Witch Fire (13 page)

‘Oh? And what about Endor – do they have mates in Cordoba too?’

Glory had kept her tone light, but Raffi looked at her askance. ‘With the covens, you can do business. But with the terrorists, there are no deals. No rules. Is very bad for business. Bad, too, for the good life.’

‘I dunno about that. Endor want witches on top, calling the shots. Running the show. That ain’t so terrible.’

Raffi, though, was shaking his head. ‘Glory, seriously, you are not knowing what you say.’ He ground out his cigarette beneath his heel. ‘Endor is for crazy people. They bring only fire and blood.’

Dr Caron and Lucas were also discussing the headlines. It was Lucas’s twelfth session with the psychoanalyst, as new students had to attend four sessions a week. Glory filled the time by making up incredibly complicated, incredibly graphic dream sequences, all starring Esmerelda Thunderpants. Lucas was trying a different kind of game. He turned question-and-answer into hide-and-seek; his camouflage a blend of truth, lies and evasions.

‘What was your first reaction when you heard of the assassination?’ Dr Caron asked.

Truth
: ‘I thought of my father.’

‘But not your mother?’

Lie
: ‘No.’

‘Even though she was murdered in similar circumstances?’

Evasion
: ‘I never knew her. I was a baby when she died.’

Alessandra Giordani had been a mother of two, celebrated in the press for her love of designer clothes as well as her dazzling legal career. Lucas wondered if there had been any chance for her mind to fight the invader’s, as the assassin’s fae snaked into her brain. He wondered for how long afterwards she had waited and watched as her life seeped out in scarlet streams. In the final moments, he hoped the witch had the mercy to leave her mind a blank. He hoped this was true for his mother too.

‘I gather your godfather will be coming to see you,’ said the therapist, in an apparent change of tack.

‘Er, yeah.’ Lucas’s godfather was, in fact, the man from MI6.

‘Are you close?’

‘We get on pretty well. But he doesn’t know about my condition. He thinks I’m here for behavioural issues.’

‘It is a pity your father could not visit.’

Lucas stared down at the sand. It was all wiggles today, a knot of lines and curves.

‘He’s . . . he’s very busy with his new job.’

‘Do you think he misses his old one?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.’

‘He put many witch-criminals away. And sent some to the Burning Court, I believe. You know, there is a theory that witchkind are naturally criminal. That the fae is predisposed to cause harm. What do you think?’

‘I think there’s always a choice. Whether to follow an urge, or fight it.’

‘So you do feel an impulse?’ Dr Caron was looking at him with new kind of concentration. ‘An urge to harm?’

Lucas touched the thread of grey in his hair. He reminded himself that he didn’t know what the doctor wanted from him, or what she might be looking for. Truth, lie or evasion?

He took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I do.’

Chapter 13

On the Saturday of their fourth week, Principal Lazovic told Lucas he’d been granted an afternoon pass to Blumenwald. ‘Consider it a reward for good behaviour,’ he said.

Lucas had already visited the village once. There were a couple of gift shops, an outdoor pursuits store, a small hotel and a café. That was pretty much it. But wherever Lucas chose to go, a plain-clothed guardian came too. It wasn’t clear if this was for Lucas’s protection or Blumenwald’s. The villagers might take Wildings’ money, but that didn’t mean they liked living in its shadow. Everywhere he went, Lucas felt eyes on his back. On his last visit, he was pretty sure a mother had picked up her child and crossed the street just to avoid him. It seemed these people had their own extra sense for sniffing witches out.

Nonetheless, he was pleased to get out of the academy. He hoped a change of scene might help him get some perspective on the place before his meeting with the MI6 agent. He was beginning to think Glory was right, and that unless they did something drastic, they’d have nothing to show for their time here. Maybe there really was nothing untoward going on at Wildings. Maybe the intelligence chatter was just that: meaningless noise.

