Pariah Read online

  Anyway, I’m trying to explain why I’m standing around, soaking wet and freezing my arse off, stark naked in the middle of nowhere. One of the things I discovered when I was a novice at Saint Cyprian’s – one of the things nobody would believe – was that desire is a force like contiguity. If you want something badly enough it’s like there’s an affinity with whoever or whatever you want.

  With my kit off, there’s nothing between my physical form and the rest of the world. Simple. OK, a bit creepy too. I open a small bottle of my own blood. I dip a quill pen into it and spend half an hour drawing symbols all over my body, using a mirror to see round the corners.

  I’m shaking with cold now. And when I look at myself in the mirror . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about. I put the mirror on the ground and smash it with a stone. I hang Kazia’s pentacle around my neck. I unfold the silk square and run the tip of my finger along the spine of the feather, and I’m just trying to imagine that I can feel its affinity with her when I hear a voice—

  ‘Will this help?’

  A ragged white bundle unwinds as it tumbles down the side of the crater and finally spits out a four-foot nurse shark. I look up and see Marvo grinning back at me from the rim of the crater.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Two Elementals or One Elemental Twice

  IT’S LIKE I’M outside my own body, floating in mid-air and staring down at this bald, skinny little runt who’s squatting down there in the dirt, shivering like a skinned rabbit, staring wildly around . . .

  I know what that little runt’s thinking: should he just run for it? Is there any way he can pretend this isn’t happening?

  ‘I’m not a perv!’ he yells.

  Wham! I’m back on the ground and I’m the skinny little runt in the circle. Someone’s laughing.

  ‘I have to do it like this.’ I can hear my own voice echoing back at me off the three standing stones – shrill, like a cracked trumpet.

  ‘So get on with it.’ Marvo’s sitting with her legs dangling over the rim of the crater, grinning down at me. I notice that she’s swapped her black trousers for a pair of jeans.

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’ My famous sense of humour has deserted me. ‘Turn round—’

  ‘No way!’ She’s swinging her feet up and down so her heels bang off the ground and clods of earth run down the slope. ‘Let’s see some action.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  I get my answer as this kid a few years older than me pops up beside her, waving and smirking like a gargoyle. Brother Andrew, one of the monks from the termite nest: grey habit, tonsured carrot-coloured hair, buck teeth and all. My humiliation is complete.

  ‘He knows all the places you go,’ says Marvo.

  ‘Come on,’ Andrew jeers. ‘We haven’t got all night!’

  He’s going to pay for this; but I haven’t got time right now. I kneel over the shark and hack off the barbels. I ought to take an hour to purify them. I ought to chop them up. The world is largely made up of things I ought to do . . .

  Marvo slides off the rim and scuttles down beside me. ‘The word you’re looking for is “thankyou”.’

  I take a moment to consider changing the spell and blasting her and Andrew back to Oxford. Later, maybe. Right now, she’s staring at the sorcerer’s mark across my chest. It’s like a tattoo, but it isn’t; it’s my licence from the Society of Sorcerers to practise magic. It looks like one of my magic circles: a series of concentric blue rings with symbols in black and red . . .

  ‘What happened there?’

  I shiver and jump back as her fingertips brush across the outermost circle, where a couple of symbols have vanished, leaving a gap in the design.

  ‘I lost my licence, remember?’

  ‘I thought they just suspended it.’

  ‘I guess they had second thoughts.’

  Symbol by symbol, the mark is disappearing. It’ll be gone in a month or so. Luckily, it doesn’t affect my ability to work magic. Kazia doesn’t have a licence and that doesn’t hold her back. It just means that, like her, I’m toast if I’m caught at it . . .

  ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ I ask. ‘I mean—’

  Marvo is down on one knee, reaching for the feather.

  ‘Don’t touch!’ I slap her hand away.

  She jumps up and punches me back. ‘What’s it for?’ Her eyes widen. ‘The demon in the mortuary—’ Her eyes go wider still. ‘Caxton’ll kill you!’

