Divided Souls (14 page)

I
t wasn’t as if Latin was her favourite or her best subject. It had waited all these centuries; it could manage another ninety minutes without her. Cassie wasn’t willing to wait another single one, let alone an interminable
double
period of bloody Virgil. Yusuf and Mikhail were dead, and Ranjit might be next. He might already— No! She refused even to contemplate the possibility. But with still no word from him, Cassie was now adamant that it was time to take the initiative.

There was only one place to start looking. Cassie went straight to Ranjit’s room, half hoping that it would be empty and that she’d have peace to prowl, but it wasn’t to be. When the door began to open to her knock, her breath caught in her throat and her heart leaped – irrational as it was, she couldn’t help hoping against hope that she’d see Ranjit’s face – but it was Torvald again.

‘Cassie.’ He eyed her, puzzled, but his overriding expression was one of anxiety.

‘Sorry to disturb you—’ she began, her words tumbling out.

Torvald held up his hand to stop her. ‘Don’t worry about it. Still nothing, I’m afraid. I don’t suppose you’ve …?’

Cassie shook her head, her brow furrowed. Torvald stepped back, gesturing. ‘Look, why don’t you come in? No point standing out here.’

She nodded. As he followed her in and shut the door, Torvald said, ‘He hasn’t been around for ages.’

‘I don’t get it. I mean, he’d tell you if he had to go away, wouldn’t he?’

‘Usually.’ He shrugged.

Cassie swallowed. ‘Well … I mean, of course he’s always kind of been a law unto himself, right? Maybe we’re worrying too much …’

‘Yes, but he’s never been away for so long,’ pointed out Torvald. ‘And he always told me when he’d be back.’

I’ll bet he did, thought Cassie dryly. Hungry after an absence, poor lad.

‘Have you talked to Sir Alric?’

‘I’ve tried. Didn’t get any joy out of him. He’s aware of the situation, that’s all he would say.’

Cassie turned a slow circle, studying the boys’ room, opulent as ever. They even had a flat-screen TV. Torvald certainly got good perks for feeding Ranjit. She wondered if he knew.

Maybe her nosiness was a bit blatant, because he said rather pointedly, ‘There might be a clue here that I’m missing. Do you want to check a few things?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Have you looked through his stuff?’

‘Course I have. Nothing’s missing, not his passport, no clothes, not even his wallet. He’s just – kind of – evaporated.’

‘His emails? Anything like that?’ Cassie was wandering round the room now, touching things. Something was making her deeply uneasy. It was as if she could feel his presence … and something else too, fainter though. Something familiar, or
someone
she knew? That something or someone had been here and she could feel its former presence like a ghost. A ghost she could smell and touch. What it reminded her of most was …

The Knife
.

That was it. She had a connection to that strange Few artefact, with its bizarre inward life. When it was close, it spoke to her like a voice. Well, this was the same sort of feeling. It had been in here at some point, she was almost certain of it.

And it wouldn’t have got there all by itself. Could Jake have—?

‘What are you thinking?’ Torvald’s voice broke into her thoughts.

‘Nothing.’
Nothing you’d want to know, anyway
. Cassie turned to face him. ‘Where’s Ranjit’s laptop?’

‘There.’ Torvald pulled out a drawer and retrieved it, setting it reverently on the desktop. ‘I don’t know his password, obviously. Same with the voicemails on the room’s phone system. I can’t access them.’

‘Let me try.’ She booted up the laptop, hesitated with her fingers on the keys.

ranjitsingh

Incorrect password

ranjit1

Incorrect password

darkeacademy

Too obvious, anyway. She tapped her fingernails on the edge of the laptop.

No, it couldn’t be.

Maybe?

cassandra

Welcome Ranjit

Behind her, Torvald coughed. Cassie stepped back, beating back a rush of conflicting emotions, then bent down to the keyboard again.

There was nothing sinister that she could see: nothing, but the fact that no emails had been downloaded in ages. With a horrible sense of dread, Cassie watched the list of unread emails grow like a black spell, creeping down the screen. Two from his mother. One from his academic counsellor. Amazon, iTunes, play.com, the usual suspects. Fifteen, twenty … She didn’t know he subscribed to popbitch.com, she thought with a small reluctant smile. More emails piled in: another from his mother, now one from his father. His brothers, an email from each.

