‘What am I going to do?’ Lily said. ‘So much is happening...’
Emma lit a cigarette, exhaled. ‘My dear, we have to work together. Basically, the situation is this. The Murkasters, being Grigori, gave certain benefits to the people of Little Moor. One of these things was an extended life span. But when they left, the benefits went with them. The flame beneath the High Place has the power to rejuvenate but once the Grigori dampened it, none of us knew how to activate it again. The Murkasters were very selfish to leave in the way they did! But now, another Grigori has come. The man you know as Peverel Othman. What he’s doing here, I’m not entirely sure, but we have to use the situation to help ourselves. He seeks to control us, but we must equally control him. If he leaves us, I shall lose everything I’ve regained.’
Lily felt very sleepy now. It was difficult to concentrate on Emma’s words. ‘Did you know Othman was coming here? Is that why you returned to Little Moor?’
Emma laughed. ‘Allow me to let you in on a little secret, Lily. I never left the village!’
Lily frowned. ‘But I’ve never met you before. Where were you hiding? Why were you hiding?’
‘You’ve met me a thousand times. And I wasn’t hiding. Well, let’s put it this way. I was hidden, but it was beyond my control. My body betrayed me, and I was trapped within it. You knew me as Emilia Manden, Eva’s mother.’
Lily put one hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. ‘No! I don’t believe it.’
‘You must,’ Emma said. She did not seem mad, yet her claim was outrageous. ‘I realise this must sound very unlikely to you, but it is the truth. That is the power of the Grigori. I smelled Othman out as soon as he got here, and I forced him to give me back what was mine.’ She indicated her svelte body. ‘This.’
‘How did he do that?’
Emma laughed. ‘Oh come, Lily dear, how do they do anything? It’s all sex, the great source of power, the fount of magic.’
Lily was faced with the image of Othman making love to Emma, then realised he must have actually made love to Emilia. The thought was disgusting. She was so old! ‘Did he really do that?’
‘Oh yes. Believe it, dear. He will have his way with many people in Little Moor. You mustn’t make the mistake of getting possessive about him. That path leads only to the town of hurt. The Grigori use us, but we must also use them.’
‘How do they use us? Just for sex?’
Emma shook her head. ‘That’s only part of it. They like experimenting, and we make good subjects for their experiments. They claim to have helped evolve the human race, and who knows, it might be true. They told me they want only to help us become more like them. Of course, this might be a lie. They might just be evil, cold-hearted and curious, eager to twist and deform our bodies and our minds for their own pleasure and entertainment.’
‘That’s horrible!’
‘Well, I could make your hair curl with stories about Long Eden when I was a girl!’ She flicked ash on the carpet. ‘Anyway, one of their pet projects was creating hybrids. They’ve always done it. You and Owen are the product of such an experiment. Othman knows that. If I were him, I’d want to reclaim Long Eden, get inside the house. Perhaps he will continue the experiments. Who can tell? We must make him want to stay, Lily. At least until you and Owen can claim the power that is yours.’
‘You think we could make old people young?’
Emma laughed again, patted Lily’s hand. ‘That remains to be seen. I don’t know how much the Grigori traits lie within you. Othman will bring them out if they’re there. He’s already started, hasn’t he?’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Saturday 24th October: Abyss Recording Studios, Vienna
Taziel Levantine lay asleep at one o’clock in the afternoon. It was a grey anvil of a day; nothing worth getting up for. Taziel’s clothes lay strewn around the floor of the darkened room, limp ghosts of his long body fashioned in fabric. He was dreaming. The dreams were not of his work, bled from the near dry well of his creativity, nor of the last person he had spoken to, on the phone, before falling asleep — his woman. He dreamed of the simurgh, a bird-creature evoked from the myths of his race, which flapped carrion-scented feathers, wet with death, in his face and screamed incomprehensible prophecies. Behind the fierce claws, smoke billowed and curled. Through it, Taziel’s sleeping mind could see the image of a man, hanging upside down, twisting in the hot wind. It was a familiar haunting. Taziel twitched and grimaced in his sleep, but there was no-one there to see or comfort him. He had locked the guest room door against everyone: concerned friends, anxious engineers, disgruntled fellow musicians who saw the second hand on the clock marking off money and more money. Taziel did not want to work; it seemed a travesty. He knew he was being humoured, dragged out of the rigid pit of isolation he had clawed for himself in the remnants of his existence. His wounds were healed; he had no excuses for licking them in private. They were only scars now.
