Timecurse

by Tom Becker

  “Thanks,” he said finally, and continued off down the corridor.

  One thing was abundantly clear: wherever Jonathan had been, it had changed him. Whereas in the past he had seemed somehow lost and overlooked, there was a new confidence and self-belief about him that Kate noticed, even if no one else did. He still kept his distance from the other pupils, but now she sensed that this was by choice. Even so, every time their paths crossed he smiled and gave her a quiet hello.

  One morning Kate was staring out of the window, lost in a daydream, when she saw Jonathan walking purposefully across the playground towards the far end of the school grounds. Wherever he was going, it had nothing to do with lessons. What was he doing? Kate couldn’t resist it – excusing herself to go to the toilet, she left the classroom and hurried after him.

  It was cold outside, and a biting wind gnawed at Kate’s bare legs. She walked as quickly as possible across the playground in pursuit of Jonathan. If he’d turned round at any time, it would have been obvious she was following him, but he didn’t seem to care. He headed down the side of the sports hall and behind the back of the building – a favourite hideout for smokers and amorous couples. Hugging the side of the wall, Kate came to the corner and peeped around it.

  Behind the sports hall, a girl was waiting for Jonathan. She was short, with flaming red hair. Pretty, Kate conceded, in a striking sort of way. Even though she was their age, the girl wasn’t wearing a school uniform – instead she was muffled up in a thick black overcoat, with matching hat and gloves. There was a grave expression on her face.

  Jonathan called out and greeted the girl. They hugged one another, but not comfortably. Whoever this girl was, Kate thought, she wasn’t his girlfriend.

  “I got your note,” he said. “I’m still surprised, though. What are you doing here, Raquella?”

  “I could ask you the same question,” the girl replied.

  “Thought that would be pretty obvious,” Jonathan said wryly. “I’m back at school.”

  The girl looked enquiringly at the building behind her.

  “Never had the chance to go to school myself. What’s it like?”

  “Tedious,” replied Jonathan. “Especially the double French lesson waiting for me this afternoon. On the plus side, no one’s tried to kill me for three months, which is a record. But then, you didn’t come all this way to talk to me about school.”

  Around the corner, Kate was perplexed. The quip about people trying to kill him should have been ridiculous – so why did she have the strange feeling Jonathan wasn’t entirely joking?

  The redhead took a deep breath. “I came here to warn you. You’re in grave danger.”

  “Danger?” Jonathan laughed. “Here? The worst thing that can happen to me here is detention, Raquella.”

  “You don’t understand,” the girl said. “Two nights ago Thomas Ripper died. Darkside’s ruler is no more.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  At the word “Darkside”, something had stirred within Kate, the faintest glimmer of recognition somewhere in the back of her mind. She shook her head and tried to focus on the girl’s story.

  “I was working late at Vendetta Heights when the Blackchapel Bell begin ringing. At once I heard the front door slam, and saw my master’s carriage driving off into the night. He didn’t return until the early morning, and spent all of the next day locked in his study. I tried to see him, but he refused to talk to me. The only servant he spoke to was Mr Pelham, the butler. Last night he went out again, and I haven’t seen either him or Mr Pelham since.”

  “Maybe Vendetta got peckish and went looking for some necks to chew on,” Jonathan said. “He is a vampire, after all, Raquella. Did you expect him to leave you a note?”

  Vampire? Kate blinked with surprise. It was surreal to hear the word in the everyday surroundings of her school. Was it another joke? One thing was for sure: the girl wasn’t laughing.

  “Yes, thank you for reminding me of that fact,” Raquella retorted icily. “Actually, Vendetta always tells me when he’s going somewhere. He doesn’t just disappear. I checked his wardrobe – some clothes were missing. The clothes he wears in Lightside. And when I cleaned the study this morning, I found this in the grate.”

  She handed Jonathan a scrap of charred paper. He looked at it, frowning.

  “This is the address for this school!”

