by Laura Powell
‘Believe me, I don’t underestimate the challenge.’
‘Don’t underestimate the people here, either.’
In the light of a bare bulb, her face was all bones and shadows. They were as different as it was possible for two people to be, yet he knew they had one thing in common. Her mother had also been taken from her at an early age – not by witchcrime, admittedly, but as a result of its legacy. Angeline had told the Witchcrime Directorate that Glory wanted justice for her mother, and the chance of a normal life. Looking at her now, Lucas wasn’t so sure. Coven blood feuds were about the pursuit of vengeance, not the righting of wrongs.
After she left, Lucas stood absolutely still for a minute, letting the emptiness wash over him. Then he squirted shower gel all over the sink and turned on the tap. The sound of running water was calming. A compact mirror had been stuck above the sink with Blu-tack; this time, however, he avoided Harry’s face. He wished he had something, anything, of his own. A book, a postcard . . . even his old watch.
Music was still pumping away downstairs. Lucas lay down on the sagging mattress and closed his eyes. He tried not to think about the last time he saw his father, their embrace made clumsy by the weight of things unsaid. From there, his thoughts moved to his mother. He wondered what kind of difference his fae would have made to her. He wondered what she would think if she could see him now. It was several hours before he fell asleep.
CHAPTER 18
On the other side of the wall, Glory also lay wide-eyed and wakeful. She imagined the Inquisition’s witch prowling around next door, plotting his next move. He was a strong witch, that was for sure. As soon as he’d begun his witchwork, her own Seventh Sense had felt the fae leap and crackle in the air between them. She wasn’t afraid of him – at least, not in the way she was afraid of Charlie Morgan. But he made her nervous.
As a result of her restless night, Glory slept through her alarm and didn’t get up until mid-morning. Still, the extra sleep had done her good. She felt hopeful and alert. First, she decided, she’d sort out the mess with Patch and the accounting. Then she’d show Harry around. He might be more forthcoming once she got him on his own, away from the coven.
There was a secure line to Charlie Morgan’s office in the basement meeting room. It was furnished with a telephone, computer and a battered conference table and chairs. She half hoped she could leave a message, but her call was answered with an irritable ‘What?’
‘Morning, Uncle C.’
Monster. Murderer. I’m gonna take you down . . .
Coolly, she explained the situation with Patch’s brother and the gambling debt, and confirmed the money would be repaid at the end of the month.
There was heavy breathing from the other end of the line. ‘So what next?’
‘How d’you mean? I did what you wanted and I got you your cash. Patch never meant no harm. As for Dad . . . well, he’s a soft touch. But he knew Patch would do right by him.’
Charlie made a scoffing sound. ‘Your dad’s head is so far in the clouds it’s practically on Pluto. This is what happens when a coven loses its way – without discipline, people take advantage.’
‘Maybe so. In which case, getting us back on track – and restoring discipline – is my problem. And Cooper Street’s business.’
She sucked in her breath, trying to visualise the man on the other end of the line. The shrewd cruel eyes, the well-fed face. Had she gone too far? There was a long wait before he answered.
‘If you’re not careful, there won’t be much of a business left. I need to see results, Glory. I’m depending on you.’
He hung up. Murderer, she mouthed at the phone. Bastard. Murderous treacherous bastard scum.
She had just got up to leave when Jacko and Earl pushed through the door. They were talking about Harry.
‘. . . I only met him the one time,’ Jacko was saying. ‘’S’funny, though. He seems younger than I remembered.’
Earl chuckled. ‘All the better for us. He’s used to living soft too. Anyone can see.’
‘Ain’t you the early birds,’ Glory remarked, before they could ask what she was doing there. ‘What’s up?’
‘Gotta check on the online perfume sales,’ said Jacko. ‘The computer upstairs keeps crashing.’ He turned on the PC. ‘Chinese Dave phoned – said there’s a problem with the latest DVD order. Nate’s gone to talk to him, and taken Harry along.’
‘You serious? I thought Harry was supposed to be lying low. Not being paraded about like a prize poodle. At this rate, we’ll have the Inquisition sniffing round our doorstep before the week’s out.’
