eyes fell on the crows, perched on the banister. “She’ll keep, for now. First, we need to talk. Come with me, crow talker.”
Caw clenched his fists as the cat feral walked from the room. He wanted to run out into the street, to start tracking the prisoners down straightaway. But he knew that Quaker might be the only one who’d know how to find them. So—against all his instincts—Caw followed.
The dogs’ barks still rang through the house as Felix Quaker led Caw to a cellar kitchen with a cobbled floor and a simple wooden table. The crows flew in and landed on the edge of the sink. Quaker placed the dead cat softly on a sheet of newspaper in front of a huge hearth. A dozen other cats emerged and gathered around the corpse of their friend, mewing softly. The cat feral was unrecognizable from the immaculately dressed man who had answered the door less than an hour before. His wrist was bleeding from the dog bite, blood crusted under his nose, and his crisply ironed clothes were wrinkled and torn.
He turned his narrowed eyes on Caw. “So tell me, why do they think your friend is the crow feral?”
“I suppose . . . every time they saw me with the crows, she was there too,” said Caw, realizing it was true as he said it. “In fact, that first time in the alleyway, they didn’t see me at all—just Lydia. When Jawbone attacked her dad, they must have thought it was her calling the crows to protect him.
“And then at the Strickhams’ house, Mamba must have seen my crows waiting outside . . . but she didn’t see me then either. So of course she thought they were Lydia’s.”
He wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. If only he had sent her back to Crumb’s hideout, none of this would have happened.
“I see,” said Quaker. “And how did you find me?”
“Miss Wallace,” Caw said quietly. “Before . . .”
“The incident at the library,” said Quaker. He ran a cloth under the tap and dabbed his bloody nose. “I read about it. The police didn’t give any details, though. You knew her too?”
Caw nodded. “Jawbone and his friends killed her,” he said.
“Savages!” said Quaker, flashing his sharp teeth in a grimace. “The librarian was a capable woman. I use the library often for my research. Of course, she never knew who I really was.” He tossed the cloth in the sink. “Two days ago, I was taking out some books when I saw a drawing on her desk.”
Quaker looked up sharply. “Yes! How do you—”
“We drew it,” said Caw. “Me and Lydia.”
Quaker’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Well, I must have given quite a start when I saw it, because the librarian asked what it meant to me. I didn’t want anything to do with it, of course. I told her as much, quite firmly. Then I left in a hurry.”
“She must have guessed that you knew something about it. She wrote your name underneath that drawing,” said Caw. “She was holding it when they killed her.”
Quaker looked away as though unable to meet Caw’s eyes. The dogs’ barking had become less frequent, and Quaker glanced upward. “They’ll calm down eventually,” he said. “I never liked dogs, but they’re mostly harmless away from their feral’s influence.”
Caw had so many questions, he hardly knew where to start. And how were any of them going to help Lydia?
“So you know Jawbone?” he said.
“I’ve run into the likes of him in the past,” said Quaker. “That strand of dog talker has always been nasty.”
“There are others?” said Caw.
Felix Quaker sat heavily on a chair. “You’ll find a kettle on the range with hot water, and tea leaves in that jar on the shelf.” He pointed. “I can’t talk about ferals without a decent cup of tea in my hand.”
Begrudgingly, Caw fetched the jar and found two cups. He began to empty some of the dried leaves into them.
“Hold on there!” said Quaker. “You’ve not done this before, I see. Watch and learn!”
Caw stepped back and let the cat feral take over. He scooped the leaves into a metal object with holes in the side, then put that into a small pot and filled it with steaming water.
“I suppose I owe you my thanks,” said Quaker. “Jawbone’s dogs would have killed me if it weren’t for your crows.”
“Well, I’d be dead too, if you’d told him I was in that wardrobe,” said Caw.
Quaker leaned closer to Caw, sniffed deeply, then nodded. “I didn’t recognize you at first, but I should have. The resemblance is uncanny.”
Caw’s neck prickled. “You knew my parents?”
Quaker poured the amber liquid into two cups and pushed one across the table to Caw. “I did indeed, Jack.”
“Jack?” said Caw, sitting up straighter.
“I suppose you don’t use that name anymore,” said Quaker. He sipped his tea and purred contentedly. “I remember you as a baby. Jack Carmichael, son of Elizabeth and Richard. They were clever people. Brave, too—perhaps a bit too much so, at the end.”
Caw swallowed and fought back the threat of tears. He turned his attention to the cup of tea. Taking a sip, he let the strange flavor settle on his tongue and winced.
“Not a fan, I see?” said Quaker, smiling. “Neither was your mother.”
Caw sat up straighter.
“Well, we shan’t waste it,” said Quaker, snatching the cup toward his own. He took another sip of tea. “You know, I thought the crow line had ended. After the events of the Dark Summer, I went to your house. You were all gone, but the signs were there. The webs, so thick I had to use an ax to get through the door.” Quaker shook his head at the memory. “What a waste of talent. If only your mother had kept herself barricaded inside, as I did, maybe she’d still be alive, but—”
Quaker stopped midsentence and seemed to notice the stricken look on Caw’s face. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “As I said, they were brave.” He took another sip of tea. But for an instant, Caw thought he almost looked ashamed.
“Why did you go to my parents’ house?” asked Caw.
