“Er, yes!” says Win. Then his eyes light up. “Let’s jump on a dragon right now and go on a Crowky hunt. We can get to him before he goes looking for the Box!”

OK, so it’s a slightly mad idea, but right now I’d do anything that might stop the map from falling into Crowky’s hands. I look at Rose and say, “At least we’d be doing something instead of sitting here and eating toast.”

“STELLA!” The voice comes from the very top of the castle. We look up and I see Audrey’s face peering over the banister.

Stella cups her hands around her mouth. “WHAT IS IT?”

Audrey starts running down the stairs. “I saw it! I saw Crowky’s boat!”

We all jump to our feet. “Big black sails, tall, skinny?” shouts Stella.

“That’s it!” Audrey’s taking the stairs two at a time. She pauses to catch her breath.

“Is the boat sailing here?” Stella looks at us with a mixture of alarm and excitement. “We’ve been expecting this. We need to lock up the dungeons, stop Crowky from getting into the castle through the sea cave!”

“No!” Audrey’s cry rings out. “It’s going away from the castle. It’s heading toward the End.”

I look at Rose. “He knows,” I say. “That crow flew straight to Crowky and handed him the map. He’s going after the Box!” I grab her arm. “We have to do something!”

A determined look flashes across her face. “You’re right. We’re going to stop him.”

Chapter 22

While we’re still running across the bridge, Rose puts her fingers to her lips and whistles. Crowky might have a boat, but we’ve got dragons!

And the biggest dragon of all has just appeared in the sky.

Bad Dragon races over our heads, her shadow covering us like a black cloud. She reaches the cliffs before us, lands, and, head bowed, waits patiently for us to get off the bridge and climb onto her back.

I’ve barely grabbed hold of a spike before Rose urges Bad Dragon to “Gobo, gobo!” and the huge creature is climbing to her feet and running toward the edge of the cliff. Then we’re up in the sky, and rising higher and higher with each immense thrust of her wings. We glide over the sea and past the Crow’s Nest.

Far below, Stella and the other Lost Girls wave to us from the balcony.

“Fobastober! FOBASTOBER!” shouts Rose, and we fly straight out to sea. Win pulls his telescope out of his bag and we take it in turns to look for any sign of the Raven. But we can’t see anything except crashing waves.

“They could be anywhere!” shouts Rose.