The Necromancer Trilogy - Eachanstone

Chapter Fifteen - Being Normal

Sophie was under house arrest. They hadn’t actually put it like that, but the result was more or less the same. She was trapped and confined. She was allowed to use no magic. She had to pass as normal, in some house with the owners away, until Chrysanthemum deciphered the Scroll.

  The initial indignity had given way to frustration. Tala and Celia were off discovering clues about Zephyr’s murder, and the second body that had been discovered in a similar condition. Chrysanthemum was working till her eyeballs boiled in her private office, trying every code possible on that frustrating picture.

  Meanwhile, Sophie was sat in a house, being babysat.

“You think I’m not bored too?” Blue demanded. “You think I want to be sat here minding you while I could be out doing better things?”

“Better things?” Sophie raised an eyebrow. “Do you ever do better things?”

“Not often,” Blue admitted. “But I might have a mind to today, but instead I’m stuck here making sure nobody kills you.”

“Lovely,” Sophie rolled her eyes. “I feel so wanted.”

“It’s not like I want you dead,” Blue explained. “It’s just that this house gives me the creeps.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the walls,” Blue said, apologetically.

“What’s wrong with the walls?”

“They’re yellow.”

Sophie took some time to process this, looking round at the nursery-yellow walls of the living room. She burst out laughing.

“It isn’t funny!” Blue glared at her, but a reluctant smile forced its way onto his face.

“Yes, it is,” Sophie recovered herself. “Why don’t you like yellow walls?”

Blue shrugged. “When I stayed with my grandparents, the room had yellow walls.”

“So?” Sophie stared at him. “My bedroom walls were pink. That doesn’t mean I’m scared of it.”

Blue frowned. “You had a pink bedroom?”

“Don’t change the subject. What was wrong with the yellow walls?”

Blue looked embarrassed. “I…um…I used to get paranoid really easily. I had this thing about the wolf.”

“The wolf.”

“Yeah,” Blue looked away, awkwardly. “It lived in the gap between the wardrobe and the wall, and under the bed, and the cupboard under the stairs, and behind the armchair in my parents’ room and…it just followed me, ok? Hiding in shadows.”

Sophie nodded. “I understand. I used to be afraid of the moth.”

Blue gave her a funny look but carried on. “Well, it was complicated. I had a whole million theories about this wolf. It wasn’t a real wolf. It was a bit like a really messed-up werewolf from a horror film made by a director with a sick sense of humour.”

“I get the picture,” Sophie smiled.

“Well, anyway. In this room, they left a nightlight. And the way the shadows fell on the wall, I could see the wolf. It was the wolf. It was most definitely the wolf. But they didn’t listen when I told them and they left the nightlight on.”

“Ah.”

“And then, of course, I woke up in the middle of the night, saw the wolf, and screamed. I fell out of bed, knocked a glass of water over and it smashed. I trod on the broken glass when I tried to get up, fell into a wall and knocked myself out.”