Burn Mark Page 5

  The car crash had come at the height of Endor’s campaign, after the Southampton bombings and the assassination of the Home Secretary, before the sabotage of HMS Thrace. The authorities said that the murder was intended as a warning for Ashton Stearne. But Camilla came from an old inquisitorial family as well. For Endor fanatics, that would be justification enough.

  Lucas looked at Bea’s hand, resting on the stone beside his. However close they became, they would always be two different bodies, two separate souls. So how must it feel to invade another person’s consciousness, like some witches did? To tether another soul to yours and move their body to your command? Maybe that’s why Gideon’s so enthralled by the bridle, Lucas thought. He doesn’t just fear the power that witchkind has. He envies it.

  The motorcycle revved again, matching the buzzing in his ears. Although he remembered little of last night, he dimly recognised the surge of feverish disorientation. Waves of pins and needles had begun prickling through his skin.

  ‘Lucas, are you OK?’ Bea was frowning in concern.

  ‘I’m fine – I –’

  I’m going mad.

  But no, no, he wasn’t. Bea could see that. Bea would make sure he was all right. Her soft touch would soothe the itch in his blood; her rosebud mouth would hush the rising din. All he needed to do was keep his focus. He smiled, and leaned towards her.

  ‘Lucas!’

  Philly was marching across the lawn. Her make-up was smeared and her hair dishevelled, and she was clutching a bottle in one hand. ‘What’s this,’ she said belligerently, ‘what’s this I hear about you causing a scene with Gid?’

  Lucas and Bea drew apart. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ said Lucas curtly, over the drumming in his ears.

  ‘Yes, it bloody well does if you keep making an idiot of yourself in front of my friends. Gid—’

  ‘Gideon’s never going to look twice at you whether I’m around or not.’

  There was a nasty pause.

  Then, ‘You pompous arse,’ Philly exploded. ‘You know what your problem is? You’re so damn pleased with yourself the whole hexing time. You –’

  Her voice joined the buzzing in his skull, the hissings in the shadows. Both increased to a new intensity.

  ‘Be quiet,’ he said, keeping his voice low, so as not to add to the uproar all around. For some reason, one of Philomena’s hairgrips was in his jacket pocket, and he grasped it savagely. He couldn’t hear himself think.

  Philomena ignored him. She ignored the whispers and nudges of the group outside the conservatory. She ignored Bea’s hostile stare. Philomena’s evening had not been a success, and its assorted frustrations had now come to a head.

  ‘I’m warning you, if you carry on acting so superior –’

  On and on. Lucas closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the dewy balm of the night garden. He envisaged scooping up its peace and pressing it against Philomena’s jabbering mouth. Tightening his grip around the hairgrip, he bent back its thin metal as he begged for silence. A curb of iron, a cloud of numbness. Be quiet, be quiet, he mouthed, like a prayer. Quiet . . .

  ‘The thing is, Lucas, what you fail to appre—’ Philomena coughed. ‘You fail –’ She made a retching sound, like Nell after the bridle. ‘You –’ Her voice died to a rasp, then a whisper. Then, nothing. She blinked woozily.

  One of her friends, who had been hovering near by, came and put her arm around her. ‘Come on, Phil,’ she coaxed. ‘Let’s go inside. We’ll get you some water and you’ll be absolutely fine.’

  They set off towards the house, Philomena croaking in faint protest, her hand around her throat.

  ‘Hex,’ Lucas swore.

  ‘She’s off her face,’ Bea told him. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  Lucas was, in fact, feeling better. The pressure had lifted and heat retreated. ‘All the same, I’d better check she’s OK.’ He got up, slightly unsteadily.

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Bea, and pointed. ‘Look at the bells.’

  The conservatory door, like all entrances to the house, had a row of boxed iron bells over the threshold, ready to sound the alarm if a witch hexing a bane approached. All three had begun to quiver.

  Bea was more intrigued than worried. ‘Weird. I wonder what’s set them off? Still, it’s not as if they’re actually ringing.’

