by John
‘As you like, my friends,’ said Caravaggio. ‘But since I’ve no wretched idea whether it’s morning, noon or night, I am at the mercy of my appetites.’ He sat up and drank heartily from the jug. ‘Are you planning on keeping me here much longer?’
‘That depends,’ said Em.
‘On what?’
‘On what you tell us about the Camarilla,’ said Matt, lifting his shades.
Caravaggio started. ‘Good God, your eyes!’ he said in wonder. ‘What colours! I’ve never seen anything like them.’
Matt’s stomach flipped as Caravaggio cupped his chin to get a better look.
‘We need the information,’ Matt said, making no attempt to break loose, ‘and we need your word you’ll help us if we need you to. Then we’ll let you go.’
Caravaggio continued to stare deeply into Matt’s eyes. Neither man moved. Em waved her hand between them.
‘Hellooo!’ she said drily. ‘I hate to break up this lust fest, but we need to know what information you think is worth your freedom.’
Caravaggio reluctantly let go of Matt’s face. Matt, equally reluctant, sat back. The artist took another long swig of ale and addressed both of them.
‘Give me your word as sworn agents of Orion that you will grant me my freedom in return for information that, in your ridiculously undisciplined modern vernacular, will blow your socks off.’
‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ said Em. ‘You tell us what you’ve learned, and we’ll check it out. If it turns out to be relevant, then we’ll free you from Guthrie’s watch and let you wander in the world for one month before we come after you again.’
‘Shall we shake on it?’ Caravaggio asked.
‘Just blow our socks off,’ said Matt.
‘Any time, my friend,’ said Caravaggio, gripping Matt’s hand.
Em fake-gagged. Matt shook his head. Caravaggio stretched out on the sand, grinning.
‘The first I heard of the Camarilla was during the time of the Spanish Inquisition,’ he began. ‘Some of the members of this cabal were Animare and Guardians like us. Others were alchemists and sorcerers, men and women dedicated to the study of dark magic. They were mostly based in Spain and Italy. When the Camarilla fell out of favour with the Spanish throne, many people thought they went underground, out of sight, ready to return when they were needed again. Others thought they sailed to the New World and established themselves there. Whatever happened, there’s been no sign of them until this century. And now it seems they’re operating again.’
‘You said people thought they would return when they were needed,’ said Em. ‘Needed for what?’
‘They were said to be protecting a supernatural being, a demon or monster of some kind. Their mission was to hunt and destroy those who could destroy him,’ said Caravaggio, sipping from his flagon. ‘They had their tentacles in lots of endeavours – the trades, the arts, even the Church.
‘They sound like a kind of supernatural mafia,’ said Em.
‘I know of your mafiosi,’ said Caravaggio, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. ‘The Camarilla are far more dangerous.’ He leaned over and brushed a curl from Matt’s forehead. ‘Your eyes are quite bewitching.’
Em glared.
‘Enough,’ said Matt, slipping his shades back on. ‘We’re on the clock.’
Caravaggio grinned, and continued. ‘Not long ago, I found myself enjoying the generous hospitality of a Brueghel wedding. While I was appreciating the talents of one of the stable boys, I overheard a conversation between two Animare whom I recognized as Camarilla.’
‘How did you know they were Camarilla?’ asked Em.
‘Members of the Camarilla wear a brand,’ said Caravaggio. ‘I recognized the mark on the wrist of one of the men.’ He grabbed a stick and quickly sketched on the sand, three straight lines with one curved line crossing at either end of the three. ‘It looked like this.’
‘It looks like a harp,’ said Em.
‘Did you see where the men went?’ asked Matt.
‘I’m afraid I was quite distracted when they faded out of the painting,’ said Caravaggio. ‘The stable boy really was most adept.’
‘Matt, we have to go,’ said Em, standing and brushing sand from her jeans. ‘Vaughn expects us to be in London in an hour.’
‘Am I free to leave?’ Caravaggio asked hopefully.
