A thought wormed its way through her mind. A hot, embarrassing thought. Last night, she had run away.
Sure, after the monster on her head was gone, it had felt like her eyes had been stapled open and floodlights aimed directly into them. That she was surrounded by vampires and magicians and that those things were even true at all, yes, that was a bit much to take in at once.
On the other hand she had panicked. She hated that venomously.
Fiona was not one to panic. She was too smart and too capable. When confronted with an emergency, she was one to calmly consider the situation and decide what to do. That was who she was.
“Oh bloody hell,” she said. Who was she? The river and the boy and the door with the girl on the other side of it – just a dream, surely. It had to be.
She tried her tea and found it within the bounds of not too painfully hot. That was when her eye fell on the family pictures on the wall.
There weren’t many of them, just a few different sized ones of the two girls and their mother. Jessica’s grin took up most of one picture, the one taken when she’d won a school science competition a year ago by constructing a device that made the hair on the heads of everyone within five metres stand on end. Another picture was of the three of them at the coast at Eastbourne, taken when Fiona was fifteen, looking down from the chalk cliffs at a lighthouse far below. It hung beside a school photo of Fiona when she was twelve, looking miserable and uncomfortable, as she remembered being all the time back then.
Fiona forgot her tea and her headache. She got up and leaned close to the Eastbourne picture.
She was there. Her hair was long and black and pulled around her face as much as possible. She had worn all black that day and never mind that it was a sunny day on the coast.
But she also saw a different girl there, overlapping her. She too wore black and wore her hair long, though she clipped it back. Her face was much rounder than Fiona’s. She wore a self-conscious smile.
“You can see it now, can’t you?”
Jessica was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking too grave for her years. She had her head tilted to one side and she watched Fiona as if reading a gauge.
“How did you know?”
“Oh, with these.” Jessica produced a set of children’s sunglasses with bright pink rims. She slid them on. “Yeah, the monster on your head is gone.”
“You knew and you didn’t tell me?”
Jessica shrugged and took the glasses off. “Why should I? You’re not really my sister.”
Fiona wasn’t prepared for that to hurt, but it did. She covered her face with her hands.
Jessica sighed. “Well, you aren’t, but you are, aren’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jessica pulled a chair out and sat with her elbows on the table and her chin resting in her hands. “I remember you always being my sister. But once I saw the real pictures, I remembered when it was her instead of you. I even remember how she died.”
The words poured cold dread into Fiona’s chest. “It wasn’t me, was it?”
“No, it was a stupid drunk driver.” Jessica’s face screwed up as she held back tears. “It was terrible. Mum cried all the time. I really missed her.” She sniffled. “But then you were here and you’d always been my sister. That was about two years ago. I felt sad for a while and I couldn’t figure out why, but that went away until I made my glasses with their verity lenses.” She wagged her pink sunglasses at Fiona. “I was mad at you at first. I didn’t think it was fair, just taking my sister’s place like that and making us love you like you were her.”
Fiona shook her head. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
Fiona opened her mouth to reply, frowned, and closed her mouth again.
“Yeah, you don’t remember,” Jessica said. “Mr Shell told me how to read your aura with the verity lenses and an aspect scope, so I can see things like that about you. I don’t think you’re the one who did this. I figured, who’d do this to themselves? Who’d wipe out their whole life? It must have been done to you.”
“But why?” Fiona asked. “Who could do such a thing?”
Jessica shrugged. “Mr Shell says it’s not easy, but it can be done.”
“You keep talking about this Mr Shell,” Fiona said. “Who is he?”
“He’s a tortoise,” Jessica said. “He knows lots of things.”
Fiona sat down and drank some of her tea.
“Are you going to faint?” Jessica asked.
“What? No, of course not.”
“Oh. I’ve never seen someone faint. Do you know about the vampires?”
Fiona’s head snapped up. “How do you know about the vampires?”
Jessica beamed. “I caught one breaking in last night and questioned him. He said he works for someone named Alice who is interested in you because of the monster in your shadow.”
For a few seconds, Fiona couldn’t even speak. “That – that b–” She bit on the word.
“You can say it,” Jessica said. “I won’t tell Mum.”
Fiona tried to bring some order to the raging thoughts in her head. Eventually she said, “How did you catch the vampire? Do you still have him?”
“I made a power gauntlet that shoots lightning,” Jessica said, coming to the other side of the table. “It plugs into a flux crystal that Mr Beak got for me from the workshop where they were made. The crystal works like a lens, but instead of light it focuses this energy that’s everywhere. Well, it’s sort of energy, but it’s not energy, but you can use it like energy. You know what I mean?”
Fiona remembered light bending and brightening around Alice’s boyfriend, Damon, and the ring on his finger.
“So I waited with my back turned until the vampire was really close and then I zapped him!” Jessica laughed and slapped the table. “He was disappointing though. He was just a boy.”
“Where is he?” Fiona asked.
“Oh, I had to let him go. I mean, what else could I do with him? I couldn’t keep him. Mum would completely freak out. I thought about killing him too and Mr Shell says that vampires burn really well, but I couldn’t set him on fire in my room and the neighbours would see if I did it out the back yard.”
