Grave Mistake (Codex Blair Book 1)

by Izzy Shows

  I should have let Aidan do this part, he was likely already going to cover this. The ritual was supposed to happen tonight, and it didn’t make sense that he would just let this slip through the cracks.

  Whatever. I needed something to do. If Aidan had it covered, that just meant that I didn’t need to worry about being super precise and I could see if I could figure it out.

  It would be good practice.

  25

  I TOOK THE UNDERGROUND TO GUILDHALL—a location that had been particularly devastated during The Blitz. The great hall had been absolutely gutted. It might not have been the place where the most people had died, but it was certainly an iconic location. Stood to reason that it would then be a place where a large portion of the energy would have congregated.

  It was both a ceremonial and administrative centre to this day, and it would certainly be a good location for inciting terror.

  Maybe I was completely wrong, I didn’t exactly know what I was doing.

  I couldn’t go into the building, it wasn’t the Open House weekend, so I hoped that being as close as possible would have to be enough. I approached cautiously, as if the building itself could be spooked and made to turn on me. I was nervous that I would do something wrong, that I’d betray my intentions if it was indeed where the ritual would take place.

  I paced a few steps to the right and then back, focusing on feeling the area with my mind. I didn’t know how to use my sense—should that be a capital S? I didn’t really know what I was looking for or even how to look for it. I was hoping that I would figure it out or get lucky and stumble upon something useful.

  “It’s pretty stirring, isn’t it?” A soft and feminine voice came from behind me, and I did my best not to jump. I glanced over my shoulder to ensure that the words had really been addressed to me—it didn’t make sense that they would be. People didn’t talk to me. I lived in a giant city and didn’t have any friends.

  Behind me stood a rather shocking woman. Her skin was dark copper brown, freckles dusted across her cheeks and nose, her eyes a vibrant green, but it was her hair that made her stand out. A red cloud of tight curls crowned her head and encircled her face.

  I was staring. Absolutely.

  “What?” I asked, a little too roughly.

  She flushed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. It’s just such a striking building, every time I pass by I always seem to stop and soak it up. The history there…it’s powerful.”

  I gawked at her, glancing from the building and back to her. She’d said it was powerful, was she toying with me? Did she know something? I chewed at the inside of my cheek, trying to make up my mind about what to do.

  “You’re not a tourist?” she said, disregarding everything else I had said. Her expression stayed warm and welcoming.

  “No.” I said curtly. It was rather obvious that I had a London accent, and I didn’t see why she had to point that out.

  “And yet you are here.” Another observation, and I realised only now that the first one hadn’t been a question. “I’ve never seen you here before. Like I said, I come by quite a bit. Most natives don’t stop to take in what’s around them, they don’t have time for it.”

  She seemed to be separating herself from them, and I waited for the inevitable question.

  Why was I wasting time with her? I had things I should probably be doing. Normally I wouldn’t hesitate to rudely excuse myself from the conversation.

  “What brought you here?” Her eyes cut to mine sharply, and I found that I was the one who broke eye contact.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Just wanted to take a look at it. Day off.” I didn’t have a good excuse, but that was because I hadn’t really thought I would need one. And I couldn’t exactly tell her that I was here looking for some signs of nefarious doings, could I?

  I glanced at her, and saw her looking thoughtful for a moment. “All right.” She accepted my completely pathetic answer without any more pushing, and I felt myself flush with embarrassment. It was so obvious that I was lying, or at least it was to me. “My name’s Emily.” She offered the name with her hand held out, and I stared at it as if it was a snake.

  “Um.” My mind contorted trying to figure out what was going on for a moment before I realised that she was just being nice. “Blair.” I shook her hand at last.

  We made quite the pair of contradictions in that moment, our hands joining us. She looked like the most respectable woman, and I looked like a street rat. She wore a lilac blouse, black slacks, and what looked like a very expensive rain coat. The ensemble did much to accentuate her full figure, though in a subtle fashion. My clothes hung off my lanky figure rather unceremoniously. She looked like your best friend, I looked like a social reject.

  Probably an accurate summation.

  I pulled my hand away, suddenly wary. She had to have an ulterior motive to be so nice. People just weren’t nice for no reason, there had to be something to be gained. Take Aidan for example; he wasn’t helping me learn about my abilities for the greater good or anything like that, he was doing it because he needed help taking down the big bad boys in the neighbourhood so that he could retire in peace. Mal wasn’t trying to teach me out of the goodness of his heart, he wanted to corrupt me so that whatever he saw in me could be used by him at a later point. Literally everyone in my life, the entirety of it thus far, had used me for one thing or another. It was the only world that I knew, and it was the only thing that made sense.

  So, I snapped at her. “What do you want?”

  She tilted her head to the side, a gentle smile still on her face. “It will sound foolish to you, but the Lord told me to look for you. I have a feeling I’m supposed to help you with something, though I do not know what yet.” She shook her head. “I will be guided when it is time.”

  Oh hell, please don’t say the Lord works in mysterious ways. That was too corny.

  “Uh…OK…” I said, taking a step back.

