Conjuror

by John

  ‘Fáilte go dtí ceann amháin agus go léir!’ said Renard in a booming voice.

  ‘Welcome! Council members, dear friends and close family. It’s customary to open this special ceremony with the “Oath of the Council of Guardians” read by the order’s historian, Simon Butler.’

  Before opening the first folio of the ancient illustrated codex known to members as ‘Albion’s Book of Days’, Simon slipped on a pair of cotton gloves to protect the priceless parchment from the oils on his skin. The Guardians in the library, including Matt and Em, felt a low-pitched hum from the codex like a song’s heavy bass-line vibrating in your chest.

  ‘With honour and loyalty,’ Simon began, ‘we, the Council of Guardians of the Order of Era Mina, pledge to uphold the rules of our ancient guild, to foster the varied ambitions, nurture the powerful creativity and support the awe and wonder of all Animare under our care.’

  ‘With honour and loyalty, we pledge to protect their art and their lives from any who would dare bring harm,’ recited the assembled Guardians. ‘Is mac-meanmna màthair cumhachd… imagination is the real and the eternal, the mother of all power.’

  Renard and Jeannie’s robes were covered in hundreds of tiny glorious glyphs. For Matt, the embroidery was a three-dimensional display of colours and shapes, full-blown animations dancing up from the fabric as if the Animare who’d created the robes had stitched the fates, good and bad, of their brothers and sisters into the cloth. Every few seconds, the figures on the robes shifted positions, as if each image was trying to take its turn in reality. On Renard’s shoulder, a medieval monk rose up, only to be cut down by a knight wielding a broadsword, his horse’s hooves stitched fast to the cloth with golden threads. The monk’s blood was sucked into the fabric of the robe before bursting into flames, the monk’s black flesh falling in charred drops around Renard’s elbow.

  Jeannie’s robe was alive too, monsters and men shifting shapes, morphing colours in a tableau of the fantastic and the grotesque, a violent melee of torture and triumph.

  Can you see the images on the robes animate, Mattie?

  I wish I couldn’t.

  Em looked pale. I think we’re seeing all the ways the monks at Era Mina were tortured and killed. Do you think Renard and Jeannie can feel what they’re wearing?

  Matt concentrated on the emotions of the two people he loved most in the world. They can feel them. It’s like they’re wearing hair shirts.

  Then why wear them?

  Masochism? Or tradition.

  Em bit her lip. No matter the suffering?

  This is what we’re signing up for, Matt thought to himself. He closed his eyes, shutting away the ceremony, the robes and his sister.

  *

  Em suddenly felt as if a claw was squeezing the breath from her lungs. One or two Guardians shot to their feet. Others fainted and toppled to the floor. The specimen jars exploded one after the other, sending shards of glass and blobs of jellyfish raining down on the gathering.

  Matt’s face was pinched. He snatched his shades from Lizzy’s hand and stepped up to the podium.

  ‘I’m sorry, everyone,’ he said. ‘I can’t do this. It has nothing to do with you, Lizzy, or you either, Em. This is all on me. And I hope one day you’ll all be able to forgive me.’

  He unhooked his robe and slipped it off. Mutters of shock and concern spread through the room. The last time an Animare and a Guardian had failed to go forward with a Union Ceremony was at the turn of the century, when John Singer Sergeant’s Guardian dropped dead from a brain aneurysm during the ceremony itself. As far as anyone knew, no one had ever not gone through with it of his or her own volition.

  Renard raised his hand in the air, calming the commotion.

  ‘Matt’s decision may be unprecedented, but as far as I know it is not against the rules of our order. It is clear that he didn’t make it lightly. But Matt,’ he said, addressing his grandson directly, ‘you must understand that there may be consequences imposed by the Council. Consequences I cannot save you from.’

  Matt looked at Em. He could sense nothing from her. It worried him more than everyone else’s responses put together.

  Renard shuffled his notes on the podium and cleared his throat before speaking again.

  ‘So if I may ask you all to settle your hearts and your imaginations, I’d like to continue the ceremony with Emily Calder and Zach Butler.’

