by Ian Richards
Sometimes when Martell returned from his excursions he brought with him mysterious boxes or bags containing unspecified substances. Attempts to quiz him on their contents were dismissed with a wave of his hand and vague excuses, but a bit of detective work soon determined that he had been conducting business with other antiques sellers from across London. Tony spotted several telltale signs. Some of the carrier bags Martell returned with were emblazoned with the names of rival stores. And certain antiques began disappearing from Martell’s Antiques only to turn up on the websites of these same stores the following day under the ‘New In Stock’ section.
Deals were being struck, Tony deduced. But why? And what was the nature of them?
Seeing his uncle so driven—often too busy to join them at the kitchen table for meals—made him uneasy. This was what he imagined Martell to have been like back in his Black Magician days—buried in books, constantly cutting deals and creeping about at all hours of the night. Only back then, he imagined, there would have been a sense of fun to it all. Martell would have been younger. He wouldn’t have looked quite so exhausted all the time.
When their paths did cross, he said nothing of Vanessa’s plan to begin teaching him magic. Though he told himself that this was because Martell was too busy to be distracted by little things like that—he’s trying to save our lives, the last thing he needs is for me to start worrying him—the truth was that he knew the kind of reaction he could expect if he did. Martell would be furious. He couldn’t blame him either. He knew how much his father’s transformation had affected his uncle. To lose another member of the family to magic would be too much for him to take. Yet Tony had no intention of following the same road as Thomas Lott. He knew better than that. Besides, what choice did he have? It was learn magic or wait for Firefox to make his next move.
Sometimes, he reasoned, padlocks and deadbolts just weren’t enough.
*
The bell above the entrance to Barnes & Potter Antiques tinkled once as the door opened, and then again as the customer closed it behind himself. The shopkeeper, Barnes, was a portly man with moon-shaped spectacles and a fluffy beard. He had a bad leg and used a crutch to get around, though if he could help it, he didn’t like to move from the stool behind the counter where he spent most of his time reading old science-fiction pulps from the 1950s.
Upon seeing the stranger enter—a tall man in a grey raincoat: fairly unremarkable—he debated hobbling over and offering to assist him, before eventually deciding against it. The man looked like the kind of customer who preferred to browse on his own rather than engage in small talk. That suited Barnes just fine. He was content to stay where he was and press on with his book. He offered the stranger a nod, which was returned, and thought no more about the matter. It was quite common for maudlin men to spend inordinate amounts of time wandering through the shop. Some were looking for something specific, yes—an old lamp perhaps, or an antique chaise-lounge for use in some am-dram production of A Streetcar Named Desire. But many seemed to have no interest beyond drifting—old things surrounded by old things, as if he were running day trips to the past instead of an actual business.
Barnes didn’t mind, of course. He was enough of a lonely old man himself to understand the workings of other lonely old men.
He returned to his book, some silly saucer tale about a lantern-jawed hero hoping to repel an alien invasion from the cockpit of a Second World War fighter jet. The stranger continued to browse, back and forth down the aisles, stopping every so often to inspect a figurine or a paperweight in more detail. Barnes left him to it, glancing up only occasionally to see if he needed any assistance. Each time the stranger ignored him. In his own little world, Barnes smiled, returning to his paperback. He had known some customers to browse for hours at a time without ever saying a single word.
Which made it all the more frightening when he glanced up and found the stranger suddenly standing right in front of him.
‘Goodness,’ he gasped, chuckling nervously. ‘You frightened the life out of me.’
‘My apologies,’ the man said. He held in his hands a golden candlestick. ‘How much is this, please?’
‘That?’ Barnes squinted through his glasses. ‘Two hundred notes.’
‘Two hundred. I see.’
For a dreadful moment Barnes thought the man was about to bring it down on his skull. There was a murderous glint in his eye—a smirk that spoke of wicked intentions. But no, it was nothing, for the man simply handed the candlestick back to him and shook his head.
‘Too much.’
