The Crooked Sixpence (17 page)

Sad blue eyes . . .
Recalling Granma Sylvie's memories again, Ivy realized she must have been seeing the face of her mother.

In the centre of the portrait stood Octavius, Granma Sylvie's father. He had a strong, imperious face with a wide jaw and jutting cheekbones. Above his thin mouth rested a waxed black moustache.

‘So that's the relatives,' Seb joked, his eyes wide. ‘Can't exactly see Mum and Dad inviting them over for Christmas.'

Ivy agreed. Still, she tried to take note of all of their faces so that she could describe them to Granma Sylvie. She wondered how she was doing in hospital and hoped she hadn't had any more visits from the Dirge.

‘Hey, look,' Seb said. Beneath the portrait was a chest of drawers, on top of which rested a rotary-dial telephone, a glass ashtray and a stack of newspapers – all covered in at least two centimetres of furry dust. Seb shook one of them clean and read the date:
4 January 1969.

4 January . . .
Ivy wondered if there was anything significant about it. ‘That's from the day before Twelfth Night,' she realized.

The paper was called the
Barrow Post
. Ivy leaned over to read it. She deduced it must be an uncommon publication because it was priced at 0.2 grade.

‘
Candidates Promise Fallen Guild Crackdown
,' she read, her voice echoing through the hall. ‘
In the final push before tomorrow's elections, the two leading candidates in the race for Quartermaster of the Great Cavern – Octavius Wrench and Mr Punch – have been speaking in the Market Cross. Wrench today promised to drive out corruption within the underguard by bringing in his own team of investigators to help deal with the Fallen Guild.
'

Seb looked up at the portrait. ‘Octavius was running for Quartermaster,' he said. ‘I guess he must have lost. Didn't you say that Mr Punch is the Quartermaster now?'

Before Ivy could answer, she spied Valian scuttling up the main stairs towards the gallery. ‘Aren't you meant to be our bodyguard?' she called.

Valian turned round, his face flushed. ‘I thought we should probably split up to search the place for clues. It'll be quicker.'

Ivy exchanged a suspicious look with Seb.

‘Let him go,' Seb said quietly. ‘It'll smell better without him around.'

Once Valian had disappeared upstairs, Seb folded up the edition of the
Barrow Post
and stuffed it into his hoodie pocket. Ivy searched through the chest of drawers. There were a number of other items – a pair of polished brogues, a horsehair hairbrush, some unopened letters addressed to Master Norton – but nothing of any real interest, until . . .

Ivy gazed at the bottom drawer. Unlike the others, it had a keyhole. She gave it a yank but it didn't budge.
If only I still had that uncommon string.
‘It's locked. Do you think you can break it open?'

Seb rolled up his sleeves and got down on his knees. ‘Maybe.' He looked underneath the chest and gave it a thump, then pulled hard on the drawer handle. Eventually the drawer snapped open and a cream paper envelope fluttered out. Ivy snatched it up off the floor. Her fingers sizzled with heat immediately. On the front, in scratchy black ink, was written:

Send to:

The Private Study of Octavius Wrench,

The Wrench Mansion

There was a slightly smudged ink stamp on the top right corner that said
DIRECT MAIL
.

‘It's uncommon,' Ivy said.

Seb went still. ‘How do you know that? You did it before with the fountain. Am I missing something?'

Ivy pushed a tangle of curls behind her ear. She had to tell Seb; he was her brother. She looked at him seriously. ‘Promise you won't make me feel like a freak if I tell you?'

Seb frowned. ‘Uh,
OK
. . .'

‘The thing is,' Ivy said quietly, ‘well – when I touch something uncommon, I can kind of sense it. First my skin goes really warm and tingly where I've touched it and then' – she hesitated – ‘I hear these whispers coming from it.'

‘What? How does that—?' Before Seb could formulate a question, Ivy recounted everything Scratch had explained to her that morning.

‘
Whispering
,' Seb repeated when she'd finished. ‘Right.' He gave her a thin smile. ‘And there's me thinking this couldn't get any weirder. I mean, I'm no expert, but hearing voices in your head—'

Ivy stamped her foot. ‘Seb! They're not in my head! And anyway, you promised not to make me feel like a freak.'

