‘Want me to hold that lead? You’ve hurt your hand. How’d you do that? Did you burn it the same as Sam?’ asked Morti as they began to walk.

  Carsen jerked Titus’s lead a little unkindly as the pooch was having a good sniff at the bottom of a passing cat.

  ‘None of your business.’

  Titus made a dash, yanking his lead and dragging Carsen in the direction of the sign that pointed to Beechy Wood. The lead almost jerked out of Carsen’s hand. I was watching from the window, but even I could see he was having difficulty because of the plasters wrapped around two of his fingers.

  ‘No, you’re probably right.’ Morti slipped along after him. ‘You might think I’m a bit annoying to start with, but you’ll find out that I’m all right when you get to know me. My parents run pubs and we move around all the time so I’m pretty good at making friends. Why do lots of Miss Percy’s class have plasters on their fingers? Makes me wonder what you are all doing.’

  Carsen was Morti’s target suspect and I left him to his own interrogation techniques. Mr Odorless was mine. Walking Titus was what they call killing two birds with one stone.

  I saw Morti turn and look back, his face one big grin. For a moment I thought he was going to give us away by giving me a big thumbs up, but he, Carsen and Titus just carried on walking. Titus stopped at a patch of soft earth and began digging in with his paws, spraying dirt in all directions before cocking his leg. Honestly, why anyone ever prefers dogs to cats is a mystery.

  I silently wished Morti luck, but I had work to do. I had to trust that he could keep Carsen and the annoying rug out of the way for long enough to let me do my bit in peace.

  15. The curse of an evil witch

  Well, I’m not abandoning Odorless as a suspect totally.’ Morti was stretched full length on the grass. Nightshade lounged next to him like a puddle of darkness, her tail giving a tiny twitch every now and again.

  Before lessons began, they were sitting by the deserted school pond in the shadow of a long line of sunflowers being grown for the annual Fivetors and Twinhills Tallest Sunflower prize. Raven listened as Morti and Nightshade bickered without enthusiasm. It was already too hot for them to argue seriously.

  ‘Everyone reckons no one sits by this pond any more cos it’s where Mr Pickles was found. But I reckon it’s cos old Odorless pops down here about three times a day to feed something to those sunflowers,’ said Morti. ‘He’s obsessed. His whole life is about beating Fivetors at something. He even pushes sunflowers into submission. Is it possible this Howling Hag business is all about Odorless sending us a message that if we don’t win something soon, we all get cursed? If he could use magic to get us to win something, he’d do it.’

  Nightshade lifted her pink nose in the air. ‘Fish guts. Think he’s using that as a fertilizer. Not magic.’

  For Raven, there was little worse than imagining blustering, bullying Mr Odorless being the secret sorcerer. She had read too much about the sort of things that happened when angry, ambitious people like Mr Odorless discovered magic. Even imagining him discovering Rookery’s true talent was terrifying. She could picture him rubbing his thin white hands together.

  ‘Fish guts! Bleurgh! Even in the tallest sunflower battle, competition is very high,’ said Morti. He picked up a small stone and tossed it into the pond with a tiny plop. ‘Your school has the most ridiculous competitions.’

  ‘It’s your school now,’ said Raven.

  ‘Yeah, till Mum and Dad haul me off somewhere else.’ Morti lobbed another stone into the pond, a bigger one that made a satisfying plop. ‘Odorless is too good a suspect to abandon just cos we didn’t find any evidence.’

  ‘I think the general idea of being a detective is that is exactly what you do,’ said Nightshade.

  Raven had nothing to report back either. She worried she might have spotted more and got the evidence they needed against Mr Odorless, if she had been brave enough to do the breaking and entering.

  ‘What about hunches?’ Morti rolled over and dug in his pocket for snacks, then broke off a long piece of grass to chew on. ‘All detectives have hunches. My hunch was we should have started with the murder of Mr Pickles. Those scissors in his belly – might have been a clear warning of what can happen if we let old Odorless down. And Mr Pickles made everyone laugh at him.’

  ‘That’s your idea of a motive, is it?’ Nightshade asked, rolling on to her side to begin a big all-over wash. ‘That he’s trying to terrify everyone into beating Fivetors?’