  All the same, the threat of their chime was near, as close as an echo. Lucas seemed to feel the metal reverberate in time to the tingling in his head. Whatever happened, and for whatever reason, he knew he must not take a step closer to the bells. He must not pass under that threshold.

  Meanwhile, the crowd on the patio continued laughing and smoking and drinking. The tea-lights flickered in the breeze. Yet the night had lost its peace, just as Philomena had lost her –

  Her voice. Philomena’s lost voice.

  How strange and abrupt, the way the noise had been choked out of her. It was almost as if she . . . as if he . . .

  My God, Lucas thought wildly, we’ve been bewitched. He stared round at the rustling depths of the garden. Who knew what could be lurking here? With the fear, the throbbing heat returned, with a force that made him gasp. Bea looked at him curiously.

  ‘I’m s-sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I’m feeling really – uh – ill. I have to go. Sorry.’

  ‘Wait,’ she called, but he was already stumbling away from her, towards the door in the wall at the bottom of the garden.

  He had to get away.

  The taxi driver eyed him suspiciously but Lucas told himself that it was perfectly natural; as far as this man was concerned, he was just another binge-drinking kid who might be sick in his cab. And Lucas really did feel sick now. Sick with shame. Leaving Bea, leaving Philly and the rest like that – what if there was indeed some evil-doer on the prowl? He’d fled, abandoned them. Abandoned everything . . . Deep down, however, he knew his fearfulness for the others was misplaced. It wasn’t even true. It had been fabricated to distract him from the other, unacknowledged dread. Because instinct told him that whatever threat had whispered in the breeze, and set the bells quivering, had already left the house.

  The taxi pulled up almost before he knew it. Lucas thrust a twenty-pound note in the driver’s hands and stumbled out without waiting for change. The night-time guard, Andy, was on duty at the gate, and it took all of Lucas’s strength to look into the CCTV camera with his customary smile as he typed in the code for the main entrance. He approached the front door with a dry mouth and clammy hands, and when he passed through without alarm, was only partly reassured. Bells didn’t warn of all witches, only of those hexing banes.

  The house was empty. Philomena was still at the party, Ashton and Marisa were out too. The silence was only broken by the throaty tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. Yet the familiarity of home did not welcome him. Like an intruder, he avoided the portraits’ eyes.

  Something dark moved in a corner. He paused, uncertain, and heard a long, low growl. ‘Kip? It’s all right, boy, it’s me.’ The growl intensified. But the next moment, there was a scrabble of paws on polished wood, and the dog had gone.

  Lucas squared his shoulders. Then he went up to his bedroom and started pulling things out of the cupboard he used to store old books and files. He forced himself to make his haste orderly: there must be no panic here. He pulled out an essay from last term, Identifying Witchkind and Witchwork, and stared at his own writing, how the brisk black ink flowed confidently across the page.

  It is estimated, the opening paragraph announced, that approximately one in a thousand people become witchkind.

  Less than 0.1% of the British population. Lucas already knew that, of course. He already knew all the information he was searching for. He just needed to see it committed to paper, by his own hand.

  Of these, female witches outnumber male ones by about three to one. The Seventh Sense (‘fae’) is usually developed between the ages of twenty and thirty . . .

  So statistically speaking, his personal odds were much
greater than a thousand to one. His mind raced to do the calculation.

  . . . although in exceptional cases, it can emerge earlier, in the teens or sometimes even in childhood.

  Exactly how exceptional, though? At this point, Lucas would have welcomed some proper data. Lists, charts and graphs, like those scattered through the research papers in his father’s study. But never mind, because

  The fae nearly always runs in families.

  Nearly always. Nearly, nearly, nearly.

  But not one hundred per cent.

  Not infallibly, continuously and for ever.

  Lucas gritted his teeth and turned the page.

  The emergence of the Seventh Sense affects people differently. Symptoms can include ringing in the ears, synaesthesia (sensory cross-over), night-time hallucinations and a burning or itching sensation. These discomforts are only relieved by a witch’s first act of witchwork.

