“Didn’t stop you digging him up.”
“That was different.”
“But you’re still saying it was a sorcerer twisted his arm.”
I nod. I feel like I’m in hell myself. Not our hell, all fire and brimstone and demons poking pitchforks up you. I mean the Greek version, Tartarus, where that bloke Sisyphus is condemned to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity, and each time he gets to the top it rolls back and squashes him and he has to start over . . .
“An’ I’m telling you, Frank.” Marvo jabs her finger into my chest at every word: “It was the girl.”
Which is where I lose it, big time. I scoop up her coat and chuck it at her. The door bangs open and as I push her past it the wolf’s head jumps out from the wood, snapping and snarling at her.
She crashes into the corridor wall. But she hasn’t finished with me yet.
“An’ you said you’d find out who killed Sean. You promised.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Yes, you did. You’re a shit, Frank. You tell people you’ll do things an’ then you don’t.”
“I never promised anything. Anyway, what am I supposed to do?”
“Contiguity.”
“What with?” Why am I even talking about this? “You need stuff to do contiguity. With Wallace, we had the head and body. You want me to dig Sean up and hack some bits off him? Coz I can do that if you like!”
“Don’t be disgusting.”
“Then what?”
“You’re useless!”
“That’s right. I’m useless. That’s what my dad said.” He was happily pocketing my money at the time. “Look, will you just get out of here?”
“Not unless you promise to help me.”
“I can’t help you.”
“You could try.” Her fingers are digging into my arm. “Can you bring Sean back?”
And I find myself screaming, “Well, let’s bloody find out!” I drag her back into the studio and throw her into a chair. There’s this dead scared look on her face, but I’m not interested in what she thinks anymore because I’m over at the bench, pulling the sheet off Groce’s body.
“OK,” I say. “See if you still want Sean back when I’m done.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Necromancy
Right, this is weird. I mean, obviously it isn’t going to work and I sure as hell hope it doesn’t. But I’ve been playing around with Dee’s incantation for months without really thinking about where I was going with it . . .
And here I am. I’ve got no idea what I’m trying to achieve. Do I really think I can bring Groce back from the other side, or wherever, and get some sense out of him? Or am I just trying to throw a scare into Marvo and get her off my back?
It’s another of those occasions—I get them a lot, have you noticed?—where I’m hard at work and screaming at myself: what are you playing at, Frank?
Anyway, I start by laying it on heavy with the herbs and spices. As the pall of smoke thickens, I trace a series of circles on the tiles and draw Dee’s symbols around them. I stand there staring down at the result.
“What are you waiting for?” says Marvo.
“Do those look OK to you?”
“How should I know?”
I drag it out for another hour, kind of hoping she’ll give up and go away. I can see it’s doing her head in, and that’s half the point. Finally I can’t find anything else to fiddle with. I don’t really want this to work, but I’m giving it my best stab.
“OK, let’s move him in.”
Fifteen minutes later, Groce is lying naked on the floor at the center of the circle, looking bored. Marvo has stopped throwing up and is standing in a small circle to his left, with a cloth over her nose and mouth, feeding herbs into a brazier.
I have decided not to tell her that mixed in with the herbs and spices are some bits of cat and the ground-up fragments of the tooth I took from Saint Oswald’s skull. Useful things, relics.
I seal the outer circle with my knife then step into another small circle on Groce’s right-hand side. I check that I can still see the blackboard through the thickening pall of smoke. I pull my wand out of my belt.
“Adonai, Tetragrammaton, Jehovah, Tetragrammaton . . .”
I run through the usual names to establish control of the magic space. The smoke has retreated to form a thick cloud billowing along the ceiling like a gathering storm. I take a deep breath and recite Dee’s incantation from the blackboard.
As I reach the end, Groce’s eyes open. He sits up.
“Oh dear God!” That’s Marvo.
I’m standing there with my mouth open thinking, bloody hell, I’ve just brought somebody back from the dead, am I a clever boy OR WHAT?
Losing it—are you kidding? I mean, when’s the last time this happened?
And suddenly I feel very, very sick indeed.
Imagine a clock where you’ve stripped all the cogs off the wheels. Groce has been dead for five days and all sorts of yucky stuff has been happening. He’s sitting there like a rag doll that’s been propped up. His legs sticking out like two white matchsticks. His hands flopped, palms up, on the floor beside his thighs. His head lolling on his shoulder. The hole in his chest where I pulled out the stake.
I’ve really overstepped the mark this time.
This long, fat centipede crawls out of his mouth. Herbs fly everywhere as Marvo screams and throws her hands over her face. If the object of the exercise was just to scare the shit out of her, I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. But since Groce is here, I suppose I’d better do something with him. Assuming it is him . . .
“James Groce.”
He can’t control his head. It falls forward onto his chest and his eyes roll up until they vanish into the shadows beneath his brows.
“In the name of the Father most mighty—”
I need to cover my back, because I’ve no idea what I’ve got here. But whatever I’m doing, it’s working: the floor around Groce is alive with insects and maggots—rats leaving the sinking ship. Each side of the body, they crawl toward me and Marvo . . .
