Conjuror

by John

  ‘Can you still hear that terrible noise in your head?’ asked Lafferty suddenly. ‘I’ve had a headache all day.’

  ‘That’ll be the Taser, you fool,’ said Hector.

  ‘He caught me on my blind side,’ said Lafferty defensively. ‘Otherwise, no way he’d have sat me down like that.’ Bereft of the penny whistle, he started fiddling with his Taser instead, safely looped back on his belt. ‘How’d he find this place anyway? It’s not like you can type directions into your satnav.’

  Hector was tired of Lafferty already. Brawn he may have had in abundance, but brain was lacking. He wished the man would leave. He had travel arrangements to make and a boy to find.

  ‘We’ve underestimated him,’ he said. ‘A mistake for which I will throw myself at the mercy of the Grand Inquisitor, when I am finally able to bow down before his everlasting light.’

  Lafferty looked blank. Unsurprising. The man was an idiot, Hector thought. He had no idea of the importance of what they were protecting in this place. He just counted the cash.

  ‘We have to find the boy,’ Hector said fretfully. ‘We need to be sure everything is ready. We cannot fail now we are so close.’

  Lafferty raised his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute.

  Hector slammed his hands on the counter, rattling the cash register.

  ‘You are a foot soldier in this army and you insult your superiors. The Camarilla have been protecting the Grand Inquisitor for centuries, and I have not risen through their ranks over the years to be taken down by the likes of you! You will not defile this sacred space with your slack-jawed behaviour. If you had captured the stupid boy this morning, we would not have to alter plans that have been eternities in the making!’

  Lafferty got up and walked over to the old cabinet with the brass hinges, pulling open its doors and running his fingers absently along its fretwork of drawers. ‘Here’s what I’d really like to know, Mister Doughnut.’

  ‘It’s Doe-net, you twit,’ said Hector furiously. ‘My family were bankers to Spanish royalty. We’ve financed more countries and crowns than you’ve had hot dinners.’

  ‘But you’re Scottish,’ said Lafferty.

  ‘My family goes all the way back to Queen Juana of Spain herself.’

  ‘Never heard of her. My family goes back to good old Alfred.’

  ‘Queen Juana was a woman of great learning,’ Hector hissed, beyond furious now. ‘Without her particular kind of magic, our Grand Inquisitor would never have survived.’

  ‘Whatever, Mr Doughnut,’ said Lafferty, turning to check out the antique cabinet backed against the far wall. ‘As I was saying, here’s what I’d really like to know—’

  Behind him, Lafferty heard a soft whistling sound like a breeze through bulrushes. The sound wrapped itself around him.

  ‘Don’t you worry your tiny brain with questions,’ said a soft, high-pitched voice. ‘We pay you to do your job, not to think.’

  Lafferty was about to comment on his boss’s sudden dialect change when a bluebottle the size of his thumb crawled up the side of the cabinet to flutter in front of his face. Another crawled out of the cabinet lining. When he lifted his hand to swat it away, Lafferty realized his entire hand was a glove of hungry black flies, and they were shredding his skin.

  32.

  DEATH AND DUST

  The flies stuck fast to Lafferty’s skin. He ran screaming across the shop, waving his hands hopelessly in the air. Bits of his skin started falling in strips on to the wooden planks of the shop’s floor. Lafferty flapped and flailed for a few more minutes, but a cluster of the flies had found a tasty vein on his wrist. Within minutes he was dead in a pool of his own blood, a grin of terror frozen on his face.

  ‘He was a liability,’ said Don Grigori, slipping a pitch pipe into the inside pocket of a black bespoke suit. ‘And, worse, a terrible bore. You simply can’t find good men these days.’ He adjusted his cuffs. ‘I must admit I do quite like the fashions of this time, Hector. This English tailor knows his craft. Make sure you reward him well. We may need him again soon, when His Eminence is back among us.’

  Hector bowed, ignoring the flies buzzing round Don Grigori’s head. ‘It’s an honour for his family to have been of service to the Camarilla.’

