The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II

by Jonathan Strahan

  There was a small desk beside the door, and Abanazer Bolger pulled up the only chair, and sat down, letting Bod stand. Abanazer rummaged in a drawer, in which Bod could see a half-empty bottle of whisky, and pulled out an almost-finished packet of chocolate chip cookies, and he offered one to the boy; he turned on the desk light, looked at the brooch again, the swirls of red and orange in the stone, and he examined the black metal band that encircled it, suppressing a little shiver at the expression on the heads of the snake-things. "This is old," he said. "It's—" priceless, he thought, "—probably not really worth much, but you never know." Bod's face fell. Abanazer Bolger tried to look reassuring. "I just need to know that it's not stolen, though, before I can give you a penny. Did you take it from your mum's dresser? Nick it from a museum? You can tell me. I'll not get you into trouble. I just need to know."

  Bod shook his head. He munched on his cookie.

  "Then where did you get it?"

  Bod said nothing.

  Abanazer Bolger did not want to put down the brooch, but he pushed it across the desk to the boy. "If you can't tell me," he said, "you'd better take it back. There has to be trust on both sides, after all. Nice doing business with you. Sorry it couldn't go any further."

  Bod looked worried. Then he said, "I found it in an old grave. But I can't say where." And then he stopped, because naked greed and excitement had replaced the friendliness on Abanazer Bolger's face.

  "And there's more like this there?"

  Bod said, "If you don't want to buy it, I'll find someone else. Thank you for the biscuit."

  Bolger said, "You're in a hurry, eh? Mum and dad waiting for you, I expect?"

  The boy shook his head, then wished he had nodded.

  "Nobody waiting. Good." Abanazer Bolger closed his hands around the brooch. "Now, you tell me exactly where you found this. Eh?"

  "I don't remember," said Bod.

  "Too late for that," said Abanazer Bolger. "Suppose you have a little think for a bit about where it came from. Then, when you've thought, we'll have a little chat, and you'll tell me."

  He got up, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. He locked it, with a large metal key.

  He opened his hand, and looked at the brooch and smiled, hungrily.

  There was a ding from the bell above the shop door, to let him know someone had entered, and he looked up, guiltily, but there was nobody there. The door was slightly ajar though, and Bolger pushed it shut, and then for good measure, he turned around the sign in the window, so it said Closed. He pushed the bolt closed. Didn't want any busybodies turning up today.

  The autumn day had turned from sunny to grey, and a light patter of rain ran down the grubby shop window.

  Abanazer Bolger picked up the telephone from the counter and pushed at the buttons with fingers that barely shook.

  "Paydirt, Tom," he said. "Get over here, soon as you can."

  Bod realised that he was trapped when he heard the lock turn in the door. He pulled on the door, but it held fast. He felt stupid for having been lured inside, foolish for not trusting his first impulses, to get as far away from the sour-faced man as possible. He had broken all the rules of the graveyard, and everything had gone wrong. What would Silas say? Or the Owenses? He could feel himself beginning to panic, and he suppressed it, pushing the worry back down inside him. It would all be good. He knew that. Of course, he needed to get out . . .

  He examined the room he was trapped in. It was little more than a storeroom with a desk in it. The only entrance was the door.

  He opened the desk drawer, finding nothing but small pots of paint (used for brightening up antiques) and a paintbrush. He wondered if he would be able to throw paint in the man's face, and blind him for long enough to escape. He opened the top of a pot of paint and dipped in his finger.

  "What're you doin'?" asked a voice close to his ear.

  "Nothing," said Bod, screwing the top on the paintpot, and dropping it into one of the jacket's enormous pockets.

  Liza Hempstock looked at him, unimpressed. "Why are you in here?" she asked. "And who's old bag-of-lard out there?"

  "It's his shop. I was trying to sell him something."

  "Why?"

  "None of your beeswax."

  She sniffed. "Well," she said, "you should get on back to the graveyard."

  "I can't. He's locked me in."

