Burn Mark (41 page)

‘Paterson won't cooperate,' said Jonah. ‘He's tough, he's clever, and he knows his rights. Until he sees a warrant, we won't get anything out of him.'

‘We'll see about that,' Troy said.

‘No.' Jonah frowned. ‘I won't sanction any physical coercion.'

Troy laughed weakly. ‘That must be an inquisitorial first. You're in the wrong job, mate.'

Zoey shook her head. ‘Jonah's right. No more violence. Too many lines have been crossed already.'

Glory still didn't see why a witch would choose to work for the government, and against the covens. She almost felt like saying, ‘See? See where it's got you?' She wanted Agent Connor to spit and swear, to pound her fist in rage. Her cool professional front wasn't something Glory could understand.

‘I can get Paterson to talk,' she said abruptly.

‘And how will you do that?' Jonah asked.

‘Feminine charm.'

Troy laughed again.

But Agent Connor had turned round from her seat, and was regarding her seriously. Perhaps she'd already guessed what Glory planned, and what it meant. In response to the question in her eyes, Glory gave a very slight nod. Face to face . . . witch to witch.

‘Let me try,' she said. ‘I know how to get through to him. No aggro, just chat. I promise.'

Agent Connor looked at her again. Another silent understanding passed between them.

‘OK,' Zoey said. ‘Five minutes.'

 

The van pulled up in a lay-by. Glory went round to the back. The inquisitor, hooded and gagged, was attached to one of the built-in benches by the cuffs on his wrist, and a second set around his ankles. Matt the policeman stood on guard outside as Glory got in and closed the doors behind her. Then she pulled off the prisoner's hood and – with a satisfying rip – the tape.

He didn't look afraid; she'd say that for him. Instead, he let out a sigh of weary scorn. ‘Is this where you bring out the knuckledusters?'

‘Oh, I'm just a coven slut, remember. I'm sure there ain't nothing I can do to scare a big strong inquisitor like yourself.'

She leaned across and brushed the shoulder of his suit. ‘You've got dandruff,' she told him. Then she sat back on her heels, and unwrapped the wad of tissue she'd brought with her. It contained a scoop of earth from the side of the road. A tiny grub wriggled in it, which she carefully removed and put aside on a scrap of paper.

Colonel Paterson was already pale, but he grew paler.

‘Do you know what I'm doing?' she asked, casually rolling the ball of mud and dandruff back and forth in her hands. The grub squirmed on its paper nest.

He didn't answer.

‘Ain't you guessed yet? Ain't you worked out what I am?'

He swallowed. ‘This,' he said, ‘is exactly why I and my colleagues have been forced to take the action we have. If tonight's events prove anything at all, it's that witchkind are as irredeemably unstable and vicious as we've always feared.'

‘Well, seeing as you're such an expert on us,' said Glory, ‘I'm sure you know what I'm crafting.' She spat on her palm and began to shape the mud into a little figure of a man. ‘I'm a strong witch, you see. One of the strongest. And I know how to hex a bane that lasts. You understand?'

He didn't say anything. He was absolutely still, mesmerised by the lump of mud in her hands.

She made her voice gentle. ‘So I'm going to put a worm in your brain. No one but you will know it's there. Only you will hear it, as it whispers and gnaws . . . only you will feel it slither through your skull . . . It'll grow bloated in there, and rotten. Your brain's going to rot too. And there is nothing,
nothing
in the whole world that can help you.'

She cocked her head at him and smiled. The trick was to make people believe you were capable of anything.

‘. . . Unless, of course, you can tell me what you've done with Lucas.'

Chapter 37

The bridle wasn’t as painful as Lucas expected. As the metal curb closed on his tongue, and the iron clenched his skull, he felt a rush of weakness. Pins and needles prickled all over. But after a while the iron’s effect was merely numbing. All his senses were deadened. His vision was dimmed, his hearing muffled. Even his thoughts slowed. He was cold, cold to the bone. It felt like he had been cold for ever. He didn’t notice it much now.

