Shadow Spell (5 page)

‘So he could be disguised as anyone or anything?'

‘That's right. And you see, around the time of the Final Gathering, Simeon fell in love. He never said who it was, but I think she was a Quick. So I've often wondered if, at the end, the spell disguised him as a Quick so that he could be with her.'

‘But she'd be dead by now, wouldn't she?' The sound of the wind was louder, getting in the way.

‘Oh yes, but he may have kept the disguise even after her death. There may have been children, and if so then they would have been Grimm and may still be alive. Besides, Simeon loved company, so he'd be in a place where there are people, I'm sure.'

Nin thought about it. ‘OK, so that's one possibility. But where do I start to look?'

‘In Dark's Mansion,' said Enid promptly. She looked almost transparent now, her form thinning, blending with the fiery glow of dawn. ‘There's a story that when Simeon emptied his house, storing away everything he owned for the day when he might return, he left one great treasure behind. If I know Simeon it's not a treasure so much as a clue, a hint of some kind.'

Enid Lockheart leaned close, her golden eyes fixed on Nin's, and even though the once-sorceress was only a vision, Nin felt breath on her cheek, warm and full of something so vital it made her gasp.

‘We need you, Nin. More depends on your success than you could possibly understand. And time is running out. All night, while you were lying here so badly injured, while your friends waited and watched, Strood has been getting things done.'

Nin shivered as Enid's words blurred in her head. ‘You're fading!' she cried urgently. ‘Where is Dark's Mansion?'

‘Here,' said Enid. ‘Simeon built it high enough to touch the heavens and what you are hearing is the ceaseless wind that blows about its peak.'

‘Here … !'

‘My spell knows, you see,' Enid went on, ‘that to keep the Sanctuary safe, Strood has to be stopped before he finally ends us all.' Now, the once-sorceress was nothing more than a formless shape of light. ‘So when the Sanctuary had to move, the spell chose to bring it to Dark's Mansion. It brought us here because of you, Ninevah. My spell knows that you are its only hope and it is helping you so that you can help it, so that it can go on keeping me safe, you see?'

Enid smiled, though by now Nin could hardly see the curve of her lips any more.

‘Good luck, Ninevah, though I'm told you already have it! You must win through, for all our sakes.'

‘Whatever happens, I'm glad I saw you,' said Nin, as her inner eyes closed and her real ones began to flicker open. ‘You are so lovely.'

‘We all were,' Enid's voice was a whisper now, her shape a glimmer of ruby in the after-dawn light. ‘But remember, sometimes beauty hides a rotten heart.'

And then her light went out and Nin opened bleary eyes on the morning.

The world had changed. Nin had never been to the Sanctuary before this, but Jonas had told her about it and she had seen into its cool stone corridors. Now the walls were twisted wood, baked by time and sunlight to a deep gold. Unevenly spaced windows looked out on to a
clear sky of delicate turquoise. But the thing she saw straight away as she walked its halls in the early-morning light was that the Sanctuary was shrinking. The once airy corridors and many rooms were changing, and this time not by design. Enid was right. Mr Strood had been Getting Things Done.

‘It started that night, after the BM nearly got you,' Jonas told her, while she dressed and ate a hurried breakfast. She had already told him about seeing Enid, and about what they had to do next.

Jonas sighed. ‘At midnight the Sanctuary was full of rooms and doors and long hallways. By dawn it was twothirds the size.'

‘But how?'

‘We don't know for sure, but we think Strood has sent his BMs to kill the Quick who were once patients here, who left to go back home to the Widdern, having got back their health or their sanity. The ones who kept the spell alive by telling the story to others.'

‘So, all over the Widdern, people are dying?' Nin looked up at him, horrified. She was feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead of her, and if she had had any glimmering of hope that Strood might change his mind and give up, it died right then. ‘It's awful.
He's
awful.'

‘That's why we're going to do something about it, right?'

Nin sent a glance at the two stuffed rucksacks propped against the wall. They were getting ready to leave.

‘Taggit's gone on ahead,' said Jonas. ‘He's going to see if he can find Skerridge and Jik, then we'll all meet up at Hilfian. Taggit thinks that with Strood on the warpath, Hilfian is the place everyone will go. Good place to gather and make a stand, see? We might find help there. Plus, the Savage Forest is not far beyond Hilfian, so if we want, we can go on and speak to Nemus. He might be able to tell us more.'

Nin's appetite had gone, but she forced down her last mouthful and smiled up at Elinor as she came to take away the plate and cup. The sister smiled back, her golden eyes lovely, but still nothing more than a pale reflection of Enid's.

Sorcerer-Grimm, thought Nin, and wondered who her Fabulous father or mother had been.

‘I'll take Toby back to the Widdern,' Elinor said. ‘So you need not worry.'

‘Toby?'

‘I think we'd better send him home, don't you?' said Jonas. ‘Kid's been through enough already.'

‘I'll deliver him right to his door,' promised Elinor, ‘and he can take his memory pearl and be safe with his mother by lunchtime. She'll be shocked at first, but if I know Quick minds she'll put forgetting him down to the trauma of his disappearance.'

Nin nodded. She wanted so much to go home with Toby that her eyes stung with unshed tears. Jonas must have seen the look on her face, because he put an arm around her and squeezed, though he said nothing.

‘All right,' said Nin, sniffing hard, ‘but I want to say goodbye.'

When they were all packed and ready to go, Elinor woke Toby and brought him along to the doorway that led out into Dark's Mansion. By now the Lockheart Sanctuary was beginning to stir and other sisters, going about their morning business of waking up their patients, turned their heads to look at Nin. The shrinking seemed to have stopped for now – presumably because the BMs who were doing the damage were hiding from the daylight – but there was a feeling of tension in the air, of anxious waiting.

