Burn Mark (33 page)

‘Rory? Hi. Lucas Stearne here. Yeah . . . Really good, thanks . . . Actually, I’ve got a bit of a favour to ask . . .’

Rory was more than eager to oblige. He was a junior lawyer in the Office of the Inquisitorial Court, who calculated that making pals with the Chief Prosecutor’s son would be a smart career move. However, there was a problem. ‘The thing is, Lucas, I’ve got quite a lot on. I wasn’t actually planning to go to the Hammers tonight.’

Lucas’s voice swelled with disappointment. ‘But you did say come
any
time . . .’

And somehow, Rory found himself promising to visit the Inquisition that evening, and process the application to bring Lucas Stearne in as his guest.

Lucas rewarded himself with a shower in his en suite bathroom. It was as if the squalor of Cooper Street was steaming out of his pores. His clothes felt like old friends. Here was his proper self: the same but different. Irrevocably so. His right hand rested on his left shoulder blade, the one with the Devil’s Kiss. He saw Glory again, leaning towards him through the candlelight, the dark stain waxing and waning under her skin.

He blinked the image away.

From a trunk in the attic, he pulled out the inquisitorial cloak that had belonged to his grandfather. It was made of heavy black wool with a lining of scarlet silk, faded with age. He stuffed it into a rucksack, collected black gloves and a small torch from his bedroom, and headed downstairs. Getting into Ashton’s study was easy enough. Lucas knew a spare key was hidden in the Chinese porcelain vase in the library. Moments later, he was pulling away the set of
Encyclopaedia Maleficia
from the bookshelves to expose the safe behind.

His father had shown him how to access the safe in case of emergency. The numbers on the combination lock were the date of Camilla’s death, in reverse order. The safe contained various legal documents, such as the deeds to the house and Ashton’s will. Lucas wasn’t interested in any of these. His target was the two iron keys tucked at the back.

One of the keys’ handles was marked with a tiny cross, the other with a sword. They were too small and plain to look like anything special, yet were one of only four pairs that provided access to the Inquisition catacombs. The only way to get down there was through the crypt of St Cumanus’s church. A couple of times a year, the catacombs were opened up for historical tours. Otherwise, they were out of bounds. Ownership of the keys was a matter of prestige, rather than practical use. Apart from the Witchfinder General, only three inquisitorial families had a personal set: the Stearnes, the Hopkins . . . and the Patersons.

Lucas slipped them into the rucksack with the cloak. They were iron, but the quantity of metal was too low to cause him any discomfort. Carefully, he closed the safe and replaced the encyclopaedias. Then he turned to his father’s computer. With the industrial action in France, he still had a good hour before Ashton and Marisa were likely to return, and before he needed to set off for the Hammers. He knew he might never have an opportunity like this again.

Getting started was easy. He’d seen his father log on enough times to know that his password began with a ‘G’ and was eight characters long. Lucas guessed the G was for Grantham, the name of the historic Stearne house that been sold in the nineteenth century. Sure enough, ‘Grantham’ got him in.

He immediately brought up the National Witchkind Database. There were four access levels. Level One recorded the names of anyone suspected but not proven to be a witch. Level Two provided basic information on all proven witches whose identity wasn’t classified. Level Three gave access to their personal files. Level Four contained summarised reports on all witches whose identity was secret or sensitive. To read their complete case histories you had to apply directly to their warden, or whichever state official was responsible for their supervision.

Only senior inquisitors could use Level Four. Lucas knew the individual access codes for this were changed every week, and sent to the relevant personnel via an encrypted file. As long as Ashton had logged on to Level Four within the past seven days, Lucas had a good chance of recovering the sequence. His principal tool would be dust.

House dust is primarily composed of airborne pollution, human skin and hair. This was his father’s private room, so it would mostly be his father’s dust. Although the housekeeper would have been in over the weekend, to look after Kip and put things in order, she didn’t have a key to the study. Even so, the surfaces were fairly clean, and it took Lucas some time to sweep the thin film of dust lying over the desk and windowsill on to a piece of paper. He had better luck with the top shelves of the bookcase, behind volumes that were rarely consulted. The dust was quite thick there.