Time passed. He didn’t know how long. He was vaguely aware of Striker moving about but he wasn’t particularly worried. He drifted in and out of a disembodied limbo.

Something flickered into the haze. His bleary eyes took a while to identify the brightness. Not matches, this time, but a lighter. Striker was flicking it on and off, up and down. The spark of it danced in his eyes.

‘You’ve soaked up a lot of water, witch,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe it’s time to dry you out. Maybe it’s time to heat you up again . . . to shine some light . . .’

He began to hiss.

‘
Ssssssssss . . .
’

Glory was adamant they shouldn’t pass on the information she’d got from Paterson to the authorities. Lady Merle had said the police were implicated in his plot. The five of them had to get to Lucas before anyone else did. They couldn’t risk the enemy alerting his captors. However, Jonah insisted that Ashton Stearne be informed. He phoned as they entered the outskirts of London. It was a necessarily brief conversation; Ashton was on a call to the Witchfinder General at the time.

They parked in a side street a little way down the road from the address Paterson had given them. Since the place wasn’t an official Inquisition facility, they hoped the security measures would be minimal. In fact, Number 26a looked to all intents and purposes like a normal residential flat. The basement area beneath it was boarded up and the building as a whole had a neglected air. Glory wondered if Paterson had lied to them after all. This was not the setting for the high-tech evil inquisitorial lair of her imagination.

Zoey did the initial reconnaissance, and reported that there was a second entrance to the ground floor flat via the back of the building. It was agreed that Troy and Matt would cover the main door, in case any escape attempt was made, while the other three went in through the back. Paterson, meanwhile, would remain locked up in the van.

A builder’s skip eased their scramble over the wall. In spite of everything, Glory felt a shiver of excitement as she dropped down into the enclosed yard. The overlooking windows were dark and silent. Zoey had clearly had more experience than Troy at breaking down doors, for she despatched it in three swift kicks, driving the heel of her boot into the area just below the handle. Jonah stood behind her, covering her with the gun.

No inquisitors lay in wait. No alarms were activated or weapons deployed. They found themselves in an ordinary if dilapidated kitchen. Underwear dripped on a clothes rack, dishes soaked greasily in the sink. In the inner doorway a woman with a thin sallow face and tousled hair was standing in her dressing gown, hand on heart. A child squirmed at her side.

‘Please,’ the woman said in a thick Eastern European accent. ‘I have visa.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Papers, visa. Everything. The man say. He promise.’

Her little boy had a snotty nose and big brown eyes. The broken lock, the night awakening, the hard-faced strangers with guns . . . It was how Glory had imagined the Inquisition coming for her. But he stared back at them solemnly, unafraid.

‘We’re not from immigration,’ said Jonah, showing his badge. ‘We’re the Inquisition.’

The woman seemed, if anything, relieved. At any rate, she nodded vigorously. ‘Yes. British Inquisition. Yes, they who promise. They have our papers. They arrange all.’

The child wriggled away from his mother, and ran towards the front room. The carpet was sprinkled with coloured pencils, and lines of toy soldiers arranged on the floor.

‘This is the witch,’ Glory said slowly, wonderingly. Jonah and Zoey turned to scrutinise the woman again. ‘No,’ Glory said. ‘The kid.’

Lord Merle’s box of witchwork made a new kind of sense. The red whistle, the toy train, the doll with scribbled spots on its face, the plastic horse . . . They were playthings turned into weapons; childish props for adult nightmares. It was the toy soldiers that made her see it. Zoey had talked in the car about the army parade that Jack Rawdon had been going to attend.

The boy’s mother shook her head. Her eyes darted, fearful and quick. ‘No understand. No possible.’

‘Not possible,’ Jonah echoed, though he knew that it was. He guessed too who these people were. They were the last of the detention centre runaways, the missing Roma who’d broken out in hope of a better life. The words of his boss came back to him.
Juvenile witches can be a valuable asset.

