Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Acknowledgements
Glossary
About the Author
Also by Donald Hounam
Copyright
RHCP DIGITAL
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RHCP Digital is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
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www.ladybird.co.uk
First published 2016
This ebook published 2016
Text copyright © Donald Hounam, 2016
Cover artwork copyright © Sean Freeman, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–448–17368–6
All correspondence to:
RHCP DIGITAL
Penguin Random House Children’s
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
For
John and Katie
Order for the detention and trial of Francis Joseph Sampson, issued on the 5th of October 2015 by the Holy Office of the Inquisition of the Society of Sorcerers.
Whereas you, Francis Joseph Sampson, aged fifteen, son of the late Joseph William Sampson, were denounced to this Holy Office for summoning without official authorisation the demon Cimerez, a marquis of Hell ruling twenty legions of spirits:
The Society being determined to proceed against the disorder and mischief thence resulting, the Board of Discipline suspended your licence to practise sorcery and sentenced you to undertake a pilgrimage to the tomb of our founder, Saint Cyprian of Antioch, in the Holy City of Rome; and, upon your return, to perform an act of sincere contrition before the assembled members of the Society.
Since you have disobeyed this injunction and have aggravated your delinquency, the Tribunal of this Holy Office has determined:
That your licence be permanently and irreversibly revoked.
That, following your arrest by the Knights of Saint Cyprian, you will be remanded to the custody of this Holy Office until your trial on charges of insubordination, disobedience and the practice of black magic.
That, if found guilty of these charges, you will be burned at the stake, your ashes cast into the River Isis, and your name stricken from the records of the Society of Sorcerers.
And so we say, pronounce, sentence, declare and ordain.
Signed:
Ignacio Gresh, Grand Inquisitor of the Society of Sorcerers
ANY SORCERER WILL tell you: once there’s a demon in the room, all bets are off.
Funnily enough, though, the demons aren’t the problem. So long as you say the right words, make the right smells and remember to duck in the right places, it’s easy enough to avoid getting mashed up.
It’s the people you’ve got to watch out for. One of the first things they taught me when I was a novice sorcerer: you can never predict or guarantee any human behaviour in the presence of a demon.
You want proof? OK, here it is: a tall, middle-aged man staring back at me from a magic circle that’s all that’s keeping him from being torn apart and dragged off to hell . . .
Three weeks ago he was the dog’s bollocks. The king of the castle. The fairy on the top of the tree. The Superior General of the English branch of the Society of Sorcerers.
My boss.
He used to be all smart dark suits, beautifully polished shoes and cashmere overcoats. Now he’s wearing a stained, crumpled linen robe, tied at the waist with a ripped silk scarf. His grey hair used to be neatly tonsured – you know, shaved into a small, round bald patch at the centre as a reminder that in the eyes of God we’re all arseholes. Now it’s long and straggly, and it’s turned white, like the ragged beard covering his face.
He used to be in charge of everything. Now he can’t even stop his own hands from shaking like twigs in a hurricane. The nails are long and black with dirt. I can see where he lost the little finger of his left hand . . .
His name’s Matthew Le Geyt. He was my Master and he taught me everything I know. He fed the missing finger to a demon, seven years ago, to save my life – maybe my soul, if I had one.
We’re underground, in the secret sorcerer’s lair that lies beneath the Bishop’s Palace in Doughnut Cityfn1. It’s like the inside of a circular church, about twenty yards across, with a domed ceiling and a sort of arcade round the perimeter.
There’s mashed-up furniture; and magical gear scattered all over the place: candlesticks, braziers, a sword, various knives, silk squares, spilled herbs and spices. The chalk lines across the black-tiled floor are all smudged, apart from a small double circle around the Boss, scattered with symbols. He’s got a single white candle burning in a silver candlestick, a paper bag containing more candles, a box of matches . . .
And even if he is the Superior General of the Society of Sorcerers, he still needs to go to the lavatory, so he’s got a metal bucket with a lid.
The place stinks. Like someone shut a herd of cows in a small barn and fed them on baked beans, cauliflower and lentils for a month. We’re talking serious farting, with a heavy note of sulphur and a bitter edge of herbs and spices.
That’s because we’ve got a demon.
His name’s Alastor. He’s this bloody great huge bastard, the best part of seven feet tall, with bright golden eyes, like a bird’s, and the traditional goat’s horns. In one hand he’s swinging a scourge with a dozen chains ending in sharp hooks. In the other he’s clutching an axe. All he’s wearing is a studded leather belt; and the only reason he’s wearing that is so he has somewhere to park an evil-looking dagger with three serrated blades.
So he’s a bloody great huge dangerous bastard, and he’d be snacking off my head if I didn’t have a silver pentacle hanging around my neck on a gold chain.
Basically, what we’ve got here is an unresolved magical event, like a juggler’s been called away and left all the balls just floating in mid-air . . .
