“I said, don’t come any closer!” said Ned, trying to sound braver than he felt.
The dark hollows of the gob’s eyes shone and his lips broke into a smile. He walked forward, slowly now, relishing every second as Ned backed away further down the alleyway that ran alongside Mavis’s tea shop.
“So it’s true … Not the boy you was then, are you? You ain’t nothin’ without your mum and dad.”
The creature was right. But even now, powerless as he was, Ned wasn’t alone, not quite.
“To be fair, I did try and warn you. Gorrn?” he breathed.
Ned’s shadow – his slovenly familiar – did not make tea, or do the dishes. In fact, there were relatively few things the creature did well, except for fighting and biting.
“Arr,” said the shadow, and the smug grin on the gor-balin’s face was promptly removed as the darker recesses of the alley began to shift.
The shadow that was Gorrn raised himself up from the ground as a wall of toothy darkness, thickening and darkening as he stretched to fill the width of the alleyway between Ned and his assailant.
“Grak!” spat the gob.
And in a violent and silent second, Gorrn lunged, enveloping the Darkling in his folds before spitting him out like a mouthful of chewed food and into one of Mavis’s green recycling bins.
A shaken Ned closed the lid on the unconscious assassin, quickly and quietly.
“Thanks, Gorrn.”
His familiar oozed back to the ground before blending into the shadows.
“You there, Whiskers?”
“Scree.”
“I know Dad told you to be quiet and keep our cover, but next time someone comes at me with a knife can you assume the cover’s been blown and, you know, do something useful?”
The Debussy Mark Twelve remained silent.
Ned’s heart was pounding for more reasons than he could count. For one thing, Barbarossa’s minions were dangerously close, and not for the first time. Had it not been for Gorrn, the assassin would have ended him then and there. But that wasn’t what was really troubling him. What really scared him was that he still couldn’t work his Engine, no matter how hard he tried. How was he ever going to defeat the Darkening King if he had no powers? Not to mention the fact that if his parents found out about his face-off in the alley, they’d wrap him in so much protective cotton wool that he’d end up suffocating. He’d tell them later, after the tea room and in his own good time. He hid the gob’s Zimmer frame down the alleyway and out of sight, and paced back to the corner of Mavis’s tea shop.
“Not a word about this, from either of you. Not till we get back, OK?”
“Arr.”
“Scree.”
“I thought I told you – no talking to the mouse, Ned!”
Ned looked up to see that his dad had come back out of Mavis’s to get him.
“Sorry, Dad. I thought, erm … there was nobody about so …”
His dad cocked his head slightly.
“You OK, son? You look a bit ruffled.”
Gorrn shifted guiltily along the ground by Ned’s foot.
“I’m fine, Dad, just a bit nervous, you know? About who it is we’re going to see.”
“Well, keep your wits about you. Danger could be lurking anywhere.”
“Yes, Dad, anywhere …”
Afternoon Tea
avis’s was in fact just as it should have been. Scones, cake, proper teapots with proper tea and lacy pink curtains to match the lacy pink tablecloths. It was also, much to Ned’s surprise, completely empty apart from an extremely overdressed and bejewelled lady – presumably Mavis, thought Ned. No doubt her business was going well, though you wouldn’t know it from the state of her empty premises. His dad walked up to the counter and spoke to her quietly, leaving Ned with his mum.
“Do you think he – it – will actually be there?” Ned asked his mum.
“I hope so, darling. I’m so tired of all the running and chasing. All the grinning and pretending we’re on holiday.”
“You know, we could lose the grinning? It’s not like everyone’s always happy when they’re on holiday. We could pretend we’ve come down with some sort of tummy bug – you know, from all the exotic hotel food?”
His mum chuckled. “Oh, Ned, we’re on the Isle of Wight, not Outer Mongolia. The food’s good but hardly exotic.”
“You’re right, Mongolia was last week,” smiled back Ned.
“Was it? Oh yes, that dreadful business with the cyclops. Do you know, I thought it was Spain for some reason.”
