فصل 03

CHAPTER 3

WORRYING QUESTIONS

COLD RAIN FELL IN SHEETS FROM THE DARK LONDON sky. The gusting wind spattered raindrops against the dining-room window of the grand Aster mansion on Kensington Palace Gardens. Inside, at a table large enough for dozens of people, sat just three: young Molly Aster and her parents, Leonard and Louise.

The room was warm and bright, but the mood of its occupants more closely matched the gloomy weather outside. Lord Aster had spent the afternoon in his study, meeting with four men, all of them members of the Starcatchers, a secret group to which the Aster family had belonged for many generations.

Leonard had emerged from the meeting with a somber, troubled look. Both Molly and Louise knew he had something to tell them; they also knew that it would have to wait until they were alone. Now, with their meal finally served and the household staff back in the kitchen, Molly and her mother looked at Leonard with questioning faces. He glanced at the doorway to make sure he would not be overheard, then spoke quietly.

“I must go to Paris,” he said. “There’s to be a meeting of the senior Starcatchers.”

“Is it about what happened at Stonehenge?” asked Molly. She shuddered, recalling the terrifying night among the massive stones—her father lying on the ground, grievously wounded; her mother a ghastly sleepwalking shell, unable to recognize her husband or her daughter, her life spirit stolen by the hideous shadow creature that called itself Ombra. That night Molly had very nearly lost both of her parents, and the Starcatchers a huge quantity of precious, powerful starstuff, which would have fallen into the hands of humanity’s most evil enemies. If Peter hadn’t been there…

“Yes,” said Leonard, his voice low. “It’s about what happened at Stonehenge. And some other troubling things, which I was a fool not to recognize earlier.”

“What troubling things?” said Molly.

Leonard hesitated before responding, and for a moment Molly thought she had pressed too hard. Until recently, her parents had revealed little to her about the inner workings of the Starcatchers. But since the awful night at Stonehenge, and the courage Molly had displayed there, Leonard had been more willing to answer his daughter’s questions.

“Actually,” said Leonard, “what’s most troubling is something that didn’t happen. That was a very large batch of starstuff we had—the largest in centuries, at least. Yet we received no warning before it fell in Scotland. That’s why the Others got to it first. We were so concerned about getting it to the Return that we didn’t stop to ask ourselves why we weren’t warned about it in the first place.”

“What kind of warning?” asked Molly. “I thought the Starcatchers could sense when starstuff fell.”

“Yes, we do feel something when a large amount of starstuff falls,” said Leonard. “But the Others feel it, too. The reason we always manage to reach fallen starstuff before they do is that we always receive warnings before it falls.”

“Warnings from whom?” said Molly.

“We don’t know,” said Leonard. “The alerts come anonymously, by various methods. Long ago, it would be an unsigned letter slipped under a Starcatcher’s door. More recently—for the last century or so—the warnings have appeared in an Oxford newspaper, the Observer.”

“Warnings about starstuff…in a newspaper?” said Molly.

“They were coded,” said Leonard. “They took the form of personal notices to a ‘Mr. Starr.’ Every day for more than a hundred years, a Starcatcher stationed in Oxford has scoured the Observer for these notices. Sometimes decades would go by without one appearing. But then, one day, he’d find a notice that said something like ‘Mr. Starr: Expect your package Thursday.’We then knew that there would be a starstuff Fall on Thursday. We wouldn’t know where it would fall, but by knowing when we could have teams alerted all over the world, watching the skies for the Fall, ready to go collect the starstuff. That gave us a huge advantage over the Others. We almost always reached it first.”

“Until that big lot fell in Scotland,” said Molly.

“Yes,” said Leonard. “There was no warning for that. Last week we had our man check and recheck the Observer for the days leading up to that Fall; he found no notice for Mr. Starr. That’s troubling enough. What’s more troubling is how quickly the Others got to the starstuff in Scotland. It’s as if they were warned instead of us.”

“When was the last warning, then?” said Molly.

“It was twelve years ago,” said Leonard. “In fact, just a few days before you were born. That was the last notice for Mr. Starr that appeared in the Observer.”

“And you have no idea who’s been doing the warning?” asked Molly.

“None,” said Leonard. “Whoever they are, they’ve always kept their identities hidden. And for whatever reason, this time—even with such a dangerous amount of starstuff at stake—they didn’t warn us. We were very fortunate to get that starstuff back, thanks to you and Peter.”

“And George,” said Molly.

“Yes, of course, George, too,” said Leonard. “In any event, we’re quite worried that the next time there’s a starstuff Fall, we won’t be so fortunate. We need to find out why we weren’t warned and what we can do about it. That’s one reason for the meeting in Paris. The other is this…this Ombra creature.”

As he said those words, Lord Aster glanced at his wife; her face went pale at the name of the hideous thing that had held her captive.

“Do you think there’s a connection?” said Molly. “I mean, between Ombra and the fact that there was no warning?”

“I fear so,” said Leonard. “It’s difficult to believe it’s a coincidence. And whatever this Ombra thing is, or I should say was, it’s apparently not the only one. Our man Bakari, in Egypt, encountered something quite similar a few weeks ago; we lost five people there. We’re very concerned that the Others have allied themselves with some new power—a very dangerous power. That’s why the senior Starcatchers are meeting in Paris. We need to find out quickly why this is happening and what we can do about it—before the next starstuff Fall.”

“How long do you expect to be gone?” said Louise.

“Not more than two weeks, I hope,” said Leonard. Seeing the apprehension on their faces, he added: “The house will be guarded. And I promise we’ll do a better job than last time.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Louise. “You didn’t know….”

She faltered, remembering how easily Ombra had taken over the three burly men guarding the Aster mansion when she had been kidnapped.

“It won’t happen again,” said Leonard. “We know what we’re up against now. And whatever that thing was, it was destroyed at Stonehenge.”

“Don’t worry about us, dear,” said Louise, smiling bravely. “We’ll be fine. Won’t we, Molly?”

“Yes,” said Molly. She was also smiling, although she could not help but glance, if only for a moment, at the dining-room window and the darkness beyond. Despite her faith in her father, disturbing questions filled her mind: How can we be sure that Ombra was destroyed! And do we really know what we’re up against?