The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  The raven made a deep, rubbery crech sound. She sounded satisfied.

  ‘Alan has a panic room,’ Taryn said. ‘Whoever comes needn’t see us.’ Jacob thought she was nudging the flow of talk towards solutions and away from the matter of her stalker.

  The raven puffed up her feathers. ‘I will ask my sister to find this Hemms and hamper her progress. Hugin will locate her easily if, like Jacob, she has a blood halo.’

  ‘Two,’ said Jacob, jabbing the air, ‘there’s a talking bird in the house. A talkative talking bird.’ He was too alarmed to ask about his blood halo, but suspected it might have to do with him once having to shoot an armed criminal, who then died of his wounds.

  Shift went to the sliding door and opened it for Munin. ‘Go and instruct your sister.’

  Munin came to life, shook herself and hopped across the room, pausing beside Taryn to cock her head and say one word. ‘Sisters.’ Then she flew out the open door and into the bright east. They watched her recede. All except Shift, who stood at the door letting in the cold air, his eyes on them and a smile on his face.

  Munin’s black shape stopped diminishing and seemed to set against the sky, as if the world out there had become two dimensional.

  Then the raven’s wings flapped again and—without having turned—she was flying back towards them.

  She flew in the door and caught herself on the back of the pristine white sofa, her talons puncturing the leather. ‘Done,’ she croaked. ‘Nothing extravagant. And I had to tell her everything. So now he’ll know.’

  Jacob’s ears were ringing; he heard ‘now’, but ignored the raven’s ‘he’. Jacob had just seen a demonstration of ‘now’. The raven flew away, across the world, had a long and involved conversation with her sister, then returned, all in an instant. Which is of course how it must work if, according to legend, Hugin and Munin flew around Midgard every day collecting news for Odin.

  Odin. Jacob arrived by accident at the ‘he’ he’d been trying to avoid.

  Taryn threw up her hands and said to Munin, ‘You can go hide in the panic room when the surgeon turns up.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the raven in a tone of curious expectation, ‘I don’t remember ever having panicked.’

  ‘Panic rooms don’t make you panic.’ Jacob wasn’t afraid of offending Munin, who didn’t seem particularly dangerous, or dignified, or godly. Rather she was observant, no-nonsense, and sympathetically female. If he waved his arms and yelled ‘Shoo!’ at her—as he felt moved to do—she’d just give him a look.

  Taryn announced she was hungry and went off to the kitchen.

  Jacob, exasperated, told the others he had questions for Taryn and limited time in which to ask them, since Hemms would expect him to leave with her. ‘Even if the other raven delays her.’

  ‘Let us follow Taryn to the kitchen,’ Munin said. ‘I wonder if she has any macadamia nuts.’

  In the kitchen Munin alighted in the largest of the three sinks, where she was immediately an impediment to Taryn’s food preparation.

  Jacob put his first question. ‘Why do you suppose the demon inside your grandfather’s secretary was talking about the Torah?’

  ‘A Torah,’ she said. She waved a bunch of spring onions at Munin. ‘I want to wash these.’

  Munin scrabbled her way out of the stainless steel pit and clicked across the marble countertop to the giant fruit bowl. She found walnuts and proceeded to split and eviscerate them. That sound, and running water, were driving Jacob wild. He wanted to shout at everyone to stop doing things and give him a situation update like competent people who know how to behave during a crisis. ‘Torah, Taryn,’ he said, insistent.

  ‘I think the demon was being metaphorical. In its excitement it was quoting for effect.’ She asked Jacob if he could please make more coffee. She fished around in the drawers under the kitchen island, produced a salad spinner, placed the wet spring onions in its basket, put on the lid and pulled the cord. The spinner whirred. Jacob clenched his teeth so hard his ears whined. Then he turned to the Nespresso machine and the antique apothecary drawers full of its bullets. There were more than a dozen available flavours.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jacob. It’s difficult to explain,’ Taryn said. ‘My memory of the fire comes and goes, as if it’s a matter of no interest. It’s a memory of a time Bea was in danger, and I guess once she died that recollection became a kind of forerunner of her murder and too painful to contemplate.’ She paused and said, ‘I never talk about this.’

