The Girl Who Fell (The Chess Raven Chronicles)

by Violet Grace

  Published by Nero,

  an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

  Level 1, 221 Drummond Street

  Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

  enquiries@blackincbooks.com

  www.nerobooks.com

  Copyright © Kasey Edwards and Christopher Scanlon 2018

  Kasey Edwards and Christopher Scanlon assert their right to be known as the authors of this work.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

  9781760640248 (paperback)

  9781743820353 (ebook)

  Cover design by Design by Committee

  Text design and typesetting by Tristan Main

  Cover image © aleshin

  To Violet and Ivy. Find your power.

  FACT

  The Luck of Edenhall is a glass cup from the fourteenth century, currently part of the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The cup once belonged to the Musgrave family of Edenhall in Cumberland, and was said to have brought them great luck. In 1791 The Gentleman’s Magazine speculated that a butler from the Musgrave estate had stolen the Luck of Edenhall from fairies.

  FACT

  The unicorn was added to the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom in 1603 when James I of England ascended to the throne.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  chapter 1

  ‘A criminal has no place in the Victoria and Albert Museum,’ Janine the Labeller screeches into her phone, loud enough for everyone in the office to hear.

  Her name isn’t really Janine the Labeller. It’s just Janine. I added ‘the Labeller’ on my first day of work, when I noticed that she’d stuck a sticky name label on her tape dispenser. And her hole puncher. And her scissors. And pretty much everything else on her desk. I’m not sure if she’s always been a labeller or if she took up the habit when she found out she’d be working with a criminal.

  That would be me.

  It isn’t just my criminal record that Janine objects to. She also has issues with the way I dress. On my second day she studied my scuffed commando boots and baby-doll dress with a thin-lipped smile. ‘Ms Raven,’ she said stiffly, ‘your clothes violate the Victoria and Albert Museum’s expectations of staff attire. Even for back-of-house roles.’ She refuses to call the museum ‘the V&A’ like everyone else does. It’s always ‘the Victoria and Albert Museum’, as if Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert, were personal friends of hers.

  I’m used to people not wanting me around. It’s just that they usually manage to be a touch more subtle about it.

  I catch my reflection in the screen of my computer. Ethereal – that’s how people sometimes describe me. And not always as a compliment. But when I look at myself I just think I look, well, unfinished. Even when I make an effort, I look incomplete. Something’s missing, and I’ve never been able to figure out what. This morning I took extra care when I got ready, but I still came up short. Okay, so I didn’t polish my boots. But I did wash and blow-dry my long auburn hair. And even rimmed my green eyes with some eyeliner. It’s not every day you turn sixteen.

  A calendar alert pops up on my screen, reminding me that I’m meeting Marshall Musgrave in five minutes. It’s our regular fortnightly catch-up, where he pretends to be concerned about my welfare and I pretend to believe him, until such time that I can leave without causing offence.

  I mumble to Janine that I’m taking my lunch break. Still on the phone, she responds with a raised eyebrow and twisted bottom lip that conveys seething contempt more effectively than words ever could.

  In some ways, I don’t blame her. I’m also baffled why one of England’s richest and most powerful businessmen kept me out of jail after I got done for stealing.

  Let me rewind a bit.

  The first thing you need to understand is that working in data entry at the V&A Museum isn’t my choice. I’m only here by the grace of Her Majesty’s government’s Second Chances program to keep delinquents like me out of prison. Of course, they don’t use words like ‘delinquents’ anymore. They prefer ‘youth at risk’ or ‘young offenders’, as if thieving is a medical condition you have the misfortune to catch or a stage of life you eventually grow out of.

  Usually the Second Chances program involves some sort of rehabilitation, which is code for spending months bored out of your brain, picking up rubbish from the side of the M6 highway and attending regular meetings with a sponsor who’s considered to be an upstanding member of the community. The sponsor’s good influence is supposed to inspire us to stick to the straight and narrow, and to go back to school – once we’ve paid our debt to society and perfected our rubbish collection skills.

  Marshall Musgrave is my sponsor. He’s also on the Board of Trustees at the V&A. So not only did he arrange to get me out of the lock-up and into the program, he also pulled some strings so I could do my time entering data here instead of breathing in fumes on the side of a busy motorway.

  The second thing you need to know – and this is where things get really awkward – is that Marshall is also the ‘victim’ of my ‘crime’. It’s hard for me to imagine one of the richest men in England, with a reputation as a hard-arsed businessman, being a victim of anything, let alone anything I could do to him. He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year last year because of all the power he wields from his drug company, power plant and telecommunications and internet businesses. He’s also on first-name basis with everyone from Elon Musk to the Pope. You don’t build an empire like that by being a pussycat. But there it is: Marshall is the victim of my criminal ways.

  Showing remorse was a prerequisite for acceptance into the Second Chances program. But I faked it. The truth is, I don’t regret stealing from him one little bit. It was the only way to save Gladys’s life and I’d happily do it again.

