Skulk (19 page)

“Can we talk about this inside?” Addie asked.

James gave me a long look, then bowed deeply to us. “Anything for my favourite girl. If you’d like to show our guest the way in...”

Addie walked up to the closest arch, right up to the plywood wall that had been put up to seal the arch shut. I still couldn’t see anything that looked like a door until Addie suddenly pounced forwards and head-butted one of the corners. It flipped up, leaving a hole just about big enough for a fox to squeeze through. She paused on the other side, so I could just see her legs through the hole, and jumped up. A light came on behind her.

“Come on!” she said. Despite everything, there was a thrill in her voice, like a kid who’s discovered something
awesome
and can’t wait to share it.

I put my head down and stepped through into James’ den.

It was all I could do not to allow my jaws to drop open and let the sapphire tumble out.

This place was an Aladdin’s cave. A dragon’s lair. It was
full of diamonds
.

A bright fluorescent strip light hung in the centre of the room. In any other place, the light it cast would be harsh and unforgiving. It would make furniture seem institutional and turn skin pasty and dull. But in here, the plain, unfussy quality of light was perfect. No romantically flickering candles could have done justice to this number of diamonds. It was like standing in the Milky Way, with thousands of coloured sparks glinting and glittering around me every time I moved, even just to breathe.

There were cabinets full of tiaras, shelves and hooks dripping with necklaces, low tables scattered with rings and bracelets. Rubies and sapphires and emeralds and garnets and every shade and shape of diamond you could imagine.

The furniture must’ve been brought in some other way, but every shiny piece of stolen property was small enough that it could be slipped into James’ little black bag and carried safely through the fox-door.

Addie trotted through the scintillating forest of jewels and flopped down on a silky couch draped with velvet. I hopped up beside her and dropped the sapphire, putting my paws on it protectively, and staring around. If anything, the view from this angle was even better.

“You stole
all
of this?”

“What a question to ask a gentleman,” James smirked. He was in one of the corners, doing something with what looked like a box of miscellaneous, unsorted loot. He slipped the black bag off over his head and put it down carefully on top of a glinting pile of rubies. “Of course I did.”

He came over to the couch, jumped up and sat back on his haunches, his brush swishing happily around his paws.

I tried to come up with an appropriate expression of stunned appreciation.

“
Dude
,” I breathed.

“Why, thank you,” said James.

“Do you sell
anything
?” I asked.

“Well, you tell me, what’s the point of having it all if I can’t look at it? I sell the ugly pieces, to keep me in the style to which I’ve become accustomed. Other than that, I just like to come here and polish them. You can’t blame me, right?”

“Nope.”

“So,” James said. “I can’t help but notice you’ve brought me an enormous sapphire.”

I clenched my claws around it, protectively. “It’s not really mine. Exactly.”

“Oh yeah? Who’d you bounce it from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“I don’t want to tell him,” Addie said, turning her head sharply to me. I blinked.

“Really?”

“It takes knowledge, right? So the less he knows...”

“Oh, right. Yeah, she’s right.” I thought James already knew enough for Victoria to have every reason to send her fog after him, if she ever knew that he knew. But Addie was looking at me with huge, puppy-dog eyes and throwing worried glances at James. I supposed it couldn’t hurt to play our cards close to our chests, for the moment.

“If we tell you, you could die,” Addie said to James. “I’m not kidding, people have died.”

“Fine,” said James, tossing his head impatiently. “So what do you want from me?”

“Just to keep it safe,” said Addie. “This is like the safest place in the
world
, right?”

James shook his head. “I don’t know about that, love. Maybe the safest place in Bow, but that’s not saying much.”

“It’ll have to do,” I said. “We can’t keep carrying it around. Someone’s looking for it. Someone really dangerous.”

“Uh-huh.” James washed behind his ear, over-casually. “And I can’t help also noticing that it’s pretty much the same as the stone Olaye carelessly misplaced. I hear that was a ruby, though.”

“Did you take the ruby from the Skulk?” I asked.

“Ooh, blunt. No.” James licked his muzzle. “I prefer at least a
bit
of a challenge. I knew it was there, I mean Don was keeping it under a
rock
, for God’s sake.”