  “You are not alone, Blair.” Her eyes had a sudden intensity about them. “I think you need to know that. We’ll see each other again.” She bobbed her head in a polite nod and walked away.

  I stood in place for a moment, stunned.

  What the fuck was that? Where had she come from?

  Was she one of the necromancers? Did they like to dress up as good little Christians so they could freak people out? Was that something they got off on?

  But no, that didn’t make sense, because she had been wearing a crucifix. I wasn’t a big believer in superstition, but I just had this feeling that people who played with dead things wouldn’t be able to wear that. And besides all of that, she seemed like the real deal. She believed everything she had said, even if she had probably said it to get to me. But it all made sense. She wasn’t being nice just for the sake of being nice, she was being nice because her superhero had told her to be.

  I am denial incarnate and I am OK with that.

  I shook off the interaction and headed out. Guildhall, freaky though the interaction had been, had not yielded any feeling to me that made it stand out as a harbinger of death. There was sadness there, I felt it, but it seemed long ago and mostly forgotten. I suspected that the site of a ritual like the one I was looking for would not be a peaceful place. It would not be restful, it would not have forgotten. It would be looking for vengeance.

  I sympathise with places a lot easier than I do with people.

  26

  NEXT ON THE MENU WAS THE trail of pain that Jack the Ripper had left behind. I didn’t really think that it made sense for multiple little rituals to be used for what tonight was supposed to have in store, but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t at least check out the historic spots of London’s most famous serial killer when looking for a place of great bloodshed.

  The first stop was Mitre Square, where Catherine Eddowes had been found crumpled in a corner, her body torn and sullied. I stood in the centre, staring at the corner as people milled all around me. I was surprised at the tr
affic, until I realised that likely no one really thought about what had happened here. Why would they? It would be such an inconvenience to them, to give a prostitute the honour of remembering her. My heart hurt for this dead woman, who had been stolen from the earth…

  Such a sweet girl…

  A voice whispered to me from another plane, causing me to shiver. The drizzling rain, which had eased up earlier, descended again with eerie coincidence. I checked my walls, it was becoming something of a reflex at this point, but found no cracks.

  I reminded myself of what had happened at the graveyard, and tried to keep my guard up. Who are you? I sent the thought out, directing it to the corner, hoping that that was where the comment had originated from.

  Catherine. It whispered again. I am Catherine. Have you come to visit me? I’ve been so lonely.

  I came to check on you. It was close to the truth, and I found that I wanted to comfort her. There are people in the city who might intend to harm you.

  Sad laughter brushed against my cheek, a shockingly tactile experience. How could laughter be a physical touch? Sweet child, I cannot be harmed again. It has already happened, I have been claimed by Death.

  You’ve been here for more than a hundred years, Catherine… I paused, wondering if I should ask, then rolling my eyes at my own folly. She was a ghost. What harm could it do? Have you seen magic here?

  Of course I have, darling. The little practitioners take no notice of me, for I am not to be seen, just as I was in life. I see them with their spells just as I see the evening ladies pass through here, and try to shelter them. Her tone was happier with the change of topic. You are the same and yet different. Why do you ask me of magic, child?

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, feeling a little embarrassed. I didn’t like talking about myself, and generally avoided the topic whenever possible, but found that I was curious and wanted to know what she meant when she said ‘and yet different.’ I decided not to ask, better not to know. I am new to it. There are magic users in the city who are trying to abuse the dead and use them for their power. They’re going to hurt the city. I thought they might try to use you. I didn’t tell her that it wasn’t specifically her I thought they’d be after, but rather all the victims of Jack.

  She was silent for a while, and I felt guilty about having brought the conversation back to a sombre note. She was silent for so long that I began to fret that I had frightened her off, that she wasn’t going to tell me anything anymore.

  I told you that I go unnoticed in death as well as I did in life.

  What did that mean?

  I have seen little men, scurrying like rodents, their faces so grotesque. They hide better than the homeless do and they have good reason for it. They look like they’ve died and not had the good manners to leave this earth. They do not see me, for I am of no consequence. I heard them ranting, I heard them searching. Little one, you should leave this city, for its blood will run in the streets, and there is nothing you can do…

  She sounded sad, and almost maternal, in her care for me. I wondered if she’d had a child that she’d been taken from. It wasn’t that crazy of a thought, she’d been a lady of the evening, and they generally had slip ups now and then. You just generally didn’t hear that tone from someone who’d never loved a child.

  All the same, she confirmed what I already knew. The necromancers were in town, and it sounded like they were rounding things up. No time to lose, but that made sense, their ritual was tonight.

  Thank you, Catherine, but I can’t do that. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I started to leave then paused, and looked back. Why are you here? You were buried.

  Yet it is here that my spirit must stay. He made it so. Her voice faded after that, and I had the sense that she would not answer if I asked another question.

