Ghost Dance

by Rebecca Levene

  The university library was easy to find. It loomed over the nearby college quad, its centre topped by a tower that looked more industrial than academic. Morgan wasn't sure what he'd imagined the place might look like, but it definitely wasn't this. The building reminded him of Battersea Power Station, and it was dauntingly huge.

  The elderly man guarding the entrance waved Morgan through when he showed his police ID, not offering to help him find his way. Even at this time of year, with the students absent, the place was packed. There were a dozen people Morgan could have asked for directions, but he took one look at their smooth, confident faces and walked on. He stumbled on the catalogue room by pure chance and sat at an unoccupied computer, glad he'd found something he knew how to handle.

  A search for John Dee yielded hundreds of results, but when he paired it with other search terms - alchemy, philosopher's stone, eternal life - he narrowed down the list. He scribbled the titles on a scrap of paper, his handwriting cramped and awkward, an atrophied skill. Beside each title he wrote the library code, a collection of numbers and letters.

  Then he sat and stared at them.

  "Took me weeks to figure out the system here," a quiet voice said behind him.

  He snapped his head round. The young woman standing by his shoulder pulled back and smiled, her sunny expression framed by spiky blonde hair.

  "I'm getting the hang of it," he told her.

  She nodded, but he could see she didn't believe him. "You're that policeman, aren't you? The one who's looking into Dr Granger's murder?"

  "How the hell did you know that?"

  She rested a hand against the back of his chair. Her fingers were delicate, but he saw that the nails were bitten to the quick. "Don't worry, I haven't been stalking you. Coby told me about you. His description was spot on."

  Morgan leaned back, elbows against the desk. "Oh yeah?"

  She nodded but didn't elaborate and he wondered just what Coby had said. Nothing flattering, he was sure.

  She squinted at the list of books he'd noted. "You're researching John Dee? Coby said you were asking about Dr Granger's research."

  "Just getting some background detail."

  "Want some help? It's just I'm going up there myself, so we could find the books together. Though I've got to warn you, most of them are as dull as dried dog shit. Actually, I could just précis them for you. No reason both of us should suffer through it, is there?"

  Her eyes sparkled into his and he found himself nodding.

  "I'm Julie, by the way. I'm Dr Granger's other PhD student. God, sorry, I should have said that straight off." She scratched her short nails against the back of her neck, frowning.

  "OK Julie," he said, "show me the way."

  She led him up a long flight of stairs. Her gait was fast and relaxed, the material of her jeans pulling tight across her arse with each stride. He alternated between enjoying that and studying the view from the windows. As they climbed he saw aerial snapshots of the town, odd, mismatched angles on trees and buildings which made it seem as if the library was moving location as he climbed.

  She finally left the stairwell at what must have been the sixth or seventh floor, plunging into a maze of rooms. The bookshelves were packed so tightly they were concertinaed together. Morgan couldn't figure out how anyone reached them, until he saw a gangly young man push two shelves aside to create a space between them and he realised they must be fixed on rollers.

  He'd been told this was a copyright library and that it received one of every single book published in the world, but he hadn't really thought what that meant. He was used to the internet, data without form or location. It was odd to think of all this knowledge having a physical presence, solid and destructible.

  The room they ended in was unoccupied. Julie perched on the end of a wooden table, her legs crossed at the ankle.

  "Welcome to my home from home," she said. "It's OK for the psychologists and the chemists, all the stuff they need is in journals, they can do their research online. Us historians still need to look at primary sources and out-of-print editions of books no one's ever heard of. I've spent more time in this place than in my own room."

  Morgan perched on the other side of the table, the shape of his body a mirror of hers. "I can think of worse places to be."

  She looked uncomfortable, scratching at her neck again in what he realised must be a habitual gesture. "Yeah, sorry. I know I'm lucky to be here."

  "Bet you worked your arse off for it, though."

