by Emma Newman
Tom held up his palms. “Cat, calm down. We can talk about it on the way home. You knew this would happen one day, it happens to all of us. I had to get married, we all have to do what’s best for the family, and the alliance with the Irises is critical.”
“Fuck the Irises!” she shrieked and his pale cheeks flushed crimson.
“You’ve been in Mundanus for too long,” he said with a grimace. “Now pull yourself together and stop this nonsense. You’ve had your fun, now you have to face your–”
“You sound like our bloody father!” she yelled. “This wasn’t just having some fun, I made a life of my own!” Just three days before her life had been an open vista of possibilities. She had choices, from what to do with her life down to when she made a cup of tea and what she ate for lunch. All of them, large and small, were telescoping into a dark tunnel leading to a life she couldn’t bear, a life of quiet servitude and fitting in, of performing for society’s expectations in public and behind closed doors much worse, accepted as part of wifely duty. “I can’t live like they do.”
“I’ve had enough of this.” Tom reached for her hand, which she snapped out of his range.
She darted into the hallway. “I’m not going to be married off like some–”
“You are a Rhoeas-Papaver, one of the Great Families, and you will come back to Aquae Sulis with me now.” Tom was looking angry. She’d never seen that before.
“No, I–”
Before she realised what was happening, he’d lunged at her, banging his shoulder into her stomach and flipping her over into a fireman’s lift. His arms wrapped around her legs and he headed for the door.
“My stuff!” she yelled.
“You don’t need any of it at home,” he replied.
“You can’t do this!” she said, pummelling his back with her fists, furious at being handled like a troublesome child. Why did he have to be so big? “This is kidnapping.”
“This is the way it’s going to be, Catherine,” he said, opening the door and checking no one else was coming out of their flat at the same time. “And don’t even think about screaming,” he added, as she sucked in a deep breath to do so. “I have other Charms at my disposal that you do not want me to use.”
That kept her quiet as he descended the stairs. It was too humiliating for words. Her fury made it hard for her to think about anything but clobbering him over the head at the first opportunity and making a run for it.
“Now,” he said, hand on the handle of the communal front door. “Do I need to lock you in the boot of the car?”
“No,” she said quietly, thinking that if he put her down by the car, she could sprint away and call for help.
“And Catherine,” he added, turning the handle. “If you do anything except get in the car and put your seatbelt on without saying a word, I will use a Doll Charm on you.”
She thought she was going to be sick. She’d heard rumours of that Charm, one of the least acceptable in Society; it rendered the victim powerless over their body but still aware. The victim could be frozen rigid or kept pliable like a rag doll. Either way it would make escape impossible and he’d have to carry her into the family house utterly helpless. It would be obvious that she’d resisted him.
“I understand,” she whispered, cowed.
He dumped her by the side of a black VW Golf, too modern to belong to the family. She saw the hire-car information on the passenger seat as he unlocked the door for her. It took several goes; he was briefly befuddled by the buttons on the keychain remote, and he held her arm with his other hand as he muttered in frustration.
He opened the door for her and pushed her inside. She sat on top of the bits of paper, realising that this was it, she was leaving Manchester, kidnapped by her own brother.
“Seatbelt,” he ordered and she clicked it into place. The thought of seeing her parents by the end of that very day made her throat tight. Cathy tugged down her sleeves, twisting the cuffs as the panic surged through her, unravelling her ability to do anything except shake violently.
The door was slammed shut and he marched around to the driver’s side, looking up and down the street nervously. She was amazed no Arbiters had appeared. Perhaps they weren’t as scary as she’d been led to believe.
“Can’t I just get my bag?” she asked as he got in and put on his seatbelt.
“No.”
Just one minute would be enough time to grab her phone and hide it somewhere useful later on. “But I have things I need in–”
“Don’t you understand, Cat?” He twisted in his seat to face her. “It doesn’t matter any more. It’s over.”
He stalled the car as he tried to pull away and she sank in the seat. Could she bolt at a service station? She sighed at herself. Lord Poppy wasn’t going to forget about her, even if she did manage to get away from Tom.
“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she said, watching her street disappear in the wing mirror.
“As you’ll soon discover, sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to,” he replied, tapping the sat nav. She noticed his hands were shaking. This had been hard for him too. He was just as trapped as she was.
“We could make a plan, Tom, if we worked together–”
“Stop it!” he shouted and hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Just…just accept it and start working out what you’re going to say to Father, not how you can get out of this. Whether you like it or not, whether you hate us or not, you will be engaged to William, you will do your duty, you will marry him, and you will live in the Nether and that is that.”
She turned away, curling up her legs and looking out at the city and its traffic. She felt her heartbeat pounding in her temples, her stomach knotted. She still had a wish to make and the only thing she wanted she wasn’t permitted.
It was hard not to think about giving up.
Soon they were leaving the redbrick urban sprawl behind and the view opened out onto green fields and occasional farmhouses.
“When will we be there?” she asked.
“After dark.”
“Why don’t you take the motorway if it’s such a rush?”
“I don’t like driving on them. Everyone drives too fast.”
She faced forwards and noticed how slow he was driving. “You know we can go up to sixty on this road?”
