Burn Mark

by Laura Powell

‘I don’t believe it! You nicked it from that old man!’

  ‘What else d’you expect? Light-fingered chav like me.’ She smirked. ‘Actually, he went off so quick I forgot about it. But don’t have any if it’ll offend your delicate morals.’

  Lucas took a swig, just to prove her wrong. The raw alcohol hit the back of his throat and he winced. He realised he hadn’t had anything to eat except a sandwich, five long hours ago. Investigation of his own pockets produced a chocolate bar he’d forgotten about. Better than nothing. Glory, meanwhile, was trying to compose a text message to Auntie Angel. The difficulty of deciding what to write was made worse by having to convey the message in code.

  The glow of the phone’s screen reminded Lucas of the candles left by the earlier intruder. His witchwork supplies included matches, so he was able to light both candles and place their jars on the floor between them. He put out the chocolate bar too.

  Glory raised an eyebrow. ‘Candles, booze, chocolate . . . are you trying to seduce me, Mr Inquisitor?’

  His face set. ‘You know I’m not an inquisitor. I never will be.’

  When he had interrogated her in the Radley, demanding that she tell him what she knew, Glory had felt an instant of real panic. It was an atavistic response, the fear felt by generations of her ancestors responding to the threat made by generations of his. As he had loomed darkly over her, eyes burning with their own pale fire, he had seemed a High Inquisitor in his own right.

  She recognised that she had to get past this. It wasn’t as if the Inquisition had specially bred him to be its own fae-powered witch-hunter. He was a witch by accident, not design. Glory had once known how the Chief Prosecutor’s wife had died. But she’d either forgotten or ignored the fact, and that made her ashamed. The power in Lucas was the power that had murdered his mother. Small wonder he distrusted it.

  Almost as if Lucas knew what she was thinking, he said abruptly, ‘Getting the fae was the worst thing I could imagine. Yet I didn’t ever imagine it; the idea was too impossible. And when it happened, my dad . . . Well. Maybe it was even worse for him. I know you won’t believe it, but my father’s a good man as well as a good inquisitor. They do exist.’

  He looked down at his hands. ‘The crazy thing is we both know that if I’d committed some crime, or got a girl pregnant or started taking drugs . . . that kind of stuff, we could have dealt with it. Got through together. But the fae changed everything.’

  Glory didn’t know what to say to this. Instead, she asked him how he had first got the fae. His answer was as hesitant, and awkward, as her question. It was then they discovered they’d become witches on the same day. From there, Glory moved on to all the other questions she’d been storing up. What his training had been like. What kind of witchwork he liked best. Whether he’d ever tried sky-leaping . . . Before long, Lucas was asking his own questions back.

  Whatever was waiting for them in the outside world, they would face it tomorrow. The two of them sat on grubby piles of curtains, passing the chocolate and hip flask between them, exchanging their stories. For this one night, their defences were lowered, blurred by tiredness and whisky and the smoky flicker of the candle flames.

  ‘What about the rush?’ Glory asked him sleepily, towards the end. ‘The witchwork high?’

  ‘I don’t trust it. I know the thrill would be the same if I was doing harm or hurting someone with my fae,’ Lucas replied. ‘And yet I want to keep feeling it, in spite of everything. In spite of the stain. Because that’s what witchwork is: mud and sweat and blood . . . a kind of fever . . .’

  Glory pulled down the neckline of her jumper, exposing the velvety pinprick under her collar bone. She touched it, feeling the fae’s dark flush.

  ‘Look,’ she told him. ‘Look.’

  Reluctantly, he raised his head, facing her through the haze of light and shadow, as the Devil’s Kiss bloomed beneath her skin.

  ‘It can be beautiful too.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Glory woke up first. She was stiff and cold, and smeared with dirt from her nest of curtains. Her mouth tasted vile. There hadn’t been much whisky in the flask, but on an empty stomach, at the end of a long and tumultuous day, it had been more than enough. She squinted at her watch. Nine twenty. They’d overslept.

  Lucas was still asleep. He was lying face upwards, his black hair falling back from his forehead, frowning in his dreams. In spite of the frown, the vulnerability of his unconscious form disturbed her, and she turned away.

