Shadows & Dreams

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Shadows & Dreams Page 19

by Alexis Hall


  “I should have stopped them.”

  “You’ve never faced corpsefire before. It weakened you. If you were fully human, you’d be dead.”

  There was a long silence. I was tired too. I leaned into Nimue. The snow swirled, mixed with feathers.

  “Jacob said they knew you.”

  “Remember those guys who kidnapped me when I was seventeen? It was them. They’re led by this psycho wizard vampire called Henry Percy. He said he’d come to stop us wiping out his bloodline, but I don’t know. He could’ve just left town. It’s just... I don’t know. It doesn’t add up but I can’t think right now.”

  “You’re asleep, Kate.”

  “It’s bugging me.”

  “Think about it in the morning. Rest now.” Her lips brushed against my cheek, softer than the snow.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  “I’ll keep fighting her here. And I’m sending word to other courts. It makes me look weak, but this is bigger than London.”

  “The vampires are mucking in, now that they’ve stopped trying to chop my head off.”

  “If tonight’s anything to go by, it seems like they’re not all on board.”

  The darkness began to deepen, and the train came silently to a halt.

  “This is your stop, Kate.”

  * * *

  I woke to the smell of fresh coffee and my own singed hair. Honestly, I felt pretty shitty. I lurched into the bathroom to catalogue the damage. Three long cuts ran down my cheek, part burn, part claw mark. Ow. I cleaned them up and showered the smoke out of my hair, dressed, and staggered into the kitchen for my caffeine fix and the obligatory banana.

  I explained my new exciting injuries to Elise, and then we piled into the car, swung by the office to pick up the Corin file, and set off for Oxford. I pulled my hat over my face hoping to sneak another hour’s kip on the road, but Elise put paid to that when she cranked up the volume, popped out my trusty Leonard Cohen CD, and replaced it with some kind of German thrash metal.

  I pulled my hat down even further, but it was no use.

  “Elise,” I groaned. “What the shit is this?”

  “This, Miss Kane, is ‘Sehnsucht,’ the opening track of Rammstein’s 1997 album of the same name. The album is probably most famous for the fifth track, ‘Du Hast,’ the title of which is a play on the homophones hasst, meaning hate, and hast, meaning have.”

  “And you think this is appropriate music for half nine in the morning, why?”

  “I find the rhythms soothing. I would also remind you that the last time we were on an extended car journey you made me listen to ‘Diamonds in the Mine’ three times in a row.”

  “It’s a classic.”

  “It is an old man screaming into a microphone about the inefficiencies of the New York postal service.”

  Mercifully, after an hour, Elise let me change the CD. I thought about putting on Songs of Love and Hate just to spite her but decided that would be childish. I stuck on some Tom Waits and fell asleep.

  Elise woke me up a little while later.

  “Miss Kane,” she said, “these roads appear to be laid out most illogically. I attempted to take the shortest and most expeditious route to our destination only to find that I was not permitted to turn in the direction I intended. I have been driving in circles for some time now.”

  We blundered around for another thirty minutes, trying to navigate the one-way system and find a damn parking space. We eventually ditched the car near a boathouse and headed a few streets south to where Professor Fox lived. He had one of those big, gold, historical-looking houses tucked away on a leafy crescent north of the city centre. Time was, it would have been the poshest thing I’d ever seen, but since coming to London, I’ve been hanging out with millionaire vampires and werewolf aristocrats. Hell, Eve could have bought this place thirty times over and not even noticed. Still, it was a bit of a step up from my two-bedroom flat on Muswell Hill.

  I climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. It was opened by a silver-haired man in a velvet smoking jacket. He had a slightly weather-beaten look and pale blue eyes glittering behind silver-rimmed spectacles. Basically, he was the kind of professor I’d have had a crush on at university. If I’d been straight. And if I’d gone to university.

  “Miss Kane, I presume?” he said. “And Miss Archer?”

  “Archer’s dead, this is Elise.”

  “I’m terribly sorry. Would you like to come inside?”

  He led the way into a tastefully furnished living room, all wingback chairs and shelves full of those old, leather-bound books that I’m pretty sure nobody actually reads.

  “Tea? Coffee? It’s a little early for anything stronger.”

  I went for coffee, and he disappeared into another room, returning a few minutes later carrying a tray. He settled himself into a chair and carefully laid out a cafetière, two cups, a jug of cream, a bowl of those rough-cut sugar cubes you get in fancy cafés, and a plate of those little Italian biscuit things.

  “So,” I said. “Break-in.”

  “Gracious me, how direct.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “No, no, I find it quite refreshing. I’ve been moving primarily in academic circles these past thirty years, where circumlocution is an art form.”

  “Can you tell me more about the things they took?”

  He crossed one leg over the other and leaned back with the air of a man about to blow my tiny mind. “That very much depends on you, Miss Kane. Tell me, do you consider yourself open to unusual ideas?”

  I bet he said that to all the girls. “Try me.”

  “You know, of course, that I am a collector, and I assume you know what it is that I collect.”

