Blink and You Die

by Lauren Child

  ‘Oh, congratulations, you figured it out, or was that dear dead Bradley? My what an agent he was, what a shame he had to die all over again.’ The Count made a sad face before continuing with his tale.

  ‘Morgan betrayed me, reneged on the deal, which is why I find myself doing his bidding.’ He tutted to himself. ‘A word to the wise … if you ever make it that far – which of course you won’t – never impart knowledge which might bring about your own downfall.’

  ‘But it was you who looked into the Jade Buddha’s eyes,’ said Ruby. ‘Why give what you saw there to Casey Morgan?’

  ‘Alas,’ said the Count, ‘I do not have your talent for deciphering code and the eyes held a code which only Morgan could undo.’ He looked at her sadly. ‘It seems I am now the prisoner of my protégé.’

  ‘Don’t expect me to feel bad for you,’ said Ruby. ‘This problem is yours.’

  He gave her a pitying look.

  ‘I don’t think you are seeing the big picture here,’ said the Count. ‘Such blinkered vision – the reason you should feel bad, very bad indeed is because, Ms Redfort, Casey Morgan is very much your spider too and he’s creeping closer and closer across his web and, forgive me for noticing, but you seem to have your wings all tangled.’

  ‘Then tell me who Morgan is,’ said Ruby.

  He gazed down at her with a puzzled expression. ‘You really don’t understand do you, little Ms Redfort?’

  There was brittle anger in his voice and her heart began to thud. ‘Understand what?’ she asked. ‘Understand what?’

  ‘That I have no idea who Casey Morgan might be.’

  In her surprise, Ruby began to laugh, an involuntary reaction not of her choosing.

  ‘While you delight in my misfortune you might want to think of your own.’ He peered into her eyes and said, ‘Remember, Morgan is coming for you. The spider is getting ever closer.’

  And he turned on his heel and disappeared into the dark, his footsteps accompanied by his final words:

  ‘My advice: look closer to home, very close to home.’

  IT WAS ONLY AS SHE WAS PARKING HER BIKE to the side of the house that Ruby realised she no longer had her space costume. At some point she and it had parted company and who knew where it now was. She had no desire to go back out there, no desire to leave home ever again. She climbed the steps and before she could reach the front door it swung open and there was Hitch.

  ‘Hey kid, it’s been a while.’

  She looked at him, really looked at him.

  ‘You’re not dead?’ she said. ‘I thought you were.’

  ‘If I was then I seem to have made a full recovery,’ said Hitch.

  ‘But the plane crash?’

  ‘I jumped.’

  ‘But where have you been all this time?’

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ he said.

  ‘But that’s good,’ said Ruby, ‘that you’re not dead. Great, I mean.’

  ‘Why ever would he be dead?’ said her mother, appearing from her room. She shook her head and kissed Ruby on the cheek, and she and Hitch walked upstairs and into the living room.

  ‘It’s swell to have you back,’ said Brant, raising a champagne glass. ‘Mrs Digby has cooked a delicious chicken surprise in your honour – you completely missed the last one.’

  Hitch turned to Mrs Digby. ‘So what makes this chicken such a surprise, Mrs Digby?’

  ‘The fact that you actually bothered to show up and eat it,’ said the housekeeper. She gave him an irritable look and he gave her a kiss on the cheek and she immediately forgot her grievance.

  The dinner that followed was indeed delicious. It was also full of meal-time chatter, and Sabina and Brant spent the evening firing questions at Hitch.

  SABINA: ‘Where did you get that suit?’

  HITCH: ‘London.’

  SABINA: ‘How chic.’

  BRANT: ‘Why London?’

  HITCH: ‘I have a tailor there; he makes very hardwearing suits and I need my suits to be hardwearing.’

  SABINA: ‘Of course, I see, butlering must play fast and loose with one’s clothing.’

  HITCH: ‘You’d be surprised.’

  SABINA: ‘I’m sure I would.’

  HITCH: ‘The last thing one needs is for a suit to rip at the seams.’

  BRANT: ‘You must give me the name of your tailor.’