“We want it back. It’s important.”

“Important, eh? What’s so important?”

“I said, didn’t I?” Addie growled. “If we tell you, she could come and... it’d be really bad, OK?”

“All right,” James murmured. “All right, babe. I won’t ask.”

“You’re sure you didn’t take the Skulk stone?” I pressed.

“Can’t help you there,” said James, with a flick of his head.

“But you’ll hide this for us, right?” Addie said. “You remember when you said if I ever needed anything, anything
at all
, I should ask you?”

“I pretty much meant cash, sweetie, but sure. I’ll hold onto it. I’ll put it away in a drawer and I won’t let anyone take it but you. How’s that?”

My gaze wandered over James’ cave and then lighted on Addie. He’d promised her cash, any time she wanted... and she was living under a trailer in the Westway Traveller Park, and she’d never taken him up on it?

I didn’t get it. Pride could only take you so far, surely? But then, one thing I’d noticed about rich people: they could have dignity by the bucketload, but they were often not big on pride.

Addie squeezed past me and snuggled up to James, rubbing her muzzle against his. “You’re the tits, Jimmy.”

“I know,” said James, with another doggy grin, licking the top of Addie’s head affectionately.

He showed us out, but before we could walk off he called to me.

“Hey, Meg. Can I have a word?”

“Don’t talk shit about me,” Addie warned.

“
Never
,” James swore, so deadpan that it could only have been sarcasm. Addie stuck out her tongue and trotted away to wait at the end of the alley

“Look,” James said, “Addie’s telling the truth about people dying, right?”

“Dying, getting turned into evil pigeons,” I said, a little hysterically. “Yeah.”

James hesitated for a second. “Well, if you ever want to clue me in on exactly what’s going on and why these things are so important, I’m here.”

“We’ll be back,” I promised. “It’s Skulk business. And I think that makes it your business, whether you want it to be or not.”

I thought he’d deny it, but he just nodded.

“Actually, there’s something else you can help me with,” I said. “Do you know where the other shifters meet? The Cluster and the Horde and the butterfly one?”

“The Rabble? Kew Gardens, I think. In one of the big greenhouses. Last I heard the Cluster were meeting in a derelict pub in Hammersmith, the
Saracen
. And the Horde meet up in the abandoned tube station in Aldwych, but – you don’t want to go visiting.”

“Why not?”

“They’re not friendly. At all. Trust me on this. And look, this might come under the heading of ‘talking shit’, but take care of Adeola.”

“I’ll try,” I promised.

“So, what do you think that sorceress bitch’s deal is?” Addie asked. We’d followed the train tracks down to Limehouse, and now we were looking out over the river at the dark knife-edge of the Shard, slicing through the London skyline.

“I… I don’t know,” I said. I scratched hard behind my ear with my back paw. “I guess she wants this weapon that Blackwell told me about. The one that got split up into the five stones.”

“Yeah, but why?” Addie’s nose twitched and she glared down at the reflections of the lights glittering in the river. “Is she a terrorist or what? I mean, what kind of person lives all the way up there and still wants
more
power?”

The taller the towers, the more powerful they became
, Blackwell had said.

And even though I knew that, I couldn’t help thinking the Shard was kind of beautiful.

My Dad helped build that,
I thought, with a strange burst of pride.
If I ever see him again I’m going to tell him how pretty it is.

“My mum, for one,” I said. Addie gave me a sharp look. “One of her campaign managers once told me that wanting to be Prime Minister is perfectly sane, but nobody actually gets there without going some flavour of bonkers. It’s like… a slippery slope of bad choices. You make allowances and concessions and deals. You go on
Newsnight
and kiss babies and pretend to be tough on immigration, or whatever it is everyone wants that week.”

“How bad do your choices have to be to end up with you killing people for a bunch of magic rocks?” Addie asked.

“Pretty bad,” I conceded.

“Well, whatever it is, we’re going to stop it, right? How are we going to get up there?”

“I don’t think we can, not yet.”

“What?” Addie snarled. “She’s got your mum and dad. I thought we were going to go and sort her out?”

