Burn Mark (29 page)

It was then that the sirens began to wail.

Flashing lights pulsed in the cracks around the boarded-up windows and entranceway. Several police cars, ambulances and a fire engine were racing down the road outside.

This time it was Lucas’s sixth sense that kicked into action. He knew, somehow, who those sirens were for. Glory guessed it too. Before he could stop her, she hurried out of the building.

Chapter 25

 

That far-off rumble hadn't been thunder, but an explosion. When Glory and Lucas reached the shabby high street at the end of the Radley's block, some people were already stumbling away in panic, while others, like them, pressed on – drawn by a desire to help or witness, to sniff out the blood. They followed the commotion through a housing estate, until they came to what should have been another unremarkable road.

The police had already cordoned off the area. Acrid smoke hung in the air. It came off a wreck of twisted, blackened metal, shot through with flames. The remains of Charlie Morgan's BMW.

Lucas thought, before he could stop himself, of his mother.

Glory could think of nothing at all. Her mind was a roaring blankness.

The car-bomb had exploded outside an off-licence. Its windows were blown out, the interior in shreds. A woman was sitting on the kerb, a bloody rag pressed against her head. Another bystander lay in the road, surrounded by paramedics. One ambulance had already gone and frantic activity could be glimpsed inside the other two. A crowd had already gathered.

‘. . . it'll be a political target,' somebody was saying. ‘Some government bigwig the witches don't like.'

‘Just like Endor, all over again,' said his friend.

Glory's face was dazed and white.

‘Here you go, luvvie, have a tot,' said the elderly man standing next to her and Lucas. He handed her a hip flask. She took a swallow of whisky and coughed, spluttering. ‘That's right – put some colour in your cheeks.'

‘Did you see what happened?' Lucas asked.

‘I seen it all.' The old man spoke with relish. ‘I was waiting for me bus, just over there. Then a car pulled up and this bloke – big, important-looking – got out the back. He went into the offie for a packet of fags. But as soon as he opens the car door again . . .
kaboom
! The blast threw him halfway across the street. Poor sod looked in a bad way. Still, at least he was alive when they put him in the ambulance. His driver didn't have a hope.'

Perhaps there had been a problem with the detonator. Thanks to a trick of timing, Charlie Morgan had – possibly – survived.

A policeman was taking down names and asking for statements. The old man moved towards him eagerly. Lucas took Glory by the arm. ‘Come on,' he muttered. ‘We shouldn't be seen here.'

Because he didn't know where else to go, he led her back in the direction they'd come from, and the desolate row of abandoned buildings.

‘Not the Radley,' Glory told him, rousing herself a little. ‘The Wednesday Coven crew – once they hear – they might come looking –'

A disused office block provided an alternative shelter. Someone had already cut the wire fence across the entrance and they climbed inside a smashed window on the ground floor. Glory's torch picked out a sleeping bag and syringe lying in the corridor, and couple of half-melted candles stuck in jam jars. All the items were filmed with dust.

They moved on to a windowless room furnished with a couple of beaten-up filing cabinets and a pile of filthy curtains. Glory propped the torch on a cabinet and sat on the curtains. Her legs still felt a little wobbly. It was only now, looking at Lucas in the torchlight, that she thought back to the confrontation that the sirens had interrupted. It already seemed faded and far away.

She had wanted Charlie punished, and thought she would have rejoiced to see him dead. Yet she couldn't get that smoking, bloodied heap of metal out of her head. The image alternated with one of Charlie topping up her glass at dinner the other week: bragging, swaggering, invincible.

‘All right . . . who d'you think done it?' she asked, trying to keep her voice firm.
Grit your teeth and remember you're a Starling.
‘Paterson and Merle?'

Lucas was relieved by her businesslike tone, and did his best to match it. ‘I don't see how killing a coven boss fits into the plot to frame Jack Rawdon. And what about the timing? They'd need to prep an insider, wouldn't they, for access and so on. I'd think it more likely one of Charlie's associates or rivals decided to take him out.'