He held up his hands. ‘OK, OK.' He pointed to the envelope. ‘Well, look, if it's definitely uncommon, then what do you think it does?'

‘I don't know.' She turned it over. It wasn't sealed. ‘Maybe we should read what's inside? It might be a clue to what happened on Twelfth Night.' She slid her fingers under the flap on the back and opened it.

And suddenly the room was spinning.

‘Seb!'

‘Ivy?!'

The hallway – with its grand staircase and dark oil paintings – was swept away. Ivy felt herself rotating. She didn't want to reach out with her arms in case she hit something.

After a few seconds the spinning slowed down and a new room came into focus. Ivy fell to her knees and closed her eyes to let the dizziness subside. Her stomach was doing somersaults.

‘Ivy?' Seb's hand was on her shoulder. ‘You need to see this.'

Slowly she opened her eyes and struggled to her feet.

They were in a lavishly furnished room lined with mahogany bookcases and glass cabinets. Pale silvery light fell from a set of uncommon milk jugs hovering in the centre of the ceiling.

Seb took a few steps forward. ‘Where are we?' He ran his fingers along the top of a studded green leather chair tucked under a desk. They came away covered in grey fur.

Everything in the room was covered in such a thick layer of dust and cobwebs that Ivy could barely make out individual objects – a crystal decanter and matching glasses; an ivory tusk displayed in a glass cabinet. No one had been there for a very long time.

She scanned the walls and spotted a single portrait hanging between two bookcases. ‘Octavius Wrench,' she said, recognizing him from the portrait in the entrance hall. She re-read the front of the envelope. ‘
The Private Study of Octavius Wrench.
Do you think this is it?'

‘Must be. The books are all about the history of Lundinor or uncommon stuff.' Seb looked around the room. ‘It's weird that there isn't a door anywhere. That envelope must be the only way in or out. Maybe if you open it up, it takes us out again . . .'

Ivy considered the envelope carefully. Seb could be right. Common envelopes open, so uncommon envelopes might just open different kinds of things. ‘Let's look around for more clues before we go,' she suggested. ‘We might be close to something.'

Seb nodded and headed towards the bookcases on the other side of the room.

Ivy took a few shaky steps forward. She leaned against a wooden chair back, trying to steady herself. She could be imagining it, but the walls still looked like they were spinning . . . or maybe it was just the wallpaper.

The wall beside her was covered in thick, emerald-green paper decorated with vine leaves. Ivy traced one of them with her fingers. There was a loud
pop!
and the vine she had been touching sprang out of the paper and reached for her.

She jumped back. ‘Seb! Over here!'

As he scurried over, a sound like the popping of a hundred champagne corks filled the room, and every vine started crawling out of the wall, unravelling and twisting itself into a rope.

Seb raised an eyebrow. ‘Cool. Even better than the origami wallpaper in our room.'

The ropes had soon formed a large rectangular door with an oval doorknob. Eventually they creaked to a stop and, with a click, the door fell ajar.

‘Not
another
doorway,' Ivy groaned. She felt like they'd had their fair share already. They'd better take a careful look before they stepped through.

Seb laid a hand on a leafy green frond. ‘Seems OK. Let's see where it leads.'

‘Wait—!' Ivy started, but it was too late. The vines scratched and crackled as the door opened and Seb stepped through.

A cloud of rust-red dust rose into the air and Ivy put a hand over her mouth. ‘Seb!' she spluttered.

‘I'm OK,' he coughed. ‘You can come in.'

Ivy heaved a chair over from the study and used it to wedge the door open before tentatively crossing the threshold. ‘Where are we?'

They had emerged into a small circular room. It appeared to be empty. ‘I don't know,' Seb said. ‘But there's loads more doors here.'

Ivy squinted, wiping the dust out of her eyes. Through the haze she could just see that the room wasn't in fact circular. It had straight walls, with a door in each. She turned slowly on the spot, counting. Altogether, there were . . .

‘Six,' she said. Her voice ricocheted around the chamber, making her jump. Two of the doors were made of stone, one was stainless steel, while another was crafted from old splintered wood. The fifth had been carved from some kind of glittering rock that Ivy had never seen before. Each door had the same design drawn upon it. A dinner-plate-sized image of a coin –
the crooked sixpence.