  "'Course you can. Just slip through the wall—"

  He shook his head. "I can't. I can only do it at home because they gave me the freedom of the graveyard when I was a baby." He looked up at her, under the electric light. It was hard to see her properly, but Bod had spent his life talking to dead people. "Anyway, what are you doing here? What are you doing out from the graveyard? It's daytime. And you're not like Silas. You're meant to stay in the graveyard."

  She said, "There's rules for those in graveyards, but not for those as was buried in unhallowed ground. Nobody tells me what to do, or where to go." She glared at the door. "I don't like that man," she said. "I'm going to see what he's doing."

  A flicker, and Bod was alone in the room once more. He heard a rumble of distant thunder.

  In the cluttered darkness of Bolger's Antiquities, Abanazer Bolger looked up suspiciously, certain that someone was watching him, then realised he was being foolish. "The boy's locked in the room," he told himself. "The front door's locked." He was polishing the metal clasp surrounding the snakestone, as gently and as carefully as an archaeologist on a dig, taking off the black and revealing the glittering silver beneath it.

  He was beginning to regret calling Tom Hustings over, although Hustings was big and good for scaring people. He was also beginning to regret that he was going to have to sell the brooch, when he was done. It was special. The more it glittered, under the tiny light on his counter, the more he wanted it to be his, and only his.

  There was more where this came from, though. The boy would tell him. The boy would lead him to it . . .

  A knocking on the outer door of the shop.

  Bolger walked over to the door, peering out into the wet afternoon.

  "Hurry up," called Tom Hustings. "It's miserable out here. Dismal. I'm getting soaked."

  Bolger unlocked the door and Tom Hustings pushed his way in, his raincoat and hair dripping. "What's so important that you can't talk about it over the phone, then?"

  "Our fortune," said Abanazer Bolger, with his sour face. "That's what."

  Hustings took off his raincoat and hung it on the back of the shopdoor. "What is it? Something good fell off the back of a lorry?"

  "Treasure," said Abanazer Bolger. He took his friend over to the counter, showed him the brooch, under the little light.

  "It's old, isn't it?"

  "From pagan times," said Abanazer. "Before. From Druid times. Before the Romans came. It's called a snakestone. Seen 'em in museums. I've never seen metalwork like that, or one so fine. Must have belonged to a king. The lad who found it says it come from a grave—think of a barrow filled with stuff like this."

  "Might be worth doing it legit," said Hustings, thoughtfully. "Declare it as treasure trove. They have to pay us market value for it, and we could make them name it for us. The Hustings-Bolger Bequest."

  "Bolger-Hustings," said Abanazer, automatically. Then he said, "There's a few people I know of, people with real money, would pay more than market value, if they could hold it as you are—" for Tom Hustings was fingering the brooch, gently, like a man stroking a kitten—"and there'd be no questions asked." He reached out his hand and, reluctantly, Tom Hustings passed him the brooch.

  And the two men went back and forth on it, weighing the merits and disadvantages of declaring the brooch as a treasure trove or of forcing the boy to show them the treasure, which had grown in their minds to a huge underground cavern filled with precious things, and as they debated Abanazer pulled a bottle of sloe gin from beneath the counter and poured them both a generous tot, "to assist the cerebrations."

  Liza was soo
n bored with their discussions, which went back and forth and around like a whirligig, getting nowhere, and so she went back into the storeroom, to find Bod standing in the middle of the room with his eyes tightly closed and his fists clenched and his face all screwed up as if he had a toothache, almost purple from holding his breath.

  "What you a-doin' of now?" she asked, unimpressed.

  He opened his eyes and relaxed. "Trying to Fade," he said.

  Liza sniffed. "Try again," she said.

  He did, holding his breath even longer this time.

  "Stop that," she told him. "Or you'll pop."

  Bod took a deep breath and then sighed. "It doesn't work," he said. "Maybe I could hit him with a rock, and just run for it." There wasn't a rock, so he picked up a coloured glass paperweight, hefted it in his hand, wondering if he could throw it hard enough to stop Abanazer Bolger in his tracks.