‘All right. Maybe you ain't the only snitch on the block. Maybe somebody else just got their cover blown.' Glory sighed. ‘We'd better hope so, anyhow. 'Cause if Charlie found out you're a WICA mole, he'll have spread the word. Me and Auntie A will be under suspicion, along with anyone else who's been within a mile of you in the last week.' She got out her phone. ‘I need to warn Auntie.'

But Lucas stopped her hand. ‘Let her know we're safe. Say we were following Charlie, saw the explosion, and that we're hiding out till we know what's what. But don't tell her what we heard from Lady Merle.'

‘Are you cracked? We need all the help we can get.'

This was tricky. Lucas didn't want their recent accusations and recriminations to flare up again. He paused, searching for the right words. ‘How long has your great-aunt been an informant for the Inquisition?'

‘Coupla months.'

‘Are you sure about that?'

‘'Course. Why?'

‘According to my handler at WICA, Angeline's been informing for decades.'

Glory smacked a filing cabinet in frustration. ‘More crappy Inquisition lies! Auntie Angel's no snitch.'

‘Er, you both are, remember? For good reason, of course,' Lucas added hastily. ‘If Angeline
did
get in touch with the Inquisition thirty years ago, I'm sure there's an explanation for it. But I don't think we should risk getting her involved. Not until we know exactly what she's been telling them, and why. And why she hasn't told you.'

‘Thirty years, you said?'

‘Twenty-eight, to be precise.'

Glory felt her whole body lurch. It was like missing a step on the stairs. The big event of twenty-eight years ago was Granny Cora's return. After five years on the run with Edie, she'd telephoned her sisters, and arranged for them to meet. But the Inquisition got to her first. Someone had tipped them off.

Don't go there, she told herself fiercely. The Inquisition lies, everyone knows that. They want to make you paranoid. They twist things, and people, to suit their own ends. If Auntie Angel ever went to the prickers, it would have been to try to bargain with them, to ensure her sister's release . . .

In which case, though, why hadn't she ever told Glory about it?

Lucas, sensing his advantage, pressed on. ‘Even if my cover's safe, we won't get any help from the covens. Charlie made that clear to Lady Merle. We can't risk going back to Cooper Street and WICA won't be much safer – the Inquisition monitors everything. So I need to get word to my handler in secret.'

‘You trust him?'

‘Her. Yes, I do. She's WICA, and loyal to Rawdon. She'll find a way to warn him.' As he spoke, he realised there was someone else he could go to. Zoey was under surveillance, but Senior Witch Warden Jonah Branning wasn't. The man might be irritating but he wasn't corrupt. That freckled face practically shone with honesty. ‘But if we're going to put a stop to this conspiracy, we'll need proof.'

‘On that film you took, all you got is accusations. A chat between a mobster and some high-class bimbo ain't evidence. It'd be laughed out of court.'

‘I know. That's why we need to speak to Lady Merle ourselves. She may have more information for us. The key to all this is the witch that the conspirators are using. We have to find out who it is and where they're being held.'

‘Hmm.' Glory eyed him thoughtfully. ‘If we're going to play detectives, then I'll need a drink.'

With a flourish, she brought out a hip flask from her jacket pocket.

‘I don't believe it! You nicked it from that old man!'

‘What else d'you expect? Light-fingered chav like me.' She smirked. ‘Actually, he went off so quick I forgot about it. But don't have any if it'll offend your delicate morals.'

Lucas took a swig, just to prove her wrong. The raw alcohol hit the back of his throat and he winced. He realised he hadn't had anything to eat except a sandwich, five long hours ago. Investigation of his own pockets produced a chocolate bar he'd forgotten about. Better than nothing. Glory, meanwhile, was trying to compose a text message to Auntie Angel. The difficulty of deciding what to write was made worse by having to convey the message in code.