  Kneeling, Don Grigori scooped a handful of buzzing bluebottles from what remained of Lafferty’s raw pink flesh and white cartilage. Cupping them in his hands, he puffed air at their wings, watching them flutter on his palm before brushing them back on to the body.

  ‘Should I clean that up?’ Hector asked.

  Don Grigori ran his slender fingers over an animal skin, sending dust motes dancing into a ribbon of sunlight piercing the filthy latticed windows. Then he sat on a carved mahogany chair and crossed his legs, his elegant hands smoothing the already perfect crease on his trousers. Even after only one day outside the painting, Hector noticed Don Grigori’s recently repaired skin was thinning, his complexion becoming translucent and jaundiced.

  ‘Leave my children to their work,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you have learned about the boy’s whereabouts.’

  ‘According to my sources,’ Hector said, ‘he conjured his disappearance and vanished beneath a statue of Shakespeare.’

  Don Grigori smiled. ‘Ah, Shakespeare.’

  Hector continued. ‘The police believe the boy is part of the gang of jewel thieves who’ve been plaguing this part of the city in recent months. The sooner we can relieve them of this notion, the better for us.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘When the heat from the police cools, the boy will be more open in his movements, making it easier for our network of spies to catch sight of him.’

  ‘It is an affront that the boy has escaped again,’ Don Grigori said irritably. ‘I must share the blame for our failure to stop him in Chicago. I’d never encountered two conjurors at the same time, especially a mother and a son. I was unprepared for their powerful bond. It will not happen again.’

  ‘The boy’s mother had been trouble for a long time,’ said Hector, flicking a fly from his forehead. ‘Taunting us with her music at the Albert Hall, no less.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Don Grigori. ‘And now her son comes charging into our plans with his lance tilted.’

  ‘Should we delay the journey?’ asked Hector. ‘We could stay here a little longer.’

  Don Grigori cupped Hector’s chin and tipped his face upwards. His gaze was ice blue. Hector shivered.

  ‘We will leave tomorrow as planned. The boy has worked faster than I could have imagined after his mother’s death. He has her journal to guide him, of course. When he is ours, we must destroy it. For a weak woman, she somehow managed to uncover our plans.’

  ‘The boy will be ours soon enough,’ said Hector.

  Don Grigori nodded. ‘And when he is, our journey to the Second Kingdom can proceed. Until then, prepare your… what is your word?’

  ‘Our network, signor?’

  ‘This age lacks poetry, Hector.’ Don Grigori sighed. ‘Use your network, then, and search this city for the boy. When you find him, bring him to me.’

  ‘I know someone in a unique position to help us,’ said Hector. ‘Until now, this person has been a rather reluctant member of our cabal. Perhaps it is time to call in our favours.’

  A bluebottle landed on Don Grigori’s polished brogues. He leaned forward and let it flutter to the back of his hand, where it folded its wings against its bulbous body. The castrato pinched the fly between his fingers and dropped it into his mouth.

  ‘I trust I can leave this matter with you, Hector,’ Don Grigori said, floating up off the chair. ‘Don’t let me down again.’

  Hector bowed and tried not to think about Lafferty’s corpse.

  33.

  MAGIC AND REVELATION

  The inside of the church was cold; Matt and Em’s breath fogged the air. Em stomped up and down, trying to drive some life to her toes. They had deposited Caravaggio on the beach with Guthrie, surprisingly without muc
h fuss from either man, and grabbed a late meal before returning to HQ. Now it was just a question of keeping warm. Em was in leggings, boots, fingerless gloves and an Argyle sweater Jeannie had knitted for her birthday. She layered this over a T-shirt, plus an oversized cardigan she’d found in a closet in the living quarters upstairs. Matt’s hair was loose on his shoulders and damp from the sea air. He was dressed in a vintage Bob Dylan T-shirt, skinny black jeans, boots and a tartan blanket he’d rustled from Vaughn’s bedroom. His shades were on the top of his head, his eyes on full-tilt freaky.

  ‘I’ve a new assignment for you,’ said Vaughn, turning the screen of his laptop to face the twins. ‘According to a source, there was an incident at a shop just off the Strand involving this young man.’

