The Devil's Apprentice Read online

  It would not open. There was no keyhole; Ghost guessed it must be bolted on the other side. Big Belinda had gone that way: he could see her in his mind’s eye, following the mute, waiting while he secured the door behind them. The mute would have been carrying a lamp or torch to light the passage: he could picture the light dwindling slowly down a long length of tunnel, and the guide’s towering form stooping under the low ceiling, and the shadow of Big Belinda wavering and billowing after them. He could picture it so clearly it was almost real. He knew where the tunnel would go. Beyond Close Shave Alley was Sweet Street, and beyond that the high wall of the Duke’s garden. Ghost had a vague recollection of Mr Sheen talking about the old Duke, the present Duke’s father, who had been a friend of the king before the rebellion – the king they had executed like a criminal, though Ghost wasn’t sure why. Mr Sheen had approved of the aristocracy: they were his prey. He told them how the old Duke had been imprisoned in his own house because the Tower was full, and he would have been executed too, only he escaped, no one knew how, and though the Ironclads scoured the city they couldn’t find him.

  ‘There’s a secret passage, see? I knew one o’ the servants, he told me about it. The Duke, ’e had it made early in the war, in case the wrong side won. ’E was a smart one, the old Duke, cunning as a thief for all his blood was blue. They say he hid in the passage ten days waiting for the soldiers to quit searching – ten days o’ drinking water from the gutter and eating rats. Foul fare for a man o’ his breeding, but he thrived on it. Died in France, he did, at the court o’ King Louey. ’E was lean and hard and tough as a tanner’s thumb, and he had more vices than a tuppenny whore, but the French cooking did for ’im in the end. This Duke now, he looks different, fat as a Christmas goose, but don’t you be fooled, he’s his father on the inside, only sharper and meaner. The old Duke, he’d kill quick as lightning, without turning a hair or breathing a prayer. But his son, he’d kill you slow, just for the fun of it.’ There had been both fear and admiration in Mr Sheen’s voice when he said those words, and the raven had squawked as if in affirmation. Ghost’s face grew thin and hard at the memory. He thought of Tomkin, somewhere beyond that door, and the Duke behind his high wall, safe from plague and peril. There were promises to be kept, debts to be paid; that was why he had lived, surviving disease and despair, that was what he was for. At the thought, the knife came into his hand, the little blade flicking out like a serpent’s tongue, but he put it away, and climbed the stair, back to the darkness of the barber’s shop.

  Perhaps forty minutes later the cellar door opened and Big Belinda emerged, brushing the dust from her skirts. Ghost was squatting on the top of a cupboard, trusting to the gloom to hide him, but the procuress never glanced up. She was talking, more to herself than the mute who came after her, his lamp held high.

  ‘So he wants a new boy, does he? A sweet-faced child to sing him to sleep, to drive away his demons and open the gates of Heaven for him – and where am I to find one in this city? They’re all dead or dying. The younger they are the faster they sicken; that’s how it goes. But he wants one untouched by plague or human hand – a cherub in a city gone to hell. What’s wrong with the one he’s got? Lost his bloom – huh! Of course he’s lost his bloom. His Haughtiness can take the bloom off in a week, whether with a belt or a riding whip. Dainty little flowers bruise easy, and then they don’t look so dainty any more...’

  She vanished into the alley, still talking, and the mute locked the door behind her and returned to the cellar. When he was sure he was alone Ghost slid down from the cupboard and left via the window.

  Cherub, he was thinking. A cherub in a city gone to hell...

  London, twenty-first century

  IN TEMPORAL CRESCENT, nothing happened – for a change. Jinx had gone home; Pen’s term had ended, leaving her plenty of time to develop her pattern theories; Gavin went on a date with Josabeth Collins, and found himself secretly bored. On the Sunday he came to dinner, and won Eve’s approval by smiling his dazzling smile and talking a lot about cooking, though she nearly lost his when she said he was going to be another Jamie Oliver.

  The following week the state schools broke up, and the next Saturday Jinx came back.

  With the dog.

