Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One: Fortitude
Chapter Two: Style Counts
Chapter Three: A Dead Gent
Chapter Four: Love
Chapter Five: Dead Pigs
Chapter Six: White Mouse
Chapter Seven: The Boss
Chapter Eight: Autopsy
Chapter Nine: Holy Matter
Chapter Ten: Alchemy
Chapter Eleven: An Unfortunate Business
Chapter Twelve: The Frank Way
Chapter Thirteen: Dee’s Last Incantation
Chapter Fourteen: Demonology
Chapter Fifteen: Naturally Blond
Chapter Sixteen: Smart Aleck
Chapter Seventeen: First Date
Chapter Eighteen: The Hole
Chapter Nineteen: Not Heaven
Chapter Twenty: Doctor Death
Chapter Twenty-One: Discipline
Chapter Twenty-Two: Digging
Chapter Twenty-Three: Too Clever By Half
Chapter Twenty-Four: Necromancy
Chapter Twenty-Five: Invisibility
Chapter Twenty-Six: Visibility
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Vade retro Satana!
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Exterminating Angel
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fancy Dress
Chapter Thirty: Blood
Chapter Thirty-One: Begone!
Chapter Thirty-Two: Jump
Read on . . .
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
GIFTED
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17306 8
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Penguin Random House Company
This ebook edition published 2015
Text copyright © Donald Hounam, 2015
Cover artwork copyright © Sean Freeman, 2015
First Published in Great Britain
Corgi 9780552571876 2015
The right of Donald Hounam to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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For Cecily
I’VE BEEN UP all night, while the cat’s still fresh.
And I’m wrecked. I’ve washed the dead animal in exorcised water, fumigated it in rosemary smoke, held it up to the four points of the compass and rattled through all the formulae of purification. I’ve got the whiskers in a bowl, and the skin neatly folded up in a bucket on the floor.
I hinge back the ribcage and gaze down at the liver, lungs, heart and the rest, all stuffed in like dirty laundry in a bag. I feel queasy and kind of guilty . . .
But dead is dead, and I need the parts. I can use the teeth for a couple of defensive spells; the eyes and whiskers will cook up for elementals; and a few rather unpleasant Presences of my acquaintance are partial to dried cat’s liver.
Time flies when you’re having fun. My studio used to be a chapel and it’s got these thick stone walls, so it’s like the outside world doesn’t exist. The fire up at the east end, where the altar used to be, has burned down to a dull glow. I’ve got all sorts of muck all over my gloves and the side of my nose is itching like mad. As I rub my cheek against my shoulder, the lamps flicker spookily, like something is passing through . . .
I play around with dead people all the time, up at the mortuary, so the cat really shouldn’t bother me. But it’s creeping me out, just lying there with its mouth open, its eyes closed and its guts glistening. It doesn’t look at all happy and I feel like I ought to apologise. I glance up at my magic watch, hanging from a hook out of harm’s way. Nearly four thirty. Just get it done, Frank. I fumble for my tweezers . . .
And there’s this sharp click behind me.
I nearly jump out of my skin. I look round, heart pounding, and see that my door has locked itself and the inside surface is rippling like the wind churning up the surface of a lake.
Which means trouble.
I can hear voices coming through this hole I’ve hacked in the wall between my studio and the corridor. Call me paranoid, but I don’t like surprises. The termites – they’re these monks who feed me and keep an eye on me and beat me up when they’re stuck for entertainment – well, I don’t trust them. And this is a particularly toxic termite: a voice I’ve come to know and love.
‘Have you ever met a sorcerer before?’
‘Oh yeah.’ A girl’s voice. What’s going on?
‘They’re difficult.’ Brother Thomas: my least favourite termite. Always manages to wind me up. The door doesn’t think much of him either. I can see the wood bristling now, like the hairs along a dog’s back.
‘Personally, I’d burn the lot of them.’ He knocks hard on the door. It makes this low, dangerous growling noise.
It’s not just the five quid – the going rate for a dead moggy round the back streets of Doughnut City – it’s the hours I spent purifying and dismantling the corpse. And now I’ll just have to dump it along with all the bits I wanted.
I slam a cover over it: disassembled animals can create a bad first impression. I drape a cloth over the bucket containing the skin. I look around. The place niffs a bit, so I throw a few sprigs of rosemary into the brazier. I chuck a couple of books into the safety of the cabinet and run around turning down the lamps. I grab a pair of underpants hanging over the back of a chair. If they weren’t dirty before, they’re dirty now: I wipe the blood off my hands and toss the pants in the laundry basket. I pull on a shirt. I’m neat and presentable. Maybe they’ll go away.
‘Brother Tobias!’
‘Get lost, parrot-face!’ I yell.
The door handle rattles.
Just so you know to avoid them, the termites are Agrippine monks, a small order established in 1747 to keep a lid on sorcerers like me, living out in the big bad world. I’ve been with them for more than a year but they’re still a mystery to me. This arse knows about the door – he’s got the scars to prove it. Like, maybe he’s stupid, but is he deaf too? Can’t he hear it growling? He starts hammering. There’s a vicious snarling noise. Even on this side, the surface of the door bulges and twists.
A long, gratifying silence. Then his voice, a trembling whisper: ‘You talk to him.’
Hers: ‘This is Detective Constable Marvell an’ I don’t need this shit!’
Oh hell, not her again! Shouldn’t have ignored the scryer. I tell the door to open. Which it does, with all the trimmings: sinister creak, flickering lamps and an icy draught across the floor.