In fact, Nate’s recklessness made her own job easier. The Wednesday Coven would be on to Harry even more quickly. She couldn’t believe no one else had considered the risks though.
Earl looked uncomfortable. ‘I did tell ’em to be careful. And Nate swore not to say a word –’
But Glory was already hurrying up the stairs to Number Seven’s attic. If Nate and Harry were with Chinese Dave, they’d be gone for at least an hour. It was the perfect chance to investigate Harry’s glamour.
If Glory had wanted to publicly expose him, she would need to destroy the amulet he was using. She only wanted to see through his glamour without him knowing. This meant reversing the witchwork involved.
Glory knew a glamour’s illusion could outlast its amulet for some time, depending on its contact with the witch who had crafted it. But to be safe, Harry would be wearing an amulet close to his skin. To be even safer, he would have a ready-made spare. She could work on that just as effectively.
Her search began with the various nooks and crannies in the attic. All she found was dust. From there, she went through the folded pile of clothes by the mattress, checking the seams. Then she moved to the sports bag. Its lining had already been searched by Nate, and she didn’t find anything new.
She sat back on her heels and surveyed the room. What a neat-freak. The contents of the washbag were laid out as tidily as the clothes. Toothbrush and paste, shower gel, flannel and the rest were all lined up to one side of the sink. The one missing item was the deodorant, which was in a zipped-up side pocket of the otherwise empty bag. It struck her as odd because everything else was so carefully set out.
Glory gave the can a shake, and – feeling foolish – sprayed it out of the window. OK, so it worked. What now? She’d already spent twenty minutes on the search. She took out some of her irritation on the can, twisting it about with her hands in frustration. It was then the base popped open, and a fold of grubby paper fell out. Bingo.
Now the real work could begin.
Firstly, she had to cover her tracks. Best keep it simple: she’d make up some story about having to ‘borrow’ Harry’s bag, and present him with a replacement later. Since he could hardly kick up a fuss about a missing deodorant, he’d just have to craft another glamour as soon as he could.
Secondly, she had to find a vantage spot for undoing the glamour. She needed to have a clear view of her target, yet be out of sight herself. This was easier said than done. But luck was on her side. It was a sunny day, and when Nate and Harry returned at twelve, they went straight out into the scrubby patch of weeds that was Number Seven’s back garden. Chunk followed, carrying pizza and beer. Glory could do the job from the safety of her own bedroom.
She pulled a side table over to the window and placed a mirror face down, to use as a work-board. If she was going to undo the witchwork, she needed to reverse as many of its components as possible. Very carefully, she unfolded the amulet. It was gummed together by a paste of ash and bits of unknown grit. She spread it out flat to examine the little stick man with his pink cheeks and scribbled yellow hair. As she touched it, she could feel the Devil’s Kiss warm beneath her collar bone responding to the fae imprinted on the paper.
Glory brushed off as much of the ash mix as possible, before licking her index finger and rubbing it through the grit. Then she picked up her eraser. She was glad the picture hadn’t been d
one in ink; working with Tipp-Ex would have been messy, and harder to control. Watching Harry out in the garden, drink in hand, she took the eraser and dragged it in slow strong strokes across the yellow-haired stick man. Her fae flowed through, rubbing out the fae worked into the lines and shading of the picture.
It wasn’t easy. The pencil didn’t fade like it should. The other witch’s fae was resisting hers, and the effort sent pins and needles shooting through her hand. Her Devil’s Kiss ached. Still, Harry was looking blurred. Like a watercolour painting that had got wet. Finally, she took his name – a false name for a false identity – and unpicked it. Backwards-speech was the language of reversals. Sekuj Yrrah she whispered, as the brown pencil eyes grew fainter and the pink pencil cheeks faded. Sekuj Yrrah.
Now her view of Harry was nothing but grey fuzz. Glory pressed the blank rag of paper between her palms. Sekuj Yrrah, she said for a third time, this time commandingly. Her eyes stung and watered. And when the mist cleared, a pale slim boy with dark hair was staring up at her window.