Materials gathered, Lucas clicked on the log-in page for Level Four of the witchkind database. He sat for a while in his father’s chair, fingers spread out on his father’s keyboard, visualising Ashton at his desk. Then he held the paper layered with dust over the keyboard and blew, very gently.

The dust did not fall. It hung above the keys in a greyish-beige mist. Lucas’s breath had sent his fae into this mist, and now it worked its way into the particles of his father’s skin and hair, the fibres of his clothes. For a second or two, the fae-dust floated before his eyes, before hazy trickles of it began to float down to the black keys, one trickle after another.

The first key the dust landed on was P, where it left the faintest of blurs, like a fingerprint. Then 5. Then 9. The ?/ key. J, Q, A. With a final puff, 6.

Lucas typed in P59, and stopped.

The fourth symbol could either be ? or /, depending on whether he used the shift key or not. Suddenly, everything was in doubt. He didn’t know what letters, if any, should be in caps, and whether the numbers should be symbols instead. He would only have three chances to type the code before the security system was alerted and the database shut down.

Lucas stared at the smudgy keys again. Was he imagining it, or was the dust somewhat heavier on the ?/ key, the J and the 6?

He typed in p59?Jqa^, and held his breath.

Access Confirmed.

A guilty thrill ran through him. This was his chance! As a precaution, he began by typing in his own name into the search engine, and was relieved to see that nothing came up. His identity was still protected by a false name. He could now move to the real object of the exercise: finding out what the Inquisition had to say about Angeline Starling.

It was very straightforward. Up popped Angeline’s profile, along with a photo. Quickly, he scanned the notes. Her first encounter with the Inquisition was at the age of twenty, when she had been witch-ducked and pricked under suspicion of witchwork. The results were inconclusive. She had been taken in for questioning by the police and Inquisition on three subsequent occasions, and each time she was released without charge. Lucas guessed this was in conjunction with the Starling Twins’ activities. But twenty-eight years ago, Angeline had presented herself at the Witchcrime Directorate and ‘volunteered information pertaining to the whereabouts of a known witch-criminal’.

Cora Starling. It had to be. Lucas could see that the dates matched, and felt foolish for not making the connection before. It also explained why Glory had become so agitated when he told her the year when Angeline was alleged to have started informing. She must have turned in her own sister to the Inquisition! Where she was witch-ducked, and drowned . . .

Lucas thought of the Starling Girl shrine in Angeline’s room in Cooper Street, and how the old lady was always droning on about the sacred memory of her beloved sisters. Then there was the way she doted on Glory, and hated the Morgans. Her betrayal made no sense.

He read on. Angeline had never been formally tested or registered, but her fae was estimated to be a lowly Type B. Presumably that was why she hadn’t been bridled: they knew her to be a witch, but she was more useful to them as an informant. Her Current Status read:
Operation Echo. Active.
Operation Echo was the mission to place Harry Jukes in Cooper Street. To learn about Angeline’s activities in more detail, he would have to submit an application to Commander Josiah Saunders or another name that he didn’t recognise.

Lucas pressed ‘print’. He knew it would hurt Glory to see this, but she needed to know, even though she’d no doubt find some way of dismissing it as yet more Inquisition propaganda.

He saw there was a list of reference numbers at the bottom of Angeline’s page. They were links to more Level Four files, probably those relating to her sisters. The other Starling Girls might be dead but their records were still classified. Lucas clicked on the top one.

It took him to Edie Wilde, nee Starling.

Glory’s mother. Charlie’s victim. Alleged witch.

He had read all this in the Cooper Street file, which had been compiled by the Inquisition and supplemented by WICA. According to this, she was an unregistered low-grade witch who’d probably got the fae in her early twenties. Yet the version of Edie Starling on the database seemed like a different person entirely.

