Witch Fire (17 page)
Authors: Laura Powell
He didn’t respond.
‘I heard about what happened last night.’
‘It didn’t mean anything.’
She tapped her finger on the desk. It was the one with the missing joint; the skin was yellow and puckered at the end.
‘People are gossiping. About you and Gloriana. You and Jenna too.’
‘I don’t pay attention to gossip.’
‘Lucas. I know you are confused. And bored, and lonely. But to form an intense attachment in such a short space of time, and to such a girl . . . Gloriana is crude, aggressive. I confess I do not see what someone like you would see in her.’
‘Why?’ he asked, goaded. ‘Because she’s not browbeaten by this place? Because she’s proud of what she is?’
Dr Caron’s face grew sharp and watchful. ‘And you admire that?’
At once, he realised his mistake. ‘No. Not at all. It’s just . . . well, it’s different for someone like Glory. She’s been brought up among criminals. She’s used to – er – deviancy. That’s why we quarrelled.’
‘Did you discuss with her what we talked about in Blumenwald?’
‘Of course not.’ He swallowed. ‘Anyway, she wouldn’t be interested.’
Dr Caron’s eyes travelled slowly round her office. Lucas began to sweat. What if he and Glory hadn’t managed to completely cover their tracks? The woman must already know about the attempted break-in to Lazovic’s office, and now there was evidence of sky-leaping too.
The silence stretched on. Finally, he said, ‘I think I’m ready to talk to my father now. About what we, er, discussed. Do you think you’ll be able to set up the call?’
Dr Caron spread her hands out on the desk.
‘I don’t think that would be wise just now. You are overemotional. We do not want to overreach ourselves.’
The next morning, the school was informed that, for health reasons, the therapist had gone on indefinite leave.
‘Hello? Hello?’
‘It’s me, Dad. Glory.’ She could hear music and laughter in the background, and the chink of glasses. ‘Are you at a
party
?’
‘Oh, ah, well. Just a small gathering. The Residents’ Association got the funds for the play centre, so me and Peggy thought a celebration was in order. Rolf’s helping too.’
Glory leaned her forehead against the side of the service station phone box. She felt terribly tired.
‘Sounds fun.’
‘And how are you doing?’
‘Fine. Mostly. That is – well, things ain’t exactly gone to plan at the academy. We’ve hit a bit of a dead end. So I’m going to take a break. I thought I’d go travelling for a while. Maybe visit Cousin Candy.’
‘On your own? What about money?’ He coughed. ‘Ahem. I’m not sure this sounds very, er, sensible.’
‘I’ve enough funds to be getting by. And I’m with a friend.’
‘Lucas?’
‘No. Someone else from the school. Lucas . . . he’s staying on. Fact is, Dad, I might have made a mistake with this WICA business. I don’t reckon the job’s right for me after all.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, love. I hope you’re not in any difficulty.’
‘I’ve always been free to walk. And I ain’t done nothing wrong – don’t let no one tell you otherwise. Don’t let on what we’ve talked about neither. Any problems, you speak to Troy. I’ll be in touch again soon.’
‘Oh dear . . . well . . . I’m sure you know what you’re doing. You’re such a clever girl. But you will be careful, won’t you?’
‘Always. I love you.’
‘Love you too.’
Glory put the phone down with a sigh. She knew she would have to broach the subject of Edie at some point, but her heart shrank from the prospect. At least Patrick was discreet. All those years in the coven hadn’t been for nothing.
Please, please pick up
, she begged silently as Troy’s mobile, the one he used for personal calls, began to ring.
At the last minute, he answered with an irritable, ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Glory, and I’m gonna have to be quick ’cause I’m on one of them phonecards and I ain’t got much credit. But I thought you should know I’ve left the academy, and WICA, and the rest. You were right. More than right. I was a fool to trust them. I’ve been played.’
She worked hard to keep her voice strong.
There was a moment’s pause. ‘Exactly how much trouble are you in?’
‘Hard to tell. I’m free to resign from the agency, I guess, but if I come home I’ll be hauled in by the prickers for bridling and that. So I’m gonna lie low for a bit.’
