Chapter Sixteen

 

We were on a clock; it wouldn’t be long before the police were dispatched to this address. Somehow I didn’t think you could send half a squadron to sleep and not expect every stone not to be turned by the police officers who were still awake. If they had any common sense, they’d come here eventually. In any case, even if time weren’t of the essence, I’d lost patience with working surreptitiously. Winter obviously felt the same. We didn’t even discuss the matter; we simply strolled  through the front doors, ignoring the well-placed CCTV cameras and walked up to the sleepy-looking security guard at the front desk.

‘Hal Prescott,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

The guard blinked and stifled a yawn. Then he took in our vomity, bloody, bruisy appearances and sat up straight. ‘Er, who are you?’

It was Winter who answered. ‘Adeptus Exemptus Raphael Winter from the Hallowed Order of Magical Enlightenment. We need to find Hal Prescott immediately.’ He leaned forward. ‘It’s a matter of life and death.’

Our less than salubrious appearances must have added credence to Winter’s words. The guard was more than eager to help us out. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said. His cheeks turned bright red. ‘I mean Adeptus Exceptus. Exemptus. Shit. Sorry.’ He coughed. ‘Shit.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘Civilians often struggle when confronted by us for the first time.’

He nodded vigorously, obviously relieved that I’d given him reason to act like a stumbling numpty, and turned to his computer. Unfortunately, his relief didn’t last long. After a few frantic key taps, his brows knitted together anxiously. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Prescott isn’t here. He’s informed us that he’ll be away for the next week at least.’

A whole week? My stomach dropped. Whatever Blackbeard was planning, we could be certain that it would be catastrophic. His supposed interview as part of Clare’s coven was on Tuesday; that left at least five more days for him to cause even more havoc and kill even more people.

‘Do you have a mobile phone number for him?’

More key taps. The guard swallowed. ‘No.’

Winter and I exchanged glances. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to let us into his flat. We need to search it without further delay.’

‘I can’t…’ The guard tugged at his collar. ‘I don’t think I can do that. You need a warrant.’

Winter folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘You’re right. It’s important to stick to the letter of the law. The trouble is that lives are in danger and we don’t have time to get the warrant we need.’ He paused. ‘Why don’t you just tell us which flat belongs to Mr Prescott? We’ll take things from there. Any measures we take will occur without your permission or your knowledge.’

I was impressed. Winter didn’t treat the guard like an idiot and didn’t deny what we were here to do. He did, however, speak with a smooth command that was difficult to ignore and his words had the clear ring of sincerity. ‘If we do nothing, people will die,’ he said softly. ‘I guarantee it. You have the chance to help us stop that from happening.’

The guard swallowed. ‘Okay. Yes. I can tell you which flat is his. But I can’t know about you going in there, alright? I need this job.’

‘All you’re doing is telling us which number he lives in. That’s all. No one will ever know.’ Winter’s voice dropped. ‘Most real heroes are unsung.’

The guard gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head. ‘Twenty-three,’ he whispered. ‘Mr Prescott lives at number twenty-three.’

‘You’re a brave man,’ Winter said. ‘Thank you.’ He whirled round and headed for the stairs.

‘There’s a lift waiting,’ I said. ‘It’ll be faster.’

I expected Winter to disagree but he didn’t. He simply nodded and joined me, stepping inside the lift and hitting the button for the second floor. The doors closed smoothly and he turned to me. ‘I lied to that guard,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not something I make a habit of. I’m sorry, Ivy. I don’t usually pretend to be someone I’m not.’

I blinked. For a moment, I wasn’t even sure what he was referring to. Then I realised he’d pretended that he was still with the Order. ‘It was for the greater good, Rafe. You were right. If we can’t find and stop Blackbeard, people will die. The end justifies the means. And you don’t ever have to apologise to me, not for something like this.’

‘I won’t compromise who I am,’ Winter said. ‘The end does not always justify the means. Lose your morals, regardless of the reasons why, and you lose yourself.’

‘You’ve not lost your morals. It was a tiny lie, Rafe. You were Adeptus Exemptus, after all.’

‘It was still wrong.’

I wasn’t so sure. ‘We have to find Blackbeard,’ I said helplessly.

The lift doors opened. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘We do.’

