‘Who is the boy?’ As I ask the question, I see something moving, deep below the surface. ‘Look, he’s under a spell. I mean, the marks on his body—’
Andrew’s been shuffling forward, inch by inch, hoping I won’t notice.
‘Will you go away?’ I shout.
‘Make me,’ he says.
Back to whispering, then. ‘It was you who did the original magic, right? But why go to all that trouble? What’s so important about him?’ I’m getting this weird sinking feeling. I don’t really understand it, but it’s like I almost had something – and it’s slipping away from me . . . ‘Who wanted him dead?’
Of course, I realise why Kazia’s here. After I messed up her summoning, she reported back to whoever told her to do it. They bashed her about a bit and now I’m starting to look like a better prospect. And while we’re asking questions: why did she have to sneak into the mortuary to do the summoning?
She’s shaking her head like it’s hurting. We’re putting on quite a show, and I’m thinking I could sell tickets when she says, ‘I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Stop lying, Kazia. Someone gave the orders—’
Her fingers tighten on my arm. I think she’s drawing blood. ‘You said you’d help me!’ she wails.
I can wail too. ‘But why should I trust you?’
She’s looking at me funny, and I realise . . . that thing I thought I had . . . that I felt slipping away . . .
It’s gone. I don’t know what it was, but it was something important.
Andrew’s shuffling again.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ I hiss into her ear. ‘Help you get away, or help you take another crack at the Crypt Boy?’
Her eyes fill with tears. ‘Please, Frank.’
Do I believe any of this? What do you think I am? Stupid? But somebody certainly hit her in the face a few times, which kind of makes my heart bleed.
Yeah, my heart’s busy when she’s around. But I can’t help thinking: that’s what she’s counting on, isn’t it? So sure, she probably does need my help – but not in the way she’s saying and maybe not even in the way she’s thinking . . .
‘Time to go,’ I say.
‘I need to sleep.’ She stumbles to her feet. ‘Where’s your lair?’
I can’t help glancing towards the back of the cloister, and before I can stop her, she’s off along the passage that leads past the chapel towards the gardens and my studio.
I go after her.
‘We can hide her somewhere.’ Andrew’s right behind me, eyes shining. ‘There’s an empty cell next to mine.’
She doesn’t get far. Out into the open and down the steps, onto the gravel path, where she collapses.
I grab her hand to pull her up, but she gives this almighty wrench and drags me down beside her. Her arms go round my neck. I can feel her tears on my cheek. Andrew’s dead right: she’s an incredibly proximate occasion of sin.
‘You must have somewhere I’ll be safe.’ Her whispered breath is hot on my cheek.
Despite appearances, I’m not a complete fool. I realise what’s going on here. She recognised the cloaking spell when Brother Thomas went over backwards. And the quickest way to break a cloaking spell is to get whoever cast it to drag you through it.
And of course she’s got magic of her own: the spell she cast over me the moment I first set eyes on her. I’ve got voices screaming at me:
Don’t be an arsehole, Sampson.
You’ve been dreaming about this moment.
Take her back to the studio – help her off with those wet clothes . . .
For someone whose immortal soul is in peril, Andrew is suspiciously happy to help me haul her to her feet. He’s a bit slow sometimes; he lets me drag her a couple of steps towards the cloister before he cops on—
‘Where are you taking her?’
‘Outside. She’ll be fine.’
‘Brother, you can’t!’
‘You said it yourself: she’s a proximate—’
‘No.’
He steps away and I’m left standing there with Kazia’s dead weight hanging onto me. Her eyes open. She’s staring at Andrew so hard that he goes red.
I’m beginning to feel jealous. ‘Come on.’
Brother Thomas is back on his feet, stumbling around the cloister. He stares glassily at Kazia. ‘How did she get in?’ He crosses himself.
‘She’s just leaving,’ I say, and Brother Thomas collapses in the same heap he just got up from.
‘Brother.’ Andrew plants himself in front of me, one hand raised like a jack directing traffic. ‘This is wrong.’