  The Nespresso made hatching-dragon sounds.

  ‘On one occasion I did think about the fire, I googled what I recalled of Battle’s words. It turned out he was quoting Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who was a mystic and a writer of wonder tales. Nachman was riffing on his great-grandfather, the Hasidic teacher Ba’al Shem Tov. Anyway, Nachman, at the end of his life, told his secretary to burn his writings. He thought people would die if they weren’t burned. As if his papers were the makings of a cursed book.’

  As she told this story Taryn was crushing cloves of garlic with the flat of a knife, skinning and chopping them. Jacob filled two coffee cups. He kept one himself and handed the other to Taryn. Shift was watching Taryn closely. It turned out he was considering food, and his difficulties with it. He said, ‘Remember what I can’t eat.’

  Jacob had a strange thought. Maybe Shift’s reminders served another purpose. Maybe it wasn’t about what he was unable to eat, but ideas people had about his allergies. His constraints.

  Taryn was telling Shift what she planned to do. She’d sauté a red onion and grill some zucchini and halloumi. She hoped that would suit him.

  Jacob made a mental note to continue to pay close attention to all Shift’s protestations. He knocked back his tiny espresso and said to Taryn, ‘Do you think we should consult works of Hebrew scholarship?’ That would be a job for her, not him.

  ‘The demon inside Battle wasn’t recommending reading. I don’t think it had its own words for its delight.’ Taryn produced a packet of prosciutto from the capacious refrigerator. She peeled off a strip and offered it to Munin, who took it, threw her head back and gulped. The ribbon of cured flesh flopped and whirled until the raven had swallowed it down.

  Taryn offered the prosciutto to Jacob. As soon as the meat touched his tongue, his mouth flooded with saliva. He temporarily could not speak. He’d forgotten he was hungry.

  Munin said, ‘Did Battle’s demon say “The new Torah will issue from me” because it was a special demon?’

  ‘None of them is special,’ Shift said. ‘They are legion.’

  Jacob swallowed. ‘It thought it had captured the flag. It was crowing.’ Then, ‘No offence,’ to Munin.

  Shift said, ‘The demon set fire to James Northover’s library because it believed it held the box. Hell is chasing this object to destroy it. Because destroying it will bring something to pass. Some change in conditions desirable to Hell.’

  ‘Well, that’s a theory,’ Jacob said. He thought Shift’s take on the situation had firmed up far too early in the investigation.

  Taryn turned on the flame under the grill and began slicing zucchini.

  Jacob was becoming very interested in what she was doing—and the result—an appetising salad. He liked watching the process itself, how graceful and competent her movements were, her fingertips reddened by cold tap water, and shiny with oil—she had dressed then tossed some lettuce with her hands. Jacob could smell preserved meat, and the hot iron grill, and oil and garlic and lemon. The aroma was the most solid and real thing since the halo of squirrel fur. But inclusive, convivial, soothing—rather than lonely.

  ‘But—’ the raven said. The rest of her sentence was incomprehensible, as if she were just a bird, making bird noises.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ Shift said, then pulled a face, backed off into the corner and told Taryn he couldn’t eat any vegetables she’d braised on that.

  Taryn glanced at the grill, looked helpless for a moment, then went to
the fridge to find more vegetables.

  ‘A good question which we could judge for ourselves if it were put in a language we share,’ Jacob muttered.

  Shift looked at Jacob and spoke again. His expression was that of a person repeating another person’s words. He stopped speaking and waited for a reaction.

  ‘Would anyone drink wine if I opened a bottle?’ Taryn asked. ‘I was thinking a Sangiovese.’

  Shift sounded frustrated, ‘What Munin asked was—’ He concluded his sentence in a string of nonsense. It wasn’t even the same phrases he had used before, but another phonetically divergent language—equally incomprehensible.

  Jacob was tired of Shift’s opacity. ‘Stop it,’ he ordered.

  ‘Yes,’ the raven agreed. ‘Best to.’

  Shift regarded Jacob. His eyes grew dark. He flushed, only under his jaw at first, then the blush flashed across his lips as if it were a grass fire leaping from patch to patch. That Shift was offended and suppressing his anger was even more irritating.