He strode out of the lift with his long-legged gait, moving even faster than he did normally. It was a struggle for me to keep up but fortunately we found number twenty-three quickly. Rather than have Winter agonise further over breaking and entering as well as lying, I jumped in and cast a rune to open Blackbeard’s door. The adrenaline coursing through my veins was a little too strong, however, and the magic slammed the door open with such force that the damn thing almost fell off its hinges.

‘Are you okay, Ivy?’ Winter asked.

I nodded. ‘Yep.’

‘If you’re not…’

I stepped across Blackbeard’s threshold. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’ Then I marched in, ready to do battle.

If I were interior designer for a psychopathic murderer, I decided, I would probably aim to produce somewhere that looked exactly like this. The floors were dark tiles lined with dark grout. Slit someone’s throat here and you wouldn’t have to worry about staining anything. One quick mop and you’d never know that blood had been spilt. I thought of Winter’s desire to scrub away at my bathroom grouting. Next time I got the chance, I would get a black Sharpie and colour it all in to look like this. Job done.

The walls, from the corridor to the living room and the bedroom beyond, were all painted in a stark white. I supposed that some people would have described the style as minimalist. To my untrained eye, it looked depressing. Coupled with the unsheathed samurai sword hanging on a wall, together with the gleaming twin knife blades hanging opposite, there was more than a pinch of the sinister.

‘It’s very … clean,’ I said finally, gazing round the pristine, empty surfaces. How could anyone live like this?

Winter grunted. From the expression on his face, even he seemed to think this place was a step too far.

The kitchen was all stainless steel and more shiny black marble stuff. There wasn’t so much as a kettle on display. Winter began to open drawers and cupboards but nothing seemed to take his interest. I left him to it and ambled over to a wall of smoky mirrors. There wasn’t a single smear anywhere. I shook my head in amazement. If I lived here, it would take less than an hour for them to become permanently streaked with a combination of grease, dust and goodness knows what else.

It rankled that we’d been able to stroll in here so easily. Blackbeard thought very highly of himself. He obviously expected someone to look for the murdered coven members sooner or later, hence the booby traps he’d left on their doors but there had been nothing preventing our entry here. He didn’t think that anyone would be smart enough to catch up to him – or maybe he didn’t care. It wasn’t as if there was much lying around to give us clues about what he was planning next.

Irritated by both the cleanliness and Blackbeard’s apparent arrogance, I exhaled onto the mirror, steaming up as large a section as I could. While Winter’s huffing from the kitchen grew louder, I used the tip of my index finger to draw a smiley face. Whatever happened, I liked the idea of Blackbeard sitting on his perfect white-leather sofa and suddenly realising that someone had been in here and marred his Zen bachelor pad with a cheeky smile.

For effect, I reached over to add two bushy eyebrows. As I did so and pressed down on the mirror, I realised that it felt loose. The mirror moved when I touched it. I knocked on the smooth surface; it definitely sounded hollow.

‘Rafe!’ I called. ‘Something is here!’

He was by my side in an instant. ‘What?’

‘This mirror,’ I told him. ‘It’s concealing something. There’s definitely something behind here. It’s a cabinet or a false wall.’

He stretched out his fingertips, splaying them across the glass. There was a faint clunking sound when he pressed down and he sucked in a breath. ‘There must be a way to open it properly.’

I nodded. It is one thing to use magic to open a door when you can see the mechanism and understand how it works, but you can’t just throw a spell at something you don’t understand and expect it to do what you want. Life doesn’t work like that and neither does magic.

I took a step back and looked around. ‘There has to be a remote control or a button. The glass is too clean. There’s no way Blackbeard uses his grubby mitts to open his bat cave. It would ruin his perfect aesthetic.’

Winter pursed his lips in agreement and we started searching. There wasn’t much lying around; in theory, it shouldn’t have taken long to find the secret key.

‘We know his name now,’ Winter said, as he delved in between the sofa seat cushions. ‘You don’t need to keep calling him Blackbeard.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But Hal sounds like a friendly guy. The sort you’d invite round to a barbecue and let play with your kids. Blackbeard is an evil bastard.’

‘I don’t think we’re likely to forget that anytime soon.’