All wrong. I barge past him and manage to get Kazia as far as the gate. It creaks open.
‘Please, Frank – he’ll kill me.’
‘Who will?’
And when she doesn’t reply I say, ‘Let’s see if he does.’ And push her outside.
There’s nobody waiting for her. She’s just standing there weeping in the drifting veil of rain. Her hands fall open, like the statue of the Virgin Mary in the monastery chapel.
‘Please, Frank.’
I’m closing the gate, telling myself that she’s a great little actress. A split second before the bolt clicks home, I hear her say, ‘All right then. Have it your own way.’
I’ve got this sinking feeling. I let it sink for a while, as I walk back across the cloister. Then I go back and open the gate.
She’s gone. Just my woolly hat, lying on the pavement, a couple of feet away. As I scoop it up, Preston whispers proudly: ‘I found her.’
How do you explain to a search elemental that it’s found the person it was built to find – even if that person hasn’t stayed found – and that it’s time to go?
It usually starts as just a feeling, that there is somehow less of the elemental. Give it a bit longer and you can actually see through it. I’ve seen it take as long as forty-eight hours; but once a search elemental has done its job, it just fades away.
‘I found her.’ Preston can’t get over how clever he is.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Great work.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Gift Object
I SPEND THE afternoon helping the dog clean up my studio. I’ve still got Alastor buzzing and banging away in my head, but I curl up on the mattress and manage to fall asleep, and I wake up feeling a bit less wrecked. I light a lamp and spend an hour scrawling symbols on a piece of paper. Then I sneak into the monastery stables and steal a horse.
I’m wearing my jerkin with a scarf across my face and my woolly hat jammed down over my eyes. It’s five o’clock in the morning. What better time to get rid of the remains of a dead shark?
There’s an incinerator at the mortuary. OK, so last time I tried to get in, they stopped me at the door and told me to get lost. This time, once I’ve tied the horse up round the back, I mutter a few invocations, make a couple of passes over the piece of paper that I prepared, and pin it to the front of my jerkin. Now you see me . . . now you don’t! I stroll into the mortuary with the shark wrapped in its sheet under my arm.
Of course there’s a weakness to an invisibility spell. It doesn’t hide the smell. As I pass the desk, the night receptionist stares around blankly and mutters, ‘What the hell’s that?’
Down in the utility area, the diener on duty . . . I’ve had run-ins with him before and he’s an arsehole. He runs one bony finger down a greasy ledger—
‘So when was this item purchased?’
‘Last week,’ I lie.
‘I don’t see no shark.’ He shakes his head. ‘God, it stinks.’
‘So chuck it in the incinerator.’
He makes a face like he’s sucked on a lemon. ‘More’n my job’s worth . . .’
I hoick the shark up under my arm and press the other hand against the door to the children’s ice room. It sighs and opens.
A single gas fitting throws a cold, dim glow across the empty room.
The ledger is on the desk. I park the shark on the
floor, and take the ledger over to the light. As far as I can see, compartment sixty-seven, up at the end of the room, hasn’t been reassigned since the Crypt Boy was carted off to the amphitheatre.
I open the silver door. The tray is empty. I toss the shark in and close up. I’ll come back tonight, when everybody’s gone home, and rescue it. OK, so the smell’s a bit of a giveaway. But it isn’t exactly fragrant in here anyway, and if anybody finds the shark, what are they going to do except toss it in the incinerator . . .?
‘But Charlie, you don’t get it—’
I’m sitting on a rickety chair, clutching a murderously strong cup of coffee, in a big, high-ceilinged room with a window taking up most of the end wall. Half the panes are patched with cardboard where the glass is broken, but through the others I can see a Montgolfier drifting across a grey sky.
‘Sure I do.’ My pal Charlie’s on his knees, pulling a battered leather case out from under his bed. ‘The girl’s a menace.’
‘But it’s not her fault!’
‘Try telling that to the boy in the mortuary.’ He opens the case and pulls out a paper package.
‘Is he still in the amphitheatre?’
