Franklin's Emporium Read online

  She was going to call the kitten Misty but Dad called him Cesare after some evil old Italian duke, and it stuck – for good reason. Cesare was a complete tyrant: he tore the curtains, scratched the furniture, weed on the carpets and even chewed up my school project. Mum had to write a letter to my teacher saying the cat ate my homework.

  For a creature that was adorable – all round blue eyes and smoky grey fur – he had an evil heart. It was the cutesy-pie kitten’s fault that the invisicat came to stay and refused to budge.

  Paws 4 Thought was bigger than it looked from the outside. The main part was stacked with sacks of cat litter and dog biscuits, birdseed and racks of collars, poop-scoops and bird feeders. The rest was divided into four separate areas: one for fish, one for rodents, one for birds and a private, curtained off area at the back.

  The pet shop owner was poking around as if he was trying to find something. When he saw me he flapped his hand irritably, said, ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ and started pulling boxes off a shelf and peering behind them.

  I didn’t mind. It was the Easter holidays and I had time to waste.

  Like some other units in Franklin’s, Paws 4 Thought was strange. It was gloomy, lit by dismal, dusty bulbs. The only bright illumination came from occasional flashes of coloured light from around the edges of the sagging black drapes at the back of the shop.

  The pets had fresh food and water but their roomy cages were made of curly, wrought iron metal with bolts and cogs and elaborate locks on the doors. If they’d had wheels they’d have rolled about on their own as if a mad scientist had wound them up. Inside their ornate cages the animals and birds were creepily silent.

  In the shadowy aquarium, fish sailed monotonously back and forth in illuminated tanks, occasionally diving down to ruined gothic castles, sunken airships and skulls with jaws that opened and shut. I liked those. I picked up a display skull and was feeding it a simpering mermaid when a jingling noise made me turn.

  It was the pet shop owner. He was short and thin with an ordinary face except for the fact it was very, very pale and he had huge ears. An earring, shaped like a snake eating its own tail, hung from the left lobe. He wore a sort of saggy dressing gown in balding black velvet. He was clutching a blue cat collar with three large bells on it. That’s where the jingling noise came from.

  ‘Have you lost a cat?’ I asked, putting the mermaid back on the shelf.

  ‘None of your business,’ he snapped through a mean little mouth. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for cat toys,’ I said.

  ‘You won’t find any in here. Try over there.’

  He pointed to a rack near the counter. His finger was encircled by a large ring embossed with another snake.

  I went over and browsed. I chose a treat dispenser shaped like a mouse’s head. It had a giant pink nose and ears, and holes in the sides for biscuits to fall out of when the cat batted it around. Cesare would like that – he was keen on battering things. I picked up a box of meaty snacks as well.

  Two customers came in and I went back to the fish room while the owner was serving them. I thought about feeding the mermaid to a plastic shark. Maybe set up a tug-of-war with the skull?

  Maybe not. I didn’t want to get a bad reputation, not now Mum and Dad had units here and it was only a couple of days to the boys’ exhibition.

  I bent down and looked at a blue and gold Siamese fighting fish drifting aimlessly round and round its tank. Staring at me from the other side of the tank was a pair of slanted yellow eyes. I nearly leapt out of my skin.

  The eyes vanished.

  Strange.

  As I leaned forward for a closer look I dropped the box of treats. It rattled. Instantly the eyes appeared again. I picked up the box and shook it experimentally. The eyes moved around the side of the tank to the front, stopped and looked right at me.

  When I say, ‘the eyes moved,’ that’s exactly what happened. The eyes. No body, only the eyes. And a loud throbbing purr.

  First published 2016

  This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © 2016 Bloomsbury Education

  Text copyright © Gill Vickery

  Illustrations © Aleksei Bitskoff

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

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  eISBN 978 1 4729 1804 8

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