Indeed. ‘He’s as calculating and clever as he is cold.’ I didn’t think I’d ever come across anyone who was genuinely evil before. Since meeting Winter, I’d met a whole range of plonkers, from selfish and nasty to stupid and self-centred. There had been thieves and murderers and general evil-doers. But while each of them had committed evil acts, there had been a certain method to their madness. They all had motives for doing what they did; I couldn’t condone their actions but I could understand them a little. Blackbeard was different – there was a wellspring of darkness inside him. Yes, he purportedly killed Clare’s coven because he hated witches but I was sure that was an excuse. The man needed to justify his actions to himself but I’d lay money on the theory that he just enjoyed killing.

With that thought bouncing around my head, I straightened up and abandoned my bid to search for a key to open Blackbeard’s den. No, I didn’t know how this door worked but I did know how glass worked.

I raised both hands. ‘Winter?’ I said calmly.

‘Yes?’

‘Duck.’ I flicked out the rune and the glass instantly shattered into a million pieces. I have to admit that the effect was pretty amazing although the sound was bloody loud. So much for my smiley face. Oh well. I rarely did subtle – Blackbeard would definitely know we’d been here now.

Winter didn’t move a muscle. ‘You just broke a mirror,’ he said.

‘Yep.’

‘A very large mirror.’

‘Yep.’

‘That’s seven years bad luck.’

I glanced at him. ‘Not according to you.’

‘I might not have faith in superstitions, Ivy, but you do.’ Winter’s blue eyes swept across the damage. ‘And both the police and Arcane Branch won’t be happy about what we’ve done to their crime scene.’

‘Neither the police nor Arcane Branch have got as close to Blackbeard as we have.’ I sniffed. ‘They’ll just have to deal with it. And I have faith in you. That will have to be enough.’ I pointed. ‘Look. There’s the secret door.’ I stalked up and kicked it open. I didn’t do that for effect – my hands were shaking so much that I didn’t think I could turn the handle.

‘We’ll catch him,’ Winter said. ‘His days are already numbered.’

I just nodded and walked into the claustrophobic darkness in front of us. It was Winter’s spell that lit the small room. To be honest, when I saw what Blackbeard had been concealing, I almost asked him to extinguish the light. If the flat outside was pristine, this was its natural opposite. After the bleakness of the other rooms, it almost hurt to look at it.

Every inch of wall space was covered with something. In some places, he’d pinned up yellowing news articles, all of them related to either magic, witches or the Order in some way. None of the headlines were positive. Other parts of the walls were plastered with sticky notes of all shapes, sizes and colours. Random words and numbers were scribbled on them, some as chilling reminders like ‘track down strong rope’ and others which made no sense whatsoever such as ‘here 6731’.

There were haphazard piles of books on the floor and several plastic bags that seemed to contain clothing. In the furthest corner, there was a towering stack of ornate boxes and urns similar to the container in which we’d found Clare’s ashes. Winter reached for one while I suppressed a shudder. He flipped open the lid and breathed out before showing me that it was empty.

‘There are still three missing coven members,’ he said. ‘Their remains have to be somewhere.’

I flattened my mouth into a thin line. ‘There’s been no sign of their spirits yet. They might not be here.’

Winter started searching through the rest of the collection. ‘Maybe there’s enough of Blackbeard’s null nature lingering here to hold the ghosts at bay. Or maybe he’s taken them with him. We have to check, though.’ His eyes met mine. ‘Their ashes are all the evidence we need against him.’

You could take the witch out of the Order but you couldn’t take the Order out of the witch. He was still thinking like an Arcane Branch officer. The truth was that we already knew Blackbeard was guilty and finding the rest of the coven’s remains would prove nothing. It would, however, give their families some small comfort. All the same, Winter still desperately wanted to do things by the book; he really was as orderly as the Order itself. I hoped he realised sooner rather than later that he belonged with them as much as he belonged with me.

I stepped back to give him more room, inadvertently knocking over one of the book piles as I did so. I was about to kick them out of the way but one of the titles caught my eye. I knelt down and examined it. Well, that answered one question.

‘Check this out,’ I said. ‘It’s a book on pagan black spots and their potential effects. It’s got to be at least a hundred years old.’ I flicked through the pages. ‘And there’s a bookmark in the section on Wistman’s Wood.’

Winter gave me a grim look. ‘He’s planned everything from the get go, hasn’t he?’

I bit my lip. ‘There’s a second bookmark.’ I turned the pages, sucking in a breath when I scanned through the text. ‘Uffington White Horse. That’s less than an hour away from Oxford.’

