13 Secrets

by Michelle Harrison

  “We did it,” he said, allowing himself a small smile. “Jack’s family is safe.” He rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face.

  “I knew we could,” said Fabian, his eyes shining behind his glasses.

  “So it’s over?” Tanya asked, gazing at Rowan. “Your last job. You don’t have to get involved with all that anymore.”

  Rowan sat down next to Sparrow. Her knees felt weak, like they would not hold her up much longer. “No,” she whispered. “It’s not over.”

  “What do you mean?” said Suki sharply. “You brought Jack’s mother back—you saved her.”

  “I meant it’s not over for me. Not yet.” From behind them, the sirens finally stopped wailing, leaving Tickey End eerily quiet. “We need to go somewhere and talk about what just happened.” Rowan paused and swallowed dryly. “Because for me, I think it’s only just begun.”

  Suki’s caravan was one of the smallest, and was furthest from the performance area of the circus, a few doors down from Tino’s. A deep sea-green, adorned with silver engravings and patterns, it stood surrounded by the circus community’s tethered horses, accompanied by a pleasant munching noise as they grazed.

  Suki opened the door and beckoned—then squealed and backed into Sparrow before anyone else was even through the door.

  “What’s the matter?” Sparrow barged past her into the living area. “Oh, it’s Crooks.” He turned to Suki in surprise. “Did you know he was going to be here?”

  Tanya clambered up the steps, Fabian and Rowan close behind. Suki’s face was clouded with anger when they got inside.

  “No, I didn’t.” She grabbed a cushion from a nearby chair and hurled it across the caravan. Crooks was sprawled out on Suki’s tiny bed, his boots resting on a patchwork blanket. The cushion caught him on the side of his face, but failed to remove the smirk from it.

  “How many times have I told you not to keep letting yourself in?” she yelled, hands on her hips. “Just knock, like everyone else!”

  Crooks gave a lazy shrug, a bunch of keys hooked around his finger. “You weren’t here,” he drawled, swinging the keys in a circle. “So I thought I’d come in and wait for you.”

  “Well, don’t. You made me jump.”

  “Clearly.” Crooks pushed past the velvet curtains on either side of the bed. He straightened his striped trousers and flicked his black hair back off his face. “I can see you’ve got guests, so I’ll come back later.”

  “You might as well stay,” said Sparrow, with a grudging glance at him.

  “Fair enough.” Crooks plopped back down on the bed, grinning.

  Suki sighed and sat down next to him. “Close the door,” she told Fabian, who was the last in. “You’ll have to take a seat anywhere you can find one. I’m sorry it’s so small; it’s only designed for one person.” She seemed lost all of a sudden. “It was Cassandra’s before it was mine.”

  Sparrow perched on a wooden window seat close to the bed. Tanya, Fabian, and Rowan squeezed in and sat on a woolen rug on the floor. It was cozy in the caravan, and more homely than at Tino’s, with intriguing items dotted around the place, a little like Mad Morag’s. Yet there were no items that gave any indication of Suki’s past beyond the circus—no family photographs or trinkets, nothing that was without function. Tanya wondered if she found reminders of her family too painful.

  “So what’s going on?” Crooks inquired.

  No one answered at first. Eventually Sparrow broke the silence.

  “That job we did today—there was a… something unexpected happened.”

  “The one with the changeling mother?” asked Crooks, still spinning his bunch of keys. “Did something go wrong?”

  “Not exactly. We got rid of the changeling… found the real mother and brought her back, but…”

  “It was all a ruse,” Rowan put in. It was the first time she had spoken since Tickey End, and only after she had entered the caravan had she stopped looking over her shoulder. “The whole thing… it was devised to get me there. The person masquerading as the changeling used the family to get to me.”

  “What?” Tanya said, incredulous. “Who?”

  “And why?” asked Fabian, looking equally shocked.

  “Eldritch,” Rowan whispered, fearing to say the name. “And the reason why is easy—he wants his revenge.”

  “Eldritch,” Suki repeated. “The fey man you left in the cellar, is that right?”

