It was Cardoza’s turn to play but he was too busy watching me.
“What sort of things do you mean?”
I felt my face start to redden though I didn’t know why.
“Something more durable. An item with a history, particularly if it has some sentimental value. It’s not an exact science, though. Certain items which you might think would give you a guaranteed reading turn out to be useless. Then I pick up an old shoe …”
As Michael came back into the room, Cardoza dropped his cards onto the table and stood up.
“Do you hear that, Michael? Bronte here can do a trick.”
Michael was intrigued. “Really? Here’s me boring you to death playing poker and you’re a proper magician.”
I flexed my fingers and pulled a rictus grin. I hated that word.
“No, I’m definitely not a magician.”
Cardoza stopped his son from sitting down. “Tell you what. Go and dig out some of your old stuff from Prep school.”
Michael rolled his eyes but his father was insistent. “No, you’ll like this. Remember, it’s got to be old stuff, nothing new. Bronte’s going to tell us all about them.”
I turned to Macrory. “You’ve set me up.”
“No, no, no. Well, sort of,” he sat up straight in his chair while the others talked. “You said that he wasn’t going to give us anything for free. Well, consider this a sort of down payment.”
I gave a long sigh. “On the understanding that this is a one-off. I’m not doing this sort of thing again.”
Macrory held up his hands. “Oh, understood. Understood.”
*
Michael cleared away the flowers and then placed four items in the centre of the table.
There was a tired looking hedgehog rubber, some kind of trophy, an over-sized wooden bottle-opener and a pair of pruning shears.
I had a good hard look at all of them. They seemed innocent enough but I was already having second thoughts. I’d allowed Macrory to manipulate me into this little side-show when it wasn’t something that I’d normally do. I didn’t know why I had been given this particular gift but it hadn’t been to entertain people at parties, I knew that much. I’d never used it in this way before, except when I was a teenager and was testing it out for myself. At my age I really should know better.
But there was also the chance that Daniel Cardoza had the Seelie Blade. Probably had it secreted away somewhere in the house. The thought of getting my hands on it again genuinely excited me.
I would do this one thing, I promised myself, but afterwards, never again.
I looked at the items a second time and drew a blank. What if I got nothing from any of them? In retrospect, I figured that I should have given Cardoza more guidelines. I’d feel like the worst fake in the world if I went through them all and got nothing back in response.
It would serve me right.
I sat on one side of the table with Cardoza across from me, Macrory to my right and Michael to my left.
They sat in a stilted silence, watching me expectantly.
“Should we hold hands or something?” Cardoza grinned.
“Very funny. Let’s start with this little fellow.”
I picked up the hedge-hog. He looked friendly enough, he had a little cartoon face. I clasped him in my hands as if warming him.
Concentrated.
Nothing.
Closed my eyes.
Nothing.
Waited.
Still nothing.
I opened my eyes. They were all staring at me.
“Sorry. I’m obviously a massive fake.”
Cardoza said, “That was Michael’s favourite toy when he was younger.”
“I just couldn’t focus for some reason. I just kept seeing two of them.”
“There were two of them,” Michael said, suddenly delighted.
Cardoza laughed. It was a rich, mellifluous sound. “That’s right. He went to two parties, got a party bag from each and they both had the same hedgehog inside. What happened to the other one?”
“I gave it to Anthony. He’s still got his as well.”
“Not exactly miraculous though,” Macrory was unimpressed.
“That’s really good,” Michael looked like he meant it. “We’ll have to do this again tomorrow night.”
I said, “Tomorrow?”
“We’re having a party. Dad’s friends are coming over. They’ll be trying to impress one another with their new girlfriends. It’s funny. But we’ve got a decent DJ. You should come, shouldn’t they dad?”
“Well, that’s really short notice, Michael. They might have other plans ...”
“No, that’s fine,” Macrory said. “We’d love to come, wouldn’t we Bronte?”
It sounded horrendous. Whose girlfriend was I supposed to be?
“Oh, yes. That’d be lovely.”
I distracted myself with the next item. A trophy of some kind, the cheap metal had tarnished quite badly. But again I got nothing. And I really tried that time. I mean really.
The corkscrew was a lot easier. That was a relief. I just knew everything.
“You bought this on holiday. The shop was very small, the man who sold it to you had something wrong with his leg. Turkey, I’m thinking. Somewhere around there, anyway. Michael was wearing a striped t-shirt when he bought it. Red surfer shorts. You bought it as a present. For your father?”
I had my eyes closed and I could picture the scene. “There’s a woman with you. I’m assuming that’s your mother. She’s wearing a lace top. There’s a bracelet…”
“Okay, that’s enough.”
“Is that a dolphin on the bracelet?”
“Okay,” Cardoza’s voice sounded bruised. “I’m officially impressed.”
I opened my eyes. Cardoza was sitting opposite me, arms crossed, scowling.
Michael reached across and took the bottle opener and rapped it lightly on his knuckles.