  The water supply had been turned off along with the electricity, but Glory managed to find a scoop of rain water in a tub in the backyard. She splashed her face, rinsed her mouth out and chewed on a wad of gum. It didn’t touch her thirst. Squatting behind a rubbish skip to pee, she reflected that if she’d known she was going to camp out in a derelict building, she’d at least have packed a toothbrush. And some mascara. Her reflection in the window was dismal, unkempt hair straggling around her grey face.

  Lucas was up when she got back. Tersely, she directed him to the water. Both were wondering if they had revealed too much last night. They avoided each other’s eyes. However, when Lucas returned, he had a spring in his step. He was holding a small twist of paper, which he proceeded to rip apart with relish.

  ‘The amulet for Harry’s glamour,’ he explained. ‘If the Wednesday Coven do suspect Harry’s a mole, then I’m safer as myself.’ He looked at his hands affectionately. ‘It’s good to be back.’

  Glory also ripped up the undone amulet she’d been carrying. It felt symbolic of something, though she wasn’t sure what. At any rate, some of the awkwardness faded.

  At quarter to ten, they set off for the local tube station, where Glory remembered seeing an internet centre. They had decided to start their investigations via the web. Their first stop, however, was a café round the corner. After using the washroom, and ordering bacon sandwiches and tea, they both felt slightly more human.

  Glory had turned her phone off at night to save the battery, and also for safety, in case it could be traced. In the optimistic light of morning, this seemed like taking things to extremes. She found she had a curt voicemail from Troy (‘Call me’, received at 2 a.m.), several missed calls from Auntie Angel, one from Nate, and a garbled message from Patch. Word of what had happened to Charlie had spread quickly. There was nothing from her dad. He probably hadn’t even realised she’d been gone for the night.

  In the end she sent another text to Auntie Angel to ask her to keep covering for them, and promising to be in touch soon. Then she switched off the phone again. She was determined not to give another thought to the allegation that Angeline was a long-term snitch. Still, better safe than sorry.

  Lucas asked if any of her messages had been important.

  ‘Troy wants to speak to me. It don’t mean he’s on to you, though. Poor sod probably just wants to give me the heads-up on his dad.’ Charlie had made plenty of people widows and orphans, but Glory couldn’t get any satisfaction from the thought of his own family gathered tearfully by his bedside.

  ‘What’s the deal with you two anyway?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  He didn’t quite have the courage to repeat Nate’s insinuations. ‘I just, um, wasn’t sure how close you are.’

  ‘Not very, considering I’m his future missus.’

  Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. She was tired and dishevelled, and she should have been plain. Yet when he looked at her face, the strong bones and stubborn mouth, he found himself thinking that she was prettier than he’d realised. Striking, at least. Troy must have seen this too.

  ‘Makes business sense,’ Glory explained. ‘If I was to marry into the Wednesday Coven, Charlie’d be able to keep me and my fae under his thumb. He might not know I’m a witch, not for definite, but he’s making plans all the same. He’d like me to be a good little wifey, see, breeding witch-babies for the Morgan empire.’ She tried to sound flippant, but it didn’t quite come off. ‘It turns out there ain’
t many options for coven girls. Even the witchkind ones.’

  ‘That’s . . . awful.’

  For some reason, his pity annoyed her. ‘Oh, stop gawping. I’ll bet marriage-fixing goes on in the Inquisition too. Ain’t that the best way to keep the fae and other riff-raff out?’

  Lucas remembered his father with Marisa in the study, reassuring her about Camilla’s witch-free background. I did the usual checks: her pedigree was impeccable. It had never occurred to him that his parents’ marriage might have been arranged. He pushed the idea away.

  ‘If so, it didn’t work, did it? Look at me.’

  Once in the internet centre, they found a quiet corner away from the other customers. The first thing Lucas did was download the file of the recording he’d taken at the Radley from the miniature spy-cam. Then he set up two new email accounts, and sent the film as an attachment from one account to the other. It was now saved in cyber-space.

  Next, he logged on to an online news archive his school subscribed to. They were going to use it to search for background on Lord and Lady Merle.