  Zach leaped from his chair so fast he knocked it over.

  ‘Easy does it, son,’ Simon remarked. Laughter cut through some of the tension.

  Em stayed where she was. Em, who was crying. Em who never cried. Matt’s heart clenched, then leaped with hope.

  ‘Em?’ said Zach.

  23.

  BANKSY AND MERLIN

  Two days later, the twins exploded from Johannes Vermeer’s The Allegory of Painting in waves of greys and greens. Matt stumbled a little, but fought the momentum, skidding to a stop against an upholstered chair where someone had been reading old newspapers. Clippings from neat piles stacked on the chair’s arms flurried at Matt’s feet.

  Em wasn’t as graceful, crashing out of the Vermeer on a slick of viscous paint. Punching into reality, arms akimbo, legs splayed, she thudded into a draughtsman’s table, knocking a cup of pens and brushes on to the floor, her hip slamming against the corner of the table, before landing on her bum under the desk.

  ‘OK?’ asked Matt.

  ‘Nah,’ Em quipped, gasping. ‘Fractured hip.’

  The last two days had been exhausting, stacked on top of several levels of awkward. Em knew she’d made the right decision to stick with Matt, but her heart still ached. Zach’s anger and misery had been so acute he had barely signed a word to her, cutting her off from his thoughts entirely. When she tried to access his mind, he imagined a computer firewall, so all Em could see were lines and lines of computer code. When Em had tried to breach his defences one last time before they’d left, the code had spelled out, ‘Fuck off.’

  Em really hoped Jeannie was right, and time would heal his hurt. Em wasn’t sure she was strong enough to carry Zach’s rage like a boulder in her gut for very long.

  The Vermeer still had a cyclone of colour and light swirling at its core, expanding beyond the border of its gilded frame as if it were about to burst free. It was so bright and rotating so fast that Em wondered if it might be strong enough to pull her back inside.

  Vaughn Grant didn’t so much drop as glide from the painting in one elegant movement. Colour and light from the painting stretched out behind him in a cape of blues, yellows and greens. When he was fully in the room, the painting shrugged back to its original state, only the faint telltale glow left as evidence.

  Vaughn grinned and winked at Em, brushing flakes of blue paint from his jacket.

  ‘Show off,’ said Em, realizing that they were in a church.

  ‘Welcome to Orion,’ he said. ‘We are essentially the MI6 of the Animare world, and you and Matt are our newest and youngest recruits. I hope you appreciate the strings I pulled to make this happen. God knows, the Council didn’t know what to do with you after you rejected your chosen Guardians.’

  The twins looked around at the space, the medieval pitched ceiling with its thick beams and the altar at the east end of the building. The ground was uneven and cobbled, marked every few metres with flagstones that had the names of the dead etched on them. Rows of canvases leaned against the walls next to blocks of marble in various states of reveal. Busts on pedestals sat beside empty gilded frames. The most amazing area in the church was a series of what looked to Em like Plexiglas coffins standing beneath a row of dusty skylights. Inside were concrete blocks cut from walls with graffiti on them, pictures of telephone boxes, police constables, doors and children.

  Matt’s expression changed. ‘Whoah! Are those Banksys? Is he an Animare?’

  ‘They are, and, yes, he is.’

  Vaughn stepped round clusters of desks, some with massive computer screens on them, others piled
with books, and light-tables for the close examination of paintings.

  ‘One of our founders, James McIntosh Patrick, came upon this church and its surrounding land when he was on a scouting tour for his own landscapes. It was close to ruin. He bought it, renovated it and converted it to our Scottish headquarters. He was not a religious man, and appreciated the irony that Orion, where art is worshipped and imaginations revered, exists on a site reserved for God. It’s also remote enough that our fading goes undetected.’

  Em gazed at the stunning painting of the Saint-Martin Canal in Paris, on the wall opposite. It was by Alfred Sisley, an impressionist Animare along with Manet and Pissarro.

  ‘Were all these paintings created for fading?’ she asked.