  "There's two of them out there now," said Liza. "And if the one don't get you, t'other one will. They say they want to get you to show where you got the brooch, and then dig up the grave and take the treasure." She shook her head. "Why did you do something as stupid as this anyway? You know the rules about leaving the graveyard. Just asking for trouble, it was."

  Bod felt very insignificant, and very foolish. "I wanted to get you a headstone," he admitted, in a small voice. "And I thought it would cost more money. So I was going to sell him the brooch, to buy you one."

  She didn't say anything.

  "Are you angry?"

  She shook her head. "It's the first nice thing anyone's done for me in five hundred years," she said, with a hint of a goblin smile. "Why would I be angry?" Then she said, "What do you do, when you try to Fade?"

  "What Mr Pennyworth told me. I am an empty doorway, I am a vacant alley, I am nothing. Eyes will not see me, glances slip over me. But it never works."

  "It's because you're alive," said Liza, with a sniff. "There's stuff as works for us, the dead, who have to fight to be noticed at the best of times, that won't never work for you people."

  She hugged herself tightly, moving her body back and forth, as if she was debating something. Then she said, "It's because of me you got into this . . .. Come here, Nobody Owens."

  He took a step towards her, in that tiny room, and she put her cold hand on his forehead. It felt like a wet silk scarf against his skin.

  "Now," she said. "Perhaps I can do a good turn for you."

  And with that, she began to mutter to herself, mumbling words that Bod could not make out. Then she said, clear and loud:

  "Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind

  Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,

  Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,

  Above, beneath, betwixt, between."

  Something huge touched him, brushed him from head to feet, and he shivered. His hair prickled, and his skin was all goose-flesh. Something had changed. "What did you do?" he asked.

  "Just gived you a helping hand," she said. "I may be dead, but I'm a dead witch, remember. And we don't forget."

  "But–"

  "Hush up," she said. "They're coming back."

  The key rattled in the storeroom lock. "Now then, chummy," said a voice Bod had not heard clearly before, "I'm sure we're all going to be great friends," and with that Tom Hustings pushed open the door. Then he stood in the doorway looking around, looking puzzled. He was a big, big man, with foxy-red hair and a bottle-red nose. "Here. Abanazer? I thought you said he was in here?"

  "I did," said Bolger, from behind him.

  "Well, I can't see hide nor hair of him."

  Bolger's face appeared behind the ruddy man's and he peered into the room. "Hiding," he said, staring straight at where Bod was standing. "No use hiding," he announced, loudly. "I can see you there. Come on out."

  The two men walked into the little room, and Bod stood stock still between them and thought of Mr Pennyworth's lessons. He did not react, he did not move. He let the men's glances slide from him without seeing him.

  "You're going to wish you'd come out when I called," said Bolger, and he shut the door. "Right," he said to Tom Hustings. "You block the door, so he can't get past." And with that he walked around the room, peering behind things, and bending, awkwardly, to look beneath the desk. He walked straight past Bod and opened the cupboard. "Now I see you!" he shouted. "Come out!"

  Liza giggled.

  "What was that?" asked Tom Hustings, spinning round.

  "I didn't hear nothing," said Abanazer Bolger.

  Liza giggled again. Then she put her lips together and blew, making a noise that began as a whistling, and then sounded like a distant wind. The electric lights in the little room flickered and buzzed. Then they went out.

  "Bloody fuses," said Abanazer Bolger. "Come on. This is a waste of time."

  The key clicked in the lock, and Liza and Bod were left alone in the room.

  "He's got away," said Abanazer Bolger. Bod could hear him now, through the door. "Room like that. There wasn't anywhere he could have been hiding. We'd've seen him if he was."

  A pause.

  "Here. Tom Hustings. Where's the brooch gone?"

  "Mm? That? Here. I was keeping it safe."

  "Keeping it safe? In your pocket? Funny place to be keeping it safe, if you ask me. More like you were planning to make off with it—like you was planning to keep my brooch for your own."

  "Your brooch, Abanazer? Your brooch? Our brooch, you mean."

  "Ours, indeed. I don't remember you being here, when I got it from that boy."