“That was the week before.”
Ned watched as his dad passed Mavis a brown envelope full of used notes. She peered in and nodded appreciatively, then returned the favour by passing something small over the counter and tipping her head towards a door at the rear of the shop in a way that said, “Over there but I didn’t tell you.”
The happy holidaymakers that were Ned and his family made their way down a cramped corridor, past a loo, towards the door at the back. They walked through and found themselves in a small windowless room with red velvet wallpaper and a pair of long-backed mahogany chairs arranged either side of a tall mirror.
Ned saw it and sighed. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” said his dad.
“I thought we agreed, no more mirrors!”
Olivia Armstrong managed to look quite sheepish, which was not something the ex Mother Superior and Circus of Marvels agent was prone to do.
“Ned, we have avoided mirrors at every possible turn. We have travelled in the cargo holds of freighter ships, aeroplanes, a military troop carrier … even strapped to the bottom of a horse-drawn cart. This is completely unavoidable. Where we’re going isn’t on any map – it’s in the mirror-verse.”
Ned’s few experiences of stepping through mirror-portals had not for the most part been pleasant.
“In it?!” he shrieked at a far higher pitch than he’d intended.
“Safest safe house in existence. Son, this is the closest we’ve come in months. The last three informants were murdered before we even got there and Spain … well, Spain was an unmitigated disaster.”
His dad was not wrong. The “informant” they’d gone to meet had turned out to be an agent for the BBB, and had it not been for some quick thinking from Olivia, and Gorrn providing cover for a speedy getaway, the Armstrongs’ mission would have come to an end. It had only been after the battle over At-lan that Ned and his family had discovered who the BBB actually were. A josser network of highly trained spies, seemingly with unending resources and a fascination with the Hidden in all their forms. Their goal? No one really knew. But the BBB were getting better, smarter and more cunning. Everywhere the Armstrongs turned the message was the same – they were after Ned and his family and would go to any lengths to find them.
“Yes, it was a disaster, Dad, and your sources could be wrong about this too. We don’t know what’s on the other side of that mirror.”
“Nor what’s behind us.”
For a moment Ned thought about Barbarossa’s assassin still lying unconscious in a wheelie bin outside. And there could be more on their way.
“Fine,” managed Ned.
“Right,” said his mum. “Let’s go and find ourselves some trouble, eh?”
Given that trouble was regularly finding them, maybe turning the tables wasn’t such a bad idea.
His dad held the sliver of glass that Mavis had given him, and the Armstrongs all joined hands. Then quietly and without fuss they proceeded to walk through the mirror.
That was the thing about trying to find a Demon – they always seemed to hide in the most awkward places.
The Door
ed had only travelled by mirror a handful of times. Even so, he still had to adjust his brain as he pressed his nose to the glass. His reflection appeared to wrap around him somehow, and the glass had give. It was cold – somewhere between ice and water. Not slush exactly; slush was wet. But not dry either. More like jelly, onl
y without its stickiness.
His reflection warped and blurred and joined with another until, quite seamlessly—
Shluup.
Ned popped out on the other side as though nothing had happened.
“This is it, son,” said his dad. “Mavis’s real tea shop.”
In front of them was a single carved door with images of fair-folk and Darklings all about its entrance. What was strange and very mildly terrifying was that it appeared to float on thin air, just above the red carpet they were standing on. Above and below was a starry sky with no moon to light it but what looked like the aurora borealis – a great dancing show of coloured light playing out around them.
“Wow,” said Ned. “Where are we?”
“Well, son, technically Mavis’s tea shop isn’t anywhere. Those stars out there are actually mirrors, just like the one we stepped through. This is somewhere in between the reflections, between the light. Geographically speaking, ‘here’ doesn’t really exist—”
“Now, Ned, I don’t need to spell out the dangers,” interrupted his mum.
“Yes, son, you’ve not been yourself for a while now, so if there’s trouble in there, you leave it to me and your mum, OK?”