  Gladys is my landlord and the closest I’ve ever come to having a friend. I started renting the apartment above Gladys’s laundromat when I was fourteen. My foster father, Larry, was long dead by the time I moved out, and my foster mother, Sue, was happy to see the back of me – so long as she and whichever boyfriend she had at the time still got to pocket the welfare payments. We had a deal: Sue would keep quiet about me moving out before reaching adulthood and I wouldn’t mention that she was taking money for nothing.

  It was a sweet deal for everyone concerned. The only person who didn’t do so well out of the arrangement was Gladys. Because when I say ‘rent’, I mean that she lets me live there for fre
e. All she asks in return is that I service and repair the machines and help out with the ironing and steaming when things get busy. She would probably do better finding a tenant who could pay in actual cash, but for some reason she’s always had a soft spot for me.

  I have no idea how old Gladys is. It’s not the sort of question I ever felt I could ask. She was ancient when I first started visiting her after school and she’s even more ancient now, a decade later. When I was a kid I’d delay going home for as long as possible, sitting at her kitchen table either doing my homework or helping her fold washing, and listening to her sing the same bizarre songs over and over. She has an atonal voice that sounds a lot like a dying cat, but somehow I find it comforting.

  A year back, Gladys was diagnosed with a potentially fatal blood disorder. She tried to hide it from me, but she was getting tireder and tireder, and then one day she could barely get up and I forced her to tell me what was the matter. Her only hope was a kidney transplant or a new, very expensive, class of drugs called hemotenes.

  It just so happens that hemotenes were developed by one of Marshall’s companies. We couldn’t have afforded the drugs in a million years and I wasn’t about to stand by and watch Gladys die. So I used the only real skill I have.

  Hacking.

  I’ve always been better with machines than with people. Computers don’t lie to you; they have no hidden agenda. When I was growing up I spent all my spare time playing around on an old laptop a social worker had given me. It was a piece of junk but I liked it better than any person I knew. I guess that tells you all you need to know about my people skills.

  When Gladys got sick I hacked into Musgrave Pharmaceuticals and flagged a small batch of drugs that was scheduled to be delivered to a pharmacy and rerouted them to the laundromat instead. I hid my tracks, using a different pharmacy and a different courier company each month. And it all went like clockwork. The drugs were delivered, Gladys was looking better. And we weren’t paying a cent.

  Until one day the police came knocking. They read me my rights, took my fingerprints, and then faster than you can say ‘youth custody’ I had a criminal record.

  Fortunately for me, Marshall Musgrave was one of the business leaders closely associated with the Second Chances program. It would’ve looked bad for him and the program if I’d gone to prison after I was convicted. Just imagine the tabloid headlines about the billionaire do-gooder who put a young offender behind bars.

  But credit where it’s due: Marshall not only made sure I stayed out of prison, he also ensured Gladys got a regular supply of the drugs. And he kept all of it, even his good deeds, out of the papers. He’d probably hate his business competitors to know that underneath the tough-guy image he has a good heart.

  So here I am, well on my way to becoming a functional member of society. That is, of course, if you define a bored-out-of-her-brains data-entry clerk a functional member of society. But as much as I hate the mindlessness of entering visitor feedback surveys into a database, I know I’d hate rubbish duty a lot more, so I will forever be in Marshall’s debt.

  As I walk down the corridor towards my preferred meeting spot with Marshall, I hear yelling from the lawn outside. Peering out the window, I see two police officers evicting Neville from the area. Neville is the resident homeless man. I’ve shared many of my homemade ham and cheese sandwiches with him in the five months I’ve been trapped here. I like how he throws back his head and laughs a deep belly laugh, showing off all the missed opportunities for the dental industry.

  Like Neville, I know what it’s like to be hungry. The pittance social services paid to my foster parents was only rarely spent on me. I was an income stream for them – and not a particularly good one. Unlike Neville, I escaped my predicament. But I’ll never forget the aching stomach and shivering body, the feeling of not knowing if or when I would eat again.

  ‘But … but … where’m I s’pos’ to go?’ Neville stammers as he clings to the rusty trolley containing his worldly possessions.

  One of the police officers assumes that menacing stance that all male law enforcers seem to have mastered – legs wide, hips thrust forward, as if they think their dick is a sword. To be honest, he’s not nearly as convincing as he thinks he is. He’s tall but scrawny, and has a weak chin. I bet his email password is something like ‘stud’ or ‘champ’. The other one is built like a bulldog and looks like he could squash Neville like a bug. Far more convincing.

  I hate police. And social workers. And counsellors and doctors. No doubt the endless parade of professional do-gooders who’ve case-managed me over the years would say I have ‘trust issues’. And they’d probably be right. But in my experience, the people who are supposed to care are usually the first to let you down.

  I decide to help Neville as a matter of principle. I whip out my heavily modified phone and fire up a little app I put together to slip in the back door of CADMIS. For the uninitiated, that’s the Computer-Aided Dispatch Management Information System – the secure computer network the police use to send officers to jobs.

