Charlie Bone and the Wilderness Wolf (Children of the Red King, Book 6) by Jenny Nimmo

interest in the waiflike pair. "I'm Charlie." He grinned at them. "So - my great-aunt is your new mother."
    "We know," said the girl. "I'm Miranda and this is Eric. We're going to get our dog."
    "You wouldn't come with us, would you, Charlie?" Emma smiled persuasively. "I don't like Darkly Wynd, and now Olivia's gone..." She hugged herself and shivered.
    "Of course we'll come," said Charlie.
    Darkly Wynd was not the sort of place people liked to visit on their own. A dark, narrow alley led into a courtyard where tall, gray buildings gathered around a square of rough cobblestones. Most of the houses were boarded up, their doors nailed shut and their windows barred.
    At the end of the courtyard a block of buildings stood facing the alley. They had tall pointed turrets, iron-framed balconies, and long windows, their pediments adorned with strange stone figures: trolls, goblins, dwarves, demons, and unlikely beasts.
    Aunt Venetia's house, on the right, had a shiny new roof; it looked a lot cleaner than Aunt Eustacia's house, in the middle, or Lucretia's, on the left.
    "Great-aunt Venetia's had her house done up," Charlie remarked. "It looked awful after the fire."
    "Fire?" Miranda's small face puckered with fear. "How did it happen?"
    "Oh, er, just an accident," Charlie replied evasively.
    Emma gave him a look that said "thank you for not going into detail."
    Three sets of steps led up to three black doors, and a number thirteen, in polished bronze, was fixed to the center of each door.
    "Three thirteens," Billy whispered. (It was the sort of place that made you speak very softly.) "Doesn't the mailman get confused?"
    "Probably," said Charlie.
    A sudden, frantic whining came from inside the third number thirteen, and Miranda cried, "It's Chattypatra! You can hear her."
    They ran across the courtyard and stopped at the foot of the steps. Runner Bean began to bark excitedly. His tail wagged so fast you could hardly see it.
    "Your uncle said the key was under the troll," Emma told Charlie.
    "What troll?" And then Charlie saw it. A squat, evil-looking lump of stone standing in a dark corner of the porch.
    "We're coming, Chattypatra," called Miranda. "We're coming."
    The whining increased. It grew into a stream of delirious barks, while Runner Bean joined in with his own special brand of yelping.
    "SHUT UP!" cried Charlie, glaring at the big dog.
    Benjamin clamped his hand around Runner Bean's nose. "You don't have to talk to him like that," he said in an offended tone.
    "Sorry, but I just can't think." Charlie stared at the troll.
    "What's there to think about? The key's under the troll." Emma began to mount the steps.
    "No, Em." Charlie grabbed her arm. "Take this." He handed her the kettle.
    "Wow, it's heavy." She touched the blackened side. "And it's warm."
    "I know." Charlie had noticed the kettle getting warmer. Did it have something to do with Great-aunt Venetia's house? He climbed the steps while the others remained on the sidewalk, watching him silently.
    He bent toward the troll and stopped. The troll had blinked. Could it have been a trick of the light? Charlie's own shadow passing over the stone? No. He was quite certain that one of the troll's stone eyelids had closed over its round, malevolent eye. It had happened so fast, Charlie barely had time to register it. But it HAD moved.
    Charlie turned to the group behind him, all looking up expectantly, except for Eric who was gazing at the troll with an odd, distant expression.
    Charlie took a breath, bent down very quickly, and pushed the troll backward. And there was Great-aunt Venetia's front door key. He picked it up and flourished it at the others.
    Everyone cried, "Hooray!" and rushed up the steps.
    Charlie fitted the key into the lock, turned it, and the door swung open without so much as a squeak, let alone the sinister creak that he expected.
    A small, white dog shot out of the house and leaped into Miranda's arms.
    "Oh, Chatty, Chatty!" Miranda's eyes were in danger