About three weeks ago I realised that the Boss was involved in all sorts of murky stuff involving unlicensed sorcery and murder. Unfortunately, Matthew realised I’d realised. He’s way too old to do magic himself, so he got this tame sorcerer to summon up Alastor to chew me up and spit out the bits.
That pissed me off. Big time. But I turned the tables and I was seriously tempted to feed the Boss to his own demon—
But I couldn’t, could I?
The grimoires – the magic books – are very clear about this: if a demon manages to get its talons on you, it’ll turn you inside out and unravel you. Then it’ll whisk you off to hell and put you back together in a different order so all its chums can have a laugh. Why? Because demons are miserable bastards who got booted out of heaven, and the only thing that makes them feel better is if someone else is in even more pain than they are . . .
I know it doesn’t make sense. And even if it does, it’s so incredibly out of order that I’m damned if I’ll believe it.
Except that maybe I’m wrong. I’m wrong about most things, yeah? So if there’s even the tiniest chance it’s true, I couldn’t condemn Matthew to that.
Which left me with a problem: what could I do with him? Couldn’t let Alastor have him. Couldn’t risk letting him go, because he’d just trot back to the Society and see about having me stuck on the end of a fork and toasted.
So I ducked the problem and left him stuck down here in a protective circle with Alastor bouncing around outside.
It’s a mess. But hey – it’s my mess.
I’ve been down here for at least an hour, just sitting on the floor with Alastor blowing green smoke over my shoulder, wondering how the hell I sort it all out.
‘It’s obvious,’ says Matthew. ‘You have to let me go.’
‘And then what?’
‘We can work something out.’
‘Like what?’
I sit there until he says, ‘So do you have anything to suggest?’
Absolutely not. And I’ve got other stuff to worry about. I can’t think about this any more – not tonight, anyway. If I keep him here, it’s like I’ve got a fishhook through my own entrails and I’m dragging them out, inch by inch. If I let him go, the Society will do the entrail-dragging for me.
It’s hopeless and my head is starting to hurt.
‘What about Kazia?’ he says. ‘I assume you’re looking for her.’
‘No.’
He smiles. It’s not a real smile – he’s in too much pain for that. It’s the sort of smile that says, ‘You can’t fool me, sunshine. I know more about you than you know about yourself.’
And he’s right. Of course I’m looking for Kazia.
Full name: Kazimíera Siménas. Nationality: Lithuanian. Age: 16. Profession . . . well, none officially, but she summons demons in her spare time. And there’s a rumour going round that I’m in love with her.
Which reminds me . . .
I check my watch. It’s four o’clock in the morning and if I’m ever going to find her I have to see a man about a dead shark. I get to my feet.
There’s an arch at the bottom of the stone stairs that spiral up towards the real world. I stop and check the charcoal symbols scrawled down the stonework each side, to prevent Alastor from leaving.
He’s standing right behind me.
‘Are you sure I can’t take care of him for you?’ He demonstrates by dragging one of the razor-sharp blades of his knife across his own throat. I close my eyes as thick black liquid spurts out. When I open them again, of course he’s uninjured and standing there grinning down at me. ‘Just trying to help,’ he says.
In the library at the top of the stairs, I stop to reset the spell on the cellar door. It grumbles a bit and calls me a few names, but at the end of five minutes it’s securely locked and invisible to anybody who enters the room.
I could just sneak out of the palace the way I sneaked in: through the gardens and down to the path along the river. But tonight . . . I dunno, maybe I’m just in a funny mood.
I open another door and follow a long, dark corridor to the front of the palace. I manage to avoid falling over any of the furniture and waking up the household, and I find myself standing on the black-and-white chessboard tiling of the entrance hall, craning my neck to peer up into the stairwell.
That’s where I glimpsed Kazia for the very first time: hanging over the banister, two floors up, staring back down at me like she knew a twerp when she saw one.
One of the things you learn as a sorcerer is to envision things. Whatever you’re trying to achieve – find buried treasure or lost dogs, cause naked maidens to dance on the table, summon up a demon to rub somebody out – requires an intention.
I have a powerful intention: to find Kazia. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure she has an equally powerful intention of her own: not to be found.
I close the front door of the palace silently behind me. The porter at the gate is fast asleep. I trot off along the Palace Road, under the railway bridge and up the hill towards the Hole . . .
fn1 Look, I know there is a lot to take in. So I’ve stuck a glossary at the back. A bit of history, a few jokes . . .
I’VE SAID IT before, so I’ll say it again: there’s a lot I can do with a dead shark. I just didn’t expect Dinny to turn up with anything so bloody big.
‘What am I supposed to do with this?’
‘’Ow should I know?’ Dinny does his special French shrug. ‘You are the magician.’
‘Sorcerer. Magicians do card tricks.’
‘So make trick with two ’undred pound.’ Dinny doesn’t like to be reminded that he was a sorcerer himself, until his Gift vanished.
