Burn Mark (18 page)

‘Ah.’ Gideon looked faintly amused. ‘Well . . . have a good night, then.’

They were just parting ways when a high and terrible scream shattered the evening quiet. It came from the street outside. Almost simultaneously the iron bells that topped the Inquisition’s wall began to ring, a harsh clanging that was loud enough to make the air shudder.

Jonah and Gideon exchanged appalled looks, and hurried towards the gate. There was a bus stop a little way down the road – just a few metres from where he had watched Zoey get into her taxi. A young woman was staggering away from the stop and towards Outer Temple, plucking at her clothes and crying. Her face was covered in oozing black pustules. She was followed by three or four others, all suffering from the same disfigurement. No sooner had they reached the gate than they stumbled and fell, crawling drunkenly around the pavement and mumbling gibberish.

In a matter of moments, a squad of inquisitorial guards hastened to form a protective ring around the victims. Someone shouted that a team from the medical block were on their way. Ambulance sirens blared in the distance. On the other side of the road, horrified bystanders were huddled together. A small boy wailed. Meanwhile, Kindle Yard filled with inquisitors, murmuring fearfully to each other as the news spread.

‘It’s witchwork, isn’t it?’ Gideon stammered. ‘I never imagined – not here, not like this . . .’

A witch attack at the gates of the Inquisition! For the first time in Jonah’s life he felt the full force of something beyond the usual human fears: the sense of an alien and malignant power, unknowable and implacable. His flesh crawled.

Gideon’s eyes glittered feverishly. ‘It’s a sign from the covens. They must be trying to intimidate us because of the Goodwin trial.’

The medics had arrived, and though it was difficult to see what was happening, it appeared the symptoms of the attack were disappearing as quickly as they had begun. One of the victims was already sitting up and talking.

Jonah and Gideon were joined by more onlookers. A woman shook her head grimly. ‘That whistle-wind in the MP’s office was only the start. You know the train that derailed in Ealing last week? Twenty injured, three critically. The investigators thought it was a mechanical fault. Now it turns out the train driver was under a bane. He’d been witchworked into seeing a giant black horse come charging down the track! It’s all been coordinated.’

Others were saying the same thing. Fear was giving way to anger, and a new sense of purpose.

Gideon too had regained his self-possession. His face had set. ‘If that’s true, then everything changes. It’s not about control and assimilation any more. This is war.’

Lucas did not learn of the attack at the bus stop – the ‘plague of boils’ as the tabloids called it – until later that night. After leaving WICA, he went straight home and shut himself in his room with the armful of files that Zoey had given him.

Apart from Zoey, he’d seen little of the other witch-agents, and nothing of the famous Jack Rawdon. He had expected to be met with an over-eager, slightly defensive chumminess, as among people who share some fetish or embarrassing hobby. But the few witches he’d been introduced to had been brisk and professional, no more. Lucas was relieved. He didn’t want to feel like he belonged.

Besides, he needed to distance himself from the seething mix of energies and impulses the day’s witchwork had woken in him. Tomorrow, he would learn more about Harry Jukes and the part he was going to play in the coven. Tonight, he must order his thoughts, make his preparations.

He began by looking at a family tree of the Morgan and Starling clans. It was accompanied by reports on members of the Cooper Street Coven. Flipping through the file, he paused when he came to a slightly blurred photograph of a girl. Gloriana Starling Wilde, according to the memo. Fifteen years old. Two cautions for shoplifting, a record of truancy. Risk of turning witchkind: high.

It wasn’t surprising. She was the granddaughter of one of the twentieth-century’s most infamous witches. What’s more, her mother, Edie Wilde nee Starling, was also possibly witchkind, though low-grade. The report stated that this was unproved, since she had never been registered. The Inquisition suspected her of turning witchkind around the age of twenty-three. At the age of twenty-four her daughter was born, and three years after that she went missing, presumed dead. The file said that she was the likely victim of a coven hit, the consequence of feuding with the Morgan brothers over a disputed will. This was why her daughter was collaborating with the Witchcrime Directorate.

