This close, the gannet seemed massive, and my mind went to those weird letters I’d found on the 158back of Charlie’s drawings. You’d definitely have a problem if a bird this size decided to attack you. Its beak and claws looked horribly sharp, and I had to force myself to walk over and wave it away.

“Go on, shoo!”

To my relief, it fluttered off with a squawk, and I reached out for the window, my fingers shaking at the awful proximity to the sickening height. I couldn’t help my eyes sliding downwards, and my heart suddenly seemed to stop inside my chest. I couldn’t breathe, or think, or do anything other than stare in horror at the bent and crooked shape of a body, just visible in the moonlight, crumpled upon the ground, right at the foot of the lighthouse.

159

Chapter Thirteen

A cloud shifted in the sky above, the moonlight became a little brighter, and suddenly there was no body on the ground at all – only a shadow breaking up before my eyes, an illusion caused by the night. My heart began beating again, but now it felt like it was going at about a hundred beats a second, and my hands shook worse than ever as I slammed the window closed. I knew Rosie must be in the lighthouse somewhere – that I had gone in the wrong direction and missed her – yet I suddenly had the most awful, awful feeling. Something was wrong – I knew it.

I strode over to the mantelpiece and saw that Rosie’s crystals were still there, so I scooped them up and slipped them into my pocket. If Rosie hadn’t 160come up here to fetch the crystals, then where had she gone? I thought perhaps she might be in one of the other rooms inside the tower and was just about to check when something caught my eye in the curved mirror. I turned towards it and then breathed a sigh of relief. Rosie was here after all – I could see her in the reflection, standing with her back to me, peering out of the window I’d just closed. I guessed she must have entered the room behind me, moving so quietly that I hadn’t heard her come in.

“Where have you been?” I began. “I was—”

I turned round and broke off abruptly, the words dying in my throat. The room was empty. Rosie wasn’t there. There was no one in front of the window. My eyes went back to the mirror and it now showed only me in the room. But how could that be? Rosie had been right there – she couldn’t possibly have walked, or even run from my sight in the split second it had taken me to turn round. My head whirled and throbbed with confusion. What was going on?

“Rosie?” I called, even though I could see she wasn’t there.