Demon Shade (The Demons of Oxford Book 2)

by Kara Silver

  “Some, yes.” Aeth nodded at the heads on either side of the steps.

  Kennedy gave up.

  “Upstairs.” Aeth pulled at her coat when, inside, she tried to swerve into the shop near the reception. “We need mathematical instruments.”

  “We’re gonna measure for him? Weigh for him? Use a compass to draw intersecting circles?” Kennedy felt she was entitled to levity on her birthday. “And wouldn’t the basement be better? Look, it says they’ve got chemical, physical and medical items. That should include bowls—I’m surprised you don’t want to scry for him.”

  “That’s a good idea for a last resort. I’m assuming you know how to, then? Well, you’re a quick learner. Shouldn’t take you long to figure it out.”

  Kennedy kept her mouth shut, all the way up to the top of the building, including ducking under a rope to enter a dusty, unused room. “What are those?” She pointed to the lenses in the ceiling. “A skylight? Then what’s the mirror for? And this massive dish-shape scooped out of this long table?”

  “It’s a camera obscura. Those are lenses. It projects a live image of the town.”

  “Won’t we need sun?” She had a vague idea of how they worked. “And okay, it’ll show us the town but how does that help?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Perhaps if one of us had a birthday today, we could use our magic birthday wish to make the apparatus reveal Tristano’s sorry presence.”

  Kennedy walked right up to Aeth and narrowed her eyes, peering hard. “Okay. That’s a lie. I know your tells now. And, if by any chance, I do have a magic wish…” She closed her eyes and clasped her hands in prayer position for a minute, then opened her eyes again. She patted her chest and waist. “No. Didn’t work. Back to the padded bra and waist training. So, I’m going to assume…to find a demon, a demon glass would be useful?”

  She handed over the square of mage glass and Aeth positioned it. He switched off the lights and turned the camera on. In a second, a huge image of the town appeared within the table-sized dish.

  “It’s amazing!” Kennedy walked all around it, marvelling at the city’s towers and churches, its museums and colleges, squares and streets, all reproduced in perfect miniature, shown in warm, soft colours. “I can see my staircase from here! And there’s your roof… But where’s Tristan?”

  As soon as she asked, a black spot appeared on the live map.

  “Oh.” Kennedy pointed. “But that’s the stretch of river where the boats are. He must be back. At home, I mean. I guess that means Giacobbe’s found him by now? He probably wasn’t even lost.” She didn’t know which one of them she was trying to convince. “Except, that’s not how this works, is it.” As usual, there was no need to make her suspicions into a question.

  “Well, if you think he’s home, let’s go and pay him a visit,” Aeth replied.

  “See if he’s got me a birthday cake? Somebody’s got to have, right?”

  “I wish I hadn’t mentioned it,” Aeth muttered, righting the room and handing Kennedy her glass again.

  “I wish… No. I won’t waste it.” She wished too much to formulate anyway. That this wasn’t happening. That we weren’t going back the way we came, down the museum steps. That—

  “Ready?” Aeth looped an arm around the column to his right.

  “To… Oh. Shortcut time.” She nodded, although she could have done without it. “Tandem ride? Or me take this one the other side and race you?” From the look he gave her, she deduced she was supposed to ride shotgun with him. Fine.

  She never knew which part of it was worse. The initial feeling that she’d run into a brick wall, or stone pillar? The sensation a second after of straining every last nerve and sinew to squeeze through a too-small, impossible, invisible fissure in said brick wall? It made trying on a dress a size too small in Primark a breeze. After that crash and squash, the being buried alive but being simultaneously jerked and dragged through the tomb was just as bad, if not worse. Whatever, she was always glad to surface.

  “Oh.” Yeah, she’d assumed they’d be exiting via the slim pillar just inside the fairground. “Well, thanks, Jack Symonds, weir engineer extraordinaire. Without this handily placed tribute to you here, I’d have had a longer journey.” She tried to straighten her hair and scarf.