  Yep, he was one of those. I wanted to say you collect magical doodads that you probably don’t understand anywhere near as well as you think you do, but I didn’t think that would go down well.

  “Cultural artefacts?” I offered with my best oh please educate me look.

  “That is one way to describe it, but they are so much more than that. My collection houses items of real power.”

  “What kind of real power?” I asked dutifully.

  He poured cream into his coffee and took a sip. When he felt he’d built the tension enough, he looked me in the eyes and said, “The supernatural, Miss Kane.”

  There was a silence, and I realised that was my cue to be shocked. “Wow,” I replied, with as much sincerity as I could manage.

  “It is a little hard to encompass at first.”

  I bet he said that to all the girls as well. “So what was taken?”

  “A Hand of Glory and a demon’s skull. The Hand of Glory is a candle fashioned from the left hand of a hanged criminal. While it burns, its owner will not be seen by those he does not wish to see him.”

  “And the demon skull?”

  “An interesting historical curio. It was seized after the dissolution of the Templars in 1312.”

  “Does it do anything?”

  “Not every item in my collection has an obvious function, but that does not diminish their individual value.” He patronised me over the top of his glasses. “I must say, you are a very practically minded woman, Miss Kane. Most people express far greater incredulity when I discuss these matters with them.”

  “The way I see it, stuff you don’t believe in can still kill you.” I produced a printout of Corin’s picture from her file. “Have you seen this woman?”

  He looked sheepish.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “She told me she needed to use my telephone...”

  “And, let me guess, one thing led to another?”

  He actually blushed. Corin had that effect on people.

  “And this was a couple of days before your stuff went missing?”

  He nodded. “I
did mention it to the police, but so far, they haven’t found her. She told me her name was Jenny.”

  “Can I see where you keep your collection?”

  “That didn’t end well for me last time,” he said, with a half smile.

  “You wouldn’t have let me in if you hadn’t checked my credentials.”

  “Very true, Miss Kane. Step this way.”

  Professor Fox’s collection was housed in a large, humidity-controlled cellar, protected by an alarm, a reinforced door, and a numeric keypad. It would have put off most casual thieves, but Corin was far from casual. The artefacts themselves were stored in oak-fronted, glass-panelled display cases like you get in museums. Again, most of them were locked. Again, it wouldn’t have stopped Corin. I wasn’t that deep into the occult black market, but I was pretty sure a lot of this shit was worth serious money. If Corin had gone straight for the skull and the Hand of Glory, she must have needed them for something specific. It would have really helped to know what the skull was for. And if anyone would know what you could do with a demon skull, it would be a demon.

  We said our good-byes to the professor and I asked him to email me some pictures of the missing items. The moment I got back to London, I called Ashriel, and he agreed to drop by the office that afternoon. Elise and I had a pub lunch, or rather I had a pub lunch and Elise watched me eat and talked excitedly about all the new things she’d done in the last couple of days.

  Back at the office, I hauled Archer’s whiteboard out of the broom cupboard. He’d have been really proud of me if he hadn’t been dead. I drew up a timeline. Corin had got out on the tenth of November, had broken into Professor Fox’s collection on the nineteenth and hit Isis Fortuna on the twenty-fifth. She’d been a busy girl. Today was December twelfth, which meant she could be anywhere. Hell, she might not even be in this world.

  I took a step back and looked at the board. It wasn’t really a timeline so much as three dates in a sort of row with nothing much to connect them up. If I could find somewhere she’d been in the last day or so, I could track her scent, but her movements were too random for that.

  This was starting to look depressingly like square one.

  Okay, Kate, think about this. What do you know about this woman?

  She’s always on the run. She’s a compulsive liar. She’s capable of murder. She’s really good in bed (probably not helpful). She’s working with someone or for someone, who’d helped her get out of prison, but she values her independence and probably won’t want to stick with them. Which means she’s probably going to screw them over, which means she’s going to have to find someone else to hide behind, because that’s what she does. Last time it was me. So she’ll be working in cash, and she’ll need large amounts of it quickly. So she’ll need a fence, one that specialises in magical bling. There couldn’t be too many of those in London, at least ones who knew what they were doing.

  “Miss Kane,” said Elise, coming to the back office, “there is a well-configured gentleman to see you.”

  “A what?”

  “A tall gentleman, with pleasingly symmetrical features, and what I am given to understand constitute ‘bedroom eyes.’”

  “That’ll be Ashriel. I didn’t think he’d be your type.”

  “I am not certain I have a type, Miss Kane. I was merely making an observation.”

  Ashriel had poured himself into the same chair he’d sat in on his first visit three months ago.

  “Do you require anything?” asked Elise, following me into the room.

  Ashriel’s eyes flicked curiously in her direction and stayed there.

  “Mr. Ashriel, do you require anything?”

  “Um,” said Ashriel. Then he seemed to pull himself together. “No, thank you.”

  Elise nodded and disappeared into the kitchenette.

  “Ground control to Major Ashriel?” I waved at him.

