The Copper Heart

by Sarah Painter

  The Copper Heart

  Sarah Painter

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  Text Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Painter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Siskin Press Limited

  Cover Design by Stuart Bache

  For my wonderful readers,

  thank you for taking Lydia Crow under your wing

  Also by Sarah Painter

  The Language of Spells

  The Secrets of Ghosts

  The Garden of Magic

  * * *

  In The Light of What We See

  Beneath The Water

  The Lost Girls

  * * *

  The Crow Investigations Series:

  The Night Raven

  The Silver Mark

  The Fox’s Curse

  The Pearl King

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Thank you for reading!

  Love urban fantasy?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  It was a typical spring day in central London. A dense grey sky crouched over the city and the air was damp with threatening rain. Lydia was clinging to the cold metal of a steel cylinder, her feet braced against more steel, and she was trying, very hard, not to think about the thirty floors below her. One hundred metres of empty air ending with solid tarmac.

  The Shard, London’s tallest building, was a tapering pyramid of glass panels held together by a steel cage and, according to the website Lydia had looked at, a concrete core. The metal struts were accessible on the four corners of the pyramid and the evenly spaced horizontal pieces looked invitingly like a narrow ladder. From the ground, at least. Close up, the rungs were too far apart, and the upright beam too wide to comfortably grasp. Lydia had a pouch of chalk and was wearing grippy climber’s shoes, but she still felt she could slip at any moment.

  Ignoring the trembling in her muscles, she hauled herself up another rung. The spring breeze was stronger at this height and a gust blew bits of hair into her face. She hugged the pole for a while, taking a mini-rest and spitting the strands from her mouth. Lydia had scraped her hair back into a ponytail but it evidently wasn’t enough. She should have worn a swimming cap.

  Lydia focused on the smooth metal inches from her face. She didn’t want to look up, to see how much more towering skyscraper she still had to climb. And she definitely didn’t want to look down. Just imagining the tiny people on that hard, hard ground, was enough to make her stomach flip. She was a Crow, she reminded herself. She wasn’t afraid of heights.

  Being a Crow, of course, was exactly the problem. It was the reason she was clinging to one of the most iconic buildings in London, breaking the injunction against trespassing the owners had been forced to institute to stop people from doing, well, exactly what she was attempting.

  The sun broke through the cloud at that moment, early light reflecting on the glass and shining steel and almost blinding Lydia. Clinging where she was, muscles burning and shaking, was not a tenable position. She knew this so she forced herself to start moving again. One foot up onto the next rung, then sliding her hands up the pole, wrapping them around for a better grip and then, with increasing effort, the second foot up. The fear was circling. Every time she moved upward there was a moment when her body was too far away from the building for comfort, when she had to trust muscle and grip and momentum. The test was to get as far up as possible, which required careful calculation as well as guts. If she climbed until her energy was completely gone, she wouldn’t be able to descend safely. There was no rope, no harness, no giant bouncy pillow. Nothing to stop her from breaking every bone on the unyielding ground far below.

  That was it. She was going back down. For a second, just the thought of descending made her body go liquid with relief. Lydia began reversing her movements, at first finding them even worse than climbing up. Each time she moved a foot down, it was reaching blindly for the rung below. The urge to just stop and cling to her position, both feet firmly on a metal strut, both hands gripping, was almost overwhelming, but she knew that if she gave into the urge, she would die. Her muscles, already exhausted, would quickly tire and she would fall. There was nobody coming to help, so she had to keep moving. She moved her hands, bent her legs and sent another foot downward.

  The sounds of the city began to flood back as she descended. Traffic, car horns, a pneumatic drill, and intermittent sirens. It gave her a jolt of adrenaline. The ordeal was almost over. Lydia took a deep breath and forced herself to keep moving steadily and safely. This was no time to rush. She was still twenty floors up when a voice by her ear made her jump in surprise. She adjusted her grip, making sure it was firm while looking around. The voice had said her name. Just once, but very clearly. There was nobody there. Only glass and steel and a glimpse of grey sky and other buildings, an unwelcome reminder that she was way too far off the ground. Of course there was nobody there. She was experiencing an auditory hallucination because she was exhausted. It would be something to do with the build-up of lactic acid in her muscles. Something like that. ‘Sod off,’ she said, anyway. Just in case. Living with a ghost had taught her that there were all sorts of people in the world and some of them were non-corporeal.

  ‘Lydia,’ the voice said, again. It sounded human, if that human had an extremely sore throat. And had smoked approximately three thousand cigarettes.

