Read Online Cat's Paw by Nick Green - Free Book Online

worked,’ said Geoff. ‘You led me right to him. To use the Compass without training is remarkable. The fact that Ben was in trouble might have helped.’
    ‘Can’t you do the Oshtian Compass, though?’ asked Cecile.
    ‘Course he can!’ chided Susie.
    ‘Actually,’ said Geoff, ‘the answer is yes and no. For Ben, I couldn’t. I’d only met him once, you see. And you couldn’t really say we bonded. In fact, I
think you told me to get a haircut.’ He paused for the class giggle. ‘That’s why I talk about the will. It’s the driving force, the magnetism in the needle. To put it
simply, your Compass can only point to a person if you already have a very strong bond.’
    Tiffany saw Ben turn away. Were his ears normally that red?
    ‘Okay then,’ said Yusuf. ‘How did we score? Sixes? Sevens?’
    Geoff frowned. ‘Come again?’
    ‘He’s talking about your side of the bargain,’ said Susie.
    ‘Are you going to tell us who those creepy kids are, why they kidnapped Ben, and why they’re living like moles in a hole,’ said Olly, ‘or have I just knackered myself out
for nothing?’
    ‘Moles? No. They’re not moles.’ Geoff laughed darkly. ‘Okay. You’ve proved yourselves. And it is safer if you know. Though not much.’
    His eyes darted around.
    ‘Not here. I can’t talk about this next to a drawing of Winnie the Pooh.’
    ‘Sorry.’ Tiffany felt frosty again. ‘This hall was the best place I could find. Or afford.’
    ‘I’ll find us somewhere better,’ said Geoff.
     
     
     
     
     

FERAL CHILD
    Ben had always liked Abney Park Cemetery. There was no better place to chill out. Here in a walled-off corner of Hackney the evergreens grew thick as a witch’s wood.
Trees and shrubs sieved out the street noise, letting birdsong bubble through the stillness. Sleepy, creaking boughs watched over the graves and the wind whispered with the rustlings of squirrels,
foxes and field mice. This cemetery was a place of life, not death. Only once had it made Ben afraid.
    He’d been eight years old, walking with Mum and Dad, back in the days when they were still together. Then he lost them in the labyrinth of graves. Sighting a church spire above the
leaf-line he headed towards it, for he knew his own way home from Stoke Newington church. To his shock and bewilderment, the path took him not out of the graveyard but to a clearing, where stood a
hollow-eyed chapel he had never known was there. Its doors were planks, its rose window broken. It seemed to howl with loneliness.
Lost
. He had turned in terror, running through a nightmare
of ivy-bound headstones until Mum and Dad’s distant shouts finally brought him back.
    ‘He’s right!’ Daniel, clinging to the rose window, peered out through the stone petals into the thicket. ‘This place rules.’
    ‘Well. It’s still a church.’ Tiffany’s voice rang flatly.
    ‘A shell of one,’ said Geoff. ‘No-one’s used it for years. Most classes we can hold outside, so long as you hide from passers-by. Then if it rains we can exercise in
here. We are allowed to be wimpy about the rain.’
    Ben wandered up the twilit nave, long since stripped of pews. He had to admit (with a twinge of disloyalty) that Geoff had found the perfect headquarters: secret, vaguely sinister, walled in by
woodland. They didn’t even have to bring three pounds. The old chapel was tiny really, far smaller than the horror-film abbey in his memory. Funny to think he had once been scared of it. Then
the gloom brought to mind a similar place, a lost and forgotten Tube station, and the laughter stayed inside him.
    ‘Duh-duh daaaaah!’ Arms raised, Olly mimed playing a huge church organ.
    ‘It
is
a bit creepy,’ Susie frowned.
    ‘Hey, if there were ghosts around, I’d see ’em,’ said Geoff. ‘Everyone find a space to stretch.’
    During the rigorous warm-up, Ben noticed something interesting. Geoff had his own way of performing certain pashki movements. For instance, he