  I made my way to the next stop, pondering her words. He made it so? Did she mean Jack? The murders had gone unsolved and likely would stay that way for the rest of time, but part of me wondered if…well, if Jack had been a warlock. It made a bit of sense, considering how he had appeared and disappeared. And a normal man wouldn’t be able to bind a spirit to an area. Right? I didn’t think so, but I also didn’t really know what was possible. I suppose a particularly gruesome death could shock a spirit into staying where it was, but Catherine didn’t sound like a shocked and scared ghost. Hell, she sounded at ease with most of it. She was there and there wasn’t anything that she could do about it. She wasn’t ranting or raving or swearing vengeance on the town for not finding her murderer.

  Maybe I could talk to Aidan after this was all over, about the possibility of putting her to rest, sending her on to whatever awaited. That had to be possible.

  I turned onto Goulson Street and walked until it became Bell Lane. White’s Row was on Bell Lane, a carpark that used to be Dorset Street back in the day, which had housed Miller’s Court, where Mary lived. Mary hadn’t been murdered out in the open, like the others. She’d been found in her bed, mutilated almost beyond recognition, at Miller’s Court. Some had speculated that Black Mary’s killer had not been Jack at all, but rather some other—perhaps copycat—killer. Her death had been the most brutal of the victims, and she was the only one whose body had not been on the street.

  I had my own theory, for what it was worth. Most people believe that serial killers start with someone close to them, a person they’ve been obsessing about for some time. Some believed that Jack had been a client of Catherine’s—and perhaps I should have asked her, damn, wasted opportunity—but I believed that Black Mary was the victim that Jack had known. He’d tested his abilities on Catherine, uncertain of his ability to take a life and knowing that Mary would be able to identify him. Once proven, he went back to the woman who broke his heart and took hers. Mary’s death had been so brutal because he’d cared about her at some point or other, or perhaps he’d believed that he’d cared. Serial killers don’t exact that kind of brutality on some random passer by, they do such things on those that they know.

  I walked until I stood in front of the section of White’s Row that had been closest to Mary’s boarding house room. It didn’t feel too different from out here, but I knew I would have to get closer. Perhaps if I knew more than I would be able to probe the area with my mind, but that wasn’t something that Aidan had taught me. Had to do this the old-fashioned way.

  I took a deep breath and crossed the street, entering the car park.

  A sense of unease spread through me as I entered, not overwhelming but present. I glanced around the darkened structure, taking note of the various cars all in their rows. Nothing out of place, and no one walking about. That wasn’t abnormal, generally people are only about when parking or leaving. Middle of the day wouldn’t see much traffic.

  I walked farther in, trying to figure out whereabouts Mary would have been when she died. I didn’t think I needed to be in the exact spot, probably underneath it was fine, I didn’t want to go up to the next floor. Bit lazy, but oh well.

  As I walked, I began to hear someone walking ahead of me, along with a muffled conversation.

  Nothing really to be concerned about, just someone leaving for a lunch break most likely. Still, it unsettled me. I was already uneasy, and given the nature of my visit, I didn’t want to get close to anyone. I thought about changing directions, but I was already a third of the way down the row of cars and I didn’t want to walk all the way back just to go up another row.

  I could probably just cross over between cars…

  I changed directions to do just that when the sound of footsteps got louder. My anxiety spiked and I hurried, but abruptly found myself facing three angry looking men. Red faces, eyes narrowed, fists balled with an aggressive stance.

  I was in trouble even if it was just a mugging.

  Heh. Just a mugging. Never thought I’d see a mugging as an upside.

  They looked unhappy to see me.

  “Hey, guys, I don’t want any trouble. Just trying to find m
y car,” I said, flashing a smile at them. I tried to keep my voice steady and at a soothing register, but it was difficult with the way my heart had sped up.

  “You don’t look like you’d have a car to park ‘round here,” The first one said.

  I raised an eyebrow. “And what exactly should I look like? Has no one ever told you to not judge a book by its cover? I could be filthy stinking rich for all you know.” Well, probably would have been best not to say that. If they were going to mug me, it was better to be broke than anything else.

  “You ain’t rich,” he scoffed. “Just a tramp.”

  “Bobby, she’s not a tramp. She’s the girl Johnny and Tim ran into.” The second one nudged his friend, keeping his voice low as if it would stop me from hearing them.

  Well this was a shit situation now. The only people I’d run into before that could fit this bill were the necromancers that had looked like they’d been about to kill me before Aidan showed up. I couldn’t count on him to save my skin this time, so this was probably going to get ugly.

  “I’m going to repeat myself. I don’t want any trouble,” I said, taking in a deep breath after.

  “Well you found it, lady,” Bobby told me.

  I watched for a moment as energy pooled in their hands, a menacing red colour, before I ducked between two cars and out to the other side.

  “Arma,” I breathed the Latin word, pushing the shield out to form around my hand. It was harder than the fire to conjure, but I didn’t know what they were going to throw at me and didn’t want to get caught with my trousers down.

  A lance of the red energy came sweeping towards me from above the car, and I lifted my shield to catch it. I watched as it skittered to a sudden stop on my shield, dispersing to the sides. It was an interesting display, and I was not yet over being amazed by magic.