Firstly, Edie was Type E, not Type A. Type E was the highest known ranking – the same as Lucas’s. By her own admission, she had turned witchkind at the age of thirteen, though it was not until the age of twenty-seven, when her daughter Glory was three years old, that Edie was formally tested and registered. This was the same year that she disappeared. Yet there was no mention of a feud with the Morgans or a coven hit. And now Lucas understood why Edie Starling was unbridled, and had a fake profile in the Cooper Street file – she too was an undercover agent. Not for WICA, though. She was working directly for the Witchcrime Directorate.

Current Status:
Operation Swan. Missing in Action
. The last sighting of her had been five years ago.

Lucas stared disbelievingly at the screen. It was impossible, but true. Glory’s mother was – just maybe – alive. The photograph of her didn’t much resemble her daughter. She looked to be a natural blonde, with thin, fine features and startled eyes. He scrolled down to the names of the officers supervising her case, and his heart almost stopped. One of the four was Ashton Stearne.

There was no time to absorb the impact of this discovery. Something at the corner of his eye tugged his attention away. The monitor at the door, which was currently trained on the entrance gate, showed a blonde struggling with a suitcase. Marisa and Ashton had returned.

Lucas didn’t think he’d ever moved so fast in his life. He shut down the computer, brushed off the dusty keyboard with his sleeve, and grabbed the printout of Angeline’s profile, all in less than twenty seconds. Then he sprang out of the room and locked the door behind him. A few moments later, the key was back in its hiding place and the printout stuffed behind a sideboard. Meanwhile, Kip was barking. ‘Oh shut up, you stupid mutt,’ said a familiar petulant voice. Not Marisa, but Philomena. Lucas waited until the banging in his ribs had calmed, counted to ten, and walked into the hall.

‘Hi, Philly.’

She gave a theatrical start. ‘Lucas! What are you doing here?’

‘A flying visit. I just had to collect some . . . stuff.’ He picked up the rucksack with the inquisitor’s cloak and keys.

Philomena edged around him, hugging the walls as if he was suddenly going to blast her with a thunderbolt.

‘When are you coming back?’

Good question. ‘Soon, probably.’

‘Well, it’s been absolutely horrid here. Your dad’s in a permanent grump and Mummy’s not much better. There’s no one to talk to about what I’m going through.’

‘I’m sorry if you’ve been suffering.’ He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice.

‘God. Why doesn’t anyone take me seriously? It’s still all about
you
. How
you
must be feeling. What
you’re
going to do. Same old, same old.’

Lucas moved to the door. ‘When you see my dad, will you tell him I’m fine? And . . . and I’ll talk to him later.’

‘I’m not a bloody answering machine.’

‘Just do it, Phil.’

She stared at him. ‘You cause all this trouble,’ she said, ‘and yet you still think you’re so hexing special.’

Chapter 28

Mindful of Troy’s instructions about blending into the background, Glory kept her make-up to a boring minimum. Mascara, eyeliner, clear lipgloss, a touch of blusher. Sighing, she pulled on the shoulder-length brown wig. Just because it was close to her real hair colour didn’t mean it suited her. At least she was coming round to the dress. The deep purple was nice, and the material clung in all the right places. She was rather disappointed when Troy’s only comment was ‘Good’.

Troy wore his tuxedo in the same effortlessly casual way he wore his suits. He accessorised it with a gun holster under the jacket. She watched him adjust the shoulder straps and wondered what he’d used it for before.

‘You think we’ll need a gun?’

‘I think it’s best to be prepared. Witchwork can only get you so far.’

They spent the drive out of London with the radio on, each lost in their own thoughts. However, they paid more attention when it came to the news. The police had made a statement that no witchwork was suspected in Charlie’s car-bomb. All bar two of the Roma migrants who’d escaped from their detention centre had been found. Another top footballer had been caught in a sex and drugs scandal. Another witness had withdrawn from the Goodwin trial. But the focus was mostly on Helena Howell’s efforts to rush a raft of new witch-terror legislation through parliament. Her gratingly sweet voice sounded entirely reasonable as she outlined why Britain was ‘on the brink of a public emergency that threatened the life of the nation’. Troy switched the radio off with a snap.