The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) by Eoin Mcnamee

Author:Eoin Mcnamee [Mcnamee, Eoin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780375985928
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-08-14T06:00:00+00:00

When Vandra got back to Pearl’s bed, the agent was awake.

“Do you want something to help you sleep?” Vandra said.

“Something you could inject into me?” Pearl asked.

“That’s only for really serious things,” Vandra said. “But I can get a pill from Jamshid.”

“No, it’s okay, I feel like talking. There’s a phrase that keeps going through my head. They kept asking about it when they were interrogating me, whether Agent Stone had found any references. When I said no, they didn’t believe me and they kept on hurting me.”

Pearl shuddered and fell silent. Vandra took her hand where it lay on the covers.

“What was the phrase?”

“Kind of an odd thing: ‘The Lost Boys.’ ‘What do you know about the Lost Boys. Tell us about the Lost Boys.’ I told them I’d never heard of them, do you hear me, I’ve never heard of them!”

“It’s okay,” Vandra said, “it’s okay.”

There was no pill or injection to heal such fear. Instead, Vandra held Pearl tight, afraid to move as the woman clung to her. Late into the night, Vandra realized that Pearl was asleep, but she dared not move.

The Lost Boys. The phrase ran through Vandra’s mind, gathering mystery to itself. Who were they? How would she find out? In the end she fell asleep lying across the bed, still holding Pearl.

The following evening the ravens gathered in the trees at the front of the school, silhouetted against the reddening sky as the sun went down. Les had puzzled all day as to what they should do. In the end he wrote ASK THE GALLERY OF WHISPERS on a sheet of paper and held it up to the others. They all nodded.

That evening each one pleaded tiredness and went to bed early (although Les thought Dixie overdid the elaborate yawning and stretching). They would use the time-honored method of putting pillows in their beds to imitate their sleeping forms so they could visit the gallery. Vandra produced four little boxes and gave them one each.

“They’re Slugs of Somnolence,” she said. “They’re quite vicious and hate being enclosed in the boxes, so they growl all the time. The thing is, their growls sound exactly like people breathing. But whatever you do, don’t open the box. They’ve got teeth.”

When the time came, the cadets placed the Slugs of Somnolence under their pillows and sneaked out.

“Ravens got the message, then,” Les said, looking up at the white-coated lenses of the surveillance cameras. The cadets were all wearing dark clothing, and Dixie produced a tin of camouflage blacking. They were barely visible as they made their way toward the front of the school.

“What’s going to happen when Brunholm notices that all the cameras are going out? He’ll smell a rat.”

But the ravens had thought of that as well. Les picked the lock of the front door and they went into the hallway. Brunholm had insisted that two cameras would do the work of the porter, Valant, so despite his protests, he had been given duties in the archive.

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