Read December for Free Online Page B

There, gleaming in the moonlight, beneath the radiant Angel above us, glowed the Ormond Jewel on top of the Ormond Riddle!
    Winter took the Jewel in her hand. ‘ Amor et suevre tosjors celer ,’ she whispered eerily, reciting the inscription inside, as her forefinger traced the almost invisible letters. ‘A love whose works must always be kept secret.’ She looked up at me and asked the question that was in all of our minds. ‘Why would your mum have these?’
    I could see my own shocked expression mirrored on the faces of Boges and Winter. We should have felt fantastic. We should have felt like leaping over the cenotaph in a single bound. Instead, dark questions had taken over.
    ‘Your mum?’ Boges asked slowly. ‘Your mum is Deep Water or Double Trouble?’
    ‘It can’t be right.’ I shook my head, refusing to accept it. ‘There must be an explanation.’
    ‘That scent that you almost identified back there at the undertakers’ … Maybe you’re repressing the memory,’ Boges continued, hinting at my reaction to the scent of Mum’s perfume the last time we snuck into Rafe’s house. ‘Maybe you know exactly who it belongs to but can’t bear to face the truth, and that’s why you can’t bring yourself to recall it. It’s your heart stopping you.’ Boges shook his head and ran his handsthrough his hair. ‘I can’t believe your mum is in on this … Mrs O,’ he said in disbelief.
    ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said defensively. ‘You don’t know that’s true. She could–’
    ‘Oh wow! What is that?’ a voice interrupted us.
    I swung round.
    ‘What are you doing here, Gabbi?’
    ‘You said you were coming here so as soon as Uncle Rafe and Mum went to bed, I snuck out. Don’t worry, they don’t have a clue I’m gone!’
    My little sister didn’t look the least bit sorry about breaking the rules. In fact, she looked pretty proud of herself for wandering out alone to find me.
    She’d been kidnapped before, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her off, especially not right now when I was sick with suspicions about Mum.
    She ran over to hug Boges and Winter.
    ‘That’s the Ormond Jewel,’ I said, finally answering Gabbi’s question, ‘and that is the Ormond Riddle. These are the two things everyone ’s been after.’
    ‘Where did you find them?’ she asked.
    Winter looked down, avoiding the question, and fiddled with the laces on her sneakers, while Boges remained gobsmacked, the two frown lines on his forehead forging together in a deep trough.
    ‘Is that a real emerald?’ she said, coming closer.
    ‘You bet,’ Boges replied, finally speaking up for all of us. ‘It’s the real thing. “Big as a pigeon’s egg”,’ he quoted.
    While Gabbi and Boges talked, Winter pulled me aside against the dark, curving wall of the cenotaph.
    ‘Your mum had these? From Rathbone? In her bag?’ she whispered, her worried eyes searching mine.
    I nodded.
    ‘ Mum had them?’ asked Gabbi, swinging around from Boges. ‘How come Mum had these things if everyone’s been after them? I thought you said she didn’t know anything about this.’
    I was lost for words. As I shrugged my shoulders , things seemed to slowly come into place. My mum must have always known more than she’d let on. After all, she’d seen the transparency and the empty jewel box, and she’d heard Rafe questioning me about the Ormond Riddle–she’d been there all along. I recalled her staring at Dad’s drawing of the Angel up on my bedroom wall before this mess began …
    The cenotaph started to spin around me like I was trapped inside one of those anti-gravity carnival rides. Mum? Could Mum have been the person who–I tried to stop my brain from going there, but it was determined. My mum had beenacting like a stranger to me almost all year. If she was capable of turning her back on her son, could she also have been capable of … attacking me? Locking me in a coffin and leaving me to die underground?
    ‘Somebody say