She’s come dressed as a deckchair. Red duffel coat with one toggle missing, blue jeans, a yellow bag over her shoulder. She’s about my age: dead skinny, with curly black hair and pale skin and that weird darting gaze that all tatties have.
While her eyes flicker round the studio, Brother Thomas’s fat, self-satisfied gob looms over her shoulder, his bald skull shining greasily in the gaslight. He’s sucking one finger, so the door must have taken a chunk out of him.
She steps inside, still checking the joint out. It’s not what you’d call homely. Grey stone. No windows, unless you count a tiny circle of stained glass high on the west wall, above the stove.
She cranes her neck to stare up at the stone ribbing across the ceiling. Her gaze flashes over my stuff: shelves of books, cabinets of metal and glass instruments, a wire cage with a couple of white rats scuffling around inside it. Brother Thomas tries to follow her in. Shifty little weasel: he’s never actually got inside and it bugs the hell out of him. He manages one step before the door slams in his face.
She jumps, but she doesn’t turn to look. She stands there, working hard at staying cool, looks me up and down. ‘You’re up early.’
‘What do you want?’ I’m not going to pretend I’m pleased to see her.
‘A bit of light wouldn’t hurt.’
‘I like it like this. Helps me think.’
‘Dark teenage thoughts, I bet.’ She sniffs. ‘What died?’ She pulls a flat, round silver case out of her bag and waves it at me. ‘I scried you. Why didn’t you answer?’
‘Coz I saw it was you.’ Her face twitches and I realise I’ve upset her, which is good. ‘Never even heard it, if you really wanna know. I was busy.’
Her name’s Magdalena Marvell. Really. We’ve never actually worked together; but I did something incredibly stupid a few weeks back – took an eyeball from a corpse in the mortuary, if you must know. It was for a good cause, OK? And nobody would have cared, if she hadn’t gone and shopped me.
She’s staring up at a tinted photograph of an elderly Japanese gent dressed like a Christmas tree: his holiness Pope Innocent XVII. Finally she mumbles, ‘Wasn’t my fault.’
‘Ah. I thought maybe you’d come to apologise. You got me in a load of shit.’
She just looks at me. After a bit I start to think, are my flies open? Is there toothpaste round my mouth?
‘So, what are you doing here?’ I ask.
She’s gazing down at the floor, at the smeared remains of a chalk circle scattered with symbols. The smoke from the rosemary in the brazier wafts around her as she turns and walks her fingertips along the bench that runs down the centre of the nave: over charts, around glass jars, flasks and phials, paper packets, bunches of herbs, balances, knives, a mortar and pestle – your standard Junior Sorcerer’s kit. She peers across at the blackboard behind the door, covered with scrawled code that even I can’t make sense of any more, but which could still get me roasted in front of a large, appreciative crowd.
‘Clue,’ she says. ‘It’s not a social visit.’
Like I said, it’s been a long night and I’m slow to catch on. I just stand there with my mouth open until she folds her arms and says:
‘You’re still the junior forensic sorcerer, yeah?’
‘Far as I know.’
‘So are you coming?’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll find out when we get there.’
I duck into what used to be the south transept, and dive under the bed.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘My boots.’
‘There’s a pair by the door.’
I know there is, but I need a few moments to get my thoughts straight. It’s like this every time a new job comes up. I love the buzz, but I’m already making this list in my head of all the things that can go wrong . . .
I crawl out and see that she’s found something new to stare at: a charred book lying on a red velvet cushion, under a glass dome. ‘What’s this?’
‘You’re the tatty.’
I get what I’m trying to provoke: her angry look. She lifts the dome and picks up the book. Blackened fragments of paper fall away as she turns it to examine the lettering down what’s left of the spine.
‘In Defence of Sorcery.’ She looks up at me. ‘Does sorcery need defending?’
‘That didn’t set fire to itself.’
‘Author’s name’s been scratched out before it was set alight. Title page burned away . . .’ She lifts the book to her nose and sniffs at it. ‘Published here, though – that’s the glue the cathedral press uses.’ Another sniff: tatties stick their noses in things a lot. ‘Set alight with consecrated oil – the stuff they use in churches—’
‘And termite nests.’
‘Huh?’
‘I found it outside my door.’ I’m lying back on my bed, one foot in the air, tying my bootlaces.
She sniffs again and pulls a face. ‘Did you pee on it?’
‘No, that was the generous donor.’
She drops the book on the cushion and goes across to wash her hands at the sink in the corner.
‘What d’you keep it for?’
‘A reminder that I, too, am combustible.’ I roll forwards, onto my feet. ‘Come on then.’
But she’s back at the bench, turning up the lamp. Will we ever get out of here? She picks up a notebook that I forgot to hide. I grab it and toss it into a corner. That’s the trouble with tatties; they can’t leave anything alone. She’s reaching for the cover over the cat . . .
‘Pick a card.’ I grab a pack of Tarot cards and shuffle them. ‘Any card.’
I fan them out. She hesitates, then takes one.
‘Remember it.’
She’s peering at the design on the face. ‘What is it?’
Unless my card-sharping skills have deserted me, it’s La Force – Strength or Fortitude – a woman holding a lion’s jaws open.
‘Just remember what it looks like. You can do that, can’t you? Put it back.’ I shuffle the cards, riffle them dramatically . . . and chuck them in the fire. ‘So let’s go.’ I grab a woollen hat from the antlers of a stag’s skull.
‘Why’d he call you “Brother Tobias”? The monk—’
‘The termites use my stage name. You can call me Frank.’
‘How old are you, Frank? Fifteen?’