Charlie nods. ‘The Society’s sending somebody in to reinforce Ferdia’s protective spell.’ He unwraps the package and pulls out what looks like a mouldy parsnip, with withered branches resembling arms and legs. Mandrake. ‘And obviously they’re looking for an unlicensed sorcerer who conjured up a demon without authorisation.’ He tosses the mandrake to me. ‘I think your name came up . . .’
I put the mandrake to my nose and get this stale, mouldy, slightly sulphuric smell.
‘Not very fresh,’ says Charlie. ‘But at least the beetles didn’t get to it.’
The mandrake beetle crawled out of nowhere about six years back and chewed its way through most of the crop. Not a real beetle, by the way; nobody really knows what it is. Some people think it’s some sort of demonic emanation, whatever that might be.
‘Thanks, Charlie.’ It’s not even remotely fresh; but it’s better than nothing. I put it down on the bed.
‘My advice, Frank: turn her in. She’s killed people, right? She tried to kill you. I know I didn’t see this demon’ – he crosses himself – ‘but it’s obvious she doesn’t know what she’s doing.’ He pats my knee. ‘She doesn’t give a damn about you, Frank. You’re just a pair of eyes she can pull the wool over.’
I don’t like that. Because I know it’s true.
Preston’s wandered over to sniff the mandrake. He sneezes and rolls over on his back, then kicks desperately to get himself right end up. I don’t know what’s going on inside him – actually, there shouldn’t be anything going on inside him any more. He found Kazia. It’s not his fault I couldn’t hang on to her. Job done. He keeps giving me these . . . I dunno, it’s hard to read the expression on the face of a beach ball with fins and a feather sticking out of the top, but it’s kind of like a cat that knows it’s got a one-way appointment with the vet . . .
I jump at the sound of an explosion. Through the window I see a momentary ball of fire glow behind the Montgolfier. The airship judders and goes into a turn as a second rocket explodes, further away.
‘Never fly over the Hole.’ Charlie picks up Sean’s notebook from the table beside me. ‘So what’s this?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘Why’d you leave it where I was bound to pick it up, then?’
‘It’s Marvo’s brother’s stuff. He was a Ghost-spotter.’
While Charlie leafs through the notebook, I sip my coffee and look around. Bare floorboards. Damp patches down the walls. A bucket to catch waste water from the sink.
‘Charlie, why do you live in this craphole?’
He doesn’t even look up. We both know the answer. Elemental work pays peanuts, but it gives him a last fingerhold on the only thing that ever mattered to him: his few years as a sorcerer. Which is what the jacks count on.
It’s not difficult, by the way, instantiating basic elementals. You don’t need a huge Gift – in fact, you need very little at all. The forces are out there and they’re up for it. But you do need the skills acquired during training as a sorcerer. And when the Gift fades, those skills remain.
I sometimes wonder what I’ll do when my time comes. But I prefer not to wonder about it for very long at any one time . . .
I’m looking up at a small cupboard in the corner to the right of the window. It’s got glass doors and inside there’s just a single object: a small, crudely carved wooden horse with chipped black paint and one leg missing.
Charlie’s Gift object.
It’s one of those weird things. It’s not like it’s official or anything; in fact, as far as I know the Society never even talks about it. Nobody ever said anything to me, not even Matthew.
But all sorcerers have one. It’s something or other: usually a childhood toy, as far as I can make out. I dunno, it’s like you’ve got this superstitious idea that your Gift sort of lives in this object and that keeping it safe will stop you going post-peak. Bollocks, of course: every sorcerer goes post-peak. But we all like to imagine we’re different . . .
Even Matthew had a Gift object. It took me a long time to find it, but one day when I was in his office I spotted a small wooden box on the top shelf of his bookcase. So next time he left me alone there, I got up on a chair and took it down and opened it.
Just a small, cloudy, white glass marble. I managed to put it back and get down off the chair a split second before he came back.
Have I got a Gift object? You bet. Buried for safety in a tin, down by the river outside Abingdon.
