by Laura Powell
As Troy opened the door, she glimpsed a big light room, with lots of books on the shelves and, intriguingly, two wine glasses on the table. There was a kicked-off pair of women’s heels underneath it.
‘Why can’t I come in?’ she complained. ‘You afraid I’m going to lower the tone or something?’
‘This is my private space. It’s got nothing to do with the coven, and nothing to do with my family. And I’d like to keep it that way.’
Troy closed the door on her, re-emerging a few minutes later in a clean shirt and carrying an overnight bag. Glory was dying to ask who the shoes belonged to, but didn’t quite dare.
In spite of everything, she was looking forward to going on a spree with Morgan money. But here too Troy proved a disappointment. He only let her look in one boutique and rejected her first three choices of dress: leopard print, scarlet and sequins. ‘You don’t want to stand out. You want to disappear into the background,’ he told her, before presenting her with a selection of outfits that were as plain as they were pricey.
‘Frumpy,’ she pouted.
‘Classic,’ he retorted. ‘And don’t go mad with the heels. You might need to move fast.’
In the end they compromised on a dark purple cocktail dress and black slingbacks. Anything was better than Glory’s current get-up. She felt like an urchin, with her grubby black clothes and unwashed hair. The snooty sales assistant clearly thought that Troy had picked her up in the street, and handled his platinum credit card as if it had been dipped in manure. This provided pretty much the only amusement of Glory’s day.
Perhaps to avoid similar censure, Troy chose a distinctly downmarket hotel for their base. They would only be using the place for a couple of hours, to make their final preparations and consolidate their plans. The receptionist looked them over wearily, with the air of someone who’s seen it all before.
Glory went to use the shower while Troy made phone calls to the hospital and various coven contacts. She returned to find him typing on his smartphone. ‘What’s the latest?’
‘Dad’s in intensive care. He’s suffered forty per cent burns, but his condition’s stable, at least.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Well, she was sorry for Troy, at least. ‘I’m sure you must want to be with your family right now.’
‘Dad’s not the type who’d appreciate me snivelling by his bedside. Not when there’s work to be done. Mum understands that too. Uncle Vince’s team are shaking down the usual suspects, trying to find out who Jonesy’s blackmailers are, and once we know that, I’ll set about dealing with them – whether they’re connected to the Inquisition or not. But in the meantime . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I might as well kick some bad-guy butt with you.’
While Troy took his turn in the bathroom, Glory set about crafting their tickets. She had already looked them up on the charity’s website, and seen how they were designed as personalised invitation cards. Now she carefully copied out the text on to two plain white postcards. She used gold ink, and reproduced the style and layout as accurately as possible. They’d decided that disguising Troy’s identity would be more trouble than it was worth, but that she should change her name to match her subtly-altered appearance. The name on her ticket was Elizabeth Brantly.
Glory’s method was close to the one Lucas had used to replicate the diamond necklace, since both objects represented similar things. Before enfolding the cards in the cashmere stole she would be wearing to the party, she drew a picture of Lord Merle’s coat-of-arms (found on an internet heraldry site) and pasted a twenty-pound note (courtesy of Troy’s wallet) on to the back of each. The fascination of luxury, money and privilege were now all represented in the witchwork.
As she was wrapping up the cards, her mobile beeped. It was a text message from Lucas, with a mobile number. ZConnor, in case of emergency. Good luck. She was just saving the witch-agent’s number when Troy came back from the bathroom. She felt guilty hiding it from him but maybe Lucas was right. Better safe than sorry.
‘Here you go, Cinders,’ she said, handing the fascination over to Troy to uncover. ‘Your fae-godmum says you shall go to the ball!’
He took out the tickets and examined them carefully. ‘I knew you had talent,’ he said. ‘But this is really impressive.’
Glory glowed. It felt great to be witchworking in the open. It was also good to be on friendly terms with Troy. Once again, she wondered what he knew about her mother’s murder and, if he knew, what he thought about it. But to ask him would raise his suspicions about her motives for helping Lucas. She couldn’t take the risk.