‘Nearly sixteen. And you, Magdalena?’
‘Sixteen.’ That’s peak for a tatty. She’s got ten years or so before she burns out. ‘An’ if you call me that again, I’ll kill you.’
I pull on my black leather jerkin and pick up my case. The door opens.
‘What about my card?’ she says, looking back at the fire. I just shrug and wave her out into the corridor. No sign of the wounded termite; just the gaslight flickering in the draught.
‘Don’t you want a coat?’
I ignore her. She mutters, ‘Your funeral.’ The door closes. She watches me set it: a touch, a couple of words. When I turn away, she can’t resist stepping back to push it. A section of the door transforms itself into the head of a wolf, snapping and snarling at her. She jumps away, shaking. The wood settles back.
‘Simplest spell in the world,’ I say. ‘I could give you one for your place.’
‘Yeah, my mum’d love that. A key’s fine. You gotta tell anyone you’re going out?’
Bloody cheek! I’m not a prisoner.
I open the outside door and stand at the top of the steps. It’s cold and pitch-black. The moon set exactly fifty-seven minutes ago.
How do I know that? I’m a sorcerer, OK? I just know stuff like that. So anyway, there’s no sign of dawn yet. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The termites were out late last night throwing manure around the vegetable garden and it’s pretty ripe – but it makes a welcome change from decomposing cat.
I gasp as a sharp elbow digs into my side. Marvell barges past and heads off along the path.
‘So where are we going?’ I call as she disappears into the darkness.
‘Osney. The Bishop’s Palace.’
‘Who’s dead?’ I can’t see her. I just follow the sound of her feet crunching on the gravel. I hear the whisper of her coat brushing against the hedge; the smell of lavender fills the air.
‘Who says anyone’s dead?’
‘They don’t drag me out for stolen bicycles.’
‘Prob’ly coz they know you stole ’em.’
I can just make out the monastery chapel now, silhouetted against the dirty brown glow of Doughnut City. Marvell is just this dark shape, bobbing up and down ahead of me. I’m waiting for her to crash into the low wall, just ahead where the path twists. But she makes the turn like she’s lived here all her life and whizzes off up a flight of steps.
‘All they told me, someone’s dead,’ she says. ‘At the Bishop’s Palace. Dunno who.’
She’s struggling with a heavy door. I step up to help her, but she pushes me away and throws herself at the black wood. The door bangs back and our feet echo on the stone floor of a corridor that brings us out into the cloister running round the front quadrangle. Water splashes in the fountain.
‘Are you spotting it?’ I ask.
That’s what tatties do: they spot stuff that the rest of the CID are too blind, stupid or lazy to notice. Until they go blind themselves.
‘What do you think?’
‘Who’s the grown-up?’
‘Caxton.’
‘Oh, great!’
We’re at the porter’s lodge. ‘Shop!’ I call. A hatch opens. This kid a couple of years older than me, with buck teeth and tonsured, carroty red hair, stares suspiciously out.
‘Brother Andrew! Unleash me on an unsuspecting world.’
He’s not blessed with a sense of humour. ‘Where are you going?’ he whines.
‘None of your business.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘None of your business,’ Marvell says. Against my better judgement, I’m in danger of beginning to dislike her less than I probably should. ‘Open the door, you little squirt.’
Andrew whizzes out and fumbles with a ring of heavy iron keys. The locks scrape. The door creaks open. Marvell steps out into the big wide world.
I put one foot over the threshold . . . and freeze.
There’s a single lamp post almost opposite, and a van, painted in blue city police livery, standing beneath it. One of the horses shifts in its harness and I hear a series of soft, splattering thuds. Steam rises from a small pile of dung.
I peer into the shadows along the narrow street. Yesterday was the feast day of Saint Cyprian of Antioch, and since he’s the patron saint of sorcerers there was a crowd of protesters out here, yelling for me to come outside and face the music.
I didn’t let them bother me, just climbed in and out over the back wall. They seem to have gone, anyway, leaving just a scrawled message on the wall opposite: ‘Rot in hell!’
‘You comin’ or not?’ Marvell hisses back at me.
Course I’m coming. It’s only a matter of time before I get bored with harming domestic animals and start in on myself again.
Final look up and down the street. All quiet. I step out and as the door slams behind me I realise that although a leather jerkin makes an effective style statement, it won’t keep out the arctic wind.
‘Told you!’ Marvell crows as I pull my hat down over my ears.
As we cross the road, the driver, perched on the box in front of the van, extends his hand towards me, the middle and ring fingers tucked under the thumb, the index and little fingers pointing towards my eyes.
I’m used to ignoring superstitious crap like this. I mean, it’s not like it works or anything—
Except that this time he’s got lucky because there’s the thunder of hoofbeats behind me and a hansom cab comes screaming round the corner.
Unbelievably, Marvell stops dead in the middle of the road and sticks her hand up like a traffic jack. The cabbie hauls on his reins, but can’t stop the horse. I take a run and knock her out of the way, just in time. We go flying under the police van’s team and her elbow hits the cobbles with a crack.
As I stagger to my feet, spitting out horse shit, the cab door flies open and this guy throws himself out at me.
I grab my case and hit him with it.
Not hard enough. He pulls a knife.
I wonder if, in the interests of fair play, he’d be prepared to give me a moment to put my case down, open it, and find my own knife.
Guess not.
I’m stumbling backwards, holding the case defensively in front of me. In a situation like this, you get a kind of blinkered vision of the world you’re about to leave. I’ve no idea where Marvell’s got to. All I see is a sudden flash of reflected light as the knife slices through the air . . .
