Skulk (25 page)

The knowledge that this was impossible, at least for a little while, ached dully in my chest.

But if I couldn’t go home, what was I going to do until midnight?

“I should try to reach Blackwell, tell him what I’ve found out. Maybe he’ll have figured out something more about what’s going on with the Conspiracy.”

“We’ll go with you,” said Susanne.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” I said, automatically, and instantly regretted it. The very last thing I wanted right then was to go running off to the Tower of London on my own. Not least because the Shard was right across the river, so close you could probably swim it if you didn’t mind catching a few horrible diseases and a touch of hypothermia.

Luckily, Susanne took my polite refusal for what it was and clicked her tongue at me. “Don’t be silly, of course we’ll come.” She turned to Aaron and Marcus. “We’ll meet you later – where, Meg?”

“Willesden Junction,” I said, trying to ignore the tiny stab of guilt. This wasn’t a betrayal – bringing the Rabble there could only help the Skulk. I was pretty sure of that.

Even in the middle of a drizzly autumn day, Tower Hill was busy with tourists. We came out of the station into a sea of backpacks and bumbags and hastily-purchased Tower of London-branded umbrellas.

The Shard loomed up just to our right, across the river; grey and monstrously big from such a close viewpoint. The top few floors were lost in the clouds. I wondered if Victoria was up there, staring down at us through the shifting grey mist.

“There’s some good graffiti round here,” said Mo suddenly, breaking the silence that’d fallen between the three of us as we crossed the road towards the Tower.

“Oh yeah, I saw a photo,” I said, happy to turn part of my brain away from Victoria for a second. “Didn’t that team from South Africa come over and leave one of their goblins behind Fenchurch Street?”

“Yeah, last year. I wonder if it’s still there.”

As one, we stopped and turned back to look up the hill towards the train station.

And then, pretty much as one, realised what we were doing.

Mo gave a jerky, bashful shrug. “Maybe we can go and look for it later. Some other time.”

“Yeah. Not so much at this minute.” I sighed as we turned back towards the Tower. “Although you have no idea how much I’d rather run off and look for goblins right now.”

There were two Warders out by the main entrance, dressed in their identical dark blue coats with red trim spelling out ER across their chests. Their wide-brimmed hats kept the soft rain off their faces. One was old and bearded, and one was slightly younger and wore glasses. Neither of them was Blackwell.

I squared my shoulders and walked up to the ticket barrier.

“Excuse me,” I said, leaning across and giving the closest Warder, the one with the glasses, a polite smile. “Can you help me? I’m looking for Arthur Blackwell. He’s a Yeoman Warder here.”

“Blackwell?” The bearded Warder came over. “Can I ask why?”

“He’s a friend of my dad’s,” I lied cheerfully. “They were stationed together in Scotland for a bit. I was just passing, I wondered if I could say hello, give him Dad’s love, you know.”

“I’m afraid Yeoman Warder Blackwell is on leave today,” said the Warder, with a beardy smile.

“Oh, that’s a shame. Um – would you mind letting him know I was here?”

“Of course. What’s your name, dear?”

“My name’s Meg…”

I hesitated – probably not for more than a second, but in that second I thought:

If I give them my real name, they could look me up and find out my dad’s never been anywhere near the army.

If they look me up, they might find out my family is missing.

They might find out about the school.

I don’t even know how it’s being reported yet.

They might not look me up, they might be totally trustworthy and just pass my name on to Blackwell and that’ll be it.

But if one of the dodgy ravens guesses Blackwell’s been talking to another shifter…

“Meg Grantham,” I added, giving the Warder a bright smile. “My dad’s name is Ned Grantham.”

“Lovely,” said the Warder. “I’ll be sure to tell him all about it.”

“Thanks,” I said, and turned away.

Mo and Susanne were standing a little way back, and I gave them a shrug as I walked up to them.

“Apparently he’s not here.”

“Do you want to go fox and sneak in?” Mo asked. “I could come with you.”

I smiled at him, but then cast a wary glance back at the Tower. “I think let’s leave it for now. I’ll try again once we’ve met up with the others.”

