Burn Mark (32 page)

‘Even though it’s sold out, I can still add us to the list,’ Troy said. ‘There’s a picture of a ticket on the website, so you can knock up fakes with a fascination.’

‘What about the Morgan name, though?’ Lucas asked. ‘That might set off alarm bells.’

‘My family are major charitable donors,’ Troy informed him coldly. ‘It happens that Dad gave an endowment to the Meadowsweet Children’s Hospice earlier this year. Besides which, I’m a fine upstanding citizen without a stain on my character.’ He turned to Glory. ‘You should maybe think about a glamour, though.’

‘I ain’t so sure. If we’re going to persuade Lady Merle to trust us, I don’t reckon we should hide behind witchwork.’

When she left for the toilet, Lucas felt suddenly vulnerable. Sure enough, as soon as Glory had closed the door, Troy leaned across the table and fixed him with his red-rimmed glare. ‘
I know who you are and where to find you,
’
he said. ‘Don’t ever forget it.’

‘Er . . . OK.’

‘Now,’ Troy continued, ‘it’s true my organisation can’t afford a witch-hunt, not with our boss down and a blood feud in the offing. It may be that provoking war between the covens is part of Paterson’s plan, and so he arranged the car-bomb to frame one of our competitors. If that’s the case, then I need to know about it.

‘However. That doesn’t mean I like you or I trust you. So if anything bad goes down tonight, I and my coven will hunt you down, and make you pay. You and Paterson both. Understand?’

Lucas nodded.

Troy pinched his cheek, in a parody of affection hard enough to leave a bruise. ‘Good boy.’

Soon afterwards, it was time for Lucas to leave. Arden House, Lord Merle’s country pile, was a forty-minute drive outside London, and Troy and Glory would have to set off around quarter to seven. Lucas aimed to get to the Hammers by seven thirty, but he had to stop by home first. It was already half past three, and there was a lot of preparation still to do.

When it was time to say goodbye, he felt constrained by Troy’s presence. Glory seemed constrained too. She was uncharacteristically quiet, arms folded tightly across her chest, eyes on the floor. Lucas was gripped with foreboding. None of them really knew what they were doing and how it might end. Then he remembered the night in the Gemini, just before going to see Charlie, and Glory’s warm breath in his ear. ‘We’ll be OK,’ he told her softly, and touched her on the hand. ‘They’re greedy murdering scum but we’re better than them. I know you can do this.’

Glory smiled a little, crookedly.

‘Look after her,’ Lucas said to Troy.

What an idiotic thing to say
, he thought as he left them.

Chapter 27

Look after her.

It was an idiotic thing to say. But Glory didn’t feel as insulted by it as she ought to be. She stared at the door. Lucas’s words had been so . . . final.

‘Quite the little gentleman,’ Troy observed. ‘Or are you sticking to your original estimation of him as a “pillock”?’

‘He’s only a pillock some of the time. And he’s doing his best.’

Troy rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me. The pair of you had an all-night pyjama party, bonding over your dysfunctional family life and the Joy of Fae.’ Then his expression turned serious. ‘You need to watch yourself, Glory. Lucas might be a witch, and he might be on our side – for the moment. But he’s got twelve generations of inquisitor in his blood. He’s not our kind.’

Glory resented this on a number of levels. ‘I don’t care what “kind” he is or he ain’t. I just want him to get his part of the job done, and for us to do ours. That’s all. Then we can get on with our lives.’

‘Our lives have changed,’ Troy said, and looked more serious again.

Since Troy had already added them to the guest list for Lady Merle’s ball, the next stage of their preparations mostly involved shopping. They needed the materials for the fascination Glory intended to craft, and a dress, make-up and a wig for her to adjust her appearance.

First, however, Troy hired a car under a false name, in case his Mercedes was being tailed. The next stop was his flat. This was in a discreetly plush apartment complex near Tower Bridge. Glory was made to wait in the hall outside while he picked up his tuxedo and other bits and pieces.

