Resonance (27 page)

Burnt Out

H
ARRY’S LEGS WERE
like jelly. He felt he might fall down.

‘Let’s … let’s sit down for a minute, will we, kid?’

Tina sank to the stone steps, wrapped her arms around herself and laid her head on her knees. Harry dropped to the step beside her. The candle he held out against the darkness cast just enough light to show that they were at a junction on the staircase. Below them lay the steps they’d ascended from the underground theatre; far above, the door that led to the library. To their right, a passage sloped steeply up into darkness.

Harry switched his attention back and forth between the passages, feeling crawlingly vulnerable. That had been Joe down there – pale and wild and crouched at the feet of …

Harry’s mind showed him what Joe had been crouched at the feet of, and his thoughts veered from it, terrified. He returned to the facts. He had seen Joe; had witnessed the black man save him.
Vincent – I saw Vincent save him
.

Tina had told him Joe was dead. But Harry had seen him crouched at the feet of the Angel, and—

Harry’s eyes opened wide. An angel. He had seen an angel. Just like Tina had said. And not just any angel, either – Uriel, the burning eagle. Uriel, the protective lion, the flames of his blazing body filling the theatre with heat and light, descending the steps of the theatre, taking that thing from Tina’s arms; roaring, roaring, and then weeping in rage.

Uriel, who had saved the world from the Nephilim. Uriel, commander of the Army of Angels. Uriel, one of the four protectors of the throne of God, here,
here
, the tears of defeat in his eyes.

Magician
.

Harry jolted, the candle held high.

I am here, magician.

His attention snapped towards the passageway that curved away to his right. The candle illuminated only a few paltry feet of gritty flooring and rock walls, but beyond that the now familiar twin phosphorescence of eyes watched from the darkness.

Is the seer unharmed?

Tina turned her head, resting her cheek on her folded arms as she looked in Vincent’s direction.

‘Joe,’ she whispered. ‘Are you there?’

There was a moment’s silence, then a dry whisper came down to them. ‘Yes.’

‘I can’t sense you at all.’ There was no reply to this, and Tina’s back rose and fell in a sigh. ‘I think I need to sleep,’ she whispered.

Bring the seer back to her room, boy. Make certain she rests
.

There was a barely audible scuffling far up the passage, and Harry leapt to his feet, the candle thrust forward, straining to see.

‘Where are you taking Joe?’

His voice echoed back to him in mocking non-answer. After a few moments, he heard the door at the top of the steps opening and closing, and he realised that Vincent had taken a different route up to it. The ground below the manor must be a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels and doors. How many entrances and exits must there be?

Looking up at him, Tina’s face was very pale, and her eyes seemed bigger than Harry had ever seen them, dark as midnight. He crouched and gazed into her face. ‘Can you make it back upstairs?’ he whispered.

She sighed and rose to her feet. He cinched his arm around her waist, and they slowly climbed the stairs to the house above.

T
HOSE TERRIBLE LI T TLE
kids were crouched at the door to Tina’s room, trying to look through the keyhole. They straightened as Harry and Tina came around the corner, and Harry felt his stomach shrink at their small wicked faces floating in the near dark – at the pinpricks of their glowing eyes.

The little girl took a step towards him and he couldn’t help it, he shrank back. She smiled in sly happiness and swished her skirts to and fro.

‘Hello, stick-man,’ she sang. ‘We were checking to see if you were home before we paid you a visit. What’s that you have on your bed?’

He summoned some backbone. ‘You bored with torturing helpless dogs?’

The boy pointed to Tina’s door. ‘Come inside with us,’ he said.

To his horror, Harry found himself stepping forward, already reaching for the handle. He was halted by Tina’s arm around his waist. ‘Stay with me, Harry.’

She pulled him back and Harry moaned, torn between her command and the boy’s. It was a nauseating feeling – an intense, itchy panic – and he bent double, overcome with confusion.

Tina tightened her grip on him and took the candle in her free hand. ‘It’s all right, Harry,’ she said, and he instantly felt better. She lifted the candlestick high, looking at the children. ‘Go away,’ she said.

The boy’s eyes hopped between them, a foxy curiosity welling up. He opened his mouth to speak, and Harry turned his face away, terrified. The door opposite Tina’s opened a fraction and Vincent slipped out into the candlelight. He seemed unnerved at the children’s presence. They seemed fascinated by his.

‘What are you doing in that room?’ asked the boy.

‘Pap doesn’t like people going in there,’ said the little girl, awed at the very thought of it.

Vincent closed the door behind him and stood with his back pressed to the wood. ‘You … you go off and play,’ he told the children. ‘You are not allowed up here.’

‘We only want what’s in there,’ said the little girl, pointing to Tina’s bedroom. ‘We weren’t going to play with Pap’s seer.’

‘There is only an old one in there. You know you’re not allowed to play with the old ones.’

The girl pouted. ‘That’s only when they’re in the attic.’