  Felinacious took one look at him, attempted to scramble up a sheer sideboard, gouging deep claw-marks in the wood, and finally made it to the top of a chest of drawers, from which vantage point he proceeded to hiss at the enemy in the manner of a cat who has done very little hissing and can’t quite get it right. Hoover lifted his lip in what, in a Rottweiler, would have been a snarl, but in his case was merely a half-hearted sneer. After this face-off, something of a comedown for both species, they decided to ignore each other.

  ‘He’s Bartlemy’s dog,’ Jinx explained, wincing as a rib twanged. ‘I found him – or he found me – in the house where Barty used to live. I don’t know where he came from. He wasn’t there before. He’s not an ordinary dog.’

  ‘He looks ordinary,’ Gavin said, not so much disparaging as reassured. ‘He looks pure pedigree mongrel.’

  Pen, who was a cat person, eyed Hoover without enthusiasm and wondered if she could order Jinx to remove him.

  Probably not.

  Quorum, who cleaned as well as buttled, was even less enthusiastic than Pen, conveying his feelings with pointed silences and much flourishing of brooms in Hoover’s wake.

  Eve said doubtfully: ‘I suppose as it’s Mr Goodman’s dog, and this is his house...’

  ‘He’s a good guard dog,’ Jinx declared. ‘We need a guard dog.’

  Eve thought of the burglar alarms all down the street, the grilles on the windows, the security shutters. ‘All right,’ she said.

  Later, when she was out, Jinx told Pen and Gavin what she had seen, no longer bothering to have qualms about their youth. Qualms were a luxury she couldn’t afford.

  ‘Hoover’s my familiar,’ she maintained. ‘On loan from Uncle Barty. You have the Teeth–’ she nodded to Pen ‘– and I have Hoover. He looks after me. No one’s tried to run me over for a week.’

  ‘He chases cars, does he?’ Gavin said, grinning. ‘Bites their tyres?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Jinx said darkly.

  Pen surveyed her familiar – or familiars – which were sitting on a nearby shelf leering at her. She didn’t know if teeth were supposed to leer, but these did. ‘So,’ she said, ‘Azmordis has a skull studded with diamonds that’s been around since the Renaissance, and we have a set of dentures. What does that tell you?’

  ‘He’s the one with the budget,’ Gavin suggested.

  ‘We could take that skull!’ said the Teeth. ‘We could crack that cranium! We could spit out the diamonds so they went ping! against the wall!’

  ‘Only if it was a metal wall,’ Gavin said.

  ‘Shut up, or we’ll bite your–’

  ‘Isit meant to tell us anything?’ Jinx demanded.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Pen fumbled with her ideas. ‘The thing is, they’re sort of parallel. The Skull and the Teeth. Not-quite-identical opposites. Duality.’

  ‘What makes them opposite?’ Jinx said.

  ‘The Teeth are on our side. We’re the good guys. If there are any. At least, I... I hope we are.’

  ‘Are we?’ said Gavin. ‘Not being bad guys doesn’t make us heroes. As far as I can see, we’re just in the way.’

  ‘That’s why we have to get involved,’ said Pen. ‘No one else will. I’m responsible for this house–’

  ‘What have I told you about being responsible for everything?’

  ‘– and we know now there are people trapped here with horrible things happening to them, turning them twisted and cruel, making them suitable candidates to be the Devil’s apprentice. We have to stop it – get them out somehow–’

  ‘Save them from themselves?’ Gavin queried sceptically.

  ‘If you’re doing Devil’s Advocate,’ said Pen, ‘I think it’s in very poor taste.’

  �
��I expect they’ve turned to the dark side already,’ Jinx said gloomily. ‘Still, she’s right. We have to try. God, I hate saving the world.’

  Pen and Gavin stared at her, their two very different faces wearing a single expression. There was an extremely pointed silence.

  ‘Have you?’ Gavin asked.

  ‘Saved the world,’ Pen elaborated.

  ‘Well, not exactly...’

  Gavin turned to Pen. ‘What’s your plan of action?’