  Lydia wanted to close her eyes. She touched her forehead to the metal pole, increasing her grip as best she could. Her fingers were numb and she was frightened the strength in her hands was ebbing away. What would happen then? She saw, in horrible technicolour, her fingers uncurling and slipping, her body leaning away from the metal scaffolding, her arms pinwheeling uselessly in the empty air as she fell backwards and down, down, down.

  There was a crow perched on the metal frame of one of the sheets of glass, its head cocked. Lydia blinked, expecting to dispel the image, but no. It remained. Chunky body, powerful black beak, black feathers and a single, shiny black eye fixed upon her, as if waiting.

  ‘What?’ Lydia knew she sounded rude, but it was hard to modulate her tone. She was, in all likelihood, about to slip and fall to her death. ‘I could do without an audience,’ she said. ‘I’m not having the best day.’

  The crow shifted its feet and a small shiver ran along its body, ruffling its feathers.

  ‘Yes, you’re very beautiful,’ Lydia said. ‘And you can fly, you smug bastard.’

  There was something about seeing the crow which had cheered her up a little. She wasn’t alone. And
she was a Crow. A rush of energy ran through her body and she continued climbing down, her pace steadier.

  * * *

  Once she got to the last few feet, Lydia was dismayed to see that there were plenty of people on the pavement. She had started before dawn and the area around The Shard had been almost deserted. She hadn’t been that long, but already commuters and street cleaners had filled the thoroughfare. Hell Hawk. That was London for you.

  Aiden was waiting where she had left him. He had his phone in his hand and was still filming. ‘You can stop, now,’ Lydia said, holding her hand up.

  ‘Not bad,’ Aiden said.

  ‘Feel free to head on up there yourself,’ Lydia said, drily. Her limbs were like jelly and her heart was thudding. She was managing to resist the urge to drop down and kiss the ground, but only just.

  Aiden flashed a smile. He looked better these days, a bit of colour in his cheeks and a body that was young-skinny, rather than malnourished. When Lydia had taken over the Family from her uncle Charlie, she had inherited Aiden as a right-hand man. He was one of her many cousins, and only twenty years old, but he had worn the haunted expression of a much-older man. ‘Nah, you’re all right,’ he said, easily.

  ‘You get it all?’ Lydia said, falling into step with Aiden as they joined the crowds milling around the London Bridge station. ‘Because I’m not doing that again.’

  ‘Unless someone challenges you,’ Aiden said.

  ‘What?’ Lydia had thought that climbing the highest building in the city was an induction thing. Like a hazing. ‘I thought it was one and done.’

  Aiden shrugged. ‘Only if you’d reached the top. You’ve left it that someone can challenge you by climbing higher.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘No one’s going to do that,’ Aiden said. ‘It would be… Disrespectful to challenge the head of the Family.’

  ‘Damn right,’ Lydia said, smiling to show she wasn’t offended, while inside she swore. Feathers. Another tradition to worry about.

  * * *

  Back at The Fork, Lydia sat at her favourite table and waited for Angel to bring her breakfast. There were perks to usurping Charlie Crow and one of them involved a full English, gratis, and brought to her with the bare minimum of scowling. ‘What’s happening with Charlie’s house?’ Angel surprised her by asking.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you’re not moving in there, is it being sold? Seems like a waste.’

  Lydia knew that it seemed odd, ignoring a massive house in favour of her little flat above the cafe, but she had no intention of leaving Jason. He could leave the building if he hitched a ride inside her body, which was exactly as weird and uncomfortable as it sounded, but otherwise was confined to quarters. ‘What’s it to you?’

  Angel’s expression closed down and Lydia mentally kicked herself. She hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but every day since stepping into her role as the head of the Crow Family had been a barrage of questions. People looking to her for decisions and her having to pretend she knew what she was doing. Not easy when every day brought fresh horror as the full extent of Charlie’s business practices came to light. Lydia was dismantling the criminal side to the Crow Family business while, simultaneously, trying to keep the members of the family happy. Or happy enough that they didn’t mount a rebellion. It was exhausting.

  Her phone buzzed with a text from Aiden.

  Everyone is very impressed. Good job, boss.

  Lydia wondered if he learned this style of handling from dealing with Charlie. Lydia found it risible, but there was a part of her that liked it. A part that she would have to watch.

  Upstairs in her office-slash-living room, the landline rang. ‘Hi Mum, everything okay?’

  ‘Everything is perfect. Your dad sends his love.’

  In the few weeks after Mr Smith had used his healing mojo to restore her father’s mental capacities and stop the series of small strokes which were eroding him further, Lydia had spoken to him on the phone regularly. It had seemed, in the past, that her presence made Henry Crow worse and she didn’t know whether Mr Smith’s cure would extend to keeping him well or whether she still needed to stay away. There was only one way to test it, and she didn’t want to risk making him ill again. Her parents agreed, without them ever needing to have a frank discussion on the subject. They had been on a six-week cruise, returning the week before and Lydia guessed things would return to normal with Lydia mainly speaking to her mum and visiting rarely.

