Midnight's Choice by Kate Thompson Page A

moment, then turned back. Once again his face wore the sweet smile that had stayed in her mind’s eye for so long.
    â€˜Do you need help with something?’ she said.
    He laughed and shook his head, and Tess had a strange sense of having missed some kind of opportunity.
    â€˜Are you sure?’ she said.
    â€˜I’m sure.’
    â€˜Well, I do.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    She stopped, remembering the difficulty that Kevin had encountered when he tried to convince her that he knew she was a Switcher. It was something that had been private for her all her life, and it was a subject not easy to approach. She had been defensive and dismissive. She had no reason to believe that Martin wouldn’t feel the same way.
    â€˜It’s a friend of mine,’ she said at last. ‘Sort of a friend, anyway. He’s been taken prisoner.’
    â€˜By who?’ Martin’s face seemed to be open and full of concern, but Tess was aware of some darkness which flitted behind his eyes.
    â€˜By the zoo,’ she said.
    â€˜The zoo?’ said Martin, his voice full of incredulity. Tess had hoped that it might have been enough of a hint; that if he was a Switcher he would empathise with her having animal friends and open himself to her. But instead he went on, ‘Are you serious? Are you the full shilling?’
    Tess swore to herself in Rat. There was no easy way into this. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘let’s not beat about the bush, eh? I know who you are, I know what you can do. You don’t have to pretend with me.’
    The boy ran a hand through his thick red hair and looked at Tess with a bemused expression. ‘What, exactly, do you know?’ he asked. Again his face seemed open and friendly, but again Tess was aware of a shadow passing behind his eyes, as though there were someone else in there apart from the charming boy, looking out through his eyes.
    Tess took the bull by the horns. ‘I know that you’re a Switcher. I know that because I’m one, too.’
    â€˜A Switcher?’ Martin’s face wore a puzzled frown. ‘What’s a Switcher?’
    â€˜You know very well, because you are one.’
    â€˜I know what I am, all right,’ said Martin, and there was an edge to his voice as he said it which went along with the sinister shadow in his eyes. ‘What I don’t know, though, is what it has to do with you.’
    â€˜I’ve already told you. I need your help to rescue my friend. I don’t know how I’m going to do it on my own.’
    Martin looked thoughtfully at his feet for a moment, then said, ‘Tell me about your friend.’

CHAPTER EIGHT
    T ESS WASN’T SURE WHERE to start. She realised she was still standing up beside the bed, and took the opportunity to get her thoughts together while she looked for a chair. There was one beside the table, but she had to move a pile of books off it. She noticed as she did so that they were all horror stories, classics as well as modern writers.
    â€˜How old are you?’ she asked, as she brought the chair over to the bed and sat down in it.
    Martin resettled himself as well, propping himself up on pillows and pulling the covers up around his waist.
    â€˜Fifteen,’ he said.
    The wind was knocked out of Tess’s sails, and for a moment she wondered if she was making a terrible mistake.
    â€˜You can’t be!’ she said.
    â€˜Well I am, almost. Why shouldn’t I be?’
    Tess breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Because if you were, if you’d had your fifteenth birthday, you wouldn’t be able to do it any more.’
    â€˜Do what?’
    â€˜You know very well, what. Change your form, become something else.’
    The look in Martin’s eye was, for a moment, openly hostile. In an instant, though, he had recovered his poise, and the charming expression of puzzled interest returned.
    â€˜Go on,’ he said.
    â€˜Well, you need to know that,