Ned bristled, but he knew he was right. Ned was like a tiger without claws – no more capable of defending himself than the boy he’d been before discovering the Hidden and his powers. His mum saw the look on his face.
“Terrence Armstrong, sometimes your mouth gets in the way of your brain! Ned, darling, you’re finer than fine. It’s just a phase. I’m sure plenty of Engineers before you went through just the same sort of thing, and anyway, I don’t have any powers, do I? There’s nothing strong bones, a highly developed set of reflexes and quick thinking can’t get you out of!” said his mum, clearly trying to sound upbeat.
Ned knew she didn’t really believe it, just as surely as he knew she was wrong, but he smiled as best he could.
“That said, stay close,” urged his dad. “Now …”
They turned to the door. The entrance was completely silent, and Ned wondered whether the mirrored version of the tea shop was as empty as the one they had passed through to get there. A pink neon sign rearranged itself from a jumble of words till it read, MAVIS’S YE OLDE TEA SHOPPE, and then the sign changed again to: NO COFFEE DRINKERS ALLOWED.
Its oak door had the most lifelike carving at its front in detailed knots of intricately tooled wood. Ned had to blink – it looked very much like the Mavis they had seen back on the Isle of Wight, only “woody”, and both younger and a little less full in the face.
“Who are you?” croaked the wood.
Ned gawped – there was little he hadn’t seen behind the Veil, but this was definitely his first talking door.
Ned’s mum paused for a second, quickly recalling the cover story they had decided on before setting out.
“Ahem,” began Olivia in quite the regal tone, “I am the Lady de Laqua, with my warlock and nephew, Tarquin.”
The carving’s wooded eyes peered at them slowly, till the entire door started to shake, before breaking into creasy, knotted laughter.
“Ha ha ha! Come on, dear, no one ever tells me their real name here, but Tarquin?! Looks more like a Cecil to me.”
Ned’s mum scowled at Ned, as though he had somehow let them down by not looking “Tarquin-ish” enough.
“It matters not,” said the door. “Everyone is welcome here, just as long as you have coin. You do have coin, don’t you?”
“Yes – yes, we have coin,” replied Ned’s mum.
“ENTER!” croaked the door and flung itself wide.
Boiling
hey were met by a wall of colour, sound and heat. Mavis’s Ye Olde Tea Shoppe was bursting at the seams with its tea-drinking patrons and, to Ned’s amazement, there was not one but at least a dozen other Mavii all in the same heavy make-up and outfits as the one on the Isle of Wight. They moved through the crowd with all the skill and expertise of a lifetime pouring tea. Quick, amiable and with no time for nonsense.
“Doppelgängers,” whispered his mum. “Don’t stare.”
“Well, that’s one way to save on staff,” breathed his dad, his nerves finally settling into the mission at hand.
At its very centre Ned saw the real Mavis, who was at least in looks completely identical to her counterparts working the room, except for one amazing and inescapable difference. The real Mavis was a giant. Ned could only get a proper look at her from the waist up, but she must have been at least thirty feet in height and her great warbling voice shrilled with banter and laughter in equal measure, seemingly having several conversations at the same time. Around her was a great circular bar area arranged on three floors and the heavily bejewelled Mavis had teapots for rings on brown-stained fingers, pouring her cups ten at a time and on every floor. Her great earrings swung like chandeliers and she was coated in at least a gallon of make-up. Great rollers the size of tractors were in her hair and her shimmering dress was in gaudy, sequinned reds. It appeared that only an original outfit would do for the original Mavis. No matter how loud the raucous tea room got, her voice carried over all of it.
“My darlings, yes, of course!” she boomed to a boisterous gathering on the top floor. “Have you tried my new range in health teas? A little antioxidant? It’ll give you zip! We’ve Ener-tea, Strawber-tea and my absolute favourite, Zipi-tea. That’s trademarked, by the way, so don’t get any funny ideas.”