  She grinned and he felt himself flush. He realised he'd started running his own hand across his cornrows and he brought it to his side. "So tell me about your research. That guy - Coby - he said Dr Dee's big thing was immortality."

  She laughed and he watched her T-shirt ride up her abdomen to reveal an inch of thin, pale stomach. "Yeah, he would say that, it's what his PhD's all about. But Dr Dee had his finger in a lot more pies than that. Back then it wasn't like it is now. These days I start out in humanities and then I specialise in history, I narrow that down to the Tudors and now I'm just researching one man's life. Not even all of it, just a tiny corner. There's so much knowledge in the world, no one can know very much of it.

  "But back then, humanity knew less and individuals knew more. A man - and it was always a man - could be an expert in everything. People who called themselves natural historians saw the whole of existence as their field of study. And they didn't see the world the way we do now. They made no distinction between the natural and supernatural. Astronomy and astrology were viewed as part of the same discipline, the position of the stars being related to their predictive powers. The same methods could be applied to discover the distance of the earth from the moon, the secret of immorality, or the exact date of Noah's flood."

  "And is that what your PhD's about?" Morgan said. "Noah's flood?"

  "No, that wasn't actually Dr Dee's thing. His central obsession - even beyond the search for immortality, or maybe as a route to it - was figuring out a way to make contact with the spirit world. He had a... well, not really a friend. These days we'd probably call Edward Kelly a con man. Even back then, he'd had his ears cropped for forgery. But Kelly convinced Dee he was a medium and that he could train Dee to be one too. They used crystal balls and later scrying mirrors - there's one in the British Museum made from obsidian. It's kind of beautiful."

  "And did it work?" Morgan asked. "Did they really contact spirits?"

  She looked at him oddly and he smiled to make it seem a joke.

  "Well," she said. "Dee believed he did. He wrote extensively about his conversations with discarnate entities. Angels. That's what my dissertation's about. The angel Uriel in particular had a long-term link with Dee and it caused him no end of trouble. People thought having dealings with spirits was ungodly. A religious mob sacked his house in 1583 and a lot of his most prized possessions were stolen or destroyed."

  It was funny, Morgan thought. She was the expert in Dee, she'd read every book about him, knew when he was born, where he lived, who he married and when he died - but she didn't know the single most important thing there was to know on the subject. She didn't know that a person really could contact the spirit world and that mirrors really were the way to do it.

  "Sorry," she said, studying his expression. "Was I..." He knew she was trying to find a way not to say 'going too fast for you'.

  "That was really helpful," he told her.

  Her fingers crept up to her neck again as she blushed. "I just - I have to teach part time, you know, to make ends meet. Sorry if that was a bit of a lecture."

  "It was great, really."

  "I don't see what it's got to do with Dr Granger getting killed, though. I mean, it's not likely to be a rival don jealous that she got an article accepted in History Today." She frowned. "Is it?"

  "I can't discuss the details of the case, I'm afraid." It sounded stiff but she seemed to buy it. She'd probably watched the same cop shows he had.

  "You wanted some books, did
n't you?" she said, glancing at his list then pulling volumes from the shelves. "You can't take them out, but if you've got time you can sit and read them here. Or-" her blush deepened "-I could go through them with you. Point out the important bits. You know."

  Morgan could hear his old squadmates - you're in there, mate. He was, he could tell. It had been a while, but not that long. So what if she didn't know the real him? Everyone had secrets and some of them had to be worse than his.

  "That would be great," he said. "When I start going cross-eyed from all the reading I can take you out for lunch to say thanks."

  "Yeah, I think that's the least you can do." She grinned and he smiled back. She was pretty and she was flirting with him and later tonight, she might be fucking him. The day was going a lot better than he'd expected.

  She seemed to read at least some of that in his expression because he saw her pupils swell as she cleared her throat then said, "There's one book on your list that's on a different floor. Give me a few minutes and I'll fetch it."