We’re in an upstairs room in the remains of one of the old university colleges, slap-bang in the middle of the Hole.
Not a hole. The Hole.
That’s why they call it Doughnut City. After the college wars, eighty-five years back, there was nothing left in the centre of Oxford except an enormous pile of rubble, still oozing magic. Nobody who mattered wanted to move back in there; but there were plenty of poor people who couldn’t afford to mind if their skin came out in boils or an arm fell off, and they drifted in, moved the wreckage around and made the best of it.
Most of the magic that did the damage had a short half-life, so these days only the occasional finger or toe still falls off. The Hole has turned the clock back to the Middle Ages: wood and tin shacks, piled on top of each other in the shells of the old buildings; open sewers; a population who don’t need magic to dismember and disembowel each other.
There’s the sound of gunfire and a lot of screaming. Nobody gets much sleep in the Hole. One day the army’ll move in and clean it all up; but tonight there’s just a small gang of us up here glaring at each other: me, my mate Charlie Burgess, Dinny Saint-Gilles and a couple of his goons.
I’m placing two small silver pentagrams on the marble mantelpiece, above a gaping cavity in the wall where the fireplace used to be. I’m not quite sure what they’re supposed to save me from. They certainly won’t protect me if the sagging ceiling decides to fall in.
Water runs steadily down the crumbling brickwork where the oak panelling has been torn out for firewood; it forms a puddle on the floor, then trickles out under the door and down the stairs. On top of the stench of rotting rubbish drifting in from the street through the broken window, there’s this stink like urine coming off the shark. It’s about four feet long and it’s lying on a sheet in the puddle, with the sawn-off tip of some sort of spear still sticking out of its side.
‘I mean, how’m I supposed to get it back to my place?’
Dinny does the shrug again.
‘But all I wanted . . .’ I hold up my hands, a couple of feet apart.
‘Sharks,’ says Dinny. ‘They do not grow on trees.’
‘And you said fifty quid, anyway.’ I don’t think we agreed a price, but that’s all I’ve got in my pocket.
Dinny lost both hands a couple of years ago. The light from the lantern glistens along two steel hooks as he waggles them under my nose. ‘Two ’undred.’
‘You’ll have to take it back.’
‘’Undred fifty.’
I decide to let that stick to the wall for a bit. I crouch beside the shark to inspect the snout. I need time to think. I’m desperate, but I haven’t got that kind of money.
‘Where’d you get it, anyway?’
‘Fell off the back of a boat,’ one of Dinny’s goons sniggers. Big bloke with a tiny round head like a billiard ball.
My money’s on a private aquarium. I’ve got the shark’s mouth open. Not a pretty sight, but most of the teeth are present and correct and in better shape than Dinny’s. For the procedure I have in mind, all I need is the barbels – the two fleshy whiskers growing from each corner of the mouth; but I’m sure I can find something useful to do with the teeth, the eyes, the heart, the liver . . .
Useful rule of thumb: no sorcerer ever turned his nose up at a dead animal.
Charlie used to be a sorcerer too. He’s sitting quietly on a broken chair, rolling a cigarette. He’s this little bloke with curly hair, bleached white. He’s post-peak and can’t do proper magic any more; but he can still handle elemental work for the jacks – the police.
He’s a good mate, because he catches my eye and pulls the corner of a banknote out of his jacket pocket. He holds up three fingers; I hope that means thirty . . .
‘OK.’ I get to my feet. ‘Here’s the deal. I pay eighty quid tonight, after you’ve helped me get it back to the monastery—’
‘Are you taking the mickey?’ Billiard Ball is so outraged that his glasses fall off. He just manages to catch them and sticks them in his pocket.
‘Then tomorrow night you come and take what’s left away, and I pay you another twenty.’ I guess I can find it somewhere. ‘That’s a hundred quid.’
‘No, no!’ Dinny waves his hooks madly. ‘I don’t take less than one ’undred thirty.’
My heart’s in my boots. I’ve got to have that shark if I’m going to find Kazia.
‘’Undred twenty.’ Dinny manages not to stab himself as he folds his arms. ‘Final offer.’
So I’m standing there, wondering whether I’ve died and gone to Another Place where I’m doomed to spend eternity haggling over a dead fish with a French psychopath with no hands—
When the door bursts open and two uniformed jacks burst into the room.
‘Freeze!’ one of them yells, waving a pistol.
Another thing I’ve said before and I’ll say again: there’s something wrong with me. And here’s the proof: I stand there like furniture while everyone else makes a bolt for it. Charlie and one of the goons vanish out of another door. Dinny pushes Billiard Ball out through the window ahead of him. The two jacks split up and go after them. There’s a crash from outside – the sound of shots—
Which leaves just me and the shark. You can tell which is which, because I’m the one who’s still blinking when a small figure, dressed in black, marches into the room.