Will it save me? Not if I leave it there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Procedure
‘YOU KNOW WHO this is, don’t you?’ Charlie’s holding up one of Sean’s photographs: the toad-faced cleric stares out from the back of the Ghost. ‘Bruno Vannutelli.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Come on, Frank, pay attention at the back. He was a Dominican friar, then Bishop of Cremona. He’s the papal legate to the Society.’
‘Yeah, so . . .?’
Charlie sighs. ‘He’s that cardinal who wants to close the Society down.’
‘Oh, him.’
I know the story. Vannutelli popped out of the woodwork when I was a novice at Saint Cyprian’s. He preached this sermon about how the Society was an agent of Satan and that it ought to be dissolved and its money and estates confiscated.
The bit about the money and estates went down particularly well. The pope liked the idea and Vannutelli got the job. When he was my Master, Matthew used to mutter about these meetings he was having with him. He didn’t reveal much detail, but I could tell he thought Vannutelli was a puffed-up, sanctimonious shit. Although obviously he put it differently.
I point to the photograph. ‘No glasses . . .’
Charlie nods. ‘Must’ve had the Procedure.’
‘Wonder how much that cost him . . .’
‘Come on, Frank, think about it: Vannutelli wants to excommunicate the Society for treating with demons . . .’
‘Yeah, yeah. I get it.’
Every novice who survives his first year at Saint Cyprian’s undergoes the Procedure. It’s an elaborate ritual that lasts all night and involves kissing the back end of a Presence called Buer, a Great President of hell with fifty demons at his command and the power to fix the Blur.
If Vannutelli doesn’t have to wear glasses, he must have puckered up for a demon. The cardinal who wants to close the Society down for doing exactly that.
‘So if Marvo’s bro took a photograph of him like that . . .’
‘It’d be a reason to run him over.’
I scratch my head. ‘Except a Ghost can’t run anybody over.’
‘What does Doctor Death say?’
‘That it was an accident,’ I say. ‘A horse stepped on him.’
Charlie shrugs. ‘If anybody knows, Doctor Death should.’
> ‘So where did Marvo get this stupid idea from? Coz it sure doesn’t add up.’ Doesn’t square with what her mother says, either.
‘Maybe she just misses him,’ Charlie suggests. ‘Maybe it’s some fantasy she dreamed up so she doesn’t have to think about, you know . . . going blind. Strange kid . . . sweet, though.’
‘All right, Charlie. I get it.’
‘I don’t think you do. My advice? If you really want to save someone, stick to Marvo.’ He grins. ‘Or yourself.’
‘I like Marvo . . .’
‘There you go, then.’
‘But it’s not like that.’ I grab the photograph. ‘I can see this stuff upsets her like hell and I really want to help her, even if she is a pain in the neck. I mean, tatties get a raw deal—’
‘Yeah, and you could get Buer in to fix it for her.’ Charlie puts his hand on my knee for a moment. ‘Don’t, though.’
Good advice: it’d get me in even deeper shit with the Society.
‘I know you don’t want to believe Marvo fancies you.’ Charlie opens his tobacco tin. ‘Because you don’t know how to deal with it. That’s fair enough – you’re only a kid and you’ve led—’
‘Yeah, yeah. A sheltered existence.’
‘Will you shut up for once, Frank? The thing about Kazia is, it feels safe saying she’s the only girl for you and you’ve got to save her, because you know she’s lying . . .’
Ouch.
‘So you don’t really have to deal with her.’
Preston’s found a new way of amusing himself. He stands on one leg, then leans sideways – if you can really say he’s got sides – until he falls over. He bounces back up like a ball and giggles every time.
‘If you’ve found her,’ says Charlie, ‘what do you need him for?’
Preston does this thing . . . I think it’s supposed to be an appealing smile, but he’s got too many teeth to get away with it, and they’re all in the wrong place.
Charlie’s rolling a cigarette. ‘How did you get dragged into this Crypt Boy malarkey, anyway?’
‘Marvo.’
‘See what I mean? Inseparable, you two.’
‘Yeah, but she doesn’t seem that interested.’
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