Demon Bone (The Demons of Oxford Book 1)

by Kara Silver

  She sort of wanted to close her eyes in this job too, but forced herself to stand at the wooden counter near the door and take in the place, all its three floors, all the cabinets, wall panels, twin spiral staircases, teaching area on the top floor, the eye-catching iron ceiling joists, or whatever those roof girder things were. She’d never studied architecture.

  Strange, she was expecting Aeth to be there, which was impossible, of course. Must just be because that was where they’d met. Edson had pointed out the STAFF ONLY door, and Kennedy entered the tiny kitchenette and made herself a pot of tea, rolling her eyes at the passive-aggressive notice about please leaving at least twenty pence in the dish when you had anything: supplies, especially biscuits, didn’t grow on trees, sadly. Other notes in a similar vein abounded, in the kitchen and staff toilets, begging all staff, salaried or volunteer, be they professors, TAs, curators, gallery assistants or even guards to leave the surroundings as they’d like to find them.

  Was there a trajectory? Could you work yourself up from night patrol to volunteer gallery assistant to poorly paid teaching assistant to the dizzy heights of professorship or, holy of holies, curator? Even if that was possible, Kennedy somehow doubted that was her path. Did the damn place even need guards? With all the money Heylel seemed to have, couldn’t the powers that be invest in a decent alarm system instead?

  Which reminded her. She checked out the sliding panel the TA had opened yesterday and from where Aeth had taken seats for them—not that she was thinking about him—and amused herself playing with the light switches, switching on overhead illumination over one display after another, then the low lights around the cases themselves, then trying to pick out with spotlights the items hanging suspended from the ceiling. Oh, boats! From hollowed-out tree trunks to lighter craft with sails. Nice.

  Well, things were fine there. No need to check out each nook and cranny. Kennedy booted up her laptop and sat at the entrance desk to work for a while, until the weight and texture of the place began to press in on her again and she needed air. There was a lift, she discovered, but for goods only, so she took the stairs, spiralling around and up to the top floor. She was looking for a window to stick her head out of, but found something much better: up two wooden stairs at the back was a door marked ROOF EXIT.

  She shoved it open. Kennedy hesitated a moment then stepped out. It wasn’t risky—the top story of the building sloped inwards, as she’d supposed from the angle of the iron beams supporting it but didn’t meet in a point. Instead it seemed as if the edges were guarding the flat space of the roof in its middle. A snicker escaped her. There were statues here. What if she started a new thing of dressing one of them up? Her contribution to college life and culture?

  Except they weren’t people, exactly. Maybe representations of, sort of stylised, fantasy-style? Not quite gargoyles. Her town had some on its cathedral. Yes, weren’t they usually on religious buildings, and smaller? This one, for instance looked…like Aeth!

  Okay, that was a bit bitchy, but its solid-hewn face and stillness did remind her of him. Or maybe she was just missing him. “I’m not thinking about him!” she protested to the night. “It would have been sensible to have gotten his number, or staircase numeral, or whatever they call it here, after yester—” Nope. Not going there. It was werid she hadn’t seen him. Heylel wasn’t as big as most of the other colleges. She stroked a hand down the not-Aeth-in-the-least— “Grotesque! Yes! That’s what they’re called when they don’t spit water. But…you probably know that, don’t you?”

  She gave a final pat to the statue and went inside again. She must be desperate for company if she was talking to blocks of stone, not to mention thinking one resembled someone.

  Hearing voices outside, Kennedy exited via the side door. The main door was supposed to remain locked, Edson had said, until the change of guards. People! Lounging on the steps and smoking and drinking. Ah. She made sure her footsteps were loud and the beam of her torch shone. When she got up to them, she saw the two that weren’t smoking or drinking were kissing. Charming.

  “Hi, guys. Just to say this is a non-designated area for smoking and people aren’t really allowed on the museum premises when the museum’s closed.”

  “Oh, right.” Cool Cigarette Guy blew smoke out, almost at her.

  Kennedy eyed him. “I get that it’s a nice night, after the rain yesterday, and you want to sit down and relax, but you’ll have to go to a designated outdoor area.”

