by Laura Powell
“And she did. She said Mr. Marlow had lured her out to the tower and tried to attack her. When she fought him off, he’d run away. The building was structurally unsound, so nobody really questioned how the roof had fallen in. Of course she was immediately carted off to the hospital to be treated for shock and stuff, and after police inquiries were over she didn’t come back to school. It was the most tremendous scandal.… I don’t even know if Mia got her triumph in the end. I’ve never seen her at Temple House.
“Nobody connected me to what had happened. I barely knew what had happened myself. But the next evening I went back to the tower. It was fenced off with big KEEP OUT and DANGER signs, and there was a woman standing there, all dolled up in a leopard print coat and high heels. It was the Queen of Pentacles.
“She said, ‘I thought I might find you here,’ and gave me a card. The Fool. And, well, you can imagine the rest.”
Cat couldn’t help comparing his story to her own initiation into the Game. Whereas she’d contributed to a man’s death, Toby had actually saved the knight whose move he’d intervened in. She was grudgingly impressed.
“Didn’t what you’d seen scare you?”
He shrugged. “I was nervous about getting in over my head. Of course I was. I knew I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes; that’s why it took me such a long time to try out the Arcanum.
“Look, it’s obvious you and the other guys each have your own top-secret mission with a Very Important Prize at stake. And I’m just a—a hanger-on. I do see that. But it’s not so terrible to want to be involved, is it? With something bigger than me, I mean. Something bigger and better and more exciting.”
Yes, she could see it all. The princess in her tower, rescue and romance … Which was all the Game would ever mean to him. However hidden their motives, it was clear Flora and Blaine were acting out of the same kind of desperation as she was. Meanwhile, Toby just wanted to play heroes.
And yet Cat was oddly touched that he had shared this story with her. She wasn’t used to heart-to-hearts or receiving confidences.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
He started twisting his hands. “Because—because after we said goodbye on Christmas Eve and I was going home, I saw Mr. Marlow, walking down the street.
“He was moving very slowly, with a cane. His left foot was dragging behind him, and the leg didn’t look right. All stiff and crooked. He used to be quite good-looking, in a slimy sort of way, but now he just looked ill.
“We recognized each other at the same time. Marlow went even paler than he was before. He … he clutched my arm and—and said in this horrible rasping voice, ‘You can’t win. You can’t win.’ ” Toby licked his lips nervously.
“Then what?” Cat prompted.
“Then I ran off. But … now I … I can’t stop thinking about it. It felt like an omen. Or a warning.”
Cat shook her head. “It’s no secret that chancers can’t win prizes. And it’s no wonder the man’s pissed at you. You ruined his move.”
“I guess. But it was a weird coincidence, don’t you think? Meeting him just before we start our quest.”
“Maybe the kings and queens arranged for you to bump into him, just to scare you.”
She told Toby about her meeting with Alastor. “We’ve obviously got the GMs worried,” she said in conclusion, “and that’s a good sign.”
Toby’s expression brightened. “True. Once we’ve changed the Game, knights like Marlow won’t be driven to kill other players. Everyone can be a winner.”
Cat was pleased that Toby had got over his misgivings so easily, but she felt a little envious, too. Whatever lay ahead, she knew she couldn’t face it with his kind of optimism. And what had happened to the others? They had arranged to meet at three, and it was nearly quarter past.
But the next moment, a taxi drew up and Flora got out. “Gosh, I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said breathlessly. “We had one of Daddy’s golf cronies over for lunch and it went on and on. Did everyone have a nice Christmas?”
Although he hadn’t announced himself, Blaine had also appeared, just behind Cat and Toby. His hood was pulled low over his face and he was swigging from a can. At Flora’s words, he spat on the pavement.
Flora wasn’t easily cowed. “Hello, Blaine,” she said sweetly. “How was your day?”
“Super. I robbed a little old lady and spent the money on crack.”
Her smile didn’t slip. “If you’re trying to shock me, I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that.”
“That’s assuming I give a toss about what you think.” He chucked his can into the gutter. “Now we’ve got the Season’s Greetings over with, isn’t it about time we made our move?”
