“What happened to these parents?” Potter asked, stepping from the corner of the room.

“Emily didn’t say,” she answered him. “I remember one night that she was very upset and I could tell that she had been crying. A pack of juvenile wolves had arrived wanting to be matched. Emily had been close to all of her students but she had a couple of favourites. Both of these had been chosen for matching and she said that they changed – they were no longer the children that she had once taught. Within days they had left and she never saw them again, nor did their parents.”

“How had they changed?” Kayla asked.

“Emily didn’t say,” Elizabeth said, and I watched as a tear spilled from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “But I knew she was, at times, terrified of what was happening at Ravenwood. Then, she started ringing me and saying that she had started to be plagued by vivid dreams. In these dreams she saw a different world. At first I thought it was just Emily wishing that things could be different, but she became convinced that the world as we know it had been…pushed…somehow. That’s how she described it, Miss Hudson, just like you did in your advert. Emily started to believe that the world had been pushed off course. She told me that the world had once been different. Where there weren’t any wolves – Skin-walkers. She described a world not too dissimilar to the one we know, but it was a world where children weren’t matched.”

“Where is Emily now?” I asked her, wishing that I could speak with her to discover what else she knew.

“She’s vanished,” Elizabeth said, trying to fight off a stream of tears that were desperate to roll down the length of her face.

“Vanished how?” Isidor gently asked her while handing her a piece of tissue.

“Thank you,” she said, mopping away her tears. “I believe she has been murdered.”

“What makes you think that?” Potter cut in.

“Emily told me that the Headmaster of the school just left or disappeared,” Elizabeth explained. “A wolf by the name of McCain took his place. He was a harsh man and he replaced the teachers with people who wore hoods and gowns. Emily told me that you couldn’t see their faces. These new teachers, if that’s what they were, were cruel to the children. Emily said that on several occasions their cruelness was something close to brutal. She went to McCain and objected at what she had witnessed. McCain told her that if she didn’t like how the school was being run, she was free to leave. But Emily couldn’t – she wanted to stay and protect the children, and besides, like most of the other teachers had, she lived on the school grounds, it was her home.

“Then, one night she called me to say that she had woken the night before to find McCain standing in her room, staring down at her while she slept. She asked him what he wanted and what he was doing in her room in the middle of the night, but he left without giving an explanation. Emily said she was now in fear for her own safety and I begged her to leave. But she told me how she had bought herself one of those tiny video cameras. She explained that she was going to try and capture on film some of the cruelty that the children endured at Ravenwood School and then send it to the press. She was also going to hide the camera in her room at night to see what it was that McCain was doing in there while she slept. Emily feared that he had perhaps been into her room before but she hadn’t woken.”

“And did she capture anything on film?” I asked her, now gripped by the story.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, that red rash on her cheeks now gone. “I haven’t heard from Emily since that last phone call. I’ve tried ringing her mobile, I’ve sent emails, but have heard nothing from my sister. I’ve tried to contact McCain but he refuses to return my calls. So today, unable to continue with my life until I find out what has happened to my sister, my boyfriend, Harry and I drove the long distance to Wood Hill to visit Ravenwood School. We didn’t get any further than the main gates, which are locked with chains and padlocks. Emily was not exaggerating when she said that Ravenwood had become something close to a prison.

“Eventually, McCain came down to the gates and told me to go away before he called the police. But I could see in his eyes that he had murdered Emily,” Elizabeth said.

“How can you be so sure?” I asked her.

“Because when he saw me standing at the gates, he looked as if he had seen a ghost,” she said. “He hadn’t known that Emily had an identical twin. For a moment, he thought I was her.”

“What did he say?” I asked her.

“After realising his mistake, McCain told us that Emily had left the school some weeks ago, but I knew that was a lie because I’d only spoken to her a few days before,” Elizabeth said. “Knowing that McCain would never tell me the truth, Harry and I headed back into town and paid a visit to the local police station. I spoke to an officer there by the name of Banner, but he didn’t seem interested. It took me over half an hour to get him to agree to file a missing persons report. So, feeling as if I had wasted my time and was still no nearer to the truth, we decided to stay in town, but we soon realised that the place was like, really weird.”

