Spellfall by Katherine Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

Julie. She didn’t say anything even though she must have known he’d been out later than usual last night. He felt a bit bad about lying. But it couldn’t be important, could it? After all, Jo had been with Nat since he’d seen her leave the house.
    “I see.” The policewoman double-checked the time he claimed he’d gone to bed, wrote “half past midnight” in her notebook, then asked him how he got on with his new family and how he liked living in Millennium Green after the big city.
    “Mr Marlins don’t like me much,” Tim said finally, to shut her up. “Which is fine by me, ’cause I don’t like him much neither.”
    His mother told him off for being cheeky and apologized to the policewoman, who looked at Tim’s head and gave her a sympathetic glance. Tim set his jaw. Then the policewoman’s radio crackled and she excused herself while she held a quiet one-sided conversation over by the French window.
    Tim stole a look at his mother. She was curling the ends of her hair round and round her fingers. She’s really worried, he thought with a jolt.
    After a few minutes the policewoman came back, a peculiar look on her face. Julie jumped up. “What?” she demanded. “What is it?”
    The two women stared at each other. Julie went deathly pale. Uneasy prickles worked their way up and down Tim’s spine.
    “They’ve found the dog,” the policewoman said gently. “In the river. I’m afraid it was dead.”
    Tim turned cold. “What about Nat?” he said but no one answered.
    His mother flopped back on to the sofa with a little moan. The policewoman sat beside her and held her hand, saying soothing things.
    Forgotten, Tim fiddled with his earring. “Nat can swim,” he said stubbornly. “Don’t worry, she’ll be OK. I bet she’ll be back in time for tea.”
    *
    In her dream, Natalie was drowning. She’d been skating with Jo but she’d fallen into the river in the fog. The water was freezing and stole her breath away so she couldn’t even scream. Dad, Julie, and Tim were on the bank but they didn’t see her as the river carried her further and further downstream. She tried to swim against the current but the skates were too heavy. They were dragging her under. It grew darker as the river plunged into a haunted wood where huge trees reached for her with gnarled fingers and whispered strange secrets into her ear—
    She woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat, to find herself tucked up in bed and the room in darkness. She rolled over with a sigh of relief and reached for her bedside lamp. Just a nightmare, that was all.
    The lamp wasn’t there.
    In a cold rush, it all came back. The supermarket car park, the fog, the needle in her neck. She jerked up and stared around in terror.
    Her captors had taken her glasses – the room was blurred. But she made out bars across the moonlit window, their shadows falling across unfamiliar furniture, sloping attic ceilings, and a chair in which a small figure slumped, his head resting against the wall.
    Natalie clutched the blankets to her chin and stared at the boy. Even without her glasses, there was no mistaking that unruly hair, those awful clothes. Without stopping to think, she fought off the blankets and clambered out of bed. “You little slime-bag!” she yelled, thumping him. “You deliberately tripped me!”
    The boy jerked awake and jumped off the chair, arms over his head. “No, don’t get up! He took your—”
    Natalie’s fury died in a flood of embarrassment, confusion and fear. Sometime while she’d slept, her jeans and anorak had been replaced by a thin cotton shift that barely came to her knees. She grabbed the blanket she’d just discarded and wrapped it tightly around herself.
    “—clothes,” the boy finished, staring fixedly at his feet. “It wasn’t my fault. Don’t hurt me, please.”
    Did he really think she was going to hurt him? Like this?
    Movement had revived all the bruises she’d suffered in the car park when she fell. Her