Three years ago, a man had come into his life and systematically destroyed it: Peverel Othman. He had brought with him the promise of magics unimaginable, but there had been a cost. After a sleek seduction, Othman had taken over the management of Taziel’s band, all of whom were Grigori. As Taziel’s work had soared to new levels of creativity, and the band’s fortunes waxed strong, Othman had dabbled in the politics of the music business. He had engineered a rivalry between Taziel’s band and another — for publicity, Othman claimed — but the mounting tide of jealousy and deceit had ended in tragedy. Taziel had hit out in fury, and there’d been a casualty of his rage. Taziel had escaped imprisonment only because of Grigori connections. He felt little remorse now for the crippling injury he had inflicted against the front-man of the rival band, but his heart was still broken by Othman’s betrayal. When the storm broke, Othman had fled and Taziel had not seen him since. Sick with despair, Taziel had hidden himself away and some kind of fluke of fate had kept the healing presence of Adele beside him. He had vowed never to work again, but his music made money, and others were not content to let him vanish without trace.
‘Come back,’ they had wheedled, ‘Write music again, record, be happy. See light.’
In the end, it had been easier to comply; their therapies were harder to bear than work. Also, his record company, Grigori owned, owned him. They had used all manner of threats to smoke him out; he still feared prison, being incarcerated with the lowest aspects of humanity. A huge marketing machine stood ticking over, waiting to rev up, churn out hypocrisies. The company people expected Taziel to exorcise the demons of his fall and supposed resurrection in the music, and relished the lucrative thought of his fans being able to analyse his tortured soul via his lyrics. But no faces burned in Taziel’s memory, and his heart was a blank slate. Adele, his woman, kept him calm; she had stayed by him during the flaying times, while others had fled. He knew that some of her friends considered her a saint, others a mad woman. It did not matter what they thought. He never abused her. They existed in a bubble of excision; everything painful she cut out of his reality before it might reach him.
Adele could not control his dreams.
‘Angra Mainyu!’ spat the simurgh, and Taziel turned over in the bed, his limbs bound in tangled sheets. The bird engulfed him in its thundering wings, thrust its beak against his head as if to break open the skull, implant a thought there. The Hanged One is waiting for you! He is hungry for you, Taziel! Then came wakefulness, and the insistent knocking was not against his own skull, but in the world of the flesh. He heard the door handle rattling, the sound of his name being called, ‘Taz! Taz!’
‘All right.’ Disoriented, Taziel sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments, watching the world sway around him. He felt as if he was drawing something back into himself, something which had been roaming.
‘Taz, it’s the phone!’
He pulled on a long, black T-shirt and went to open the door. Outside, his closest friend and guitarist, Rafe, took a step backwards, as if he hadn’t expected the door to o
pen at all.
‘Who’s on the phone?’ Taziel asked. He had deliberately avoided looking in the mirror on the way out, but guessed from the reflection in Rafe’s expression he did not look particularly lovely. He was unshaven and, because Grigori were not particularly hairy, the patchy growth looked almost mangy. His long, fair hair was a mat of tangles.
‘Enniel Prussoe.’ Rafe shook his head. ‘Are you OK?’
Taziel nodded dismissively, repeating the name of the caller a few times, then, ‘What does he want?’
‘Wouldn’t say.’
There were no phones in the guest rooms at the studio. They were designed to be places of rest and nothing more; business should not cross their thresholds. Taziel slouched his way to an empty meeting room on the next floor. Rafe hovered in the doorway as Taziel seated himself in an executive swivel chair at the head of an enormous table laid with neat notepads instead of placemats. The overcast afternoon light was softened by marbled paper blinds which occluded the floor to ceiling windows. Rafe watched as Taziel picked up the phone and the call was put through to him. After only a few seconds, Taziel swung his chair around, so that Rafe could not see his face. But Rafe heard him say ‘No!’ several times. The small word echoed in the immense silence of the room. Each ‘no’ was delivered in a different tone: first wonderment, even pleasant surprise, then fear, then adamant refusal. Rafe shifted his position uneasily. He thought Taziel Levantine was fragile and yearned to intervene.