For a moment Ned felt on familiar ground, as if he was at a party at the Circus of Marvels. All the fear, all the worry from running and hiding finally ebbed away as he took in the splendour and fanfare of a Hidden get-together, with its bunting and pretty lanterns floating in mid-air. Soft music was being played by a band of nymphs on the second floor and all around them the air seemed to bubble. It was only when Ned’s eyes adjusted that he began to notice why, and he finally understood why it was so hot. Every wall had built-in glass kettles that were constantly boiling away, ready to create one of Mavis’s multicoloured concoctions. Every tea imaginable, catering to every taste, was on show. The smell of herbs and spices was dizzying. Saffron and cardamom, lily and sage, rose water, bluebell and forget-me-not. And further along into the darker corners of the tea room were pickled egg, carcass and swamp bile. Because as Mavis had explained to them – “everyone was welcome at Mavis’s”, even Darklings.
Ned’s mum put a heavy hand on his shoulder as they inched their way through the crowd. “Stay close,” she whispered.
Ned had no intention of doing anything else. They were deep now in the Hidden’s underbelly. From the dwarves to the dryads, each and every one was hiding from something. What astounded Ned was that they could share a room, let alone a table, with Darklings. Goblins, pirates and cut-throats, imps and a pair of nightmongers, who were creatures too foul to share a table with anyone. How it hadn’t erupted into outright violence was beyond Ned, till he walked past a table where a blue-painted dwarven berserker was in a heated debate with a knot-skinned mud-goblin, its hair and teeth a mess of rooty browns.
“You owe me for that cup, Guldrid – now pay up!”
“Want payin’, do ya?!”
The mud-gob threw his teacup at the dwarf, who barked in pain before smashing the table clear in half. No sooner had the sound of breaking china been heard than a giant arm came tearing through the room. The arm belonged to Mavis.
“NO FIGHTING IN MY TEA ROOM!” she bellowed.
The music, along with everything else in the room, suddenly stopped.
Realising what they’d done, the guilty parties pleaded in terror.
“Preease, we meant no ’arm,” begged the mud-goblin.
“RULES IS RULES!” warbled Mavis, and in one great sweep she grabbed both dwarf and goblin and hurled them out of a third-storey window.
There was no ugly splat outside, just their horrified cries as the two brawlers were launched into the mirror-verse, destined to float there long after they both had starved.
“Shh,” replied his mum.
“WHAT IS RULES?” boomed the giantess now, with none of the cheeriness she’d shown only a moment ago. Her great eyes peered at the crowd defiantly, demanding a reply.
“Rules is rules!” warbled the crowd, no doubt with more than a pinch of fear-induced bravado.
“THAT’S MORE LIKE IT. MUSIC!”
The band started up again and seconds later the incident was seemingly forgotten.
Ned’s dad tapped one of the Mavii on the back. With all the commotion they were now running late for their appointment.
“Excuse me, madam?”
She turned with a blue-shadowed flutter.
“Yes, sir. Fancy a cuppa?”
“No, thank you.”
The mini Mavis scowled.
“I mean, yes, shortly. But, you see, we’re here to meet someone.” He whispered a name into her ear and the waitress’s face blanched.
“Are you sure?”
“The name’s quite correct. We were told that he had something for us.”
“No, I mean are you sure you want to meet him?”
Ned’s parents both nodded.
“I see. You had better follow me then.”
Past a throng of mercenaries and several other Mavii, their waitress took them to a dark corridor leading away from the main hall.
“This is the VIP area. If you need anything, feel free to scream.”
She knocked on an unmarked door.
“Enterrr.”
“I’ll leave you to it. Remember, scream if you need me – one of us will hear.”
The mini Mavis moved back down the corridor as fast as she could, making no secret of her desire to leave them to it. As soon as she was out of earshot there was an audible “Unt” from Ned’s shadow. Ned’s familiar and trusted bodyguard, bound to him as a servant to do his bidding at whatever cost, made his feelings quite clear. “Unt” meant a lot of things, but in most cases it meant “No”. Gorrn would not be entering the room with them.
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