She pushed back the chair as the list finally stopped. ‘Nothing,’ she said, though she had a feeling it was anything but. ‘I’ll try his voicemail.’

It was the same story. Luckily, it was the same password: guilt clenched her stomach. Had he really pined for her as much as Torvald claimed? Unwilling to believe she had found nothing, she sat back down at the laptop and opened a list of his documents in a separate window.

‘So what do you think?’ Torvald sounded impatient.

‘Hang on.’ Increasingly frustrated and desperate, she scrolled down the document list. There were so many; should she open every single one? Even if it all looked like innocent homework, there could be useful information disguised behind an inane document name …

Something caught her eye. She scrolled back up to it.

Found Items

Not so mysterious, as names went. But it was password protected.

She tried again.

cassandra

No …

She chewed on a nail. Well, it was worth a try. She typed in her birth date.

Bingo!

Torvald was leaning over her shoulder, tense with interest, as the PDF of a scanned document loaded. Some kind of manuscript, pages and pages of it. ‘What is that? It looks ancient,’ he said, his voice tight, curious.

Cassie took a breath. ‘Yeah it does, doesn’t it? Could be a fake, of course. Something he found on the net …’

She was talking nonsense, and she knew it. This was an old document and she knew immediately it was something important. The faded writing was antiquated, but she could just about make it out – and not just that: there were symbols, designs, ancient script similar to images she’d seen before. And one image in particular that she’d seen everywhere from New York Public Library to the Arc de Triomphe to the broken version on her own shoulder blade …

She knew one thing: she did not want Torvald peering over her shoulder while she deciphered the document. Swiftly she clicked the print button and closed the window.

‘But what was it?’ He stepped back, disappointed and a little annoyed.

‘I … I dunno, really. It might be something or nothing. I’ll take a copy and check it out, OK? I, ah … have a class now,’ she lied.

He scowled. ‘All right. I get the message: this is Few stuff, right?’ He stopped for a moment, relenting. ‘Look. You promise me you’ll let me know if you find anything?’ He hesitated. ‘I miss him too, you know.’

‘Course I will.’ Forcing what she hoped was an unconcerned smile, she closed the document and rolled up the printout, keeping it well away from his curious gaze. ‘As soon as I know anything. But let’s not get our hopes up yet, eh?’

She was afraid he was going to delay her further, but he didn’t. Once outside Ranjit’s room, with the door shut firmly behind her, she ran for her own. It was time to try and figure out what the hell was going on.

A
s Cassie got back and closed the door behind her, she took a deep breath and pulled out her desk chair. Placing the printout pages on the smooth wooden desktop, she sat down and shuffled quickly through them, desperate for some clues. The pages were blurred in some places, indecipherable in parts, but she was getting the gist of them just fine. Sitting in the too-quiet room, Cassie could hear the blood rushing in her ears as she ran her forefinger across the heading of the topmost page.

The Eldest Few. Just the name made her shiver with a sensation that was all Few instinct. It seemed that the very first Few was, according to this document, the most evil of creatures, and as those who succeeded him grew in number, his power had got out of control.

He was apparently the one who created the Knife. With the tip of her finger Cassie traced the picture on the page: the blade, the elaborate handle, the mythical creatures that writhed around it. She involuntarily grimaced, remembering the real thing. Many seemed to hate or fear that blade, but Cassie couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but fascination. It was beautiful, and alive, and lethal. Why did she feel such an attraction to it, and what did that say about her?

Something else about the Knife grabbed her attention, and her breath caught in her throat. According to the manuscript, it had a special purpose. The Knife was the only thing able to sever the link between Spirit and Host … 

Cassie was stunned. This was the answer she had been looking for at the start of last term, when she’d been so desperate to find a way to get Estelle’s spirit out of her for good. She wasn’t sure how to feel about the discovery that the means may have been right under her nose that whole time.

No, Cassandra, let us not think back to that dark time.
We’re together now, we are strong …

There was a distinct edge of nerves to Estelle’s voice, but Cassie’s growing astonishment was drowning her out at the moment.