  And when they were done quizzing him, they filled him in on the latest Twinford gossip.

  SABINA: ‘The Eye Ball is going to be magnificent, you will come, won’t you?’

  HITCH: ‘I’ll think about it.’

  BRANT: ‘What’s to think about? It’s the only party in town.’

  SABINA: ‘No, honey, it’s not the only party in town, it’s just the best party in town.’

  BRANT: ‘That’s what I meant, darling, the best party!’

  There was little chance to talk to Hitch alone, and though of course Ruby should have told him about the Count encounter there and then, the evening was so perfect and everyone seemed so happy that she just couldn’t bear to spoil it.

  I’ll tell him tomorrow. Tomorrow I can face it, but not now.

  She climbed into bed and switched off the light.

  She lay for a while just thinking about things. The best thing had happened, almost a miracle: Hitch had returned. When she thought of Marnie Novak and Lorelei, the plane crash, it made her shudder. The odds of Hitch surviving all that seemed so slim, so unlikely. It really was something that he had survived.

  She stared at the tree shadows as they waved their spindly arms. What was it that was gnawing away at her, because something was. Something ugly was lurking in the very darkest part of her mind and every time she tried to drag it into the light, another thought blocked it.

  At exactly 3.33am Ruby woke up. She was drenched with sweat and finding it hard to breathe. She sat up, reached for the bedside light and knocked over a glass of water and stumbled out of bed. Bug woke too, his eyes fixed on hers as he got awkwardly to his feet, his plaster-cast leg tap-tapping as he followed her to the bathroom.

  Ruby ran the faucet and splashed her face with water. Bug was standing next to her, his ears alert for danger.

  Ruby was muttering.

  How did Hitch survive that plane crash?

  Who booked that plane? Well, Spectrum had. Who told her to jump? Hitch. So had he actually wanted her to plummet to earth? She thought about it. Without the parachute cape, then she would be splatted over the mountain-top.

  He had given her the parachute cape, a gift from LB, so he hadn’t wanted her to die.

  She thought again, no, he hadn’t wanted her to die falling from the plane, but had he set her up for what came later?

  What if Hitch had been the one to call in that request to Zuko, what if he had scheduled the Spectrum jet – tipping off the Australian, allowing her to get on board, bringing with her, her own henchman?

  No, this is stupid, thought Ruby. Hitch was punched by those guys, he was all beaten up. She pondered on this, and another horrible thought spread. But what if that was staged? All part of the plan, right up until Lorelei appeared, then things had gone wrong. Lorelei wasn’t meant to be there, thought Ruby, Lorelei wanted me dead and Marnie for some reason needed me alive.

  Was that why Hitch had told her to jump? He knew she had a chute, knew that she could make it out of there in one piece. The plane was meant to land safe and sound, but it didn’t, couldn’t.

  I got down to earth, but I might have died afterwards. No one could have known she would survive. Not only that, she thought, but no one could have known they would find me. In fact they hadn’t found her, she’d found them, so there it was, an accident, a cruel twist of fate, if I hadn’t picked up that signal on Hitch’s locator, if Marnie Novak hadn’t taken Hitch’s locator then I would never have followed the signal … Oh … another bad thought. What if Hitch had handed his locator to the Australian knowing that this would be the way to lure Ruby, knowing that if Ruby got Hitch’s sign
al then she would come and find him? What if he’d planned all this, faked his own death and then disappeared for a while so he could do whatever he needed to do without anyone asking tricky questions?

  Ruby slept fitfully, as you might expect someone to sleep if they had a probable murderer sleeping three floors below them.

  But by the time the light began to creep into her room so her suspicions faded and the very notion that Hitch might in some way be implicated in her capture seemed ridiculous.

  When Ruby came down for breakfast she found her parents dunking croissants into bowls of coffee while they perused Paris Match. There was no sign of Hitch.

  ‘He might be in his room,’ suggested her mother, ‘though he said he was going out for the day so you may have missed him.’

  Ruby went down the two flights of stairs to the ground-floor apartment and knocked on his door. There was no answer so she tried again, a little harder this time. When she knocked the second time, the door sort of drifted open. She peered in. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  ‘Hitch?’ she called.