‘Not just yet,’ said Matt. ‘We could have discovered a lot of that information from our own archives. What else do you have for us?’
‘I have nothing else.’
‘Well, enjoy the Scottish sunshine,’ said Matt, getting up.
‘Wait!’ Caravaggio said, catching Matt’s arm. ‘On my wanderings in and out of my favourite works of art, I may have noticed that someone is stealing musical instruments from paintings.’
35.
TIME TO GO
‘You two are up early,’ said Vaughn, pouring himself a cup of coffee and sitting next to Em at the small kitchen table upstairs in the church’s living quarters.
‘Anxious to get on our way to London, I guess,’ said Em, sipping the tea she’d hastily made as soon as they’d returned from the Guthrie painting.
Her tall boots stood beside her chair. Vaughn’s eyes narrowed as he leaned over and tipped one of the boots upside down. ‘Sand?’
Em grabbed the boots and quickly tugged them on.
‘Do you remember when I was younger and my dreams sometimes animated into reality when I was nervous or scared?’
Vaughn relaxed. ‘I remember. Jeannie was always destroying handsome vampires or flying wizards with her frying pan at breakfast. So what was this one about?’
Em projected embarrassment as strongly as she could. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Nope,’ said Vaughn, following the twins downstairs and into the church. ‘I do not. Now, don’t forget these.’ He handed two new sketchpads from his desk drawer as the twins prepared to fade through the Vermeer to London. ‘Use discreetly.’
Em shoved her sketchpad into her Emily the Strange messenger bag she wore slung over one shoulder. Suddenly guilt and longing pinged through her, and her stomach twisted. The bag had been a Christmas present from Zach.
‘Ready?’ asked Matt, opening his pad, charcoal in hand. Em could feel his excitement wash over her, chasing away the crazy butterflies in her gut.
‘Check the statue for any residual evidence of animation,’ Vaughn told them as Matt sketched. ‘Then interview the clerks in the shop. If you get any leads on our Conjuror, that would be great too. But no more than that, OK?’
Matt was already outlining the main elements in the Vermeer, using the side of his hand to smudge and create texture.
‘Oh,’ Vaughn added, ‘and if you need a direct line to Orion, use the phones I’ve given you. The operator will tell you where your nearest possible fade might be, in case you get lost or stuck.’
Em gripped her brother’s shoulder as he drew, his hand flying over the page, lines of light shooting from his fingertips, coiling chimneys of mist building around them. Em’s feet broke into particles of light and ribbons of shimmering colour. She felt her body tilt, and her limbs became weightless. In a burst of brilliant blue, she and Matt faded into Girl Interrupted at Her Music Lesson.
36.
MAKING THE HEADLINES
Penelope Flanagan was rolling up the steel shutters protecting her granddad’s newsagent’s on Exhibition Road. The shop was a quick walk from the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of the world’s foremost centres of excellence for the decorative arts: a fact not lost on Penelope, who wanted to become a fashion designer.
Even though it meant getting up early, Penelope didn’t mind being the first one at the shop during her summer holidays. Most of her pleasure at opening the shop alone was her ritual with the newspapers. Penelope loved the feel, the smell, and the touch of them. She loved cutting the strings that bound the stacks waiting for her at the kerb, and being the first to smell the ink and scan the screaming headline
s. Penelope was a news junkie like her granddad and, although her technology kept her connected to the world every second of every day, she appreciated the ritual and its connection to the Victorian newsies who had once flooded the street, as well as the bond it gave her to her granddad, who still marked the times of his life by the headlines that stood outside his shop door.
Penelope carried the tabloids inside first. She was about to return to the kerb for The Times and the Telegraph when the face on one of the papers struck her as familiar. She cut the strings, put aside the broadsheet ad for the sandwich board, and took a closer look.
It was a picture of a young black man, about the same age as her, looking lost amid a crowd of white tourists. Penelope read the caption: ‘Have you seen this man?’
According to the story, the unidentified teenager had evaded a wide net cast by the London police yesterday after a suspected robbery at a shop off the Strand.