She’s just standing there gasping, her hands over her face.
“Don’t move!” I hiss.
Unnecessary. She’s too freaked to do anything. My skin is crawling. I shuffle back to the far side of my circle.
The creepy-crawlies have reached the chalked perimeter of my circle. It’s supposed to protect me, but do they know that? I’m shaking all over and about to turn and run for it when they swing around like troops on a parade ground and file around the outside. They reassemble as they pass me and wriggle out until they reach the outer circle.
They stop dead, then all turn to face inward, toward Groce. A shimmering black circle.
Despite the cloth mask, Marvo has stuck one finger in her mouth and she’s biting down hard on the knuckle.
“James Groce.” It’s time to roll out the Usual Suspects. “I command thee by order of the great God, Adonai, Tetragrammaton, Jehovah . . .”
It’s like someone’s blowing air into a balloon. Groce’s neck straightens. His head lifts. His eyes fix glassily on me.
“Who are you?” His lips move mechanically, forming each syllable a split second before the words emerge from somewhere in the distance, beyond the studio walls. And I realize what he reminds me of: a puppet, moved by invisible strings.
So who’s doing the pulling?
“My name is Frank Sampson. I’m the forensic sorcerer investigating your death and I want to know—”
His face crumples. “What have you done to me?” He has managed to raise one hand. As he stares at the palm, a raised lump forms and cracks open. A small gray maggot falls to the floor and starts wriggling away across the tiles. It’s too slow, though. The hand falls back, squashing it.
I can see blood staining the cloth around Marvo’s mouth and running down the back of her hand. She whispers, “Stop it, Frank. Stop it.”
But I can’t. I’ve got this far. The stench i
s overwhelming. Groce’s skin is gray, breaking out in raw fissures.
“You killed yourself. Do you remember?”
There’s a long silence. It’s like he’s staring through me at something. It’s so spooky that I turn to look over my shoulder, but there’s just my studio with shelves of books and equipment and the picture of the pope with a disapproving expression on his mug.
I jump as Groce cuts loose.
Look, I’ve heard people swear. Usually at me. But what’s pouring out of Groce is this obscene torrent of filth and hatred. This is one very angry dead bloke indeed. There’s one name, constantly repeated:
Wallace.
And if I’m getting it straight, what he’s screaming is that Wallace killed him.
I finally manage to get a word in. “But it was you that killed Wallace.”
There’s this obvious problem with Groce. When he stops screaming abuse and stares at me and his mouth falls open, I don’t really know if he’s just surprised or if he’s reverting to being what he actually is.
Dead.
So I say, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He’s staring at Marvo. “You’re not Alice.”
She shakes her head.
Tears roll down his cheeks. “He killed her.”
“No, you did. And Wallace—”
“—killed me.” He points to the hole in his chest. “Knife.”
I don’t see any point in putting him straight about the stake. This is getting silly.
“I saw a dog,” he says.
That’s better.
“Windows.”
“Yes?”
He stares left and right, then raises his head, like he’s gazing up at something. “Angels,” he says.
I realize that this is a dream. It’s a comforting thought, since it means that all I have to do is wake up and none of it will have happened.
“Stairs,” says Groce. “Down.” His hands drag across the floor, palms open, away from his thighs. He seems to be tracing a circle . . .
“That’s enough, Frank,” says Marvo. And she’s right. I raise my wand and take a deep breath.
“Adonai, Eloim, Ariel, Jehovah! I charge thee to return whence thou camest—”
Groce convulses, like whoever is holding his strings has given them an almighty wrench. He spins around and collapses.
For several seconds, nothing moves. I croak my way through the incantation. I can’t hear Marvo. Groce is just lying there in a crumpled, broken heap.
There’s a faint rustling that grows to a sound like the wind through corn. The insects are moving across the tiles, crawling and wriggling toward the center of the circle. Through the mouth and ears, through the cuts and fissures, they disappear into Groce’s body.
When everything’s stopped moving, I turn to Marvo. “Happy now?”
“What’s wrong with you, Frank?”
I’ve fixed the bite marks in Marvo’s finger, and we’re sitting on the steps outside my studio. There’s a cold wind, but since I messed about with him, Groce is really living up to his name and the stench indoors is intolerable.
“I mean, that was barbaric.”
“You made me do it.”
“OK, so I pushed you, but I never thought—”
“That’s enough!”
I’ve no idea what I raised in there. All I know is, I was in way over my head. And all I want is for Leo and Martin to come and take the body away so I can pretend none of this ever happened.
Across the vegetable garden, Brother Andrew is digging away dutifully in the midday sunshine. Overhead, a puttering Montgolfier drags a plume of steam behind it. I’m just wondering why I’m not on it, when Marvo says:
“What he said, about Wallace killing him . . . I mean, it’s not like people can’t come back from the dead. At least you’ve proved that.”
“Groce killed Wallace.”
“I didn’t hear him confess.”
“What you heard in there, that wasn’t Groce.” At least I hope it wasn’t.
“So what was it?”
“I don’t know. It was traumatized to hell and back—I don’t think it even knew it was dead.”