“All right. Let’s go home,” said Susanne. “If there’s nothing else we can do until we’ve met the Skulk, then you should try to get a couple more hours’ sleep.”

The very mention of sleep sent a huge yawn crawling up my throat. I tried to stifle it.

“Actually, there’s something else I need to do. I want to see the news about my school. I want to see…”

What did I want to see? Photos of the outside of my school, police tape, shocked interviews with parents and students, statements from the police?

“I don’t know, I just want to see it.”

“OK,” Susanne said, but she seemed doubtful.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “I’m not going to see pictures of it and faint or anything.”
They’re not going to show pictures of what I saw last night on the news.

“Let’s not do it here,” said Mo. He was looking up at the Shard. I followed his eyes and saw that the clouds were parting, as if the building was a sharp edge slicing through grey candyfloss. I nodded hard.

We headed back underground and I resisted the urge to snatch Mo’s phone out of his hand and try to get onto the Tube Wi-Fi. Nothing would have changed by the time we got to Acton. I folded my hands in my lap and tried to be Zen.

I think Mo could tell I wasn’t feeling very Zen. He’d pulled his phone and he was Googling Kensington School for Girls by the time we were halfway up the escalator. I was pathetically grateful. We stood outside the station, waiting for the page to load while Susanne went into the newsagent’s over the road to see what was in the printed papers.

It wasn’t raining any more. The sun was starting to filter weakly through the clouds. I put down my hood and scooped out my hair, scraping it into a ponytail, twisting it, trying not to look over Mo’s shoulder, tangling my fingers in it, curling it over my shoulder, pulling it straight and letting it bounce back, wondering how the hell the internet was taking so long to load.

I gave in and stepped closer to him so I could look at the screen of his phone. He was scrolling through search results, scanning them with a frown creasing his brow.

KSG Sixth Form entry

Kensington fee paying schools

Jobs at Kensington secondary schools

KSG netball team storms London Championships

Kensington School for Girls Ofsted 2013

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea private schools

There was nothing about any attack. Nothing from the BBC, nothing from the police… nothing at all.

“I don’t understand,” I muttered. “Someone
must
have found them by now. It’s the internet, this is news – people died, they were… It was…” I thrust my shaking hands into my pockets and tried not to think about red handprints on the walls. I could still feel my fur sticking and clumping together. I couldn’t fall apart now; I had to get a grip. “How can there be nothing?”

I looked up and saw Susanne coming across the road, holding a stack of papers and looking concerned.

“Is there anything?” I asked. “Any mention at all?”

“Not that I could find,” she said. She handed the papers to Mo. “Let’s go home, we can look again.”

“No. It’s not going to be there.” I tangled my fingers in my hair. “Google me. Or – no, do my mum. If one of us is missed, it’s going to be her. Sarah Elizabeth Banks.”

Mo typed, his thumbs moving swiftly across the screen, and then hit go. I shuffled my feet while the results came up. “Sarah Elizabeth Banks, MP Kensington and Chelsea…” he raised his eyebrows at me. “Your mum’s the Secretary of State for Business and Enterprise?”

“Does it say anything about her being missing?” I pressed.

“I can’t see anything.”

I let out a long breath.

“Come on,” said Susanne quietly. “We can talk this through at home. Come on.” She put a gentle arm around my shoulder and I let her steer me away down the street.

I sank back into the cracked brown leather sofa with another steaming mug of tea at one elbow and Susanne’s creaky old laptop balanced on top of the pile of newspapers in front of me. I’d scanned them from cover to cover and found nothing, not a single word about my school or my parents. But I still refused to believe that nobody on the entire internet had noticed anything strange about a school suddenly closing. I Googled every combination of words I could think of, I scoured Facebook and Twitter, but everything seemed normal.

“Why so quiet?” I muttered. “Why is it so quiet?”

Mo shifted beside me, still scouring the internet on his phone. “Look at this.”

I leaned over. “The school website? That doesn’t say anything, I looked already.”

“No, but that’s just it. It doesn’t say
anything
. If the school was closed for the day, wouldn’t it say so?”

“Doesn’t it?”

He shook his head.

My shoulders slumped and I stared at him. “But it has to be closed. The hall is full of… it has to be.”