‘Yes,’ Barnes said. ‘I’m sorry about that. Can I interest you in anything else?’
‘Perhaps. I wonder if you know where I might find an old friend, a Mr. Joseph Martell? He runs a store not dissimilar from this one.’
‘Joseph Martell?’ Barnes shook his head. ‘Sorry, never heard of him.’
The stranger raised an eyebrow. ‘No? Now that is interesting. You see another friend of mine—his name isn’t important—he told me that he saw Joseph Martell come into this very shop a little over two days ago. Apparently he came in with a bag full of candlesticks just like this one, and left again empty-handed.’
Oh, bloody hell, Barnes thought. The candlesticks are nicked. This bloke is a copper.
Clearing his throat, he fumbled for an excuse. ‘Look, it’s perfectly legit, all right? He gave me the candlesticks, I gave him a pocket-watch. It was a trade. All above board and legal.’
‘A pocket-watch.’ The stranger—the policeman—he nodded, as if this were all information he already knew. ‘And the value of this pocket-watch would be …?’
‘I don’t know. Forty quid maybe. It was an old, beaten-up thing. I don’t think it even kept the time properly anymore.’
‘I see. Thank you for your help, Mr. Barnes. You’ve been tremendously useful to my enquiries.’ He turned to leave, then stopped and turned back. This time his smirk was sharper than before. Barnes felt his blood run cold. A policeman? No. Suddenly the idea seemed ludicrous. ‘One last thing,’ the stranger said. ‘Is it normal to strike a deal in which a set of candlesticks worth two hundred pounds is exchanged for a forty pound pocket-watch?’
‘Of course it’s not,’ Barnes blustered. ‘But the watch was worth more than that to Martell. He had some sort of sentimental attachment to it. That’s why he offered to pay a bit extra to get it back. It’s all legit, honestly it is.’
The stranger held up a finger. ‘But why would your pocket-watch be of sentimental value to Mr. Martell?’
‘Because,’ Barnes said. ‘It used to be his, didn’t it? He sold it to me thirteen years ago. And now he wants it back.’
Mr. Kepler smiled. ‘Thank you, Mr. Barnes,’ he said. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
*
Tony’s first magic lesson took place inside Martell’s Antiques and was conducted in secret on the shop floor while Martell remained locked away in his office. Vanessa wore her new blue dress and stripy colored socks. Tony took off his suit jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. He also rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie, presumably in anticipation of the hard work to come. From a nearby shelf Pushkin looked on sleepily, uninterested in the whole spectacle.
Vanessa invited Tony to sit. He did so.
‘Magic,’ she began, ‘is a creative skill, like any other. You need to learn the basics and you need to practice every day. I don’t suppose you can play a musical instrument, can you? Because that’s an excellent starting point.’
Tony shook his head. At some time or another he had experimented with most of the instruments to have passed through the doors of Martell’s Antiques, but with no success whatsoever. Banjos, trumpets, xylophones, bass guitars. He had never been able to get more than a few duff notes out of any of them.
‘I see. In that case we will have to start from the very beginning. What do you want to learn first?’
‘I don’t know.’ He paused. ‘Firing lightning bolts?’
She began to give him a list of tricks that he could more realistically expect to master. These included basic spell-casting, summoning spirits, and conversing with animals. (To demonstrate this particular skill she miaowed at Pushkin, who blinked twice, then miaowed back. ‘He says ‘how do you do?’,’ she nodded. ‘Which is very polite, especially for a cat.’) As the list continued—fire demons, shadow snatching, basic mind manipulation, mirror merging—Tony found himself unable to stop smiling. Everything Vanessa talked of sounded thrilling to him—it resonated on some deep, base level, as if he had always been destined to take this path, as if becoming adept in magic was his destiny. For the first time in his life he found himself almost feeling sympathetic towards his father. Had he felt like this when he first began pursuing an interest in the occult? This shivering, teeth-chattering thrill? Yes, he thought, he probably had. Was this what it was like for you too, dad? Is this what you gave everything up for?