‘It’s the gigantic horse shape cut into the hillside. Is that pagan?’ Winter asked. ‘I thought it was just an Anglo-Saxon emblem commemorating a battle.’

‘No one knows for sure. But it does say here that nearby is the spot where St George apparently killed the dragon. There’s a bald patch where the dragon’s blood was spilt. It’s said that nothing can ever grow there.’

‘Sounds pretty damned mystical to me,’ he said. ‘Just like Wistman’s Wood.’

‘Yeah.’ I met his eyes. ‘It can’t be a coincidence that he’s made a note of this place. It’s so close to Oxford and the Order headquarters.’

‘Look through the other books. Maybe we can get more clues about what he’s planning.’

I nodded and started to crouch down. I was halfway to the floor, however, when my legs gave way completely and I ended up sprawled on my arse. Winter opened his mouth to say something and was forestalled by several loud shouts coming from further back in Blackbeard’s flat.

‘It took the cavalry less time than I expected to make this connection,’ Winter muttered.

‘Blackbeard’s dad was probably worried about his son,’ I said. ‘Either that or he suspects him. His own flesh and blood is a mass murderer – he must have some inkling about his son’s true nature. Maybe that’s why he really hired the security guard.’

Winter nodded and walked to the door, his palms splayed outwards to indicate he was unarmed. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to do much good; he was immediately body-slammed backwards.

‘Hey!’ I protested. Before I could get to my feet, however, a blank-faced, armed police officer waved a gun in my face.

‘Stay down,’ he snarled.

‘But…’

‘Secure the area!’ He made some complicated gesture with his hands; if he’d been a witch, they would have conjured up an effective rune. Instead of a spell, however, another suited and booted officer appeared, yelling for me to lie face down on the ground. For a split second I was tempted to cast a spell and get rid of this lot but I knew that it was probably wiser to cooperate. That was a very big gun and I’d already been in one more fight tonight than I’d planned. There are only so many times a girl can get knocked out before she ends up back in hospital. Right now I didn’t have time for that, which was a shame because hospital beds were pretty darned comfy.

There was the crunch of glass as several more officers stormed the area. Actually, forget about Blackbeard’s father; this was down to breaking the mirror. Seven years’ bad luck, I thought morosely. Starting right here.

We might still be in middle England but these officers were a lot warier and better trained than their counterparts at the crematorium. The first thing they did was to bind Winter’s and my hands behind our backs with clever knotting that prevented our fingers from moving. Even most witches weren’t that canny. I stopped admiring them when they yanked me sharply to my feet and all but dragged me back into Blackbeard’s living room and flung me on his sofa. Down. Up. Down. I wasn’t a yo-yo. They ought to make up their minds.

There was the faint ping of the lift opening followed by the most godawful yowling and screeching. It got louder and louder until three red-robed Arcane Branch witches appeared with Brutus in a cage.

‘We have secured the familiar,’ the nearest one said. This was followed by a nervous glance towards Winter, who’d been dragged over next to me. He might be tied up for the second time tonight but these witches were still scared of him. We could work with that.

Winter had obviously had the same thought. ‘Adeptus Minor Green,’ he said, in his best shiver-inducing voice. ‘Ms Wilde and I are both here for the same reason as you – to track down the killer of the Dorset coven. This is his place of residence. We entered it expecting that—’

‘Shut up.’ Despite his harsh command, Green’s voice still quavered. It didn’t help that Brutus was throwing himself against the bars of the cage and shrieking feline misery at a level of decibels that would normally require ear protection.

‘Brutus,’ I said, hoping for once he’d listen to me. ‘Just be quiet for now. Please?’

He paused for a moment, his yellow eyes gazing at me from behind the metal bars. ‘Bitches.’

When he realised who had spoken, the burly police officer nearest me let out a high-pitched shriek that was even louder than Brutus had managed. Impressive. Brutus shut up and stared. Before things got completely out of hand, I tried to speak up. ‘Look, guys, we’re all on the same side here. Let’s—’

‘Don’t say another word.’

‘But—’

‘I mean it,’ the policeman threatened. ‘Say just one word and you’ll regret it.’

‘Sir—’

‘I told you!’ he screamed in my face.

Alrighty: perhaps he was being serious about the no-talking thing. Winter nudged me with his elbow, which was pretty unnecessary. I had the message, loud and very clear.