  Taryn had opened an airlock-like hatch in the corner of the kitchen and was now shoulders-deep in the floor, descending a tight spiral staircase into a wine cellar. She reappeared a moment later with a bottle, opened it, apologised for not leaving the wine to breathe, and poured a glass for everyone except the raven. Then she continued topping and tailing the green beans she’d found. She put them in the microwave and pressed buttons. The microwave’s hum added itself to the sound of sizzling slices of zucchini.

  Shift broke eye contact with Jacob and edged around the bench. He reached Munin and gathered her into his arms. Munin was surprised, and for a few moments there were talons and wings springing out around Shift like a splash of ink. Then Munin collected herself and settled in Shift’s arms. ‘I’m not one of your hens,’ she reminded him.

  Shift cuddled her as if she were. ‘It’s not a glamour,’ he said.

  ‘You can do better than that.’

  ‘The box isn’t even present, and it does this. It must be an enchantment.’

  Munin said, ‘I’m not sure we’d know if the box was present. That’s how strong the spell is. Except it’s more than a spell, it’s a covenant.’

  Shift said, ‘How often have you encountered something like that?’

  ‘In this world? A dozen times maybe. You’re a thing like that. One covenant built upon another.’

  Taryn used tongs to lift grilled vegetables onto the plated lettuce. She drained the beans and cooled them with running water. She put them in a separate plate, laid grilled halloumi on the zucchini, shaved parmesan on Shift’s beans, and spooned dressing over everything. She pushed the beans towards Shift and the grilled vegetables towards Jacob, and kept a plate herself. She clearly wanted to make them eat standing at the bench. There was a lot of sense in that, Jacob thought, since anyone who arrived would do so from the road, not the shore. The kitchen overlooked a windbreak and had a staircase mounting to a gallery off which Jacob supposed there were bedrooms. Of course Taryn knew the house.

  Jacob realised he was plotting avenues of escape, and was watching Taryn do the same. But neither of them was thinking straight. And when Taryn spoke up again to say, ‘They’re talking about the box,’ she sounded too calm, as if Shift and the raven’s strange exchange had been all politeness, and her acknowledgement of it just civilised conversation.

  Munin said, ‘The box, which we will from now on dignify by calling “the Firestarter”. The Firestarter has a kind of spell on it. You humans can consider it in some ways, but not others. You aren’t able to formulate the obvious question about it, or even hear that question put to you. The Firestarter has been hidden here—Midgard—because the spell ensures you humans keep it hidden.’

  ‘What is the obvious question?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘You won’t hear me if I ask it.’

  Taryn said, ‘Can the demons ask?’

  ‘Demons, sidhe and the godly could get together and have a lively discussion about the Firestarter, covering all its known particulars,’ Munin said.

  ‘Not that they would.’ Shift was whispering.

  Jacob pointed his fork at Shift and asked the raven, ‘Which is he? I need clarification because I think he’s not playing straight about his allergies.’

  ‘Sidhe,’ Shift said. ‘And human. The allergies to iron and grain and red meat apply, but not as strongly as they would to any full blood.’

  ‘But you’re immune to this supposed spell?’

  ‘I am.’

  The raven jabbed Shift’s hands a few times to persuade him to put her down. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she said, and Jacob decided she didn’t mean she wished he wouldn’t hold her.

  ‘The Firestarter seems to frighten him.’ Jacob’s thoughts were coming back into focus now that he’d been given permission to steer them away from the maelstrom of the spell.

  ‘It makes me sad,’ Shift said. ‘Magic is horrible.’

  ‘No more than money,’ Munin said. ‘Money is truly horrible.’ Then, sounding like someone’s mother, ‘Shift, eat the meal Taryn has made for you.’

  Jacob grabbed Shift’s plate and moved it out of his reach. ‘I’m sure there’ll be anaesthetic involved in the operation you’re about to have. So—nil by mouth.’

  The food, gastronomically exquisite though nutritionally sparse, seemed to restore everyone who ate. Even Munin had more, chasing several whey-slick bocconcini around the countertop before swallowing them whole. When she’d finished she announced she was leaving. She took a short rocking walk to the end of the bench, flexed her wings, aimed at the door—then furled them again. ‘Shift. You must continue to try to corner a demon and persuade it to speak to you.’

