I race after her. I’m halfway up when a chair comes bouncing down and sends me flying. By the time I pick myself up and get to the top, she’s long gone.
I yell, “Marvo!”
“What?”
“Can we just get out of here?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jump
I close my eyes and see Kazia stepping out of the circle, her face blank like she doesn’t even know me. I don’t like that, so I open them and Marvo’s staring across at me.
“You were right, Frank.”
“Right about what? I mean, I haven’t been right about anything since this whole stupid mess started.”
We picked up a cab outside the railway station, and now we’re heading past the Oxpens. Through the window, I can see the ragged silhouette of the scaffolding around the cathedral spire, exactly like that first morning. I didn’t realize you could have so much fun in just ten days.
“You were right to give her a chance.”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if I’d got you and your mum killed.”
Marvo smiles. “Take more’n a demon to kill my mum.”
I’ve got used to her bleached hair. Trouble is, it reminds me of Kazia and it’s like Marvo’s reading my thoughts because she says, “If she asked you . . . you know, to help her again—”
“Not that she would.”
“Yeah, but you’d do it, right?”
I nod.
“Must be love then. Nothing else could be that stupid!”
I can’t think of anything to say.
“So what you gonna do now?” Marvo asks.
I shrug. “Any ideas?”
“Talk to Caxton.”
I shake my head. “The Society wants me to go to Rome. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Any better ideas? Matthew isn’t there to defend me anymore. If I don’t go . . . well, it’s only a month to bonfire night.”
Marvo doesn’t say anything for a while, just sits there with her face turned away, staring out of the window. At last she says, “There must be someone else you can trust.”
“Just you and Charlie.”
“Charlie can’t help you—”
“And you’d better not try. Just forget about me.”
She goes red and says, “I don’t think I can do that.”
OK, I’m slow but I finally get it. Reg Garston was right. But it’s like Marvo’s handed me this present, all beautifully wrapped up with a satin bow, and I know it cost her a pile of money, and I feel grateful . . . and incredibly embarrassed and actually a bit pissed off, because I’ve got absolutely no idea what to do with it.
So I sit there and stare at it, and don’t even unwrap it, which is a crap thing to do.
“Then I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say.
Yeah, I know it’s unfair. I get to fancy Kazia, but I can’t handle Marvo fancying me. Because I realize that Marvo really means it. And of course the whole point about Kazia was that in my heart of hearts I always knew she was winding me up, so it felt . . . well, kind of safe.
Apart from Alastor, obviously.
Anyway, we ride on, and after a bit Marvo shakes her head and says, “You can’t just leave him down there.”
“Huh?”
“Your boss . . .”
“I can’t feed him to Alastor.”
“You can’t afford to let him go.”
“So he’d better get used to the sandwiches.”
“The demon,” says Marvo. “Won’t he get bored or something?”
“No idea. There’s nothing in any of the grimoires about a situation like this.” I smile. “I’m breaking new ground.”
She pulls out her scryer. “Let me call Caxton.”
I grab her arm before she can open the lid. There’s this wrestling match, but I’m stronger than her.
“Did I hurt you?”
She shakes her head. “You can’t help her.”
“I can give her a head start. There’s still stuff in my studio I gotta get rid of. And you and me, we’ve got to get your story straight . . .”
So we argue about that all the way back to her mum’s place. We agree that none of last night happened and that she knows nothing about Groce’s body disappearing from the suicide plot.
Finally she nods. “That’ll have to do.”
We’re at her place. I check my magic watch. “I’ll say good-bye now.”
I see her hand move. It’s going to be another of those cheek-patting moments and I really haven’t got the strength for it anymore. I lean back. I can see she’s upset, but I can’t help that.
“You were going to help me with Sean.”
“Now’s not a good time.” There was never a good time. “I’m sorry.”
She gives me this sad smile and gets out. As she pushes the front gate open, the surviving hinge finally gives up the struggle and the whole thing collapses. She kicks the rotten fragments savagely into the bushes and walks up to the house. She stops on the doorstop and shouts back at me:
“What about my mum?”
“She’s just hypnotized. She’ll wake up in an hour or two—won’t remember a thing.”
The red duffle coat disappears into the house. The door closes. I bang on the roof of the cab.
The first train up to London is at 5:24. I’m back at the station with just enough time to buy a ticket and get noticed.
He’s this great long streak of misery with a mustache. He’s wearing a porter’s peaked cap and jacket, but he hasn’t lifted a suitcase in living memory. I know him because he used to show up at Saint Cyprian’s when I was there. He’s one of the Knights of Saint Cyprian’s plainclothes goons. He hangs around the station, watching who comes and goes, and scries the Society if anything interesting happens.
He clocks me and the pilgrim’s emblem I’ve pinned to the front of my woolly hat. I pretend I haven’t noticed him. The train arrives. Yeah, I know I’m supposed to walk, but why should I be the only one to compromise?
