by Laura Powell
And afterwards, his father, bursting through, picking him up like a child, holding him in his arms. My son. My son.
CHAPTER 38
Glory did not go home that night, or the night after. She got a message to Cooper Street that she had gone to visit her Morgan cousins, to offer support in Charlie’s hour of need. In fact, she was staying at Troy’s flat. He himself returned to the family house in Cardinal Avenue.
With the arrival of the team from Special Branch, the professionals had taken over. Lucas was immediately whisked away in an ambulance with his father, but at one point Glory thought she’d have to stay in the basement all night. Men in uniform swarmed everywhere: shining lights, taking photographs and collecting samples, barking codes into transceivers. Officer Branning and Agent Connor did most of the talking. Somehow, they managed to keep the details of Troy and Glory’s involvement to a minimum. Glory made the most of acting dazed and confused; Troy, at least, had his head wound to excuse him. Eventually, they were allowed to leave. Formal statements would be taken later.
That was when Troy took her to the flat. ‘You need a breathing space,’ he said as he left. ‘Take your time.’ Afterwards, Glory barely remembered crawling into bed, her body still rank with sweat and smoke. She was afraid the smell would haunt her dreams, taking her to the Burning Court, or the attic with Lady Merle. But the night was quiet, her sleep deep enough to drown in.
She stayed in the flat all of the next day. She spent two hours getting soap scum and water all over Troy’s immaculate and expensively accessorised bathroom. Then she ransacked Troy’s immaculate and expensively stocked fridge. Browsed his bookshelves, rummaged through his drawers, pilfered a pair of cashmere bedsocks. She kept the TV on, partly because the background noise was comforting, and partly because she was waiting for news of the scandal to break. So far, the only part of the story to come out was ‘tragic blaze at media tycoon’s mansion’. The report was mostly speculation. Glory thought of Rose Merle, sitting quietly in some hospital room, her perfect face as blank as her thoughts. Perhaps Lady Merle had been right to call her memory loss a mercy.
Zoey Connor came around in the afternoon. She was tired but upbeat. She said that all of Paterson’s accomplices, including the MP Helena Howell, had been taken into custody, and were cooperating with the police. The Roma mother and her son were under guard in a safe house, while the authorities tried to decide what to do with them. They’d already bridled the boy.
‘It turns out that one of the Witchcrime Directorate’s informants found them, and alerted Paterson. I’m not sure how they discovered the boy’s fae. I think the mother was perhaps planning to use it in her appeal for asylum. But Paterson offered a different kind of deal. A new, legal life in Britain for her and her son, in return for their help with some clandestine government operations. It’s still not clear how much the woman understood. The little boy obviously didn’t know what he was doing.’
Glory nodded. That was why he would be beyond suspicion. A six-year-old witch was so unlikely as to seem impossible. ‘Paterson weren’t ever going to hand over a couple of shiny new passports and a council flat, was he?’
‘No. Once the job was done, I’m sure the plan was to ship them off on the quiet.’
‘Or dump their bodies in a ditch. Why ain’t none of this stuff on the news?’
Zoey seemed a little uncomfortable. ‘There’s a media blackout, until all the facts are known. A story as big as this requires careful management.’ She didn’t quite meet Glory’s eye.
On Wednesday morning, Glory went shopping with the money put out for the cleaner. When she got back, Jonah telephoned with the news that Lucas was back at home. He was asking to see her.
They met in the WICA safe house where Glory had first been introduced to Harry Jukes. Jonah let her in, and she surprised both of them with the warmth of her greeting. He showed her up to the small bare kitchen where Lucas was waiting, but didn’t go in.
Lucas got up from his chair when Glory arrived, and this unsettled her. She wasn’t sure what to do. Shake his hand? Give him a hug? She felt clumsy, and unprepared.
He looked OK, she thought. Not much paler than usual anyway. The shadows under his eyes reminded her of the witch-stain. He smiled at her and the shadows lightened. For some reason this confused her too.
‘How are you doing?’ she asked abruptly, to cover it.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘They kept me in hospital overnight as a precaution. But there was no need. It was . . . it was only water, after all.’