There’s a loud bang. Me and the guy both look round.
Marvell’s holding a pistol, pointed into the sky. As she lowers it threateningly, I notice that my attacker’s wearing an armband with an emblem: a burning five-pointed star.
He throws himself back into the cab. The whip cracks. The cab thunders off, the door still flapping.
‘WHO THE HELL was that?’ says Marvell.
‘Why didn’t you shoot him and find out?’
We pile into the van. Marvell falls back into the seat opposite me, clutching her left elbow in her other hand.
‘Let me see that,’ I offer. But she shoves me away and pulls her elbow closer to her chest.
I hate jack vans. The dirty yellow panelling. The overflowing ashtrays and the stink of stale tobacco. The driver’s had enough excitement for one night and isn’t taking any more chances; so rather than risk going through the Hole, he takes us the long way round, through Iffley and across the bridges to the Grandpont.
The sleeve of Marvell’s coat has a gaping tear in it and she’s dripping blood onto the leather seat.
‘Christ, I can’t go to casualty,’ she groans. ‘Caxton’ll kill me!’
‘The hell with Caxton.’ That’s Marvell’s boss. Mine too, sort of. ‘I can fix it.’
I knock on the roof and yell at the driver to stop under one of the lamps. I can see Marvell doesn’t trust me; she pulls faces and makes hissing noises while I help her out of her coat and sweater. I tear the sleeve of her shirt up to the shoulder.
She’s got these scrawny little arms, like she’s never lifted anything in her life, and I can see she’s self-conscious about them. Her elbow is split open, right on the joint. I can see the bone.
I open my case.
‘Bloody hell!’ she mutters.
As well she might. One of the customs of the Craft is that your Master presents you with a case when you get your licence. My Master is a big noise in the Society of Sorcerers and a very rich bunny indeed.
The Society, by the way, is big on chastity and massive on obedience, but crap at poverty.
Anyway, my case is crocodile with silver fittings outside, and snakeskin and ivory inside. It’s divided into compartments with black silk linings for all the instruments, herbs and other gear I need in the field. There are good thaumaturgic arguments for all this, but frankly other sorcerers seem to get by on calfskin and brass. In short, my case is pretty tacky – and I love it.
I squeeze a few drops of aloe into my palm – I always carry a couple of leaves because I’ve a tendency to set fire to things, including myself. I sprinkle in comfrey, add a few drops of exorcised water and mix it all together with the tip of a small silver knife.
‘In the name of Adonai the most high. In the name of Jehovah the most holy!’
Marvell’s eyes go wide with shock as I slap the goo over the wound. I clamp my hand round her elbow, so she can’t wriggle loose. It’s a simple spell and it works fast, or not at all. I make a shape in the air with the first two fingers of my free hand.
‘In the name of the Lord who maketh all things whole. In the name of the Lord who is blessed. In the name of the Lord who healeth the sick.’ I do a lot of stuff in threes. I take my hand away. ‘You can give it a wipe now.’
She’s twisting her arm, staring at her elbow in disbelief. ‘That’s amazing!’
‘It’s routine.’
She stares at me for a moment, then she says, ‘Suit yourself.’ She’s prodding her elbow, where the wound has vanished completely. She won’t even have a scar. ‘That lunatic.’ She pulls down her sleeve. ‘Who was he, anyway?’
‘Didn’t you see the badge?’ I point to my arm, where he was wearing the burning pentagram emblem, but she just shakes her head. ‘He was ASB.’
‘Anti-Sorcery . . . Brigade?’
‘Brotherhood.’
The protesters I get outside the termite nest are just a nuisance, but the ASB are genuine nutters. I close my case and knock on the roof of the van.
‘ “Does sorcery need defending?” Huh!’
We pass warehouses and a stockyard, with mad-eyed cattle staring out at us between the bars. Then we’re rattling over the main bridge across the Isis. Through the crumbling stone pillars of the balustrade, I can see the wharves along the riverside. The gaslight gleams on the bodies of a couple of big guys, stripped to the waist, stretching up like lost souls in hell to steady a pallet swinging from a crane. And there’s a boy, aged maybe eight or nine, perched on a seat at the top of a ladder, checking off a manifest and screaming at dozens more guys chucking stuff into a boat.
Enjoy it while it lasts, kid!
Out in the darkness of midstream, the lights of a chain of barges drift slowly past. Even with the van windows closed, the sinus-clenching stench of rotting rubbish makes the horse shit smeared across my face smell like roses.
Marvell has fastened the torn remains of her shirtsleeve at the cuff. She looks round for her sweater, sees that I’m wiping my hands on it and grabs it.
‘You don’t look too hot,’ she says.
‘I’m fine.’ But I’m not. I feel sick and I’m sweating – nervous about what’s waiting for me at the palace. Despite all the practice with cats, I’ve never really got used to seeing people mangled up and spread around the place. With my right index finger, I draw a protective pentagram in the condensation on each window.
‘What’s that for?’ Marvell says.
I shake my head. Without an incantation and some more symbols, the pentagrams have no real power, but they make me feel better.
Marvell leans forward. I slap her hand away before she can draw in the condensation.
‘You don’t know what it is,’ I mutter. ‘So don’t fiddle.’
She frowns and looks round the van, obviously wondering what to fiddle with next. She makes a grab for my case.
‘Leave that alone!’ I snap. ‘It could have your hand off.’
There’s this flicker of anger across her face. She pulls her sweater on and says, ‘Never really worked with a sorcerer.’