Cardoza said, “Michael’s mother passed away four years ago.”
“Oh! I’m sorry to hear that.”
Cardoza stuck out his jaw. “It’s fine. We’re fine with it now.”
No one was looking at anyone. Macrory stood up.
“Well, I think we really should be going. Bronte?”
He puffed out his cheeks and gave me one of those, ‘could you not have been more sensitive?’ expressions.
I felt totally stupid. Nobody said anything but I was more than capable of reading their body language. By mentioning Michael’s mother I’d touched on a taboo subject. Cardoza hadn’t said ‘my wife’ so there were clearly issues there. I was angry with Macrory for not mentioning it earlier. I felt terrible. I’d ruined the night, embarrassed our host and no one had mentioned the Seelie Blade.
I went to pick up the final item on the table, the pruning shears. Cardoza made to snatch them up but I beat him to it.
The floor lurched under me.
We were in another room. No, not a room, a garage. I could make out the light framing the garage door. A bare bulb shone overhead but it was dim. A figure sat in the centre, with newspapers arranged around his feet. I thought at first it was paint splatters on the paper but then I realised my mistake.
An enormous man stood behind him dressed like a rapper, only he had blood on his otherwise pristine white trainers. He had hold of the smaller man’s arm and was holding it straight out. The hand was a pulpy mess with two fingers missing.
Cardoza was holding the clippers and he was angry. Angry at the man in the chair because he wasn’t telling him what he wanted to hear. Angry that this was all taking so long. Angry that the rapper hadn’t prepared the floor properly. Angry that this was going to take forever to clean up.
“He doesn’t know.”
“I’m sorry,” Cardoza had his fingertips braced on the table’s edge watching me.
I’d spoken out loud.
Then, in a more reasonable voice he said, “I’m sorry? Who ‘doesn’t know’?”
“O
h, me. I don’t know anything. About these”
I handed him the shears.
He took them. “You said: he doesn’t know. What did you mean?”
“She means me,” Macrory said. “She thinks I don’t know when to call it a night.”
“But she said ‘he’. We all heard it.”
I stood up, feeling dizzy.
Macrory said, “You two stay where you are. We’ll find our own way out.”
*
We sat in the back of the car in silence.
Carl, the driver, had obviously been in bed when Cardoza’s call had woken him. He didn’t attempt to engage us in conversation and that was just how we wanted it.
It would have been a very pleasant journey home if Macrory hadn’t kept looking at me imploringly. He was going to be impossible to live with until he got his own way.
After the car dropped us off, I waited until we were half way up the front steps before turning on him.
“What the hell was all that about?”
“I think we extricated ourselves from that one rather well,” he said. Then he gave me a mischievous look. “So, what was it that you saw in those shears?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on. You might have fooled him but you’re not fooling me. You did see something didn’t you?”
“How could you put me in such a terrible position?” I asked.
“It was all a bit of fun. I was just trying to break the ice.”
“But Cardoza knows. He knows that I know about the clippers. I saw him torturing someone. He’s not an antiques dealer - he’s a gangster. You took me to dinner with a gangster.”
“A gangster who just so happens to have the Seelie Blade in his possession.”
It was late and I was trying to keep my voice down because of the neighbours. I put my face right up close to his.
“How do you know? At what point in the evening did he confide that bit of information to you? When?” a little bit of spittle caught in his beard but I was in no mood to apologise.
“You’ve dragged me all the way over there, locked me in his basement with those things, made me trivialise myself and my craft. And in all that time you didn’t bring up the Seelie Blade once.”
“So? We’re going back there tomorrow night. We’re invited.”
I shook my head
“That was Michael showing off. Cardoza just didn’t know how to say: ‘No.’”
“Doesn’t matter. An invitation is an invitation.”
I gave up. I stormed up the steps, adjusting my handbag as I looked for my keys.
“There is no point going back there. You don’t even know whether he has the blade.”
“Oh, he has it alright.”
“And how can you be so sure?”
“Because I sold it to him.”
*
We stood in the lighted hallway, talking in whispers. I didn’t want to have this argument in the flat as I didn’t want to wake Millie but I also didn’t want to have it on the street. I just hoped that none of our neighbours appeared to complain.
“You sold it to him?”
“I kept meaning to tell you,” he was getting surly now.
“When? When were you meaning to tell me? And how did you even get hold of it?”
“Oh, that!” he blew out his lips. “That’s simple. I got it off you.”
The lights went off at that point. They’re on a timer. They give you just enough time to get to your flat before they switch themselves off. Eco-friendly, the land-lord calls it.
“You stole it off me, how?”
There was a very long pause while I studied the way that the moonlight reflected off his forehead.
“At the Tower of London,” he left the sentence hanging.
“You mean: that time I was kidnapped and was taken to the Tower of London to take part in a mass exorcism. Yes, now you come to mention it, Macrory, I think I do remember that.”
“Oh, come on, Bronte! Don’t be like that.”