  There was another long silence, then Abanazer Bolger said, "Well, look at that, we're almost out of sloe gin—how would you fancy a good Scotch? I've whisky in the back room. You just wait here a moment."

  The storeroom door was unlocked, and Abanazer entered, holding a walking stick and an electric torch, looking even more sour of face than before.

  "If you're still in here," he said, in a sour mutter, "don't even think of making a run for it. I've called the police on you, that's what I've done." A rummage in a drawer produced the half-filled bottle of whisky, and then a tiny black bottle. Abanazer poured several drops from the little bottle into the larger, then he pocketed the tiny bottle. "My brooch, and mine alone," he muttered, and followed it with a barked, "Just coming, Tom!"

  He glared around the dark room, staring past Bod, then he left the storeroom, carrying the whisky in front of him. He locked the door behind him.

  "Here you go," came Abanazer Bolger's voice through the door. "Give us your glass then Tom. Nice drop of Scotch, put hairs on your chest. Say when."

  Silence. "Cheap muck. Aren't you drinking?"

  "That sloe gin's gone to my innards. Give it a minute for my stomach to settle . . ." Then, "Here—Tom! What have you done with my brooch?"

  "Your brooch is it now? Whoa—what did you . . . you put something in my drink, you little grub!"

  "What if I did? I could read on your face what you was planning, Tom Hustings. Thief."

  And then there was shouting, and several crashes, and loud bangs, as if heavy items of furniture were being overturned . . .

  . . .then silence.

  Liza said, "Quickly now. Let's get you out of here."

  "But the door's locked." He looked at her. "Is there something you can do?"

  "Me? I don't have any magics will get you out of a locked room, boy."

  Bod crouched, and peered out through the keyhole. It was blocked; the key sat in the keyhole. Bod thought, then he smiled, momentarily, and it lit his face like the flash of a lightbulb. He pulled a crumpled sheet of newspaper from a packing case, flattened it out as best he could, then pushed it underneath the door, leaving only a corner on his side of the doorway.

  "What are you playing at?" asked Liza, impatiently.

  "I need something like a pencil. Only thinner . . ." he said. "Here we go." And he took a thin paintbrush from the top of the desk, and pushed the brushless end into the lock, jiggled it and pushed some more.

 
There was a muffled clunk as the key was pushed out, as it dropped from the lock onto the newspaper. Bod pulled the paper back under the door, now with the key sitting on it.

  Liza laughed, delighted. "That's wit, young man," she said. "That's wisdom."

  Bod put the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the storeroom door.

  There were two men on the floor, in the middle of the crowded antique shop. Furniture had indeed fallen; the place was a chaos of wrecked clocks and chairs, and in the midst of it the bulk of Tom Hustings lay, fallen on the smaller figure of Abanazer Bolger. Neither of them was moving.

  "Are they dead?" asked Bod.

  "No such luck," said Liza.

  On the floor beside the men was a brooch of glittering silver; a crimson-orange-banded stone, held in place with claws and with snake-heads, and the expression on the snake-heads was one of triumph and avarice and satisfaction.

  Bod dropped the brooch into his pocket, where it sat beside the heavy glass paperweight, the paintbrush, and the little pot of paint.

  Lightning illuminated the cobbled street.

  Bod hurried through the rain through the old town, always heading up the hill toward the graveyard. The grey day had become an early night while he was inside the storeroom, and it came as no surprise to him when a familiar shadow swirled beneath the street lamps. Bod hesitated, and a flutter of night-black velvet resolved itself into a man-shape.

  Silas stood in front of him, arms folded. He strode forward, impatiently.

  "Well?" he said.

  Bod said, "I'm sorry, Silas."

  "I'm disappointed in you, Bod." Silas said, and he shook his head. "I've been looking for you since I woke. You have the smell of trouble all around you. And you know you're not allowed to go out here, into the living world."

  "I know. I'm sorry." There was rain on the boy's face, running down like tears.

  "First of all, we need to get you back to safety." Silas reached down, and enfolded the living child inside his cloak, and Bod felt the ground fall away beneath him.