Troubletwisters by Garth Nix, Sean Williams

at school back home, you see. . .’
    ‘You didn’t mention it before. And yesterday you ate a ham sandwich. Still, it’s not a bad philosophy, as long as we make sure your diet is balanced.’ With a heavy silver spoon, Grandma X indicated the bowl in front of her. It contained a strange-looking broth of lumpy green and orange vegetables, to which she now added a further layer of pungent herbs. ‘Lately I myself have been . . . not at my best . . . and I am hoping this will help.’
    ‘What do you call your diet?’ asked Jaide in as innocent a tone as she could manage.
    ‘Nothing in particular, dear. There are simply occasions when certain foods are beneficial, particularly for cleansing the mind. Would you care to try some?’
    Both twins quickly shook their heads.
    Grandma X smiled as though she rather enjoyed their reaction. ‘No, I didn’t think so.’
    Jack tried his best to smile back, thinking that at least Grandma X wasn’t turning into a Hansel-and-Gretel type of witch. Or at least not yet. He couldn’t help glancing at the big old oven, though. It was huge, much larger than any normal person could need, particularly if she lived alone.
    A child could fit in that oven. Even two children, in a pinch.
    Jack shuddered and looked away. What was he doing? Staring at ovens, talking to cats—
    Grandma X burped with surprising volume and waved her hand rapidly in front of her face.
    ‘Pardon me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m very sorry about that. Well, if you’re not going to eat any more, you can dispose of your leftovers and clean up your plates. And then, if you like, I’ve fished out a stack of your father’s old toys for you to play with. They’re in the lounge, by the ottoman.’
    Jack didn’t know what an ottoman was, but the thought of toys his father had owned as a child was very nearly sufficient to drive all his anxieties from his mind. He raced through his chores, then hurried to the lounge, Jaide hard on his heels.
    What they found, next to a bursting footstool, was a pile of dusty old board games. They browsed disappointedly through them, recognising titles like Scrabble, which Hector notoriously beat everyone at, but finding many others they had never heard of. What their father had seen in them, Jack didn’t know.
    ‘I’ll just be in here, tidying up, all right?’ called Grandma X from the drawing room.
    Conscious of her proximity, the twins settled in for a game of Park and Shop, which proved to be no more exciting than its name suggested. As Jaide moved her token listlessly across the board, from Bakery to Women’s Wear via something called Hay Grain Feed, she saw the old lady fiddling with the compass she had brought out the previous day, turning it from side to side and holding it upside down above her head. Whatever Grandma X was doing, it didn’t look like tidying.
    As the twins played, the cats moved restlessly through the house, padding softly up and down the stairs and peering closely into every room. To Jaide they seemed to have a purpose of some kind. They were patrolling, or searching for something. Or maybe, she thought, they were like guards in a prison, doing the rounds. And if that was the case, then she and her brother were no doubt the prisoners . . .
    Every time Kleo looked at Jack, he twitched guiltily back to the game. Luckily, however, neither Kleo nor Ari said anything more comprehensible than a meow the whole evening, and by the end of it he was convinced that he must have imagined Ari talking before. Maybe it had been oxygen deprivation from running so fast, Jack thought. His brain had become starved of air and had started hallucinating.
    Then, as Jack and Jaide were packing up the game, the cats came back with something that indicated they had been on another mission entirely: Kleo strolled into the lounge with an apparently unharmed mouse wriggling about in her mouth.
    Jaide ran forward in interest, trying to see how the cat was holding the mouse without