“That’s … practical of you,” Fiona said.
“I don’t think he’ll be back. And if he is – POW!” She laughed again, but then looked at Fiona shrewdly. “What will you do now?”
Fiona sat up straighter. “You’re right, I have to do something. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. That’s as good as running away. I have to find out who did this to me and why.”
“If you find something, let me know,” Jessica said. “Maybe I can hack into government databases and find the secret conspiracy that’s erased your past.”
Her eyes were shining with excitement. Fiona almost dismissed the offer as one of her little sister’s crazy ideas, but caught herself. “Can you do that? Really?”
“Oh, sure. I made some modifications to my laptop. I tried looking at missing persons and police records and that sort of thing, but I didn’t find anyone that looked like you.”
“I think my name was Lucy,” Fiona said. “I think there’s a – a man after me.” She remembered that glimpse of a ridged face and bright amber eyes, but she didn’t trust it. “I think his name is Yadrim. I don’t know what he wants.”
“Hmmm, might be useful. I’ll look.”
“Don’t get caught,” Fiona said. “And thank you.”
Jessica had already jumped out of her seat, excited to have a new project. As she raced through the kitchen she called out, “Don’t worry, sis, I’ll keep you safe.”
Fiona returned to South Kensington before the sun went down. At the Tonno brothers’ house she pressed the doorbell and Gerald, the butler with the neat bulging stomach, opened the door.
“I’m here to see Marwan Tonno.”
She didn’t add and I’m not taking
no for an answer, but it was a near thing.
Gerald stepped back. “I shall see if the masters are available, Miss.”
He left her in a comfortable waiting room of sorts just beside the main door. Fiona turned in a slow circle, taking in several generations of family portraits, three wooden masks that looked like they’d come from a Stone Age Pacific island and a map of the world, a century or two old and distorted the way those old maps always were.
She noticed that everyone in the family portraits wore a ring set with a blue gemstone. The newer portraits were professional photographs and through some trick of the lighting, the gemstones drew the eye more than she would have expected. The older portraits were paintings and here the artists had striven for the same effect.
She leaned closer. Akin and his brother wore rings like that last night, didn’t they?
She heard footsteps coming down the stairs and she waited until they arrived in the room before turning round. Akin and Marwan Tonno both looked displeased to see her, though Marwan at least did not look surprised.
“Is Alice here?” Fiona asked.
They exchanged a look of surprise. “No,” Akin said. “We –”
“Good,” Fiona said. “I want you to help me dream.”
Akin spread his hands and Fiona saw that she was right: they wore rings like the ones in the family portraits. “Fiona, it isn’t that we aren’t sympathetic to your situation, but we are businessmen. We make a point of staying out of the politics of the shadow world and you are – how shall I put this?”
“Trouble?” Fiona said.
Marwan chuckled.
“You have created quite a stir,” Akin said. “We do good business with Vivien and his like, but we do it making sure they are always more interested in what we can give them, rather than in us. It is dangerous to have their attention. You have theirs.”
“You can help me in the same way you help them,” Fiona said. “Without getting involved.”
Marwan rubbed the line of his jaw with his long, narrow fingers. “What is it you want, Fiona?”
“Last night I dreamed my way into the dream of London,” Fiona said.
Marwan blinked. “The great dream? On purpose? That is an achievement. What did you see there?”
“Marwan,” Akin said.
He grunted. “Please, continue Fiona.”
Fiona chose her next words carefully. She chose to lie, because she didn’t know who was listening.
“I saw things there, learned things about myself that are hidden. I want to go back and see what else I can learn, but I don’t know how I got there. I don’t want to just hope it happens again the next time I fall asleep. Is there a trick to it or some kind of oneiric incense I can burn?”
Akin hissed something to Marwan, who murmured a reply. With a dismissive gesture he came further into the room, sat in one chair and waved Fiona into another. He took a phone from his pocket, tapped and scrolled through its contents and scrawled a few notes on a notepad he picked up from a small table.
“Much can be learned in dreams,” Marwan said as he wrote. “Your instinct has brought you to the right place. But I will be honest with you Fiona. The kind of journey you wish to take is one for which I am a poor guide. I have a talent for dreams and a passion for them, but my skills will be of little use to you.”
Fiona stared at the ring on his finger while he wrote. The sapphire reflected more light than it caught and she felt it drawing more and more of her attention, narrowing her vision into a tunnel, until there was the gem and the light and the gold socket holding it, swelling and subsiding like the flanks of a beast as it breathed.
The spell broke when Marwan tore the page off the notepad and handed it to her. She saw a name, a phone number and an address.
“Who is this?”
“A better dream guide than me,” Marwan said. “Tell her that I referred her to you. It will pique her interest, if not her pleasure.”
“And now it is time go,” Akin said.
But Marwan held up a hand. “I will give you one more piece of advice, Fiona. Be careful with Alice.”
Fiona frowned. “I don’t intend to have anything to do with her ever again.” She didn’t say that Alice had sent a spy into her house, but her anger at it was in her voice all the same.