‘Don’t worry about me. Just keep Caxton off my back.’
‘You’ve still got horse shit on your face.’
‘I may need you to help me with some stuff.’ I wipe my shirtsleeve across my face. ‘Just here and there. I’ll ask.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Never do more than I ask. Things bite – like my door.’
She nods, but she doesn’t like being told what to do.
I add insult to injury: ‘You’ll get the hang of it.’ I’m dangerously close to patting her on the knee.
Amazingly, we get there without her strangling me.
From the Oxpens I can see the silhouette of the cathedral looming over the gasworks, the spire still shattered at the top and shrouded in scaffolding after the Montgolfier raids twenty years back.
As we pass under the railway bridge, the early train to London rumbles overhead, spitting out cinders and leaving a plume of steam. We turn left down the Palace Road. In the greengrocer’s on the corner, the shopkeeper is holding up a lantern for this kid to write out price tags. The boy turns to stare at us, and the shopkeeper clips him one round the ear.
We rattle along a terrace of crumbling houses to the palace lodge, a dingy Gothic heap of stones with a hole through the middle for carriages to go in and out, and deep ruts worn into the pavement by centuries of metal-bound wheels. There’s no security elemental here, just a uniformed jack and a knock-kneed old geezer in tights – some sort of gatekeeper, I suppose. They wave us straight through.
The van drives around some sort of lawn and stops on a paved area in front of a red brick building that’s far too big for one bloke, however holy, and must be murder to heat. A couple of torches are burning in brackets hanging out of the wall.
In the middle of the lawn, two uniformed jacks are bent over in an ornamental pond, their trousers rolled up above their knees, fishing around with their hands. And beyond them I can see another jack holding up a lantern while a young guy with white hair pokes around in the bushes.
I let Marvell get down from the van first. I stretch back to wipe away the pentagram from the far window: it’s dangerous to leave any sort of trace behind you. I grab my case and I’m just stepping out, erasing the second pentagram with my sleeve, when I hear Marvell mutter:
‘Oh hell! Can’t stand them things.’
I look round. There’s a lion prowling towards us, its mane fluorescent in the flickering torchlight. It stops a couple of yards away, its eyes burning. Marvell’s hand trembles as she holds it out. The lion advances, lowering its head and giving out a deep growl like machinery turning underground.
It’s not a machine, though; it’s an elemental. It sniffs at the small ruby set in the ring on her little finger, and licks the back of her hand. She nearly faints with relief.
My turn. Style counts. I hold out my hand, palm up. The lion watches with interest as I make a fist. Abracadabra! When I open my hand again there’s a white mouse running round it. I toss the mouse into the air. The lion opens its mouth and swallows it whole.
Bit rough on the mouse, but Marvell’s impressed. The lion too – it turns and pads away. The front door of the palace swings open.
‘Show-off!’ Marvell mutters, just a whisker too late.
Inside there’s an entrance hall, with black-and-white chessboard tiling and a giddying stench of furniture polish.
It’s pretty dark, but through an open door to the left I can see people sitting round a table. There’s a kid my age, and a middle-aged woman with dyed red hair, who looks up at me, crosses herself and fumbles with a couple of chains hanging round her neck. It takes her a few seconds to disentangle a pair of spectacles from a silver amulet, which she raises to her lips.
Household staff, I guess. Bishops, in my admittedly limited experience, don’t make their own beds.
Peering round the hall, I can see half a dozen portraits hanging high on the walls, above the wainscoting: dead bishops keeping an eye on the visitors. They don’t like the look of me; I don’t like the look of them.
To my right, there’s a wide staircase. The light is coming from a chandelier hung high in the stairwell. And as the candles flicker in the draught, I glimpse someone leaning over the banister two floors up.
She’s got blonde hair, cropped dead short. It’s hard to tell at this distance, and it could be just wishful thinking, but it looks like she’s staring at me. Maybe that’s encouraging. Maybe she’s thinking, who’s the twerp? Me and girls – there’s not much to say; I’m too busy dismantling domestic animals.
‘Through here,’ says Marvell, pointing to a heavy door.
How does she know? Coz she’s a tatty and sometimes . . . OK, it is kind of weird, but it’s like sometimes tatties just know stuff without being told. The uniformed jack slumped in the chair in the corner looks like he’s happy to know nothing. He gets up and pushes the door open. I take a moment to peer up the stairwell.
‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Marvell mutters.
The girl has gone.
We stumble down a long dark corridor with a single candle glowing in the distance. The floor is stone, uneven and slippery. We pass the outlines of doorways, heavy furniture and dark, indecipherable paintings. More dead bishops, I guess. This isn’t a murder, it’s a suicide brought on by the interior decorating.
Halfway along, Marvell jumps as a dark shape looms up from a chair. I can’t see his face, but I’ve been waiting for him to pop out.
‘Nice lion, Charlie!’
The candlelight gleams on his teeth as he grins. My old pal Charlie Burgess has great choppers; otherwise he’s this wispy little bloke with curly hair bleached white, like most of the CID wear it.
He whispers, ‘Best behaviour, Frank. It’s Caxton.’
‘Yeah, I know. My cup runneth over.’
We’ve reached the candle, stuck in a bracket screwed to the rough stone wall at the end of the corridor. On our left there’s a doorway. Marvell reaches for the handle—
‘Hang on!’
I’ve got this sudden attack of stage fright. My stomach’s doing cartwheels and I’m shaking like a monkey on a barrel organ. I’ll admit it, OK? I’m wound up about what’s waiting for me behind the door. Not just the corpse, either. Beryl Caxton is like every jack I’ve ever met: aggressive around sorcerers. And me, it’s like I’ve got this special talent for getting right up her nose.
