Burn Mark (17 page)

‘Valuable to whom, sir?’

‘To those in authority, of course. Well, under-age witches aren’t like other kids, are they? The fae sets them apart. It hardens them in some ways, makes them vulnerable in others. Far better, then, to take advantage of their facilities while they’re young and impressionable, and before they can be lead astray.’ The boss smiled. ‘We have to keep an open mind on these matters, Branning.’

Sir Anthony Brady, Witchfinder General, had established the policy of limited cooperation with WICA. Yet it remained controversial, especially in the Witchcrime Directorate. Everyone knew that Silas Paterson, the directorate’s deputy head, was against it. And Paterson had many supporters.

Some were convinced that all witchwork was an instrument of the Devil. Others were against collaborating with any outside agency, witchkind or not, on the grounds that it undermined the authority of the Inquisition. Those in favour of the policy argued that the Witchcrime Directorate was overstretched. If the Inquisition’s priority was fighting witchcrime, shouldn’t they be willing to exploit whatever resources were available? Jonah himself had often made this point. However, Lucas Stearne’s situation put the nature of such ‘exploitation’ in a different light.

‘I can see how a child spy could be useful,’ Jonah conceded. ‘But . . . even so . . . if it was
your
child . . . ?’

He’d gone too far. A frown crossed his boss’s genial pink features.

‘Lucas’s father respects, as we all must do, his son’s courage and sense of duty.’

So Jonah agreed to process Lucas’s application to WICA. He authorised the unbridling too. It turned out that there had been some muddle with Lucas’s assessment, and he was actually a Type E witch – even stronger than previously thought. Jonah couldn’t understand how the original assessment had gone wrong. There was no information about the mistake in the file. He remembered how Lucas had argued the case for his recruitment, impassioned yet self-possessed, blue eyes ablaze with conviction. Just like his father. This was not necessarily a good thing, Jonah thought. It seemed to him that Lucas had the makings of a formidable witch.

WICA had two internal departments: Unit A, which worked on domestic security, and Unit B, which specialised in foreign intelligence. They shared a centre for work and training. Jonah was going to meet Lucas there early on Monday morning – little more than a week after Lucas had turned witchkind.

Time was short. Lucas was only going to have a week’s preparation before joining the coven. Jonah would be supervising him for most of this, and liaising with Lucas’s Unit A handler during his period undercover. Ashton Stearne had insisted this would not go beyond the end of the Goodwin trial. But though Lucas didn’t say so, Jonah knew that once this period ended he hoped to be taken on by WICA in a permanent role.

Their destination was a converted warehouse in the docklands. Much of the area had been redeveloped into a bright, shiny world of glass, granite and steel, and ‘luxury river-view living’. WICA’s HQ, however, was a grimy Victorian hulk on the edge of an industrial estate. The sign over the main door read:
Avalon Atlantic Plc: International Shipping
.

Beyond Avalon Atlantic’s shabby foyer, and concealed by a sliding screen, was the secure entrance to the rest of the building. Jonah, who was meeting Lucas inside, was directed by the fake receptionist through to the real reception. This one was both sleek and functional, and had a bust of John Dee in an alcove behind the switchboard. Dee had been a trusted advisor to Elizabeth I (an alleged witch and so-called ‘Fae Queen’), and had set up a secret council of witch-spies to aid her war against Spain. WICA regarded him as their founding father, even though the agency had not been formally established until after the Second World War.

The Inquisition kept a close eye. Witchwork activities were monitored by CCTV, most of the offices and phone lines were wiretapped, and inquisitorial guards had their own station in the building. Jonah had to admit their presence was reassuring. He had never been in a place where so many witches were gathered together at the same time. Lucas, too, looked tense. His manner was distantly polite, like a well-bred guest arriving at a party he’s not sure he’ll approve of.