Because it seemed that the Eldest had created more than just the Knife.

Rubbing her forehead, trying to shift the headache she could not afford right now, Cassie squinted at the text, reading and re-reading the details of the other artefacts – a Pendant and an Urn.

There was something eerily familiar about the pictures of both, as though they’d been formed from the same stuff as the Knife. She touched the scanned engraving of the Pendant. It was carved out of jade, the manuscript told her, but it was like no other piece of jewellery she’d ever seen. As with the Knife, it was carved with twisting, snarling beasts: there they were, the familiar cats and mermaids and caryatids, and the less recognisable creatures she had never been able to name.

Which sounded uncomfortably like what Cassie thought of as her ‘broken’ powers – part of Estelle’s spirit being locked outside of her, able to invisibly manifest itself in the inexplicable ability she had to control and move and manipulate with her mind alone …

And the Urn. As she read the words again, Cassie felt her eyes so wide with amazement that they hurt, and she had to blink hard as she studied the scans of the perfectly inked text.

Why exactly would anyone want to contain and preserve a spirit anywhere but inside a host’s body …?

Ah. It seemed the Eldest Few had a hunger for more than just your common-or-garden human life-force.

It was all so much to take in. If the Knife was not the only remnant of a lost Few culture, perhaps it
wasn’t
the Knife she’d sensed after all in Ranjit’s room? It could have been any of the other artefacts. Was it possible that it wasn’t the Knife that had killed Yusuf and sucked him as dry as a dead herring? That maybe Jake
wasn’t
the culprit?

But if not him, then who?

Cassie shuddered, turning another page. At last, there was some good news, she thought, though she couldn’t help noting the irony of seeing this part as a good thing, given all that had happened last term …

The Elders had formed a Council (yes, that sounded familiar) that was strong enough to defeat the Eldest Few: he had fled, never to be seen again. The Council, recognising the dreadful power inherent in his creations, had hidden the artefacts. For some reason that she didn’t understand, the manuscript said that the artefacts were hidden by
non
-Few, drugged to forget what they’d done and where they’d been (that sounded familiar too, Cassie thought with a frown).

And the records of the artefacts and their hiding places, as deemed by the Council – contained within this manuscript – were to be divided in two. This document that Ranjit had found, it seemed, was only Part One …

Cassie sat back, breathing deeply. It sounded crazy, and only made a vague kind of sense in her mind. Thinking of Jake, she shivered. What had he done with the Knife? Had it fallen into the wrong hands? Was that why Ranjit had been asking about it, was he worried about what it could do? She sighed. So much was still so unclear.

Flipping back through the pages, Cassie smoothed them with her palms, marvelling at the detail in the engravings, even in laser-printed reproduction. Something made her want to touch every one of these beautiful drawings, and to touch their real living counterparts. She could almost feel the warm smoothness of the jade pendant as she ran her fingers across the page. And then, with a heavy heart, she flicked to the final page, where the elegant, barely decipherable script ran out.

Yes, the Knife had been hidden in Angkor Wat, Cambodia; she could make out that much from the description, though the place wasn’t named. The hiding place of the Pendant
was
named, though.

Byzantium. Which then became Constantinople. Which then became … Istanbul. It had been hidden right there, in that very city. There was no indication of where
exactly
it was hidden; only a sketch of a symbol, different to the familiar Few mark, under which the Pendant apparently lay.

But one thing was clear enough to her: Ranjit had found this manuscript, scanned it, and gone to hunt down the Pendant.

But
why
? And what had happened to him? Maybe the other part of the manuscript explained more?

Cassie knew she couldn’t tell Sir Alric about all this. She knew that very clearly. She wasn’t going to be the one who got Ranjit into trouble. She’d just have to get him out of it …

Somehow.

She needed help, though, and there was only one person now who’d be willing, who she’d – almost – trust. Pulling out her phone, she dialled Richard.

‘Richard? Hey. It’s Cassie.’

‘Like I’d fail to recognise those dulcet tones, beautiful. But you sound tense. Anything I can, uh, help with?’