Fact is, I lack a good corpse-side manner. And when I get twitchy I act like an arsehole.
‘Mr Memory?’ I croak.
‘Inside with Caxton.’ Charlie doesn’t look too hot either: it’s not difficult, instantiating elementals, but it takes it out of you. ‘Wound up and ready to go.’
Marvell opens the door. As I pass Charlie, he whispers, ‘Deep slow breaths.’
Good advice. Caxton’s a pain, just in case you weren’t getting the picture.
Charlie closes the door behind us.
THE FIRST THING I see is the reason we’re all here so early in the morning. There’s a massive wooden desk in the middle of the room, and a man wearing a blue silk dressing gown and clutching an open book, sitting motionless in the chair behind it.
‘Wow!’
Detective Chief Inspector Beryl Caxton glares at me. ‘Behave yourself, Sampson, or clear out now.’
I am behaving myself. I’ve managed not to throw up.
This guy has no head.
I catch a glint of silver as Caxton sticks the inevitable amulet back in her coat pocket. Damned if I know what she’s afraid of; she’s twice my size with hands like shovels. I checked her file once so I know she’s thirty-five, but she’s got this permanently sour expression that makes her look even older. Like Charlie, she’s bleached her hair snow white. On her, it doesn’t look even remotely cool.
She takes off her glasses to stare at the damage to Marvell’s coat. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Nothing, Chief. I’m fine.’
Yeah, right. Her boss might not have clocked her hands trembling before she stuffed them in her pockets, but I did. Now Marvell’s just standing there, face blank, sniffing the air and looking round the rest of the room.
On with the show. I put my case down on the floor and dig in my pocket. I pull out a couple of tiny silver pentagrams and look round for the best place to put them.
We’re in some sort of library. From behind the door, the shelves, crammed with dark, leather-bound books, run unbroken along two walls. The first hints of dawn seep in through open French windows that stretch from the high, painted ceiling – all curly clouds and pink cherubs – to the wooden floor.
‘That’s where they got in,’ says Caxton. The gaslight is reflected in splinters of scattered glass where one pane has been smashed.
Marvell stoops to peer at a silver candlestick lying on the floor. It’s ornately worked, about fifteen inches long, heavy enough to do serious damage.
‘It’s from the cathedral. One of a pair.’ Caxton sticks her specs back on and squints down at her notebook. ‘From the Lady Chapel, apparently.’
‘And who’s the stiff?’ I ask as I place the pentagrams at each end of the mantelpiece. I’m getting a faint tingle of residual magic off everything, but I’d expect that in a building this age.
‘Show some respect, will you?’ Caxton growls. ‘It’s the bishop.’
‘Sez who?’
There’s a typewriter on the desk, and an electric lamp that must have been on all night, because the battery’s nearly flat and it casts only the faintest glimmer over the piles of books and documents. I take a deep breath and stoop to examine the body. Whoever he is, he’s incredibly dead. There’s a fair amount of gore where the neck has been severed.
‘Clean job,’ I say, just managing to keep my voice steady. ‘One blow, maybe two. An axe or a cleaver – a guillotine if you had one to hand.’
‘A sword?’ says Marvell.
‘Who the hell drags a sword around with them these days?’
‘You do, Sampson.’ Caxton has taken her spectacles off and is polishing them furiously. She sticks them back on her face and screws up her eyes as she goes round the desk to peer at the book the stiff is clutching. ‘Marvell, what is this?’
But before Marvell can get there, a voice pipes up from a chair beside the ornate marble fireplace. ‘In Defence of Sorcery, by Henry Wallace, MD, Bishop of Oxford.’
Mr Memory looks strikingly like Charlie. Not really surprising: Charlie instantiated him. He’s the data elemental for the case, who gets to remember everything then spit it out later; and since Charlie has a sense of humour he’s wearing a baggy, slightly threadbare dinner suit over a crumpled white dress shirt and a black bow tie with a food stain on it. His eyes are closed. He looks tired. But then Charlie’s elementals always look tired.
Marvell looks round at me. ‘That’s that book you’ve got back at your place . . .’
‘Clever of you to remember. The termites loved it.’
‘Termites?’
I mime hands clasped in prayer and a haircut with a hole in it. ‘Obviously they’re blind as bats’ – Caxton glares at me – ‘so they had to get someone to read it to them. Turns out they loved it so much, they burned a copy and left it outside my studio, like I told you.’
‘So what’s it about?’ says Caxton.
‘Basically Wallace doesn’t understand what the Church has got against sorcerers.’
Caxton pulls a face.
‘He thinks all this stuff about rounding us up and barbecuing us for playing with demons is a distraction from the Church’s true mission, whatever that may be. In particular, he defends local boy made good, Oswald Devereaux—’
‘That’s . . . Saint Oswald?’ says Marvell.
‘One and the same.’
‘My mum’s always goin’ on about him. He was beheaded, right?’
Mr Memory starts up. ‘During the great witch panic of 1493, Saint Oswald refused to leave Oxford. He was dragged from the altar and beheaded on the cathedral green.’
Marvell gestures towards the headless corpse behind the desk. ‘Coincidence?’
Caxton tosses her a pair of silk gloves. ‘See if he’ll let go of it.’
Marvell pulls them on and turns to the corpse.
There’s something fundamentally wrong about a headless body. I saw one when I was a student at Saint Cyprian’s and I remember thinking: if I look away, by the time I turn back someone will’ve fixed it.