Taziel put down the phone, but did not turn to face the door. He said, ‘They’re making me go to England.’
Rafe took these words as an invitation into the room. ‘Why? The album’s not finished yet.’
Taziel turned round then. His face looked stricken. Rafe had not seen that expression for some time, and had hoped never to see it again. ‘What’s happened?’ He was thinking of a lawsuit, some unexpected legal revenant. Sometimes, money was not enough to satisfy the wounded, the victims. It was possible someone, somewhere had reanimated the scandal.
Taziel shook his head to signify he could not explain, then made an effort to appear normal. It nearly succeeded and would probably have convinced anyone other than Rafe, or Adele. ‘You’ll have to carry on without me as best you can. Prussoe tells me I shouldn’t be away long.’
‘I can come with you.’
‘No. Not necessary. It’s family business, that’s all.’ Taziel stood up. ‘I’d better throw some things into a bag. Call Adele for me, will you?’
‘What do I tell her?’
Taziel flashed a feral smile at his friend. ‘Invent something.’
‘It’s nothing to do with...?’ Rafe let the question hang, afraid of invoking bitter ghosts.
Taziel drew in his breath. ‘It was never over, Rafe. And it has to be.’
Rafe watched him walk back up the corridor towards the stairs. The faint suggestion of a spring in Taziel’s step made Rafe very much afraid.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sunday 25th October: High Crag House, Cornwall
Aninka was told that the car would come to pick her up at seven-thirty. She spent the day mooching around the house, avoiding relatives, trying to recapture childhood memories in some rooms, trying to shun them in others. Out in the real world, among ordinary people, it was easy to forget who and what she really was. Here, she could be nothing but Grigori. It seemed unfair she had to have this heritage thrust upon her.
During the day, she rang Noah, but could only reach his answering machine. She felt abandoned, chastised. What was Peverel Othman doing now? Where was he? Such questions were like hooks in her heart. She didn’t want him to be Anakim, evil. She wanted him back.
Walking through a misty rain in the afternoon, lost in the tangled realms of the garden, she considered that it could have been an accident that people had died in Cresterfield. Enniel had told her that the herbal mixture Othman had given to Wendy and the others had undoubtedly contributed to their deaths. No trace of poison had been found in the bodies, however. Aninka now knew that Othman had invoked a demon which had taken their souls, but Enniel had suggested that if the Marks’ and their friends had not taken the haoma, they might have been able to resist the demon’s power long enough to flee the garage and escape it. Cause of death had been given, officially, as heart failure brought on by group hysteria. Had Othman wanted to kill Aninka as well? She couldn’t bear the thought of that, not when she had the memory of his warmth and his beauty to lay alongside it. But then, she argued, Othman had eaten the haoma-laced meal too. Of course, Grigori had more robust constitutions than humans. Perhaps she was immune to its will-weakening effects, and Othman had known that. Yes, that must be the explanation. She wondered whether he’d tried to contact her at home since she’d left the flat. Was he aghast at what he’d done, terrified of the consequences? No. His history suggested he knew what he’d been doing. And the girl, Serafina. She had not died of poisoning or heart failure.
Now Aninka stood before the long windows in one of the drawing rooms, chain-smoking. Rain lashed the glass, salt rain from the sea. The room was warm, enclosed. A fire burned in the enormous grate. Clocks ticked. As the darkness came, her reflection bloomed in the window, became a mirror image. She looked bewildered, hanging there like a ghost on the outside.
‘Gone cold, hasn’t it.’ One of her guardian’s servants had come into the room: Leonie, a small woman, who favoured tight clothing and elaborate hairstyles. She was biting into an apple, a women’s magazine held open in one hand. Aninka had never liked this woman. She was human, a dependant, and riddled with all the resentments that often entailed.
‘It is the time of year,’ Aninka answered, coldly, stubbing out a cigarette. The ashtray, an ancient hoof of some gazelle-like creature, was overflowing onto the polished mahogany of the tabletop.