After inspecting the gift shop’s selection of cowbells and snow globes, all the while shadowed by Ivan, the guardian, Lucas ran out of things to do. The cobbled street outside the café was crowded with happy families eating honey cakes in the sun. Rather than endure the stares and whispers his presence would provoke, he took refuge in the hotel. The only other customer in the dining room was a whiskery old gent snoozing over his newspaper. It might have been cosy here in winter, with a log fire and snow falling outside. In summer, the abundance of carved wood was overbearingly gloomy. Lucas ordered coffee as Ivan took up position two tables away.

‘Hello, Lucas.’

He looked up to see Dr Caron.

‘Oh. Er, hello.’

The therapist gave one of her melancholy smiles. ‘I hope I am not disturbing you. Ivan messaged me to say you were here. You see, there is someone I would like you to meet.’

‘Another therapist? I didn’t realise I was such a hopeless case.’

‘Another kind of doctor. Please,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing to worry about. I have arranged a consultation, that is all.’

Lucas’s heart began to thump. His instincts told him something was about to happen, something important. After only a slight hesitation he got up and followed Dr Caron. This was his chance, and he had to take it.

They went upstairs into a small private dining room. Ivan waited outside the door. The rustic wooden beams and floral drapes seemed an unlikely setting for an act of violence, yet Lucas braced himself all the same. There was a man in a suit at the table. He had a blandly handsome face, square-jawed and cleft-chinned. Spray-tanned too by the looks of it. As he got up, Lucas thought of Gideon, taking out the syringe from his inquisitor’s cloak, advancing with a smile . . . But the man only wanted to shake hands. ‘I’m Dr Claude.’ His accent was American. ‘Great to meet you.’

‘How do you do,’ Lucas said automatically.

Dr Caron and Lucas took their seats. For a few moments they waited in silence. The way the therapist was fiddling with her ring suggested she wasn’t quite as composed as she appeared. ‘Lucas, I have been working with young people with your condition for many years. I believe I have made progress with all my patients, but some have been easier to help than others. More . . . rewarding. That’s why I’ve taken a special interest in you, even though, in some ways, you are the most problematic of the students at Wildings.’

He frowned. Really? More problematic than Anjuli, who didn’t eat, and Yuri, who liked to hit things?

‘You are expert at suppressing your feelings, Lucas. Yet compared to the other students, you are the least reconciled to your condition. In the wellness questionnaire you completed on your first day here, you ranked being “angry”, “dangerous” and “powerful” at the top of the list of reactions to your condition. In our sessions, however, you have talked of fear . . . of being at the mercy of destructive impulses.’

She took out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and passed it over to him. It was a page from the mood diary he’d been doing in art class; a splurge of red and black swirls, jagged yellow scribbles.

‘What does this represent?’

He tried to laugh. ‘Nothing good, by the look of it.’

He remembered doing it, of course. It was when he and Glory had discovered Rose Merle had been at Wildings. He had been thinking of Rose’s mother’s death in the burning attic. And of his mother, in the burning car.

Lucas glanced at the other doctor, who nodded encouragingly. He decided to take the cue.

‘I suppose it’s true I’m, er . . . conflicted. But I thought I was making progress.’

‘Indeed you are. That’s why I have brought you here today. I’ve seen how you have begun to let your guard down, and your vulnerabilities show. Some patients with your condition have no desire to open up, no real motivation to alter their behaviour and attitudes. But you, I think, want to change.’

‘My behaviour?’ He didn’t need to pretend to be confused. This was not where he expected the conversation to be going.

Dr Caron gave him one of her measuring looks. ‘Adam.’

Self-consciously, Lucas touched the grey in his hair. ‘Adam’ was the name they had agreed to use in the therapy sessions when talking about his fae. ‘Adam’s’ arrival had been very unexpected. ‘Adam’ caused a lot of trouble for Lucas’s family, and his father disapproved of ‘him’. And so on. But Lucas was tired of codewords and evasions.

‘
There’s nothing I can do about my fae.’

‘Ah,’ said Dr Claude, leaning forward, ‘but
we
can.’