MARVO STOPS DEAD in her tracks, staring at me. ‘I thought you’d gone,’ she whispers.
After I locked Matthew in the cellar with only a pissed-off demon for company, I realised it was only a matter of time before the Society missed him and started prodding me with sharp objects to see if I knew where he was. They’d already ordered me to make a pilgrimage to Rome, so I got myself seen climbing aboard a train and leaving town.
‘I came back.’ I do my best smile. ‘You’re looking very smart.’
Her days of dressing like a deckchair are gone. Detective Constable Magdalena Marvell is dressed all in black: coat, scarf, trousers and shoes, like she’s making some sort of statement. She was always skinny – even more of a shrimp than I am – but now she’s lost even more weight. With her hair cropped short and bleached, like all the CID wear it, she looks like a small, sad tree after a snowfall.
She’ll never make detective sergeant, by the way, because she’s a tatty. And tatties get used and discarded, not promoted.
‘I came looking for you.’ Her eyes dart around the room, taking it all in. ‘At the monastery.’
‘And?’
Her face has gone blank. ‘You weren’t there.’
Actually, I was. That train I got on? As soon as it was clear of town, I jumped off and sneaked back. I’ve spent most of the time since then hiding out in my studio, which I’ve got wrapped in a cloaking spell. It’s not just invisible: people can’t remember that it was ever there. And if they really try to think about it . . .
Well, Marvo’s clutching her head like it’s about to explode.
It’s dead clever, a cloaking spell. But to tell you the truth, the fun wears off after a while.
‘I’m here now, anyway.’ I raise one hand and make a shape with my fingers – not real magic, by the way; more like hypnotism.
A flicker of light from the stone in my ring darts across Marvo’s eyes. Her face relaxes. Her eyes drift closed . . . and I’m just stooping to pick up the shark and tiptoe out of here when there’s the sound of shots outside and her eyes flutter open.
‘What’s that?’ She’s staring at the shark.
‘My lunch.’
‘Don’t be a prat.’
‘It’s what I do best.’
‘See what I mean?’ She leans over the shark and sniffs – tatties sniff things a lot. Her face wrinkles up. ‘That’s disgusting!’
‘Ginglymostoma cirratum,’ I say. ‘The nurse shark. Fully grown it can reach a length of fourteen feet. It’s a common inshore bottom-dwelling shark, found in tropical waters—’
‘What’s it for?’
‘I’m planning a seafood risotto. What do you think it’s for?’
One of the jacks stumbles back in, mopping sweat from his forehead with a snotty handkerchief. His name’s Carter and he’s close to retirement, if he doesn’t have a heart attack first. ‘Bastards got away,’ he gasps.
‘You don’t say,’ Marvo mutters.
‘Can we get out of here?’ Jacks are scared of the Hole, especially at night.
‘What about Hasnip?’
I assume that’s the other jack. There’s a flash of light from outside, followed, a moment later, by the sound of an explosion.
Carter jumps. ‘Did you hear that?’
Marvo flaps a hand at him. ‘In a minute.’
‘What are you after Dinny for, anyway?’ I ask.
‘For Christ’s sake, Marvell!’ Carter’s at the window, staring anxiously out into the darkness. ‘It’s not safe.’
‘I said, in a minute!’ Marvo turns back to me. ‘The chief thought he might know something.’
‘He knows where to get a shark. Know something about what?’
‘We’ve got this dead kid.’
There’s the sound of running footsteps overhead. Lumps of plaster fall from the ceiling. Carter jams a pair of thick spectacles on his face. He pulls out his revolver and flips the cylinder open.
‘Stupid bleeding tatty!’ he hisses. ‘Get us all killed!’ An empty cartridge case rattles off across the floor. Carter’s eyes are rolling behind his glasses like goldfish in a bowl. He fumbles with a fresh round, moving his head backwards and forwards, struggling to focus—
It’s called the Blur. Medical name, presbyopia.
You’re fine as a kid; you can see everything sharp as a knife.
Around twenty, your eyes start to act up. You can still see stuff in the distance, but your close vision goes to hell and you get these blinding headaches. There’s nothing healers can do about it . . .
By the time they’re twenty-five most people need strong glasses to make out anything less than a room away.
Thirty: those lenses are like goldfish bowls.
The banging overhead is getting louder and Carter’s beginning to panic. He’s dropped his gun and he’s down on his hands and knees fumbling for it.
‘Here.’ Marvo steps across, picks it up and hands it to him.
‘Bloody tatty!’ He holds the gun at arm’s length, eyes screwed up. After a bit more fumbling, he jams the new round into the chamber.
I catch Marvo’s eye. She just shrugs. She doesn’t expect any thanks. Tatties don’t get thanked.