I glance back as the train pulls out. The streak of misery is on his scryer.
We trundle past the Bishop’s Palace and the cathedral, and bang over Boney’s Bridge.
A bit farther down the line, they’ve been working on the Black Bridge at Nuneham for months and the trains have to slow right down to cross it.
I’m ready, with the door open and steam and hot cinders blowing in my face. I thought we’d be going slower. Don’t think about it, Frank. Just jump.
There’s a crash and all the breath is knocked out of me. I’m spinning and bouncing, and then I’m lying in the long grass at the bottom of the embankment, hoping that nobody’s seen me. Nothing broken; just a few scrapes and bruises. I open my backpack and pull out the repair kit.
When everything’s stopped hurting, I get to my feet, pull out a trowel, and dig a small hole at the foot of a tree. I bury a small tin, its lid sealed with wax. I fill in the hole and conceal it. I toss the trowel into the river and start the long walk back along the bank to Doughnut City.
A hundred yards along, a flock of crows have come in to feed on the field beside the path. I run at them, yelling and screaming and waving my arms, and they scatter up into the sky.
A Dangerous Magic Glossary
It’s funny: I thought I’d be able to explain everything as we went along, but it’s not as easy as I thought. So here’s all the knobbly, awkward stuff that I couldn’t quite fit in. If I’d done my job properly, you wouldn’t have to bother with this crap. But, as usual, I messed up. Sorry.
ASB: The Anti-Sorcery Brotherhood. Founded 1898; membership unknown. The name says it all, really: it’s a brotherhood (so no girls) and it’s dedicated (if you can describe a crowd of arseholes as dedicated) to the destruction of the Society of Sorcerers.
The Blur: See presbyopia.
CID: The police Criminal Investigation Department. You can’t miss them: bleached white hair, cut short; bewildered expression . . .
College Wars: 1927–31. For centuries the various colleges of Oxford University were happy to compete on the sports field. Then someone came up with the bright idea that real weapons and live ammunition would liven things up a bit. By the time everyone got bored, most of the university was a pile of ashes.
The Concordat: The Church formally recognized the Society of Sorcerers as a religious order in 1563. But it was a match made on Earth, not in Heaven. The Society kept hauling demons up out of hell to make things explode. The Church complained about the noise, but the Society was having too much fun to care. And when things got a bit sticky, about 150 years back, the Society sent in a flock of demons to pull the dome off St. Peter’s and drop it in the Tiber. The church didn’t see the joke and excommunicated the Society. A week later, on his Easter appearance to bless pilgrims to Rome, the Pope turned into a piano and started rattling out a selection of popular waltzes. Everyone agreed that this was getting silly. So in 1908 they finally signed the Concordat, a document the size of an encyclopedia in which everybody promised to behave. Some hope . . .
contiguity: See sympathetic magic.
Dictionnaire Infernal: An (incomplete) encyclopedia of demons, written by Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy and first published in 1818.
Doughnut City: Oxford. So-called because of the burned-out Hole in the middle where there used to be a university (see College Wars).
Einstein’s Laws: Albert Einstein (1879–1912) was another of those sorcerers who just don’t know when to stop. He was twenty-three—well post-peak —when he made his last attempt to summon up Lucifer. Judging by the mess they found later, he succeeded. But as well as a pile of ashes, he left behind his three laws of contiguity (see sympathetic magic): that although contiguity fades over time it never absolutely disappears, that it can’t be magically induced, and that it can’t be destroyed by magical means.
elemental: A form of natural energy that even a post-peak sorcerer can channel and convert to physical form, usually resembling a human being or an animal. They have purpose, but—unlike angels and demons—no consciousness. Basically they’re slaves, except that you don’t have to feed or shelter them, or look after them in old age, since they can be made to disappear at the flick of a finger.
exorcism: A religious ritual that anyone can perform, designed to make demons blink. Exorcised water, used in magic ceremonies, is a mixture of distilled water, quicklime or salt, and prayer.
Ghost: Magically powered vehicle that allows the rich and powerful to get from point A to point B without having to smell horseshit.
grimoire: A book containing a collection of magical procedures. Because we don’t make this stuff up as we go along, you know. We get it out of books written by dead guys who made it up as they went along . . .
The Hole: The burned-out wasteland in the center of Doughnut City, left behind after the College Wars.
Inquisition: If you’ve built yourself a religion, you’ve got to have rules. And if anyone breaks those rules you have to set them straight. Pain seems to work. Pope Leo XVII gave the Society of Sorcerers permission to set up its own private Inquisition in 1787.
jack: Police officer, uniformed or plainclothes.
John Dee: English mathematician, alchemist, and sorcerer (1527–1608). His day job was astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I. Among the papers unearthed after his death was the famously incomplete “last incantation” which he was said to have used to raise the dead to get racing tips.
livor mortis: After death the blood stops circulating and settles toward the lower parts of the body, causing a purplish-red discoloration of the skin. The degree and location of lividity can be an indication of how long someone has been dead and whether they have been moved since death.
