Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [63]
“Nine what?” asked Cat.
Janet had found the bundle of letters addressed to Miss Caroline Chant. The red book of matches was tucked in front of it. Janet took the little book carefully out and chucked the letters back in the box. “Nine matches,” she said, as she opened the book. “And there are too! Oh, good Lord, Cat! Five of them are burned. Look.”
She held the book out to Cat. He saw there were indeed nine matches in it. The heads of the first two were black. The third was charred right down to the base. The fourth had a black head again. But the fifth had burned so fiercely that the paper behind was singed and there was a hole in the sandpaper beneath it. It was a wonder the whole book had not caught fire—or at least the last four matches. They were as new, however. Their heads were bright red, with yellowish oily paper below, and bright white cardboard below that.
“It does look like a charm of some kind,” Cat said.
“I know it is,” said Janet. “These are your nine lives, Cat. How did you come to lose so many?”
Cat simply could not believe her. He was feeling surly and resistant anyway, and this was too much. “They can’t be,” he said. Even if he had nine lives, he knew he could only have lost three, and that was counting the time Gwendolen gave him cramps. The other two would be when he was born and on the paddleboat. But, as he thought this, Cat found he was remembering those four apparitions coming from the flaming bowl to join Gwendolen’s gruesome procession. One had been a baby, one wet. The crippled one had seemed to have cramps. But why had there been four of them, when five matches were burned?
Cat began shivering, and this made him all the more determined to prove Janet wrong.
“You couldn’t have died in the night once or twice without noticing?” Janet wondered.
“Of course I didn’t.” Cat reached down and took the book. “Look, I’ll prove it to you.” He tore the sixth match off and dragged it along the sandpaper.
Janet leaped up, shrieking to him to stop. The match burst into flame.
So, almost at the same instant, did Cat himself.
14
C AT SCREAMED. Flames burst out of him all over. He screamed again, and beat at himself with flaming hands, and went on screaming. They were pale, shimmering, transparent flames. They burst out through his clothes, and his shoes, his hair, across his face, so that, in seconds, he was wrapped in pale flame from head to foot. He fell on the floor, still screaming, and rolled there, blazing.
Janet kept her presence of mind. She dragged up the nearest corner of the carpet and threw it over Cat. She had heard that this smothered flames. But it did not smother these. To Janet’s horror, the pale, ghostly flames came straight through the carpet as if it was not there, and played on the black underside of it more fiercely than ever. They did not burn the carpet, nor did they burn Janet’s hands as she frantically rolled Cat over in the carpet, and then over again. But no matter how much carpet she wrapped around Cat, the flames still came through, and Cat went on blazing and screaming. His head was half outside the flaming bundle she had made of him, and it was a sheaf of flames. She could see his screaming face inside the fire.
Janet did the only other thing she could think of. She jumped up and screamed herself. “Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci! Come quickly!”
The door burst open while she was still screaming. Janet had forgotten it was locked, but the lock did not bother Chrestomanci. She could see it sticking out from the edge of the door as he flung it open. She had forgotten there were guests to dinner too. She remembered when she saw Chrestomanci’s lace ruffles, and his black velvet suit