He wondered if magic was in his blood, and knew instinctively that it was. It was deep inside him—a swirling snake in his DNA, coiled and luminous and ready to be unleashed.
Vanessa was now talking about the science behind magic, the role of ritual and preparation, the different mental states that had to be accessed in order to fully develop latent abilities. Tony struggled to keep up. This was complex stuff, and he was still thinking about fire demons and holding conversations with neighborhood cats. He took the idea further. Imagine taking a trip to London zoo and swapping stories with the chimpanzees. Or casting spells that would allow him to walk on water.
‘Focus, idiot.’ Vanessa cuffed him on the side of the head. ‘Oh, this is hopeless. You won’t learn anything by daydreaming. Magic is a discipline, chimney sweep. You need to concentrate.’
To prove her point, she closed her eyes and turned her palms to the ceiling. After a few moments she rose into the air, hovering off the ground as if sitting cross-legged on an invisible ledge. ‘Concentration,’ she intoned carefully. ‘And … focus.’
Suddenly other objects began rising into the air. Vases and coffee tables and books and puppets. Even Pushkin, who looked as alarmed as could be expected. Slowly these items rotated around her, graceful orbits that reminded Tony of a visit to the London planetarium he had made when he was younger. Vanessa hovered in front of him like the sun, the blazing centre of this wonderful, strange, hodgepodge universe.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘Try and distract me.’
‘Distract you? How?’
‘Through stupid questions, of course.’ She waved a hand. ‘I don’t know, by making a noise or something. Clap your hands. Wave your arms. I want to show you how important concentration is when practicing magic. No matter what happens, you must retain your focus at all times.’
Tony tried distracting her by jumping up and down and shouting, but she remained chillingly indifferent. Such was her lack of reaction he could almost have not been there at all. He tried to make things more difficult by tossing a cushion at her head, but she incorporated it into the orbit seamlessly. Returning everything to the ground as softly as she had lifted them up, she sat on the floor once again and opened her eyes.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Now your turn.’
‘I think not,’ Martell said from behind her. ‘Not on your life.’
How long he had been standing there Tony didn’t know. He seemed to have stepped out of the shadows themselves. At once a great feeling of guilt came upon him, a dreadful, stomach-turning shame that immediately eclipsed the enthusiasms of earlier. The expression on the old man’s face was part anger and part hurt. It was the latter of these two that affected Tony the most. He tried to offer an excuse but the words ran away from him.
‘Martell, we were just—’
‘I know what you were doing, my boy. I can see that very clearly.’ He lifted Pushkin into his arms and gave the cat an affectionate rub. ‘You’re learning magic.’
‘We thought it would be a good idea,’ Vanessa offered. ‘To keep him safe from Krook and Kepler.’
‘Two of the most fearsome men to have ever lived,’ Martell nodded. ‘I see. I presume you intend to hover out of their reach, my boy? Fix it so the only way they can kill you is with the assistance of a long pole.’
‘It’s a start,’ Vanessa said sharply. ‘And it’s better than sitting around and waiting for them to come for him.’
‘I disagree.’ There was a sharpness to Martell’s voice that seemed to surprise even him. ‘Look,’ he continued, softening his tone again, ‘I know you only want to help. But magic, Tony … I just have a bad feeling about it. It frightens me.’
‘But what about Kepler and Krook? What about Firefox?’
‘Both situations are being dealt with, my boy. You don’t have to worry.’
‘Dealt with how?’ Vanessa asked, frowning suspiciously.
But Martell would say no more on the matter. With the magic lesson called off Tony had no choice but to spend the remainder of the day on the shop floor, surrounded by the slow ticking of the clocks. As Vanessa played with her Tarot cards and Pushkin slept soundly on top of a stack of old vinyl LPs he sat at the counter and waited for customers that never arrived.
It was a long, long afternoon.
*
‘Hello? Is anybody there?’