Montgolfier: The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne, made the first public ascent in a hot-air balloon in 1783. After that, people started using lighter-than-air gases like hydrogen, added engines, and called them Mongolfiers. Very quickly they realized you could drop explosives from them.
nekker: General term of abuse for sorcerers, a contraction of necromancer. Necromancy—from the ancient Greek νεκρός (nekrós), “dead body,” and μαντεία (manteía), “prophecy or divination”—is the art of raising the dead to foretell the future. As if dead people care about football results.
pentacle: A design written on paper or parchment, or engraved on metal, and used to command or to protect against demonic forces. There’s good money to be made selling protection from disease and surefire winners at the races. Also known as an amulet or talisman.
pentagram: A five-pointed star, drawn without lifting the pencil from the paper, and a symbol of . . . well, pretty much anything you like.
post-peak: The Gift—the ability to work magic—appears in early childhood and peaks around the age of seventeen. As it fades after that point, a sorcerer is said to be “post-peak.” The Gift becomes undetectable after about twenty-five.
presbyopia: The age-related inability to focus clearly on near objects. Also known as the Blur. It starts to kick in around twenty and is acute by twenty-five. Symptoms are eye-strain, headaches, and difficulty seeing in dim light or focusing on small objects or fine print. Spectacles help, but not very much. Gardeners, for example, can see enough to work; but they need a kid to read the instructions on the packet of seeds.
reliquary: There are idiots out there who really believe that touching a bit that’s fallen off a saint will cure you of all sorts of diseases. There’s money to be made from this. To prevent the relic from being kissed or stroked to pieces you have to put it in a container—a reliquary—preferably something expensive-looking.
rigor mortis: Within a few hours of death, chemical changes in the muscles make the limbs go stiff. The effect dissipates eventually. But it can be used as a very approximate indication of time of death.
schismatic: Anyone who doesn’t agree with the Pope (that includes laughing at his hat).
scryer: A magic mirror. Some sorcerers have claimed to be able to see the future this way; but its general use is for communicating over long distances.
simultaneity: See sympathetic magic.
Society of Sorcerers: Founded as a secret religious confraternity in 1513, partly to share ideas, but mainly to prevent arguments between rival sorcerers from turning into Armageddon. Officially recognized by the Church in 1563. Relations have deteriorated over the last fifty years or so. The Church has accused the Society of heresy. The Society is rumored to be sharpening its wands.
sympathetic magic: The principle that physical objects are invisibly linked by magical forces that a sorcerer can detect and analyze. Contiguity (also known as contagion) is the affinity that persists eternally between any two objects that have ever touched each other, or between the individual fragments of a single object. Simultaneity is the link between all events occurring at the same moment in time, anywhere in the physical universe. Similarity is the relationship between objects that physically resemble each other.
tarot: A pack of playing cards consisting of four suits of fourteen cards and a set of twenty-two trump cards depicting figures like the Devil, the Pope, and Death. Fortune-tellers use them to predict the future.
tatty: The police force is run by idiots whose presbyopia makes them effectively blind. Any kid under twenty can still see clearly, but tatties are special: they’re incredibly sharp and they get “insights” that tell them stuff nobody else could have worked out. The downside is that they go completely blind around thirty.
thaumaturgy: A fancy word for magic. Impressed?
tonsure: A silly haircut. Sorcerers adopted it to prevent demons grabbing them by the hair. Monks took it up because they thought it made them look cool. To be fair, standards of what constitutes “cool” have changed since the Middle Ages.
Acknowledgments
A book is only as good as the judgment of the people who rub the author’s nose in all the bits of it that don’t smell right. If
A Dangerous Magic has any merit, it is due to the interest and enthusiasm of Stephanie Thwaites, Claire Nozieres and Emma Herdman at the Curtis Brown literary agency; Hannah Featherstone, David Fickling, Tilda Johnston and Ruth Knowles at David Fickling Books and Random House Children’s Publishers; Alix Reid and Kayla Pawek at Lerner Publishing; and others who have worked on it.
Thanks to Ann Wroe, at The Economist, who corrected my Latin; to Keith Blount who developed the brilliant Scrivener writing application; to Danielle Carnito for the outstanding cover; and to the staff in the various coffee houses in London where I did a lot of the dirty work.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my old pal Chris Bidmead, for an unflagging stream of constructive suggestions, mixed with smartarse comments.
About the Author
Donald Hounam grew up just outside Oxford, England. He toyed with medieval history at Saint Andrews University, and wrote a doctoral thesis on apocalyptic beliefs in the early Crusades. He threw paint around at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford, then found himself in Dublin, Ireland, where he threw more paint around and reviewed films until his flatmate set the building alight one Christmas, whereupon he scuttled back to England and started making up unlikely stories.
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