  ‘No,’ said Lucas aloud, though his voice shook. Enough. His blood had cooled, and the echo in his head had gone, but he had not committed witchwork. For God’s sake! Philomena had simply had too much to drink and choked on her own indignation. It was a coincidence, that’s all. It had to be.

  Meanwhile, his own words marched relentlessly on.

  A witch uses his or her Seventh Sense by channelling mental powers (similar to telepathy, mind control, psychokinesis and precognition) through or into people, animals and objects. The practice of fae also draws on normal physical faculties, such as sight, touch and sound.

  Hard as he tried to block them, the memories came thick and fast, in a kaleidoscope patterning of sight, touch, sound. The image he’d created in his head of black silence, muffled against Philomena’s mouth. The clenching of his hand around her hairgrip. Those whispered pleas for quiet. The shiver of bells.

  For the first time, he remembered waking in the night, and the strange sense of exaltation he’d felt as he opened his arms to the darkness. Exaltation, and . . . power.

  But there remained one final test. One last hope.

  . . . The so-called ‘Devil’s Kiss’ is the physical mark of the fae, borne by all witches, that waxes and wanes according to the witchwork done . . .

  Lucas carefully put the essay away (Really excellent work! his teacher had scrawled on the covering page). Then he went down to the utility room and found the housekeeper’s sewing kit. Methodically, he searched for the longest, thickest needle he could find. Calmly, he went back upstairs and into his bathroom. Slowly, deliberately, he began to undress.

  Lucas stood and regarded his naked self in the mirror. His appearance rarely troubled him but tonight it felt as if he was scrutinising his body for the first time. He started with his hands, making a precise examination of each crease and fold of flesh. He knew what he was searching for. A new and unexplained mark, bigger than a freckle or mole, but not by much. Something like a bloom or bruise under the skin.

  Yet the longer he looked without finding anything, the more frightened he became. Hope was unbearable. He grew obsessive, then frantic. He began pinching and twisting lumps of flesh, raking the stretched skin with his nails.

  Then –

  Could it –?

  There.

  A small unfamiliar blot under his left shoulder blade. It was purplish-black, dark as sin. Lucas touched it and felt a soft throb bloom in his head, like an echo.

  Where the Devil had kissed, people said, the body died. The mark of the fae was numb. A person could put the tip of a hot poker against it and the bearer wouldn’t flinch. The witch-prickers of the Inquisition, however, used needles.

  Blindly seizing his needle, Lucas stabbed it into the blot. The metal pierced the skin and slid through to the bone of his shoulder blade. There was no blood, no twinge. No trace of hurt. Nothing. He carried on viciously thrusting with the needle: arms, neck, chest, until he was blood-speckled and whimpering. He flung the needle away.

  Lucas crouched naked on the floor as the tears burned from his eyes and blurred the bloody flecks on his skin. He barely noticed them. For how long he stayed there, rocking back and forth, he didn’t know. Crisp black letters marched through the blankness in his head.

  My name is Lucas John Augustine Stearne. I am fifteen years old. My father is a twelfth-generation inquisitor. My mother is dead.

  I am Lucas Stearne.

  I am fifteen years old.

  I am Lucas.

  I am a witch.

  CHAPTER 6

  Glory was often exasperated by her dad but after their last encounter she just felt depressed. She had a sudden urge to celebrate Friday night, to join a crowd and go dancing. In the end, she made peace with Nate and gatecrashed a club night he’d scammed tickets for.

  The doorman was a mate of Earl’s, so getting in wasn’t a problem. But it wasn’t Glory’s kind of place: an overpriced basement dive full of scruffy hipsters and the kind of public school type who likes to slum it in style. Nate had got their tickets from one of the latter – a trust-fund brat who wanted to play gangsters, and was dumb enough to think that Nate was the real deal.

  It was a strange night. Glory felt tearful and panicky, yet laughed the loudest and talked the most. Her senses tingled all over, black flecks and bright sparks dancing before her eyes. She got home just before dawn and didn’t get up until lunchtime, when she was woken by a row in the room next door. Jacko and his on-and-off girlfriend were yelling blue murder. By the sounds of it, she’d just chucked her phone at his head. Then a door slammed, and it was quiet again.