  His attention snapped back to me, honeyed whiskey and whispered secrets and good old-fashioned down-and-dirty fucking. “What do you need, Kate?”

  “What could I do with your skull?”

  “Ideally, you could leave it exactly where it is.”

  I printed out the catalogue photo Professor Fox had sent me. “Okay, but what if I made it into something like this?”

  Ashriel gave a low whistle. “Where the hell did you find one of these, and no pun intended.”

  “Long story. I’m looking for someone who nicked one.”

  “It’s a soul box. You can, y’know, put souls in it.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “A couple of reasons. You can put someone else’s soul in it, and then you’ve got someone else’s soul to do what you like with. Or you can put your own soul in it, to keep it safe for a bit.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “Demons, for a start. If you, say, wanted to shag an incubus...” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Or a succubus in your case, you could put your soul in the box and you’d be more or less safe. Wouldn’t be much fun for the demon, though, and to be honest, you’re better off having a wank.”

  “Thanks for that. Good to know. Anything else?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “It could be useful if you had to go up against a serious mage or a powerful vampire. Vampire bites wouldn’t affect you, apart from the blood loss, and they couldn’t read your mind or sense your presence. And most ritual magic would slip off as well.”

  “So, hang on.” I stared at the picture. “What’s the downside here? Because it sounds like I should get me one of these.”

  “Kate, take it from someone who knows, you’ve got a soul for a reason. You kind of need it. Plus demons don’t die, so if you leave your soul in there for too long, it’ll get eaten. I’ve seen it happen. And then the demon gets your body. That never ends well.”

  “Let me get this straight. If someone put their soul in this box, they could, purely hypothetically, sneak up on an ancient sleeping vampire and it wouldn’t sense them?”

  He shrugged. “Guess so.”

  Once again, I was grateful that, as a paranormal detective, I didn’t need evidence that would stand up in court. Well, M’lud, the accused was hired by persons unknown to steal an ancient ceramic pot in order to wake up the former vampire queen of the British Isles. How, M’lud? We don’t know, but we think she stuck her soul in a box and used a candle made out of a dead man’s hand.

  I couldn’t prove any of it, but I was pretty damn certain that was how it had gone down.

  If I could figure out why, I’d be laughing. Or, more likely, dying.

  I slid the printouts into the Corin file. “Okay, next question. If I’d stolen one of these and used it and wasn’t going to use it again, who would I sell it to and how much would I get for it?”

  “These babies are fantastically rare. To make one, you have a decapitate a demon, stop its body getting sucked back into hell, and be up to your elbows in some serious infernal magic. You can’t put a cash value on it because the people who want this sort of thing aren’t types to deal in money.”

  They never are. “Do you know if any have popped up recently?”

  Ashriel shook his head. “I’m not as tuned in to that stuff as I used to be.”

  “Well, can you point me at anyone who is?”

  There was a brief pause.

  “I could,” he said slowly, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I know you can handle yourself, but I’m not going to send you off to chat with demons.”

  “I’ve met demons before.”

  “You’ve met the kind of demons who get caught. The ones who stick around are either like me or, uh, not like me. They’ve been around for a long time, which means they’re very powerful, they only want one thing, and they know how to get it.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “No, you won’t. Kate.”
He gazed at me across the desk. I got hit by a wave of his blood sugar sex magic, and it suddenly occurred to me he probably had a hard time getting people to take him seriously. “I don’t have many friends, but I think you’re one of them. And friends don’t send friends to get their souls sucked out.”

  “Uhh, thanks. If you had a soul, I wouldn’t want it to get sucked out either. Not that you do. So, um, forget it. Look, I really need to find this thing, and if this is the only way, I’m going to do it.”

  He was still staring at me. I think he was genuinely worried. “There’s no way I can talk you out of this, is there?”

  “Basically, nope.”

  “Fine, but can I at least come with you? If it comes to a fight, we’re probably both dead, but we usually don’t attack our own kind.”

  “Honour amongst thieves, huh?”

  He looked away. “We fought a war together. We lost, but it still counts for something.”

  As usual, I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say, so I changed the subject. “Do we have to go to a crossroads at midnight or something?”

  “Not exactly. Have you heard of the Angel of St. Paul’s?”

  “Vaguely.” There were rumours floating around of an old man who sat outside St. Paul’s Cathedral and could make wishes come true, but those kind of stories are two a penny, particularly in my line of work.

  Ashriel rose gracefully. “Come on, we’re going to see him. I’ll give you a lift.”

  I’d learned to my cost that Ashriel drove a green Mini Roadster that wasn’t really compatible with my legs. “Honestly,” I said, “I fancy the walk.”

  St. Paul’s was about half an hour from my office, and we set off together.

  “So,” he said, in his best casual voice, “when did you get the new assistant?”

  “I made a deal with the Multitude to find the King of the Court of Love.”

  He grinned. “And the deal was you got an extraordinarily beautiful young woman to help with your filing? That’s not exactly a Faustian bargain, is it?”

  “You know, I honestly think it just likes to help people.”

 

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