In spite of herself, she started away in shock. He really was her own age, not just some under-grown twenty-year-old. A boy witch with powers near equal to hers! He must already be an important figure in WICA if they and the Inquisition entrusted him with undercover work.
Who was he and where did he come from? He was better-looking than his glamour but she didn’t reckon that he and ‘Harry’ were too dissimilar in background. You could spot the public school type a mile off. Like those twits in green uniforms at the bus stop the other day. It was an air they had. A gleam and polish . . . Maybe that’s why this boy looked slightly familiar. She’d bet he wasn’t putting on his toff accent, or that haughty manner. Believe me, I don’t underestimate the challenge.
But Glory liked a challenge too. Seeing the witch’s true face had only increased her curiosity.
CHAPTER 19
The girl’s face at the window was a far-off smudge, but there was something about the way she was looking at Lucas that made him uneasy. Abruptly, she disappeared from view. Lucas went back to pretending to appreciate Nate’s latest anecdote.
They were all more or less the same. The morning’s trip to the DVD supplier had mostly been an excuse for Nate to talk up his ‘international contacts’ – as if he was some kind of jet-setting criminal mastermind. Now they were out in the scabby garden, standing among thistles as the wretched dogs whined and scrabbled on the other side of the wall. Lucas had only had a couple of hours’ sleep and was feeling hollow with tiredness.
‘Don’t worry if Glory acts a bit sore, by the way,’ Nate told him. ‘She can be an uppity little cow. Auntie A’s spoiled her – filled her head with tales of Starling-girl stardom. You coming here has put her nose right out of joint.’
‘Whose nose is that?’ said Glory, coming out from the house. ‘And where’s me ham and pineapple?’
‘Pizza’s for those what earned it,’ said Chunk. ‘We’ve been working all morning.’
‘Exactly,’ said Nate, through a mouthful. ‘Shouldn’t you be off learning your times tables or something?’
‘And shouldn’t you learn to shut your gob when you’re eating?’ She grabbed a slice of pizza from the box. ‘Auntie needs me to do the rounds. She wants Prince Harry to come with me.’
‘That’s my bag,’ Lucas said, frowning. Glory had it slung over one shoulder, and it appeared to be stuffed with packets of cigarettes.
‘Yeah. I needed to borrow it,’ she said breezily. ‘Now, are you coming or what?’
‘Ask nicely,’ said Nate. ‘He’s not for you to boss about.’
‘You’re not boss yet neither,’ Glory retorted.
Lucas went after her into the house.
‘Er . . . perhaps I should carry the bag –’
‘Ain’t you the gentleman.’ She adjusted the strap. ‘Lucky for you, I’m no lady.’
He tried to reassure himself with the thought that even if someone discovered the amulet inside the deodorant can, there was nothing they could do with it. From what he’d seen of Auntie Angel’s efforts to set the paper doll alight, she was a pretty low-grade witch.
‘So tell me what we’re doing exactly,’ he asked as they set off down Cooper Street.
‘Getting to know the neighbours.’
It turned out the bag contained packets of mince, tea and cheap chocolate, along with the cigarettes. Glory was giving out care-packages – bribes, Lucas thought – for the locals in Cooper Street’s territory.
They were mostly visiting young mothers and the elderly. It was a chance for people to moan about the troublemakers on the estate, and list various small grievances (a leaking tap, a broken lock) the council hadn’t got round to fixing. Glory wrote these down. ‘Earl’s good with the DIY stuff,’ she explained. ‘He’ll be round later.’
She didn’t just hand out food and fags. There was witchwork as well. Auntie Angel had crafted small amulets for luck and health, or finding lost property. People paid for these, between twenty and fifty quid. Lucas wondered how they could afford this on benefits. They also gave Glory the local gossip: the comings and goings, the feuds and romances and shady deals. Everyone was interested in Harry too.
‘He’s on work-experience,’ Glory would say, with a wink and a grin. Or, ‘Auntie Angel’s special project.’ And, ‘You’ll be hearing a lot more of him.’
Several asked if he was the ‘new boyfriend’. For the younger ones, Glory would toss her hair flirtatiously. ‘Can’t you see I’m out of his league?’ For their elders, she’d give a sigh of mock-regret. ‘He’s an uptown boy and I’m an East End girl. You know it’d never work.’