“I’ll go at the speed I want to,” he replied, arms held rigidly straight at the wheel.
“What’s Lucy like?” she asked, hating the atmosphere, bored with the questions and worries battering her skull.
“Clever. Funny. She has good taste.”
“You like her then?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I was relieved she wasn’t like her parents.”
Cathy smiled. Poor Tom, utterly incapable of talking about how he felt. “I’m sorry,” she said, the guilt welling again. “I missed you. I thought about you all the time.”
“I just can’t believe you did it by yourself. I thought I was going to have to fight off kidnappers and rescue you.”
“But you turned out to be the kidnapper,” she said and then clamped her mouth shut. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”
“It just came out,” he corrected. “It was exactly what you were thinking. I see you’ve lost your good manners and the ability to keep your thoughts to yourself.”
She kept her mouth shut, trying to disprove him.
“What did you think you’d find in Mundanus?”
“I already found it,” she said. “Freedom.” And love, she thought, but didn’t dare mention anything to do with Josh.
“But what did you want to actually do there?”
She fiddled with a cuff again, uncertain whether to tell the truth. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Tom. She was worried he’d laugh at her. Her mouth twitched into a smile at the memory of when Josh had coaxed it out of her. He’d asked a few times at the end of a film and she’d brushed the question off, finding it hard to undo a lifetime of hiding her ambition fr
om everyone around her. Then he tickled her until she’d fallen off the sofa but she still refused to tell him. He sat back and with a terrible sadness in his eyes said, “If you don’t feel safe to tell me, that’s OK.”
That was the first moment she wondered if she was falling in love with him. She sat back on the sofa, tucked her toes under his leg and took a deep breath. “For the first few months away from my family I thought about opening a bookshop with an open fire and comfy chairs and free tea.”
“Sounds good. Only sci-fi books?”
“Maybe. Lately I’ve had another idea…but I don’t know if I could do it.”
He smiled, rested a hand on her knee. “What did Doc Brown say?”
She grinned. “‘If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.’ OK. Promise not to laugh?”
“I promise.”
“I want to do something in human rights. I want to protect people who don’t have a voice.”
He nodded. “Cool.”
She searched for any hint of scorn, any impending jibes, but there was nothing except a gentle smile. “Josh,” she said, leaning closer. “I…I think I l–.”
“Did you hear me, Cat?” Tom called. “What did you want to do in Mundanus?”
She blinked. “I wasn’t sure yet.” She swallowed the lump in her throat and looked out over the fields.
“Did you really want to stay in Mundanus forever?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Yeah,” she said wistfully.
“Even though you’d get old?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, there’s more to life than worrying about bloody wrinkles, you know.”
He winced. “Don’t speak like that once you get back to Aquae Sulis. They’ll pick you up on every little thing.”
“Didn’t they always?”
He nodded. “You’ll just have to make the best of it. William’s family are very wealthy and very powerful. It’s a very good match. You’ll want for nothing.”
“Except freedom, some basic human rights, the ability to own my own property – because that’s all I’ll be: property.”
“Cat.”
She closed her eyes, overwhelmed. If she’d had an off button, she’d press it now. She was too tired to think straight and too wired to sleep.
The car’s brakes squealed and she was thrown against her seatbelt. When she opened her eyes, she saw a car blocking the road ahead, a black vintage Bentley with a driver in goggles and leather driving gloves still behind the wheel. A young man in his early twenties was leaning against it, slapping his paired kid gloves against the palm of one hand.
He was dressed as if he’d stepped out of a shooting weekend in the Twenties. He too was wearing a very out-of-place sword.
“A Rosa,” Tom said. “Fool, what does he think he’s playing at?”
The buttonhole was the main clue: a gorgeous deep-red rose. He had a handsome face but an unfortunately large nose, dark hair scraped back and an arrogant tilt of the chin.
Tom brought the car to a stop in a narrow layby. “Stay in the car,” he said and got out. Cathy pulled up the handbrake before it could roll backwards and got out to join Tom, who clicked his tongue in irritation but carried on.
“I say, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” he said, striding up to the man. “You could have caused an accident.”
“Thomas Rhoeas-Papaver?”
“I am,” Tom replied, a foot taller than the source of his irritation. “And who might you be?”
“Horatio Gallica-Rosa,” he said with a slight bow. “And you must be the elusive Catherine Rhoeas-Papaver, so famously being schooled in Switzerland.” His eyes ran up and down her jeans and hooded top. “Is that the fashion over there?”
Catherine took Tom’s advice to not speak her thoughts; there were far too many expletives. Something about the way Horatio looked at her got her hackles up. She decided to clean the rust off her old skills.
“Mr Gallica-Rosa,” she said, with a small curtsy that felt ridiculous in jeans and trainers. “Good day to you. Has your car broken down? Do you require assistance?” The words felt so wrong, like someone else was speaking them.
“All manners now, I see,” he replied petulantly, resting his left hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword. “Pity they weren’t in evidence yesterday.”
She frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Don’t play the coquette with me, Miss Papaver.” He sighed at her blank stare. “The wish magic you cast, you foolish girl. Your meddling prevented the delivery of a mundane that was promised to me by Lady Rose.”