Looking out of the bus, Lucas viewed his home neighbourhood with a stranger’s eye. The squares were leafy, the streets quiet, the paint on the walls as smooth as cream. The people strolling on the pavements didn’t have a single tattoo or tracksuit among them.
He got off the bus one stop early to hunt for a payphone. Out of habit, and superstition, he looked around to check that he was unobserved. Troy’s threats were not to be taken lightly. But Lucas knew that if things went wrong, somebody in a position of authority would need to know the full story. He would start with Witch Warden Branning.
The call didn’t begin well. Officer Branning was angrier than Lucas would have thought possible. Since learning of the assassination attempt on Charlie Morgan, Lucas’s father had been phoning Jonah every hour on the hour, asking for news of his son, and demanding that Lucas be recalled from duty. He had threatened to go to Jack Rawdon himself.
Jonah had only managed to put him off after speaking to Agent Connor. She’d expected to hear from Lucas following the surveillance operation at the Radley, and had taken the emergency step of contacting Angeline after news of the car-bomb broke. The old lady confirmed that she’d heard from Glory that she and Lucas were alive and well, but were now out of contact. This news went only part-way to relieving the general anxiety.
Lucas was ashamed. It had honestly never occurred to him how the attack on Charlie, and his own lack of communication, would affect the people responsible for protecting him. Yet he disliked being treated like a foolhardy kid, even if he had behaved like one. Besides, there were much more important things to worry about – as he told Officer Branning the moment he could get a word in. ‘It’s a matter of national security,’ he said, an unconscious note of hauteur creeping into his voice. ‘You’ll understand the seriousness of the situation when you see the recording I made.’
‘What situation? What recording? What –’
Lucas explained that he’d saved the film of Charlie’s meeting in the Radley in an anonymous email account. It was something Agent Connor needed to see as well, but he couldn’t risk alerting the team at WICA because he didn’t know what kind of surveillance they were under. ‘I’ll text you the log-in and password for the account in a couple of hours. But there’s something I need to do first.’
Jonah made various exclamations of protest, exasperation and alarm.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lucas at the end of them. ‘I really can’t tell you anything more for the moment. Once you’ve seen the film, make sure Agent Connor sees it too. Don’t worry; I’ll be in touch soon.’ Then he hung up.
There was, in fact, nothing stopping Lucas from letting Jonah access the film right then and there. But that would set in motion a train of events he wasn’t ready for. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Troy and Glory’s reaction if he brought the authorities in behind their backs. It was that he was sure they were on the right track. They just needed a head-start, to get on with the job without any outside interference.
Lucas had learned from Jonah that although his father and stepmother had planned to return from Paris early that afternoon, France was gridlocked by a transport union strike. Even if they had tried to come home earlier, they wouldn’t have got past the blockade. They would certainly be away for a few hours more. Since Philomena was spending the Easter weekend at her dad’s, the coast was clear. He got past the guard, camera and access code at the Stearne residence’s gate, then
went up to the front door and put the key in the lock. He could hear Kip barking inside. The dog rushed up in a slobbering frenzy of enthusiasm, as if he’d been away for a year.
He kept away from the portraits, though. All those generations of Stearnes, with their unsmiling mouths and proud eyes, would be the witnesses to his burglary. There was no other way of describing it, even if the end did justify the means. His father would be implicated in the plot if it succeeded, for it would be his job to convict Jack Rawdon of witch-terrorism and treason, and send him to the Burning Court. But Lucas had to remind himself that when – if – the case came to trial, his secret would be out, and the Stearnes in disgrace. A new Chief Prosecutor, probably one of Paterson’s cronies, would conduct the trial.
He couldn’t worry about that now. It was time to make his second phone call of the day. He switched on the mobile he’d left in his bedroom, ignoring the accumulated text messages, voicemails and missed calls, and dialled the number for Rory Dixon.