Until now, Lucas had only seen two sides of Glory: sulky or fierce. This was a new Glory altogether: cheerful and patient with the old folk, matey with the young mums. If nothing else, she knew how to work a room.
It came as a shock to see how accepting these people were, not just of organised crime, but of witchkind in general. A couple of the old biddies they visited had pictures of the Starling Twins framed on their mantelpiece. There had been a coven at Cooper Street for nearly a hundred years, and it seemed that old habits – and loyalties – died hard.
Perhaps it was just that anyone living here was grateful for whatever help they could get. Some of the newer council buildings weren’t so bad. There were a few scruffy but respectable terraced houses. But the mass of the Rockwood Estate was a concrete jungle of rusting balconies, weedy yards and dank corners, with one lone tower block in the centre. Its windows stretched from earth to sky; stacks of smeary eyes, watching.
Most of the residents had the same worn-down look as their surroundings. There were girls with prams and pushchairs, still kids themselves, and young men with angry stares who stood around on corners; leering, gobbing, swearing. If Glory was nervous of them she didn’t show it. In her too-tight jeans and extravagantly fake fur gilet, she walked through this wasteland with her hips swinging and her head high.
In fact, the only local feature Glory commented on was a graffiti tag they saw sprayed inside a stinking underpass. A red S with a diagonal line slashed across it, like a crooked dollar sign. ‘It’s the badge of Striker’s crew,’ she told him with a frown. ‘I ain’t seen one so close to Cooper Street before.’
‘A local gang, are they?’ Lucas knew the stories about hoodies on the rampage: street battles with knives and pit bulls, sometimes guns. You didn’t need to belong to a coven to cause trouble.
‘Not exactly. Their leader’s this crazy preacher guy. Got converted in jail apparently. He acts like he’s got a direct line to God – going to put the world to rights, vigilante style.’ She frowned again. ‘But this ain’t their territory. They should know better than to come to Rockwood.’
From the underpass, they went to the mini-mart on the estate’s forecourt. Lucas had a couple of things he wanted to buy, including a new deodorant. After their final house-visit, Glory had simply chucked his bag into a weed-infested canal. ‘It’s had Auntie Ange
l’s witchwork in it,’ she’d said by way of explanation. ‘We don’t want it to be traced back to us.’
Lucas was left to fume in silence.
He was also fuming about his lack of funds. All his cash had been confiscated, though Nate had doled him out a tenner that morning. Pocket money, he’d said with a smirk. The rest you’ll have to earn. It was a small thing, but Lucas had never had to count his pennies before.
Afterwards, they took cans of Coke over to a bench scrawled all over with four letter words. ‘We did good work today,’ Glory said, yawning. ‘Ouff. If the local gossips don’t get Charlie’s spies pricking up their ears, I don’t know what will.’
Lucas nodded. The groundwork had been done. But he wasn’t in any hurry to return to Cooper Street, and it didn’t look as if Glory was either. She had begun to tap out a series of messages on her mobile phone. Idly, he picked up a newspaper lying under the bench.
The front page had a picture of Helena Howell, MP, addressing an anti-witchkind demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament. An update on the Goodwin trial reported that a witness for the defence had broken down under intensive questioning by the Chief Prosecutor, and admitted using a false alibi. The journalist described it as ‘a rare success for the Inquisition, in a case that has been dogged by disruption and confusion’.
All the news seemed to be bad news. There had been a break-out at a detention centre for illegal immigrants a couple of months ago, and group of Roma asylum seekers were still on the run, including a child of six. One of the group had been recaptured yesterday, and set himself on fire in protest. Lucas thought, as he always did when he heard news of this sort, of the burning of Bernard Tynan. Another article contained an interview with the wife of the train driver who’d been under the bane. Apparently he was still suffering from the hallucination that had caused the derailment. A monstrous black horse, charging towards him . . .
With a sigh, Lucas turned to the editorial column. Its title was ‘Wave of Witch Terror’, and its author called for ‘an urgent reassessment of witchkind rights and responsibilities’.