The Skeleton Key (9 page)

I let out an audible exhalation.

Oh, hell, Luke . . .

‘Pandora, darling, are you all right?' Celia asked.

Feeling heavy, I left the torch by the door and walked to the lounge room, carrying the dusty book I'd found in the strange laboratory. Under the light of her reading lamp and the glow of a moon which still looked close to full, my great-aunt was perched elegantly in her reading chair again. She had been studying an old tome with Freyja curled up next to her and now she looked up and examined my expression. Though Celia could not be found earlier, when Luke and I had walked through, now she seemed not to have moved, yet my life had shifted profoundly.

‘Okay . . . I'm really worried now,' I said, for lack of a more articulate response to what had just happened.

He reached for my throat!

‘Would you like a cup of tea?' Celia said, marking her page.

‘Oh.' I screwed up my face and rubbed my forehead with one hand. ‘That is very kind but I just don't think I can have another cup. I think I'm kind of freaking out, actually.'

My great-aunt raised one arched eyebrow and crossed her arms. I guess she didn't like the rejection a whole lot.

‘I'm sorry. It's just that . . . well, I found Lieutenant Luke, finally, and what I think was Dr Edmund Barrett's laboratory. But Luke is not Luke. Or Luke was Luke for a moment, but then . . .' I rambled, making little sense. ‘Oh, Great-Aunt Celia, I'm so worried. I found him, but he's not himself,' I said, and slumped back against the wall. My eyes started to well up again but I tried to calm myself. I was not going to cry anymore. I was not.

I heard Celia stand up and walk across the hardwood floor. Freyja darted over to me to sit at my feet, gazing at me with her big, strange opal eyes. I could swear she wanted to tell me something.

‘He's just . . . just like a zombie or something,' I muttered through my fingers, disbelieving. ‘He's like someone else entirely. He looked at me like he didn't even know me, and then he tried to attack me.'

Had
I
done this? By making him leave the house? Had I asked for too much? Had I cursed him?

‘And his eyes! His eyes glowed this horrible green.'

Celia put a cool hand on my shoulder. ‘It sounds like someone or something has possessed your soldier friend,' she said calmly.

I blinked back the tears that had threatened to return and crossed my arms over my chest. Was that what had happened? ‘What kind of something?' I asked.

I could tell by the look on her face that she had an idea.

‘Let's have some tea,' she replied and turned on her elegant heel. I had to restrain myself from screaming. I desperately wanted to know what she meant, but I knew better than to push Celia. Celia did not allow herself to be hurried by anyone.

She's not going to let me refuse, is she?
‘Okay,' I said, resigned to yet more tea.

My wise great-aunt walked into the kitchen, the beautiful fabric of her dress swishing as she moved, and I followed her without another word, feeling more than a little frustrated by this ritual of hers. She put the kettle on and I dutifully opened the cupboard and got out the cups and saucers. We went about our preparations silently, with Freyja pacing at our heels, clearly as impatient as I was. But before long we had the silver tray prepared and the penthouse smelled of aromatic tea leaves. We sat in the lounge room – Celia in her usual reading chair, and me perched on the hassock with Freyja purring in my lap.

‘You have been through a lot this evening,' Celia said as she carefully poured me a cup of tea and added a generous amount of milk and honey.

She handed me the cup and I thanked her. It smelled truly wonderful, and though I'd thought I was too stressed out to be able to relax, the first sip made my shoulders drop. The tea tasted sweet and milky compared to the last cup, only a couple of hours earlier, when I'd been upset by the woman hanging from the chandelier. But now seeing the woman in black seemed like nothing.

Luke. Not Luke . . .

I took another sip of the tea and felt my shoulders drop another inch. My great-aunt watched me carefully, I noticed, perhaps deciding whether her calming tea was taking effect.

It was.

‘So you found your soldier but he was not himself?'

I shivered thinking about those eyes – those green eyes. ‘Not at all,' I said.

