The Crooked Sixpence (25 page)

Valian waved the glowing trowel in front of him. Ivy saw a look of horror in his eyes. ‘I think I know what this might be,' he said. ‘I've heard rumours . . . It's called a “whispering hall”.' He looked at Ivy. ‘They're used to harness the power of whisperers. It was barbaric. Whisperers were made to sort through rubbish all day long till they found something uncommon.' He picked up a tin can from one of the piles of junk. ‘But they only existed in ancient times. This one looks as if it was built within the last fifty years.'

Ivy jumped to her feet and scrambled away from the table. ‘Look at everything,' she said, suddenly understanding what this place was. ‘It's all designed to fit someone my size. It's designed for—'

‘Children,' Seb finished, horror glazing his eyes. ‘It must have something to do with the Dirge.'

Ivy gazed around at the hundreds of chairs and pictured all the whisperers who had been imprisoned there – kids just like her – forced to move their gloveless hands through God knows what for hours and hours on end.

Valian crunched the tin can in his fist. ‘I bet
this
was where all those kidnapped children came,' he spat angrily. ‘They must have all been whisperers.'

Ivy remembered what Scratch had told her: whispering had been thought impossible for a child. That was probably why no one in Lundinor had figured out why the children were being taken – no one guessed they were whisperers. Only the Dirge had discovered it.

‘Scratch told me that my whispering was unusually sensitive,' she said to Valian. ‘Do you think that's why the Dirge hunted young whisperers – because their abilities were stronger than adults?' She thought about all those terrified children, stolen from their families and forced to work in an underground prison.

Suddenly Valian started. ‘Can you hear that?'

Ivy strained her ears. There was a weird noise in the air, a kind of fluttering.

Valian's eyes widened as his trowel burned with white light. ‘I think I've just realized what uncommon trowels do.' He lifted it high above his head and directed the umbrella of light between two of the long tables. It lit up a series of bulky, dim shapes approaching from the edge of the hall. ‘They sense the presence of the dead.'

Ivy's eyes darted around. Figures began appearing out of the shadows, some hulking and cumbersome, others wispy and fast. Slowly she lifted her yo-yo out in front of her, trying to keep her arm steady.

Seb pointed a drumstick into the distance. ‘What's in here? Selkies?'

‘Others too,' Valian whispered fearfully.

They all fell silent as a thin stream of black dust snaked over the floor towards them. In places, the powdery stuff flaked away like dead skin and sprouted spiky hairs. ‘What is it?' Ivy asked, coughing.

‘Wraithmoth,' Valian wheezed. ‘The closer it gets, the harder you'll find it to breathe.' He unzipped his jacket and rummaged around inside. ‘Don't touch them. They're deadly.' He edged closer, tugging his uncommon bath plug out of his pocket and swinging it above his head like a lasso.

Seb was gasping. ‘
They?
'

Ivy made a panicked search into the distance. A second wraithmoth had appeared above a conveyor belt, writhing around and sending smoky tendrils into the air like an angry spider. More dark figures were just behind it, drawing closer.

She tried to think. Surely there was another way out of this place. She glanced up at the lights on the ceiling. They didn't look uncommon – there were wires running to the other end of the hall. Ivy traced them through the shadows, down a pillar and along a wall. They ended in a steel box next to a handle identical to the one Seb had pulled. Beside it she could just make out a dark rectangle – a door.

Ivy grabbed Seb and pointed. ‘Do you see that?'

He nodded.

Valian was still whirling the uncommon bath plug above his head. ‘What are you waiting for?!' he rasped. ‘Run!'

Run.
Ivy's legs jerked into action, but Seb soon overtook her. ‘Ivy, quickly!' he shouted.

She followed him between two long tables but her wellies were slipping all over the place. Her arms flailed wildly as she struggled to keep her balance. ‘Selkie slime!' she screamed. The floor was covered with it. She spied the second wraithmoth coming towards them.

Seb had seen it too. ‘What do we do?'

The wraithmoth was blocking their path to the door, but if they turned back, they'd only meet Valian and the other creature.

With a shaking hand, Seb sliced his drumsticks once, twice through the air. A millisecond later twin shock-waves sent the creature tumbling backwards. It gave a furious hiss as fingers of black smoke wove together to repair the holes in its body.