  Rowan nodded.

  “Well, you can’t really blame him,” Crooks said. “I mean, you did leave him there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “And you can’t blame Rowan for reacting that way,” Tanya snapped, glaring at the black-haired boy on the bed. “Eldritch was there when her brother—when James—was taken away! It’s only natural that she would have wanted revenge.”

  “But he didn’t deserve that,” Rowan muttered.

  “Maybe not,” Tanya said. “But you acted in the heat of the moment—it wasn’t out of spite.”

  “So if you left him there, how did he get out?” Crooks asked.

  “His hand… the one that was manacled to the wall. It had been cut off—there was just a stump,” Rowan said in a small voice.

  Fabian let out a low whistle. “He did it himself?”

  “It’s possible,” said Rowan. “But I can’t think what he would have used—he had no weapons. The Hedgewitch would have taken them from him.”

  “So perhaps someone else helped him,” said Tanya. “But who?”

  “The coat,” Rowan whispered. “It has to be.”

  “What about the coat?” said Fabian.

  Rowan pulled the fox-skin coat from her bag. “This coat was made to order by the Hedgewitch. It was the only garment in the place that was ready—someone was coming to collect it. But I’d already taken it. Whoever that person was would have been angry with me for taking it, and Eldritch wouldn’t have held back in telling them. That would be reason enough for them to help him escape, leaving him free to come after me.” She pulled her knees to her chest and began to rock. “I knew it. I knew he’d get out somehow and come after me….”

  “So why now?” asked Crooks. “And why go to the trouble of involving Jack’s family?”

  “Because he knew he couldn’t get to me directly,” Rowan answered. “I’ve been protecting myself and surrounded by people. This is the only job I’ve done in months. With me using the coat it made things a lot easier for him—it’s more difficult to abduct a person than it is a fox. To get to me he had to trick me into coming into contact with him. He must have been planning it all this time.”

  “But if that’s true he must know about what you do,” said Suki, her eyes wide. “That you were involved in all this… that it wasn’t just James you were trying to find. And if he knows about you, then…”

  “Chances are he knows about some of us… if not all of us,” Sparrow finished.

  “And with what’s just happened to poor Fix, and Cobbler and Dawn still missing, I’d say we’ve got a problem. A serious problem.”

  “They’re not… missing,” Tanya said. Her chest felt tight with the pressure of the secrets she had been holding in all day. “They’re dead.”

  “How can you possibly know that?” Crooks asked.

  “Because I saw them. I mean… I didn’t actually see them, but I went to Morag’s—the gypsy woman’s—today. While I was there, she had a vision. I was standing next to her, looking into the water where the vision appeared. I saw it exactly as she saw it.” She glanced at Rowan and Fabian and saw their shock at this admission. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. We already had too much going on, and I didn’t want to panic anyone.” She paused, looking from face to face, with the exception of Fabian’s. “It showed you… all of you. Your faces, one by one. I recognized you all from the barn the other night. It showed Fix… dead. A fly was crawling over her. And it showed two more faces, faces I didn’t recognize—but I knew then that it was Cobbler
and Dawn and that they were—”

  Sparrow’s face had drained of color. The entire caravan was in silence, horrified by the revelation. “Go on,” he whispered.

  “She said something,” said Tanya. “ ‘The thirteen secrets have been found out.’ That’s what she said.” She glanced at Rowan. “She said you’d know what it meant.”

  Rowan covered her face with her hands and started rocking again. Tanya saw Suki’s hair swishing from side to side as she shook her head vigorously.

  “No. That’s not possible.”

  “ ’Course it’s possible,” Sparrow said, his voice husky. “And it makes perfect sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Suki argued. “It makes sense for Eldritch to come after Rowan, but the rest of us? Why would he bother? We’ve done nothing to him!”

  Sparrow rubbed his thumb slowly over his chipped tooth.

  “True. But there are two things that would make sense. Firstly, given Rowan’s past, if she knew she needed protection, who would she be most likely to turn to?”