If you’re a grown-up and you’re Blurry, any kid with half a brain can find a dropped gun, thread a needle or read stuff out for you. Tatties, though . . . they’re special. They’re sharp. They can’t just see clearly, they can think – clear and fast. They’ll walk into a room and notice things that anybody else would miss. They’ll spot the connection between two shreds of information that nobody else could’ve seen.
That’s why Marvo’s giving the orders, even though she’s only sixteen.
Uniformed jacks like Carter, they can’t stand tatties.
‘This dead kid,’ I say. ‘The Crypt Boy, right?’
After three weeks locked away in my studio, all I know is what I read in a newspaper that I picked up. The police found some kid’s body stuffed into a secret chamber underneath a derelict church.
‘Nothing to do with Dinny,’ I say. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a kid.’
‘But he’d know people who would.’
I’m about to say that I don’t think so, and that maybe Marvo might like me to look at the body—
When there’s a final, deafening crash overhead, and we all look up in time to see the ceiling cave in and Hasnip come tumbling down in a cloud of shattered wood and plaster.
Like a good mate, Carter breaks his fall.
After that, nobody says anything for a bit. Marvo gets Carter on his feet, and together they pick up Hasnip. I’ve got the shark, wrapped in the sheet. I grab my pentagrams from the mantelpiece, and we’re out of the room, struggling down a shattered staircase. The shark weighs a ton, but I’m holding it over my head because there’s this horde of children hanging over the banister a floor up, yelling and screaming and chucking stuff down at us.
The kids in the Hole – they’d give most demons a run for their money. I see a brick bounce off Marvo’s shoulder, but then we’re over a pile of rubble and out of the building, dashing across the street towards a waiting police van.
The driver’s waving a gun. ‘Come on!’ He fires into the darkness.
The ruins of the old college buildings loom over us like a crumbling wedding cake. Opposite, there’s open ground with a couple of dogs rooting around in the rubbish. Street lights? You must be joking! Bonfires burning in the distance . . .
We can stand around admiring the scenery another time. Right now, the bricks are still raining down. Glass smashes on the cobbles and a trail of fire roars towards us. As I pull Marvo out of the way, another flaming bottle flies out of the darkness. Carter’s got his arm under his mate’s shoulder and his gun out, firing wildly as a mob of kids swarm out of cover and the entire street is engulfed in flames and oily smoke. The horses scream and rear up, almost throwing the driver off the box.
Out of bullets, Carter throws Hasnip into the back of the van. The shark is finally getting bored with bouncing around on my head. I can’t hold it with just one hand, but as it falls I manage to shove it in Marvo’s direction. She catches it, stumbles backwards and falls inside the van. I trip on the step and land on top of them both. I hear more breaking glass and shooting, and when I look over my shoulder the van door is on fire.
Carter lets off a couple of final rounds, then throws himself on top of the pile. We all roll around on the floor as the van takes off, trailing flames and smoke.
Yeah, you can see why the jacks steer clear of the Hole.
‘WHERE’D YOU CRAWL out of?’ The receptionist at the mortuary stares at me over his spectacles. ‘I thought you’d gone.’
‘I missed your welcoming smile.’
‘Smartarse! Anyway, I can’t let you—’
‘I’ll sign him in.’ Marvo’s been clutching her shoulder ever since we ditched Carter and Hasnip at the infirmary. I told her to let a healer look at it, but she said she wasn’t going to risk me getting away. She winces with pain as she grabs the pen and turns the logbook.
‘What happened to you?’ the receptionist asks.
‘Nothing important.’ She’s left a smear of blood across the page.
‘Stupid—’ He breaks off as he finally notices the shark. ‘What’s that?’
‘Evidence.’ Marvo turns away from the desk and just walks into me. ‘Come on.’
I used to work here, until I got fired for getting up too many people’s noses. I lead the way across the lobby and into a corridor.
‘Autopsy room’s that way,’ says Marvo.
I manage to raise the shark in my arms. ‘Can I park this first?’
There are three forensic amphitheatres in the city mortuary and I used to have the run of one of them. Just outside it is my old robing room. At least they haven’t messed with the door: I brush my fingers down the wood; it sighs like maybe it’s missed me and swings open.
I lay the shark on the floor and turn to Marvo. ‘Let’s have a look.’
‘What?’
‘Your shoulder.’
‘I’m fine.’ But she knows she isn’t. She hisses and pulls faces as she wriggles out of her coat and drops onto a stool.
One good thing about my robing room: I’ve got an electric light. It hasn’t been used since I ran off, so the battery’s fully charged, and now that Marvo’s sitting down I can see dark roots where the bleach is growing out of her hair.
It’s a CID thing, the bleach. They seem to think it makes them look special or clever or something. I never thought Marvo would fall for it, and I suspect she only did it to wind me up. Since then, maybe she’s forgotten or just couldn’t be arsed. Maybe she’s depressed. She doesn’t look very happy.
‘So.’ I open a cupboard and grab a porcelain jar. ‘Pleased to see me?’
