Free Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

Bernard’s owl eyes were examining me in the beam of the flashlight. I looked defiantly back at him. It wasn’t forbidden to get into a cupboard in the middle of the night, was it? And why I should was no business of Mr. Bernard’s.
    Did he actually sleep in his glasses?
    “It’s another two hours before the alarm clocks go off,” he said at last. “I suggest you spend the time in your bed. I’m going to get a little more rest myself. Good night.”
    “Good night, Mr. Bernard,” I said.

 
     
    Despite a thorough search of the house, it proved impossible to lay hands on the girl thief seen early this morning in the town house of Lord Horatio Montrose (Inner Circle) in Bourdon Place. She probably escaped by climbing out of a window into the garden. The housekeeper, Mrs. Mason, drew up a list of items found to be missing: silver cutlery and valuable jewelry, the property of Lady Montrose, including a necklace given to Lord Montrose’s mother by the Duke of Wellington. Lady Montrose is at present in the country.
     
    F ROM T HE A NNALS OF THE G UARDIANS
    12 J ULY 1851
    R EPORT : D AVID L OYDE , A DEPT 2 ND D EGREE

 
     
    FIVE
     
    “ YOU LOOK WORN OUT ,” said Lesley in the school yard at break.
    “I feel terrible.”
    Lesley patted my arm. “All the same, those dark rings under your eyes kind of suit you,” she said, trying to cheer me up. “They make your eyes look extra blue.”
    I smiled. Lesley was so sweet. We were sitting on the bench under the chestnut tree, and we could only talk in whispers, because Cynthia Dale was sitting behind us with a girlfriend, and right beside them Gordon Gelderman was talking about football with two other boys from our class, in a voice somewhere between a duck’s quack and a bear’s growl. I didn’t want them to overhear us. They all thought I was weird enough anyway.
    “Oh, Gwen, you really ought to have told your mother.”
    “You’ve said that at least fifty times now.”
    “Yes, because it’s true. I can’t understand why you didn’t.”
    “Because I … no, to be honest, I don’t understand why myself. Somehow or other, I suppose I was hoping it wouldn’t happen again.”
    “But that adventure in the night—I mean, just think what could have happened to you! Take your great-aunt’s vision—it has to mean you’re in danger. The clock stands for time travel, the tall tower for danger, and the bird … oh, you shouldn’t have woken her up! It’d probably have gotten really exciting at that point. I’m going to Google the whole thing this afternoon—raven, sapphire, tower, mountain ash tree. I’ve found a Web site about extrasensory phenomena—it tells you lots of stuff. And I’ve looked up loads of books about time travel for us. And films. Back to the Future , parts one to three. Maybe we can find out something from those.…”
    I thought about what fun it had always been, sitting on the sofa in Lesley’s house watching DVDs. Sometimes we used to mute the sound and synchronize our own words with the pictures.
    “Are you feeling dizzy?”
    I shook my head. Now I knew what it had been like for poor Charlotte these last few weeks. Being asked all the time whether I was dizzy really got on my nerves. Particularly when I was always sort of listening to myself and waiting for the dizzy feeling.
    “If we only knew when it will happen again,” said Lesley. “I do think it’s unfair. Charlotte has been prepared for this for ages, but you’ve been thrown in at the deep end.”
    “I’ve no idea what Charlotte would have done last night if she’d been chased by the man who was sleeping in our built-in cupboard,” I said. “I don’t think the dancing and fencing lessons would have been much use there. No horse in sight for her to ride away on, either.”
    I giggled, imagining Charlotte in my place, running all over the house to get away from the angry young man called Walter who slept in the cupboard. Perhaps she’d have snatched a sword off