  “Us,” said Crooks. His cockiness had dissolved, and one leg was bouncing up and down in a nervous dance. “She’d probably come to us.”

  “He could be making sure you’ve got no one left,” said Sparrow. “No one to run to.”

  Fabian frowned. “But he tried to capture her just now. If he was trying to get rid of everyone else first, why would he have acted then?”

  “Good point,” said Sparrow. “And I agree. I don’t think he’s targeting us all. I think he found his way to the Coven and used it for information.”

  “You mean he used the others to get to me?” said Rowan. “Three people are dead… because of me.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Sparrow. “I was there… I saw him, remember? He’s crazy.”

  “I’d be crazy too, if someone left me in a cellar to die!” she retorted.

  “He was there a lot longer than you,” Sparrow said gently. “You don’t know what sort of things he witnessed, or heard. He was probably half-mad when you arrived there.”

  “Right. And then I pushed him over the edge.”

  “We don’t know for sure that it’s Eldritch who’s done all these things,” said Fabian. “At the moment all we’re certain of is that he’s after Rowan. We’ve got no proof of the rest—that he’s found out about whatever these thirteen secrets are that you lot are guarding.”

  Rowan, Sparrow, Suki, and Crooks shared nervous glances.

  “So what are the thirteen secrets?” Tanya pressed. She knew she had gone too far now. This meeting, and her relaying of Morag’s vision, had surely broken Gredin’s rules about her being involved. Her heart quickened at the thought of Oberon. She hoped he was safe at the manor. “What exactly are you hiding that someone out there is willing to kill for?” She looked from face to face, but every one of them seemed to want to look anywhere except for at her. They were clearly not going to answer.

  “Well, whatever they are, you’d better start thinking about whether they’re worth risking your lives for,” said Fabian, peeved at the exclusion.

  Tanya averted her eyes in frustration. She noticed a small wooden bookshelf, where rows of books on the occult rested below a number of fortune-telling objects: a crystal ball, tarot cards, and a crystal-dowsing pendulum.

  Tanya wondered if any of them genuinely helped Suki in her psychic endeavours, or if they were merely props.

  “None of them,” Suki said suddenly.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Tanya responded, unnerved.

  “You didn’t have to. I can tell what you were thinking.” Suki pulled the patchwork blanket around her. “I don’t need any of them. They’re just for show. Makes people feel they’re getting their money’s worth, somehow.”

  “So how do you do it, exactly?” Tanya asked.

  Suki shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just get pictures and words in my head that I can’t explain. I don’t know where they come from. Sometimes I don’t even know what they mean until later. I don’t use a seeing bowl like your gypsy friend.” She paused. “Why do you think she told you about the vision?”

  “She said I’d triggered it by being there,” Tanya answered. “I suppose it’s because I’m connected to Rowan—and because I care about her.”

  “What about you, Suki?” Crooks asked. “Haven’t you had any inklings about what’s going on with all this? Any visions?”

  Suki pulled at a piece of loose thread on the patchwork quilt. “No, no visions. But I’ve been having bad dreams lately. Strange dreams, where I’m lost in a storm. I can’t see ahead.”

  “You said you felt something was blocking you when you were trying to find Jack’s mother,” said Sparrow. “And she was close by—really close.”

  Suki nodded. “That’s the one thing that I do understand. She was hidden in an old bomb shelter—it had a steel roof. One thing I’ve noticed about my visions is that they don’t see past or through iron. It… scrambles things, somehow.”

  “So you think she was put there on purpose?” asked Sparrow.

  “Maybe. If someone is after us, and knows about us, then there’s every chance they could know about my limitations. As for the rest, I don’t understand it either. Sometimes, if I try to concentrate too hard on something it won’t come to me. But this feels different. It’s as though everything is blocked. Like my dreams are trying to tell me something.”

  “Maybe Morag can help us again,” said Tanya.

  “Worth a try,” said Sparrow. “If she’s had one vision, there could be more she could help us with.” He hesitated. “Was there… anything you saw… in her vision that could help us find Cobbler and Dawn? Anything at all that you can remember?”