The glow of the phone's screen reminded Lucas of the candles left by the earlier intruder. His witchwork supplies included matches, so he was able to light both candles and place their jars on the floor between them. He put out the chocolate bar too.

Glory raised an eyebrow. ‘Candles, booze, chocolate . . . are you trying to seduce me, Mr Inquisitor?'

His face set. ‘You know I'm not an inquisitor. I never will be.'

When he had interrogated her in the Radley, demanding that she tell him what she knew, Glory had felt an instant of real panic. It was an atavistic response, the fear felt by generations of her ancestors responding to the threat made by generations of his. As he had loomed darkly over her, eyes burning with their own pale fire, he had seemed a High Inquisitor in his own right.

She recognised that she had to get past this. It wasn't as if the Inquisition had specially bred him to be its own fae-powered witch-hunter. He was a witch by accident, not design. Glory had once known how the Chief Prosecutor's wife had died. But she'd either forgotten or ignored the fact, and that made her ashamed. The power in Lucas was the power that had murdered his mother. Small wonder he distrusted it.

Almost as if Lucas knew what she was thinking, he said abruptly, ‘Getting the fae was the worst thing I could imagine. Yet I didn't ever imagine it; the idea was too impossible. And when it happened, my dad . . . Well. Maybe it was even worse for him. I know you won't believe it, but my father's a good man as well as a good inquisitor. They do exist.'

He looked down at his hands. ‘The crazy thing is we both know that if I'd committed some crime, or got a girl pregnant or started taking drugs . . . that kind of stuff, we could have dealt with it. Got through together. But the fae changed everything.'

Glory didn't know what to say to this. Instead, she asked him how he had first got the fae. His answer was as hesitant, and awkward, as her question. It was then they discovered they'd become witches on the same day. From there, Glory moved on to all the other questions she'd been storing up. What his training had been like. What kind of witchwork he liked best. Whether he'd ever tried sky-leaping . . . Before long, Lucas was asking his own questions back.

Whatever was waiting for them in the outside world, they would face it tomorrow. The two of them sat on grubby piles of curtains, passing the chocolate and hip flask between them, exchanging their stories. For this one night, their defences were lowered, blurred by tiredness and whisky and the smoky flicker of the candle flames.

‘What about the rush?' Glory asked him sleepily, towards the end. ‘The witchwork high?'

‘I don't trust it. I know the thrill would be the same if I was doing harm or hurting someone with my fae,' Lucas replied. ‘And yet I want to keep feeling it, in spite of everything. In spite of the stain. Because that's what witchwork is: mud and sweat and blood . . . a kind of fever . . .'

Glory pulled down the neckline of her jumper, exposing the velvety pinprick under her collar bone. She touched it, feeling the fae's dark flush.

‘Look,' she told him. ‘Look.'

Reluctantly, he raised his head, facing her through the haze of light and shadow, as the Devil's Kiss bloomed beneath her skin.

‘It can be beautiful too.'

Chapter 26

Glory woke up first. She was stiff and cold, and smeared with dirt from her nest of curtains. Her mouth tasted vile. There hadn’t been much whisky in the flask, but on an empty stomach, at the end of a long and tumultuous day, it had been more than enough. She squinted at her watch. Nine twenty. They’d overslept.

Lucas was still asleep. He was lying face upwards, his black hair falling back from his forehead, frowning in his dreams. In spite of the frown, the vulnerability of his unconscious form disturbed her, and she turned away.

The water supply had been turned off along with the electricity, but Glory managed to find a scoop of rain water in a tub in the backyard. She splashed her face, rinsed her mouth out and chewed on a wad of gum. It didn’t touch her thirst. Squatting behind a rubbish skip to pee, she reflected that if she’d known she was going to camp out in a derelict building, she’d at least have packed a toothbrush. And some mascara. Her reflection in the window was dismal, unkempt hair straggling around her grey face.