‘And go where?’
‘Cordoba. I thought I might look up Candy.’
‘Mab Almighty, girl – it’s the back of beyond! Not to mention home to every kind of lowlife under the sun.’
She managed to laugh.
‘
Then I’ll feel right at home. In any case, I got connections there. I won’t be on me own.’
After some grumbling, Troy gave her Candice’s address, which he’d got from one of the Wednesday Coven’s contacts in San Jerico. At the moment, the only communication Candice’s family had from her was the occasional email.
‘Can’t you tell me what happened?’ he said afterwards. ‘What they’ve done?’
‘Later.’ Glory gripped the phone tight to support herself. ‘I need to get my head straight first. Keep an eye on Dad, OK, but don’t worry about me. I’m a Starling girl, remember.’
‘Not likely to forget, am I?’ Troy said, softer now.
When Glory put the phone down, she saw Raffi waiting for her across the way, shovelling chips into his mouth.
‘Sorry for the hold-up,’ she said, as breezily as she could make it. ‘I were just finalising my travel plans. Thought I might swing by Cordoba, as a matter of fact.’
‘Seriously? This is totally excellent! San Jerico, my home town, is very friendly place – good for us deviants, ha ha. We can party there.’
‘Sounds fun. But I gotta keep my head down, till I sort stuff out.’
‘You will be OK, though?’
‘I’ll be fine. I just . . . I just could do with a break.’
Raffi didn’t respond immediately. His pudgy face was solemn.
‘Lucas, he hurt you very badly, I think.’
The man from MI6 was tall and shambling and ruddy-faced. As he hovered in Lazovic’s office, waiting to fill out the relevant paperwork, his eyes flicked about nervously, as if he expected an ambush of teenage delinquents at any moment.
‘Ah, ahem, Lucas, m’boy. Jolly good.’ He peered absent-mindedly at the view. ‘Charming place . . . July’s a good month for alpine flowers, they say, even though there’s still snow on the mountainside.’
Lucas and his ‘godfather’ did not speak until they were several miles past Blumenwald, and their car pulled up in a deserted picnic spot. At once, the man from Six straightened up, became curt and shamble-free. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is quite some situation we’ve got here. Care to explain how it all went tits up?’
It appeared that Jenna had lost no time in spreading the bad news, and cover her back in the process. Lucas kept his own story as concise and colourless as possible, while admitting that mistakes had been made at different stages by different people. The other agent heard him out in silence and without comment. Finally, Lucas ventured a question of his own. ‘I don’t understand where Section Seven got their intel. How did they discover we were WICA, and how did Jenna know about Operation Swan?’
‘
They knew about you and Glory because Commander Hughes had a word with her opposite number at the WSA. As for Edie Starling . . . well, they have their sources. The UK Inquisition has been relatively slow to make use of witchkind intelligence, but Section Seven and the WSA have been collaborating for a good while. It’s put them ahead of the game.’
‘Not when it comes to Cambion,’ Lucas pointed out. ‘I didn’t give Jenna the name of the company, or its connection to Rose Merle. Then there’s Dr Caron. She might have backed off for now, but it’s possible she’ll still try to contact me. We’ve got a head start.’
‘
That may be true. However, it’s not something that you should worry about.’
‘How do you mean?’
The agent didn’t answer him straight away. ‘Frankly, I can’t understand why you and Glory were ever paired up in the first place. It seems obvious there’s too much personal history between you and your families for a professional distance to be maintained.’
‘I wanted Glory to be told about her mother before we went on this assignment. I knew it was a mistake. I tried –’ Lucas stopped, hearing the whine in his voice.
The other man drummed his fingers on the wheel.
‘
The long and short of it is, Section Seven thinks you’re compromised, and I’m afraid our side is inclined to agree. So you’re coming back to London with me. Tonight.’
The news was not unexpected, and yesterday Lucas would not have particularly cared. Today he seethed at the stupidity of it all: his own, and everyone else’s. ‘What about Glory?’