While Jonas stood by, Nin watched Toby hurrying up to her, his blond hair flopping over his face, his wide eyes so blue they were nearly purple. He gazed at her worriedly, but to Nin's relief there were no tears.

‘I can help, if you like?' he offered. He was wearing a pair of slightly too big pyjamas and was holding Monkey, the toy that had come all the way across the Drift with Nin to rescue him from the Terrible House of Strood. Nin shook her head.

‘It's OK, Toby. But I've got another job for you, a really important one.' Nin bobbed down so that she could talk to him eye to eye. ‘Look after Mum, right, because she won't remember me at all. But when she does, she won't know why she's forgotten in the first place so she'll be all upset. And when that happens, when she cries out my name or something, then it means I'm right outside the door. Do you understand?'

Toby nodded.

‘And then you can open the door for Mum and I'll be there, waiting, see?'

She didn't think about the ending where they didn't make it, Strood won and she never came home, just in case it showed on her face. She gave him a hug and a kiss and then turned back to the door.

‘Ready?' asked Jonas.

Nin paused, settling her rucksack more comfortably on her back. It was her old pink one, the one with the horrible fairy embroidered on it. Packed inside she had the rest of the beeswax candle that brought peace of mind, the bottle of bee venom painkiller and some food. Slung around her waist was a leather flask of fresh water. She still had her old boots and jacket and Elinor had found her a pair of someone's jeans and a shocking pink T-shirt, to replace the things that had got ripped and bloodstained. The sister had even come up with a new black coat for Jonas, his having been ruined when they used it to wrap up Jik for their under-sea escape. He still had his old red scarf wound around his neck.

‘Ready,' she said as firmly as she could.

Jonas pushed open the door to Dark's Mansion and they stepped through into a howling wind that smelt of ice and early morning.

It was early morning in the Widdern on an ordinary high street in an ordinary town. People rushed in and out of shops, keen to get things done before the day wore too far on. Occasionally one or two of them paused in front of Sandy's Electrical Store to stare at the images flickering across the TV screens, images of homes and cars, each one burned to a horrible wreck during the previous night by some cause unknown. Each one contained the charred remains of bodies that had been at the centre of the blaze. The morning newspapers were calling it ‘Britain's Blowtorch Butchery'.

Next to the TV store was the Little Garden Shop, and here people who didn't want to know any more horrible facts about the rash of fire tragedies sweeping the country were pausing to comment on the garden statues ranged along the front.

‘Very modern,' said one old, but elegant woman with a floaty scarf, ‘rough hewn of natural materials, but with an almost occult feel about it.'

‘Give me a gnome any day,' muttered her husband.

Something snuffled near Skerridge's elbow and he squinted down at a small dog attached to a lead, which was attached to the woman with the scarf, who was studying Jik intently.

‘So organic, a wonderful representation of the Earth Incarnate,' Floating Scarf went on.

‘Blimmin' creepy if you ask me.'

Jik glared.

Skerridge chuckled. He was sitting on the pavement next to Jik and so right underneath Floating Scarf's nose, but Skerridge was a bogeyman in the Widdern and to grown-up Quick he was invisible. They could hear him though, and Blimming Creepy backed off looking nervous.

‘Ya betta watchit. One of 'em'll buy ya if yer not careful,' Skerridge whispered.

Blimming Creepy went pale and grabbed Floating Scarf's arm.

‘Did you hear that?'

‘What? For goodness' sake, Bernie, it's just a statue.'

‘It's glaring at me and
I heard something speak
.'

Skerridge chuckled again. Floating Scarf blinked. The dog snuffled some more and made a nervous yipping sound. Skerridge hissed like an angry kettle. A small child being wheeled past in a pushchair burst into a fit of spontaneous screaming.

Floating Scarf squeezed Blimming Creepy's arm. ‘On second thoughts, dear, you're right. Definitely creepy.'

The dog whined. Skerridge leaned over and snapped
twice. An empty lead dangled against Floating Scarf 's legs, but she was already on the move, hurrying Blimming Creepy in the direction of home and not even noticing that her pet had gone. Skerridge munched thoughtfully as he watched her cross the road, clutching her husband tightly, the empty lead flapping along behind her. The inattentiveness of the Quick never ceased to amaze him.

He chuckled. Jik looked at him sternly.

‘Ik!'

‘I was 'ungry! 'S all right fer some of us what don' 'ave a stomach, but we're gonna be 'angin' around 'ere ferever, so I gotta take some nourishment while it's about.'

It was a good thing that BMs knew the name and address of every living Quick – at least, the ones that hadn't already been stolen – as it meant that Jik and Skerridge had been able to go straight to the home address of Hilary Jones. Hilary was the last surviving descendant of the once-sorceress Senta Melana, who had cut off her own left hand and earthed herself, pouring all of her magic back into the Land before going to live in the Widdern and have babies. They knew that Hilary was the
last
surviving descendant because they had reached the homes of the other descendants far too late to save them. Strood's BMs had been getting things done all right.

‘There's two fings 'appenin' in the Widdern, see,' explained Skerridge heavily. ‘On the one 'and, 'e's killin'
off Senta's descendants so as to end 'er line altogevver; and on the ovver e's killin' off a bunch o' Quick what I strongly suspec' 'ave 'ad doin's wiv Enid Lock'eart.'

Jik ikked quietly. It sounded right. It sounded just like Strood. The thought made him feel anxious, not just for the poor suffering Quick, but for some other, deeper reason that he couldn't quite put his finger on. One thing was sure though, he knew in his mud that what Skerridge had said on the beach was right. There would be consequences.

Unfortunately, they had turned up at Hilary's flat – two floors up in the elegant block opposite the garden store – a bit too late to stop her going out that morning.