Within an hour of receiving the email, the sender was sitting across from me in the consulting room that I had prepared earlier that day. Elizabeth Clarke was in her early twenties and very pretty, something that Isidor had obviously noticed. He sat to the side of me, his mouth open. Elizabeth had blond hair that she had piled on top of her head in a loose-fitting bun. Little wisps of hair lay against her perfectly formed cheekbones. Her green eyes twinkled and her full lips glowed with a faint shade of pink lipstick. She was smartly dressed in a white blouse and light blue pencil skirt and jacket.
“Are you any good?” she asked me.
“At what?” I smiled back, but I knew what she meant. I had advertised my services as a private investigator and she wanted to know if she was going to be wasting her money or not.
She glanced at Potter who slouched against the wall in the corner, lost in a cloud of cigarette smoke, then at Isidor and Kayla who sat on either side of me. “Perhaps I’ve wasted my time,” she said, getting up from her seat.
“You’re not married, Miss Clarke,” I started, and winked at Kayla. God, this was so easy but it felt so damn good to be back at doing what I enjoyed the most. “However, you are dating someone and he hasn’t shaved for at least two days. You’re a school teacher by profession. You were raised in the town of Wood Hill but left some years ago and haven’t been back for some time. You live in a city that is some distance away. Your journey today was long enough for you to need to stop at a petrol station and refill your car. You’ve come about a family matter. Not a friend. A member of your family…”
“Okay, you’ve made your point,” Elizabeth said, sitting back down. “How did you know all that stuff about me — have you researched me in some way?”
“All I knew was from what you said in your email, that you had been pushed and that your name was Elizabeth,” I assured her.
“So how do you know then?” she asked me. “Are you psychic?”
“No,” I smiled, shaking my head.
“She sees things,” Isidor added.
“So you are a psychic then,” Elizabeth said. “I have no need for one of those.”
“You’re not married because you don’t wear a wedding ring,” I smiled. “That was the easy part. You haven’t removed one or forgotten to put it on as there is no red mark left on your finger. You are, however, in a relationship with a man who either hasn’t shaved for a few days or has a very short beard. He has travelled with you and is probably waiting for you back at your motel.”
“How can you be so sure about that?” Elizabeth asked me, looking startled.
With my fingertip, I tapped my cheek and said, “Miss Clarke, your cheeks have a rather healthy glow, as does your chin. That might be due to exceptionally good health, but the redness to the chin — no that looks more like a rash of some kind — like you’ve been kissing a man recently who hasn’t shaved. He has travelled with you today as you’ve come a long distance and the rash would have faded by now. The spattering of chalk dust on your right sleeve tells me that you have been writing recently on a chalkboard, which suggests that you are a teacher of some kind. The raised pimple of flesh on the middle finger of your right hand tells me that you like to write a lot — more than just the occasional note or two, so I’m guessing your mark a lot of homework.”
“And how do you know that I’ve travelled a long distance today…”
Before she had the chance to finish her question, I said, “By the fact that you needed to refill your car with petrol — you’ve splashed some on your skirt. You would have only come such a long distance if it was a matter of urgency. For instance, a problem with a family member. I’m guessing by the fact that you are staying in a motel that it is a brother or sister who is working in this area. If it had been a parent, you would be staying with them.”
“How can you be so sure that I’m staying at a motel?” Elizabeth asked.
“Because no one would have left their own home on such a wet night dressed like you are now,” I smiled at her. “When you set off today, you had no idea that the weather would be so bad once you got here and you hadn’t packed adequate clothing.”
“Very good,” Elizabeth said staring at me.
“Good?” Kayla gasped, “That was awesome!”
Not wanting to waste any more time, I looked at Elizabeth. “You said in your email that you’ve been pushed. Please explain what you mean by that?”
With the back of her hand, Elizabeth knocked away one of the loose strands of hair and said, “I saw your advert in the shop window and it reminded me of something my sister used to say.”
“Your sister?” I asked her. “And where is your sister now?”