Cat had assumed that their meeting point would be where they’d create the threshold. She liked the symmetry of it, too: Piccadilly was where she’d first met the Knight of Wands, and where the King of Swords had taunted her with the effigy of Justice. However, she wasn’t the only one who wanted their threshold’s location to have some scenic or symbolic significance. It emerged that Flora wanted to move up to Mercury Square while Toby preferred to walk down to Admiralty Arch—“I’ve always thought it’s got a triumphal sort of feel about it.”
“Give us a look at the trinket,” Blaine said abruptly.
“Careful,” said Toby. “Once you’ve thrown it, the faces will be complete and—we hope—ready to work their magic.”
Blaine flicked the die into the air. Sure enough, as soon as he caught it, the final face was marked by a zero. “Nice. So all we need to do is give it a roll and, Open Sesame, a threshold appears.”
“I think so, but we don’t want—”
Too late. Blaine had already stooped to send the die skittering down the pavement. Its triangular shape meant that it moved oddly, more of a bounce than a roll, yet the motion had a strange sense of purpose to it. As they watched, it tumbled over from edge to edge in a rough circle, before coming to a stop. This time, each felt an unmistakable throb on their right palms, as the four faces of the die glowed silver, then returned to blankness. Now it was just a lump of dark metal.
Flora’s breath hissed. “You irresponsible jerk.”
“Oh, get over it. If I’d left it to you lot, we’d be debating locations till next Christmas.”
“So where’s the threshold, then?” asked Toby. “And can I be the one to raise the coin?”
“Be my guest.” Cat pointed toward a fast-food outlet a few feet away on Shaftesbury Avenue. The lit-up HOT FOOD sign in the window had a wheel worked into the first o. A few seconds later, Toby was proudly brandishing his coin.
“Look, it’s got our zero on it as well! OK—time to rock ’n’ roll.”
“What, no big speeches?” Blaine jeered. “No gathering round for a team pep talk?”
“You want to make a speech, go ahead,” Flora replied. “Please. I’m sure it would be most inspiring.”
Cat looked up from where she’d been staring at the pavement. “I dunno about fancy speeches, but it seems to me that if any of us are having second thoughts about this … thing … we’re doing, now’s the time to say so. Because once we throw the coin, it’ll be too late.”
She waited. A motorbike roared past, a woman giggled into a phone, pigeons pecked for crumbs in the gutter. Nobody spoke. Slowly, carefully, they met each other’s eyes. Slowly, carefully, they each gave a brief nod.
“All right then. We’re off to see the wizard.”
THEY WERE IN A CITY of ruin: of ragged walls and blind windows, bones of buildings in a starless night. Even the air tasted stale. The only sign of life came from the threshold, and the glow of the burger bar’s menu—an incongruous token of the other side.
But they had only been peering around them for a moment or two when a jumble of light and music began to seep into the night. It seemed to be coming from what had once been Great Windmill Street. Close, Cat realized uncomfortably, to her own flat.
“Sounds like a part
y,” said Toby, setting off in its direction.
Cat was the last to move. The flat, with its plasterboard walls and damp ceiling, might not be much, but she didn’t want to see it reduced to rubble. She was even more uneasy once she’d turned the corner and was faced with the Palais Luxe, lit up like a schizophrenic Christmas tree. Only it wasn’t the Luxe anymore: according to the ultraviolet lettering above the door, it was a club called Hecate’s.
Its sooty brick façade was the only intact structure on the street. A dance beat pumped out of windows pulsing with Technicolor, and an enormous bouncer stood guard outside, his arms folded menacingly across his chest. “No card, no entry,” he growled.
His expression didn’t soften when Flora held out the Magician card in her best party manner. However, after clearing his throat in a resentful sort of way, he condescended to unhook the rope from across the entrance.
Before Cat could go in, Blaine stopped in the doorway. “There’s a redhead who works at the Luxe. She’s some kind of relation of yours.”
“My aunt. How did …?”
“Soho’s a small neighborhood.” He stepped into the lobby. “You never know; a bit of insider’s knowledge could come in handy.”
It was true that, thanks to Bel’s tour, Cat was familiar with the layout of the Luxe. But although Hecate’s might have had the same basic structure—and the same shabby paisley carpet in the entrance—that was where the resemblance ended.