Ivy saw the confidence drain from Seb's face. She was about to have a go with her yo-yo when she noticed a shadow creeping across the floor. The wraithmoth was shifting. With the sound of wind filling a sail, it unfolded two smoky wings over the long table on either side.

Cursing, Seb steadied himself and shouted at Ivy without taking his eyes off the monster, ‘Ivy, get to the door!'

As the wraithmoth swooped towards them, he began desperately thrashing out a beat with his drumsticks, and the wraithmoth screeched.

Ivy ducked as Seb's drumsticks sent shockwaves through the air. Riddled with holes, the wraithmoth kept rebuilding itself with ribbons of smoke. Seb concentrated on the beat, the muscles in his shoulders rippling, his eyes focused. Every sound wave he sent out acted like a bar in an invisible cage. The wraithmoth was soon trapped – but Ivy wasn't sure how long Seb would be able to keep it up.

‘Just go, will you?' he yelled, through gritted teeth. ‘Please, Ivy. It's the only way.'

Tears blurred Ivy's vision as she slid under the trapped wraithmoth and between the long tables. Just then, she saw a familiar sandy-haired dog trotting out from beneath one of the tables.

Selena Grimes's dog?
Ivy came to a stop.

The dog yapped and then yawned and stretched its legs – but all at once its limbs elongated, and gnarled black claws burst from its paws. Its back rose up and its sandy brown hair darkened to the colour of soot. The yap deepened, and sharp black teeth emerged from its gums. It looked at Ivy with a pair of demon-red eyes, lips curling into a wicked smile.

‘I know what you're going to say,' the grim-wolf announced, stalking towards her. ‘My disguise is
so
much better than a grandma.'

Ivy's eyes widened. So
Selena Grimes
was Wolfsbane, the grim-wolf's mistress!

She stumbled backwards. Somewhere in the whispering hall behind her, heavy objects clattered against a conveyor belt; chairs crashed to the floor and the sound of rushing water thundered around the walls.
Selkies
. Ivy's eyes watered with their stench. But . . . she couldn't turn round to check if Valian and Seb were OK.

Squaring her shoulders, she raised her yo-yo and, through blurry eyes, tried to take aim at the grim-wolf. Flicking her wrist, she sent the yo-yo shooting down to the end of the string. As it worked its way back up towards her hand, a white cylinder of air formed on either side and broke away, heading for the grim-wolf, picking up water and selkie slime as they went.

The grim-wolf watched the cyclones approach with a smirk on its face, rearing up onto its back legs and leaping onto one of the long tables. The very edge of one cyclone caught the tip of the grim-wolf's tail, but it quickly pulled itself free and dropped back onto the floor. As it shook itself dry, Ivy's cyclones crashed into the wall behind, steaming.

‘Really?' the wolf mocked. ‘What are you going to do – huff and puff and blow me down?'

Ivy glowered at it. This was definitely the same grim-wolf that had attacked them in the Wrench Mansion – it had the same obsession with nursery rhymes. She focused on the door beyond the wolf. If she could just slip past it somehow . . .

The wolf licked its lips, staring at Ivy with its demonic red eyes.

Ivy fumbled with her yo-yo again. If only she knew how to use it properly. Those last cyclones had been useless; she needed to generate something that the grim-wolf couldn't dodge.

Suddenly she heard the scream of a selkie. Her ears burned like they'd been set on fire. She groaned and drove her hands to each side of her head, trying to block out the noise.

The grim-wolf howled and flattened its ears, lowering its head under its front paw.

Ivy blinked.
The wolf can hear the selkie too
. She had to use this to her advantage.

She threw her yo-yo down and dragged it back up as fast and as hard as she could. The air around her began to tremble and spin. It would be dangerous to generate such large cyclones in a confined space, but it was her only option.

Ivy unhooked her finger and hurled the yo-yo into the air just as the grim-wolf leaped towards her. She was thrown backwards as the double vortex shot up, expanding and rotating, on a collision course with the grim-wolf.

Ivy's hair was whipped into her eyes as something hit her in the chest, knocking her backwards. She fell into a heap of rubbish, sharp objects poking her sides and wet slime seeping into her trousers.
Get up, Ivy. Get up.
The huge whirlwind had sucked in the chairs on either side, along with piles of rubbish. The grim-wolf was running on the spot at the edge of the cyclones, as if stuck on a treadmill.