  ‘Keep opening the doors. I don’t see what else we can do. I told you, I’ve seen that boy in dreams – the one who went through in the seventies. I don’t know how... how real that is, but Quorum says dreams are significant, they can reveal things you didn’t know you knew, stuff from your subconscious, suppressed memories – not just your own but other people’s. If that’s true, I’ll recognise that boy when I see him.’

  ‘It’s a big if,’ said Gavin.

  There was a short pause.

  ‘Look,’ Jinx’s voice had dropped from grumble to gruff and one hand tugged at Hoover’s fur, ‘I know you don’t like me. I get that. I know a lot more about these things than you do, and I expect it’s pissing you off. I can’t help that. What’s happening here is important, and that means we have to work together, whether we like it or not. Anyway, Pen’s on the right track. When you’re dealing with magic dreams can show the truth, sometimes. And if we don’t open the doors we won’t find out what’s on the other side.’

  ‘We?’ said Gavin sharply.

  Jinx scowled at him. ‘I’ve been doing some research,’ she said. ‘I think there may be a way to control what’s behind each door. Or at any rate, who.’

  ‘What way?’ Gavin was staying with scepticism.

  ‘That story the goblin told us...’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘He mentioned a wishing stone – sort of implied he still had it. I’ve been reading up on wishing stones in one of Barty’s books. If Stiltz could be persuaded to lend it to us, I think it might help.’

  ‘Stiltz?’ Gavin queried.

  ‘Rumpelstiltskin.’

  ‘But surely that story wasn’t true,’ Pen said. ‘Not really factually true. It was just a fairytale.’

  ‘Take away the sparkly bits and the happy ending,’ Jinx responded, ‘and most fairytales are true enough. Nowadays, Cinderella comes with a divorce lawyer, and the Little Mermaid is saving up for trans-species surgery, but the basic idea always stays the same. Get pretty, get married, get rich. Whatever. Wishing stones are real, or they used to be – once upon a time, in the olden days, when reality was more flexible than it is now. They’re like... a magical pager. In theory, you can page anyone, anywhere. If the goblin has one–’

  ‘How do they work?’ said Gavin.

  WISHING STONES WERE believed to have been made by the exiles from Atlantis as instruments of summoning and compulsion. How many originally existed is not known, since most of them were lost long ago. Perhaps owing to a design fault, they resembled ordinary pebbles, oval-shaped, wave-smoothed and sea-grey, unmarked save for between one and three narrow white bands circling the stone – three-banded were the most potent – so against a pebbly background only those with highly developed witchsight could distinguish them. In consequence, many were mislaid – on beaches and shingle banks, stony hillsides and cobbled streets – and never rediscovered. They were supposed to glow or change colour when activated, tingling slightly to the touch.

  ‘The thing is,’ Jinx said, launching into a speech she had rehearsed on the train to London, ‘Bygone House is a space/time prism so powerful it would warp normal spells, but a wishing stone is a kind of magnet – a space/time magnet attracting a particular person, the way an everyday magnet attracts iron – so it shouldn’t be distorted by the prism. I think... the house might actually enhance the power of the stone. It could be strong enough to work through the doors – through the time zones – focusing on the person we want to reach. A wishing stone which can summon the Devil has got to be pretty powerful to start off with.’ She stopped, awaiting approbation which didn’t come. ‘Anyway, it must be worth a try.’

  ‘If the goblin really has this wishing stone,’ Pen said doubtfully. She didn’t believe any of it. ‘What do you do with a wishing stone to... to operate it?’

  ‘Rub it seven times widdershins,’ Jinx said promptly. ‘And wish, of course. Or it might be three times. We’ll have to try till we get it right.’

  ‘What’s widdershins?’ asked Gavin.

  ‘Against the sun. Anti-clockwise.’

  ‘Anti-clockwise is only against the sun if you’re facing south.’

  ‘We’d better do it facing south then...’