  “Aww, is this what you have to do, for your scholarship hours?” the girl stopped kissing to ask, mock concern in her voice. “Must be awful.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Repeating the rules until people manage to get them into their heads is a bit awful. Like, that the fine for smoking in a non-smoking area is thirty pounds. Oh, and that the fine for failing to put your stubs in the correct bin is also thirty pounds.” Reading all the bumf had paid off. Good thing she had a quick memory.

  “Give someone a uniform and they turn into Hitler.” The black-haired bloke holding the bottle of wine pointed at Kennedy’s fluorescent bib. “I feel sorry for you.”

  “Really? I feel sorry for you, that you’ve applied your eyeliner so badly. Why haven’t any of your friends mentioned it or tried to help you? There are tutorials online to show you, so why not fuck off and watch one?” Kennedy stood her ground until the spluttering, angry group had indeed fucked off. She doubted any of them would save her a place at meal times. Didn’t much care.

  She walked around the building and went back in. Now, she’d gotten the idea of making a circuit, literally, she thought she’d better do complete loops of the second and third floors. The top gallery turned out to be a trip through the wonderful world of weapons, from stone clubs to the latest trends in concealed blades. Interesting, in its own way.

  The middle floor was more…everything. Oh, fuck, dummies, was her first reaction. Shit, costumes, her second. What was worse, the featureless torsos displaying headdresses or jewellery, or the disembodied costumes posed as lifelike as if they’d be walking free of the cabinets any second? Kennedy didn’t know. Holding her breath, she shone her torch into the face of each upright costume. I’m not looking to see if they have eyes, she told herself. And especially eyes that follow me. Nuh-huh.

  BODY ART. She’d walked past the glass window when the label caught up with her, and it was like being snared by an invisible hook and yanked back, despite struggling to walk on. She squinted to read the handwritten labels tied to or placed under the exhibits, examples of body markings from various points of the globe and periods in time. They had been inked on to ask for protection, to attract good fortune, to show social status or occupation or prowess, as part of rituals and ceremonies to pacify entities, and…And there was her birthmark.

  Heart thudding, she pressed her nose against the pane, and her sigh of relief upon seeing the designs weren’t quite identical to the mark she bore fogged the glass. But the series of designs was familiar—each grew a little nearer to her mark. The copperplate ink label next to the black and white photographs read RITUAL AND TRIBUTE and next to it was a space. A gap, one only partly filled by a printed card announcing MOVED TO TEMPORARY EXHIBITION.

  Temporary exhibition? Where was that? Likely to be on the ground floor? Fired up, Kennedy rushed to the metal staircase. And tripped. She fell forwards, her stomach over the steel bannisters, halting her seeming certain pitch over one side by hooking her feet into and grasping hard onto the twirls and twists of the metal making up the railing, her breath bumped from her by the impact. Her torch went flying, to land on the wooden floor below her with a smash.

  She uncurled and sat on the metal step beneath her, holding on to the railings at either side. My damn ankle, probably. I was right not to want to use these crappy stairs. Wow, should buy a lottery ticket. She forced herself to let go of the thin strips of metal that were cutting into her hands and massage her ankle instead. It felt fine, but could she use it as a reason why she couldn’t do her du
ty hours here, in a place that demanded physical fitness? No, that would be dishonest, and her self-respect was important to her. She’d be better off going to some sort of gym class to strengthen her muscles to support her bones.

  Bones… Kennedy couldn’t believe she’d almost forgotten what she’d been doing. A slow walk down the stairs brought her back to the entrance and the desk with its leaflets and posters, including one about the museum’s temporary exhibitions. They were mounted in the special exhibition space on this floor, one of the rooms in the closed-off side corridor she’d walked past to go out of the side entrance earlier. She hadn’t thought to explore down there, away from the exhibits. She would now. She’d check out this exhibition of…Demonology? What the hell was that? Nothing she’d ever heard of.