Mr. Simons fumbled for the light switch. At once the procession of dusty bulbs that hung from the ceiling of his shop spluttered into life. Darkness gave way to flickering light, a frantic shadow-show that strobed for a few seconds before settling on illuminated dimness. The lighting in Past Times had never been particularly good. It was something to do with the wiring, the electrician had said. That and the positioning of the bulbs, all of which hung from the rafters like little nooses, filling the shop with light so murky the walls looked sickly and diseased.
‘Hello?’
There was nobody there. Just rows of antiques, paintings hung from windowless walls, a couple of rusted suits of armor he had picked up several years ago on a day trip to France.
And yet he was sure he had heard something.
A burglar? Unlikely. The front door was still locked and there was no other way in. An animal then? A fox or a stray cat? No, the sound he had heard had belonged to something bigger than that. Something that had been moving around.
It was late—after ten o’clock and colder than he had expected. There was heating upstairs, but down here in the shop he relied upon the four portable heaters that had been switched off at closing time. He pulled his dressing gown tighter around himself. It was cold. Like standing in the middle of an enormous refrigerator. Just the weather at this time of year, he told himself, walking back and forth and looking for any signs of a disturbance. We’re already a week into November. And wasn’t there a story in the newspaper about us being overdue a cold snap?
He stopped dead in his tracks. There was someone behind him. He could see a figure in the corner of his eye, a reflection of a reflection caught in the glass of one of the mirrors. Spinning round, Mr. Simons moved to confront the intruder, only to find the blade of a knife pressed up against his throat. How could anyone move so quickly? Where had this person come from?
When Mr. Krook grinned his face looked like a jack-o’-lantern that had begun to rot. ‘Mr. Simons. Nice to meet you. My name’s Krook. This is Kepler.’
Oh God. Another shape appeared behind him, this one taller and smelling of rain and churchyards. Mr. Simons started to cry. He couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t a brave man. He had no experience of standing down villains like these.
‘Take it,’ he sobbed. ‘Whatever you want, take it. The money’s in the till.’
‘We don’t want your money, Mr. Simons.’ The tall one, oh, his voice. So cruel, so full of hate. ‘We want information.’
‘J
oseph Martell,’ snapped Krook. ‘He came here three times this week. Why?’
‘Wanted to buy something,’ Mr. Simons stammered. ‘I heard from a friend that he’s buying up antiques from across the city. Flipped his lid, he has. Paying over the odds for all sorts of rubbish. I sent him away the first two times because I wanted to drive up the price. I’m sorry, I know it was wrong, but business has been slow recently and I wanted to—’
‘What did he buy?’ the tall one hissed.
‘And how much did he pay for it?’ added the dwarf.
‘A pair of boots,’ Mr. Simons cried. ‘A miserable pair of old boots that I’ve had tucked away in the back of a cupboard for years. He paid a hundred notes for them.’
‘One hundred pounds for a pair of old boots. That doesn’t seem very likely, Mr. Simons.’
‘It’s true. Oh God, it’s true, I swear it.’
‘And they were just normal boots? Nothing special about them in any way?’
‘No.’ He was sobbing again. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘They were ugly old brown things. Big and clumpy. Nothing special about them at all.’
‘I see. Thank you for your cooperation.’
There was a brief pause before Kepler spoke again.
‘Mr. Krook?’ he said.
Less than a second later a large chunk of Mr. Simon’s windpipe was dripping slowly down a wall decorated with clock-faces and barometers. Mr. Krook wiped the blood from his knife with his handkerchief. He gave the body on the floor a spiteful little kick for good measure.
‘Bloody rip-off merchant. A hundred quid for a pair of old shoes? I’m surprised no-one has knifed him before.’
Outside, the neighborhood was dark and silent. They made their way along the freezing streets with their hands in their pockets, both brooding on their latest discovery. Eventually Kepler spoke.
‘The Black Magician is plotting his escape. I don’t believe for a moment that the antiques he is snatching up are as worthless as these fools believe. I suspect he deliberately stashed them in stores all over the city in case he should ever need access to them in the future.’