  ‘He’s sorry to miss you, now,’ her mum was saying. ‘He’s just catching up after our trip.’

  ‘Snooker?’

  ‘Table tennis,’ her mum replied and Lydia could hear the smile in her voice. ‘He played on the ship and now he’s talking about joining the local league. He used to play with Charlie, back when they were kids, I think. But, yes, the telly’s been on twelve hours a day while he catches up on everything he missed.’

  Lydia winced at the mention of her Uncle Charlie. She tried to imagine him wielding a ping pong bat and failed. Lydia hadn’t told her parents that she had traded Charlie’s freedom for a mystical cure of her dad’s illness. She told them, instead, that he was out of control and had tried to kill her. Both true, but she still hadn’t done it lightly and she felt sick when she thought of Charlie incarcerated in a secret government facility. Then she remembered that he was the man who had murdered Jason and she stopped feeling bad.

  * * *

  Lydia let herself into Charlie’s house. He had been very careful and there hadn’t been much in the way of incriminating evidence to clear from his study, but in visiting the house to look it over, Lydia had started a habit that she wasn’t ready to break. She checked in on the place every few days and viewed the video from the security cameras, which were set to record only when triggered by movement. This meant scrolling through carrier bags blown in the wind and post deliveries. Luckily, the local canvassers were well-trained to avoid the house and Lydia didn’t have to watch random charity-collectors ringing the doorbell. She also got confirmation that her Crow power was stronger than it used to be. She ought to be caught on the video approaching and leaving the front door, but the footage went fuzzy with white snow. She had known that Charlie had that effect on video recording, whether consciously or as a side effect of being a powerful pure blood Crow, and now it seemed Lydia did, too. Occasionally, Lydia’s surveillance would be rewarded in other ways. An old contact of Charlie’s would appear, a baseball cap pulled down low in automatic-camera-avoidance. Sometimes they shoved cryptic notes through the letterbox. ‘Call K’. ‘H sends regards.’ Stuff like that, usually scrawled on the outside of a piece of junk mail. Today, there was a neatly-folded note on the polished wooden floor. Lydia pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and picked it up.

  It’s later than you think.

  With the note safely sealed in a plastic bag, labelled with the time, date, and location, Lydia moved through the rest of the house. She checked the doors and windows for signs of forced entry, just in case the cameras had glitched, then, when she was satisfied that nothing was out of place, she went up to the training room.

  It ought to be a place of bad memories. She had hated being forced to train by Charlie and had spent the entire time trying to keep her power in check, to moderate how much of it she allowed Charlie to see. She knew that he had pushed her cousin, Maddie, beyond breaking point, causing the mental instability and psychotic rage Lydia had experienced first-hand. Lydia had tried to keep herself safe, holding the warnings she had grown up with firmly in her mind. She had no wish to be used as a tool or weapon by Charlie Crow. Not to mention the time he had attacked her, trying to provoke a bigger, stronger reaction. Well, he’d got what he’d wanted. Lydia had discovered that she wasn’t the weak link she had always believed. And she also wasn’t just a battery, powering up those around her. In that moment of terror, maybe as a result of all the training that Charlie had forced, she had discovered a new facility. She had accessed a w
ell of power that seemed both within and without herself. She had reached out and found a thousand wings beating, a thousand hearts beating, every single one giving her strength.

  It had been almost three months since Charlie had been taken by Mr Smith and his government department. Spring sunshine poured through the tall windows, reflecting off the wall of mirrors and turning the sprung wooden flooring yellow-gold. Lydia stood in the middle of the room and closed her eyes. Her coin was in her hand and she extended her arm, placing the coin in mid-air. In her mind’s eye she saw it suspended there and then made it spin, first clockwise and then counter clockwise, before adding coins, one by one, and holding them in different points around the room. Making them spin in unison, or randomly. It was a warm-up or a meditation, this routine, and Lydia found it calming. The sun was welcoming on her upturned face and she felt her power humming both within her and in that liminal space beyond. The place where wings spread in the high blue sky.

  Her phone was ringing. Lydia opened her eyes, wondering how long it had been before she had noticed. For one second the room was still full of gently turning coins, and in the next second, they were gone.

  Her phone was on top of her hoodie and she felt something as she bent to pick it up. A wash of dark feeling. A premonition.

  ‘Sorry,’ Fleet’s voice sounded strained. ‘I know you’re training.’