“It is unlikely she will let that stop her,” Marwan said. “She is fascinated by magic and right now, she is fascinated by you. The one she has now, Damon, she has been with him for a while and she is surely bored with him. You are new and different.” He shrugged. “Usually she prefers young men, but she looks to have her eye on you.”
“What will she do?” Fiona asked.
“She will take over your life if you let her.” Marwan smiled. “It will not seem so bad. It may even seem amazing, or it surely would if you were a man. But then one day she will grow bored with you and a new warlock will come along and she will cast you aside without a second thought.”
Fiona heard the sadness in his voice. “You were with her?”
Akin tutted.
Marwan closed his eyes and nodded. “Long ago, when I was young. She was everything to me, as if the magic I loved had spun itself into cold flesh and blood. But I could not hold her interest forever and she broke my heart.”
“Weren’t you afraid she’d … um …?”
“Bite me?” Marwan said. “Drink my blood?” He shrugged the idea aside. “She promised me she never would. Just be careful with her, Fiona. It is your magic that fascinates her, not you.”
Fiona stood. “Thank you. And thank you for this.” She raised the piece of paper he’d given her.
Akin already had one hand on her elbow to usher her to the door, but he paused when Marwan spoke again.
“I know we say we keep ourselves uninvolved,” he said, “but I will offer you one more piece of advice. Be careful when you dream, Fiona. Someone went to much trouble to hide things from you. They are unlikely to be pleased by your efforts to dig them up.”
Chapter 12 – Jacob and Alice, Thursday
Jacob Mandellan checked his phone again. There were no new messages from Xethe, his electrical spy, but Catherine had told him there wouldn’t be for most of the day. He slid his phone back into his pocket and looked up at the nearest of Heathrow’s Arrivals screens.
“You’re looking pleased with yourself,” Miss Koh said.
“I should be. Things are going my way.”
“Only because a mystery woman in Wales decided to bail you out,” Miss Koh said. “Where would you be without her?”
“I’d be working with another seer, or I’d be going to Plan B.”
“You actually have a Plan A? I think you’re making it up as you go along,” Miss Koh said. “I think you’re just hoping to get lucky.”
Jacob turned, slid his sunglasses down his nose and brought his full attention to bear on her. It took a strong will to call up the energy that went into making daemons and then to imprint thoughts on that energy. He brought all of that will to bear on Miss Koh there in the Heathrow Arrivals lounge. Feedback whined in the lounge’s speakers. The backlit display listing the arriving flights blinked and stuttered. Miss Koh went stiff as a plank.
Jacob said, “I’m a warlock of old blood trained in the finest of England’s schools. One day I’ll decide I’ve had enough of your little tantrums and I’ll let Axrillax suck every last jolt of energy out of your body. You’ll turn cold and rigid. Your heart will stop. Your lungs won’t draw in air. Your thoughts will slow to a crawl and finally you’ll think ‘Oh shit, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.’ And you’ll be dead right.”
He let her go and pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time. Miss Koh rocked back and blinked furiously. Her mouth writhed with angry words, but she bit them back.
The automatic doors across the room opened and new arrivals spilled out. They trailed wheeled luggage, herded restless children and checked their phones for signal. Some were tourists returning from the States, others bus
inessmen and women already in suits. A phalanx of people waited for them, some bearing cards with surnames on them while others waved cheerful family greetings.
Jacob waited to see what the Reverend had in store for him. A certain kind of person would put security’s hackles right up, so he might be in for a wait. He hoped this Anthony, a man Jacob knew only as the Reverend’s primary fixer, was smart enough to look like just another tourist or businessman. Without witches or warlocks watching the country’s main airport – thanks to a bureaucratic deadlock between the shadow council and a security organisation called the Shield Foundation – blending in would be enough.
He felt the murky slither of an alien presence before he saw Anthony. It spread out before him like a wave of rushing tendrils. A regular person would feel unease, as though at the corner of their vision they had glimpsed a threatening shape that would not quite come into focus. Jacob, with senses most people did not have, felt a bolt of ice-cold fear shoot down his spine.
Anthony walked with his back straight and his shoulders swinging, like someone who had had walking described to him but was trying it for the first time. He had no luggage, but wore shiny black shoes and a long coat that reached to his knees. He wore a suit and tie beneath the coat, but it fit around a shape that did not quite sit right to the eye. His grey hair was slicked back from his forehead. He wore wrap-around sunglasses and his chin was plastic smooth.
Jacob had no doubt he was the one the Reverend had sent.
“Going to say hello?” Miss Koh asked.
Anthony looked around by turning his entire body. Even with the glasses on, Jacob knew the moment Anthony found him. For an instant he thought his brain would be sucked out through his eye sockets.
Anthony walked over, shoulders swinging but arms immobile at his sides, and stood in front of Jacob.
“I’m Jacob Mandellan.” He succeeded in keeping the rough edge from his voice. “I’m here to get you whatever you need.”
“A location,” Anthony said. His mouth didn’t form the right shapes for the noises he made. “A time. Transport. A target. No interference.”
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