  “Is this that human thing again?” Aeth enquired. He looked as though he’d strolled through the park in a gentle breeze, not dragged through a stone pillar backwards, like she knew he did.

  “Human thing? Which one? Needing to eat? To sleep? Having feelings?”

  “Disguising feelings. One with another. Such as, anxiety with humour?”

  “Oh, shut up,” she muttered, blushing. “Come on. The magic map thing showed us this way.” But her steps were slow, and Aeth, letting her lead and following close at her back, didn’t hurry her. They crossed to more or less opposite the spot where she’d hit Tristan last night, and Kennedy was the first to see it.

  It. Him. Tristan. Well, his body. If she hadn’t known somehow, deep down, and in advance, she would have thought the thing in the water, lodged between the island and a smaller bank of earth, toing and froing, uping and downing on the current churning out of the weir yonder, was a bundle of rags.

  But it wasn’t, and when the eddies turned the body over, there was no denying it. Tristan’s curly hair looked longer, water-straightened, and the dark colour contrasted with the bright red of his blood oozing out from a horrific wound.

  “His head—” Kennedy couldn’t complete the sentence, because she had to turn away and retch. “His head,” she started again, determined to get it out. She owed him that much. “Someone’s… It could have been an accident! Something fell on him, crushed his head?” It would have to have been a big piece of— She couldn’t even think it. And she couldn’t look at Aeth. She couldn’t stop looking at Tristan’s body, still falling and rising with the water, arms twitching and relaxing.

  “Kennedy.” Aeth circled her, stood in front of her, broke her line of sight so she had to look at him. “I know what you’re thinking, but you know how you can be sure I didn’t do it?”

  Oh, the hot scald of shame she felt at having, just for one second, thought… “Because I trust you?”

  “Well, yes.” A glimmer of a smile, crooked and wry, showed on his face. “That, and because I thought you did it, remember.”

  “Oh, for f—” She’d deal with that, with their homegrown, half-arsed version of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner later. “Right now, we have to handle this.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She almost smiled, despite the horror of the situation, thinking of Dr Berkley, the smartarse who claimed his knowledge of police procedure came from reading a lot. “Don’t you watch TV? When there’s a dead body, you have to call the cops.” She pulled out her phone.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Kennedy looked up on hearing voices and barking along the towpath. A few figures walking dogs were just visible in the distance. “And I don’t think we have much choice.” She pressed a button on her mobile.

  “Hi, Chris? Kennedy. Yes, I am upset. Something really bad’s happened.”

  27

  “I don’t watch detective shows, no,” Aeth confirmed a minute later when Kennedy disconnected her call. “But what he said…”

  “To leave here now and meet him somewhere else?” Kennedy hadn’t liked it either.

  “I think that’s called fleeing the scene of a crime.”

  “He must know what he’s doing,” she argued, trying not to think who she was trying to convince: Aeth or herself. “I’d better go.”

  Aeth still stood between her and the body. Shielding me, she thought. She grabbed his arm to pull him along the path with her. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean I have to like this one,” he replied.

  “I’ll come find you after,” she promised. “Times like this, I wish you had a phone.”

  As she r
etrieved her bike from where she’d padlocked it, not far from the park and Heylel, it occurred to her she hadn’t asked Aeth if he knew what had happened, who had killed Tristan. Damn! She was supposed to ask the right questions, if she needed information. I’m not thinking straight, she lamented. Pretty hard to do when you’ve just found— It hit her then, making her stop in her tracks and get off her bike to heave. When she mounted again, her legs wobbled and she had to force her fingers to grip the handlebars.

  Thank God she didn’t have far to go. The address Chris had given her was just off Woodstock Road, a main road near to the one where her college stood, and the street she was making for was headed back from it into Jericho. Even so, she could only peddle slowly, grateful for the bike lanes, if not for the shouts and tutts she garnered from cycling commuters whizzing to overtake her.