‘We’ll keep an eye on what she’s up to. But she’s not our priority. Or yours.’ The agent’s tone softened slightly. ‘If I were you, kid, when it comes to the debrief, I’d lay the blame at her door. It’s your best chance of walking away from this mess.’
At the airport, Glory changed her remaining Swiss francs into a mix of US dollars and Cordoban crescents, and used her WICA-funded debit card to buy a ticket to San Jerico. Ever since the introduction of biometric ID, it was a lot harder for witches and other criminal types to travel undetected. But although WICA could track her passport as well as her debit card, Cordoba was infamous for poor immigration controls and illegal border crossings. If things didn’t work out, Glory hoped she’d be able to slip away elsewhere without too much trouble.
She was not able to get on the same flight as Raffi. It would be a twenty-hour journey with two stopovers, one in Paris and one in Rio de Janeiro, and she wouldn’t arrive in Cordoba until eleven in the morning. Although she had thought she wanted to be alone, when she waved Raffi off, she felt a renewed sense of abandonment.
Before boarding, she bought a Cordoban guidebook. She needed to know what she was letting herself in for. And if her brain was stuffed full of facts and figures, maybe there wouldn’t be room to think about anything else.
Dutifully, she read that Cordoba was the smallest sovereign state in South America. Its main economic activities were sugar-growing, gold-mining and shrimp-fishing. Most of the population lived in the lowland coastal area. Its southern border was mountainous. Two-thirds of the country was covered in forest. The climate was tropical. Blah de blah.
The historical background bit didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know. During the Spanish and Portuguese invasion of South America, it had been the conquistadors’ guns and diseases versus the natives’ witch-priests. When these proved harder to defeat than expected, squads of witch-convicts from the Spanish Inquisition’s cells were shipped over, and promised their freedom if they would use their powers against the ‘savages’. Ever since, witchkind had been better integrated in South America than the rest of the world. Cordoba, though, was unique in that it currently had no Inquisition. Most forms of witchwork were officially illegal, yet formed the basis of a thriving black economy – something the guidebook failed to mention.
Eventually, Glory put the book away and fell into a thin doze. She dreamed of mining for golden shrimp, and fighting conquistadors in the jungle. Of Jenna, leaning over her skull with a drill. ‘It won’t hurt a bit . . .’
San Jerico’s airport was everything Zurich’s was not: noisy, ill-lit and disorderly. There were no inquisitorial guards; just a handful of bored policemen in dirty-looking brown uniforms. After being waved through immigration, Glory made her way to a bus station and found one going to
Centro Ciudad
. Those Spanish lessons were going to come in handy after all.
She got off the bus in the city centre, a cramped square of broken cobblestones. The cathedral loomed overhead, looking like a crazed wedding cake, with its layers of sooty pink and white marble. It had just stopped raining; puddles winked in the sun. Traffic growled and honked. Glory sniffed the fume-laden air appreciatively.
At the beachfront, the water was a shimmering green, the promenades lined with palms and crammed with ranks of boutiques and bars. Many buildings were in the colonial style, with wrought-iron balconies and low-pitched clay roofs. Their plaster facades were pockmarked and stained, or else gaudy with gilded arcades and brash colours. Although there was plenty of wealth on display in the high-rise apartment blocks, the bronzed tourists and flash cars, much of it was ugly. Glory didn’t mind.
I’m going to do all right here
, she thought.
She bought a map and a Spanish phrase book from a tourist shop, and fried fish-balls and iced tea from a pavement vendor. For the first time since getting on the plane, she allowed herself to wonder how Candice would react to her arrival. It wasn’t as if they had ever been close. Candy and her younger sister Skye, raised in the lap of mobster luxury, had always sneered at their younger cousin’s inferior clothes, accent and prospects. Glory had sneered back, dismissing them as a pair of spoilt airheads. She’d last seen Candy in November, just after her cousin had got the fae, and had embarked on the latest in a series of epic benders. Even Charlie, her doting dad, was forced to face the fact she was out of control.