  Morti demanded to know more about magic. Nightshade explained sorcerers tended to be best at a particular kind of magic. But once you discovered your natural talents, you studied to develop skills in different kinds of magic. It could take years of practice. And magic brought power, but also responsibility.

  ‘Thought it’d be more exciting than that,’ said Morti. ‘So you read books and study magic, and you just wait? And don’t know if you will even get magic?’

  The way he said it suggested Raven’s whole way of life was strange. Everything seemed to confirm that life would be a whole lot easier without magic. People assumed if they were magical they could do anything, or at the very least, it would be pretty fun. When Morti had thought he could understand animals he had been beyond thrilled.

  ‘You need to study because when magical folk meet with terrible ends, it’s usually through lack of skill with their magic,’ she tried to explain, thinking of Snapdragon’s own magical tragedy. And Snapdragon had been very skilled.

  ‘True. If magic goes bad, it’s usually by mistake. Few sorcerers or witches set out to be evil,’ said Nightshade. ‘Not like this curse we’re dealing with.’

  Morti asked for an example, so Nightshade told him the story of Mortuary Catkin, who had been able to conjure such strong firebolts with his fingers he could bend metal with his bare hands and had got a job as a blacksmith.

  ‘… He made such beautiful weather vanes and twirly gates and got rather rich and very popular and only wanted to use magic for good. But he burnt down an entire hotel. All he meant to do was to show off by lighting a candle at the start of a romantic meal with someone he wanted to impress.’

  Morti listened carefully. ‘So Mortuary is a magical name. P’raps I should call myself Mortuary.’

  Raven explained that a mortuary was not somewhere you’d want to be too associated with.

  ‘Are you just waiting too, Morti Scratch?’ said Nightshade lazily. ‘Or do you have an idea of what you want to be?’

  Morti let out a big sigh. ‘I always thought – a detective. But you’d think it would be easier than this, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It’s never easier than this.’

  Morti’s eyes grew rounder. ‘Have your cases always been this tricky?’

  ‘Trickier,’ answered Nightshade, polishing her whiskers.

  ‘You really are some sort of Sherlock Holmes cat, aren’t you? You walk the mean streets of the magical world.’

  ‘I’ve been up against some very ruthless criminals. It is particularly easy to evade detection when you use magic to commit a crime. We need to be alert at all times. We didn’t call it Operation Optimistic.’ Nightshade tucked her legs beneath her; her ears and whiskers twitched. A tiny blue bird had alighted near the pond.

  ‘Please don’t kill anything right in front of me,’ Raven pleaded.

  ‘So, what you are saying is I had to go through that hell so we could investigate Mr Odorless and we got nothing,’ said Morti, returning to his earlier grumbling.

  ‘What hell did you go through?’ asked Nightshade. ‘It was me who actually broke into Tidy House.’

  ‘And failed to locate the crucial evidence. My hell was spending time with that mutt,’ said Morti with a shudder. ‘You don’t like the teeth, I get that. It’s the slobber that gets me. That and the wheezing. Honestly, keeping Titus going to give you long enough to search was a nightmare. Dogs who don’t like walks aren’t really dogs, are they? I kept thinking I should call an ambulance. And I tried to squeeze the kid for answers, but Carsen saw nothing that break time, unless he’d worked out I’m collecting intel and lied,’ said Morti gloomily. ‘I do think he’s hiding something. We need a breakthrough if we’re going to crack this case.’

  Morti offered around some cherry lollies that Mr Odorless would confiscate if he got so much as a sniff of. Nightshade shook her head, but Raven accepted one nervously. All sweets were utterly banned from Twinhills and just watching Morti eating one so openly made her glance around. She wouldn’t be surprised if Mr Odorless could smell them all the way from his office.

  Morti spoke thickly as he rolled the cherry lollipop around in his mouth. ‘OK, we’ve given updates on Operation Pickles Primary Phase. You’re next, Raven.’

  ‘Thought it was Alpha Phase,’ muttered Nightshade.

  ‘Tell us the Howling Hag’s story. Why’s she returned to wreak some sort of revenge on the school? Or her ancestors have?’

  ‘I couldn’t find anything,’ Raven answered in a small voice.