Leonie threw herself down in a chair, one leg over the arm. She was, Aninka knew, over three hundred years old. A daughter of Methuselah, his heritage. She would not even begin to fear mortality for at least another seven centuries. She looked like a young woman of twenty-five, but there was something about her that spoke of age, a mixing of cultures past and present. Other humans were fascinated by Grigori dependants, perhaps drawn to their otherness. Leonie had been married once: a life outside. Enniel had indulged her, perhaps hadn’t even noticed she’d been missing by the time she presented herself beneath the coat of arms at the threshold, suitcases at her feet, an impending divorce in the hands of the family solicitors.
‘So you’re off again tonight,’ Leonie said, licking her fingers to flick through the magazine.
Aninka deplored such habits. ‘Yes. A short visit.’ She made to leave the room, conversation with Leonie being the last thing she desired at the moment.
‘Enniel’s arranged for you to be travelling with the famous Taz, then.’
Aninka paused. She didn’t want to appear ignorant. What knowledge could Leonie have sequestered that she did not have? ‘I wasn’t aware my travelling arrangements were made public.’
‘Hardly that! I only heard Enniel make the arrangements five minutes ago, on the phone in his office.’
‘Well, I hardly expected to travel alone. Please, excuse me.’
‘Aren’t you curious?’ Leonie asked.
Aninka glanced at her contemptuously. ‘I have no doubt my guardian will inform me of all arrangements in due course.’
‘But Taz, Taziel Levantine, was once a lover of the Anakim, Peverel Othman. Not only that, he’s very well known. I wonder whether Lahash will bring him with him this evening...’
Aninka suppressed a surge of impatient interest, a desire to snap out questions which would be irritatingly side-stepped. She tapped the back of a sofa which was to hand, then turned to Leonie. She affected a nonchalant tone. ‘Since you are obviously a fount of knowledge on the subject, please enlighten me. Exactly what have you overheard this afternoon?’
Leonie sat up, rubbing her hands gleefully. If she was aware of Aninka’s frosty appr
oach, she chose to ignore it. ‘There was a scandal concerning Levantine,’ she said. ‘Tears, accusations, corruption, maiming...’ She described an arc in the air with one arm, talons curled. ‘Peverel Othman is a great seducer. But of course, you know that.’ She giggled. ‘Oh sorry, I don’t want to sound bitchy.’
Aninka leaned on the back of the sofa, slitted her eyes. ‘Go on...’ She was far from happy that the woman seemed to know all about the reasons behind her visit to the house.
‘This isn’t something I overheard today, you understand. This is something I read in the file that Enniel left out on his desk the other day. Still, I’m sure you’ll keep a confidence about that! Taziel Levantine is a prodigy — Grigori, naturally — who has made a name for himself in the music business. Not so much over here, but in Europe, I understand. Have you heard of him?’
Aninka frowned. ‘I don’t think so. Is he in a band?’
‘Was,’ Leonie said. ‘They called it depression when he had to retire temporarily. Sucked dry, more like! They were called Azliel X.’
‘That sounds familiar.’ Aninka strolled around to the front of the sofa and sat down, her arms spread along the back. ‘So, what happened?’
‘Peverel Othman managed Azliel X for a couple of years. Made their name for them, I suppose.’
‘In Europe?’ Aninka was thinking of how Enniel had known all this and had pretended ignorance. Now, she was hearing it from the mouth of a menial. Enniel would receive a strongly worded rebuke for this.
Leonie nodded. ‘They gigged over here, but it never came to much. Bad timing, I suppose. Othman and Levantine were Grigori, so you have to suppose they could have done whatever they’d wanted, but preferred to keep things low key. Levantine always had recourse to family money. Don’t they always! Anyway, another band set themselves up as rivals, Atziluth. All human, they drew on a lot of cabalistic stuff for inspiration. Playing at it, of course. They believed Levantine was into the same thing. Little did they know. The music press had great fun playing the two bands off against each another. Then, for some reason known only to himself, Othman decided to start working with Atziluth as well. It’s claimed that Levantine thought he was divulging knowledge, shall we call it hidden knowledge, to the songwriter of the other band. Things must have got messy. Enniel’s dossier didn’t give too much detail. Only that Levantine blinded Atziluth’s singer and suffered a breakdown. Levantine spent some time in hospital, after what was reported as a suicide attempt, although questions were asked about that. There was speculation that Othman had tried to kill Levantine.’
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