She frowns. ‘Haven’t decided yet.’
‘Surprised, though.’
‘Not really.’ She nudges the shark with her foot. ‘Something special in mind?’
There sure is, but I don’t want her laughing at me. Not yet, anyway. I change the subject: ‘I thought you’d put in for a transfer.’
‘Changed my mind.’ And before I can ask why: ‘The dead kid – the Crypt Boy – there’s weird stuff . . .’
‘Like what?’ Her grey cotton shirt hasn’t ripped, but there’s a dark patch of blood soaking through it.
‘Sorcery or something,’ she mutters.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But every time there’s something you don’t get, you make this jump – like it’s always sorcery.’
She’s undoing her sleeve button. ‘Try not to rip it this time,’ she mutters.
Me and Marvo . . . we’ve got form, as the jacks say. Every time we meet up, she seems to manage to get herself hurt.
‘You’ll have to take it off,’ I say.
‘Nark off!’
‘Loosen the neck, then.’
She opens a couple of buttons. ‘Gimme that.’ She grabs the jar and sniffs at it.
I grab it back. ‘Has to be me.’
‘A likely story!’
I stick my fingertip in the jar, fish out a dab of goo and hope it hasn’t gone off. ‘Hold still.’ I slide my hand under her blouse.
I’m not just any sorcerer; I’m a forensic sorcerer. OK, so I got the push a while back, but when I touch human skin, I’m used to it being cold and dead.
I think I prefer it that way. Clear signals. I’m trying to pretend that Marvo’s skin isn’t soft and warm. My hand follows the line of her collarbone towards the shoulder—
‘What’s the strap?’
‘Are you stupid?’
I’m actually blushing. ‘I live in a monastery, remember?’ I’m very relieved when my fingertip encounters the sharpness of her shoulder and the sticky wetness of blood.
She hisses with pain. ‘Get on with it!’
‘In the name of Adonai the most high. In the name of Jehovah the most holy!’ I smear the salve around the place, chanting away and making shapes with my free hand.
‘Are you done?’
‘Don’t rush me. In the name of the Lord who healeth the sick.’ I pull my hand out, carefully again. ‘Once a prat,’ I say, ‘always a prat.’ And when she gives me this angry look, I specify: ‘Carter.’
‘Christ!’ She’s glaring down at the shark while she does her buttons up. ‘That thing stinks.’
Can’t argue: the pissy smell is overwhelming. ‘You’re welcome.’ I’m at the basin, washing my hands.
‘It was your fault I got hurt in the first place.’
‘But you’re all right now . . .’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ She moves the arm in a circle. Her voice softens. ‘Thanks, Frank.’ She’s on her feet, pulling her coat on.
Moment over: ‘Can we look at this kid now?’
Down a flight of stone steps and along a lamp-lit corridor that gets colder with every step, I put out my hand to open a door.
‘Hang on,’ says Marvo. Her hands are trembling as she pulls a flat, round silver case out of her pocket: her scryer. ‘Gotta call the chief.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
She turns her back on me. She’s got the scryer open and she’s tapping the inside with her fingertips.
‘Hey,’ I call after her. ‘This was your idea.’
She’s walking back the way we came. Doesn’t even look round; just flaps her hand at me and blows on the surface of the mirror inside the lid. ‘Yes, Chief,’ she says into it. ‘I’m at the mortuary.’
Whatever. The door closes behind me with a faint sigh like an old man sitting down. I shiver.
I never come down here if I can avoid it. They call it the children’s ice room, which sounds, I dunno, sort of strawberry and vanilla, you know . . .?
It’s more like a wide corridor than a room. About twenty yards long and five across, with another door at the far end. The floor is flagged stone, slippery with ice. One wall is just dark-red brick. Stretching all the way along the other side is a row of doors, dozens of them, each about three feet square. They’re made of silver, with magic symbols etched into them. Below them, through a metal grille, I can see the ice stacked up.
It’s freezing cold.
Halfway along it opens out into a sort of circle, with a desk in the middle. There’s a sour-looking middle-aged bloke huddled behind it, with a little kid on a stool beside him. They’re both wrapped up in fur coats, wearing gloves and hats, with silver amulets hanging around their necks. Their breath forms clouds in the air.
You see this combination all over the place. A grown-up because they’re supposed to know what they’re doing. A kid because the grown-up can’t actually see what they’re supposed to know how to do.
The bloke’s got his glasses off and he’s staring up at me. ‘Name?’
Like he doesn’t know.
‘Frank Sampson,’ I say. The kid pulls off one glove and writes in a big ledger.
‘Occupation?’
‘Forensic sorcerer.’ Not strictly true. Like I said, I got fired.
‘Here to see?’
‘Dunno his name. The Crypt Boy . . .?’
The kid opens another ledger and runs his finger down the page. The bloke sticks his glasses back on his nose and squints. They come off again as he gets up and comes round the desk. ‘Over here.’