‘Rory? Hi. Lucas Stearne here. Yeah . . . Really good, thanks . . . Actually, I’ve got a bit of a favour to ask . . .’
Rory was more than eager to oblige. He was a junior lawyer in the Office of the Inquisitorial Court, who calculated that making pals with the Chief Prosecutor’s son would be a smart career move. However, there was a problem. ‘The thing is, Lucas, I’ve got quite a lot on. I wasn’t actually planning to go to the Hammers tonight.’
Lucas’s voice swelled with disappointment. ‘But you did say come any time . . .’
And somehow, Rory found himself promising to visit the Inquisition that evening, and process the application to bring Lucas Stearne in as his guest.
Lucas rewarded himself with a shower in his en suite bathroom. It was as if the squalor of Cooper Street was steaming out of his pores. His clothes felt like old friends. Here was his proper self: the same but different. Irrevocably so. His right hand rested on his left shoulder blade, the one with the Devil’s Kiss. He saw Glory again, leaning towards him through the candlelight, the dark stain waxing and waning under her skin.
He blinked the image away.
From a trunk in the attic, he pulled out the inquisitorial cloak that had belonged to his grandfather. It was made of heavy black wool with a lining of scarlet silk, faded with age. He stuffed it into a rucksack, collected black gloves and a small torch from his bedroom, and headed downstairs. Getting into Ashton’s study was easy enough. Lucas knew a spare key was hidden in the Chinese porcelain vase in the library. Moments later, he was pulling away the set of Encyclopaedia Maleficia from the bookshelves to expose the safe behind.
His father had shown him how to access the safe in case of emergency. The numbers on the combination lock were the date of Camilla’s death, in reverse order. The safe contained various legal documents, such as the deeds to the house and Ashton’s will. Lucas wasn’t interested in any of these. His target was the two iron keys tucked at the back.
One of the keys’ handles was marked with a tiny cross, the other with a sword. They were too small and plain to look like anything special, yet were one of only four pairs that provided access to the Inquisition catacombs. The only way to get down there was through the crypt of St Cumanus’s church. A couple of times a year, the catacombs were opened up for historical tours. Otherwise, they were out of bounds. Ownership of the keys was a matter of prestige, rather than practical use. Apart from the Witchfinder General, only three inquisitorial families had a personal set: the Stearnes, the Hopkins . . . and the Patersons.
Lucas slipped them into the rucksack with the cloak. They were iron, but the quantity of metal was too low to cause him any discomfort. Carefully, he closed the safe and replaced the encyclopaedias. Then he turned to his father’s computer. With the industrial action in France, he still had a good hour before Ashton and Marisa were likely to return, and before he needed to set off for the Hammers. He knew he might never have an opportunity like this again.
Getting started was easy. He’d seen his father log on enough times to know that his password began with a ‘G’ and was eight characters long. Lucas guessed the G was for Grantham, the name of the historic Stearne house that been sold in the nineteenth century. Sure enough, ‘Grantham’ got him in.
He immediately brought up the National Witchkind Database. There were four access levels. Level One recorded the names of anyone suspected but not proven to be a witch. Level Two provided basic information on all proven witches whose identity wasn’t classified. Level Three gave access to their personal files. Level Four contained summarised reports on all witches whose identity was secret or sensitive. To read their complete case histories you had to apply directly to their warden, or whichever state official was responsible for their supervision.
Only senior inquisitors could use Level Four. Lucas knew the individual access codes for this were changed every week, and sent to the relevant personnel via an encrypted file. As long as Ashton had logged on to Level Four within the past seven days, Lucas had a good chance of recovering the sequence. His principal tool would be dust.
House dust is primarily composed of airborne pollution, human skin and hair. This was his father’s private room, so it would mostly be his father’s dust. Although the housekeeper would have been in over the weekend, to look after Kip and put things in order, she didn’t have a key to the study. Even so, the surfaces were fairly clean, and it took Lucas some time to sweep the thin film of dust lying over the desk and windowsill on to a piece of paper. He had better luck with the top shelves of the bookcase, behind volumes that were rarely consulted. The dust was quite thick there.
