Free Spook's Secret (wc-3) by Joseph Delaney

Spook talking in a low voice. When I reached the kitchen door, I didn't go in; it was slightly open and I saw something through the crack that halted me in my tracks.
        Meg was sitting in her rocking chair close to the fire. She had her head in her hands and her shoulders were heaving with sobs. The Spook was leaning over her, speaking softly and stroking her hair. His face, lit by candlelight, was half turned towards me and wore an expression on it that I'd never seen before. It was similar to the way my brother Jack's big, craggy face sometimes softens when he looks at his wife, Ellie.
        Then, as I watched, to my astonishment, a tear leaked from my master's left eye and ran all the way down his cheek to reach his mouth.
        I knew not to pry any longer so I went back up to bed.
    A Nasty Piece of Work
        
     
        
         T he days soon began to settle into a steady routine. In the mornings my chores were to light the downstairs fires and bring fresh water from the stream. Every second day I had to light all the fires in the house to keep the place from getting too damp. As I made the bedroom fires, my instructions were to open each window for about ten minutes to air the room. I had to clean out all the grates first, and I went up and down stairs so much that I was glad when it was over. The one in the attic was the worst, of course, and I always used to do that first, before my legs got too tired.
        The attic was a really big room, the biggest in the house, with a lot of floor space. It only had one window and that was a huge skylight in the roof. The room was empty except for a large mahogany writing desk, which was locked.-On the brass plate around its keyhole was an embossed pentacle, a five-pointed star within three concentric circles. I knew that pentacles were used to protect magicians when they summoned daemons and I wondered why the plate had that design.
        The desk looked very expensive, and I also wondered what was in it and why the Spook didn't bring it down to his study, which would have been a much more suitable and useful place. I never did get round to asking him about that desk. And when we finally talked about it, it was already too late.
        After airing the attic, I would work my way down, a floor at a time. The three bedrooms directly below the attic weren't furnished. There were two at the front of the house and one at the back. The back room was the worst and darkest room in the whole house because it only had one window, which faced back towards the cliff. As I raised the sash and peered out, the damp rock was so close that I could almost reach out and touch it. There was a ledge on the cliff with a path running upwards. It seemed to me that it might be possible to climb out of the window and up onto the ledge. Not that I was daft enough to try it! One slip and I'd dash my brains out on the flags below.
        After lighting the fires, I gave Meg her herb tea, then practised my Latin verbs until breakfast, which was a lot later in the morning than it had been at Chipenden. Following that, it was lessons for most of the day, but late in the afternoon I usually went for a short walk with the Spook, no more than twenty minutes downhill to the foot of the clough, where it opened out onto the lower slopes of the moor. Despite the hard work seeing to the fires, I'd got a lot more exercise back in Chipenden and was starting to feel restless. Each morning the air seemed colder and the Spook told me that the first of the snow would be with us soon.
        One morning my master went off to Adlington to see his brother Andrew, the locksmith. When I asked if I could go with him, he refused.
        'Nay, lad, somebody needs to keep a careful eye on Meg. Besides, I've got things to talk to Andrew about. Family things that are private. And I need to bring him up to date on what's been happening ...'
        By that I guessed the Spook was going to tell his