Careful to avoid looking at the bloody stump, Marvell takes the book in one hand and the dead fingers in the other, and pulls gently. The book moves . . . and the entire left arm with it. The chair creaks. She grabs the thumb lying on top of the book and levers it upwards. It straightens reluctantly, releasing the book. She leaves the left hand resting against the edge of the desk and leans across, still trying to ignore the disgusting mess next to her face.
‘Rigor mortis?’ I ask.
‘Some. Want a go?’
She pulls at the book again. It slips easily out of the fingers of the right hand.
‘There’s a thumbprint here, Chief.’ She’s pointing to a brown smudge on the page.
Caxton nods indifferently, probably to cover the fact that she can’t see it.
The technical name for the condition is presbyopia, by the way, but that’s a right mouthful, so everyone just calls it the Blur. What happens is, after you’re twenty your eyes start to go. You can’t read in a poor light; things in the distance are still clear, but your close vision goes all fuzzy and you get these blinding headaches. There’s nothing healers can do about it and by the time they’re twenty-five most people have gone Blurry and need thick glasses to see anything less than a couple of yards away. By the time you’re thirty, you’re in big trouble. Like I said, Caxton’s well past that, and she’d be helpless without Marvell to see things up close for her.
‘Blood on the left palm – he was stabbed there.’ Marvell raises her own hand defensively, in front of her chest, to demonstrate. ‘He couldn’t’ve been holding the book in that hand when it happened. An’ I’d be dead surprised if he picked it up afterwards . . .’
I peer over her shoulder as she pulls the dressing gown open. No Adonis, whoever he was. Broken veins. Liver spots. Black body hair turning grey across the sagging chest . . .
And Caxton may be half blind – even with her glasses on – but if she’d not let the absence of a head mislead her and taken the trouble to open the dressing gown, there’s something else she might have noticed.
‘He wasn’t killed here,’ Marvell says. ‘No blood anywhere in the room.’
Caxton nods. ‘Killed somewhere else, brought here, sat at his desk, the book stuck in his hands—’
‘Cause of death?’ I ask.
‘Are you stupid?’
‘He was stabbed first.’ I’m pointing at a black crust of dried blood over the heart. Caxton slaps my hand aside and leans in to stare, eyes screwed up, mouth open.
I’d probably feel sorry for her if she wasn’t such a total pain and if the sharp corner of her security ring hadn’t scratched the back of my hand. Like I said, I just seem to get up her nose.
‘How old was the bishop?’ Marvell asks.
‘Henry Alfred Wallace,’ says Mr Memory. ‘Born 13th August, 1958—’
‘Fifty-five then.’ Caxton cuts the elemental off as she closes over the dressing gown.
‘Anyway,’ I suggest. ‘Shall we see if it really is Wallace?’ I’ve dragged a small table out from the wall and I’ve got my case open on it. I don’t feel sick any more and this is beginning to look like it might be fun. I’m unwrapping a small brass brazier when the door opens behind me and a familiar voice whines:
‘What’s he doing here?’
Won’t you give a big Doughnut City welcome, please, to Ferdia McKittrick! He’s tall. He’s handsome – at least, Marvell is giving him a sort of glassy stare. His tonsure is so immaculately shaped that I’m convinced a personal demon flies in every day to touch it up.
There’s a lot of money in Doughnut City, which means a lot of sorcerers – maybe a dozen or so. I don’t have anything to do with them, but I know there’s one at the big Ghost factory out at Cowley and a couple more coming up with Bright Ideas around the industrial estates. The corporation has one, even if he’s rubbish, and there’s another who wanders round the hospitals, trying to prevent the healers killing too many patients.
There’s a few vanity sorcerers, working for rich bunnies. Then licensed cosmetic sorcerers, private detectives, and treasure-hunters taking money off idiots who ought to know better.
The jacks use two of us, mostly for forensic work: me and Ferdia. He’s an arsehole. He’s twenty-one . . . and he’s post-peak. Past it. Over the hill. A waste of space.
‘I told Marvell to bring Sampson,’ says Caxton. ‘I don’t want any mistakes on this one.’
‘I can manage.’ Ferdia gives Marvell the once-over as he swaggers over to the table and puts his case down beside mine. He sweeps up all the sachets of herbs I’ve laid out, and dumps them back in my case.
‘Hey!’ I squeal. It’s against Society protocol to handle another sorcerer’s gear.
Oh, the laughs we had with that one back at Saint Cyprian’s: ‘Sir, Jenkins is handling my gear again!’
Anyway, Ferdia ignores me. He sticks my brazier back inside my case, slams the lid – and jumps back as it growls at him.
I’m pissed off, but I don’t need a fight and the cat back in my studio is missing me. I’m just reaching for my case when Ferdia grabs my pentagrams from the mantelpiece.
‘Fat lot of good these’ll do you!’ He tosses them at me. I catch one, but have to chase the other across the floor.
‘And you can stick that outside while you’re about it.’ Ferdia’s pointing at a small round mirror hanging on the wall to the right of the door.
My instinct is to suggest somewhere else to stick it, but my better nature prevails. I pocket the pentagrams and park the mirror in the corridor, and I’m just stepping back into the library when the young guy with the bleached hair – the one we saw poking around in the bushes outside – wanders in through the French windows. He’s Gerry Ormerod, one of Caxton’s sergeants.
‘There’s a gate open.’ He’s got this high, squeaky voice.
‘Where?’ says Caxton.
‘Down by the river.’