His official job title is ‘diener’, which is just a fancy word for mortuary attendant. He leads me to the far end of the room and opens one of the metal doors. He puts his amulet to his lips, then grabs two handles and pulls. There’s the rumble of wheels and a steel tray slides out. The body of a child lies on it. A girl aged maybe five or six; a white silk sheet, embroidered with symbols, drawn up to her neck.
‘No!’ Back at the desk, the kid is gesturing madly. ‘Number sixty-seven.’
The diener slides the tray back and slams the door. He opens the compartment to the left. The tray is empty. He turns to the kid. ‘What are you playing at?’ He strides back to the desk and shoves him out of the way. The glasses go back on. He peers and pulls faces as he runs his finger down the ledger.
I shiver as a whisper of icy air blows through the room. I close the door on the empty compartment and open the next. A boy a couple of years older. Curly red hair. Freckles. Half his face smashed in.
The reason the mortuary has a dedicated children’s ice room is because Doughnut City’s got a lot of dead kids. Like I said, apart from tatties and sorcerers, pretty much everybody’s half blind by the time they hit twenty-five. If they’re going to hold down a job where they’ve got to make out anything closer than the other side of the street, they need a kid to do the seeing for them.
There’s a lot of people who really don’t like that. So who better to take it out on than the kids themselves?
The diener is making heavy weather of flicking through sheets of paper, his eyes rolling like a fairground ride. The little kid’s come over and he’s looking up at me, wide-eyed. He whispers, ‘Are you really a nekker?’
I’d rather he didn’t call me that. ‘Nekker’ is short for necromancer, and raising the dead to get racing tips is one of the things the Society of Sorcerers definitely draws the line at.
Think bonfires.
‘He’s in the autopsy room,’ says the diener.
‘Thank you.’ I close the door on the dead boy.
The kid tucks his hands under his armpits and whispers enviously, ‘I wish I was a nekker.’
‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ I say.
‘Better’n this.’
The diener steps up and whacks him round the head.
The kid’s got a point.
‘Skinny little freak!’ the diener mutters as the cold draught shepherds me out through the door at the other end of the ice room.
SEVERAL CORRIDORS LATER, Marvo still hasn’t caught up with me. I push open the door to the autopsy room.
It stinks of burning herbs. At the centre, half a dozen electric lights glare down on the body of a boy with a gold-embroidered, blue silk sheet pulled up to his neck. He’s lying on a silver slab: legs out straight, his arms by his sides. He’s maybe ten or eleven years old, but it’s hard to tell because his face is sunk in, like he’s been starved. Skin as white as ash. Eyes closed.
Standing over him, a tall figure we’ve all come to know and love. Ferdia McKittrick has dark, perfectly tonsured hair. He’s dressed to slice and dice, in a pale blue rubber apron over black silk overalls and exorcised latex gloves. He’s got a small table covered with a white linen cloth; and a brazier on a tripod with a haze of smoke rising from it.
He looks up at me, surprised. ‘I heard you’d left town.’
‘That’s what I heard too. Yet here I am.’
Ferdia frowns and turns to open a drawer.
There’s someone else in the room. The jacks are on the case, so of course there has to be a data elemental to remember everything. He’s standing against the wall with a sad smile on his face . . .
I call him Mr Memory. He looks like Charlie Burgess. That’s because Charlie built him – like he builds data elementals for every major investigation. Always the same: a weary-looking little man with white, curly hair, wearing a crumpled dinner suit over a white shirt and a blue, food-stained bow tie.
Ferdia’s back at the table with a small tray covered by a black silk cloth. The cold light glints on the instruments laid out on it: scalpels, shears, forceps, scissors, clamps, a saw . . .
‘Caxton know you’re back?’ he asks. That’s Marvo’s chief, the one she stopped to scry.
‘Nah. Marvell dragged me in.’ I look round. Still no sign of her. What’s she playing at?
Ferdia picks up a hazel wand and waves it over the body. ‘In the name of Adonai the most high. In the name of Jehovah the most holy.’
I hear the door open behind me; I assume it’s just Marvo rolling in at last and I say over my shoulder, ‘So did Caxton have anything useful to say?’ And when Marvo doesn’t say anything: ‘Didn’t think so.’
Still no reply. I look round and of course it’s her: Detective Chief Inspector Beryl Caxton. She’s wearing an utterly hellish shiny grey jacket over navy trousers and brown shoes. Her spectacles dangle around her neck on a frayed cord. She’s got a much better bleach job on her hair than Marvo, but it’s not a pretty sight.
She sticks a huge fist in her pocket, pulls out a silver amulet and kisses it. ‘Thought you’d gone,’ she says.
‘Join the club,’ Ferdia mutters.
‘I did,’ I say. ‘But I missed you.’