“What makes you think that she has gone somewhere?” Elizabeth shot back.
“You spoke of her in the past tense,” I smiled. “What was her name?”
“Emily,” Elizabeth said, taking a picture from her pocket and sliding it across the table towards me.
I picked it up, glanced at the photo and said, “An identical twin?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “We were identical in more ways than just our looks. Emily, like me, was a teacher. I’ve taught now for the past two years at a school in Linden.”
“Don’t you mean Lond…” Isidor started and I kicked him under the table.
“Please continue, Miss Clarke,” I smiled at her.
“Emily decided against a career in Linden and decided to teach closer to where we were raised in the town of Wood Hill,” Elizabeth continued. “She was so happy when she got herself a position at Ravenwood’s, a nearby private school. The pay was good and she seemed very happy for a time.”
“So what changed all of that?” I asked her, my interest growing in the case on hearing that Elizabeth’s sister had been working at Ravenwood School.
“The wolves came,” Elizabeth said. “As you well know, we all spend most of our teenage years fearing that the wolves would come to our town to match, but obviously like yourselves, we were lucky and the wolves didn’t choose our home town while we grew up. So we escaped the matching. Like everyone else, we heard the stories and the rumours about the schools and the children where the wolves had chosen. That’s one of the reasons that both Emily and I decided to be teachers, we wanted to try and help those children should the wolves ever arrive at the schools where we taught. I think somewhere deep inside the both of us, we both prayed that would never happen. As you know, it has been more than five years since the wolves came to match and this time around they chose the school where Emily taught. We have always been close even though we have lived apart over the last few years,” Elizabeth continued, and I could see tears standing in her eyes as she recalled her sister. “Within days of the wolves arriving at Ravenwood School, the teachers there started to leave.”
“Why?” I asked, curious to know what had taken place there.
“The wolves arrived, but you must understand that they don’t look like wolves, they look just like us humans,” she explained. “They wear the skins of the children that they matched with years ago. They erected searchlights and towers and covered the tops of the walls with razor wire. Emily called me one night and said that Ravenwood was now more like a prison than a school. She told me that some of the parents had tried to break into the school to free their children, they wanted the treaty that had been agreed to hundreds of years ago ripped up.”
“What happened to these parents?” Potter asked, stepping from the corner of the room.
“Emily didn’t say,” she answered him. “I remember one night that she was very upset and I could tell that she had been crying. A pack of juvenile wolves had arrived wanting to be matched. Emily had been close to all of her students but she had a couple of favourites. Both of these had been chosen for matching and she said that they changed — they were no longer the children that she had once taught. Within days they had left and she never saw them again, nor did their parents.”
“How had they changed?” Kayla asked.
“Emily didn’t say,” Elizabeth said, and I watched as a tear spilled from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “But I knew she was, at times, terrified of what was happening at Ravenwood. Then, she started ringing me and saying that she had started to be plagued by vivid dreams. In these dreams she saw a different world. At first I thought it was just Emily wishing that things could be different, but she became convinced that the world as we know it had been…pushed…somehow. That’s how she described it, Miss Hudson, just like you did in your advert. Emily started to believe that the world had been pushed off course. She told me that the world had once been different. Where there weren’t any wolves — Skin-walkers. She described a world not too dissimilar to the one we know, but it was a world where children weren’t matched.”
“Where is Emily now?” I asked her, wishing that I could speak with her to discover what else she knew.
“She’s vanished,” Elizabeth said, trying to fight off a stream of tears that were desperate to roll down the length of her face.
“Vanished how?” Isidor gently asked her while handing her a piece of tissue.
“Thank you,” she said, mopping away her tears. “I believe she has been murdered.”
“What makes you think that?” Potter cut in.