  Vaughn showed them a photo that looked like it had come from someone’s phone. The twins didn’t ask how his source had taken such a clear picture given that their own source was unconscious in a nineteenth-century Scottish landscape. The twins looked closely at the image.

  ‘The clerks in the store are being uncooperative, claiming the lad was never there, despite the fact that the police have footage of him running across the rooftops nearby.’

  ‘Did he steal something? People shoplift all the time,’ said Matt, looking at the photograph. ‘Why did they go all super SWAT on him?’

  ‘It’s wrong, but his colour probably made him an easy target,’ said Em with disgust.

  ‘I think it may have something to do with the jewel thieves who’ve been upsetting wealthy shoppers in the city centre,’ said Vaughn.

  ‘Still don’t get why this is Orion’s concern,’ said Matt.

  ‘Right after this incident, a phone call came in to our London headquarters from one of our sources in the field. My source said that the young man evaded capture by disappearing into a statue of Shakespeare in an explosion of light.’

  ‘That sounds like an Animare,’ said Em, clutching her mug of tea for warmth. Her gloves weren’t helping.

  ‘That’s what HQ thought at first,’ said Vaughn. ‘But he didn’t draw his way in. He altered reality with music. Specifically, with his voice. Which means he’s not an Animare, he’s a Conjuror.’

  Em put her cup down and Matt shifted his chair forward as Vaughn opened a new screen, typed in a password and clicked through to the pages of an illuminated manuscript on Orion’s database of grimoires and other ancient documents.

  ‘This is a facsimile of Agrippa’s Compendium of Magic,’ he told the twins. ‘It’s one of only two manuscripts we’ve ever discovered that mention Conjurors, and trust me we have looked. We had assumed the supernatural line of Conjurors had died out during the African Diaspora, when the Atlantic slave trade seized and scattered African peoples.’

  ‘Conjurors are African?’ asked Matt.

  ‘What little we know suggests their origins are somewhere in the Middle East or the African continent,’ said Vaughn, ‘but we don’t have enough evidence to know more than that. Occasionally, one of Orion’s researchers will come across an image or reference, but that’s not happened in decades. I don’t think anyone’s even looking for them any more.’

  Em leaned closer to read the Latin text beneath the image of an angelic-looking African youth playing a golden lyre.

  ‘“A Conjuror alone can lure demons to the underworld with his music,”’ she translated aloud.

  Matt, who was not as fluent in Latin as Em, pointed at an illuminated quotation set off with whirls of what was likely gold leaf. ‘What does this one say?’

  Em ran possible phrasing through her head. ‘“Only when the chord is true and the voice is clear will the Second Kingdom fall”,’ she said. ‘There’s a faded bit here too, with a few words missing, which says something about, “when the Camarilla rise, the fallen will walk the earth”.’

  I’ve heard that word before, Matt. Camarilla.

  Me too. Don’t say anything else in my head, Em. Vaughn’s too good.

  ‘What are you two buzzing back and forth about?’ said Vaughn, eyeing them.

  ‘Only that these phrases sound like an ancient apocalyptic prophecy,’ said Matt quickly. ‘And you know the problem with apocalyptic prophecies? For people like us, they’re a royal pain in the arse.’

  Em grinned. Good save.

  Vaughn burst out laughing.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But if this young man really is a Conjuror, then he’s a rarity, and we have to bring him in for his own protection. I need you both to fade to London and take a closer look at the statue where he disappeared. If he is a Conjuror, the Council of Guardians must be informed immediately. Then someone with more experience in the field will be assigned to bring him in.’

  Em and Matt both opened their mouths at the same time. Vaughn held up a warning hand.

  ‘If you want to be part of my Orion team, you need to learn to play with others. Don’t get too close to him or anyone else connected with the police investigation. Just investigate the scene and then report back. Understood?’

  I’m thinking this is probably not a good time to tell him about Caravaggio.

  You think?

  ‘Understood,’ the twins said in unison.

  Vaughn clicked over to another screen on his computer. A map of the centre of London came up.