“I know,” I said. “I want revenge, believe me, but we have to be smart about it. I’ve got a plan.”

“So what’s the plan, Princess Smartarse?”

I was pretty sure it was a rubbish plan. But it was the only one I had.

“We need help,” I went on. “I need to know more about what’s going on. I’m going to see the other shifters. Blackwell said we had this duty, to look after the stones, and we’ve all forgotten how to keep them safe, and that’s why Victoria could do all this. So maybe someone in one of the groups remembers and they’ll help us put it right. Or maybe I can find this metashifter person and they’ll be able to help, somehow. I’ve got to find out.”

“Meg,” said Addie, shaking her head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Your plan is asking random strangers for help? You want to ask the
Horde
? We’re going to get massacred, I hope you know that.”

“Actually, just me. You know the rest of the Skulk, right, you know where you can find them?” Addie nodded, slowly. “I want you to go and get them to meet us. I guess... tomorrow night, midnight. Can you do that?”

“Well, yeah. But, listen, they may technically be our crew, but I’m warning you, they won’t want to climb a massive tower and attack an evil witch just cause you say so.”

“If she’s got our stone, it’s all of our business. It has to be. Don will help persuade the others, won’t he? I mean, he wants to get it back, right?”

“I s’pose,” said Addie.

“Your confidence is overwhelming,” I muttered.

“I wish.” Addie stood up and brushed against me. “And you’re going to go in the Horde nest all by yourself, yeah?”

“How can they be scarier than what we’ve seen tonight?”

Addie shook her head. “You’re
nuts
, Princess.”

“Yeah. I know. But you know what, I think I like being nuts.” I gazed out across the rooftops at the Limehouse basin glinting between tall apartment buildings. “I feel OK right now. You know how long it’s been since I felt OK?”

Addie tilted her head at me and her ears flattened to the sides of her head. I blushed – not that she could see it through the fur, but I felt the heat down the back of my spine.

“It may be stupid deathwish nuts, but that’s way better than gibbering wreck nuts, right?”

Addie made a
pssht
sound between her teeth. “Right. When I left home I didn’t give a toss what happened to me next. I’d got out. I felt invincible.
It wore off.
”

“My mum used to lock me in a wardrobe whenever she thought I’d done something wrong,” I said. “Which was a lot of the time.” My voice sounded kind of distant and dreamy – I sounded pretty crazy, even to me. “I should’ve gone mad years ago, it’s pretty liberating actually.”

Addie stared at me. “A wardrobe, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t think rich people who were going to be Prime Minister did that kind of thing.”

“I think that’s what she was counting on. She… she wanted me to be perfect, that’s what’s so stupid about it. She wanted me thin and vain and clever, just like her.” I shook myself. “I should hate all this, the shift and the magic. It’s taken my parents. It took Ameera. We weren’t… I mean, we weren’t soulmates or anything, but she… she was my best friend…”

“Oh,” said Addie softly. “Was she in the school?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

After a second, I felt a warm weight on my back. Addie’d laid her head on my shoulder.

I felt her throat vibrate against me as she spoke. “Don’t hate the shift. Hate Victoria.”

“That’s just it. I love the shift. Love it. And I know I should be afraid, but I’m just glad to have a problem that makes sense. Mum despises me and everything I am for no reason at all, that’s… that’s hard. Evil sorceress wants magic stones, killed my friend, I’ve got to stop her: simple. Got it.”

Addie pulled away. Her ears twitched and she scratched behind them with one of her back paws. “People are bastards. My dad hit me a lot. There was a lot of Bible stuff. Pray the gay away, y’know, only with more shouting.” I flinched, and then felt horrible about it. “God. I’m sorry.”

“Ugh. Don’t be. Screw it. It was horrible and I’m a fox now. I’ve got my own place, I’ve got Jimmy. Worst I have to deal with now is Don. I know he’s a bigot, but he’s not a deep down awful person, he’s just a bit of a dick. I’m just saying…” she shook herself. “I’m saying, parents are people and people are bastards.”

“That is surprisingly insightful.”

There was an awkward silence. Then she licked my shoulder roughly. “Well, you’re not a bastard and neither am I, so we’re probably doing OK.”