  He nodded and watched her arse as she walked out. A second later he blinked and looked down at the pile of books. They smelled faintly musty and there was a green tint on the edge of the pages. He wondered how often they were actually read.

  The first contained extracts from Dee's own writings and some reproductions of the original manuscripts. Morgan was still trying to read the crabbed, old-fashioned handwriting when he heard the scream. It was piercing and terrified and he was sure it was Julie.

  He was out of his seat and out of the door before the sound died, hand reaching to his hip for a gun that wasn't there. He cursed and kept running, elbowing a student out of his way. He saw a snapshot of the boy's startled face, but the kid didn't complain. He'd heard the scream too.

  Morgan felt like the endless shelves of books were pressing in on him as he raced back to the staircase, shoes slapping heavily on the marble as he climbed. There was a babble of voices ahead, but no more screams. Morgan knew that wasn't good. Fuck, it was very, very bad.

  He'd lost some of his physical condition since he'd left the army, or maybe he was just running faster than he'd ever run before. The air rasped against his lungs with each breath and he could feel sweat sluicing off his body.

  There were more people on the next floor, milling and confused. He wanted to know what they'd seen, but he couldn't waste time asking. He pushed them aside, sending one girl tumbling against a bookcase and the books themselves falling to the floor. Another boy flung himself out of Morgan's path and then he was through that room and into the next - and suddenly there were only two more people, and one of them was already dead.

  The Mossad assassin was kneeling beside Julie, head turned towards Morgan as if he'd been expecting him. His face smooth and olive-brown. Only a frown of irritation crinkled his brow. Beneath it, a droplet of blood hung suspended from one eyelash. Julie lay on the floor beside him, her face turned away from Morgan. He was glad he couldn't see it. He had a good view of the slash in her throat, the one that should have been bleeding and was smoking instead. The room was full of the smell of scorched flesh.

  Morgan only froze for a moment. The instant he flung himself towards the killer the man moved, lithe and confident as a cat. Morgan felt something crunch beneath his foot as he hurled himself in pursuit and he realised, with a nauseous lurch, that it was Julie's hand.

  The assassin fled deeper inside the library, away from the crowd of students and their frightened eyes. Even in the dim lighting his white T-shirt shone bright against his dark skin. Morgan followed it through room after room, always only a few paces behind, but never quite close enough.

  The Israeli still held the knife in his hand. It looked like an ordinary army-issue weapon, but Morgan could see its edges glowing yellow. Their outline led him through a long, stone-floored corridor, down one flight of stairs and then another as the glow slowly faded through orange to a sullen red.

  He was faster on the stairs than the assassin, vaulting them recklessly until his ankle buckled on the second flight. He felt the creak of cartilage pushed to the breaking point and gritted his teeth as he leapt again, his leg burning but still working. And now he was only two paces behind his quarry.

  Morgan could hear the man's laboured breathing. He smelt his sour sweat and beneath it the copper hint of blood. His belly clenched with fury and though they were still ten feet above the next landing he bellowed and flung himself from the stairs, diving through air to catch the killer round his waist.

  The man let out his own roar of rage, bucking in Morgan's grip. There was a sickening moment of free-fall, then the jarring impact of landing. Morgan tasted blood as his teeth snapped shut on his own tongue. His knee slammed agonisingly into the wooden floor and he couldn't suppress a gasp of pain. But the killer's body took the brunt of the fall and Morgan heard the whoosh of air as it was all forced from the man's lungs.

  The assassin was silent, sprawled like a ragdoll. Morgan pried the knife from his limp fingers. As he lifted it free, the last heat seemed to dissipate from the metal, leaving it lethal but mundane. He tightened his hand on the pommel and used his other to flip the killer over, tearing the white T-shirt he used for leverage.