  ‘The statue is directly behind the National Gallery and the shop is in a quiet lane off the Strand. You can fade from our Vermeer here to another one in the National Gallery. Go to the shop. See if you can find out why its staff are not cooperating with the police. My gut tells me they know more than they’re saying.’

  He pulled an accordion folder from a locked cabinet, tucked in an alcove below the Turner, in the north transept.

  ‘Can we inspirit them into cooperating?’ Em asked.

  ‘Use your powers sparingly,’ Vaughn advised, sifting through the folder’s contents. ‘As far as the Council is concerned, you’re probationary Orion agents only, which means you’re not supposed to take on cases without my close supervision. Do not let me down.’

  He handed Em and Matt each an old-fashioned flip phone, an ID card, a credit card from the Bank of Scotland and a hundred pounds in cash.

  ‘This is ancient,’ said Matt, examining the phone.

  ‘It’s better than it looks. It has a direct line to Orion’s switchboard,’ Vaughn said. ‘And it takes decent pictures and video. Don’t use your iPhones for Orion business, they are too easily traced.’

  Em picked up the ID card and read aloud, ‘“Orion Insurance Inc.” We’re insurance agents?’

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Vaughn. ‘We insure that Animare and their Guardians are protected from those who will do them harm.’

  ‘Wait a minute. You said that Orion has knowledge of only two ancient manuscripts mentioning Conjurors,’ said Matt. ‘If Agrippa’s Compendium of Magic is one of them, what’s the other?’

  Vaughn rubbed his hand over his stubbled chin. ‘The other text with a reference is the Apocalypse of John.’

  Em froze. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ said Matt.

  ‘The Apocalypse of John,’ said Em, shivering despite all her layers, ‘is the original version of the bible’s Book of Revelation.’

  34.

  THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

  ‘Matt, wake up!’

  Matt rolled over on the leather couch tucked in an alcove of the Orion chapel, pulling the tartan blanket over his head. Em tugged the blanket back, and the static stood Matt’s hair up in crazy curls.

  ‘We have to let Caravaggio go,’ said Em.

  Matt yawned, pulling his hair off his face and twisting it into a loose knot. His eyes shifted from blue with gold flecks to green with silver, then settled to a blazing cobalt. ‘Why are we talking about this in the middle of the night? You’re the one who said he ought to be bound.’

  ‘Hear me out,’ said Em. ‘Caravaggio said he had information he’d be willing to trade with us in return for his freedom.’ />
  Matt frowned, still bleary with sleep. ‘OK, but unless his information threatens the continued existence of the universe, I don’t see why I can’t sleep another couple of hours first.’

  ‘Because,’ said Em, ‘Caravaggio is the one who mentioned the Camarilla to us first. That’s why I knew the word. “The Camarilla is back”, remember? We’ve got to find out what he knows.’

  For a second Matt didn’t move. Then he tugged on his jeans and grey T-shirt while he hopped on the cold stone floor. ‘Next time, Em, open with that.’

  When they were dressed and Matt had found his shades, they faded from the Turner into a Dutch painting called Interior of an Imaginary Gothic Church, where they caught their breath behind a Gothic column.

  ‘So nice to have young Animare visit us again,’ said a young woman in the painting as Matt and Em prepared to fade on into the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, where the Dutch painting hung. ‘Don’t leave it so long next time.’

  ‘We’ll be back soon, and I’m sure you’ll be as beautiful as ever,’ said Matt, bowing gallantly.

  The young woman tittered as the twins fell from the painting in a rush of ochre and pink light, landing on the gallery floor.

  The twins wasted no time fading into Guthrie’s Hard At It, where they’d abandoned Caravaggio the day before. They jogged past the artist with a nod and tromped along the beach, sand filling their boots, until they spotted Caravaggio spread out on his back behind a grassy dune, a flagon of ale in one hand, the other tucked behind his head.

  ‘You’d better not let Guthrie see that booze,’ said Matt, sitting down next to Caravaggio. ‘He can be an angry teetotaller.’

  Caravaggio offered Matt and then Em a swig.

  ‘Bit early for us,’ answered Em, noticing the etchings on the rocks next to the artist of four flagons of ale and what looked like a couple of turkey legs and a loaf of bread.