As Troy opened the door, she glimpsed a big light room, with lots of books on the shelves and, intriguingly, two wine glasses on the table. There was a kicked-off pair of women’s heels underneath it.

‘Why can’t I come in?’ she complained. ‘You afraid I’m going to lower the tone or something?’

‘This is my private space. It’s got nothing to do with the coven, and nothing to do with my family. And I’d like to keep it that way.’

Troy closed the door on her, re-emerging a few minutes later in a clean shirt and carrying an overnight bag. Glory was dying to ask who the shoes belonged to, but didn’t quite dare.

In spite of everything, she was looking forward to going on a spree with Morgan money. But here too Troy proved a disappointment. He only let her look in one boutique and rejected her first three choices of dress: leopard print, scarlet and sequins. ‘You don’t want to stand out. You want to disappear into the background,’ he told her, before presenting her with a selection of outfits that were as plain as they were pricey.

‘Frumpy,’ she pouted.

‘Classic,’ he retorted. ‘And don’t go mad with the heels. You might need to move fast.’

In the end they compromised on a dark purple cocktail dress and black slingbacks. Anything was better than Glory’s current get-up. She felt like an urchin, with her grubby black clothes and unwashed hair. The snooty sales assistant clearly thought that Troy had picked her up in the street, and handled his platinum credit card as if it had been dipped in manure. This provided pretty much the only amusement of Glory’s day.

Perhaps to avoid similar censure, Troy chose a distinctly downmarket hotel for their base. They would only be using the place for a couple of hours, to make their final preparations and consolidate their plans. The receptionist looked them over wearily, with the air of someone who’s seen it all before.

Glory went to use the shower while Troy made phone calls to the hospital and various coven contacts. She returned to find him typing on his smartphone. ‘What’s the latest?’

‘Dad’s in intensive care. He’s suffered forty per cent burns, but his condition’s stable, at least.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Well, she was sorry for Troy, at least. ‘I’m sure you must want to be with your family right now.’

‘Dad’s not the type who’d appreciate me snivelling by his bedside. Not when there’s work to be done. Mum understands that too. Uncle Vince’s team are shaking down the usual suspects, trying to find out who Jonesy’s blackmailers are, and once we know that, I’ll set about dealing with them – whether they’re connected to the Inquisition or not. But in the meantime . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I might as well kick some bad-guy butt with you.’

While Troy took his turn in the bathroom, Glory set about crafting their tickets. She had already looked them up on the charity’s website, and seen how they were designed as personalised invitation cards. Now she carefully copied out the text on to two plain white postcards. She used gold ink, and reproduced the style and layout as accurately as possible. They’d decided that disguising Troy’s identity would be more trouble than it was worth, but that she should change her name to match her subtly-altered appearance. The name on her ticket was Elizabeth Brantly.

Glory’s method was close to the one Lucas had used to replicate the diamond necklace, since both objects represented similar things. Before enfolding the cards in the cashmere stole she would be wearing to the party, she drew a picture of Lord Merle’s coat-of-arms (found on an internet heraldry site) and pasted a twenty-pound note (courtesy of Troy’s wallet) on to the back of each. The fascination of luxury, money and privilege were now all represented in the witchwork.

As she was wrapping up the cards, her mobile beeped. It was a text message from Lucas, with a mobile number.
ZConnor, in case of emergency. Good luck.
She was just saving the witch-agent’s number when Troy came back from the bathroom. She felt guilty hiding it from him but maybe Lucas was right. Better safe than sorry.

‘Here you go, Cinders,’ she said, handing the fascination over to Troy to uncover. ‘Your fae-godmum says you
shall
go to the ball!’

He took out the tickets and examined them carefully. ‘I knew you had talent,’ he said. ‘But this is really impressive.’

Glory glowed. It felt great to be witchworking in the open. It was also good to be on friendly terms with Troy. Once again, she wondered what he knew about her mother’s murder and, if he knew, what he thought about it. But to ask him would raise his suspicions about her motives for helping Lucas. She couldn’t take the risk.