“How dare you speak to my sister in this manner,” Tom said as Cathy tried her best to link either of the wishes to Lady Rose. Between the sleep-deprivation, background dread and rising anger at having been called a “foolish girl” there was little left for deduction.
“Which mundane?” she asked, resting a hand on Tom’s arm.
“Ella Jacobs, the film star. The woman currently cavorting around Londinium with a veritable brown-paper bag of a mundane who was never destined to meet her.”
The Guccified redhead, Cathy realised. “Lady Rose promised her to you? A mundane? Wouldn’t the Arbiters have something to say about something that dodgy?”
She heard a tiny groan from Tom and realised she’d stopped thinking about how to speak.
The Rosa tutted. “That is irrelevant. What is of the utmost relevance, however, is how your trickery, and quite frankly disgusting thoughtlessness, has resulted in depriving me of one of the most alluring beauties of this mundane generation.” As he spoke, he took a step towards Tom. “In accordance with the rights of my birth, and with the approval of Lady Rose, I demand satisfaction.” He looked up at Tom, who was turning that awful shade of scarlet again. “And I assume, that as Miss Papaver’s only brother – and may I offer my deepest condolences to you for such a difficult burden – you will be the one to give it.”
12
Max had no idea he’d slept late until he looked at his watch. It was mid-afternoon and the room was dark; all houses in the Nether had heavy curtains to compensate for a lack of discernible night time. He ached. It was too dark to see the gargoyle but he knew it was in the corner nearest the door, just like he knew his fingers were cold and his leg hurt like hell. He pulled the cord by the side of the bed to summon help.
Axon was proving to be an excellent nurse and helped him get into a presentable and mobile state. He gave Max leather gloves to protect his hands whilst using the crutches and another shot of morphine. Axon didn’t ask stupid questions or make accusations either. All the while, the gargoyle watched, its scowl demonic.
“I’ll serve a luncheon of cold meats in the dining room, when you’re ready to eat,” Axon said and left.
“We need to talk,” the gargoyle said, clunking over to sit between the bed and the door.
“I’m hungry.” Max hoped that a full belly would help with the lightheaded fuzziness the morphine had caused.
“We can’t just ignore what’s happened in London,” said the gargoyle, coming closer. “Our first duty is to protect innocents, and they’re not being protected there. It’s up to us to step in.”
“The Chapter is gone. Without the Chapter Master, Mr Ekstrand is my direct boss now. What he says, we do.”
“My stone arse!” The gargoyle sat back on its haunches, its face level with Max. “He’s obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic and he doesn’t know what it’s like out in the field. We do.”
Max shook his head. “Disobeying a Sorcerer is not the most sensible course of action.”
“I’m not saying we go and stick our fingers up at him and catch the first train back to London, I’m saying we can’t just shrug and forget about it.”
“I don’t plan to do that. I’m going to ask him more about the Chapter, now I’m feeling better. I wasn’t at my best last night either. And we can’t rush into anything with the London problem; we don’t know how high the corruption goes,
or how widespread it is. Montgomery and Faulkner now are connected to the Camden Chapter. Are only Faulkner and the one who shot me corrupt? Is it all of that Chapter’s Arbiters except for Montgomery? Is it the Chapter Master?”
“I was thinking about this whilst you were asleep,” the gargoyle said. “We need to find out if that kind of corruption is in other places.”
“But how? Even if we ignored the fact that we’d be breaking territorial rules, we have no support staff or liaison teams to flag up anything for us to look into. In London we’re blind.”
“True,” the gargoyle said. “What I don’t understand is why he isn’t hopping up and down spitting for blood after all his Arbiters, bar us, were murdered. Why isn’t he banging on the door of the Camden Chapter, or the Sorcerer of Essex?”
There was a knock on the door before Max could reply and Axon came back in. “Mr Ekstrand has asked for the gargoyle.”
“What does he want with me?” The gargoyle sounded nervous.
“I have no idea,” Axon replied and stood aside, gesturing for the gargoyle to leave. “Would you like to have lunch now?” he asked Max, who nodded.
He ate alone in a dining room with walls covered in landscape paintings whilst considering his options. It didn’t take long. The food was simple and tasted good. Cold cuts with salad seemed to be just what he could manage. Axon had arranged a chair and cushion for his leg and the woolly feeling in his head slowly improved until he felt ready to talk to Ekstrand.
He made his slow and tiring way into the hall and heard the Sorcerer’s voice.
“Good afternoon. How are you?”
“I’m very well, thank you, how are you?” That was Petra.
There was a long pause. “I’m not sure what to say,” the Sorcerer eventually replied.
“Generally, ‘I’m fine, thank you’ will suffice.”
“Even if I don’t feel fine?”
“It depends on who the person is; whether you’re addressing an acquaintance or someone you know well.”
Max went to the door and saw Petra stand up as Mr Ekstrand hurried to the other side of the room. He was dressed in a casual lounge suit and woollen waistcoat. She was wearing another curve-hugging suit. Unlike the night before, Max felt indifferent about it.