  Same old, same old . . . Glory stumbled out of bed with a groan. The pale yellow duvet ached against her eyes. The brush of a curtain rasped on her skin. A child crying somewhere outside scraped, monotonously, inside her skull.

  Her window looked over a clutter of rooftops that widened out to London’s smoky rim. It was a view she loved. Today, however, the city didn’t seem to stretch out in all its possibilities, but appeared to box her in. Cooper Street showed few signs of spring. Since Auntie Angel had a theory that nature attracted germs, their own back garden was mostly concrete and plastic flowers in pots. The garden to Number Seven grew mud, beer cans and nettles; Number Eight’s was a barbed-wire prison camp for Joe Junior’s bull terriers.

  This is it, Glory thought. My life, my world. Scams, squalor and stupid bickering . . . I should be better than this. Mab Almighty – I have to be.

  Like Lily and Cora: self-made women, and head-witches worthy of the name. Style with substance. And unlike Lily’s thuggish sons, who’d made the Wednesday Coven a byword for viciousness and greed, they’d kept their integrity. That’s why people still talked about them with respect. Glory thought of the other coven women she’d known over the years, who’d grown pinched and sour from always coming second best to their man’s latest con or newest fling. Even Auntie Angel, for all her toughness and wiliness, hadn’t escaped. Married at nineteen to a bully who’d used her fae when it suited him, and blown everything she’d saved on drink and gambling . . . What were Glory’s chances of beating the odds? She leaned against the window frame, resting her hot cheek against the glass.

  On the fence at the back of the concrete garden a tabby cat was licking its paws. Glory remembered she’d been petting it yesterday afternoon, even though it was a mangy old thing. Now it looked up towards her, ears pricked. And in that brief moment, the world changed.

  Everything was suddenly washed-out, almost colourless, and blurred at the edges, though even the smallest of specks seethed with life. But it wasn’t just the quality of Glory’s vision that had altered. Her view had gone into reverse. She was outside the back of the house, looking up from the garden towards the attic window. For a second, Glory saw herself through the cat’s eyes.

  Glory gave a stifled cry. She screwed her eyes shut, then stared out again. The view was back to normal. Yet all her senses were heightened and confused, sparking with fierce, hot energy.

  Animals were more sensitive to witchwork than humans. It was why they made good familiar
s. It was said they could detect the onset of fae; some people thought they had a fae of their own, and that they used it to commune with witches.

  Is it –? Is this how –?

  No. Don’t start, she told herself, in a kind of panic. Don’t think about it, just do.

  The cat, unconcerned, had gone back to its grooming. This gave her an idea. Light-headed, she went to find the jumper she’d been wearing yesterday, when she had stroked the cat. Sure enough, the front was covered in cat hair. Her trembling fingers raked over the wool until she had gathered a small, greyish-brown clump. The activity calmed her, giving her a focus for the gathering pressure in her head.

  Thank Hecate. The animal was still there when she got back to the window. It was stiff and watchful. Listening, as if it had been called . . . Glory pulled out a couple of hairs of her own, and entwined them with the cat fur. Then she spat on it. Like everything else, this was pure instinct. But although she hadn’t seen anyone else do what she was attempting, her trembles had gone, and she felt strong and sure.

  She kept the cat in view as she rolled the spit-dampened twist of hair and fur into a thread across her palm. Carefully, she looped it around her right forefinger, like a collar or ring. Then she held her hand up to the window, and beckoned.

  The cat flicked its tail, but its unnatural stiffness did not change. Something was missing.

  Glory thought back to their first encounter, and the crooning, kissing noises she had made when cuddling the cat. She made them again. In response, the animal opened its mouth in a soundless hiss. Still crooning, Glory beckoned it down from the fence. This time it obeyed. Her finger circled the air. The cat circled on the ground. She pointed left, and the cat followed. Right, and it came back again. She laughed delightedly.