Take Your Last Breath. Lauren Child

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      THE DREAM HAD BEGUN IN THE USUAL WAY: Ruby alone, treading water in a bottomless ocean, an ethereal voice whispering to her, almost singing. She would turn this way and that, but she could never see ‘the thing’ until it was too late.

      Suddenly she would feel something grab her leg and she would spin down, down, down into the indigo depths. And the miniature man who appeared in the water just couldn’t save her. And all the while the calling, like someone whispering a song to the ocean.

      The vision was so real that whenever she awoke, she felt sure it had happened, the whispering so familiar that she could believe that she must have heard it once before, a long, long time ago, perhaps in a past life.

      Ruby sat up in bed. She was covered in perspiration, freezing cold, and her head was thudding. She put out her hand and blindly felt around for her flashlight. But somehow the beam it shone just made things worse, more dramatic. She fumbled for the switch on the lamp beside her bed.

      Click.

      The room was bathed in light and Ruby could breathe again. Through the blur of her less than perfect vision she was reassured: there was the comic she was working on, spread out on her desk; there were the floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, hundreds of them – fact, fiction, graphic novels, codebooks, puzzle books. Her record player, her records, her telephone collection – eccentric designs, from a squirrel in a tuxedo to a conch shell – all perched haphazardly on shelves and furniture. There was the jumble of clothes on the floor. She was definitely in her room and not miles beneath the heavy ocean, sinking through indigo.

      Ruby lay back on her pillow, sighed a deep sigh and drifted back into sleep, this time dreamless, her glasses still perched on the end of her nose. She was only wrenched from her slumber when her subconscious tuned into the sound of screaming, coming from the backyard.

      Ruby scrambled to get out of bed, tripped over the tangle of discarded clothes and limped to the window. There she saw clouds of seagulls swooping and diving around the house, filling the air with their wings, legs trailing ready to land. Seagulls are sizeable birds and as they dodged and swooped, their grey and white feathers almost made contact with the glass and Ruby found herself instinctively backing away.

      The noise they made was enough to drown out most other noises, but not the screaming – this was coming from a small elderly woman who was darting around the yard waving a broom.

      It was Mrs Digby.

      Mrs Digby was the Redforts’ housekeeper and she had been with the family ‘forever’, which is to say longer than Ruby had existed and longer than Sabina had existed. No one could do without her and no one wanted to do without her: she was the family treasure.

      Ruby stood transfixed, watching the tiny woman tackling the birds, shouting abuse at them and generally telling them where to go. It seemed that they had made the mistake of settling on her freshly laundered sheets and this had got her hopping mad.

      ‘I didn’t get up before six in the am, work my fingers to the bone only to have you feathered vipers do your business all over my clean linen!’

      It was fair to say Mrs Digby was furious.

      Just then a well-groomed man came into view. He was wearing a beautifully cut suit and appeared entirely unruffled as he calmly strolled out into the yard, in his hand a tiny device. He held this up to the sky, depressed a button and suddenly, in a deafening screech, the birds all rose as one and squawked their way back in the direction of the sea.

      Ruby pushed open the large square picture window that made up most of the wall beside her desk (the Redfort house was a miracle of modern architecture) and leaned out.

      ‘Wow!’ she said, somewhat sarcastically. ‘I didn’t know you could talk to the animals.’

      The man looked up and winked.

      ‘Hey kid. Surprised to see you up before noon.’

      ‘Oh, you should know Hitch – early bird catches the worm and all that.’

      ‘Too late for worms,’ said Hitch. ‘Gulls got ’em, but I can rustle up some pancakes kid.’

      Ruby pulled on her clothes: jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt printed with the words honk if you’re happy, hoot if you’re not, toot if you couldn’t care less and scooted down the stairs two at a time. Mrs Digby and Hitch were already in the kitchen and discussing the avian invasion.

      ‘So what is it?’ asked Ruby, sliding into her chair. ‘Some kind of bird-banishing gizmo?’

      ‘Works on the same principle as a dog whistle – it emits a sound that humans can’t hear and birds can’t stand,’ replied Hitch, tucking the device into his shirt pocket.

      Ruby was impressed – not a bad gadget to have up your sleeve when the wildlife went wild.

      ‘I might have to get myself one of those,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘Where dya buy it – SmartMart?’

      ‘Well, they do say SmartMart’s the smart place to shop!’ said Hitch, quoting the store’s tagline.

      ‘Well, all I can say child,’ said Mrs Digby earnestly, ‘is that it’s just as well your parents ain’t here to see this. Your mother would have a three-cornered fit if she witnessed what those critters have done to her sheets.’

      Mr and Mrs Redfort were currently away – as they so often were – this time on a mini cruise which was taking them and the local Historical Society around Twinford’s coast. Dora Shoering was giving a series of on-board lectures about the smugglers’ caves, the famous Twinford shipwrecks and various other seafarers’ legends.

      ‘Don’t you give those sheets a second thought Mrs D,’ said Hitch. ‘I’ll get the laundry service to pick up the linen – no need for you to waste your valuable energy on that.’

      ‘Shucks and fiddlesticks,’ said Mrs Digby. Which didn’t really mean anything, but often translated as, If you insist.

      It had been less than two months since Hitch had joined the Redforts as house manager (or butler, as Sabina Redfort preferred to think of him) but to look at Mrs Digby you might have thought he had been there always. She had accepted him at once and woe betide anyone who said a bad word about him. As far as she was concerned, he was the best darned butler, house manager (or whatever else he wanted to call himself) this side of anywhere.

      Of course, what Mrs Digby didn’t know was that Hitch was actually an undercover agent, sent by Spectrum to protect and work alongside Ruby. She had no idea that the butlering was just a cover – that really would have impressed her.

      But it was a Spectrum imperative that Mrs Digby should never know, never even suspect, that this alarmingly attractive man might not be all that he seemed. Although Ruby and Hitch had got off to a somewhat rocky start, they made a dynamic team. LB had seen this: she was a smart woman and she knew that unflinching loyalty was what made a good agent, and agents who were loyal to each other made for a solid agency.

      ‘So,’ said Hitch to Ruby. ‘How are you going to get yourself in and out of trouble today?’

      ‘I’m not,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m gonna lie low – take СКАЧАТЬ