  The only discovery she had made was that terrifying mask. And she had no intention of mentioning that, certainly not until she’d had a chance to get some answers out of Rookery. Because that mask made her sister look guilty of something, only she didn’t know what. Just something horrible. Why might her sister be hiding such a vile thing? A fancy dress party, a play? Her sister was better at keeping secrets than she had ever realized. Raven was going to have to get better at digging them out. Finding that mask had changed everything. She had to find a way to talk to her sister, because it really looked as if Rookery was involved in something.

  ‘I say park the Howling Hag for now. It’s time to move into Operation Pickles Secondary Phase,’ said Morti.

  ‘I didn’t realize we had a Secondary Phase,’ said Raven.

  Morti was looking at Raven expectantly. ‘Not us – you. I’ve grilled one suspect, Nightshade breached an enemy lair. Now it’s your chance to infiltrate. You need to go covert. First break time is the perfect chance to investigate and gather intel. Next target: Suspect Aaliyah.’

  16. Operation Pickles – Secondary Phase

  There were hundreds of daisies invitingly scattered across the school grounds. I could sit and make a wonderful daisy chain, thought Raven. Instead, she found herself sighing, with no choice but to head to the dark indoors of Miss Percy’s classroom with its heady smell of paint in search of Aaliyah, and in the hope, but little expectation, of clues.

  This is what happened when you took advice from a talking cat.

  Raven popped her head around the door into Miss Percy’s classroom and there was Aaliyah, busy tidying pots and pencils as usual. Raven asked cheerily if she needed a hand, resigning herself to wasting her entire break arranging the big squeezy paints under Aaliyah’s forensic eye.

  Aaliyah was tiny, and with big puppy-dog eyes, more like someone you’d sneak into your pocket than someone who’d terrify the whole school with bad magic. She never went anywhere without a small woolly bag with mournful eyes, so it looked like she was tailed by a very sad, very shaggy sheep.

  ‘Oh, I can manage fine by myself.’ The girl turned, her look less than welcoming. She switched to a new task.

  ‘Rearranging the pictures, what a good idea,’ said Raven. ‘I’d love to do that.’

  Nightshade insisted that getting on the trail of whoever had got into Miss Percy’s locked box without being seen was key to getting them close to unmasking the Howling Hag. The talking cat had said it was a matter of finding out people’s secrets and knowing which ones were important. But Aaliyah? Hard to imagine she had something dangerous concealed in the mournful sheep bag, or that she tidied pencils as a cover for perfecting a sinister incantation.

  So far Operation Pickles was way too much Mr Odorless, an awful lot of tricky questions and no easy way of getting answers. And the plan to get intel out of Aaliyah was going to be a challenge as she never said much at the best of times.

  ‘It’s a bit hot outside for me today,’ lied Raven, moving carefully into the classroom. Aailyah may have the look of a puppy, but could show her teeth if you moved something out of a neat line.

  What kind of dark secret could Aaliyah possibly have? Even Morti had said that if you were going to name one Twinhills student who always followed the rules, helped out the teachers and would never be in trouble, it was Aaliyah. Of course, according to Morti this actually made Aaliyah the best suspect (by way of being the least likely, apparently).

  Raven was not convinced of the logic, but someone was practising witchcraft at Twinhills. Who genuinely did seem likely? She resigned herself to doing her best to find out what she could. She desperately needed to find a decent suspect, any alternative to Rookery. She needed to persuade Aaliyah to tell anything at all that she might know.

  ‘This is a much better way to spend break time,’ Raven said, persevering. ‘How are we sorting them? By size?’

  Aaliyah was still doing her best to ignore Raven. She had dark hair tied in a smooth ponytail. If ever Raven tried to get her hair to arrange itself neatly, bits escaped and flew out, determined to go their own way. She said as much to Aaliyah and this brought a smile to her serious face.

  ‘It’s as if my hair has a life of its own,’ Raven went on with a grin, and took the chance to move right next to Aaliyah, who concentrated on rearranging the pictures the class had been painting in the last lesson. Miss Percy had them pegged on a line right across the classroom to dry.