  Raquella nodded. “I don’t know what my master is planning, Jonathan, but he’s coming for you. That’s why he refused to speak to me – he knew that I would try to warn you.”

  To her horror, Kate felt a sudden tickling sensation in her nostrils. Ducking back round the corner of the sports hall, she clamped a hand over her mouth and stifled a sneeze. The conversation halted abruptly – Kate stood stock-still, barely daring to breathe. There was a long, wary pause.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Jonathan said eventually. “Go to the police and tell them a vampire’s after me?”

  “Come back to Darkside with me,” urged Raquella. “We’ll go and see Carnegie. You’ll be safer there, and it will give us enough time to find out what Vendetta wants with you.”

  “I can’t just run off to Darkside!” Jonathan protested. “Dad’ll kill me! He made me promise to give school a real go this time.”

  “Stay here, and there’s a good chance that Vendetta will kill you. I know my master’s ways all too well, Jonathan. I wouldn’t have come all this way if I wasn’t certain your life depended upon it.”

  The maid’s solemn words hung in the crisp winter air. Her pulse racing, Kate felt everything hanging in the balance as Jonathan struggled to come to a decision. Then he sighed.

  “I never did like French, anyway. Let’s get out of here.”

  2

  Jonathan quickly led Raquella out of the school grounds, and they began the short journey back to his house. The maidservant walked in silence, wrapped up in her own thoughts. Though he was pleased to see Raquella again, Jonathan never felt entirely at ease around her. She was so sensitive that he constantly found himself saying the wrong thing. At times Jonathan found it easier dealing with Carnegie’s violent mood swings than the defensive little maid. Even as she walked by his side, her cheeks reddening slightly in the wind, he got the sense that Raquella was somehow disappointed that he had needed persuading to go back to Darkside.

  However, for all her prickliness, once again she was risking Vendetta’s wrath to help Jonathan. Given the number of times Raquella had defied the vampire, it was a minor miracle that he hadn’t drained her as he had the rest of his servants. On the other hand, given the cold brutality with which Vendetta treated Raquella, it was equally amazing that she chose to stay in his service. Some relationships, Jonathan decided, were just a mystery.

  They were passing by a row of shops on the main road, where boxes of fruit and vegetables were marinating in exhaust fumes on the pavement outside. There was the wail of a siren, and a police car hurtled past them – Jonathan had to force himself not to duck behind something. Although he had been back on Lightside for three months, he still couldn’t believe the police weren’t after him. The last time he had seen Raquella, they had broken into a mansion in Kensington, in search of a precious Darkside artefact known as the Crimson Stone. In the end, they had narrowly escaped the mansion with their lives, only for the stone to disappear back in Darkside.

  Jonathan had wanted to continue the search for the stone, but there wasn’t a single clue to go on. Instead, he had reluctantly decided to stay in Lightside to face the music. After all, having made a dramatic escape from a London police station, Jonathan was now both a missing person and a suspect in an unsolved robbery. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his dad was waiting for him at home, he probably wouldn’t have gone back at all. But he had taken a deep breath, crossed back, and waited for the police to arrest him.

  Nothing hap
pened. No one asked him any questions. No one said anything. No one even knocked on the door. Jonathan settled back into his bedroom, re-enrolled at his old school, and began trying to lead a normal life. Weeks after his return, he found an article mentioning the robbery buried deep within a London newspaper. It said simply:

  ROBBERY BREAKTHROUGH: Police investigating a break-in at an exclusive address in Kensington arrested several unnamed suspects at an address in south-east London yesterday. Detective Horace Carmichael, who was leading the investigation, said that he was satisfied with the outcome of the operation, and that the police were not looking for any further suspects.

  There were no more details. Jonathan didn’t know what to make of it – he knew for a fact that his accomplices, the burglarious Troupe, were safely back in Darkside. He remembered Detective Carmichael, and his assistant Sergeant Charlie Wilson, from his interview at the police station. While the young sergeant was just like all the other policemen Jonathan had encountered, Carmichael was different – an enigmatic hunchback who gave the impression that he knew more than he was letting on. And yet here he was saying the case had been solved.