‘Where is he?’ Glory demanded. ‘Where’s Lucas? What have you done with him?’

The woman stared hopelessly.
No understand
.

But Zoey had already pushed ahead into the hall. There was a door at the end, down to the basement. Glory started after her, though Jonah tried to pull her back. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe. Let me –’ She twisted free and ran down the stairs. She saw a man in a white tracksuit, sprawled on the floor with Zoey on his back and a cigarette lighter by his side. She saw a tank. A puddle of water. A boy, caged in iron.

Crashes and shouts sounded all around. Armed officers had arrived. Troy and Matt came with them, the Chief Prosecutor was close behind. Glory barely noticed.

Lucas’s skin still had a faint stain around his eyes and mouth, the tips of his fingers. Not a bruise, but a bloom, paler than violets. When she lifted the bridle off, she felt the cold of the metal pass through her, like an echo of remembered pain.

What did Lucas know of it? A smell of burning, and the bright flare of Glory’s hair. The smoke on her skin, the salt of her tears. Her light and fire.

And afterwards, his father, bursting through, picking him up like a child, holding him in his arms.
My son. My son.

Chapter 38

Glory did not go home that night, or the night after. She got a message to Cooper Street that she had gone to visit her Morgan cousins, to offer support in Charlie’s hour of need. In fact, she was staying at Troy’s flat. He himself returned to the family house in Cardinal Avenue.

With the arrival of the team from Special Branch, the professionals had taken over. Lucas was immediately whisked away in an ambulance with his father, but at one point Glory thought she’d have to stay in the basement all night. Men in uniform swarmed everywhere: shining lights, taking photographs and collecting samples, barking codes into transceivers. Officer Branning and Agent Connor did most of the talking. Somehow, they managed to keep the details of Troy and Glory’s involvement to a minimum. Glory made the most of acting dazed and confused; Troy, at least, had his head wound to excuse him. Eventually, they were allowed to leave. Formal statements would be taken later.

That was when Troy took her to the flat. ‘You need a breathing space,’ he said as he left. ‘Take your time.’ Afterwards, Glory barely remembered crawling into bed, her body still rank with sweat and smoke. She was afraid the smell would haunt her dreams, taking her to the Burning Court, or the attic with Lady Merle. But the night was quiet, her sleep deep enough to drown in.

She stayed in the flat all of the next day. She spent two hours getting soap scum and water all over Troy’s immaculate and expensively accessorised bathroom. Then she ransacked Troy’s immaculate and expensively stocked fridge. Browsed his bookshelves, rummaged through his drawers, pilfered a pair of cashmere bedsocks. She kept the TV on, partly because the background noise was comforting, and partly because she was waiting for news of the scandal to break. So far, the only part of the story to come out was ‘tragic blaze at media tycoon’s mansion’. The report was mostly speculation. Glory thought of Rose Merle, sitting quietly in some hospital room, her perfect face as blank as her thoughts. Perhaps Lady Merle had been right to call her memory loss a mercy.

Zoey Connor came around in the afternoon. She was tired but upbeat. She said that all of Paterson’s accomplices, including the MP Helena Howell, had been taken into custody, and were cooperating with the police. The Roma mother and her son were under guard in a safe house, while the authorities tried to decide what to do with them. They’d already bridled the boy.

‘It turns out that one of the Witchcrime Directorate’s informants found them, and alerted Paterson. I’m not sure how they discovered the boy’s fae. I think the mother was perhaps planning to use it in her appeal for asylum. But Paterson offered a different kind of deal. A new, legal life in Britain for her and her son, in return for their help with some clandestine government operations. It’s still not clear how much the woman understood. The little boy obviously didn’t know what he was doing.’

Glory nodded. That was why he would be beyond suspicion. A six-year-old witch was so unlikely as to seem impossible. ‘Paterson weren’t ever going to hand over a couple of shiny new passports and a council flat, was he?’