  Tanya squirmed as she recalled the horrifying images of the dead faces. “It was fast. They were flashing by so quickly, and I… I wanted to look away. But there might have been something. With Dawn she looked pale. So pale. But it was bright, like she was in sunlight somewhere. Outside. With the other man, Cobbler, all I saw was his face. And blood in his hair. I’m sorry—I don’t remember anything else.”

  “It’s all right,” said Sparrow. “It’s a start.” He glanced at Rowan and Suki. “We need to tell Tino about this. Suki, update him as soon as possible. And tomorrow, I say we go back to Cobbler’s and Dawn’s and have another look around. There must be something we’re missing, something that will lead us to them.”

  “What about me?” asked Crooks.

  “You come as well, if you like,” said Sparrow, although he sounded less enthusiastic. “In the meantime, you two”—he nodded at Tanya and Fabian—“go to see this Magic Morag, and—”

  “Mad Morag,” Fabian corrected.

  “Whatever. Just see if she’s able to tell us any more about what’s happening.” Sparrow looked at his watch. “It’ll soon be time for tonight’s performance.” He jumped up. “I’ll leave you to prepare for it, and I’ll be back in the morning. Be ready. We’re leaving early.” He gestured to Rowan. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

  “But you’ll be alone when you come back,” she said.

  “Don’t matter.” Sparrow attempted a smile, but it looked unconvincing.

  Crooks got up. “I’ll come. Then Sparrow won’t be alone on the way back.”

  “All right,” said Sparrow, but Tanya noticed that he did not thank him.

  They left Suki’s caravan and set off. They saw Tino nearby, distributing masks and costumes, and then they heard Suki call out to him. Sparrow led the way, his head darting from side to side, taking everything in, but nothing seemed amiss. Gypsy children ran about, laughing and playing with each other and the many dogs of the circus folk. Meals were being prepared on outdoor fires, while circus folk sat on the steps of their wagons, chatting and sometimes singing songs.

  In the lanes leading back to Tickey End, Rowan walked close to Sparrow, jumping at every sound and movement. Crooks took up an annoying whistle, earning him several scowls from Sparrow, all of which he igno
red. Tanya tagged along beside Fabian, who looked deep in thought about something. Once or twice he took out the brown, leather-bound book he always carried and hurriedly scribbled notes in the back of it.

  “What are you doing?” Tanya whispered, trying to look over his shoulder, but Fabian nudged her away and closed the book.

  “I’ve just had a thought about something,” he muttered. “I’ll tell you later, when I’ve got a better idea.”

  Only when they were through the gates of Elvesden Manor did Rowan finally seem to relax. They paused in the shadow of one of the stone gargoyles on the pillars that stood on either side of the entrance. Crooks’s jaw dropped as soon as the house came into view.

  “This is where you live?” He gave a low whistle. “You landed on your feet all right. The folks here adopting you?”

  “Fostering,” said Rowan, staring toward the front door. “Oh, no.”

  Nell was on the porch, shielding her eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun to stare at them.

  “We’d better go,” said Sparrow.

  “You mean you’re not going to ask us in for tea and cake?” Crooks said in a ridiculous, posh voice.

  “Shut up,” said Rowan. “No, I’m not. Go on, go. I’ll see you tomorrow. And be careful.”

  Sparrow and Crooks vanished into the lane beyond the manor. Tanya, Rowan, and Fabian approached the porch. Nell stood at the door like a sentry, wielding a mop and tapping one flip-flopped foot.

  “I’ve just done the floors,” she said. “And I’m not doing them again, so you can all go around to the back.”

  “Fine,” Rowan muttered, turning and traipsing back down the steps. They passed the rose garden at the side of the house. Further on, Warwick leaned over one of the animal pens to speak to Rose. They both looked up and waved. Rowan and Fabian offered quick waves back, but did not stop to talk. Tanya stared straight ahead, making out she had not seen.

  At the back door a small, chocolate brown dog hurled itself at her legs with excited, high-pitched yaps.