Unconsciously, he moved one hand to touch the chafe marks on his wrists. Glory could see the red lines from the leather straps. She sat down in the seat opposite him. She cleared her throat.
‘They got the bastards what done it. Striker, and that Gideon creep and his girlfriend. Zoey told me.’
‘So I heard. They and the other accomplices have made full confessions, Patterson and Howell too. It means that you and Troy probably won’t even have to be called as witnesses.’
‘But you’ll have to testify.’
‘Yes. My identity will be protected, though. The trial is going to take place in a closed court.’
‘Closed?’
‘It’s when the public and press aren’t allowed access, so that classified evidence –’
‘I know what it is. It’s what happens when there’s a cover-up.’ Heat rushed to her cheeks, and she gave a bitter, constricted laugh. ‘Mab Almighty! Nothing changes, does it? The people in charge are going to sweep their muck under the carpet, just like they always do.’
‘They can’t,’ Lucas said – dismissively, Glory thought. ‘The story’s too big, and too many people are involved. Jack Rawdon and the Witchfinder General are going to make a joint statement to the press this afternoon.’
He frowned a little. ‘I thought you’d be relieved about the trial. It’s good, isn’t it, that you and Troy won’t have to be cross-examined? It’ll keep the business with Harry Jukes and Cooper Street out of things. You’ll be able to stay unregistered, and out of the spotlight, and the guilty parties will still get what they deserve.’
Glory certainly did not want to go to court, and she would have done her best to get out of it. But Lucas was so damned sure about the matter – so coolly casual in the face of her outrage. She could feel the same old conflict, thickening the air between them.
Lucas must have sensed it too. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to argue. I want to thank you. I owe you . . . everything.’
His eyes, the blue of them, were too intense. She looked away. ‘You can save the speeches. I was lucky, you weren’t.’
‘It’s more than that. Everything that was discovered, and achieved, is down to you. If you hadn’t found me when you did, I don’t know what would have happened.’
‘That weren’t your fault. It was all a load of accidents. We were making it up as we went along.’
He was still looking at her. She could feel it.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
Now, today? Or for the rest of her life?
‘Go back to Cooper Street, I guess.’
‘It won’t be the same, though.’ He spoke as if to himself. ‘It can’t be. Too much has happened. I don’t think I even want my old life back, even if I had the chance.’ For the first time, he looked a little shy. ‘You know, WICA doesn’t just work on coven crime. There’s industrial espionage, and government security, and international terrorism –’
‘Lucas Stearne!’ She widened her eyes theatrically. ‘Are you trying to recruit me?’
He flushed. ‘I’m hardly in a position to make job offers. I’m not sure what my status is at the moment. Nobody quite knows what to do with me. But if I get a chance, I want to stick with it. I think – well, I think this kind of work is worth doing, that’s all.’
This time, she looked at him seriously. In her pocket, the crisp edge of the card Agent Connor had given her was poking through her jeans. She waited before she replied, trying to
get it right. ‘I can see that WICA does an important job,’ she said. ‘I guess there are some inquisitors who do things right too. With Paterson and his gang put away, maybe the good guys will have more of a chance.
‘There are some things, though, that won’t never change. Like with this trial – it’s just more secrets and scheming . . . more deals behind closed doors.’ She shook her head. ‘I ain’t saying the covens have the answer. They’ve got their own problems. But it’s as important to have good people in the covens as it is to have them anywhere else.
‘You people think that if you make enough rules, fill in enough forms, then you’ll make things safe. It’s not enough. Lady Merle shouldn’t have done what she did. Not to Rose, not with the fire neither. But desperate people do desperate things. There’ll always be people like her, and they’ll always need a way out – somewhere outside the rules and the forms.
‘So I need to stay on the outside, Lucas. It’s where I fit.’
Glory’s words made Lucas immensely tired. He knew that some of what she was said was right – more than she knew, in fact.