  The first item of interest was from the website of the Meadowsweet Children’s Hospice. The charity announced that its patron, Lady Serena Merle, was hosting a fundraising ball on the Easter bank holiday Monday.

  ‘That’s tonight,’ said Glory. ‘Could be our lucky break. A big party like that should be easy to gatecrash.’

  Lucas had lost track of time and dates. It had only been a week since he’d arrived at Cooper Street, yet his old life seemed to belong to another person, long ago and far away. Now he remembered that today was Ashton and Marisa’s wedding anniversary. They were away in Paris for the long weekend. Otherwise, they might even have attended the ball. Marisa had campaigned for the same charity.

  The only real news story they found was about seventeen-year-old Rose Merle’s horse-riding accident last December, though the details of her disability were vague. It seemed that Serena Merle kept a low profile after her bridling and subsequent marriage. Before that, Serena Drew, model and actress, had been a regular in the gossip columns. One photo showed her in an embrace with a still-famous rock star. Her smile was radiant, her throat bare.

  Lucas peered closer. ‘Hey – isn’t that Vince Morgan behind her?’

  Glory leaned in too. The mobster’s craggy profile was unmistakable. ‘I know where that photo was took. It’s the Morgans’ club on the Strand. So that’s where she met Charlie and co.! Did you notice her accent stopped being so la-di-dah when she was talking to him?’

  ‘Whatever her origins, she moves in high-powered circles these days. No wonder she’s been a good source for the coven.’

  They turned their attention to Godfrey Merle and the Cardex News Group. Its dominance of the media was controversial, but remained unchallenged. No doubt it helped that Lord Merle was a major donor to the government.

  The scope and purpose of the conspiracy was becoming clear. The arrest and trial of Jack Rawdon would be led by Paterson and his cronies at the Inquisition, aided and abetted by their government and media contacts. Rawdon’s demise would be followed by a general clampdown on witchkind rights that the public, already fearful of a return to the dark days of Endor, would back all the way.

  In fact, the only remaining puzzle was Godfrey Merle’s motives. Silas Paterson was a militant inquisitor of the old school, the kind who thought all witches were the enemy and should be treated as such. His ally in government, the minister Helena Howell, was a right-wing Christian evangelical who had made a career out of anti-witchkind campaigning. But Lord Merle himself had made no public gestures or statements to suggest a personal animosity towards witches. After all, he was married to one.

  The last website they visited was the BBC news, which had the assassination attempt on Charlie Morgan as its headline. Charlie was described as a ‘prominent businessman, with alleged links to organised crime’. His condition remained critical. They followed a link at the bottom of the webpage to witchcrime updates and the Inquisition. The main story here was that Commander Josiah Saunders had been taken seriously ill. Silas Paterson was now acting head of the Witchcrime Directorate.

  ‘We have to move fast,’ Lucas said. ‘The next attack, and Jack Rawdon’s arrest, will take place later this week. We need to get hold of some real evidence to show the authorities, so they can stop this thing in its tracks.’

  ‘Authorities?’ said Glory suspiciously.

  ‘WICA and the police. Sir Anthony Brady will also have to know.’

  ‘The Witchfinder General! Mab Almighty, ain’t you learned nothing?’

  ‘He’ll do the right thing. No, really – Sir Anthony encouraged the Inquisition’s cooperation with WICA in the first place. He’s an honourable man.’

  Glory wasn’t convinced. Still, they could argue about it later. ‘OK, so I was thinking . . . this party tonight. It’s at the Merle mansion, the charity said. Now, Lady La-di-dah reckons whoever the prickers have been using to do the witchcrimes is locked up somewhere in the Inquisition. But what if the captive witch is closer to home? Posh pile like that must’ve loads of hidey-holes.’

  Lucas was sure Serena Merle would have thought of this herself. All the same, it was worth a try.

  ‘We can poke around His Lordship’s study too,’ Glory added. ‘If his wife’s been snooping for Charlie, she can probably give us her hubby’s PIN numbers and private papers and suchlike. We’ll need to get her on side first. But it’s not like she don’t want to help.’