  As he rolled, the man's eyes flicked open and for a second Morgan thought he saw a red fire burning in their depths, the same sullen glow which had earlier lit his knife. Was this another demon, one of Belle's kind? Morgan shuddered as he remembered the little girl who'd housed something monstrous inside her. His hand tightened on the knife and he pressed the flat of the blade to the killer's throat. The thick tube of the man's windpipe compressed and Morgan knew that the slightest tip of the knife, the first pressure of its razor-sharp edge, and the Israeli's life would end as he had ended Julie's. Morgan's hand shook with the effort of not doing it.

  The killer's eyes were locked on his. He didn't look frightened. "Morgan Hewitt," he said, his accent strong and slightly harsh. "I tried to keep you out of this. I tried to act polite, to conduct my business out of your sight, but you had to interfere. And all because you were thinking with your penis and not your head. Are you really the best of the Hermetic Division?"

  Morgan's fingers clawed around the handle of the knife and in the moment when rage broke his concentration, the killer moved. His legs jack-knifed beneath him, knees thumping into Morgan's stomach.

  Morgan fell back, gasping for breath. His legs were useless, his body too weak to move, but his arms still worked just fine. He slashed out with the knife, aiming for the killer's throat and catching his chest instead as the man rolled and rose. A bloom of blood flowered beneath the man's T-shirt and he let out a grunt of pain. But he kept moving and when Morgan slashed again the blade caught nothing but cotton, a neat white strip of it floating to the floor like a feather as the assassin disappeared round the curve of the stairs.

  Morgan had to get up. He had to get moving. He groaned as he rolled to his knees, head hanging between them for a moment while he gathered his breath, a tight pain in his chest telling him that ribs were bruised, maybe broken.

  It didn't matter. He staggered to his feet and ran. Pain jabbed his side and the leather hilt of the knife was slick with sweat but he held it tight. The stairs flew by beneath him and he could hear the killer's footsteps echoing up the stairwell. They were drawing away - Morgan was losing him.

  And then he heard the clatter of scores of shoes on the stairs, heading up. They were two floors, one floor beneath him, and then they were right there and there was nothing he could do to stop himself barrelling into them. He only had time to turn the blade of the knife away before he knocked two of the men to the ground, his fall once again cushioned by someone else's body.

  His ribs screamed their agony and he probably did too. His consciousness blurred for a moment and when it came back he felt arms lifting him up, a hand easing open his own and prying the knife out of it. He didn't resist. He was massively outnumbered and even in his haste he'd seen the uniforms.

  Th
e officer facing him was plain-clothes, with the silver-yellow hair and wrinkles of a lifelong smoker.

  "Listen," Morgan gasped. "That bastard's getting away. Let me get after him. Fuck - you get after him."

  The policeman's eyebrow arched in question, and Morgan's stomach clenched because he knew that look. He'd received it often enough when he was a teenager in Brixton. He could see the knife he'd held being dropped into a plastic evidence bag - the knife which now had his fingerprints all over it. Another hand dug through his pockets and pulled out the fake police ID Kate had given him. That was bagged and labelled too.

  The hands on his arms lifted them up and forward and he saw the glint of metal before he felt the cold snap of cuffs around his wrists. For a moment his muscles tensed and the hands on him tightened. Then he sighed and slumped, knowing it was useless.

  He looked the lead cop in the eye and the man flinched a little from his expression. "You," Morgan said, "are going to be really, really fucking pissed off with yourselves in about two hours. But not as pissed off with you as I am, because you morons are letting a murderer escape."

  The hands holding him jerked him roughly as they led him downstairs, but he barely registered it. In his mind's eye he could only see Julie's body, her face turned away from him, no blood dripping from the fatal wound in her throat.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When Alex left the Croatoan building the weather had switched in that odd San Franciscan way; fog rolling in from the hills to smother the streets in a grey blanket. No one tried to stop her as she shut the door behind her, and she guessed they were used to people walking out on them.

  PD was waiting for her on the opposite side of the street. He leaned against the wooden slats behind him, arms folded and face impassive. He looked just like one of those old, un-PC Red Indian statues people used to put in front of their houses, and she smiled as she moved to the crosswalk, intending to tell him so.