  The street was wide and tree-lined, no doubt leafy in other seasons, and the houses large and detached or semi-detached, their gardens low-walled, with bushes and shrubs creating privacy. Some of them had long gardens or drives, the houses hardly visible. She found the house number Chris had said and pushed her bike up the drive to the front door, where, after leaning her bike against a wall, she dropped to sit on the doorstep.

  A car pulling up outside and its door slamming made her raise her head from between her knees. She’d been expecting Chris, but it felt weird, seeing him, with his baby face and soft hair, here in front of this large, bay-windowed house. “Why here?” she said, getting to her feet. “Hello, I mean. Sorry. I’m…” She finished in a shrug.

  “It’s okay.” He caught her into a hug, holding her close. “You’ve been through an ordeal. Come in.”

  “In…?”

  He unlocked the door and ushered her into the hall, all high ceilings and large windows, with an elegant staircase rising to the next floor. Kennedy stared at the doorways and the long corridor to the back of the house. “You live here? It’s your house, I mean?” She didn’t understand. He was a police constable, his uniform dark and plain against the light woods and soft colours of the house. They didn’t earn a fortune by any means, and living in Oxford, especially central North Oxford, sure needed one. Plus he was young. He wouldn’t have had a chance to save up?

  “Yes. It’s family property.”

  “Oh.” Maybe his parents had won the lottery at some point. Or his father—or mother—was an inventor, and had made a mint. Or they played the markets. Knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. That was a phrase, wasn’t it? Kennedy could barely think. Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she wanted to sink into something soft, a luxurious duvet, say, or the sand of a tropical beach, and not come out until all this was over and she was grown-up.

  Something about the house, the contents struck her. “But you live alone? You mentioned it before.” Not with parents.

  “I’ve been lucky. In some ways.” He said the last in a lower tone, but she caught it.

  “Yeah,” she replied, peering around the pretty space. “Is this what made you leave the north, come here?”

  “Can we discuss that later?” Chris held out his hand for her coat, but Kennedy pretended she didn’t see, didn’t get it. She wanted to keep it on. If she should have taken off her shoes on this lovely wood flooring, too bad. Something told her she should keep those on too. Some note, some thread, some pulse—it was off.

  “Would it shock you if I said I’m glad this can be over?” Chris continued.

  “It would confuse me, actually,” Kennedy admitted, stepping back when he paced, to leave him room and keep space between them.

  “This is going to sound callous, but I didn’t like Tristano. Well, any of them. The fair, the troupe. Oh, where are my manners? What can I get you?”

  “Get…” She blinked in confusion, nevertheless heading down the corridor he indicated, to the kitchen. “Oh, some water, please. No, it’s okay; I’ll do it. Don’t trouble.” She took a glass from the draining board and ran some tap water into it, pleased her hands weren’t shaking too much. “Lovely room.” It was, being large and airy. “Oh, a cooking range thing.” She pointed to it, gleaming squat in a corner, and when Chris turned to see, snatched up a knife from the wooden square of drying cutlery and shot it up her sleeve.

  Kennedy really hope she wouldn’t need it, but this, the house, Chris like this, was so disconcerting. She tried to pull herself together. “But what did you say?” She must have misheard.

  “That I didn’t like Tristano. Or any of them.”

  His accent’s what’s confusing. Usually when they met, his voice was more northern for the first minute or two. “Wait.” Oh, God, is he jealous? “He’s—he was—a friend. Nothing more.” Nothing more came of it, so… “I think I need some air. Would you mind?” She jerked her chin at the back door. She did need air, but also needed not to be closed inside, with Chris, like this, here, now. She couldn’t put it into words, but she felt it.

  The garden must have been lovely in summer, and autumn. Even caught in-between, like this, needing snow to prettify the bare trees, it was nice. A terrace led from the kitchen and a trail of huge flagstones went down to the lawn. Kennedy planted herself on one, her feet shoulder-width apart. “I’m confused,” she admitted. “You were happy for me to fill in for Isabella. Encouraged me.”