  ‘It’s still only half the problem,’ Pen said, secretly unconvinced by the solution. ‘We have to get into the past without being absorbed, which is just as hard as finding which part of the past not to be absorbed in. There’s no point in going back if you’re never going to return. And,’ she went on, becoming progressively more pessimistic, ‘you say we’d have to wish for a particular person? Well, from what you overheard there should be several potential apprentices lost in Bygone House, but we don’t know who they are. Except for that boy in my dream...’

  ‘The witch-girl,’ said Gavin. ‘I’ll bet she’s one of them.’

  ‘A witch?’ queried Jinx, who hadn’t heard about the girl.

  ‘She tamed a sea monster,’ Gavin said with malice aforethought, ‘and set it on the villagers who tried to sacrifice her. There were body parts all over the beach. That’s what I call witchcraft.’

  ‘I call it psychosis,’ said Pen.

  ‘I call it scary,’ murmured Jinx.

  IT WAS RAINING on Hampstead, not the thin grey rain so typical of the English spring but a heavy persistent streaming rain worthy of a more tropical climate. Water fountained from blocked guttering and overflowed ditch and drain. Sparsely-leaved trees offered no shelter and the spray from a passing car was like the backwash of a speedboat. Felinacious had ventured out, perhaps to avoid Hoover, and now lurked in the porch, whining. Above, the cloud-roof was low and so deeply grey it turned the daylight to evening.

  Over the low cloud, among the murky towers of the stormheads, there were wings too wide for rook or raven. Wings black as midnight, turning and turning on a narrowing spiral around some unseen point below. Such wings might have belonged to the condor of the Andes, or an eagle greater than any yet recorded, except that they seemed to be made of darkness, melding with the cloud-core as they veered, leaving a shadow-trail in their wake that bled slowly into the surrounding gloom. And the body – the body was not that of a bird. Streamlined, featherless, with no clear form but a face that was human or nearly so and eyes that saw not merely far but through, through swirling cloud and blurring rain, down to the house in a crescent of houses, the house with no door, to the windows with their shutters and bars, to the raindrops beating on brick and pane – saw dimly through neighbouring roof and walls, to three who sat talking close together, a dark-skinned boy and a light-skinned girl and another, also possibly a girl, with purple hair and a ring in her nose.

  The wings dipped, narrowing for the dive; a darkness streaked earthward, swifter than the rain. Then there was someone on the lawn between 7 and 7A, a shadow-figure blending with the storm-grey afternoon, fading into the lee of the house. The smaller house, with lights showing, glimmering through the wet.

  The people inside could be seen as vague images behind the barrier of the wall, shapes and colours that gleamed faintly with the heat of life. The observer drew nearer, eyes slitting against the rain, though no rain touched him. He appeared to be listening, his hearing more than mortal, but could catch only a rumour of what was said, voices not words. The high clear tones of one of the girls, the deeper timbre of the boy, and the third voice, lacking resonance, too low or too soft to carry. The auditor lifted his arms; wing-shadows unfurled, stretching and darkening. A single beat carried him to the roof, where he crouched b
eside a chimney, hearing the sound carry from the room two floors below.

  ‘– and I don’t think we should – but you said – we could get lost in history – it might be dangerous – bit late worrying about that – we have to find the pattern – of course it’s dangerous – no pattern, just chaos – dangerous – too dangerous...’

  And then the boy’s voice: ‘What’s bothering your dog?’

  The watcher had noticed the dog but had paid it no attention. He would have had to be in the room for an animal to be aware of him.

  An ordinary animal...

  ‘Hoover... What is it?’

  The sound travelled upward, not exactly a growl but a preliminary rumble, conveying both suspicion and unease.

  ‘Maybe there’s a bird’s nest in the chimney.’ The boy again.

  ‘No,’ said the younger girl. ‘We had a fire there two nights ago: remember?’

  ‘There’s someone on the roof.’ The third voice, normally low-pitched, sharpening with fear. ‘Don’t talk!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sssh!’

  ‘You’re being paranoid. How could anyone get on the roof? We’d hear them climb up.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was anyone human.’

  ‘Maybe it’s Stiltz.’ The younger girl sounded uncertain. ‘He gets around without making any noise. Or being seen.’