  ‘I’m only pausing here to have the iron removed.’

  ‘Very well,’ the raven said. She flew out of the kitchen. They heard the noise of the latch as the door opened itself to let her out.

  ‘We should try to rest,’ Taryn said.

  ‘Upstairs, out of sight,’ Jacob said. ‘I’ll stay downstairs and watch for Hemms.’

  ‘She won’t come,’ Shift said, and they both ignored him.

  ‘Will I have to speak to her when she arrives?’ Taryn asked.

  ‘Yes. But feel free to be obstructive.’

  Jacob woke up when Alan Palfreyman’s security contractor, Stuart, arrived with the doctor. They came in wheeling a portable X-ray machine on a sturdy handcart. Jacob got up to greet them. Taryn didn’t reappear.

  Jacob woke Shift, and between them they helped the doctor get everything set up. While that was going on Stuart looked in on Taryn and had a talk to her, checking for his employer on her welfare.

  Jacob stayed in the room throughout Shift’s procedure. Then he gave Stuart and the doctor coffee. Stuart said, ‘Since Ms Cornick is without her own car I’ll leave her my Land Rover and ride back to London with the doctor. Mr Palfreyman would want that. And I’ve left a new phone in the glovebox.’

  Stuart and the doctor departed in the late afternoon. Jacob lay down on a sofa and fell asleep again.

  Jacob’s watch told him four hours had passed. Hemms had failed to turn up. The raven had talked about arranging a delay, not a deterrence, but Jacob was filled with a sick sense of worry.

  Hemms’ phone rang nine times before she answered. She said she was in Norwich Hospital waiting to see an orthopaedic surgeon. ‘I don’t think I’m going anywhere tonight.’

  Her story was this. She was on her way at a good clip, and had slowed at the intersection of A47 and Dunham Road when a large rock came through the windscreen. She tried to brake with her kneecap knocked out of place, and couldn’t do it. Her car swerved into a ditch and her head bashed the door post hard enough to give her concussion. The car was wedged against a stone wall. Hemms hauled herself out the passenger’s door. It was then she realised her leg wasn’t operating properly. ‘So I called an ambulance.’

  ‘Where did the rock come from?’ Jacob tried to put his question naturally. But what was nat
ural? His history of regular dissembling hadn’t equipped him to fake innocence on matters Hemms wouldn’t believe anyway.

  ‘Perhaps some idiot was playing with a catapult in a nearby field. How am I supposed to know? The Norwich police are investigating. If it turns out it was a space rock I’m shouting everyone in our section lottery tickets.’ Hemms then got back on the case. ‘How is Ms Cornick?’

  ‘Sleeping. With a dose of antibiotics in her. I can’t in all decency badger her until she is rested and the drugs kick in. She was feverish and wasn’t making much sense. She ordered me out of the house—but I stayed.’

  ‘All right.’ Hemms was swallowing his story. Some or all of it.

  ‘I’ll come,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Do,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll leave a note and hit the road.’

  ‘I’ll see you soon. And Jacob?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t let me down.’

  The only remaining medical equipment was a suspended bag of saline. Shift was on his back, bandaged, bare to the waist, with large expanses of his exposed flesh varnished with Betadine.

  Jacob sat on the side of the bed. He tapped the back of Shift’s hand, careful not to come into contact with the Gatemaker’s glove, which was now fastened to Shift’s wrist by both its pin clip and leather bindings.

  Shift opened his eyes. He momentarily leaped into focus, as he never quite had before. It was as if their skin contact helped Jacob see him better—the dark-skinned young man with a raptor’s nose and beautiful hazel eyes.

  ‘I have to take off,’ Jacob said. ‘But I’m concerned for Taryn. She still seems determined to fulfil her professional obligations. To carry on as if she’s not in danger. What can we do about that?’

  ‘I’ll stay with her. I too would like to have a look at the papers she tells me her New Zealand grandmother has. Papers about the dispersal of James Northover’s library.’

  ‘Are you well enough to travel?’

  ‘The doctor told me that several pellets remain lodged behind my ribs, in positions too complicated for him to extract without a hospital and ultrasound.’