Looking out of the bus, Lucas viewed his home neighbourhood with a stranger’s eye. The squares were leafy, the streets quiet, the paint on the walls as smooth as cream. The people strolling on the pavements didn’t have a single tattoo or tracksuit among them.

He got off the bus one stop early to hunt for a payphone. Out of habit, and superstition, he looked around to check that he was unobserved. Troy’s threats were not to be taken lightly. But Lucas knew that if things went wrong, somebody in a position of authority would need to know the full story. He would start with Witch Warden Branning.

The call didn’t begin well. Officer Branning was angrier than Lucas would have thought possible. Since learning of the assassination attempt on Charlie Morgan, Lucas’s father had been phoning Jonah every hour on the hour, asking for news of his son, and demanding that Lucas be recalled from duty. He had threatened to go to Jack Rawdon himself.

Jonah had only managed to put him off after speaking to Agent Connor. She’d expected to hear from Lucas following the surveillance operation at the Radley, and had taken the emergency step of contacting Angeline after news of the car-bomb broke. The old lady confirmed that she’d heard from Glory that she and Lucas were alive and well, but were now out of contact. This news went only part-way to relieving the general anxiety.

Lucas was ashamed. It had honestly never occurred to him how the attack on Charlie, and his own lack of communication, would affect the people responsible for protecting him. Yet he disliked being treated like a foolhardy kid, even if he had behaved like one. Besides, there were much more important things to worry about – as he told Officer Branning the moment he could get a word in. ‘It’s a matter of national security,’ he said, an unconscious note of hauteur creeping into his voice. ‘You’ll understand the seriousness of the situation when you see the recording I made.’

‘What situation? What recording? What –’

Lucas explained that he’d saved the film of Charlie’s meeting in the Radley in an anonymous email account. It was something Agent Connor needed to see as well, but he couldn’t risk alerting the team at WICA because he didn’t know what kind of surveillance they were under. ‘I’ll text you the log-in and password for the account in a couple of hours. But there’s something I need to do first.’

Jonah made various exclamations of protest, exasperation and alarm.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Lucas at the end of them. ‘I really can’t tell you anything more for the moment. Once you’ve seen the film, make sure Agent Connor sees it too. Don’t worry; I’ll be in touch soon.’ Then he hung up.

There was, in fact, nothing stopping Lucas from letting Jonah access the film right then and there. But that would set in motion a train of events he wasn’t ready for. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Troy and Glory’s reaction if he brought the authorities in behind their backs. It was that he was sure they were on the right track. They just needed a head-start, to get on with the job without any outside interference.

Lucas had learned from Jonah that although his father and stepmother had planned to return from Paris early that afternoon, France was gridlocked by a transport union strike. Even if they had tried to come home earlier, they wouldn’t have got past the blockade. They would certainly be away for a few hours more. Since Philomena was spending the Easter weekend at her dad’s, the coast was clear. He got past the guard, camera and access code at the Stearne residence’s gate, then went up to the front door and put the key in the lock. He could hear Kip barking inside. The dog rushed up in a slobbering frenzy of enthusiasm, as if he’d been away for a year.

He kept away from the portraits, though. All those generations of Stearnes, with their unsmiling mouths and proud eyes, would be the witnesses to his burglary. There was no other way of describing it, even if the end did justify the means. His father would be implicated in the plot if it succeeded, for it would be his job to convict Jack Rawdon of witch-terrorism and treason, and send him to the Burning Court. But Lucas had to remind himself that when – if – the case came to trial, his secret would be out, and the Stearnes in disgrace. A new Chief Prosecutor, probably one of Paterson’s cronies, would conduct the trial.

He couldn’t worry about that now. It was time to make his second phone call of the day. He switched on the mobile he’d left in his bedroom, ignoring the accumulated text messages, voicemails and missed calls, and dialled the number for Rory Dixon.