‘Well, you are safe now and that is the main thing. I'm sure there is an explanation.' She took a sip of her tea, her movements languid. ‘What is that book you brought with you?' she asked casually.

‘Oh yes.' I'd put it at my feet. ‘I thought you might find this interesting. It's called
Transcendental Magic, its doctrine and ritual
.' I bent and picked it up, shaking the dust off the cover.

‘Magus Eliphas Levi – the pen name of Alphonse Louis Constant, the French occultist. Alphonse did know some things,' Celia conceded. ‘Though many of his ideas were quite fanciful. He believed that “souls” were sent out in pairs from heaven, and that when a man renounced the love of women, he made the bride who was destined for him a slave of the demons of debauch. No word on what happened to a man when a woman didn't care for him. There is a lot of that sort of nonsense in there.' She took another sip of tea. ‘But on certain rituals, Alphonse was quite learned. Anyway, it should make for some interesting reading, though the various translations can be inexact.'

Celia seemed quite familiar with the tome. I opened it at the copyright page and noted that Barrett's edition had been published in 1896, a few years before his death. ‘This translation is by a G. Redway.' I put the book in my lap and crossed my arms. ‘I've been wondering about something. If Barrett's laboratory is so hidden, who discovered his body? How did they know he'd even died?'

‘Dr Barrett had research assistants from time to time. Some of his experiments required it.'

‘What happened to them?'

‘Well . . .' She paused. ‘Let's just say no one saw much of them while they worked for Barrett, or after. I heard that Barrett's assistant at the time of his death was mute.'

Convenient if you didn't want them blabbing about your experiments, I thought. And not everyone in Edwardian days was literate.

‘In any event, after Barrett's death, his assistant disappeared into a life of anonymity. Hopefully a happy one, but with Barrett's reputation, perhaps it was not good to let it be known you'd worked with him.'

Indeed.

‘What does the book say?' Celia asked me, turning my attention back to its pages.

I shrugged. ‘Well, it doesn't look like light reading. The writing style is quite antiquated.' I casually flipped through the book, stopping at a random page. It read:

We must collect in the first place, carefully the memorials of him (or her) whom we desire to behold, the articles he used, and on which his impression remains.

‘Hmmm. This section is on necromancy, and it mentions needing to have articles of the deceased.'

‘Does it?' she said, and her tone implied that it was not a question at all.

The sword. Barrett had had Luke's sword. I was more certain than ever that Barrett had tried to evoke him, though for what reason I could not fathom.

‘But if all this is related somehow – Luke's disappearance, his sudden change – who is causing it? He hasn't been like this before.'

Celia took a slow sip of her tea and placed her cup and saucer back on the tray with a barely audible clink of china. ‘There are two main forms of necromancy, Pandora.'

‘Necromancy? You think Luke is being controlled by necromancy?' I blurted in response.

She nodded.

Of course he is. He is dead.

‘The first form of necromancy involves a journey to the realm of the dead to consult with those who have departed from this world,' she explained.

‘The realm of the dead? You mean, like, the Underworld?' I asked.

Luke had explained to me that there is an Underworld of some kind, but not hell, per se. Or at least not hell as it has been taught in religious scriptures over the centuries, with fire and brimstone and all that. What would such a place be like? Could the Underworld really
be
a physical place? A place a necromancer could travel to? Or was it a place you travelled to in your mind?

‘Like the Underworld, yes,' Celia confirmed, continuing with her explanation. ‘The second form of necromancy involves summoning spirits into the mortal sphere.'

Spirits like Luke
, I thought.

‘Both of these forms of necromancy aim to consult with or control spirits, and glean power or information from them, as spirits are known to possess great truths the living cannot know. The methods of summoning the dead or consulting with them differ, but there have been many famed necromancers over the centuries and a number of them left very specific instructions as to what methods may be used.'

I thought about that. Dr Edmund Barrett had clearly been dabbling in necromancy, and the discovery of Luke's cavalry sword in the mansion further lent credibility to the idea that Luke's grave had been disturbed by him, or someone working for him. I swallowed and tried to put the idea of Luke's decomposed remains out of my mind. I simply couldn't think of him like that, even after the way he'd been tonight, the way he'd changed.