  ‘So don’t tell her.’

  ‘Christ, you’ve been busy.’

  And Marvo gives me this look. It starts at my head, where it flickers from my eyes to my shaved skull and back again. It moves down to the pentacle and the sorcerer’s mark across my chest. It darts down, just for a split second, then back to my face.

  We both blush.

  ‘Yeah.’ Andrew’s nineteen, but he’s got a giggle like a five-year-old. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘Out of the way, then.’

  I wait while Marvo scrambles up the side of the crater and settles beside Andrew. My fingers are numb with cold, but I manage to pick up my wand with one hand and the feather with the other. This’d better work, or I’ll be seriously pissed off.

  I kiss the feather. ‘Adonai, Tetragrammaton—’

  ‘You gotta be joking, right?’ That’s Marvo’s idea of being helpful.

  It’s an hour later and I’m shivering so badly that I can barely get my jumper over my head. ‘It’s your fault,’ I moan.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Throwing this thing around the place.’ I kick the shark, which is lying on the ground gathering dirt. ‘What chance did I have?’

  ‘Maybe you just made a mistake.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘—make mistakes. Yeah, we’ve heard that one before.’

  ‘And it doesn’t help, you and him’ – I’m pointing at Andrew – ‘sitting up there giggling at me.’

  All the way through the ritual I had this idea that Andrew wasn’t just watching me intently; he was watching a particular part of me intently.

  ‘Funny’s funny. Get used to it.’ Marvo turns and points. ‘So what about them two?’

  Them two . . . they’re not really what I planned. Identical twins, about three feet tall. Each with the body of a shark, only sort of squeezed up till it’s almost spherical, with two stubby legs growing out of their sides and ending in scaly, clawed feet. They stomp up and down at the bottom of the crater, grinning at each other. Then they both stand on one leg, put the spare claw round each other and look up at me and chorus:

  ‘OK, boss?’

  Some monster elemental! They look totally stupid and incredibly conspicuous. Especially with the single grey feather sticking out of the top of each of their heads. I doubt if they could find their own arses, let alone Kazia.

  I could blame Marvo for bouncing the shark around; or her and Andrew for staring at me. But the truth is, I messed up. It’s another of those things they told us to watch out for at Saint Cyprian’s. The entire ritual was overdetermined: I was all worked up and I just threw too much stuff at it. The feather. The pentacle. The shark. All tangled up.

  I’ve got a picture in my mind where I go over to the Weird Sisters and start banging my head off them. Instead, I kneel and tip a few herbs into my hand. ‘Adonai, Tetragramm—’

  ‘What are you doing?’ says Marvo.

  ‘You said it yourself, they’re a joke.’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re a cute joke.’ Marvo tickles one of the elementals, just behind the protruding feather, and they both giggle. ‘Give ’em a crack at it – what’ve you got to lose?’

  ‘My dignity?’

  ‘You lost that when you took your kit off.’

  I look down at the two elementals. They grin back up at me: two mouthfuls of wonky teeth. ‘Oh Christ!’

  The grins fade. ‘Boss . . .?’ I snap, ‘Don’t call me that!’

  Despair is always a tempting option. I want to crawl back to bed, pull the blankets over my head
and pretend none of this ever happened.

  The thing is, the feather from the demon went up in smoke twenty minutes ago, along with the potent bits of the shark; so unless I want to start again, right from scratch, I’ve got no choice. Marvo’s right, as usual: I’ve nothing to lose.

  ‘Oh, what the hell. I’m gonna call you Preston.’

  ‘We’d be proud and honoured, boss.’ They look at each other and murmur dreamily, ‘Preston . . .’

  I take off Kazia’s pentacle and dangle it in front of them. They sort of sniff it, then stand there looking at each other.

  ‘So get on with it.’

  They know my intention. They both turn and start clambering towards the crater rim. I run after them and grab one by the tail.

  ‘You stay.’

  His twin has stopped and is staring back at me.