‘Nevertheless, you cannot
have
it.’

‘But it is
not in the attic
.’

The little boy was watching Vincent very speculatively, his eyes hopping between the man’s face and the grip he still had on the handle of the closed door. ‘What
are
you doing in there?’ he asked.

Harry was amazed at the discomfort that rose up in Vincent’s face – he had never seen the man look anything but fully in command. ‘Nothing.’

The boy took a step towards him, seeming to listen intently for sounds from the room. ‘Pap doesn’t like anyone going in—’

‘Do you know what your pap is doing right now?’ asked Vincent brightly.

The children perked up like spaniels. ‘No,’ said the little girl. ‘What?’

‘He is
cooking
.’

They seemed a little confused. Then the boy’s face opened in sudden wonder. ‘With
fire
?’ he breathed.

At Vincent’s nod, the little girl squealed in delight. ‘Where?’

‘In the kitchens. Go on – quickly. I am certain he will let you help.’

Vincent shooed them away and they ran, tumbling and squealing and arguing happily as they raced each other down the stairs. Vincent listened quietly for a moment, then he glanced towards Tina and Harry.

‘Sometimes they seem almost normal. Is it any wonder Cornelius did not believe the accusations flung against them?’ He scrubbed his hand across his mouth and shook his head. ‘Had I been in his place, even I might have saved them from the mob and the gallows.’

‘Why do you let them stay?’ asked Harry.

Vincent frowned, as if the answer to that question were obvious. ‘Why, they are Raquel’s. Cornelius brought them for her. Why on earth would I want to get rid of them?’ He opened Tina’s door for them, gesturing them inside. ‘I will not mention that you were abroad,’ he said. ‘We need
none of
us
mention that we were abroad.’

He closed the door, and they listened to him locking it. There was the quiet opening and closing of the door opposite. It was hard to tell if he had left or if he had gone back inside, and Harry pressed his ear to their own door, listening for retreating footsteps. He heard nothing.

‘Is he gone, Tina? Can you tell if he has Joe in that room?’ He turned to her. ‘Tina? Is he …’

She was leaning on the bed, the candlestick perilously tilted, wax dribbling onto the floor. Her face was dead of expression. Harry gently took the candle from her and placed it on the bedside locker.

‘Maybe you should lie down, kid, huh? It might do you some good.’

He sat her on the bed, removed the coat she had flung on over her petticoats, and hung it on the back of a chair. He hesitated at the sight of her ragged, filthy stockings, looked up into her blank face, then, looking away, reached beneath her hem to release the stockings from their garters.

‘You can’t get into bed covered in mud like that,’ he murmured.

He pushed the covers aside. It felt very strange to lay Tina back against the pillows. He was acutely aware of her being a girl: the soft shape of her beneath the cotton of her petticoats; the dark spread of her hair on the yellowed pillowcases.

Her feet were freezing as he lifted them onto the bed. Her dark eyes followed his every move as he pulled the covers across her. He sat down, took her hand.

‘I won’t leave you, Tina,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

She gave no indication that she heard him, but there was some look to her, some
sense
to her, that told him she knew he was making promises he couldn’t keep. He squeezed her hand.

‘I’ll do my best to fight them,’ he whispered.

The faintest of smiles tugged at her lips and her eyes slipped shut.

Beside her, the strange, wizened little creature that she insisted was Miss Ursula burbled, its big eyes watching the candlelight wink and gleam on the rosary threaded through its claws.

Harry sighed. ‘I guess I’ll fight for you, too,’ he whispered.

Wrapping himself in a blanket, he went and sat in the chair by the window, looking down towards the lake. He listened to Tina breathing and the old thing murmuring to itself, and tried to think.

Uriel: fire of God; the light in the west. Harry tried to come up with a more earthbound explanation for what he’d seen, but there was none. He had been looking for music-hall tricks, the cheap and tawdry machinations of man, and all the time it had been so much more than that. So much more. Uriel, an angel of the presence, trapped here and powerless at the mercy of these – his eyes flicked to the door – these what?

Shedim? Mazzikim?
Harry shook his head.
Men
, he thought.
He is held captive by men
. This was not right. This was not good.

Behind him, Tina slept fast within the ring of golden candlelight. Her skin was paper-white, the flesh beneath her eyes as bruised as if she had been beaten. She had gone through so much to try to rescue Joe. It had been heroic.

Harry thought of all his father had told him about God and the world, and about mankind’s ancient duty to both: every human being’s responsibility in actions big and small to heal the world –
tikkun olam
.

He could not let this go on here. He had to at least try to stop this terrible thing.

Did it matter that he would fail? Was there not also honour in a valiant defeat?

Harry pulled the blanket tighter, closed his eyes and, though he knew he would not sleep, recited the
Kriat Shema al Hamita
. Then
Adon Olam
. By the time he had finished, he was calm and sure, and resigned to die in his efforts to free the Angel.