“I know what you mean,” Kayla added. “Isidor and I have been there.”

“We decided to stay out of town in a motel,” Elizabeth

continued. “And it was as we made our way back through town to our car, that I saw your advert in the shop window and that word ‘pushed’ made me think of what Emily had said to me. Do you think you can help?”

Not wanting to give away how much I knew about the world being pushed, I looked across the table at Elizabeth and said, “I think it would be best if you returned straight to Lon…Linden. You can be of little to no help here. And just in case you are wrong about McCain, surely it would be better if you were at home, where your sister knows that she can find you. I will make some enquires at the school and with the local police. Please can you give me your sister’s full name, date of birth, bank details, mobile phone number and car index?”

“Why?” Elizabeth asked me.

“It may help with my enquiries.”

“Do you think you might be able to discover what happened to my sister?” Elizabeth said, writing down the information that I had asked for.

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” I said softly. “But you have my guarantee that I will do my very best to discover the truth for you. But it does seem like a most desperate case where your sister is concerned and it would be wrong of me to give you false hope.”

“Then go back to Linden tonight and I shall be in contact with you as soon as I have some news,” I tried to assure her.

Elizabeth stood up and went to the door. Isidor followed her as if to show her out. But at the door, she turned to look back at me.

“Pushed,” she said. “You know what my sister was talking about don’t you, Kiera Hudson?”

I looked straight back at her, and with half a smile I said, “That’s what we do, Miss Clarke. We push back where others can’t. Goodbye.”

Chapter Sixteen

Kiera

“I’ll do it,” Kayla said as soon as Elizabeth had left the room.

“Do what?” I asked her.

“Go into Ravenwood School,” she said, looking at me straight in the eye. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Out of the question,” I said, getting up and leaving the room.

“How else are we gonna find out what’s happening in there?” she called out, running down the corridor after me.

I reached the great hall as Isidor was closing the door behind our visitor. “Have a word with your sister,” I said to him as I made my way back to the kitchen.

“Why, what’s she done?” Isidor muttered, sounding lost.

“She thinks she’s one of Charlie’s Angels,” Potter snipped as he followed close behind me.

“I don’t think I’m a Charlie’s Angel!” Kayla shouted as she stormed into the kitchen.

“You’re not doing it,” I told her flatly.

“Why not?” she asked, and I could hear frustration simmering just beneath the surface.

“Who’s this Charlie dude?” Isidor asked as he wandered into the kitchen.

Potter turned on him and said, “At first I thought the whole dumb thing was just an act, but now I’m beginning to wonder if you’re not just a bit thick.”

“All I asked was…” Isidor started.

“Whatever,” Potter growled, sitting on the corner of the kitchen table where he lit another cigarette. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Your sister thinks it would be a good idea if she went undercover into Ravenwood School,” I explained to Isidor, feeling a little sorry for him.

He stood by the kitchen door and scratched his tuft of a beard. “That’s, like, a really bad idea Kayla,” Isidor said.

“Why is it?” she snapped at him, and he almost seemed to flinch backwards. “I’m not a kid anymore and I wish you would stop treating me like one.”

“No one is treating you like a kid,” I tried to assure her. “It’s just that…”

“It’s too dangerous,” she said, spraying mock laughter. “After everything that we’ve been through together, everything that I’ve seen and done and you still don’t trust me.”

“Steady on,” Potter cut in. “This has nothing to do with trust.”

“And who asked you, Potter?” Kayla ripped back. “You don’t really care about me. I asked you the other day to lend me the money to buy an iPod and you told me to fuck off, so stop pretending that you care.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Potter snapped, blowing smoke through his nostrils. “It’s not up to me to provide you with all the must-have gadgets. I’m not your father.”