  Yes, yes. I know. Breaching computer systems is how I got here in the first place. But I don’t have many talents, and a girl’s got to use what she has.

  I see on CADMIS that there’s been a serious car accident in Chelsea, so with a few quick strokes on my phone I send a notification to all available officers to attend the scene immediately. A couple of seconds later Officer Bulldog lifts his radio and listens, while Constable Weak Chin tries to maintain a threatening stance towards Neville.

  Come on, I will them.

  Bulldog signals to Weak Chin and turns back towards their car. Weak Chin says something to Neville – a parting warning to save face, I’ll bet – then heads to the car too. A satisfied smile creeps across my face as Neville flips Weak Chin the bird and settles back down onto the grass beside the water fountain. I decide to bring him a coffee on my way back. Maybe I’ll splurge on a cupcake for us to share for my birthday.

  But Marshall first.

  The Medieval and Renaissance Room is mostly empty today: just Tony, the security guard who nods at me when I enter; a few schoolkids with sketchpads and pencils; and a portly old man wearing a peacock-blue suit with five enormous, gold-rimmed buttons and a gold cravat, holding a walking stick that seems more decorative than functional. Even from across the room I can see that every one of his fingers is adorned with jewel-encrusted gold rings. I feel his gaze on me so I look away, at the ornate glass objects and what appear to be old treasure chests.

  Marshall isn’t here yet, so I sit down to wait on one of the benches along the wall. As I sit, a sense of deja vu washes over me. Not from being in the room – I’ve come into this room dozens of times since I began the Second Chances program – but from sitting on this bench seat.

  I’ve sat in this exact spot before, I know it. The feeling is intense, and it spills into a memory.

  A lady.

  I think harder, but I can’t summon her face. All I can remember are her shoes. She wore high heels, the kind that click-clacked on the marble floor. We came into the V&A through one of the side doors. More than once. She’d ask me to help her find something, but I never knew what. It was like she wanted to play hide-and-seek, only with the fun part taken out. And she wanted me to hold a cup. It looked more like a vase to me, but she always called it a cup. It was beautiful, colourful and fancy. Occasionally she’d buy me something to eat afterwards and I’d try to eat it slowly. I didn’t want her to know how hungry I was. I wanted to please her. But she always seemed angry, disappointed in me.

  As the memory fades I realise the very same cup – the one from my childhood – is in this room.

  In fact, it’s right in front of me.

  chapter 2

  The rest of the room falls away. The cup’s elegant swirls of blue, green, red and white enamel draw me in. I must have walked through this room a dozen times. Why have I never noticed it before now? A knot of unease tightens in my stomach as I stand and move
towards it. I have to get a closer look. I want to hold it, touch it. At the same time, I sense that I shouldn’t. That it’s dangerous.

  It’s smaller than I remember, roughly the size of a pint glass. When I was a kid it seemed enormous. As I near it, my path is blocked by a group of hungover twenty-somethings who’ve wandered into the room. Most are wearing crumpled t-shirts emblazoned with logos from the US’s finest cultural institutions: Harvard, Yale, Abercrombie & Fitch.

  A tour guide’s voice echoes off the arched ceilings and magnificently carved pillars. ‘Gather round. I’m going to tell you a story,’ she says, holding up a yellow flag that matches the sunflowers on her dress. Twenty or so pairs of Birkenstocked and sneakered feet shuffle around the cabinet that contains the glass cup.

  ‘The cup you see before you is the Luck of Edenhall,’ says the guide, trying to imbue each word with an air of mystery. This lady has a bad case of Frustrated Actor Syndrome. ‘Historians tell us that it’s most likely of Egyptian or Syrian provenance, dating from the middle of the fourteenth century. But not everyone is so sure.’ Her voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper as she glances around theatrically. ‘Some people say it was actually made by …’ she pauses for effect, a big smile on her face ‘… fairies!’

  Her revelation is met with a solitary cough from the wholly underwhelmed crowd. She ploughs on, oblivious. ‘The cup was owned by the rich and powerful Musgrave family of Edenhall – that’s in Cumberland – before it found its way to the museum.’

  My ears prick up. Musgrave? She has to be talking about Marshall’s family. I edge forward through the crowd, staring at the guide. From what I’ve pieced together from Wikipedia and the Time article, Marshall’s family lived on the Cumberland estate for generations until they hit hard times and were forced to sell up.

  ‘Legend has it that a butler in the Musgrave household stole the cup from the Fae, as the fairy folk are called, who were drinking from it by St Cuthbert’s Well,’ the guide continues. ‘It’s believed that the cup is enchanted with magical properties and brought the owners great fortune and prosperity. That’s why it’s known as the Luck of Edenhall. By some accounts, the fairies called out to the butler as he scurried away: “If this cup should break or fall, farewell the Luck of Edenhall!”’