Materials gathered, Lucas clicked on the log-in page for Level Four of the witchkind database. He sat for a while in his father’s chair, fingers spread out on his father’s keyboard, visualising Ashton at his desk. Then he held the paper layered with dust over the keyboard and blew, very gently.
The dust did not fall. It hung above the keys in a greyish-beige mist. Lucas’s breath had sent his fae into this mist, and now it worked its way into the particles of his father’s skin and hair, the fibres of his clothes. For a second or two, the fae-dust floated before his eyes, before hazy trickles of it began to float down to the black keys, one trickle after another.
The first key the dust landed on was P, where it left the faintest of blurs, like a fingerprint. Then 5. Then 9. The ?/ key. J, Q, A. With a final puff, 6.
Lucas typed in P59, and stopped.
The fourth symbol could either be ? or /, depending on whether he used the shift key or not. Suddenly, everything was in doubt. He didn’t know what letters, if any, should be in caps, and whether the numbers should be symbols instead. He would only have three chances to type the code before the security system was alerted and the database shut down.
Lucas stared at the smudgy keys again. Was he imagining it, or was the dust somewhat heavier on the ?/ key, the J and the 6?
He typed in p59?Jqa^, and held his breath.
Access Confirmed.
A guilty thrill ran through him. This was his chance! As a precaution, he began by typing in his own name into the search engine, and was relieved to see that nothing came up. His identity was still protected by a false name. He could now move to the real object of the exercise: finding out what the Inquisition had to say about Angeline Starling.
It was very straightforward. Up popped Angeline’s profile, along with a photo. Quickly, he scanned the notes. Her first encounter with the Inquisition was at the age of twenty, when she had been witch-ducked and pricked under suspicion of witchwork. The results were inconclusive. She had been taken in for questioning by the police and Inquisition on three subsequent occasions, and each time she was released without charge. Lucas guessed this was in conjunction with the Starling Twins’ activities. But twenty-eight years ago, Angeline had presented herself at the Witchcrime Directorate and ‘volunteered information pertaining to the whereabouts of a known witch-criminal’.
Cora Starling. It had to be. Lucas could
see that the dates matched, and felt foolish for not making the connection before. It also explained why Glory had become so agitated when he told her the year when Angeline was alleged to have started informing. She must have turned in her own sister to the Inquisition! Where she was witch-ducked, and drowned . . .
Lucas thought of the Starling Girl shrine in Angeline’s room in Cooper Street, and how the old lady was always droning on about the sacred memory of her beloved sisters. Then there was the way she doted on Glory, and hated the Morgans. Her betrayal made no sense.
He read on. Angeline had never been formally tested or registered, but her fae was estimated to be a lowly Type B. Presumably that was why she hadn’t been bridled: they knew her to be a witch, but she was more useful to them as an informant. Her Current Status read: Operation Echo. Active. Operation Echo was the mission to place Harry Jukes in Cooper Street. To learn about Angeline’s activities in more detail, he would have to submit an application to Commander Josiah Saunders or another name that he didn’t recognise.
Lucas pressed ‘print’. He knew it would hurt Glory to see this, but she needed to know, even though she’d no doubt find some way of dismissing it as yet more Inquisition propaganda.
He saw there was a list of reference numbers at the bottom of Angeline’s page. They were links to more Level Four files, probably those relating to her sisters. The other Starling Girls might be dead but their records were still classified. Lucas clicked on the top one.
It took him to Edie Wilde, nee Starling.
Glory’s mother. Charlie’s victim. Alleged witch.
He had read all this in the Cooper Street file, which had been compiled by the Inquisition and supplemented by WICA. According to this, she was an unregistered low-grade witch who’d probably got the fae in her early twenties. Yet the version of Edie Starling on the database seemed like a different person entirely.