Ivy looked around dazedly and saw the broken remains of a large ceramic lamp next to her – that was what had knocked her over. As she staggered to her feet, her fingers brushed something that sent a warm tingle into her skin. She turned and searched carefully till she came across the uncommon object – a leather belt with a rusty buckle.

Without stopping to think, she quickly fastened it and then lifted it above her head. Her mind racing ahead of her, she drove herself up through the air – over the whirlwinds, over the struggling grim-wolf. Landing safely on the other side, she lowered the belt to her waist and touched down.

The door in the back wall was ajar. Battling against the pull of the maelstrom, she headed towards it and yanked it open. Her skin immediately burned with heat – the door was uncommon – but she couldn't stop: she stepped over the threshold into a small silver room bathed in green light. Directly in front of her she saw a face – a face she recognized.

‘
Dad?
'

The creature that looked like Dad grinned. Its skin was see-through and its neck sagged like melted wax. ‘Hello, brat.' It pointed an uncommon toilet brush at Ivy's head. ‘I know you think you're smart, but if you even move a muscle' – the creature's eyes glinted – ‘I'll have you.'

Ivy stood there quaking; fear and anger bubbled inside her. She locked eyes with her dad.

Except it's not really him . . .

Her dad never looked at her like that – with an evil, malice-filled stare. Valian had explained what the creature really was:
a shapeshifter; a grimp
.

The grimp's blue eyes glittered, reflecting the flashing lights in the whispering hall behind. Ivy could still hear the ongoing battle – the clatter of rubbish and the surge of water. The grimp grumbled and, keeping its eyes and the toilet brush fixed on Ivy, edged its way round towards the uncommon door. Ivy realized that she had seen the door before – in the Hexroom. It was the same stainless steel door that the grim-wolf had emerged from; the one belonging to Wolfsbane.

‘Goblin!?' the grimp shouted. A drop of saliva fell from its lips. ‘Get out of there. Those selkies are back!'

Ivy heard a growl and then saw the grim-wolf stealing towards the door. Its fur was matted, but it had obviously escaped the yo-yo tornados. It smiled as its red eyes fixed on Ivy. Once it was over the threshold, the grimp slammed the door shut with an echoing thud.

Everything around Ivy fell eerily silent, with only the memory of the selkie's scream ringing in her ears. She swallowed: if she couldn't hear Seb and Valian any more, they certainly couldn't hear her.

‘Now, isn't that better?' the grimp asked, grinning as it made its way round to face her. Its voice was harsh and grating, like fingernails down a blackboard. ‘Finally we can hear each other clearly.'

And see each other clearly . . .

The grimp was wearing the long grey coat and button-down shirt that Ivy's dad had been wearing when she'd waved goodbye to him three days ago. She glared at the poor imitation. Close up, it looked like a bad waxwork. The grimp had the same speckly grey hair, the blue eyes, the line of freckles on the brow, and the thin nose and flat chin. But there was something wrong with its expression.

Ivy suddenly wondered if the illusion was crumbling because it hadn't fed for a while.

‘Now,' the grimp said, rubbing its hands together. Its arms hung loosely in front of it like a chimpanzee's – in marked contrast to Ivy's dad, who always stood up straight. ‘Where is the object, Ivy Sparrow?' it hissed, darting its head forward. ‘Where is the Great Uncommon Good?'

Ivy wished she still had her yo-yo. She'd have liked to throw it straight at the grimp's head. ‘What have you done with my mum and dad?!' she shouted.

The grim-wolf –
Goblin
– sniggered. ‘Uh-uh,' it tutted, shaking its furry head. ‘That wasn't the correct answer.' It paced back and forth, its tail whipping through the air. ‘Tell us where your grandmother hid the object. No one wants this to get messier than it needs to.'

The grimp sniggered. ‘Speak for yourself, Goblin.'

Ivy grasped the leather belt and tried to inch backwards. She cast her eyes around, searching for a weapon. The room was cylindrical, with metal walls, like a huge tin can; there was only one obvious way in and out – the uncommon door through which Ivy had entered. Around the edge she saw a ring of electronic consoles with dusty switches, smashed bulbs and dark glass monitors, while in the centre stood a shaft of green light locked within a rotating metal cage. It made a strange humming noise as it spun.