“Emily told me that the Headmaster of the school just left or disappeared,” Elizabeth explained. “A wolf by the name of McCain took his place. He was a harsh man and he replaced the teachers with people who wore hoods and gowns. Emily told me that you couldn’t see their faces. These new teachers, if that’s what they were, were cruel to the children. Emily said that on several occasions their cruelness was something close to brutal. She went to McCain and objected at what she had witnessed. McCain told her that if she didn’t like how the school was being run, she was free to leave. But Emily couldn’t — she wanted to stay and protect the children, and besides, like most of the other teachers had, she lived on the school grounds, it was her home.
“Then, one night she called me to say that she had woken the night before to find McCain standing in her room, staring down at her while she slept. She asked him what he wanted and what he was doing in her room in the middle of the night, but he left without giving an explanation. Emily said she was now in fear for her own safety and I begged her to leave. But she told me how she had bought herself one of those tiny video cameras. She explained that she was going to try and capture on film some of the cruelty that the children endured at Ravenwood School and then send it to the press. She was also going to hide the camera in her room at night to see what it was that McCain was doing in there while she slept. Emily feared that he had perhaps been into her room before but she hadn’t woken.”
“And did she capture anything on film?” I asked her, now gripped by the story.
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, that red rash on her cheeks now gone. “I haven’t heard from Emily since that last phone call. I’ve tried ringing her mobile, I’ve sent emails, but have heard nothing from my sister. I’ve tried to contact McCain but he refuses to return my calls. So today, unable to continue with my life until I find out what has happened to my sister, my boyfriend, Harry and I drove the long distance to Wood Hill to visit Ravenwood School. We didn’t get any further than the main gates, which are locked with chains and padlocks. Emily was not exaggerating when she said that Ravenwood had become something close to a prison.
“Eventually, McCain came down to the gates and told me to go away before he called the police. But I could see in his eyes that he had murdered Emily,” Elizabeth said.
“How can you be so sure?” I asked her.
“Because when he saw me standing at the gates, he looked as if he had seen a ghost,” she said. “He hadn’t known that Emily had an identical twin. For a moment, he thought I was her.”
“What did he say?” I asked her.
“After realising his mistake, McCain told us that Emily had left the school some weeks ago, but I knew that was a lie because I’d only spoken to her a few days before,” Elizabeth said. “Knowing that McCain would never tell me the truth, Harry and I headed back into town and paid a visit to the local police station. I spoke to an officer there by the name of Banner, but he didn’t seem interested. It took me over half an hour to get him to agree to file a missing persons report. So, feeling as if I had wasted my time and was still no nearer to the truth, we decided to stay in town, but we soon realised that the place was like, really weird.”
“I know what you mean,” Kayla added. “Isidor and I have been there.”
“We decided to stay out of town in a motel,” Elizabeth
continued. “And it was as we made our way back through town to our car, that I saw your advert in the shop window and that word ‘pushed’ made me think of what Emily had said to me. Do you think you can help?”
Not wanting to give away how much I knew about the world being pushed, I looked across the table at Elizabeth and said, “I think it would be best if you returned straight to Lon…Linden. You can be of little to no help here. And just in case you are wrong about McCain, surely it would be better if you were at home, where your sister knows that she can find you. I will make some enquires at the school and with the local police. Please can you give me your sister’s full name, date of birth, bank details, mobile phone number and car index?”
“Why?” Elizabeth asked me.
“It may help with my enquiries.”
“Do you think you might be able to discover what happened to my sister?” Elizabeth said, writing down the information that I had asked for.
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” I said softly. “But you have my guarantee that I will do my very best to discover the truth for you. But it does seem like a most desperate case where your sister is concerned and it would be wrong of me to give you false hope.”
“It’s not hope that I’m looking for,” Elizabeth said. “It’s the truth that I seek.”
“Then go back to Linden tonight and I shall be in contact with you as soon as I have some news,” I tried to assure her.
Elizabeth stood up and went to the door. Isidor followed her as if to show her out. But at the door, she turned to look back at me.
“Pushed,” she said. “You know what my sister was talking about don’t you, Kiera Hudson?”
I looked straight back at her, and with half a smile I said, “That’s what we do, Miss Clarke. We push back where others can’t. Goodbye.”