  ‘You go.’ That’s how it works: one does the searching, the other hangs around with me and jumps up and down when his twin has followed the affinity to Kazia. ‘And for God’s sake stay out of sight!’

  ‘OK, boss. Whatever you say.’

  I pull my jerkin on while I watch him scramble to the top of the crater and duck ostentatiously behind one of the standing stones. After a moment, his face reappears. He looks around, one foot raised to shade his eyes. He runs across to vanish behind another stone—

  ‘Don’t overdo it.’

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ says the Preston beside me. ‘Whatever you say.’

  I look down at him. ‘And you, heel.’

  There’s a voice from the distance: ‘OK, boss. Whatever you say.’

  Marvo mutters, ‘OK, maybe you are wasting your time.’

  Preston looks up at her. ‘Hey, give us a break, willya?’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Power

  IT WAS A hard slog coming up through the woods. Even downhill, it’s a hard slog going back. Preston keeps falling over his own feet.

  ‘Sorry, boss.’

  ‘Just pay attention and get on with it.’ The oilcloth bundle is back in its hiding place. I’ve got my satchel over my shoulder. Marvo’s cradling the shark, wrapped up in the sheet again.

  ‘Listen,’ I say to her. ‘You didn’t have to bring me that.’ I nod towards the shark.

  ‘I couldn’t leave it lying around the mortuary.’

  I’m still shivering. I got chilled to the bone, dancing around back there, and I don’t think I’ll ever warm up again.

  ‘You’re a fool, Frank,’ Marvo says quietly.

  I know I am; I know I’m letting her down. So I don’t need Andrew sniggering, ‘Well, we all knew that!’

  ‘She’s only interested in what she can get from you.’ Marvo means Kazia, obviously.

  ‘That’s not important.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I know. If the Society gets hold of her . . . blah, blah, blah . . .’

  ‘I’m not a complete fool,’ I mutter. ‘I realise she’s only interested in staying clear of me.’

  ‘So why are you doing it?’

  I shrug. ‘It’s not really about her, anyway.’

  Marvo’s been on her scryer, so at least there’s a ride waiting for us down in the village. Some of the new vans have heaters inside – OK, just a tin box full of hot bricks – as well as pneumatic tyres. Not this one. My teeth have started to rattle almost as loudly as the wheels.

  ‘So what is it about?’ Marvo’s sitting across from me with her nose wrinkled up. The shark has managed to wriggle its head out from the sheet and is eyeing her like she’s its lunch.

  I look round from drawing a pentagram in the dirt on the window. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Kazia. If it’s not really about her—’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ What it’s about is that as long as I’m chasing around after Kazia, I can forget all the other stuff. How I get the Society off my back. What I do about—

  ‘What about your boss?’ Sometimes it’s like Marvo can read my thoughts.

  ‘Matthew?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Where d’you think?’

  Marvo was there when I left Alastor to look after Matthew. And that tame sorcerer he had – the one that I was telling you about? Yeah: Kazia. And it was Matthew who told her to rub out me, Marvo and her mum.

  ‘He’ll starve.’

  ‘I took care of that.’

  ‘You can’t just leave him there for ever. You have to talk to the Society, Frank.’ And I’m just making a mental list of all the reasons this is a bad idea when— ‘Jesus, this thing stinks!’ Marvo elbows Andrew in the ribs. ‘Open the window.’

  He blinks nervously as she leans across him and pushes the front end of the shark out into the big wide world.

  I grab the tail. ‘Hey! I need that. There’s all sorts of stuff—’

  ‘Then look after it yourself.’ She heaves the shark across to me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘For dragging you out all over the place. This was good of you . . .’ I pat the shark. ‘I mean, I know you—’

  ‘Know I what?’

  ‘I dunno. Disapprove.’

  ‘I hate her, OK?’ She turns to Andrew. ‘Will you shut that bloody window?’ Back to me: ‘I just don’t want to feel I helped get her killed, that’s all.’

  I don’t say anything. Know what I’m thinking, though? That the only reason Marvo dug the shark out of the mortuary was because she realised I’d never forgive her if she didn’t help me save Kazia.