It was definitely him. Penelope had no doubt about it. She’d seen him that morning, lurking behind the café next door. His jacket, an expensive Belstaff, and his good looks had caught her eye. What was a young homeless person doing with such an expensive jacket?
She put on the kettle and thought about whether she wanted the bother of calling the police and being dragged into the drama of it all.
37.
TRIFLING DETAILS
‘How long do we have to wait?’ asked Rémy, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets. He’d switched his hoodie for a long-sleeved T-shirt after seeing his picture splashed across the morning papers while scavenging for breakfast.
‘Impatience is one of your more serious character flaws, my friend,’ said the Professor. ‘If you are not careful, it will be your downfall.’
Rémy scanned the man standing in front of him. The Professor was dressed in a navy wool pullover, a yellow scarf, a tweed jacket with suede patches on the elbows, green corduroys, black socks and sandals. Every item had belonged to at least two or three other men before him and sported their own distinctive odours. His thick belt studded with silver that looked like it belonged to a pirate, was fastened around the outside of his jacket.
‘While you, of course, have no flaws at all, Professor,’ Rémy observed.
‘My flaws are neither here nor there,’ the Professor replied, pulling a baseball cap down over his eyes. ‘You are the issue at hand… Aha.’
A nondescript white delivery van was pulling up at the loading dock of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
‘If you hurry,’ said the Professor, ‘you can help them carry the trays of packaged food inside for the vending machines. They will not challenge your presence as a service worker. The crew is always changing.’
*
Rémy checked the street. There were a couple of people on their phones marching to the Tube. An elderly man was smoking a cigarette and checking out the menu in a restaurant window, while his dog dumped on the establishment’s stoop. The traffic was sparse, but it was not yet six.
Rémy had come to notice that when you were homeless, time moved outside any understandable social rhythm. The constructs that shaped how time passed for most people didn’t exist when you lived on the street. The only reason Rémy knew the time this morning was that he’d noted it on the clock above the flower-market entrance when they’d crawled out of the sewer tunnel.
‘Stay hidden until the museum opens to the public,’ the Professor reminded him. ‘You will be less conspicuous. Hide in a ladies’ bathroom. Most of the cleaning staff are women, and they will have cleaned those stalls already.’
‘How do you know that?’
The Professor adjusted his scarf. ‘I’ve been around for long enough to know the answers to many of life’s conundrums. Go!’ he added with a gentle push. ‘They are already unloading the trifles. I have somewhere else to be.’
Rémy cut quickly between two double-decker buses and into the delivery bay. As smooth as silk, he lifted a white plastic tray of yoghurt shakes from the back of the lorry, and caught up with two of the delivery workers as they pushed through the flapping rubber doors to the dock.
38.
CASTING CALL
The twins studied Shakespeare carefully. The entire base of the statue was rippling in waves of pale blue light. Even after a full twenty-four hours, Shakespeare had not yet recovered from the Conjuror’s powerful animation. Strips of yellow police tape fluttered from the arms of the statue in the cool breeze, while two uniformed officers stood nearby.
‘How are your eyes?’ asked Em.
‘Fine.’
Em brushed flecks of blue paint from the arm of her over-sized sweater. ‘Do you think the Conjuror left any prints on the statue?’
‘I doubt it,’ answered Matt, scanning the shops and the doorways surrounding the square. The morning sunlight was creating frissons of colour in his peripheral vision. ‘Unless one of the crime-scene crew is an Animare too, they won’t notice anything unusual.’
‘Maybe you can use your ’gator eyes to see what actually happened.’
‘Don’t call them that.’
‘That’s what they’re like,’ Em persisted. ‘A third eyelid drops over your eyes and pow! You see the past.’
‘You’re a laugh riot.’
‘So can you?’
Since the incident at the Kirk, Matt had been practising, learning to control the way his eyes behaved in places where the past hung heavily in the air. He concentrated on the statue, but with no results. He wondered if his eyes had trouble with anything too recent.
