The Raven Queen by Che Golden

over!’ said Danny. ‘I’ve had these under my bed for months – fresh food would have evolved by now. I wouldn’t have had to pack it; it would have been able to walk after us.’
    â€˜We can always stop at the petrol station and get some sandwiches,’ said Roisin.
    â€˜Weapons?’ asked Maddy.
    Danny shook his head. ‘We don’t have any iron in the house that can be used as a weapon, sorry. We’ve all got iron on us. It will have to do.’
    Maddy clambered over her own bed and eased the wardrobe door open, bracing it with her palm so the pressure catch would not open too fast and too hard and make a loud click. She grabbed her fake leather jacket and felt for the lump in the lining where she had hidden a crude iron knife that Granda had made for her. She was going to roast, wearing the jacket in this heat. She could already feel the temperature begin to climb as the storm blew itself out. And she had no more knives for Danny and Roisin. It was meagre protection, but she felt it was better than nothing.
    She took a deep breath and shrugged the jacket on before looking at her cousins’ white faces floating in the dark, their pale skin picked out by wan rays of moonlight.
    â€˜Let’s go,’ she said.
    Ronan was fast asleep in the room he shared with Danny, starfished in his boxer shorts on top of a rumpled duvet. The door to the bedroom where Sean and Paul slept was slightly ajar and they were unconscious from a day of kicking, gouging and biting. Danny jerked his head toward the stairs and they crept down them as quietly as they could, wincing at every creak the steps made beneath the floral carpet. Aunt Fionnula and Uncle Jack were fast asleep at the back of the house and Danny took great care not to rattle the keys on the hook beside the door as he lifted them off. He turned the keys slowly in the locks, so the tumblers turned with sleepy clicks, and one by one they tiptoed out into the moonlit, drizzly summer night.
    Although the temptation to run was overwhelming, they walked gingerly on their cushioned feet down the dark terrace and Maddy didn’t dare breathe normally until they had reached the top of the ancient steps that led them down the hill and into the heart of the city. She gripped the narrow railing that ran up the middle and watched her feet carefully on the wet, shining stone.
    â€˜How are we going to get to Blarney?’ asked Roisin as they hurried down the long flight of steps. ‘It’s miles away.’
    â€˜We’re going to get a cab,’ said Danny. ‘But we have to start walking toward the village. I’m not going into a taxi office – they’ll call the guards on us. We have to make someone feel sorry for us.’
    â€˜But we haven’t got any money,’ said Maddy.
    â€˜We do,’ said Danny.
    â€˜How?’ asked Rosin.
    â€˜I stole the monsters’ birthday money out of Mam’s chest of drawers,’ said Danny.
    â€˜Oh God,’ said Roisin. ‘We’re never going to be able to go home – Mam is going to skin us alive when she finds out!’
    â€˜I can’t worry about that right now,’ said Danny. ‘Let’s just get to Blarney.’
    It would be a nice problem to have
, thought Maddy.
If we’re worrying about Aunt Fionnula finding out the birthday money is gone, it means we came back
. She knew Roisin and Danny were thinking the same thing, but they all avoided looking at each other. At the bottom of the steps, Danny turned away from the quays at the heart of the city and instead followed the road that joined up with the motorway, the road that would lead them away from the safety of the iron-cladcity and into the fields and woods of the countryside, the road that would eventually lead to the faerie mound that pulsed like a tumour in the grounds of Blarney Castle.

CHAPTER SIX
    The motorway was lit up almost as bright as day with giant arching