‘Smartarse!’ Caxton stuffs the amulet back in her pocket.
Ferdia tosses a pinch of herbs into the brazier. ‘Adonai, Tetragrammaton, Jehovah, Tetragrammaton.’ There’s a bit of spitting and an almost invisibly thin thread of smoke drifts up.
‘Where’ve you been, anyway?’ Caxton asks.
‘Nowhere.’
‘Your lot were round, asking for you . . .’
‘The Society? When?’
‘Couple of weeks ago. I told them I hadn’t seen you, and if they found you not to send you back to me.’
‘Did you put in for the new forcer?’
There used to be two forcers – forensic sorcerers – in Doughnut City: Ferdia and me. But I pissed Caxton off once too often, so she gave me the boot. Last thing she told me, she was writing to the Society of Sorcerers for a replacement. Someone who wouldn’t ask awkward questions about her cases.
I look around. ‘So where is he?’
‘Sorcerers don’t grow on trees.’
‘A bit like sharks, then.’
Actually I’m worried about the shark. What if one of the cleaners manages to get into my robing room and comes over peckish? I need to rescue it and get it back to my place and start chopping and purifying—
And talking of chopping and purifying, Ferdia has pulled away the blue sheet covering the body.
‘Bloody hell!’ I mutter.
The left side of the dead boy’s chest is covered with magic symbols.
It’s more than a year since I bounced out of Saint Cyprian’s Institute of Sorcery with instructions to go and be a forensic sorcerer; so it’s not like I haven’t played with quite a lot of dead bodies. But as I lean over the slab I realise that this kid’s spooking me out. He’s got this . . . it’s hard to describe, but it’s like he’s radiating some sort of frozen immobility.
I’ve got my left hand up to my face as if I’m trying to shield my eyes from the glare of the lights, but who’s kidding who? I realise that I’m scared of getting a surprise. The kid feels . . . I dunno, like some sort of trap that could spring out at me.
It takes an effort, but I manage to stop myself leaning away. ‘You didn’t tell me he was a sorcerer.’ And even as I say it, I realise I’m being stupid. The black signs right over the kid’s heart are nothing like the magical mark that every licensed sorcerer bears across his chest. I can see two concentric circles with symbols between them: planetary signs, the usual stuff. And this big, complicated symbol at the centre of the circles that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
‘Tattoo?’
But when I run my fingers over the ice-cold skin I realise it’s not a tattoo because the marks are slightly raised . . .
‘Scarification,’ says Ferdia. ‘Sharp knife, maybe a scalpel. Then they’ve rubbed herbs of some sort into the incisions to prevent healing.’
Body magic. ‘Have you told the Society?’
‘Not yet. I want to see if I can find a cause of death first.’
The boy is no more than a skeleton, as if someone got under his skin and sucked all the flesh off his bones. His hair is black, down to his shoulders. His fingernails are like talons.
‘Not often we get invited into the Hole,’ says Caxton. ‘People said there was something wrong—’
‘In the Hole?’
She shrugs. ‘Everything’s relative. There were noises from the crypt of an old church, sometimes lights. The smell of incense. At first they thought it was haunted. Finally they opened it up.’ She turns to Mr Memory. ‘Show him.’
The little man smiles and pushes himself off the wall. He raises both hands and makes a gesture like the outline of a square . . .
And I’m looking through a hole that’s been knocked through a stone wall, into a small chamber. The light seeping in from behind me reveals the dead boy, lying naked on his back, mouth gaping.
It’s like I’m really there. More of the wall crumbles in front of me, and as the dust settles and someone tosses a burning brand into the chamber, I can see symbols drawn all over the walls and ceiling in red and black chalk.
Magic.
‘What’s that wrapped around his arms and legs?’ I ask.
The vision vanishes. The electric lights throw a merciless glare down at the body on the slab. Mr Memory is holding several lengths of rose briar. When I raise the boy’s arm, I see scratches from the thorns across the skin—
‘You shouldn’t be touching him,’ Ferdia points out. Correctly, by the way.
The thing is, though, the boy’s skin may be ice cold, but it’s still firm to the touch.
‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ I ask.
Ferdia snorts. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘No signs of decomposition.’
‘He’s been on ice.’
I put my finger to his throat: no pulse. Ferdia sighs and grabs a knife and puts the blade across his mouth; after a minute, there’s no sign of misting.
‘See?’
But when I pull the boy’s eyelids back, the corneas haven’t clouded over. The pupils of his brown eyes have shrunk to pinpricks, when they should be dilated.
‘Look, I’ve no idea what’s going on,’ says Ferdia.
‘But there’s some sort of magic in the boy – is that what you’re saying?’ Caxton is pulling out her notebook. ‘And that’s what’s keeping him from decomposing . . .?’ She sticks her glasses on her nose. I watch her leaf past page after page of block-capital notes until she finds a blank sheet. ‘What do you think?’ she says.