‘Nothing,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Wait… Over there.’ He pointed across the square. ‘Near that rubbish bin. Just outside the barricade. See?’
Em followed Matt’s finger, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
‘Start at Shakespeare and then follow the trail of light,’ Matt said. ‘It begins outside that café.’
‘I see it now. Wait here,’ said Em. She jogged over to the café, where Matt saw her stop at the litter bin. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she scooped something from the bin and pocketed it.
What have you got?
Walk, Mattie. I’ll show you when no one’s watching.
Matt followed Em out of Leicester Square. They cut across St Martin’s Lane, and in a few minutes were in a quiet alley off the Strand, only a few short steps from their next stop in London.
‘Show me,’ Matt ordered, holding out his hand.
Em dropped the iPod into his palm triumphantly. ‘It had light all over it,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing our Conjuror dropped it.’
Matt studied the iPod. It was an old model. Attaching his own ear buds, he pressed play. Almost at once, Em saw him rear backwards, tearing the buds from his ears.
‘Man, that’s nasty,’ he said. ‘White noise, the kind you get when the TV isn’t working properly.’
‘Weird,’ said Em, putting one ear bud in her ear. ‘Who listens to white noise?’
‘Forget the iPod for now,’ said Matt, pointing towards a doorway. ‘We have bigger problems. Look.’
A sign on the door of Old Worm’s Curiosities and Ancient Alchemies read, ‘Closed Until Further Notice.’
‘Can you hear that?’ said Em, listening. ‘It’s like a buzzing.’
‘Maybe there’s a wasps’ nest in the rafters,’ Matt suggested.
They both looked up at the thick wooden beams running above the shop’s latticed windows.
‘I think it’s coming from inside,’ said Em. She jiggled the shop’s door handle, then slipped her sketchbook out of her bag.
‘Hold up there, Quick Draw,’ said Matt. ‘Let’s animate somewhere not quite as visible. Round the back.’
As they slipped into the narrow alley next to the shop, a huge bluebottle bombed Matt, getting caught in his hair.
‘Ow!’ he yelped, ducking. ‘What the— that bluebottle bit me!’
‘Bluebottles don’t bite, you idiot. Come on.’
The flies were worse near the he
avy old door at the back of the shop. They were the size of stag beetles, buzzing in and out through the keyhole and underneath the door where the stoop was uneven.
‘Have you ever seen—’ Em began.
Matt tapped his temple. Em reframed the question inside her mind.
Have you ever seen black flies this big? It’s like they’re on steroids.
Never. Definitely something weird going on here.
They both heard a door open and close into the tiny courtyard of the office next door. A spiral of smoke rose over the wall, together with the sound of someone flipping through a magazine.
‘Hey,’ Matt said, popping his head up over the wall.
There was a scream and the sound of a dropped magazine. ‘Jesus! I nearly had a stroke. Who are you?’
‘Didn’t mean to scare you. Can I have a word?’
A gate opened in the wall and a young woman peered out. ‘How can I help?’
Matt offered her his most disarming smile. ‘Matt Calder, Orion Insurance.’
Could you have sounded any more like James Bond?
‘We’re not buying,’ said the woman. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’m not here to sell you anything,’ Matt reassured her. ‘I just have a couple of questions about what happened yesterday at the shop next door.’
The woman relaxed. ‘Checking to see if it was an inside job? I’m Jen Kolasa, by the way. Jennifer. My dad owns this place. Kolasa Casting Agency, that’s us.’
Em rolled her eyes. Jen fancied Matt.
‘Can’t imagine who’d steal anything from that ghoulish place,’ Jen went on. ‘It attracts a weird clientele and, let me tell you, that’s saying something coming from me: I work with actors. I once saw them carrying a coffin inside. I’m pretty sure they’re all Satan worshippers. The manager’s a nut-job for sure.’
‘So what happened yesterday?’ asked Matt.
‘I saw him,’ Jen said. ‘The guy everyone’s saying is a jewel thief. He jumped from our roof on to that one over there and then he disappeared down the lane towards St Martin’s.’