Soul Stealer (20 page)

“Perhaps his mother wasn’t married,” Pip suggested.

“She was married,” Sebastian softly announced, adding, “in a manner of speaking.”

“What do you mean?” Pip asked.

“Her husband was not of the flesh,” Sebastian replied.

“Not of the flesh…?”
Pip said, but, having asked the question, she did not want to hear the answer.

“Bride of Frankenstein,” Tim said in a deep voice, “starring Boris Karloff.” He put his fingers under his eyes, grotesquely
pulling his lower eyelids down.

“Shut up, Tim!” Pip said sharply. “What do you mean?”

“All the Yolands through the centuries have been born of woman,” Sebastian explained, “but sired by those who are otherwise.”

“Otherwise?” Pip inquired.

“Suffice to say Yoland’s mother — all the Yolands’ mothers — would not have known,” Sebastian replied. “They would merely
have discovered one day that they were with child.”

“Then how on earth…? You know,” Tim said, embarrassed by the direction the conversation was taking.

“Shall we just say by magic?” Sebastian replied evasively. “Black magic. Continue with your findings, Tim.”

Regaining his composure, Tim went on reading from the printout.

“After primary school, he went to the grammar school that was closed down when Bourne End Comp. was set up. Leaving the grammar
school, he went to Merton College, Oxford, where he studied chemistry.
But! Wait for this! When he was an undergraduate student, he wrote a thesis entitled
The Chemistry of Alchemy in the Fifteenth Century.
After getting his degree, he again disappeared but turned up two and a half years later in 1974 as an assistant professor
at his old school. He transferred to the comp. when the grammar school closed. He was promoted to head of chemistry in 1982
when the previous head of department was killed by an avalanche while supervising a school skiing trip to Austria. He has
never married — and that’s it.”

Taking the printout from Tim’s hand, Pip observed, “Every job a Yoland has had, right up to our Yoland, was either as a jeweler
or a chemist.”

“In other words, something to do with chemistry or precious metals,” Tim replied. “The stuff of alchemy.”

“It is not
a
Yoland,” Sebastian announced quietly. “It it
the same
Yoland through time. Each baby contains the one soul, the one man within.”

“You mean,” Pip suggested, “the soul is sort of recycled, and so there aren’t generations of Yolands, just the one.”

“Precisely,” Sebastian confirmed, “and the dates of his appearances are significant. In 1665, it was the outbreak of the Great
Plague. The end of the seventeenth century brought war with Scotland and great civil unrest in England. In 1703, there was
the worst storm for a thousand years during which half of the nation’s merchant ships were sunk and thousands drowned or murdered
by wreckers.”

“Wreckers?” Tim cut in.

“Those who scoured the coast for wrecks,” Sebastian
answered, “rescuing and then killing survivors for their ships’ cargoes. They were brutal times. In 1914,” he continued, “was
the commencement of what you call the Great War. In 1939, the Second World War began.”

“You don’t mean Yoland’s played a part in all of this?” Pip asked, incredulously.

“No,” Sebastian answered. “Were that the case, I should have awoken every time and yet I did not. However, it is greatly coincidental
that he was present.”

“Don’t you only wake up if de Loudeac’s around the place?” Tim asked. “You said…”

“Yes, that is generally true. Yet great evil may stir me.”

“So Yoland’s not necessarily the reason…” Pip began.

“… and you’ve woken up now,” Tim said, finishing his sister’s sentence.

“Yes,” Sebastian replied pensively, “I have, have I not…?”

“So when Yoland was around,” Tim wanted to know, “what was he doing?”

“I believe,” Sebastian responded, “he was researching, studying the ways of men or women at their very worst.”

“And now you think he’s come to put his knowledge to use?”

Sebastian looked from Pip to Tim and back again.

“It is my considered opinion,” Sebastian said slowly, “that Yoland has been preparing a long time for what he now plans.”

“… which is?” Tim asked.

Sebastian made no answer.

The following day, as they left the chemistry laboratory after registration, Pip felt a hand touch the back of her neck. Fingers
quickly ran down her nape, blunt, thick nails scrambling at her skin. In less than a second, the chain holding the pendant
tightened at her throat and cut into her flesh.

“I’ll ‘ave this bauble,” muttered a voice behind her.

With a sharp tug, Scrotton yanked the chain. It broke. Pip felt the pendant whip over her collarbone. Without breaking his
step, Scrotton continued towards the classroom door. Gathering the chain into his hand, he slid it into his pocket.

Tim and Sebastian were ahead of her in a wedge of other pupils, pushing to get out, so there was nothing they could do. Pip
took two paces after Scrotton and lashed out at him. The flat of her hand hit his ear and he stumbled. The momentum of her
action spun her around, and her bag caught a test-tube rack put out for the next class. It fell to the floor in a shattering
of glass, the wooden rack breaking into splinters.

Tim and Sebastian, with everyone else, stopped in their tracks and looked around. No one spoke. The silence was almost tangible.

“So?” Yoland said menacingly, as he approached Pip.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Pip said timidly, staring at her feet.

“My little lecture at the beginning of term seems not to have impressed itself upon you,” Yoland remarked acidly.

He bent down and gazed straight into Pip’s eyes. She felt him seeking out her soul and fumbled in her pocket for the clicker,
pressing the little steel tongue. Yoland
immediately withdrew from looking at her, and she sensed his influence wane.

“It did, sir. It was an accident, sir.”

Pip knew there was no point in telling him what had really happened. Scrotton would be believed before her: and, for all she
knew, Scrotton might have been ordered to steal the pendant. The whole incident might be a setup.