  “Because it was what you wanted.” He stood close. “Spending time with them. But this, well, it’s getting out of hand, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “But don’t tha’ worry. I’m here to protect thee.”

  He sounded almost like a parody of himself, the sweet, gentle police officer who’d walked through the streets of Oxford with her, drinking his beloved iced coffee, who’d taken her to a pub to hear live guitar music, who’d come to her home town and had Indian food.

  “What do you mean ‘protect’?”

  “To take care of things.”

  “I know what protect means. And take care of things how? Chris, Tristano…he’s dead! Was killed. Murdered. What’s going to happen about that?” She found herself reluctant to look at him, afraid of what she’d see. You know what cops are like. They stick together. Work the system. Chandy’s words, and the beliefs of most people where she’d grown up.

  “Kennedy, you’ll be implicated. You found the body. Before that, witnesses saw you fight. You work at the museum where the murder weapon came from. Things look bad.”

  Something was very wrong there, but, her legs barely holding her up, icy cold trickling down her spine, Kennedy couldn’t puzzle it out. “So…what are you suggesting? I need an alibi, like before?”

  He gave a short laugh, one that had her teeth on edge. “It’s gone a bit beyond that, don’t you think?”

  “Gone to where?”

  “Gone. Exactly. We should go. Leave.”

  She didn’t understand. She turned in a slow half-circle, taking in the large house, the well-kept garden, the city beyond that. Oxford housed her college, her future. It was where Chris worked, where his career lay, surely? She’d told him before he couldn’t risk his job over her. Now it seemed he was throwing everything away. For her? No. Her brains were scrambled. She wasn’t with it. “Leave for where?”

  He shrugged. “Anywhere we can be together.”

  Wow. Woah. The two reactions followed hard, one on the heels of the other, the clash so violent she was surprised he didn’t hear it. She felt it and it left her reeling. “No.” And the certainty of her refusal was as loud and firm as a cymbal crashing in the still air.

  “No?” he roared, lunging for her, no longer PC Chris Collier, charming baby-faced young police officer with a sweet northern accent, but someone, something else.

  “No!” Kennedy repeated, dodging away. Her attempt at evasion made her stumble, and, without meaning to, without trying, when she righted herself, she sank through the stone square she stood on and was gone.

  28

  She was being sliced into pieces. Kennedy shrieked as her world shredded apart in pain. All
she’d had to guide her through the buried-alive tomb of underground was the desire to get to the fair, to her kin, but emerging through the stone column on the plot of land was like being sliced into bits with cheese wire. She tried to get her hands up, to protect her face, stop her skin being flayed from her.

  What the hell? She bent over, hands on her knees, panting and wheezing, staring all around for what was wrong. It was soon obvious—the stone pillar was shattered into pieces, explaining why’d she felt she was being sliced alive. She checked that she wasn’t bleeding, fear and unease riding her. “Aeth!” she screeched. “Are you here?”

  The wind that started up blew her onto her arse. Kennedy decided to stay down, crawling through what seemed to be the eye of a hurricane, trying to see through the whirls and loops of the squall. And it wasn’t only air: cloth hurtled towards her and smacked her in the face. A tent! It was followed by a slab of wood that she ducked to avoid. Whatever this force of nature was, it was destroying the fair.

  “Uncle!” she yelled, seeing what she thought was Giacobbe in the distance, but trying to reach him through a tornado-strength wind was impossible.

  “Just damn well stop!” she screamed. What was wind, after all? As if watching a movie, she saw herself, younger, school-uniformed, learning geography, specifically differences in the atmospheric pressure. Air moves from the higher to the lower pressure area, resulting in different speeds. And air was basically gases. Nitrogen. Oxygen. Carbon dioxide. And…others. She visualised them, their molecules. And, as if listening to a lecture, she heard, Aerokinesis. The manipulation of wind.