Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles)

by Kevin Hearne

  Sara Falk’s face split into a grin that matched and made even younger the youthful face she carried beneath the prematurely white hair. It was a proud and a mischievous grin.

  “Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, you clever girl. Clever, clever girl! You kept your own heart-stone. That’s how you survived that awful man unbroken! Oh, you shall be fine, Lucy Harker, for you have sense and spirit. The visions that assault you when you touch things are a gift, and though it is not an easy one to bear, believe me that it is a gift and no lasting blight on your life.”

  A tear leaked out of one of Lucy’s eyes and Sara caught it and wiped it away before it hit the black plaster.

  “And this heart-stone, I mean your piece of sea-glass, does it glow when there is danger near?”

  Lucy again looked startled and on edge, as if she was on the point of breaking for the door. Sara put a hand on her shoulder, gently.

  “Did you know that only a true Glint can see the fire that blazes out of it when peril approaches?” said Sara. “Ordinary folk see nothing but the same dull piece of sea-glass. Why, even the estimable Mr Sharp who has abilities of his own cannot see the fire that guards the unique power that you and I have. It is not glowing now, is it?”

  Lucy looked at the dull glass in her hand; it was like a cloudy gobbet of marmalade.

  “Then if you trust it, trust me,” said Sara. “And we shall find a way to soften that pitch and peel this wretched gag off without hurting you. Come to the kitchen and we shall see what we can do.”

  She smiled encouragingly at the gagged face. Her grandfather had indeed once sought out oddities like Lucy Harker and other people with even stranger abilities. The Rabbi Falk had been one of the great minds of his time, and though not born with any powers of his own, he not only believed in what he termed the “supranatural” but also toiled endlessly to increase his knowledge of it and so harness it. He had been a Freemason, a Kabbalist, an alchemist and a natural scientist, obsessively studying the threads of secret power that wove themselves beneath the everyday surface of things and underpinned what he called “The Great and Hidden History of the World”.

  It was perhaps proof that Fate had a sense of humour in that his granddaughter had been born with some of those very elusive powers which he had spent a lifetime searching for and trying to control.

  Sara reached for Lucy’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “You are a Glint, Lucy, and you have fallen among friends,” she said. “You are out of danger here, for this is the Safe House, the most secure house in all London, safer than the Tower itself for it was made so to guard a grave secret, a key of great power, and because of that you can rest, secure that none may enter unless I let them, and so none shall harm you. Now come with me, for you are cold and the kitchen is warm and altogether more welcoming.”

  With that Sara led Lucy from the room so that all that remained was the echo of their footsteps walking away down a stone-flagged passageway, and the sound of her voice saying, “The third thing you must believe, Lucy Harker, is that the world in general, and London in particular, is a far, far stranger place that most people ever know.”

  And as if to prove that fact to the empty room, the hollow clay mannequin stood up, walked across the room and quietly closed the door behind them, before returning to his seat and sitting as motionlessly as before.