A face-saving strategy was already in place. The uncovering of the conspiracy was being rewritten as an official joint operation between WICA and the Witchcrime Directorate. In this version of events, Lucas – known only as an anonymous WICA agent – had been recruited by Commander Saunders to monitor the activities of his deputy, who was already under suspicion of malpractice. There would be no mention of Cooper Street or Harry Jukes, or the Morgan family. Privately, the Chief Prosecutor had admitted that Gideon and Zilla would get off lightly. They would present themselves as naïve young idealists, whose patriotism and zeal had been cynically exploited by the real villains of the piece.
Lucas did not like this. He accepted it, though. The government, Inquisition, even WICA, agreed that it was in all of their interests to minimise the fallout. It was in the public interest too. An aggrieved and hostile witchkind community was bad news for everyone. Lucas understood this. Glory wouldn’t. Part of him respected her for this. Part of him resented her for it. She was always so certain, of everything.
He hadn’t known what it would be like to see her again. He was half afraid to, unsure of what kind of memories she would revive. The crashing weight of water, the rub of the bindings, iron’s echo and throb . . . To look back on what had happened, even now, was to feel it in pieces. Like trying to find one’s reflection in shattered glass. Yet as soon as Glory had walked through the door, he knew it would be all right. Whatever had been broken would come together again.
That was why he couldn’t entirely trust his motives for what he was about to do.
Lucas got out the piece of paper he’d pulled from behind the sideboard that morning.
‘I have something you need to see. I found it on Monday, when I was trying to hack into the Inquisition files.’
He passed her Angeline Starling’s profile from the National Witchkind Database.
In seconds, Glory had skimmed the page. Her face hardened into a mask, china white. Her cosmetics stood out as brightly as paint.
‘Is it true?’ she asked him. Her voice had become artificial too: tinny and distant.
‘Yes, I think it is. I’m sorry.’
The breath went out of her and for long seconds did not come back.
‘OK.’ Her hands plucked at the paper, twisting and fidgeting. ‘I have to talk to her then. I have to see – to hear –’
‘There’s something more.’ Right up to the last possible moment, he wasn’t sure how to do this, and now the words stuck in his throat. ‘The report on Angeline’s . . . it’s from a database . . . there were updates on the rest of her family . . . and your mother . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘According to the record, your mother was last seen five years ago.’
‘A – alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where? What was she doing? Who was she with?’
‘It didn’t say. There was no other information.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘We can’t be sure your mother is still alive. But she wasn’t killed by Charlie Morgan. At least, not the way that Angeline said.’
Lucas knew that Glory needed to be told that Edie Starling had been working for the Inquisition when she disappeared. But it wouldn’t be fair to burden her with it now, not when there was so little real information. I’ll see her again, Lucas reasoned. I have to. Then I’ll tell her the full story. I just need to get the facts straight first.
Unless, that is, my father was responsible for her mother’s disappearance. Or worse. Because if that’s true, she will never forgive me.
He had suppressed the knowledge, but now it cut and crackled, like broken glass. He knew his face must have sharpened with it, because Glory reached across and grasped his hand. She had mistaken the nature of his hurt.
‘Thank you, Lucas. For telling me.’
He smiled back at her, foreseeing his treachery.
‘Thank you for finding me.’
CHAPTER 39
Glory returned to Cooper Street in the late afternoon. It had turned warm again and a moist green smell hung in the air, mingling with the traffic fumes. The same skinhead kids dawdled in the shadow of the tower block; chewing, gobbing, blagging, cussing. When she walked by, one whistled and the others jeered.
Patrick was sitting on the steps of Number Eight, peering into the hand-held games console Patch had swiped for him last Christmas. His thin hair puffed up a little in the breeze.
‘There you are, Glory.’
‘Hello, Dad.’
She went to sit beside him, and leaned against his shoulder. Plink, plink, bleep went the console. He was still in his dressing gown. She remembered the Chief Prosecutor, storming into the basement with a squad of armed men. How he’d sunk on to the puddled floor and cradled his son in his arms. How fierce his tenderness.