  Kennedy threw back her braid and turned to go just as a heavy, dull thudding came at the main door. Thuds that became knocking. Hard knocking. What the fuck? A lone bell tolled in the distance, long, low, and forlorn. Forsaken, somehow. Then from the heavy door—that she’d locked, the keys of which she now grabbed up into her hand—came the jingle of metal and the squeal of keys being turned in the lock before the door opened with a harsh screech.

  “Hey, love, you’re supposed to have the door open and be waiting for the next shift, even when that’s the official night patrol. Didn’t you get told that?” asked the burly uniformed security guard, arrived for his eight-hour stint. In the distance, the mournful bell tolled a final sad peal. “Anything to hand over? Love?”

  “I…dropped my torch.” Kennedy pointed over her shoulder. “I’ll just get it.” She scrambled away, finding the broken flashlight by kicking it.

  Damn. She couldn’t go and check out the display now. It would have to wait until she was alone here again, because she had a feeling she wouldn’t want a witness around when she investigated why tattoos similar to her birthmark were in an exhibition on Demonology.

  6

  And she was supposed to sleep after that…how? Or, failing that, focus on her lecture notes, core module reading, or essay researching and writing? Hearing a noise on her otherwise silent corridor, Kennedy tracked it down to the kitchenette, realising as she did so that she’d failed to wash up her cup and teapot at the museum. That should make someone leave a note that would probably skip passive and go straight to aggressive. At least that made her grin.

  “Hi,” she said to her fellow staircase dweller, who was using the microwave to make a hot drink.

  The girl jumped and whirled around, knocking her mug against the microwave door and sloshing half its contents out.

  “God, sorry!” Kennedy couldn’t do anything right, it seemed. “Let me help.” She dabbed at the girl’s pyjama top with a handful of paper towels. “Sorry again.

  “It’s okay.” The girl threw the soggy paper wad into the bin. “Kennedy, right? Down the other end? I’m Kirsty. Second year. Yes, that means I have the bigger room on the corner! Is…everything okay?”

  “Yes. Well… Yeah…no…” She shrugged

  “Can’t you sleep? Tough week?” The girl, Kirsty, threw her waves of light-brown hair over her shoulders and hopped up onto the spindly-legged stool.

  Kirsty had big brown eyes, reminding Kennedy a little of both Chandyce and Layla back home, although Kirsty was lighter-skinned than them. Perhaps it was the similarity, or the girl’s willingness to sit on an uncomfortable stool at half-past midnight on a Saturday night—no; Sunday morning—that made Kennedy park her arse on the counter, her feet on a small plastic step, and open up a little. About being behind with the work. About never having done this sort of academic work before. About balancing work and her duty hours and whatever social life she managed to have or afford.

  “I served at Formal Hall for my service hours last year,” Kirsty admitted. “Although I didn’t have to do that many, and not for long and none this year—I think I was so hopeless, they gave up on me! Yeah, fitting everything in and trying to keep up with people and family from home as well was a real bugger. I was so miserable once the novelty wore off—bloody desperate for a break at Christmas!”

  Kennedy was grateful for the talk, and for the tips the second year gave her. Kirsty also urged Kennedy to set up times to check in with Alicia, her appointed second year mentor, and to find out who her Moral Tutor was, explaining it was the tutor overseeing her welfare—AKA, her mental health—while she was in the college. Most people, her included, felt iffy about discussing personal things with a professor who also taught them.

  “But the logic is that person is expected to fully understand your work-related concerns, and that’s what’s usually at the root of mental welfare issues. He can push back deadlines or whatever for you.”

  Yeah, logical enough, Kennedy supposed, as she thanked Kirsty. She’d appreciated the chat, which had reminded her she should register with a doctor locally and check in with the college nurse. She hoped the hot milk would make her sleep. But when she did, her dreams took her back to the museum roof, to a bestiary of stone creatures, and she watched in helpless horror as one by one they leapt from the roof into the empty air. “Fly!” she yelled, fighting to flap her arms and show them, to thankfully wake up, trapped and thrashing in her duvet, before the beasts smashed to smithereens on the path below.

  She seized her notebook and a pencil and was still trying to draw the faces of the gargoyles or grotesques, finding herself instead sketching the tattoos she’d seen in the display, when Kirsty knocked at her door.

