Free The Slanted Worlds by Catherine Fisher Page A

drawings, the tangles of coded words, could be seen more easily.
    Venn picked one up and examined it.
    â€œTotal and utter gibberish.” Wharton turned a copy, not even sure which way up it should go. “I mean look at this. A tower, a bird-mask, some sort of crane? Then an equation. Then a scratchy picture of what might be, well . . . a man on a horse?”
    â€œA centaur,” Venn muttered.
    â€œWell, maybe. But what does it all mean? How can this help us get Jake back?”
    Venn flicked a glance at Piers. “Any idea?”
    The little man looked at the page almost hungrily. “Not yet, Excellency. But I’d love to have a go. Puzzles! I love puzzles.”
    Venn frowned. “Be quick. We need the information.”
    He turned to Sarah and she faced him. That sharp blue gaze they both had, Wharton thought. How hadn’t he seen before how similar they were?
    Venn said, “So. My great-granddaughter.”
    Sarah knew there was one question that had burned in him since their last meeting; he asked it at once, unflinching. “Is it true that Leah comes back?”
    She looked away. “In my history, she didn’t die in a car crash. But I don’t know details. All our family documents were lost in the fire, or Janus took them. But that painting of her—the one you have in her room? We still had that.”
    â€œSo I’ll succeed.” He seemed numb with relief, dizzy with disbelief. He glanced at Wharton, then back at her. “If only I knew how. As for what happened with Summer . . . I’m trusting you, Sarah. You have to help me. When Leah is back, I don’t care about the mirror. You can blow it to smithereens if you like.”
    He turned and went to the door.
    â€œWhat about David?” she said.
    He stood stock-still, as if he had forgotten the name. “Yes, David. David too. Of course.” He went out. A moment later they heard the front door slam.
    â€œHe’s not going to the Wood, is he?” Wharton said anxiously.
    Piers shrugged. “The estate has many footpaths. He’ll roam up on the moors for hours.”
    â€œThat Summer creature gives me the creeps.” Wharton turned to Sarah. “Come on. We need to check the mirror.”
    On her way out, she looked back. Piers had seated himself at the table. He had poised a lamp over the papers and was making hasty notes with a long red pen. From nowhere he seemed to have found a green visor to shade his eyes.
    â€œLooks like a newspaper hack,” Wharton said.
    She smiled. As she closed the door, three of the cats jumped up and sprawled on the table, mewing for food.
    â€œGet lost,” Piers said absently.

    The house was silent and musty. As they walked its corridors, they passed through slants of pale light from the windows, watery with tiny running raindrops.
    â€œIt seems so empty without Jake,” Wharton said.
    â€œYes.”
    To her it seemed as if an air of hopelessness, of damp decline, had invaded the place. She paused beneath a pale square of paneling. “There was a painting there Christmastime. Surely?”
    â€œVenn sold it last week. Piers boxed it up and I took it to the station. It’s being auctioned in Christie’s.”
    â€œSo he’s short of money.”
    â€œSarah, he’s out of money.”
    She shook her head. As Wharton led the way up the wide, curving staircase, she thought of how the Time-wolf had once slunk up here, its eyes sapphire fragments. On the landing, the ancient floorboards creaked.
    The Long Gallery stretched before them.
    They walked down it, but Wharton stopped abruptly before a bedroom door. “Reminds me. There’s something you might be able to help me with, because the damned beast won’t even look at me.”
    He led her inside.
    Jake’s bedroom.
    It had been his father’s, and he had moved in there. His clothes lay on chairs, on a heap on the floor. His laptop