  Maybe Carmichael had believed his story. Maybe he was embarrassed that a boy Jonathan’s age could escape from his grasp. Maybe, like so many other Lightsiders, he had simply forgotten about him. Whatever the reason, Jonathan was relieved that the police wanted nothing more with him.

  As they turned off the main road and towards the leafy avenue where he lived, Jonathan had to admit that the last few weeks hadn’t actually been that bad. After a year of almost constant danger, it had been nice to relax and spend time doing things he hadn’t done for a while: lounging around watching rubbish television; downloading songs from the internet; chatting to his dad and the family’s closest friend, Mrs Elwood. They tried to avoid talk of Darkside, mostly because it proved a painful reminder of the absence of Jonathan’s mum. Though Theresa Starling had vanished in the rotten borough over ten years ago, both Jonathan and his dad still nurtured the hope that she was alive, and that they would see her again.

  The Starlings’ house boasted the signs of a recent makeover – the windows had been cleaned, and the peeling paintwork redone. Jonathan walked up the driveway and into the house. Inside the front room, his dad was sitting in an armchair, leafing through a large leather-bound book. On the table next to him, a skin was developing on top of an untouched cup of coffee. Mrs Elwood was reading a magazine on the sofa, her tiny legs folded up beneath her.

  Alain looked up with surprise as Jonathan entered the room.

  “What are you doing back here?”

  “Someone wanted to see me,” Jonathan replied, and stepped to one side, revealing Raquella.

  Alain took off his spectacles. “I suppose we’d better have a chat, then.”

  They gathered around the kitchen table and ate an awkward lunch. Raquella’s appearance was the first time Darkside had touched the Starlings’ lives for several months, and Jonathan could feel the tension in the air. Raquella was cold and withdrawn, Mrs Elwood openly hostile. The tiny woman rolled her eyes and tutted as Jonathan outlined the situation. Only Alain seemed unaffected by the atmosphere, chewing thoughtfully as he finished his lunch. Then he swallowed.

  “No,” he said.

  Jonathan blinked. “Sorry, Dad?”

  “I said no. You’re not going to Darkside. You’re going to stay here like we agreed.”

  “Didn’t you hear what Raquella said? Vendetta’s coming after me!”

  “So she thinks. A scrap of paper, some missing clothes – it could mean anything, son.”

  “My master has never forgiven Jonathan for crossing him,” Raquella said quietly. “Believe me when I say he means to do him harm.”

  “And if that turns out to be the case, we’ll deal with it here,” Alain replied.

  “How?” Jonathan said, his voice rising. “This is a vampire we’re talking about, Dad! I know that we’ve managed to beat him before, but at some stage our luck’s going to run out.”

  “And if he stays, he’ll be placing you all in danger,” Raquella added. “The best thing for everyone would be for Jonathan to return to Darkside with me.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I’ll be the judge of what’s best for my family,” Alain snapped, the sharpness of his tone startling Jonathan. “I am his father, after all.”

  “Alain’s right, Jonathan,” Mrs Elwood interjected. “Do you really think you’re going to be safer in Darkside? Listen to yourself, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I don’t get it,” Jonathan said. “You never had a problem with me going back before!”

  Alain leaned forward. “I’ve let you go to Darkside in the past either because you were in danger and I couldn’t look after you, or I thought it might help us find your mother. But now I can look after you, and this has nothing to do with Theresa. I refuse to turn our lives upside down again on the basis of what that wretched vampire may or may not do.”

  As the maid sighed and pushed away her plate, Alain turned to her.

  “Raquella, I am grateful that you’ve come all this way to warn Jonathan, and I know that by doing so you’ve put yourself in danger. But you have to understand – I care about Jonathan’s safety too, and right now I think the best thing he can do is stay here in Lightside with his father.”