‘The Dirge,' Ivy realized, with a shiver.

Seb's shoulders tensed. ‘What did you say?'

Suddenly Ivy was spotting clues everywhere, like spiders waiting in the shadows – six doors, for the six members of the Fallen Guild, each door with a word engraved above it.

‘The code names,' she said aloud. A sense of dread swelled inside her as she read them. ‘
Monkshood
,
Ragwort
,
Wolfsbane
,
Nightshade
,
Hemlock
. . .' She froze. ‘Seb – Ethel told me about this place. It was called the Hexroom. It's where the Dirge used to meet.' The very thought made Ivy's skin crawl. She wondered what number of evil, whispered conversations had taken place here years ago.

She stopped when she was facing the open door they'd come in through – the one made of vine leaves. She slowly pushed it to, just enough to see behind it. The reverse of the door was crafted from stone and bore the image of a crooked sixpence, just like the others. The head on the sixpence was the same one she'd seen on the coin from Granma Sylvie's house – a hooded face with a large square jaw. A mask covered the person's eyes and nose, ending in pointed tusks at each side of the mouth. Chiselled into the bricks above was another code-name:
Blackclaw
.

Seb gasped. ‘Wait – does that mean what I think it means?'

Ivy nodded slowly, still in a daze. She glanced towards the study. ‘There's only one reason why Octavius Wrench would have a secret door that led to the Hexroom.'

Seb turned towards her, his eyes wide. ‘He was a member of the Dirge . . . Granma's dad was a member of the Dirge.' He started pacing. ‘I don't get it. Do you think she knew? Do you think anyone knows?'

Images swept through Ivy's mind: six hooded figures emerging from the shadows, each wearing a different mask . . . She grabbed her brother's arm. ‘Seb, we need to get out of here.'

He went still. ‘Yeah, yeah we do.' He headed towards the door of vines, pushing the chair away. Ivy took one last glance around as she followed. She looked down at her wellies, which had left footprints in the dust. It lay in an unbroken sheet across the Hexroom – except in two places. There was a bare triangle at the foot of two of the six doors, as if they'd recently been opened. One was the stainless steel one belonging to Wolfsbane; the other was the wooden door belonging to Ragwort. Ivy barely had time to register the information, let alone figure out what it meant, before Seb called out urgently to her.

‘Come on! Quickly.'

At that very moment, the air was pierced with a long, high-pitched howl. The sound bounced off all six walls of the Hexroom and echoed around Octavius Wrench's study. Every hair on Ivy's body stood on end. ‘What was that?' she whispered. It sounded like an animal, an angry one. As the howl filled her ears again, she tried to pinpoint where it was coming from.

Seb tugged her sleeve. ‘There.' He pointed over at the Wolfsbane door. There was a line of sickly green light around the edges and Ivy could hear scratching behind it. Her mouth went dry as the smell of damp dog crept into her nostrils. She thought she recognized it.

‘Whatever's behind that door,' she said, ‘I think it might have been there yesterday morning, during the break-in at Granma Sylvie's.'

Seb grabbed her arm and they ran.

Ivy scrambled back into the study, tripping over the thick carpet. She grabbed Seb's sweatshirt with one hand and tore open the uncommon envelope with the other. The room spun. Mahogany bookcases and silvery milk jugs disappeared – until the murky hallway of the Wrench Mansion zoomed around them.

Ivy bent forward, heaving air into her lungs. That had been
way
too close. Whatever was down there, it had almost caught them. She looked up into the gloom of the hallway, surprisingly relieved to be back there. She and Seb had reappeared at the foot of the stairs. Valian was nowhere to be seen. Ivy wondered what he'd been getting up to.

For a moment she stood there while she tried to think. She and Seb were still panting for breath. It was the only noise breaking the silence until—

‘I'd bet my claws you thought I couldn't follow you here, didn't you?' asked a voice.

Ivy spun round.

Standing on the other side of the hall was a
giant wolf
. Its pelt was shiny black with flecks of silver, and there was a diamond-encrusted pet collar hanging loosely around its neck. Ivy stiffened. The beast's eyes were blood-red with a small white pupil, like that of some demon robot.