Burn Mark (10 page)

When it came to his friends, he wasn’t sure what would be worse – their pity, or disgust. He remembered the raised eyebrow he and Tom had shared when Ollie told them about his cousin. It had seemed admirably restrained of them at the time. He tried not to think of Bea’s face, flushed and hopeful, leaning towards his by the pond.

Instead, Lucas kept returning to his single act of witchwork. Obsessively, he went over every detail of Philomena’s bane. It was like picking at a scab: revolting yet pleasurable.

He also brooded on what Ashton Stearne would be saying to his colleagues. Decisions were being made and processes set in motion that Lucas had no control over.
If only
, he thought,
I could know what they all really think. If only I knew what’s going on behind the scenes. I need to be prepared
.

But you can be, said a small treacherous voice. You have other resources now. And another inner voice, a voice Lucas didn’t even admit to hearing, whispered,
it’s your last chance.
There was an itch in his blood that was still unacknowledged, and unsatisfied.

As the afternoon wore on, he kept coming back to a discussion he’d heard between Ashton and a colleague about the use of the fae in surveillance operations. Maybe it was time to put his insider knowledge to the test.

At about four o’clock, Lucas heard Philly stump along the corridor and down the stairs. The front door slammed. A moment or so later, and before he could think better of it, he was making his way into his father’s study.

Lucas surveyed the room, and realised he was past the worst of his shock. Everything was easier now he had a task to work on. He assessed the challenge with the cool recklessness of someone with nothing to lose.

A witch with a scrying-bowl filled with water could see through walls and across cities. It was a building’s entrance and exit points that made it vulnerable. The bowl was usually made of glass because windows were made of glass, and this enabled the fae to work through the panes. A wooden or steel bowl would let a witch see through a wooden or steel door.

But scrying was one of the few witchworks that could be stopped with iron. (It was usually only the witch, not their work, which was blocked by the metal.) People with something to hide or protect installed iron shutters over their windows and fixed an iron panel to the centre of their doors. Ashton’s study was iron-proofed. And in any case, you couldn’t hear anything in a scrying-bowl.

Lucas had tried to listen through doors before. When his father first got involved with Marisa, he had even attempted the glass-held-to-the-wall trick. The theory went that the wall picked up the vibrations of sound in the room, and the glass helped channel them. It had not worked when Lucas was eleven. But things were different now.

Ashton’s study was next to the dining room. From the cabinet there, Lucas took out a pair of crystal wine glasses. His pulse was speeding up in anticipation, and he could feel the blot on his shoulder blade begin to warm.

A talisman was any kind of witchworked object; an amulet, by contrast, was a witchwork device made from scratch. From what Lucas could remember of the spying trick his father had described, he needed to cast his fae into the two glasses so that they became talismans to transmit and amplify sound. There were no exact rules for using the Seventh Sense and the fae often required the use of bodily substances as well as physical props. Lucas was of the popular opinion that witchwork was too makeshift, too
grubby
, to be considered a craft.

Here goes nothing
, he thought, as he held one of the glasses at the base of its stem. He had no option but to make things up as he went along. Grimacing slightly, he ran his forefinger inside his right ear, feeling for the whorls of bone and flesh, the warm hole of the drum. After spitting on his finger, he rubbed its wet tip round the rim of the glass.

As the motion of his hand set up a wave of vibration travelling through the crystal, it began to hum, then sing. It was something he’d done in a science lesson on sound waves, back in prep school. But this time the fae in his head echoed in answer: a darker, richer note.

Even when he lifted his finger from the rim of the first glass and moved to the second, the first kept up its thin whine. For a few moments the two sang together, their crystal bowls vibrating slightly. Once silence returned, and he ventured to pick the glasses up again, they hummed at his touch. Recognising him, welcoming him.

The walls of the study were lined with books. Lucas placed one of the witchworked glasses on the empty section of a lower shelf. With a bit of luck it would be unnoticed there. He took the other glass back to the dining room, and hid it behind the curtains. As the fae subsided, his nerves shivered and hummed, as if his body was made of crystal too. He felt at peace for the first time that day.

Half an hour later, Ashton Stearne returned. When Lucas heard his father’s tread along the corridor, he quickly moved from his bed to his desk, opening up a school text book at random. Ashton entered the room to see his son apparently deep in study.

‘How was the service?’ Lucas asked, as casually as he could make it.

‘It was fine, thank you. How . . . how are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘Good.’ Ashton nodded towards the desk. ‘Business as usual, I see. Very sensible.’

‘Did it go all right at the office?’

‘Fine.’

‘What did they say? Have you spoken to Sir Ant—’

‘I said it was fine.’

Lucas looked away. ‘Right. Sorry.’

‘No need to apologise. I’ve made you an appointment for Monday, by the way. We’ll leave here at nine.’

‘I should go on my own.’

‘Oh.’ A shadow crossed his father’s face. ‘I thought . . . I thought you might like some support.’

‘Thanks,’ said Lucas awkwardly. ‘It’s just that it will be easier to keep a low profile if I’m alone. Though I suppose you’ll have to release an, er, official statement . . . ?’

‘Mm. For the moment, I’ve been asked to keep matters confidential until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.’

Lucas took this to mean it hadn’t yet been decided whether or not his father would have to resign. He was at a critical stage in the Goodwin trial; if he had to pull out now, the case might well collapse.

‘Of course, Marisa needs to be informed. It’s probably better if she explains the situation to Philomena herself.’

‘OK. Sure. And then we can talk things over properly. I mean, there’s so much to discuss. So much to sort out. I need to know how –’

‘One thing at a time, old chap.’