For one thing, it was packed: a smoky fug of people, some of whom were in costume. A Japanese geisha, a trio of men in Second World War RAF uniform, a woman in an elaborate powdered wig, an old gent in a toga …
“Who are all these people?” Toby asked.
Flora shrugged. “Optical illusions. Ghosts of players past. God knows. They’re just part of the scenery; it’s the Magician who counts.”
“For illusions, they feel pretty solid,” Cat grumbled, as a girl in leather hot pants crashed past, squealing endearments at a man on the other side of the lobby. “Somehow I don’t reckon Mr. Abracadabra will look much like the mug shot on his card. Which means we’ll have to work our way through the rooms and hope we’ll know him when we see him.”
They began with the basement, which had been set up with a stage where showgirls writhed in costumes of tattered feathers and diamanté. Puffs of dry-ice mist swirled around the tables that crammed the floor. If the Magician was there, he was keeping a low profile, and after five minutes of knocking into tables and getting sworn at for obstructing the view, they retreated back to the stairs.
As they moved up the building, the din intensified. What had been the Luxe’s gaming hall was now an amusement arcade, where shooter and racer games were packed alongside pinball and slot machines. Everything blared with noise and color as players pushed coins into slots, pulled levers and furiously hammered on buttons.
“This is completely insane,” Flora called out, pushing back a strand of sweaty hair. There was something about her expression—something glinting and reckless—that reminded Cat of how she’d been the first time they met at Temple House. Perhaps the excitement of the place was catching. At any rate, Cat couldn’t take her eyes off all those whizzing, blinking panels. Her heart raced and ears rang. Was this how the gamblers at the Luxe felt as they waited for the roulette wheel to spin? For a confused moment, she could have sworn she saw Bel, tilting her head back and laughing, and she had to steady herself against a slot machine. Focus, she told herself, focus.
“What’s the matter with you?” It was Blaine, glowering at her.
“I thought I saw someone I knew. Just for a second.” Come to think of it, one of the dancers in the basement had looked very like the blonde from the strip joint down her street. And that fat man lighting a cigar was a dead ringer for her old geography teacher.
“Me too. It’s not real, though. Don’t let it get to you.”
Blaine’s hood had been pushed back, and under the glaring lights Cat saw the remains of a bruise on one cheek. She was gripped by the absurd notion that if she were to put a fingertip to it, and the purplish smears under his eyes, she could rub out the markings, as lightly and easily as if she were using an eraser on pencil.
“What?”
She realized she had been staring and looked away, confused.
The upstairs dance floor was the source of the techno beat thudding through the building, yet the couples beneath the glitter balls swayed in sleepy embraces, as if moving to a melody that only they could hear. On the other side of the floor was the way through to the bar. Behind a mirrored counter, bartenders juggled bottles and glasses with dizzying ease. Cat grabbed a tumbler of ice and held it against her hot cheeks.
It was less busy here than in the rest of the club, with most of the crowd concentrated in the center of the room. Some sort of demonstration or performance was taking place. A man in a top hat and tails was presiding over a card table while his audience called out instructions and encouragement, interspersed by raucous cheers.
Cat thought she recognized the game. She’d seen a version of it played on street corners, where gullible passersby could be waylaid, and a quick exit made at any sign of trouble. It was known as Follow the Lady. To begin, the dealer would place three cards face down on a table. He’d nominate one of the cards—usually the Queen of Spades—as the target card, and then quickly rearrange the cards to confuse the player as to which was which. The player was invited to choose one of the three cards. If it turned out to be the Queen, he’d win an amount equal to the stake he bet; otherwise, he lost his money. Of course, thanks to the dealer’s sleight of hand, and all manner of misdirections, the only sure thing was that the player would lose.
“Care to place a bet, my friends?” The man looked at them craftily. His eyes were black and very bright, his face creased and yellowish. “It’s the easiest game in the world!”