Mo met my eyes. “It looks like someone’s kept this out of the papers, right?” I nodded weakly. “Well, if it’s Victoria doing this, she can do magic. Maybe she’s got the Rabble stone and she can change how people see things, or the Skulk stone and she can… I don’t know, change the debris into something harmless. We don’t know all the kinds of magic she can do. Wouldn’t it be simpler for her to make it look like nothing happened, rather than letting people find out about it and then keeping them quiet?”

“I hate how right you are about that,” I muttered. “Can I borrow your phone?”

He handed it over. I clutched one of Susanne’s sofa cushions hard in one hand as I dialled the school secretary’s number with the other.

“Hello, Kensington School for Girls?”

“Are…?” my voice came out strained and squeaky. I swallowed, coughed and tried again. “Hi, sorry. Is the school open today?”

“Of course,” said the secretary. “It’s a normal school day
.
”

“Can I…?” my hand crept up to my mouth. I racked my brain for a way to ask if anyone was missing today that she would answer to a stranger on the phone.
Did you by any chance come in to work this morning and find a bunch of bodies in the hallway?

“Hello
?
” the secretary called. “Are you all right? If you’re a student calling in sick you really should have had your parents call this morning.”

Inspiration struck. It was horrible.

“Actually, I’m looking for Jewel Al-Naham. I have an urgent message from her brother Mark. It’s… about his house keys.”

I forced myself to shut up before I could accidentally invent a whole, rambling, suspicious backstory.

“I’ll take your number and have her call you at lunchtime
.
”

“Actually, it’s a bit more urgent than that – it’ll only take a second but I really need to talk to her now.”

“All right,” the secretary sighed. “I’ll fetch her. Let me put you on hold.”

The line went dead for a second and then a blast of tinny Mozart made me hold the phone away from my ear.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I muttered, cradling the phone in front of me. “This is – I should just hang up.”

“Jewel’s a friend of yours?” Mo asked.

I nodded.

“Will you regret it if you don’t talk to her?”

I tipped my head forward, letting my hair dangle down and shield me from his earnest, surprisingly insightful face. Then I nodded again.

We sat in silence, with the phone blasting twiddly klavichord runs at us, until it cut off and a very faint voice said, “Hello?”

I slapped the phone back to my ear.

“Jewel?”

“Meg, is that you? They said Mark needed me.”

“No, it’s me. I just, um…” I dried up. My free hand tapped out a nervy rhythm on my knee.

“Meg, are you all right? Have you got the bug too?” Jewel sighed. “Ameera’s off today as well, and Miss Walter. I swear if you two breathed this thing all over me and I have to spend the weekend all red and puffy and vomiting…” She clicked her tongue. “D’you want me to bring over the English homework? I’d take the out, if I were you, it’s only going to be about the Henrys again. Worst. Kings. Ever.”

I opened my mouth, and no sound came out.

It was like listening to someone speaking another language, one you used to know, from a country where you used to live a long time ago.

“Meg?” Jewel called. “Have you died?”

I sucked in a breath and blinked until the tears clinging onto my eyelashes trailed off and ran down my face.

“No. I’m here.”

“Want me to bring round the homework?”

“No! Nah. You’re right, I’d rather not know. Don’t come round, I’ll only infect you,” I croaked. “Have you… heard from Ameera?”

“Nope. I expect she’s conked out in front of Jeremy Kyle or something.”

“Yeah.” I forced a tearful grin, for whose benefit I wasn’t sure.

I felt something warm and soft on my free hand and looked down. Mo had taken my hand in both of his. And I was glad of it – I felt earthed, like I was a ball of messed up lightning that’d been crackling wildly around the room. I glanced at him, but he was looking away, staring at the newspapers on the coffee table.

“You should probably get some Kyle time in too,” said Jewel, her normal snarky drawl turning a bit gentler. “You seem pretty out of it.”

“Ugh. Yeah. I – I should go.”

“OK.”

“Jewel…” I sucked in a deep breath and steadied myself. “Listen… if Ameera and Miss Walter have both got this I bet it’s all over the school. If I were you I’d bunk off sick right now and go and stay with your dad for a bit.”