Lucas had not come through the main entrance, but via the so-called back door, an underground passageway whose entrance was located at the back of a computer repair shop round the corner. Apart from this and the fake reception, Avalon Atlantic showed little sign of being a centre of espionage. During the course of Lucas and Jonah’s tour, they didn’t see any computer suites or technical areas, just ordinary offices and a series of small windowless rooms. Most of these were empty except for a table with an object or two upon it. A glass bowl, a tangle of string . . . a feather tied to a finger bone. Jonah found them unsettling. But Lucas looked at them alertly. He must already be making connections, figuring things out.

The tour was given by a witch-agent named Zoey Connor, who – if everything went to plan – would be Lucas’s handler. She was in her mid-twenties, small and wiry with a spiky dark crop, her features already marked with lines of decision and responsibility. She was welcoming to Lucas but when her attention turned to Jonah, he felt a distinct chill. He was a little disappointed but not surprised. Witches and inquisitors didn’t mix well.

All discussions and activity involving Lucas took place in the few rooms that were free from Inquisition monitoring. These measures were to reduce the chances of his identity, and condition, becoming general knowledge at the Inquisition. Jonah’s job was to observe where the cameras, wires and guards could not.

Throughout that long first day, Jonah watched Lucas embark on his training. Every witch worked differently but there were still principles to learn. Lucas and Zoey started by discussing the best ways to use fae in surveillance and defence. No gadgets or weaponry were involved, just a handful of household objects mixed in with more intimate material – an eyelash, a tear, a drop of sweat or blood. Jonah’s task was to make a record of each act of witchwork, and observe Lucas’s reactions. He needed to pick up on signs of recklessness, or frustration with authority. The other danger to look out for was, in the words of a training manual, ‘an unhealthy and obsessive interest and/or pleasure in the practice of fae’.

So far, Lucas’s behaviour was exemplary. He was calm and collected, accomplishing each act efficiently and without any sort of show. Even so, Jonah sensed a suppressed excitement behind his restraint. It was almost as if Lucas wasn’t learning something new, but drawing on a primal foreknowledge. Perhaps this knowledge was within all of them, thought Jonah, and most people had simply lost the means of finding it. This was heretical thinking, though, and he pushed the idea away.

At six o’clock, Lucas was told that he’d done enough for one day, and should go home. Jonah had to take a bus back to the office. He needed to write up his report, talk to the boss, and check on his other cases.

After being promoted to Senior Warden, Jonah had moved from his local authority branch to the Inquisition’s headquarters. It was an independent enclave known as Outer Temple, near the Inns of Court and the City of London. Witchfinders had established a settlement there in 1401, after the first Act of Parliament against witchwork.

The church of St Cumanus was a rare fifteenth-century survivor. The catacombs below it were even older, but most of the buildings had been rebuilt or modified in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were set around a series of small courtyards and lawns. Boxed in by tower blocks and high-rise offices, the enclave had a somewhat hunched, narrow look, in spite of its grandeur.

There was a Library, Great Hall, the Inquisitorial Court itself, and head offices for all departments. Since inquisitors relied on technology to counteract witchwork, a complex of high-tech laboratories existed at basement level. There was an interrogation suite and cells too. But life above ground was, as the tour guides liked to point out, modelled on an Oxbridge college, with all the prestige attached. The Burning Courts had long been moved elsewhere.

The area was enclosed by a wall of wrought iron, crowned with bells. Jonah was just approaching the main checkpoint when he heard someone call his name. Lucas’s handler, Zoey, was standing a little way down the street.

‘Hello,’ he said, surprised. ‘Are you here for a meeting?’

‘No. I wanted to have a word before you left, but got called away. So I took a cab here instead. I’ve been waiting for you to show.’

‘Come on in, then. My office is just over there.’

‘I haven’t got clearance.’

Jonah glanced through the gates at the patrolling guards in their scarlet and grey. He should have known that even a WICA agent – an agent collaborating with the Witchcrime Directorate on a high-level assignment – would not be allowed in without all sorts of red tape to get through first. Entering the compound was almost as laborious as passing through airport security. Even High Inquisitors had to submit to a fingerprint test and iris-scan on presenting their ID.