  Aaliyah watched Raven move another picture, fidgeting with her fingers. ‘Not that one,’ she corrected nervously, ‘that wouldn’t be right. Alphabetically.’

  ‘Great!’ said Raven with enthusiasm, taking down the picture she had just done, checking the name written on the back and moving it. ‘I like tidying.’

  She was rewarded with a shy smile. ‘I prefer it to going outside to play those kind of make-up games that people do at break time,’ Aaliyah confessed.

  Raven gently took a couple of pegs from Aaliyah, who was struggling, holding the pegs awkwardly. She felt a flash of understanding that if you were Aaliyah, life made so much more sense if you arranged things well.

  ‘You are so good at this,’ Raven said with a big smile. ‘This will make it so much easier for Miss Percy to hand them out later.’

  Raven knew some people (Sam Carruthers especially) could be scathing about Aaliyah’s eccentricities. Sam had the biggest muscles of anyone at the school and was best at every single one of the sports, so could always get a laugh, even when being a little cruel at someone else’s expense.

  Aaliyah really was holding the pegs awkwardly and Raven noticed on her fingers were two plasters.

  ‘Is that painful?’ Raven swooped in to hang the next picture.

  Aaliyah just looked even more uncomfortable, pulling around her ponytail, which was long enough so that she could chew the end.

  ‘Shall we do paints next?’ suggested Raven. ‘Do you do them alphabetically too?’

  Aaliyah threw Raven a withering look. ‘No! That would be stupid. The colours get sorted by colours of the rainbow. You know, red first, then orange—’

  ‘Yes.’ Raven could not stop herself responding tartly, then added more gently, ‘It’s more complicated than I’d realized. But,’ she repeated, ‘you are very good at it.’

  Aaliyah gave a conspiratorial smile. ‘I just do what seems right.’ Aaliyah flinched as she tried to peg another picture and Raven insisted on taking the rest of the pegs. When she put up the next picture, she received a nod of approval.

  ‘I sort my biscuits into size at home,’ said Aaliyah.

  ‘That is a good idea,’ said Raven. ‘Although in our house biscuits never last very long anyway. Do you like biscuits?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone like biscuits?’

  It was no good standing here waffling on about biscuits. Break time would be over soon. The whole point was to find out what Aaliyah had seen. And as Raven tried to muster the courage to steer the conversation, suddenly she could see how crucial it was to get Aaliyah to talk. Because Aaliyah spent all her breaks tidying. That meant she must have been here when the money and the stone vanished. Surely it would be impossible for someone to have slipped in here, unlocked the box somehow, stolen the money and the stone, and put it all back undisturbed, all without Aaliyah seeing something. There was a high chance she had actually seen the Howling Hag get close enough to perform some sort of magic to get into that locked box. Who was it?

  Aaliyah could be key to unlocking the whole mystery.

  ‘Your fingers really do look painful, I’m glad I could help.’ Raven was desperately trying to work up to a way to get Aailayh to trust her enough to talk. Aaliyah stared at the two big plasters on her fingers and said they didn’t hurt any more and chewed furiously on her ponytail.

  ‘How did you hurt them?’ Raven asked kindly.

  Quite a lot of the children seemed to be wearing plasters for hurt fingers, but now Raven had asked about them, Aaliyah’s face took on the woeful, guilty look of a dog who was very, very sorry for pinching the sausages.

  Of all the things Raven might have asked, offering sympathy for hurt fingers was clearly completely wrong. Because one second Aliyah was becoming friendly, chatting about biscuits and pointing exactly where Raven should hang the last of the pictures, then she blurted out: ‘I didn’t empty Miss Percy’s secret box. I haven’t got the money and the stone. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘No, well, I’m sure…’ Raven felt confused. ‘No one’s saying you did.’

  Aaliyah was trembling.

  ‘But you were here in the classroom the break time when they were stolen. You might have seen something important?’ Raven pressed, as gently as she could. ‘It would be a big help.’

  Aaliyah’s frightened puppy-dog eyes grew wider. She touched her injured fingers on the small woolly sheep-shaped bag and drew it close to her chest.

  ‘Please Aaliyah – what did you see? Something that scared you?’

  Aaliyah simply stood there, clutching the sheep bag.

 

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