  “Are you coming to brunch?” she enquired. “And look, I rounded up everyone who’s not already gone over! It’s a pity you missed the first bit of term. We had a kind of staircase potluck and got to know everyone on our floors.”

  “And it’s a pity I’m not dressed!” Kennedy grimaced. “Could you wait a few minutes?”

  It would be good to have a gang to hang with, for meals. Students tended to pal up with others from the same floor or staircase to go and eat with, which gave them contact with people from other subjects and other years, and people to joke around with in the dining hall.

  “Oh, you draw?” Xander pointed across the table at her notebook.

  “No, I— Not really.” Kennedy closed it with a snap. She hadn’t realised she’d returned to the designs she’d sketched earlier, was refining and shading them. “And I will check out some of the societies and clubs you’ve all mentioned,” she told the group. “I really need to start doing a sport or some sort of exercise.”

  “But not today…” Jill left a pause and glanced at the others.

  “I’ve just got to finish something.” She looked rude, she knew, antisocial, too, but the urge, no, compulsion to return to the museum and see with her own eyes the tattoos—hell, the entire Demonology exhibition—was pulling at her.

  But when she did, she found it closed.

  “Fuck!” she gritted out, having jogged all that way, her study bag weighing her down. She kicked at the heavy door in frustration, jarring her ankle and letting herself in for a dull throb. “This place is stupid! It so is!” Its opening hours made no sense. “I guess I should just be happy there’s probably some labour laws forbidding you from having students working around the clock, or we’d be wardening, guarding, whatever, all day and all night!” was her parting shot.

  No biggie. She had work to catch up on anyway. From the brunch conversation a bit earlier, she’d learned that most, if not all, students arranged study sessions with colleagues from the same classes. Made sense. They’d done the same at her Sixth Form, to keep themselves motivated and working. Yeah, the other eleven first year Heylel anthro students had probably formed into a group already. Maybe some of them were in the library now and she could—

  “Damn!” She hadn’t cottoned on to the library being closed on some Sundays for maintenance, although it was open seven days a week nearer to exams. Kicking at pebbles in her path, Kennedy trekked back to her room. She should check if the department library was open, or familiarise herself with the Bodleian,
Oxford’s enormous research library, or the Radcliffe Camera, the huge circular of a library whose round drum topped with a dome made it such a landmark of the city. All she knew about the latter was that the anthropology collection was kept in the upper reading room.

  And yet, she found herself changing into yoga pants and a tee, lacing up her trainers to go for a run. Good way to get the lay of the land, right? She could slip out of the back gate, making for the University Parks. They’d looked so pretty in photos, seventy-odd green acres, sports facilities, river, duck pond—the whole shebang. So, why…why she heading for No Souls graveyard? Just to see there’s nothing there, she told herself.

  And there wasn’t. The small overgrown space looked very different during the day, and well, empty, was the best adjective she could come up with. It took Kennedy a minute to understand the depth of the silence. No voices, no traffic noises, no birds singing. So, jogging, nothing else, using the place as a cut through, nothing else, she detoured to the low-lying hollow of the other night. Empty. Quiet. Silent as the grave. And undisturbed. No sign even that she’d been there.

  So, who was here? As in, buried here? Every cemetery had a famous resident or two, and this being Oxford, this one must house a score of well-known people. But remembering what Aeth had said about the origins of the graveyard, she went to look for an information booth or noticeboard, see what she could learn. An entire circuit showed her nothing. Fine. She’d add No Souls Cemetery—or whatever its real name was—to her list of things to research tomorrow, when the library was open.

  Her uneventful circuit of the place brought her back to the dip in between a tangle of trees and shrubs. How had she entered the space the other night? Through that gap there, she supposed, squinting at the bushes. The wind picked up a little and the green barrier swayed a little, then widened into a bigger gap. Kennedy hesitated, then walked in. The first thing she noticed was a stone slab or flagstone in the centre of the hollow. The second thing she saw was a carving on it. A symbol that had become more and more familiar to her over the past couple of days—despite it having marked her body since birth.