  ‘Good idea. The other place that needs searching is the Inquisition’s HQ at Outer Temple. There are cells immediately below ground, but lots of people have access to them. The catacombs, however, are a different matter. You can’t get down there without a key.’

  ‘And you’ve got one?’

  ‘No, but I know a man who does. That’s why it’s best if I take the Inquisition, and you go to the party.’

  Glory began to protest, but he cut her off. ‘Listen. I can get into Outer Temple without any trouble. Everyone knows me there. It will be a different matter for you; much more dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t need protecting, thank you very much!’ She glared at him. ‘I’m being practical, OK? Splitting up is a stupid idea. If something goes wrong, and we’re on our own, we’ll be shafted.’

  ‘I agree. That’s why we need to get back-up. My warden, Officer Branning –’

  ‘No prickers. No way.’

  The ensuing argument took them out of the café and into the street. The fact that it was conducted in whispers and hisses didn’t lessen the strength of feeling involved. Lucas explained that the Inquisition had such a heavy presence in WICA that if he contacted his handler himself, the enemy might intercept his warning. Jonah, as an inquisitorial officer, could get round the surveillance restrictions. But Glory utterly rejected the involvement of anyone from the Inquisition. None of them were trustworthy, all were corrupt. As soon as this Officer Branning suspected she was a witch, she’d be registered and bridled and bang to rights. And so on.

  They were so caught up in the row that Troy Morgan burst upon them as if from nowhere.

  In a few brutal seconds, Lucas found himself seized by the scruff of his neck, dragged down an alley, and slammed against the wall.

  ‘Who are you? Who sent you? Tell me your hexing name.’

  Lucas was too breathless to respond, even if he’d wanted to. Dumbly, he shook his head.

  Troy hit him across the face. It was a sharp smack, rather than a violent one, but Lucas had never been struck in his life.

  Glory, meanwhile, was tugging on Troy’s arm with one hand and thumping him with the other. He ignored her. His hard green stare was fixed on Lucas.

  ‘Don’t make me force it out of you.’

  Lucas opened his mouth, but again no words came.

  ‘He’s got nothing to do with the car-bomb.’ Glory’s voice was scratchy with panic. ‘Troy, I swear it. I swear –’

  ‘I know that,’ Troy snarled. ‘But h
e’s still going to tell me what I want to know. You both are.’

  He took out a pair of thick iron handcuffs from his coat and locked Lucas into them. Then he frogmarched him back to the main street, opened the boot of the Mercedes, and bundled his captive into it. Lucas barely had the chance to struggle before the door slammed shut. A passer-by looked at them doubtfully, but Troy held up an impressively shiny badge. ‘Inquisitorial street patrol. Nothing to concern yourself with, ma’am.’

  Then he took Glory by the wrist and, ignoring all squawks of protest, hustled her into the front passenger seat.

  ‘Right,’ he said. He put his hands on the dashboard, making a conscious effort to restrain himself. His voice was like iron. ‘For the first time ever, you’re going to sit in this car and talk to me without lying.’

  The first lie Glory told Troy was that she’d only discovered that Lucas was a WICA agent last night. The second lie was the purpose of Lucas’s mission; Glory said he had been sent to the covens to investigate the recent witch-terrorism attacks. The third lie was that she had helped Lucas spy on Charlie at the Radley because she was afraid he’d report her as a witch to the Inquisition.

  Even so, she told him more of the truth than she’d wanted to. This included the fact that she was a witch, and Lucas’s real identity.

  She expected Troy to react explosively to both. Instead, he gave a twisted smile. ‘I’ve got the Chief Prosecutor’s kid in my boot? Mab Almighty . . . this day is getting more surreal by the minute.’

  As for her fae – ‘Like I didn’t see that one coming.’

  They were parked in a side street only a block away from where Troy had picked them up. Glory did her best not to get too distracted by thoughts of Lucas’s welfare. She needed to concentrate on making her story fluent, the lies persuasive. She didn’t know how much Troy believed, but at least he heard her out.

  ‘How did you find us anyhow?’ she ventured.

  He produced a pocket mirror and a wad of black felt from his pocket, plus two slivers of fingernail. The materials from the shroud.