Twelve-year-old Carmen has a secret: she can talk to her cat Grim. But the powerful Brotherhood has banned pets, and the penalty is death.
Ward is the most wanted boy in the world. The only thing standing between him and the hangman's noose is maste...
Slops wasn't home either. The Sloopers hadn't seen their son since breakfast time.
"Oh he'll be around," said Mr Slooper, as he watered a toilet brush he had for some reason planted in a flowerpot. He turned to them and pushed his glasses up his nose, looking at Ward and Carmen through a smear of mud, his hair frizzing out from each side of his head. "Our Rupert isn't in trouble is he?"
"No, not at all," Carmen said.
"Oh that's good," Mr Slooper said. He got to his feet and brushed the dirt off his trousers. The toilet brush successfully watered in, he began pruning a hydrangea with a pair of nail clippers.
"There's only one other place he could be,"Carmen said as they left the front yard.
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