Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [32]
Jenna nodded. “Yes please, Beetle.”
Beetle took out his pocket knife. He unfolded the tool for pulling-long-rusty-nails-out-of-plaster and set to work doing exactly that. Immediately a great lump of plaster came off the wall and the curtain fell on his head—crump.
“Oof!” gasped Beetle as the curtain enveloped him in a cloud of dust and dead spiders. “Oof—eurgh. Gerroff! Gerroff me!”
The curtain did not do as requested and Beetle, convinced that he had been attacked by something nasty from the attic, began stabbing at it with his pulling-long-rusty-nails-out-of-plaster tool. “Argh . . . help!”
“Beetle, Beetle!” yelled Jenna, trying to pull the curtain off. “Beetle, stand still. Stop fighting!”
Finally her voice got through. “Huh?” said the curtain.
“Beetle, please, just stay still a moment. And stop trying to kill the curtain.”
The curtain settled down and Jenna heaved it off its prey in a cloud of dust.
“Atchooo!” Beetle sneezed.
Jenna regarded the pile of shredded curtain on the floor. “Beetle: one. Curtain: zero.” She laughed.
“Yeah,” said Beetle, not quite so amused. He dusted off his admiral’s jacket and then tentatively waved his arm through the gap that the curtain had covered.
“There’s no SafetyGate there,” he said. “Or if there was, it’s come away with the curtain. I s’pose it could have been Bonded to it. Come to think of it, it did tingle a bit when it landed on me. That’s what made me think I was . . . well, being attacked. It wasn’t panic, you know. It felt really weird.”
“So . . . if Dad did put some kind of barrier up and now it’s gone, maybe we should go and tell him?” said Jenna.
“I could have a look first,” said Beetle, badly needing to do something constructive after the curtain fight.
“Well . . .”
Unwilling to let his chance to impress Jenna slip away, Beetle headed up the stairs quickly, before she had time to say no.
Jenna’s voice came after him. “Beetle, maybe you shouldn’t . . .”
Beetle stopped and turned. “It’s fine,” he said.
“It doesn’t look fine,” said Jenna. She could see the familiar shifting darkness hovering at the top of the stairs.
“I’ll just have a quick look so that we can tell Marcia exactly what’s going on,” said Beetle.
Jenna followed Beetle up the stairs. He stopped and barred her way. “No, Jenna,” he said rather formally. “Let me do this. You did ask me, after all.”
Jenna looked past Beetle up to the top of the stairs. “But Beetle, that weird misty stuff is still there. I’d forgotten how scary it is. I think we should get Dad, or maybe even Marcia. I really do.”
Beetle did not want to give way. “It’s all right,” he insisted. “I said I’d have a look and I will. Okay?”
There was something in the way Beetle stood that made him seem so solid, so commanding, that made Jenna step back.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But please . . . be careful.”
“Of course I will.” Beetle pulled out a long chain from his admiral’s coat pocket, unclipped his timepiece and placed it in Jenna’s hand. “I’m only going to be a few seconds; I’ll just have a quick look and see what’s going on. If I’m not back in . . . oh, three minutes . . . you can go and get Silas, okay?”
Jenna nodded uncertainly.
Beetle set off up the long, straight flight of stairs, aware that Jenna was watching his every move. As he drew closer to the top, a feeling of fear came over him and he stopped. In front of him, no more than three steps away, was a wall of a shifting, dancing, swirling blackness, which clearly was not just late winter afternoon darkness mixed with some old spell vapors that, deep down, Beetle had hoped it would be.
“Can you see anything?” Jenna’s voice drifted up to him. It already sounded far away.
“No . . . not really.”
“Maybe you should come down.”
Beetle thought that too. But when he looked back and saw Jenna far below, gazing up at him expectantly, he knew he had to go on. And so, determined not to act scared in front of Jenna again, Beetle forced himself to take the last few steps to