Lucas took another look at the girl’s strong beaky profile and bright blonde hair. Her ridiculous name made some kind of sense now he’d read Operation Echo’s files. Gloriana had been an honorific title for the Fae Queen, Elizabeth I. The Stearnes weren’t the only family with grand ambitions for their children.

Chapter 15

Glory and Angeline’s first meeting with ‘Harry Jukes’ was scheduled two days before he was due to join the coven. It was a Saturday, and Glory had only known the full story for a week. She remained in turmoil about every aspect of Auntie Angel’s revelations but accepted that, for the moment, coming to terms with them was impossible.
I’ll think about it all later
, she kept telling herself, suppressing another of those hiccuppy little bursts of hysteria that kept catching her unawares.
Not now. I can’t, I mustn’t. I’ll go mad.

For events were out of her hands. Angeline had already got in touch with her contact at the Witchcrime Directorate to confirm that her great-niece was on board. Apparently she had insisted from the start that Glory’s involvement was essential if Harry was to be accepted into the coven, and from there introduced to the Morgan clan.

So on Saturday afternoon, she and Angeline set off for the WICA safe house where they were to meet Harry Jukes, and be briefed on the task ahead. They told the coven that they were going to try to track down an old forger pal of Angeline’s. Both carried an elusion amulet that Glory had made. She’d bought two cheap toy compasses, which she stamped underfoot. Then she knotted her fae into an intricately tangled web of string around the broken compasses, and put them in two small cloth pouches. The tradition was to bury them at a crossroads. Since it wasn’t practical to dig up city roads, Glory had fixed them underneath a pavement grating instead. It would take a few hours of pedestrians tramping back and forth over the amulets for the witchwork to set.

Today, she had retrieved the amulets and they were wearing them tucked into their shoes. It was not comfortable but it was effective. If anyone tried to follow them, they would be caught in a web of confusion, unsure of their quarry, and mistaking right for left, north for south. No one could scry on them either. Even so, Angeline favoured a roundabout route on foot and bus. It made for a long journey, especially since she needed several rest stops along the way.

Their final destination was an unremarkable apartment building in an unremarkable residential street. They dismantled their amulets at the end of it, in case they were searched. They weren’t of any more use to them anyway – an elusion only lasted as long as a single journey.

Glory’s insides were bunching into knots as they turned into the road. The authorities knew Angeline was a witch, but her own status was secret – and at least one inquisitor would be present during their meeting.

‘Bear in mind,’ Auntie Angel had warned her, ‘that we won’t see what this Harry Jukes and his witch-friends actually look like. It’ll be glamours all round, mark my words.’

Glory and Angeline’s appearances were already known to the authorities. But Angeline underwent a physical transformation all the same. She’d left off her curlers last night, was without her usual coral-pink lipstick and rouge, and wore a shawl over a frumpy paisley smock. As they walked along the street, her upright figure slumped and shrank. It wasn’t witchwork, just good acting. Glory watched her turn into a doddery crone before her eyes.

The door to flat 9a was opened by a tall, sandy-haired young man with an awkward smile. He introduced himself as Officer Branning. When he went to shake hands with Glory, it took all her nerve not to flinch. He was the first inquisitor she’d ever met. As soon as his back was turned, she wiped her hand on her leggings.

Officer Branning led them into the kitchen-living room. It was a little too clean and bare to feel as if it had ever been lived in. The inquisitor helped Auntie Angel into a seat at the table; Glory couldn’t tell if her great-aunt’s tremors were a pretence. Her own body clenched in sympathy. She put some gum in her mouth, as she often did when she was nervous. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ the young man asked, and she nearly gave a spurt of disbelieving laughter.

His pocket beeped and he checked a pager. The officer looked relieved. ‘The others are here. I won’t be a moment.’

The moment passed too quickly. In seconds, Harry Jukes and his handler were standing in the room.