“To recover the Crow’s Beak, of course,” said Quaker.
“That sword.”
The cat feral nodded. “Luckily for me, your mother had hidden it well.”
“What is it?” asked Caw. “A weapon?”
Quaker’s eyes widened a little, then narrowed again. “It’s tragic that you know so little about your heritage, Jack.”
Caw felt a blush rise to his cheeks. “Then tell me.”
“The Crow’s Beak might look like a weapon, but in fact it’s more of a tool—a key—passed down between crow ferals since ancient times, when Blackstone was just fields and a river. It can cut through the veil that separates this world and the other.”
“The other?” said Caw.
Milky gave a low squawk from the edge of the sink, and the two crows on either side glanced at him nervously.
Quaker’s cup rattled on its saucer as he placed it down. He stared hard at Caw, and the cats by the hearth turned their eyes to their master, their ears pricked up and alert. “The Land of the Dead,” he said.
Caw felt his stomach twist.
The cat feral continued, glancing briefly at Milky. “Crows have always been special,” he said. “They are the only creatures that can cross back and forth between the lands.”
“But what is the Land of the Dead?” asked Caw.
“What does it sound like?”
The hairs on Caw’s neck rose. “The afterlife?”
“You can call it that if you like.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“You don’t believe me?” said Quaker. “Your white friend there knows I’m telling the truth.”
Milky stared at them.
“He doesn’t talk much, I see,” said Quaker. “Well, his feathers do the talking for him. He’s white like that because he’s one of the few to have visited the Land of the Dead and come back.”
Caw looked at Milky with new eyes. Could it be true?
“Say I believe you,” he said carefully. “What’s this place like?”
“Better ask him,” said Quaker, pointing at Milky.
Milky took off and landed on the table between them, talons clicking on the wood.
“Look into his eyes,” said Quaker. “Look hard.”
Milky cocked his head. Caw felt strange with Quaker and the animals watching, but all the same he stared into the crow’s pale left eye. “What have you got to show me, Milky?” he said softly.
At first he saw nothing. Then, in the depths of the pale orb, shapes began to swirl. He stared harder, and the rest of the room faded as the eye seemed to suck him in. Caw felt like he was floating, then falling, falling, into the depths of a misty sky. He saw shapes through the fog—woodland, branches, the ground covered in layers of black leaves.
“Do you see it?” said Quaker’s voice, from somewhere in the distance.
Caw nodded, unable to break away from Milky’s gaze. Through the mists he saw faces among the trees, figures drifting between the trunks. Two turned toward him, and he floated closer. They reached their arms out and murmured his name softly. “Jack?”
It was his mother. He glimpsed her face through the mist—her large, dark eyes, her kind smile. Then his father as well, his serious, clean-shaven features, with a slight dimple in his chin. The rest of their bodies were indistinct, but their faces called to him. “Jack, come to us,” they said together.
Just as he was about to fall into their embrace, another face appeared behind them. Caw’s heart lurched in horror, for there stood the Spinning Man, his spider hands sinking into Caw’s parents’ shoulders, yanking them away. His eyes were black and glittering, and his gaze was fixed on Caw.
Caw jolted backward with a gasp and almost fell off his chair. He was in the kitchen again, and Milky was watching him, head still cocked.
“The Spinning Man,” said Caw. “I saw him!”
“He is waiting for you,” said Quaker gravely.
“Me? Why?”
“Why do you think?” said Quaker. “Only the crow talker can wield the Crow’s Beak.”
“And bring him back,” said Caw in a rush of understanding. “If I cut through the veil, he can return. That’s why his followers need the crow talker.”
Felix Quaker nodded and took a last gulp of tea, setting the cup down with finality. “Their mistake with the girl has bought you a little time, but they will come back for you soon enough.”
“That may be true,” Caw said, standing. “But I’m not planning on hiding away like you. Thanks for the tea, but I need to go now. I need to find Lydia.”
Quaker reached down to stroke a ginger tomcat who was winding around his ankles. “My place is here,” he said. “I’ve helped you all I can.”
A light knock at the doorway made them both look up. Crumb was waiting at the threshold of the kitchen, Pip standing beside him.
“Yet more intruders, I see,” said Quaker.
“The front door was wide open,” said Crumb. “Looks like you’ve had some unwelcome visitors. Although I guess all visitors are unwelcome here.” His glance passed over Caw and the crows, and his expression hardened. “Where’s Lydia?”
“They took her,” said Caw grimly. “They think she’s the crow feral.”
Crumb’s face betrayed little emotion, other than a slight flaring of his nostrils, but Pip pushed past him, pointing angrily at Caw.
“You should have stayed with us, stupid,” he said. “We said you weren’t ready!”
“And you were right,” said Caw, cowed by the little boy’s stinging words. “But I’m going to make up for it.”
“And how will you do that?” said Pip.
“You have to teach me everything you can,” Caw said to Crumb. “Fast. Please, you have to help me. Somebody has to help me.” He glanced over at Quaker, but the cat feral wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Please, Crumb,” Caw repeated. “Lydia’s life depends on it.”
Crumb seemed to be deep in thought, his eyes fixed on the ground. Caw held his breath. Finally the pigeon feral met his gaze again. “Very well, crow talker,” he said. “But I warn you—it’s going to hurt.”