  And thinking this . . . it gives me, I dunno, a sense of power. Which makes me feel dead uncomfortable.

  So apparently, what happened, anyway: Marvo rolled up at the termite nest with the shark about five minutes after I went over the wall. She grabbed Andrew and they came after me. They got lucky and reached the bottom of Headington Hill just in time to see me duck into the church porch. After that, they simply had to follow me on foot—

  ‘Hang on. You asked for me at the front door?’

  ‘How else was I supposed to find you?’ Marvo points at Andrew. ‘He was on the gate. Said you’d sneaked out . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Andrew. ‘I saw you climb over the wall—’

  ‘You saw me? What about my studio?’

  ‘Clear as day.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Marvo asks.

  She asked for it. ‘There’s a cloaking spell on my studio.’ I watch her clutch her head. ‘Nobody should be able—’

  Marvo’s rocking backwards and forwards in her seat. I put a hand under her elbow to steady her, but she just lashes out.

  ‘I know you did something to it – I watched you.’ Andrew does one of his famous graveyard chuckles.

  ‘You looked pretty stupid dancing around in front of it.’ He chuckles again. ‘Almost as stupid as tonight!’

  You can hide buildings with a cloaking spell – even an entire city, if you’ve got the time. But a significant flaw is that anyone who watches you cast it is immune.

  ‘It’s been fun watching all the brothers fall down.’ Andrew’s laughing like a drain now, his hand over his mouth to cover his buck teeth.

  Preston joins in for a moment; then, seeing that I’m not laughing, puts on a straight face.

  ‘So you didn’t tell anyone . . .?’

  Andrew attempts a sinister smile. ‘Who’s to say?’

  I match his sinister smile. ‘I have ways of finding out.’

  He blinks. ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s too much fun watching them all fall over.’ He grins.

  Preston chortles, his mouth a tangled mass of glistening white, razor-sharp teeth.

  For some reason I thought that Marvo would drive off with the van, and leave me and Andrew to deal with the shark. But of course she doesn’t. When I jump out, she tells the driver to get lost, and we all trail off round the back of the termite nest and stare up at the wall. All twelve feet of it.

  ‘Where the hell are we, anyway?’ says Marvo, like she�
�s never been here before.

  ‘I’m fine now.’ I pass the shark to Andrew and lob my satchel over the wall. I turn back to Marvo. ‘You can leave us to it. Andrew’ll help me, yeah?’

  But before Andrew can even open his mouth, Marvo says, ‘But I thought you were gonna help me find out who killed Sean?’

  ‘It’s waited a year. It can wait a bit longer.’

  ‘But you promised.’

  For the record, I never promised her a thing. I’ve told her all along she’s wasting her time. ‘Gimme a break.’ I worm my fingers into a crack and get my foot up to an iron peg hammered into the mortar. A push and a wriggle—

  ‘I brought you that.’ Looking down from the top of the wall, I see her punch the shark.

  ‘Go home, Marvo.’

  She looks up at me with these big disappointed eyes and I can’t help wondering: does she practise in a mirror? She turns and heads dejectedly off up the alley.

  ‘OK, Andrew,’ I say.

  But just as he steps up to the wall with the shark, the tinny cracked rattle of the chapel bell echoes across the inside of the termite nest.

  The shark hits the ground with a squelch. Andrew’s up the wall like a ferret up a trouser leg. He vaults over the top, nearly taking me with him, and lands inside with a crash—

  ‘Sorry, Brother!’ And he’s a dot in the distance, scampering off towards the chapel.

  Nothing else for it, then. ‘Marvo!’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bat’s Blood

  A FEW MINUTES later, Marvo’s managed to get the shark over her head. Weight-lifting isn’t her sport and I can see her arms trembling, but I just manage to lean down and grab it by the tail before she lets go. The sheet falls over her head and she’s stumbling around in circles like a kid dressed up as a Halloween ghost, trying to pull it off.