5

Purrai Have No Rights

“I’M going to climb up into that tree and wait for the creature to come back,” I told Jenny.

“Good idea!” she said enthusiastically. “We’ll take it by surprise.”

“I said I, not we! It’s dangerous. I don’t know what we’re up against here.”

“Does that matter?” Jenny asked. “You’ve already told me that an apprenticeship to a spook is dangerous. I might as well start as I mean to go on and get used to it.”

The girl was very argumentative. I wondered how John Gregory would have dealt with her. But I had to make up my own mind now, and I decided that she could be of more use to me outside the tree.

“Listen,” I told her. “Your job is to keep watch here and warn me when the creature returns. Otherwise it might take me by surprise. Can you imitate the hoot of an owl?”

Jenny smiled and gave me a perfect imitation of a barn owl—it was almost too good. I’d heard an owl just minutes earlier. Could I tell her call from the real thing?

“Can you do the cry of a corpse fowl?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “but I can do a pretty good imitation of a nightjar.”

Her cry split the darkness, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

It was good, but not quite as perfect as her owl. It was just what we needed.

“You do know that a nightjar is just another name for a corpse fowl?” I said.

“Of course I do! Can’t you tell when someone’s joking?”

I sighed. This was going to be hard work. “When the creature comes back, just give two quick calls, then count to three and give another. Can you manage that?”

“Of course I can, but please be careful! I’ve met a couple of other spooks—one in particular was a pig, and the second had hairy ears and a foul temper. If anything were to happen to you, who would train me? They certainly wouldn’t!”

I wondered how Jenny knew these other spooks. Had she been spying on them too? But this was no time to start questioning her further.

“Yes, I’ll take care. You do the same. Stay in hiding and don’t get any closer to the oak than this. Understand? Look after this for me.” I handed her my staff.

She nodded, inspected it, and gave me a grin in return.

I turned and very cautiously began to approach the huge tree.

I made a slow circuit of its trunk, wondering if there might be another way in. It was worth checking, but I knew that I would probably have to climb the tree and search for an entrance higher up. After all, that was where the creature had emerged from earlier.

That’s why I’d left my staff with the girl—it would simply have been an encumbrance. But it left me with fewer weapons at my disposal: my pocketfuls of salt and iron, and my silver chain.