‘You said that spirits are known to possess truths the living cannot know. What kind of truths?' I asked.

I had already learned about a number of eye-opening supernatural rules since moving to Spektor. For instance, I could not contact Luke during the day. This despite the fact that I sometimes saw other supernatural creatures during the day, like the spider goddess, when she was at the height of her powers. Also, the Sanguine who inhabited the house could not enter a place where they had not been invited, hence Celia's penthouse was off limits. But this particular supernatural rule about forbidden truths caught my interest because it made me think of something Lieutenant Luke had told me. He had tried to explain that there were things he simply could not express, because he was forbidden from doing so, just as he was unable to venture outside the mansion in spirit form. These were the rules and not only was he obliged to uphold them, but he was also physically (spiritually?) unable to break them, even if he wished to.

All these rules were very mysterious to me.

‘Truths,' my great-aunt said, typically vague, and gave me a significant look.

Right. So she's not going to explain that one, I thought. Or, she really doesn't know.

‘Historically, necromancers used their skills for divination, fortune telling and so on.'

I nodded. I remembered some of what my mother's many textbooks on ancient cultures and beliefs had taught me about the practice. The word came from the Greek ‘nekos' and ‘manteia' –
dead
divination.

‘There are thought to be many places which are ideal for the practising of necromancy – subterranean vaults and tombs, the ruins of ancient castles or monasteries, certain woods and deserts, certain crossroads – always at night and especially around the hour of midnight. But the most powerful necromancer or sorcerer can operate nearly anywhere and anytime.'

‘There are sorcerers?' I asked, wide-eyed.

‘There are many things in this world and the next,' she said.

Oh boy.

‘You are a kind of necromancer, Pandora.'

‘I'm a what?'

‘You can summon the dead. You can speak to them. Surely you have thought of this before?'

I had always been able to speak with the dead, but they had come to me, not the other way around. It had made my childhood very difficult. I hadn't meant to do it – on the contrary. And I certainly hadn't set about finding an ancient castle or subterranean vault! Yes, I had been summoning Luke, but I'd been doing it without even thinking. Well, he'd
asked
me to summon him. He'd started coming to me whenever I'd needed help. Was that necromancy?

‘But they come to me,' I protested.

‘Pandora, listen to me. You have the powers of a necromancer. That is not something to be ashamed of. It is a special gift – an important gift for you, as long as you use it for good.'

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

Celia picked up her cup of tea and gazed at the dark liquid, and through the black mesh of her delicate widow's veil I thought I detected concern etched on her smooth features. ‘Necromancy can be dangerous,' she said gravely. ‘If you use those powers by force, as many have over the centuries, it can be very dangerous indeed. There was a famous Egyptian necromancer named Chiancungi,' she explained. ‘Seventeenth century, I believe. A famed fortune teller. According to legend, he perished while attempting to summon the spirit of Bokim.'

‘The spirit of . . .?' Growing up, I had read a lot of stories and folklore, but I had not heard of Chiancungi or Bokim.

‘According to the tale, a so-called demon or infernal spirit by that name was summoned,' she said.

‘A so-called demon? Demons exist? Why would anyone want to summon a demon?'

Necromancers? Sorcerers? Demons?
I had to try to slow down and stop interrupting Celia, though my head was spinning.

The corners of Celia's perfectly painted red lips turned up just a touch. ‘Always the questions with you,' she said, but there was a hint of pride in her voice. ‘Demons are not as you may understand them.' She patted my hand with her cool fingers, and Freyja stretched her neck up to rub her face against her wrist. ‘There are many misunderstandings about their kind – even more misunderstandings than there are about the Sanguine. Demons – or Dark Beings as they are more properly known – come in many forms, and they are very powerful, and possess much knowledge. Chiancungi did indeed try to summon Bokim. As the story goes, it was for a bet.'