The breath rushed out of Lucas’s body. All of a sudden he knew what this was about. It was about what had been done to Rose Merle. These people wanted to cut the Seventh Sense out of his brain.

He forced himself to keep calm. All the signs indicated this was a sales pitch, not an ambush, and he needed to play along. At least it was no effort to appear confused. ‘I – I don’t understand.’

‘You believe your fae is an aberration, something inexplicable and uncontrollable. Yes?’ Dr Caron asked.

He nodded.

‘Well,’ said Dr Claude easily, ‘I’m here to tell you that’s not true. The Seventh Sense is a physiological, not supernatural, condition, which can be mapped to regions of the brain.’

‘You’re a brain surgeon?’ Lucas tried to keep the scepticism out of his voice. Dr Claude looked like he’d walked straight off the set of one of those American hospital soaps.

‘A neuroscientist.’ He gave a modest yet manly smile. ‘I work for a company called Cambion, which specialises in neural technology. Our brain-imaging systems have identified the neural network responsible for the Seventh Sense, or rather, the range of symptoms ascribed to the Seventh Sense. In witches, the neurons in this network form inappropriate connections – faulty brainwaves.’

Lucas looked at his therapist. ‘So witches are mentally ill?’

‘We aren’t questioning your sanity,’ she said mildly. ‘Certainly, not all the fae’s attributes are negative. Some probably had an evolutionary advantage, before the technological advancements of the modern age. This particular technology simply aims to help those who feel their condition is a burden, rather than a gift.’

‘What’s the treatment?’

‘Something called a deep brain stimulation implant,’ Dr Claude replied. ‘It’s an electrical device that is set to block the signals emitted by the dysfunctional area of the brain.’

‘Sounds a bit sci-fi.’

‘Not at all. DBS implants have been in use since the 1990s to treat conditions such as dystonia, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. The device we use is similar to a cardiac pacemaker, and made of nanoscale carbon fibres. In size, it’s no larger than a grain of rice. Once in place, it delivers minute electrical impulses to block the impulses producing the fae – the technique is known as intra-abdominal vagal blocking. Simply put, the instinct to commit witchwork as well as the ability is suppressed. The mark known as the Devil’s Kiss fades within an hour of the procedure.’

His delivery was plausible and practised. The faint lines around his eyes and sprinkling of grey at his temples seemed to have been expertly applied – just enough to convey gravitas. Lucas remembered what Glory had told him about the man who’d collected Rose from her clinic, the smooth American.

He risked a frown. ‘OK, but how come I haven’t heard of this before? I mean, this is a major medical breakthrough. It could change . . . everything.’

The gravitas intensified. ‘Exactly. If the procedure was to be made public, it would arouse a storm of controversy. Witchkind Rights organisations would be sure to campaign against our work, or even attempt sabotage. Then there’s the danger that some authorities might force people into wearing the implants, whether they wanted to or not. The fact is, many powerful organisations are prepared to go to any lengths to possess Cambion’s research and technology.

‘For this reason, I’m not at liberty to tell you where our clinic is based until you and your family have formally committed to the procedure. To all intents and purposes, Cambion and its staff do not officially exist.’

I’ll bet
, thought Lucas. That way, the moment the medical malpractice suits arrive, you’ll vanish in a puff of smoke. ‘How many people have already undergone this procedure?’

Dr Claude smiled reassuringly. ‘A wide range. The outcomes have been consistently successful – I can show you many personal testimonies in support of our claims. Of course, you must have plenty more questions, and I will be happy to answer them. But for now, I’m sure you’d like to have some time to reflect on what we have told you. There’s a lot to take in.’

‘I know your godfather is coming to see you on Wednesday,’ Dr Caron put in, ‘but this is something you need to discuss with your father. If you wish, I can arrange for you to make a private telephone call. He will doubtless want to meet with us too. But it is of the highest importance you talk to no one else about this, either at the academy or anywhere else. If you do, I’m afraid the opportunity will be withdrawn.’