‘I was sorry to hear about Charlie,’ Patrick said, eyes fixed on the screen. ‘Nasty business, that. How’s the family bearing up?’
‘Not too bad.’
‘And what about, er, Harry? Is he with the Morgans now?’
‘No. I . . . I’m not sure we’ll be seeing much more of him.’
‘Oh, dear. He seemed like a nice lad.’
‘I s’pose. Turns out we had more in common than I thought.’ Glory wearily got to her feet. ‘I need to talk to Auntie Angel.’
Patrick looked up at her at last. He gave a cough. ‘Ah. Hmm. You know, you spend an awful lot of time with your great-aunt. Sometimes I worry she has a bit too much influence over you.’
‘Do you? Really?’ Her voice trembled. ‘And you never thought to say before?’
His face clouded with puzzlement. Before it could turn to hurt, she managed a smile. ‘Never mind, Dad. It doesn’t matter. I – I love you.’
‘Love you too.’
Plink, plink, bleep.
She went a little way down the street and knocked on the old lady’s door.
‘Glory! I’ve been worried sick. Why ain’t you returned my calls? Keeping me in the dark – what do you think you’re playing at? Downright rude, I call it. Ungrateful too. D’you have any idea how many people’ve been looking for you, missy? And what’s this I hear about you running around with Troy Morgan? Where’s Harry? There’s all sorts of rumours flying, I can tell you . . .’
She rattled on for a while. Glory didn’t hear any of it. She stood very still in the room she’d been raised in. She knew every fringe and tassel and candy-stripe, every scrap of newsprint, every black and white smile. The Holy Temple of the Starling Sisterhood.
Angeline had run out of breath for scolding. Or maybe Glory’s silence had got to her. ‘Come on, girl,’ she said gruffly. ‘Speak up.’
Glory unfolded the piece of paper Lucas had given to her and passed it to her great-aunt.
‘I know it’s true.’ She sat down on one of the overstuffed chairs. ‘Now you tell me why.’
Glory had seen Angeline do her frail
old lady act before. This was different; a stripping down, not a putting on. Her great-aunt’s face grew patched and grey, and when she lowered herself into a seat, her flesh shrivelled and her hands shook. But her voice stayed firm.
‘You want the Starling Girl story, do you?’
‘The real one. Yeah.’
‘All right,’ Angeline said, with a kind of ragged defiance. ‘All right, then. I’ll tell you how it was with my sisters and me.’ Her mouth convulsed. ‘I’d blowed their noses and wiped their arses ever since I were old enough to stand upright. Then after our ma and pa was gone, I scrimped and slaved to keep us together and off the streets. I got married to Joe, even though he were a drunk and a thug and fifteen years older’n me, so they’d have a roof over their heads, and because our family owed it to the coven. And as soon as they could, they skipped off to seek their fortunes. Didn’t ever look back.
‘Well, I should’ve known. Everyone said they’d grow up to be heartbreakers. The adorable Starling Twins! Sweet enough to charm the birds off the trees, sharp enough to steal the coat off a drunk’s back.
‘They got riches, lovers, power, their picture in the papers. I didn’t begrudge them, I were proud. All I wanted was to be allowed to help – to be a little part of the legend. Maybe my fae weren’t as dazzling as theirs, but they still used it, and me, whenever it suited. I covered for them. I witchworked for them. I got poked at with needles, and ducked in tanks.
‘I loved them girls but they only loved each other. Not any of their fancy men, nor even their own children really. They was each other’s whole world . . .’
There was a film on her eyes. Glory hardened herself against it.
‘I see. You loved my granny so much you turned her in to the Inquisition.’
‘It weren’t a plan. I hardly knew what I was doing. I was half crazy, at the time. When Cora called, I’d just got home from burying Old Joe. The police and prickers was swarming over Cooper Street; we was up to our eyeballs in debt. And there was my little sister on the phone, laughing and prattling away like she’d never left. Five years she’d been gone, and never a word. ‘‘Oh, I got such adventures to tell you,’’ she said. ‘‘So many stories! And how are you?’’ she asked. ‘‘How’s poor old Ange?’’