‘Besides,’ Zoey said, ‘what I’ve got to say is off the record. At least out in the street there aren’t any bugs.’

A bus trundled noisily past and Jonah drew closer in order to hear her. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Damn right there is.’ She ran her hands through her spiky crop. ‘I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing, sending a kid into a coven.’

He realised she had been biting back her anger all day. ‘I had concerns,’ Jonah said quietly. ‘And I did raise them. But this is Lucas’s decision. And with his father’s connections –’

Zoey gave a snort. ‘Oh, sure. There’s no network like the Old Boys’ Network . . . Look, I like Lucas. He’s bright and capable, and as near a prodigy as I’ve ever met. I’m only a Type C myself. But that’s not the point: he’s going to be sent into the lion’s den undertrained, underprepared and – when push comes to shove – unprotected. Why the hell d’you think he’d volunteer for something like this? To make his dad proud? Or is it some kind of rebellious teen death wish?’

‘Lucas is rising to the challenge of his condition, as well as embracing its opportunities.’ Jonah despised his words even as he said them. ‘He knows he’ll always be different. This is his way of dealing with it.’

‘You mean he’ll always be expendable.’

Jonah tried to speak, but she talked over him. ‘Never mind all that guff about civic values, and the Greater Good. That’s all we are to you people,’ she said bitterly. ‘Cannon fodder.’

His encounter with Zoey left Jonah tired and depressed. Light was fading on the Inquisition’s mellow stone walls and lofty windows. People were starting to make for home, calling out cheerful farewells as they headed into the London rush hour. As Jonah walked across the small cobbled square in front of the church – Kindle Yard, in times past the scene of countless balefires – his shoulders slumped. He knew he should file a report of what Zoey had said. Recklessness and frustration with authority . . . it was what he had been trained to root out. The trouble was in this instance he respected her for it.

The Witchkind Assimilation Bureau was on the far edge of the enclave, and overshadowed by Intelligence Command’s towering surveillance block. Besides Lucas, Jonah was warden for a bridled housewife, a police witch-officer and a biology student. All three presented difficulties. The police officer was facing a malicious accusation of bane-hexing. The student was trying to decide whether to graduate as a bridled biologist, or join the Department of Agriculture’s Farming With Fae programme. Meanwhile, the housewife’s little girl was being bullied in school for being ‘hag-spawn’. Thinking of the mound of paperwork waiting on his desk, Jonah’s shoulders slumped some more.

‘Hello there, Jonah.’

He looked around. A slim, tall figure was sauntering across the cobbles. It was Gideon Hale, one of the new intake of fast-trackers and already marked as a rising star. He had recently completed a placement in Jonah’s department, where he’d been attentive and deferential but Jonah hadn’t warmed to him. There had been times when he felt – and suspected he was meant to feel – that Gideon was merely playing along.

‘Rumour has it you’ve been hanging out at Witch-spook Central,’ Gideon said. ‘Is it as much of a freak show as everyone says?’

Sometimes it seemed as if there was no such thing as confidential information in the Inquisition. The whole organisation ran on gossip. ‘You know I can’t comment.’

Gideon tapped the side of his nose in a theatrical manner. ‘I understand. It’s all strictly hush-hush. But having a witch-agent to warden must be a step up from the bridled grannies and Constable Plods, right?’

‘I’d best be getting on,’ Jonah said curtly.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you must be going to the meeting too.’ Then, when Jonah didn’t respond, he nodded in the direction of the church. ‘It’s the Hammers tonight.’

‘They’re not really my scene.’

The Hammers was a social club. The name came from a famous fifteenth-century inquisitors’ handbook, the
Malleus Maleficarum
, or ‘Hammer of the Witches’. Its members met in St Cumanus’s crypt to dress up in old-style inquisitorial robes, re-enact famous witch-trials and play drinking games. The membership list read like a roll-call of ancient inquisitorial families: Altham, Balfour, Grindal, Paterson, Hopkins, Hale . . . You had to be invited to join, as Jonah knew Gideon was well aware.