  ‘Only those two and a Turner over in the north transept,’ Vaughn answered, ‘but Orion has co-opted a few around the world and added paintings within those paintings, allowing us to fade more directly to and from places. We used to have to fade between art museums and galleries. This works better.’

  ‘Not every Animare can fade, right?’ Matt asked.

  ‘No. We don’t have much record of anyone fading, before the Renaissance,’ Vaughn said. ‘But that doesn’t mean earlier Animare couldn’t do it. It just means no one documented it. The problem with being a secret order is how little gets written down. Simon does his best these days, but…’

  Regret and sadness stung Em’s mind at the mention of Zach’s dad. She wandered across the nave, giving herself a chance to get her emotions in check and force thoughts of Zach to the back of her mind. The altar looked like a throne built into the granite, a small, carved chalice jutting from the wall beside it.

  ‘How old was the original chapel?’ she asked, leaning forward to touch the smooth surface of the altar.

  ‘Don’t!’ Vaughn said sharply. Em jumped away. ‘I don’t mean to scare you, but sometimes when a powerful Guardian touches this stone, he or she gets quite a shock. Not just a little spark, but a full-blown knockout.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We think Merlin was baptized on it.’

  ‘King Arthur’s Merlin?’

  ‘Move away from the stone, Em,’ Matt warned. ‘We’re not ready to meet a wizard today.’

  *

  ‘You can sleep down here, Matt,’ Vaughn said, sorting through messages on his phone. ‘Em, you can have the bed in the living quarters upstairs. I’ll take the couch up there. I’ll turn on the generator and get the place warmed up a bit. We’re not on the grid.’

  He pointed to an arched doorway in the medieval church wall. ‘Our generator is at the bottom of the garden in a shed. There’s a bathroom and small kitchen in there. Make yourselves at home.’

  ‘This is trippy,’ said Matt. ‘Who else knows about this place?’

  ‘Only Orion agents and members of the five Councils of Guardians. Each Council supports a similar site in its own territory.’

  Matt lifted his shades off his eyes. ‘At least it’s dark in here.’

  ‘It’s always dark at this time of the day. Most natural light comes from the skylights on the roof, except for the diffused lights at the light-tables. We can’t afford anyone to see our comings and goings. At the height of the day, you’ll need your shades.’

  ‘How many people work here?’ asked Matt.

  ‘Counting both of you? Four of us.’

  Em walked the perimeter. She knew better than to touch the art. ‘Four? That’s a card game or a small dinner party, not a secret organization designed to protect Animare and their Guardians.’

  ‘We manage just fine.’

  ‘What about tourists visiting the church?’

  ‘We don’t get any. We’re too far from the station and the nearest pub is ten miles away. Now get some kip. You both look bushed.’

  *

  Later, when Em was sure Matt and Vaughn were asleep, she pulled on her boots, grabbed her coat and went outside. The night was quieter than any night on Auchinmurn. No sounds of the sea. No squeals of the gulls. Even the moon looked different from here.

  Using her phone as a flashlight, she walked along a pebbled path towards a bench under a copse of trees. The plaque dedicated the bench and its spot to the original sixth-century church, supposedly founded by St Kentigern. She tapped Zach’s number. The call went straight to Zach’s voicemail message, which he had tailored for her.

  ‘Em, leave me alone. Stop calling.’

  Em curled up on the hard bench, her loss and her anguish so profound that it woke Matt from the best night’s sleep he’d had in ages.

  24.

  MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

  PRESENT DAY

  Matt and Em hugged the shadows of the Louvre’s façade as they jogged towards an arched opening, midway down the side of the building. With his perfect night vision Matt was in the lead.

  He held up his hand, stopping Em.‘Did you hear that? Behind us?’

  Em listened. ‘It’s just traffic.’At the fourth arch from the bridge, they ducked into a small cobbled alley and jogged down a set of stone steps to a tiny forecourt in one of the oldest parts of the Louvre. The twins were engulfed in complete darkness, not even the Paris moon offering illumination.

  ‘I can’t see a thing,’ said Em. ‘And Georges is late.’

  ‘We’ll do it the old-fashioned way,’ said Matt, ‘I can see fine!’