“You’re saying that you were there?”
“’Sright. I followed you. I was trying to help.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I managed to get inside but there were too many of them. So I disguised myself just to keep an eye on you. I was about to make my move when that Terence bloke turned himself into a werewolf. Well, then it all went to hell in a hand-basket.”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I had felt totally alone that night, totally abandoned. And Macrory had been there all along.
I said, “So you disguised yourself as one of the guards?”
“No, that’d be too obvious. No, I disguised myself as one of the young witches.”
I had to pause then in order to take in what he’d just said.
“I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, Macrory, but you have a rather obvious beard. How did you manage to disguise yourself as a witch?”
“A simple spell sufficed. They expected to see a rather attractive young witch and that’s what they saw.”
“But how did you get hold of the Seelie Blade?”
“Ah, now that’s the good part. Remember when you went after Melissa Stahl in that big circle of torches? Well, she was holding the blade then, if I remember correctly. Now you couldn’t see much in there with all that smoke but, when the pair of you finally staggered out, neither one of you was holding the knife. It took a bit of searching but there it was: lying on the grass.”
“So you were there all that time, yet you never thought to try and help me?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he pushed the light switch, flooding the corridor with light. “Who do you think rang the police?”
He started climbing up the hall stairs, two at a time, looking very pleased with himself.
“So, you had the Seelie Blade all along. The one thing that could determine the fate of all mankind. And you sold it.”
“At least I didn’t drop it somewhere that any child might pick it up. Yes, I found it and I sold it to Daniel Cardoza.”
I took out my key as we approached the flat. “Why? Why sell it to him?”
“Because I knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold onto it for long.”
“Yet, according to you, he still has it.”
“Yes, and that’s why, tomorrow night, we’re going to steal it back.”
CHAPTER TEN
I pondered all this as I sat in the dress circle at The Globe. I was sitting in the same seat I’d occupied the previous day. I was just upset that Millie hadn’t been able to come with me.
They’d removed the chairs that Edwin had blasted the previous morning and replaced them with a single piece of MDF. They’d draped it in red and white tape and blocked off the aisle.
The nominations for the War Council had begun at eleven o’clock and by the time we broke for lunch at one, we’d heard from only three of the nominees. That meant that there were fourteen more to go. The nominees were only allowed to speak for thirty minutes but they needed to be proposed and seconded. With the first nominee, the proposer had done a brief introduction but, by the time we came to the third nominee, the seconder had made a speech that was well over thirty minutes long. A precedent had been set.
When we broke for lunch, I followed the crush of people down to the bar. The audience had swelled by a good third from the previous day and, while this was good for democracy, it made getting a seat almost impossible. By the time I got down there every seat was taken. They were filled by groups of delegates who looked like they’d been there for some time. They’d obviously avoided the speeches altogether and I couldn’t say that I blamed them.
I stood in the central aisle but wherever I stood I seemed to be in somebody’s way. I decided to forego having anything to eat or drink and simply go and have a smoke instead. I was halfway towards the door when I felt a light touch on my arm.
It was one of the volunteers, a keen looking girl with a pony tail.
“One of the nominees woul
d like to buy you lunch.”
“Really?” I looked around. They must have some kind of executive dining area. “That’s very kind.”
She took that for assent and headed out through the foyer and through the front door.
I was struggling to keep up.
“Sorry, where is it that we’re going?”
“Just round the corner. He thought you might have more privacy that way. I should have explained.”
I should have been suspicious but, instead, I was intrigued.
She took me out onto the riverside and pointed to a black fronted bistro.
“He’s got a table towards the back of the room,” she said. And then, with a little wave, she left me.
Inside, the place was filled to over-flowing, so much so that a waitress came over and tried to deflect me.
“It’s alright, I’m meeting someone.”
She consulted her list of bookings. “Name?”
“That’s him over there.”
O’Hagen stood out a mile, his stature meant that he dwarfed the diners either side of him. Today he was wearing a blue flannel shirt over a collarless under-shirt. He looked like he’d spent the morning wrestling grizzlies.
“Well, bless you for coming,” he stood up to shake my hand. “I worried that you might think I was being too forward.”
I brushed that off and took the seat opposite.
“Been watching the nominations?” he asked.
“Unfortunately.”
“Frightful waste of time if you ask me. Everybody should get two minutes max. with no introductions. That way we could have covered everyone before lunch then done the voting this afternoon, but that’s the Council for you, I guess.”
I was taken aback. As far as I was concerned, O’Hagen was the Council. And I said as much.
This amused him no end. He invited me to consult the menu while he talked.
He told me about his practice in the States. He ran some kind of Bounty Hunter operation, sanctioned by the Council whereby they tracked down practitioners who used their skills for criminal purposes. He had a number of well-polished anecdotes which he recounted while we were ordering our food. He finished one particular story about a violent shape shifter who had robbed a series of banks masquerading as an eight year old girl.
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