Crystal by Rebecca Lisle Read Free Book Online Page B

side.
    Raek came in. He didn’t glance towards the window and anyway Crystal knew how hard it was to see out into the dark, but she made sure she didn’t get too close. He put the carry-box – their carry-box with their sly-ugg in it – down on the table and lifted the sly-ugg out with gloved hands. It was droopy and limp.
    The window was open and Crystal could hear clearly.
    ‘What can I squeeze out of you tonight, my slimy, slithery, squelchy spy, eh?’ Raek said. He got down so low, so close, that mucus from the sly-ugg stuck to his hair and slimed on his cheek. ‘Secrets? Got lots of secrets for me, eh? Lovely, lovely secrets?’
    The sly-ugg’s eyeballs rolled backwards and forwards on the end of their stalks. It hunched itself up as it tried to slither away, but Raek held it tight.
    ‘Oh no, we don’t! No escape for you! In we go, you foul slime-ball!’
    Raek squashed the sly-ugg into the metal box. Its head stuck out at one end, tail at the other. Its stalk-eyes thrashed around furiously as it bucked and fought; but it was trapped. Raek tightened the screws, turning them slowly until the sly-ugg’s head began to bulge like a balloon.
    Suddenly there was an awful scream. Crystal jumped. Goose bumps broke out all over her skin. She stared at the sly-ugg, at its open mouth …
    The sly-ugg! The sly-ugg was screaming!
    Raek was turning the screws and squashing it harder and harder. It eye-stalks flailed about, twisting and knotting up. It writhed and wriggled like a worm on the end of a line.
    Crystal felt weak and sick.
    Then, quite suddenly, the sly-ugg went still. Its flesh began to glow a brilliant white, as if it were hot. The light that poured from it began to form a beam and the beam of white light condensed and formed a circle on the wall opposite.
    ‘Aha!’ Raek roared. ‘Here we go!’
    He stood back and watched the white circle where an image was gradually appearing … It gave Crystal a jolt. The sly-ugg had recorded everything it had seen at their apartment inside its head and now here it all was, replayed! Everything they’d said and done in front of the sly-ugg had been captured. She had known it was a spy, but still, it was awful to see how good a spy it was!
    And if that was what Raek did to the sly-ugg, what was Grint doing to her mother?
    Raek squeezed the screws a little tighter.
    ‘Now, slug-bug spy,’ Raek said. ‘I didn’t get as much out of you last time as I think I could have. We have to go back to that smoky day, that special day when Effie got so lively, when she began to remember. When she collapsed! You didn’t tell me everything. I know there’s more. You’re hiding something, little sluggy, and you know you mustn’t hide things from me. What happened? Something, something … We need to see what she got up to …’
    The white circle on the wall became cloudy. Grey swirls of smoke drifted across. There was a noise like thunder, which was the sound of coal slithering out of the coal bucket onto the fire and then the whoosh of water sizzling and steaming. The sly-ugg was replaying the moment when Crystal had tried to outwit it; the time her mum had gone alone to the lake. Raek waved his hands around as if he could actually waft the smoke on the wall away.
    ‘… Can’t see a thing! You should have moved faster. You should have recorded everything! Mindless mollusc! Spineless slug! You’re no use at all!’
    Crystal couldn’t watch any more. She was horrified to see what the sly-ugg’s spying could do, though she felt sorry for it at the same time. And somehow, somehow , it had not seen her mother bring back the thing from the lake. Thank goodness for that!
    She edged nervously along to the next window, briefly wondering how long she’d been outside. The rain was starting up again. She was getting wetter but she doubted Raek would notice that. She just had to have a look in the next window. It wasn’t the receiving room because that was at the front of the House.