Caxton turns to Marvell. ‘Do you want to check that out for me?’ She nods in my direction. ‘Take Sampson.’
‘I’ve got stuff to do.’ I grab my case and head for the door.
‘Get back here, you little creep!’
‘You’ve got the boy genius.’ I nod towards Ferdia. ‘How much magic do you need?’
‘That’s for me to decide.’
I point at Marvell. ‘Look, you send her to drag me out when I’m in the middle of something important—’
‘Such as what?’ Caxton looms over me like a building.
I prefer not to admit what I’m up to, so I stare down at the floor like I’ve seen something important there.
‘Just shut up and do what you’re told!’ Caxton jabs a forefinger the size of a bread roll into my chest and nearly knocks me over. ‘If I get any more lip from you I’ll put in a complaint to the Society – and I think you’re in enough hot water already. Am I right?’
Marvell’s standing there with her mouth open.
Another jab. ‘I said, am I right?’
I nod reluctantly. There’s stuff I could do – make Caxton’s nose bleed, bring her out in spots – but she’d know it was me. ‘Yeah, OK.’ I put my case down.
Caxton turns to Marvell. ‘So what are you waiting for?’
Marvell’s eyes flicker towards me, then to Ferdia. He gives her – well, I think it’s supposed to be his sym pathetic look, but it’s more like bad constipation.
‘Yes, Chief.’
‘And try to keep the skinny little freak out of my hair.’
‘That’s not my job.’
‘Do it anyway.’
As I step past him, through the French windows, Gerry murmurs, ‘Wish I had a fan club like yours.’
Out on the terrace, I button up my jerkin and jam on my hat.
‘Told you it was cold,’ Marvell reminds me.
As we stumble down the brick steps on to the lawn, a couple of sheep run off. The rich have elementals to keep the grass down; the merely prosperous make do with sheep. The poor don’t have lawns.
There’s a cold glow in the eastern sky. Despite rumour to the contrary, I don’t shrivel up and crumble into a tiny pile of dust at the first glimpse of the sun; but I never feel quite safe in daylight. From the other side of the lawn, I look back at the palace. The brightening sky is reflected in the French windows, the broken pane black like a missing tooth. When I glance up at the second floor, I can see a face staring down at me. Blonde hair, cropped dead short.
The face disappears after a moment. As I follow Ormerod into an alley between yew hedges, hugging myself to stay warm, there’s the sound of running feet.
This bloke is scurrying across the lawn after us. I put him in his early twenties, wearing ecclesiastical gear – nice if you like purple – and with a pair of rimless spectacles bouncing on a cord round his neck. ‘Edward Akinbiyi,’ he pants. ‘I’m Bishop Wallace’s secretary.’ A big ring glistens on his middle finger as he sticks out his hand.
I step away. ‘Not while I’m working.’
Akinbiyi pulls a face. But so what? Let him think I’m being obnoxious. In this line of work, you don’t shake hands with possible witnesses or suspects; it can mess up the magic.
‘Do you need any assistance?’
‘Nope.’ Marvell heads off after Ormerod.
‘I left the bishop downstairs in the library around ten thirty,’ Akinbiyi says as he follows her. ‘He had some personal letters to write.’
‘Did you tell DCI Caxton that?’ Marvell asks.
‘Of course.’
She catches my eye. I guess we’re both asking ourselves the same thing: if he told Caxton, why’s he telling us? And Marvell has another question:
‘Isn’t that what he hired you for? Letters and stuff.’
‘No, I just do official correspondence and administration. Bishop Wallace had perfect close vision.’
‘How come?’
‘I suppose he was one of the lucky ones.’
Luck has nothing to do with it, but I decide to keep my mouth shut. ‘How long have you been here?’ I ask.
‘Just over a year. Before that I held a curacy in Nigeria.’
I nod. ‘I wrote an essay once on egba ogwu—’
‘I’m Yoruba and I disapprove of witchcraft.’
I could explain that sorcery is different from witchcraft, but he’s too busy rabbiting on about how he found the body and called the jacks. Maybe he wants a medal.
We do another set of steps and a gravel path. The palace grounds end at a line of spiked iron railings, about six feet high and set in a low brick wall. A couple of uniformed jacks are standing around beside an open gate that leads to the towpath, overhung by trees. Beyond them I can see half a dozen red and white lights and the dark outlines of a tug and a string of barges heading downstream.
Just inside the gate, Charlie is on his knees with his arm round a figure sitting on the grass: a young guy wearing a blue anorak and trousers, his head buried in his hands, sobbing fit to die.
‘Security elemental,’ I whisper to Marvell.
They do what it says on the tin. They can work twenty-four hours, seven days a week. They can see in the dark and hear a flea fart. They don’t need to be fed or watered, although I think they appreciate a pat on the back every now and then. They never get bored and they don’t need to be paid or pensioned. You just pay a rental to the supplier, to cover instantiation and maintenance. When the job’s done, he dismisses them. Poof!
Charlie gets to his feet. ‘I can’t get any sense out of him.’
‘Any ideas?’ says Marvell.
‘Someone got in.’
‘How? I mean, if he’s a security elemental . . .’
If you really want to know about elementals, Charlie’s your man. A lot of sorcerers go into elemental work when their Gift is taken away and they can’t control full Presences any more. Basically it’s repetitive work with the occasional laugh and no personal risk.
But Charlie just shrugs hopelessly. I stroll over for a closer look. I like elementals. You give them something to do and they just get on with it, no fuss. You ask them a question and they give you a straight answer. They don’t whisper stuff behind your back or try to make you look like a fool.