“Accidents do not just happen,” Yoland continued through gritted teeth. “They occur through a lack of forethought.” He stood
up to his full height. “You will go in detention and prepare an essay of at least 300 words on the importance of laboratory
safety. In accordance with the school rules, you will either fulfill this penalty after school or during the lunch hour. The
choice is yours.”

Over by the door, Tim and Sebastian willed Pip to choose the latter option.

“In lunch break, sir,” Pip said.

“Yes!” Tim mouthed triumphantly.

“Very well. You will be here at half past twelve precisely,” Yoland decreed. “You will have consumed your food before coming.”

“Scrotton’s stolen the pendant,” Pip reported as soon as they were away from the laboratory. “I tried to get it back but…”

“It matters not,” Sebastian said with a faint smile, “and we may turn this perceived adversity to our advantage. I have noticed
that Yoland spends much of his free time around noontide in the preparation room behind the laboratory. Your chastisement
will give us an
opportunity to observe what it is he employs himself doing.”

“But it belonged to Queen Joan,” Pip reminded him.

“Be not concerned,” Sebastian pacified her. “The pendant can look after itself.”

Throughout the midmorning break, Scrotton was nowhere to be seen, only reappearing for math class immediately afterward. He
arrived late, just sliding into his seat before the teacher, a gruff woman who wore tweed skirts and heavy shoes, walked into
the room.

While worksheets were handed out, Scrotton smirked at Pip, who glowered back at him.

“Pay him no attention,” Sebastian advised in a subdued voice. “Concentrate upon your work.”

Pip had reached the fourth question on the worksheet when she thought she could just pick up the smell of burning. She glanced
around. Tim was concentrating on the work. Sebastian caught her eye and nodded towards Scrotton, who was bent over his desk.
From his creased brow and the fact that his tongue protruded from between his lips, Pip guessed he was finding the math exercise
very difficult.

As she looked at him, Pip saw something moving by his feet. She glanced down. Scrotton’s left shoe was on fire. Tiny flames
flickered along the edge of the sole, gradually spreading up the leather towards the bottom of his trousers. The class started
to giggle.

“What’s going on?” the teacher inquired, turning from the whiteboard upon which she was writing the worksheet answers. She
sniffed the air. “Do I detect burning?”

“It’s Scrotton, miss,” a girl sitting near the back of the room called out, hardly able to contain her laughter. “He’s on
fire.”

By now, flames were licking up Scrotton’s pants legs while he tried frantically to beat them out. With every blow at the flames,
eddies of smoke puffed out of his jacket cuffs.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the math teacher availed herself of a fire extinguisher that hung by her desk, removed the
safety pin and, pointing the nozzle squarely at Scrotton, said in a loud voice, “Close your eyes and mouth, boy.”

Scrotton barely had time to obey before a stream of dense, pressurized white foam hit him, enveloping him from the waist down.

“Now!” the teacher mused, standing in front of Scrotton as the smoke dissipated, “I wonder how that could have happened?”

“I don’t know, miss,” Scrotton said in a surly voice.

“I do!” the teacher replied. “Cigarettes. Matches. You know the school rule on smoking.”

Scrotton peered miserably at his feet and his still-smoldering shoe.

“On your hind legs!” She addressed the remainder of the class. “You keep quiet and get on with your work. A prefect’ll be
in shortly to mind you.” With that, she led Scrotton out, closing the door behind her. The class fell into a suppressed but
agitated chatter.

“How did that happen?” Pip whispered.

“The eye will not be stolen from its owner,” Sebastian explained. “If it is, it takes its own revenge upon the thief.”

Without leaving his seat, Sebastian leaned over and felt about in the trail of foam Scrotton had made. When he sat up, he
had the pendant in his hand. It was still attached to the broken chain.

“I’ll get the chain mended,” Pip said as Sebastian passed it to her.

“There is no need,” Sebastian answered.

He held the two broken ends of the chain between his finger and thumb. When he removed them, the chain was whole once more.

Pip settled down and Yoland, seeing she had begun her punishment, went into the preparation room, closing the door. After
a few minutes, Pip heard a faint yet distinct whining noise, reminding her of a wild bees’ nest Tim had discovered in a hollow
tree at the far end of Rawne’s Ground. Standing on the rung of her stool, she was able to peer through the fume cupboard into
the preparation room.

Yoland was standing before a condenser reducing and collecting the vapors given off by a brilliant, iridescent blue liquid
boiling in a round-bottomed flask poised over a Bunsen burner. Yet there was more than just the liquid in the flask. Small
black flies seemed to be hovering in the steam. Then, taking a pipette, he removed a small amount of the distilled liquid
from the beaker, running it off into a test tube to which he added a reddish powder. The liquid bubbled as the chemicals mixed.
Yoland then gently shook the test tube, mildly
heated it over the Bunsen burner and poured the now blood-colored fluid into a petri dish.

Moving slightly to one side, Pip saw on the workbench behind him a large retort held in place over a tripod by means of a
silver-painted clamp-stand. As she looked, something black seemed to be moving in the retort, squirming around as though it
was uncomfortable in such a confined space. The interior of the retort was misted, as if fogged with condensation. She was
reminded of her primary school classroom windows on rainy winter afternoons. Suddenly, pressed against the wall of the retort,
was an eye. It was perfectly round, like a bird’s, white with a jet black pupil — but it somehow had more to it. A kind of
intelligence. And she knew it had seen her. The interior of the retort came alive. Feathers and fur pressed against the glass
as if the contents were trying to get out. She briefly saw a beak, a pointed ear and a bright chrome yellow talon like a chicken’s
foot. Hurriedly, she bobbed down and picked up her pen.