“It knew about Wallace. All sorts of stuff.”
“There was something driving it. Hatred, revenge, whatever. But that could have nothing to do with the murder.”
“It knew about the library, too.”
“Huh?”
“It said, ‘Angels.’ Don’t you remember? Looked up, like at the library ceiling . . . ?”
Angels. Stairs down . . .
“You know your trouble,” I say quickly. “You’re too clever for your own good.”
“I’m telling you, it was the girl.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t be blind!”
“Look, girls can’t do sorcery. How many times have I got to tell you that. They never get the Gift—”
“Says who?”
“Says the Society. Say all the books . . .”
“An’ you believe them? Frank, you’re a pain in the neck, but you got one thing going for you.”
“Just one?”
“Shut up and listen for once!” She waves her finger in my face. “One thing: you don’t swallow the crap people feed you. So why d’you swallow that?”
I’ve certainly got this unpleasant taste in my mouth.
“What d’you know about her? What’s she doing at the palace?”
I’m still wondering if I should explain what I’ve found out about Kazia and her parents and how Matthew rescued her, when Marvo yells:
“Jesus Christ, Frank, wake up!”
“Huh?”
“I don’t like her, yeah? But I don’t want to see her dead and if you don’t stop messing about and do something that’s how she’s gonna wind up.”
A bit after midnight I’m rubbing out the code on the blackboard when my door growls and I’m relieved to find Leo and Martin standing nervously in the corridor. They both stink of booze, so I guess they’ve drunk away the money I gave them.
Their arrival is the only good news in a very long day. I’ve still no idea what I raised. Was it really Groce; or was it some sort of diabolical joke?
I’ve spent eight hours alone with him, cleaning up the mess he left and trying not to think about it, and I’m just relieved to see the back of him. I pay Leo and Martin off, help them roll the corpse over the wall, and watch the cart disappear around the corner.
Maybe the end justifies the means. But the last thing Marvo said to me, as she watched me sew the sheet closed around Groce, was, “Aren’t there a few parts you want yourself?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Invisibility
Most books on sorcery have a chapter on how to make yourself invisible. According to the Grand Grimoire, you need a black cat, a mirror, and a pot filled with water collected from a fountain at the stroke—ah, but which stroke?—of midnight. You put the cat in the pot, then boil it for twenty-four hours, take it out, and throw it over your left shoulder with the words, “Take what I give you, and no more.” Now comes the fun bit. You dismantle the cat and, looking in the mirror, stick the bones, one at a time, behind the teeth on the left side of your mouth until you see your reflection vanish. You say, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” and keep the bone that did the trick for future use. The grimoire doesn’t say what to do with the rest of the cat. Or whether it should be alive or dead when it goes into the pot.
Alternatively, you can draw symbols on a piece of paper with octopus ink, say a few invocations, make a couple of passes over it, and pin it to the front of your coat. It took this clever kid called Zebediah Wharton the best part of seven years to figure it out. His work only came to light posthumously when the Society found his notes in his lab. They never did find his body.
So how does it work? You know when you’re walking up the road and you’re so busy worrying about something that you pass people you know and you don’t even notice them . .
. Well, it’s like that, only someone’s made it happen. It’s a form of misdirection, the technique that conjurers and pickpockets use to distract their victims.
An invisibility spell “forbids” anyone to see the invisible object. The viewer fills in the gap either by patching in other parts of the visual field or by contriving to think about something else at the critical moment. Either way, it’s exhausting for them—which of course helps the spell work.
The unsettling thing about actually being “invisible” is that you can still see yourself. Fortunately, self-confidence is not a requirement.
“Angels.” That’s what James Groce said. He looked upward and said, “Angels.”
It’s just after half past two in the morning. I’m still not on my way to Rome. Instead, I’m at the main palace entrance, trying to sneak past the knock-kneed old porter and his crutch. A stone crunches under my foot. He stumbles around and stares suspiciously. I freeze. There’s enough light to see his eyes glaze over as the spell kicks in. I stoop and manage to pick up a couple of pebbles without making any noise. I toss them against the wall behind him. He spins around and trips over the crutch, and by the time he’s back on his feet and has pulled his tights up, I’ve scuttled off up the drive to the palace.
There’s a small oil lamp burning in the entrance hall. When I peer up the stairs I can see another light flickering dimly on the second floor. Not a sound, apart from my own breathing.
There’s all sorts of clever spells for generating light, but they take time and a certain amount of gear. However, two years ago a small electric flashlight was found at a crime scene. It subsequently disappeared from the jack shack and turned up unexpectedly in my studio. Getting batteries for it is a nightmare—they cost a fortune—so I use it as little as possible.
It takes me down the corridor and into the library, where I shine it up at Groce’s angels—the cherubs prancing across the ceiling. When I turn the flashlight off, there’s enough moonlight filtering through the curtains to see by. I lock the door and turn the contents of my satchel out onto the desk.
Item: one small compass.
Item: one copper disc on a copper chain. The disc is about four inches in diameter, engraved with the first pentacle of the moon. Not a thing of beauty, but it has the power to make the invisible visible. I put it around my neck.
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