Glory folded her arms protectively across her chest. No more handshaking for her. She chewed the gum mechanically, trying to soothe herself with the familiar rubbery motion. The boy pulled out a chair opposite her. He looked her up and down with cool interest and she stared boldly back. He had a thatch of dirty-blond hair and a fleshy pink face. The woman who accompanied him was a freckly redhead.

‘I’m Harry,’ the boy said. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ The voice: smooth, rich, leisurely. Was that faked too?

‘And I’m Anne,’ said his companion. ‘Anne Jones.’ Glory nearly laughed again: the name was so obviously an alias. She’d bet ‘Anne’ was wearing a glamour too.

It went against every particle of Glory’s body and soul to sit at the same table as an inquisitor but this pair must collaborate with the Inquisition on a regular basis. ‘Harry’ and ‘Anne’ had clearly been brainwashed into believing all the propaganda crap that said if they gave up their freedom to do the State’s dirty work, they’d be given some kind of legitimacy. As if, after suffering centuries of persecution, witchkind still had something to apologise for. As if the fae was a handicap, not a gift!

But she remained curious. Whoever this Harry character really was, he couldn’t be older than late teens or early twenties. If he was already a field agent, then he must be a strong witch.

Glory was thankful she wasn’t called upon to contribute much to the discussion. Auntie Angel had already explained her task: to help get Harry accepted by the rest of Cooper Street, and to use her family connection to get him introduced to the Morgans. All this was gone through in more detail, along with boring stuff about protocol and procedure and the Chain of Command. Glory nodded from time to time to show she was listening, but was otherwise free to follow her own thoughts.

She paid more attention when Harry talked about how he’d first made contact with the coven, ostensibly to buy drugs, and how from there he’d formed a casual acquaintance with Nate and his crew.

Glory had only heard Nate mention Harry on a couple of occasions, and always in scornful terms. Even so, she suspected Nate was secretly proud of the connection. The Starling Twins used to party with aristocrats and playboys, and it was part of his mobster aspirations to hang out with posh dropouts who ought to know better. The Inquisition and WICA had exploited this. They thought Cooper Street and everyone in it was a soft touch.

Fools
, thought Glory.
Just you wait.
The satisfaction must have momentarily shown on her face, for she caught Harry looking at her and frowning a little. His eyes were brown, slightly bloodshot. She stared back until he looked away.

It bugged her, the fact this person could look her in the eye yet keep his own hidden. Like a ghost. Somewhere there must be an amulet that contained the raw material of his illusion. There and then, she decided she would make it her mission to find it. His fae might be strong but she was a Starling girl, a prodigy – one in a million. There was no way he could compete.

The first time Lucas Stearne turned into Harry Jukes was Wednesday evening, three days after joining WICA. Since Agent Barnes remained in hospital, Lucas never saw what his predecessor actually looked like, though he studied his case notes as well as film footage of him in the role of Harry. As part of his cover, Barnes had spent the last month enrolled in a private school in North London, so Lucas also had to familiarise himself with Harry’s teachers and classmates. WICA had already assembled various accessories – from an MP3 player loaded with Harry’s music to a closet of Harry’s clothes.

There was other research too. Harry could be expected to be fairly ignorant of coven life, but Lucas still had to swot up on names, places, faces, business dealings and family history. Getting to grips with all this took up more time than the actual witchwork. There was a lot of this to practise, though he was relieved to learn there wouldn’t be time to test his ability to sky-leap. Of all the facilities witchkind had, sky-leaping was the most abnormal.

Crafting a glamour was his hardest task yet. Agent Barnes had originally created Harry’s appearance from a computer-generated illustration. Lucas had a photograph to reference instead. Dark blond hair, brown eyes, plump cheeks. Otherwise, his looks were deliberately nondescript.

He began the glamour by drawing two small pictures: one of Harry, one of himself. He had no artistic ability, as the end result proved. It didn’t matter. The point was to draw out his fae with each line of the pencil, every stroke of colour and shade, so that the crude image on the paper could channel the strength of the image in his head.