He spread out the Three of Clubs, Seven of Diamonds and Ace of Hearts and waved a red silk handkerchief over the table. Now they were their Game of Triumphs equivalents. “Three! Seven! Ace! But where’s the Lady?” With a wink, he reached behind a pretty girl’s ear and pulled out the Queen of Spades. He tossed all his cards in the air; when they fell face down on the table, there were only three again. “Pick a card, any card!”
“The Twelfth,” said Blaine.
The whole room seemed to freeze. Heat, noise, movement all drained away into a ringing silence. Then, as if at the flick of a switch, the party resumed, although the Magician’s smile had vanished. “No more bets!” He gave a hasty bow before backing away from the table. “The entertainment is over, ladies and gents, and the game is played! Thank you for your time!”
Pushing through his former audience, the Magician headed for a door marked STAFF ONLY at the side of the bar. The four chancers hurried after him, into a storage space stacked with crates of bottles. Ahead of them was a set of steps leading to another exit, through which their man had disappeared in a whisk of coattails.
They found themselves on the roof, in a small flat space between the gables. It was furnished with a bench and a sprinkling of cigarette butts. A string of tropical-fruit fairy lights sagged overhead. The Magician was standing at the very edge of the roof, staring across the skeletal city.
“Excuse me, sir,” Toby began. “The four of us are chancers, right, and the Hanged Man gave us your card—in a manner of speaking—so we were hoping …”
“I know, I know,” he muttered, gnawing at his lip. “The Twelfth on his tree. And you wish to bring him down from it.… Well, well. If the Wheel has turned that way, then I must follow it. Fortunae te regendum dedisti, dominae moribus oportet obtemperes.… So it was at the beginning, so it has always been.”
“And you were there at the beginning, weren’t you?” Flora said, looking at him intently. “Thoth, the mage, and first maker.”
His forehead creased, as if he was trying to remember something. “I was once, perhaps.… But I have had many names, and the cards many makers. The
man of whom you speak I first met by the gates of Atlantis. Or was it Babylon? There was a temple in Thebes, I recall, and an apple tree. Haec nostra vis est, hunc continuum ludum ludimus—”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Blaine roughly. “Question is, will you help us release him?”
At this, the Magician shot him a sly look; the showman’s gleam was back in his eyes. “I must do as I am bid, young sir. Oh yes indeed. See how my Lady plays her tricks: once I was a god, now I am a charlatan. Still, I have kept a few trappings of my craft. Behold!”
He opened out his coat to reveal all manner of pockets sewn into its faded scarlet lining. From one he produced a shot glass, from another a steel letter opener. Patting his outer pockets, he drew out a cigarette lighter and, digging deeper, a plastic poker chip.
With a flourish, he spread his red handkerchief on the bench and laid out his trophies. “As above, so below,” he told them, with one of his quick crooked smiles.
They might have looked like a load of junk, but the objects did correspond, in a skewed sort of way, to those shown on the Magician’s card.
“Four aces, my friends—that’s what you’ll be chasing, if you wish to bring about Yggdrasil’s fall.”
“Yggdrasil … is that a demon?” Toby asked breathlessly.
The Magician laughed. “It is a tree, young master, and one you saw in the place of sacrifice. Axis Mundi. Yggdrasil. Etz haChayim. It has nearly as many names as I, for many seeds may fall from the one fruit. To reap its harvest will take the powers of the earth and air, fire and water.”
“The first cards of the Lesser Arcana,” said Cat.
“Bravo. A big hand, please, for the lady in the corner!” The Magician mockingly tipped his top hat in her direction.
“Behold the Ace of Pentacles, Root of Earth.” Taking the poker chip, he spun it on the bench. When it settled, they could see the disc was no longer plastic, but made of clay. “Ta-da!” He spun it again, faster and faster, until its blur crumbled into a little scoop of dust. A puff of his breath and it was gone. “Next Cups, Root of Water.” He held up the shot glass, which transformed into dripping ice that melted in his hands. “Swords, Root of Air.” At this, he picked up the knife and threw it over Flora’s head. Instinctively she ducked, but as it flashed through the air, it turned into a white bird that swooped upward and away. “And lastly, Wands, Root of Fire,” he announced, flicking open the long black lighter. The next moment it shot skyward in an explosion of rainbow sparks as the Magician took a bow and looked round for applause.