Marisa returned soon after her husband. From the top of the stairs, Lucas listened to the usual bustle of her arrival, and the point at which it was cut short by Ashton’s calm interjection. ‘A word, Marisa, if I may . . .’

Lucas felt surprisingly little guilt at the betrayal he was about to make. His father had made it clear that the less Lucas knew about arrangements for his new life the better. Besides, everyone knew that witchkind were deceitful to the core. He was just reverting to type.

He gave Marisa and Ashton a few moments in the study before putting his ear to the door. Not even a murmur could be heard within. Then, his mouth very dry, he shut himself in the dining room. He collected the wine glass from behind the curtain, and went to the section of wall behind which he’d placed its mate.

Would his talisman work? He reassured himself by stroking the glass, and heard the hum in the crystal answer the hum beginning in his head. His next worry was that using the glass in the dining room would set the one in the study singing. From here on, everything was guesswork.

Lucas sat on the floor, his back against the wall. Breathing deeply, he ran his fingertip inside his ear, wetted it on his tongue, and began to circle the glass’s rim. He pictured the discussion in progress on the other side of the wall and the glass on the shelf, vibrating silently in answer.

As his finger circled the glass in his hand, the fae in both called to the glass in the other room. A thread of sound stretched between the two, then looped round the crystal rim, up through his finger and into his ear. There, the voices in the study spoke to him.

‘Perhaps you should sit down,’ his father was saying. ‘You’ve had quite a shock.’

So Lucas had missed the moment of revelation. He found he was relieved.

There was a choking, gasping sound. When his stepmother did speak, her voice was faint. ‘Have they . . . have they asked you to resign?’

‘I’ll remain where I am until after the Goodwin trial. There’s a chance some kind of arrangement might be made. A move to a more administrative role, perhaps.’

‘Even if the Inquisition supports you, the press will be out for blood. The humiliation! After everything you’ve done for this country! I can’t bear it.’

‘You must. We have other priorities now.’

Lucas, trance-like, stroked the glass. The fae pulsed at his skin. There was another effect too. When he closed his eyes, the two voices – or rather, their separate sounds – were coloured. Marisa’s was dark red, exposing an anger that wasn’t expressed in her tearful words. Ashton’s colour was also at odds with his calm manner. A whirling, grainy black. Could it be . . . panic?

‘How could it have happened?’ Marisa asked at last.

‘There’s always a chance.’

‘But your
family
– it’s biologically impossible – unless Camilla’s –’

‘No. Absolutely not. I did the usual checks: her pedigree was impeccable.’

His father’s sigh reverberated through the glass. Lucas saw it as watery grey, like rain.

‘The fae isn’t simply a rogue gene. Yes, it runs in families, but that’s only part of the story. Look at the War. The Nazis purged not just Jews but whole communities of witchkind.The British Empire did the same in some of its colonies. And yet when a new, so-called ‘purified’ generation was born in these places, witchkind were still part of the mix. The fae is an aberration, but a natural one. It will always be with us.’

‘So I’m beginning to see.’ His wife’s tone was crisp, but the green of the emotion behind it was acid. ‘Very well. Where do we go from here?’

‘It’s been agreed that Lucas’s condition should not be disclosed until the Goodwin business is over. There may well have to be a press conference. In which case, the four of us appearing together would be a great help – a “family united” and so on. Do you think you could face it?’

There was a pause. Then, ‘Of course.’ Marisa’s voice had strengthened into a theatrical purple. ‘Of course. Whatever you think best. Together, we can survive this. We can survive anything. My darling –’

Lucas let the glass fall into his lap. It wasn’t as if he’d learned anything new.
An aberration, but a natural one.
Exactly how much of an aberration, he’d find out tomorrow.

Chapter 9

Ashton Stearne had arranged for his son to be privately assessed by a colleague in an office on the other side of London. The need for secrecy had spared Lucas the indignity of a public processing centre, and the stares and whispers that would follow him through the corridors. ‘You know who that is, don’t you? The Stearne boy. Yes, turns out the Chief Prosecutor’s son is a hag! What a shock. What a scandal . . .’

That would come later. But as Lucas turned down the alley at the side of a dingy office block, and pressed the buzzer of an unmarked door, it was hard to feel the privilege of his situation. All this sneaking around was just a different kind of humiliation.

His father’s contact met him at the door. He introduced himself as Dr Simon Smith. He had greying hair and blandly smooth features, and his manner was both efficient and impersonal. Lucas determined to act the same, as if none of this business was actually to do with him, and he was merely going through the motions on somebody else’s behalf.

In a windowless basement office, Dr Smith took his statement about Philomena’s bane and the onset of his fae, and photographed the mark on his shoulder blade. Copies of Lucas’s school and medical reports were already in the inquisitor’s file.

Making the statement took over an hour. Afterwards, Lucas was given a thin grey cotton shirt and trousers to change into. An armed guard watched him all the while. Lucas knew this was to ensure he didn’t smuggle any witchworked devices into the test, but as he was escorted down the corridor, walking barefoot in the flimsy uniform, he felt cold and exposed. Though he would have hated his father to see him like this, a small scared part of him wished he was there.

The assessment room was bare and cell-like. There was a CCTV camera in the corner, a box on the floor, and a table with an iron bell hanging from a frame. Lucas and Dr Smith sat down on either side of the table. The guard took up his position by the door.

‘As you know,’ Dr Smith began, ‘the fae is inhibited by iron.’ He pulled out a drawer, in which pairs of iron wristbands were displayed. They were all of the same thickness but of varying widths. ‘I’m going to ask you to wear these bands while performing a small act of witchwork. Each time you successfully complete the task, I will give you a new and wider band, until we reach the point at which you are no longer able to perform witchwork at all.’