  No answer.

  She stepped into the room; it was tidy as always, but today there was a file on the desk. It was very unlike Hitch to leave anything like that lying around; his desk was always clear, save for a glass paperweight, a black fountain pen and a pad of white paper. She walked over to see what this file might be. As it turned out it related only to the house, the new alarm system and security devices, nothing of any consequence. As she slid the file back to the centre of the desk so she noticed his document case. It must have slipped off the chair, because it was lying on its side and some of its contents had spilled out onto the floor. She picked up a little metal card. It was a Spectrum swipe key, with his name, date of birth and his agent code.

  ‘Child! Where are you?’

  Ruby ran to the door, slipped out into the hall and up the stairs.

  ‘Here!’ she said. ‘I’m here!’

  Mrs Digby gave her a look. ‘I’m not gonna ask what mischief you’ve been getting into because I know I won’t like the answer.’ She handed Ruby a stack of envelopes. ‘You can mail these on your way out.’

  SHE MET CLANCY AT THE DONUT, just as they had planned.

  Once they were seated she told him about Hitch’s return, how she’d arrived home and there he was.

  ‘But that’s great,’ said Clancy.

  ‘I know,’ said Ruby.

  ‘So why do you look like someone stole your sneakers?’

  ‘That’s it Clance, I don’t know.’

  Then she told him of her spiralling paranoia.

  ‘It’s understandable,’ said Clancy.

  ‘Yeah, but you haven’t heard the worst,’ said Ruby.

  ‘What?’ asked Clancy.

  ‘I actually went into his room.’

  ‘When he wasn’t there?’ whispered Clancy.

  ‘I know,’ said Ruby, ‘it’s bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re lucky he’s not Minny,’ he said, ‘she’d kill you if you stepped inside her room.’

  ‘Maybe he will,’ said Ruby. ‘He’s bound to have some little tripwire system.’

  ‘So what did you see?’ asked Clancy. ‘A dirty teacup, biscuit crumbs on the floor?’

  ‘Nothing that extreme,’ said Ruby, ‘just his Spectrum identity card.’

  ‘So what was on it?’

  ‘Just “Hitch”, his agent code and his date of birth,’ said Ruby.

  ‘So how old is he?’ asked Clancy.

  ‘Forty-two, like he said,’ said Ruby.

  ‘So what’s the big deal here?’

  ‘Nothing, other than I have his ID and I need to get it back into his room before he realises it’s missing.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘I know, it’s bad, I’m losing it, super losing it.’

  ‘You’re not losing it Rube, you’re just trying to fit a puzzle together, trying the pieces, some of them fit, some of them don’t,’ said Clancy.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Ruby.

  ‘And some of the pieces are missing,’ he added.

  ‘That’s certainly true,’ sighed Ruby.

  ‘And maybe some of the pieces belong to a different puzzle,’ he said.

  ‘OK, stop with the puzzle metaphor, you’re over-doing it, Clance.’

  ‘The point is,’ said Clancy, ‘there’s a lot to juggle.’

  ‘You got that right,’ said Ruby. ‘But what am I doing putting Hitch in the frame? He’s saved me from a forest fire, he rescued me from Baby Face Marshall, Nine Lives Capaldi. Jeepers, he’s saved my bacon more than a few times, so it seems a little unfair to even imagine he might be trying to kill me,’ she said. ‘I mean if I were him I would want to clonk me on the head just for being so darned ungrateful.’

  Clancy shrugged. ‘I think Hitch would understand. Like I said, sometimes you have to allow yourself to think the worst …’ he paused, ‘and, let’s face it, the thing is, well, lately …’ Again he stopped as if not wanting to finish the thought.

  ‘What?’ said Ruby.

  ‘Well,’ Clancy said, ‘he has been acting kinda odd. I mean where has he been all this time, why didn’t he try to contact you? Put your mind at rest, and …’

  ‘What?’ asked Ruby.

  He looked at her. ‘You’re in danger and he hasn’t been there for you.’ His eyes were round and scared as they looked into hers.

