The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection: Look into My Eyes; Take Your Last Breath; Catch Your Death; Feel the Fear; Pick Your Poison; Blink and You Die. Lauren Child
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editing. Last of all, thanks a whole heap to Trisha Krauss and Lucy Vanderbilt for advice on American-speak.
Contents
Coming up for air
An Ordinary Kid
Chapter 1. Don’t back away or they will see you as prey
Chapter 2. One drop could save your life
Chapter 3. Plankton and sea cucumbers
Chapter 4. The recurring dream
Chapter 5. The shape of a condor
Chapter 6. An ocean of fear
Chapter 7. Dolphins, sharks - they’re all the same
Chapter 8. D for detention
Chapter 9. All out of fish
Chapter 10. Sea Division
Chapter 11. Seriously strange
Chapter 12. Consequences
Chapter 13. -... . .- - / .. - --..-- / -. --- ... -.-- / .--. .- .-. -.- . .-.
Chapter 14. Another Twinford Bay casualty
Chapter 15. Clutching at straws
Chapter 16. Don’t look back
Chapter 17. Something fearsome this way comes
Chapter 18. White noise
Chapter 19. Strange and old-fashioned
Chapter 20. A real potato head
Chapter 21. Get Zuko
Chapter 22. No news is good news
Chapter 23. Love without words
Chapter 24. Just plain lucky
Chapter 25. Once in a blue moon
Chapter 26. Cerebral Sounds
Chapter 27. An unblemished record
Chapter 28. I speak the truth
Chapter 29. A schoolboy error
Chapter 30. The toes of the sisters
Chapter 31. A seahorse and a golden bird
Chapter 32. From the jaws of death
Chapter 33. Time for some answers
Chapter 34. Laugh all you like, sucker
Chapter 35. Connecting the dots
Chapter 36. Stranger things have happened at sea
Chapter 37. A cloud of indigo
Chapter 38. Just static
Chapter 39. Your mother’s jewel
Chapter 40. Looking for trouble
Chapter 41. Swimming blind
Chapter 42. Whatever happened to plan B?
Chapter 43. A stitch in time
Chapter 44. Playing for time
Chapter 45. You can count on me
Chapter 46. M is for Martha
Chapter 47. Where’s an apple barrel when you need one?
Not a dream
Chapter 48. The truth is indigo
Chapter 49. The truth will out
Chapter 50. Hard to explain
A real emergency
A note on the Chime Melody musical code, with help from Dr Thomas Gardner, Music Consultant to Ruby Redfort.
A note on Count von Viscount’s static code by Marcus du Sautoy, Super-Geek Consultant to Ruby Redfort.
A note on Arvo Pärt
Acknowledgments
THE SUN FLICKERED ON THE OCEAN, cutting bright diamonds of light into the surface of the indigo water. A three-year-old girl was peering over the side of a sailboat, staring down into the deep. The only sounds came from her parents’ laughter, the sing-song hum of a man’s voice and the clapping of the waves against the yacht.
Gradually the sounds became less and less distinct until the girl was quite alone with the ocean. It seemed to be pulling her, drawing her to it… confiding a secret, almost whispering to her.
She barely felt herself fall as she tipped forward and slipped into the soft ink of the sea.
Down she twisted, her arms, her legs above her like tendrils. The water felt smooth and perfectly cold; fish darted and silver things whisked by – her breath bubbled up as transparent pearls.
Then suddenly, like a snap of the fingers, all the fish were gone: it was just the girl in the big wide ocean.
But she wasn’t quite alone.
There was something else.
Something calling to her, but she couldn’t see what. It saw her though, with ancient eyes, unblinking as it steadily pulsed its way through the blue. Something with long, long snaking arms hovering between her and nothing.
And then, vine-like, the thing coiled a limb round her ankle and tugged her firmly in the direction of infinity. Down to who knew where?
Ooops, thought the child. And on she spun. Bubbles fizzed about her and her head began to throb, her breath almost gone.
And then yank! Something grabbed her arm, someone grabbed her arm. The strangling-thing released her; suddenly she was coming up for air, breaking through the surface of the ocean.
She found herself slapped mackerel-like onto the hot deck of the boat, coughing saltwater from her lungs. Her green eyes blinked open and she smiled up at two troubled faces. She felt the water dribble from her ears, and heard the sound of the gulls screaming in the sky above.