  Slipping his bulging sketchbook from inside his jacket, he untied the leather strips holding it together. He flipped to a page about two-thirds of the way in, to an image of a key, the kind used to open old doors and treasure chests. He stared at the key before outlining it quickly, slowing only to shade and contour the teeth. The edges of the drawing began to glow, pale at first then brighter and brighter. Seconds later the key fell from the page and clunked on to the stones at Em’s feet. The light from the key lit up a small door cut into the wall in front of them. Em slipped the key in the lock, but stopped as a guard turned into the archway.

  ‘Monsieur Matt? Mademoiselle Emily?’

  Em felt light-headed with relief. ‘We started without you, Georges.’

  ‘Desolé. I saw you both on the bridge when I crossed the gardens.’

  ‘We appreciate you didn’t call the Council about this,’ said Matt. ‘Gives us a chance to clean up our mess.’

  As Matt and the guard fiddled with a set of real keys to the medieval keep that loomed in the centre of the second courtyard, Em’s imagination stirred. She could hear the gunshots, the shouts, the screams, the call to arms from the wooden barricade on the Rue de Six. She smelled gunpowder choking the air, mingling with the fires raging all over the city and the stench of blood flowing along the gutters and into the Seine in a great red ribbon of death.

  During the bloodiest days of the French Revolution, four people had docked their boats against the nearby city wall, dislodged the main sewer grate that drained from the palace, climbed inside, and crawled in the pitch-black until they were directly beneath the spot where Em now stood. History wasn’t clear on the details of what happened next, but they had somehow broken in, opened the sealed door to the medieval keep, exposesd the ancient tunnels that led into the Petite Galerie of the palace as it lay under siege, then hauled and hidden as many works of art as they could in the catacombs beneath the foundations. The only possible answer to the puzzle was that they had been Animare, and had animated keys in exactly the same way as Matt had done. That night they had saved centuries of art.

  ‘This is as far as I can go,’ said Georges. ‘I must continue with my security checks.’ He handed them a secure key card. ‘This should get you where you need to go.’

  ‘We’ll try not to use the card unless we have to,’ Matt said.

  The guard nodded, relaxing a little. ‘You will have approximately three minutes in any gallery before your body heat will trigger the alarms. It is the time it takes for a guard to move through each space. Bonne chance.’

  Matt waited until the guard closed the keep’s heavy door, before lifting the c
oncealed trapdoor. He led Em down the iron steps and along a damp tunnel to an elevator shaft filled with concrete, blocked off by the Nazis during their occupation of the city. Once again, Matt slipped his sketchbook and a nubby stick of charcoal from his inside pocket. As he drew, his fingers and charcoal were like pencils of light on the paper. As he sketched, the concrete cracked, crumbled and resolved itself into steps, spiralling upwards.

  The twins took the stairs, two at a time, up to another set of elevator doors at the back of a storage room long since abandoned. Em pried the doors open as Matt tore up his drawing, letting the pieces flutter away as concrete filled in the stairs and closed off the shaft.

  The room was filled with wall-to-wall packing crates. Matt popped the lid on the first two, sending a family of mice scuttling across the floor. In the third crate, he found what Georges had discovered.

  The crate was the size of a coffin, and inside was an embroidered glowing animated pillow, along with a long pipe and a leather pouch filled with tobacco.

  Em picked up the pouch and sniffed. ‘It’s him.’

  On the other side of the door to the storage room, Em heard footsteps again. She flicked off the light and stepped behind the door, waiting. Matt backed against the wall next to her. A stray mouse darted round Em’s feet and scampered under the door.

  The footsteps stopped. The twins held their breath.

  Then they heard their quarry sprinting in the other direction.

  ‘Not again,’ said Matt, yanking the door open.

  25.

  NOT MY FAULT

  The twins chased a man wearing a loose white tunic, leather breeches and a sword down the emergency stairs to the Louvre’s main gallery. Sprinting down the marble steps, Matt clipped the edge of Winged Victory’s bow-shaped plinth with his wrist. By the time he had stopped yelping at the pain, their prey had gone.