  ‘It’s OK Clance, really it is.’ She could not tell him about the Count, not now.

  ‘But you’re worried,’ said Clancy. ‘You’re wondering if you can trust the person you need to trust most.’

  She stared across at him,

  ‘And what’s your instinct Clance?’

  He said nothing for a long moment, but when he finally did, he looked Ruby straight in the eye and said, ‘You have to go with your gut feeling. You have to trust in your own sixth sense because deep down you know the answer.’

  When she arrived home there was still no sign of Hitch, which was good because it meant she had an opportunity to slip back down to his apartment and replace the identity card on the floor where she had found it. She was busy trying to position it exactly where she’d picked it up from when she saw the corner of something almost hidden but not quite. It was just poking out from under a low sideboard and when she slid it out she saw it was a passport.

  Curious, she opened it. As one would expect, there was a photograph of Hitch, recently taken, and his date of birth, which corresponded with his ID card. It was his name which troubled her: Art Hitchen Zachery, the boy from the rapids.

  Her mind began to process this information.

  So he had been in the Larvae Programme.

  But he’d told her he hadn’t.

  But he would have undergone SME, so how would he know?

  That’s right, SJ had told her so, the Junior Space Recruits had all undergone Specific Memory Extraction – ‘some of them as young as ten years old.’

  She looked at his date of birth … now that doesn’t seem right.

  Forty-two in 1973 meant he was …

  seven, when he was in the Larvae Programme.

  No memory-zapping for Hitch.

  So why would he not be able to remember being a Junior Space recruit?

  Because he was lying, that’s why.

  She quickly slid the passport under the sideboard, slipped through the door and closed it quietly behind her, but as she turned to climb the stairs she heard a voice.

  ‘Why were you in my apartment?’

  But she found herself unable to speak.

  ‘Come on kid, I’m sure you can come up with some explanation – some plausible reason for snooping.’

  Still she couldn’t find a single word.

  ‘No?’ he said. ‘Should I be worrying about what team you’re rooting for?’

  ‘I saw your passport,’ said Ruby, ‘you’re Art Hitchen Zachery, you were in the Larvae Programme. You told me yo
u weren’t, but you were.’

  ‘I had no memory of it. I told you the truth as I knew it.’

  ‘Really? That’s weird because you didn’t undergo SME – the only kids who did were ten or older – SJ told me.’

  ‘And did SJ tell you why?’

  ‘You were too young?’ said Ruby.

  ‘I went into shock – getting chomped by a crocodile will do that to you. I remember nothing about it – nothing about that training week, which by the way is when I joined, I only know any of what I’m telling you because last night I took a look at my file and it didn’t make for pleasant reading – turns out Casey Morgan threw me to the crocodiles; apparently I caught him launching Baker into the rapids.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hitch, ‘oh, is right.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ruby, ‘it’s been a tough week.’

  ‘It certainly has,’ said Hitch.

  She looked at him, her face full of regret. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

  He sighed. ‘It’s OK.’ And he extended his hand.

  ‘Do you forgive me?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing to forgive,’ he said.

  They shook on it.

  ‘Will you be coming to the Eye Ball thing tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure kid, depends where I need to be.’

  ‘I thought it was your night off,’ she said.

  ‘Butlers don’t have nights off, don’t you know that?’

  ‘So you are a butler, and there was me thinking you were a secret agent.’ She smiled.

  ‘Secret agents definitely don’t take nights off – they’d wind up dead if they did.’

  She paused. ‘I’m not sure I want to go,’ she said.

  ‘Did something happen?’ he asked.

  ‘The Count. Last night I met the Count, he was waiting for me.’

  ‘You didn’t think to tell me this?’ Hitch looked bemused.

  ‘I’m telling you now,’ she said. ‘He said all the usual Count stuff, it was creepy like always but nothing was so creepy as what he said when I asked him who Morgan was.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Hitch; there was something different in his voice, less even perhaps, unlike himself somehow.

  Ruby looked up at him. ‘He said “I have no idea who Casey Morgan might be”.’