  Raquella rose stiffly from her chair. “I understand completely, Mr Starling. We have different concerns. I’m a Darksider, Jonathan’s part-Darksider, and—”

  “And I’m not?” Alain finished, his gaze hardening.

  There was a pause.

  “No,” the maid replied eventually. “You’re not. As I said, we have different concerns. Good day to you all.”

  With that, she walked out of the kitchen.

  “Wait, Raquella!” Jonathan called out, but the only reply was the sound of the front door closing. He turned and glared at Alain.

  “Good one, Dad,” he said sarcastically.

  As Mrs Elwood coughed uncomfortably, Alain collected up the lunch things and carried them over to the sink.

  “There are limits, Jonathan,” he said quietly, and left the room.

  Later that night, the Starling house remained sullenly, stubbornly silent. Mrs Elwood had long since made her excuses and left, leaving the main combatants to their cold war. After the fight in the kitchen, Alain had retreated into his study, and hadn’t reappeared. Jonathan had spent the rest of the day moping round the house, feeling equally restless and angry. Though deep down he could understand why his dad had forbidden him from going to Darkside, it didn’t mean that Jonathan agreed with him.

  Now he was lying on his bed, flicking through an old comic book. He knew that he should probably go to bed, but there was no way he was going to sleep yet. It wasn’t just that he was annoyed with Alain – he also had a horrible nagging suspicion that, somewhere in Lightside, Vendetta was closing in on him.

  A rattling sound at the window made him jump. As Jonathan put down his comic book, another rattle followed hot on the heels of the first. He stole cautiously over to the window and pulled it open, shivering as a draught of November air blew into the room. He looked down to see Raquella standing in the shadows of his back garden, a handful of stones in her palm.

  “What are you still doing here?” Jonathan hissed.

  “I told you,” she called up. “You have to come with me!”

  “You heard what my dad said! He’ll go mad if I go behind his back!”

  Raquella rolled her eyes. “We’ve coped with worse than that, haven’t we? You know I’m right. Why else are you awake?”

  Jonathan bit his lip. The last thing he wanted to do was defy his dad. But if Raquella was right, then by staying here he was placing both Alain and Mrs Elwood in danger. More than that, the pull of Darkside was making his heart pound and the blood swell in his veins. He could almost hear the raucou
s streets bursting into life with the onset of nighttime. In one way, Raquella was right: Alain could never understand that feeling.

  “Hurry up! It’s freezing down here!”

  Jonathan took a final look back at the bright, inviting warmth of his bedroom, and then slipped out of the window, down the drainpipe and into the night.

  3

  Jackdaw Square was carefully stashed away in the southwest corner of Darkside like stolen booty. Four rows of plush terraced housing surrounded a small garden, which was guarded from the public by spiked iron fences. The affluent residents were taken from the higher echelons of Darkside society – elevated above the hovel-dwellers of the Lower Fleet by several lifetimes of robbery and plunder, they were only one forged will away from being able to afford a mansion on Savage Row.

  At three o’clock in the morning, the respectable silence was disturbed by the sound of horses’ hooves. A carriage rattled into the square, pulling up by a house on the north side. The carriage door opened, and two teenagers climbed down on to the pavement. One – a girl – spoke briefly to the driver, and then walked up the steps towards the house. As the carriage sped away, the other – a boy – examined his surroundings in the glow of the street lamps.

  “Very nice,” Jonathan said. “Don’t know why you had to send the carriage away, though.”

  Raquella looked back from the door. “Not everyone wishes to advertise their connections with my master, especially at this time of night. And there is someone here we should speak with.”

  Who, exactly, she didn’t seem inclined to tell him. From the moment they had reached the end of Jonathan’s road to find a carriage waiting for them, the maid had been tight-lipped, refusing to answer his questions. Judging by the crest on the side of the carriage, Jonathan gathered they were travelling in one of Vendetta’s private vehicles, but the route they had taken to Darkside remained a mystery. When he tried to look out of the window to see where they were headed, the maid reached over and firmly pulled down the blinds.