She could practically hear his grin through the receiver, but she had to ignore it. ‘Look, I’ve found something. Do you think you could come over?’

He was knocking on her door within minutes of her call.

‘That’s an invitation I can’t refuse. What’s the mystery, then?’

‘Look at this.’ She drew him over to the desk, sat him down, and fanned out the pages before him. ‘See what you make of it.’

Leaning closer to her, Cassie felt guilt shimmer through her along with the electricity of attraction. Now certainly wasn’t the time – not with the situation with Ranjit looking more and more serious with every passing moment.

Richard skimmed the text, quickly turning the pages, occasionally hesitating over an obscured word. It took him perhaps ten minutes to read the lot.

‘This certainly makes a lot of things a bit clearer.’ Shaking his head, he sat back, touching the papers almost reverently. ‘Keiko
did
find that knife in Angkor Wat. I remember it well. It was something she sensed. She was sure something was there, in one of the old temples, but she didn’t know what; she was obsessed with tracking it down. And she did. And you know what? She was never quite the same …’

Cassie watched him thoughtfully. ‘You mean she wasn’t always a crazy homicidal bitch?’

Richard laughed. ‘A crazy bitch, always. But it was like everything multiplied overnight: the crazy part and the bitch part. And she certainly turned homicidal.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Cassie shivered.

‘Nobody else was ever allowed to touch it. She was so possessive about the thing. It was like she’d found the One Ring.’

‘Hmm,’ Cassie mumbled, her brow knit. ‘Maybe the artefacts have some strange affect on Few. Though I had the Knife, and I’d like to think I didn’t reach crazy bitch levels of behaviour, but …’

He raised his head and studied her. ‘Well, you’re only part-Few, though. Maybe that makes a difference?’

‘Jake’s touched the Knife too, but the worst that happened to him happened
before
he ever touched it. Or at least, that’s what I thought …’ Cassie’s breathing quickened. What had her friends got themselves embroiled in? What if the Knife made Jake’s vengeful nature even worse?

Richard was reading the pages closely again. He remained silent for a few more minutes, occasionally sighing deeply. Then he shuffled the papers into a neat pile, took a breath, and stood up quite sharply.

‘I don’t know. I don’t really know what to make of all this. But, Cassie, speaking of Keiko … Listen to me.’ He turned.

He was very close.
Alarmingly
close. Cassie wanted to take a step back but found she couldn’t. There was a look on his face, almost pleading, and he was nibbling the corner of his lip in a way that made Cassie’s heart pound. He lifted his hands.

Oh God, she thought. Is he going to try and kiss me again? Please don’t let him try and kiss me. Not right now, too confusing, too complicated—

‘Cassie, I—’

‘Hold on!’ She raised a warning finger to his face, and he started back. But instead of moving away, her body took over. Instead of pushing him away, she found herself grabbing his head in two hands, pulling him to her, pressing her lips to his and …

Kissing
him
.

Richard was shocked only for a moment; then he was responding with enthusiasm, deepening the kiss. She moved her tongue to find his, and he gave a little groan of lust. He wasn’t the only one, she thought, pulling him closer. Her fingers raked slowly, luxuriantly through his silky hair, breathing in deeply through her nose, smelling the woody, warm scent of his skin …

Bloody hell!

Pulling back, she wobbled, getting her breath and her composure back. He looked in much the same state.

‘Well.’ She put a hand to her chest, and did her best to make a joke of it. ‘I, uh, I thought we should just … get that out of the way.’

Something flitted across his face – hurt, disappointment? – but then the shutters were down again.

‘Fair enough, beautiful,’ he retorted, winking. But there was no mirth in his voice.

She was hopelessly confused now, more about herself than about him. ‘Richard, I’m sorry. Um, were you going to tell me something?’

‘I’m not. Not sorry, I mean.’ He sounded over-bright now, like he always did in defensive mode. ‘And actually, it’s late. Let’s leave it. We should get some sleep, think this over. It’s a lot to take in.’ He stopped and pointed to the printed pages, as though he was concerned she might have thought he meant something else. ‘Shall I see you in the morning?’

‘Um, OK.’ Cassie was lost for words as she watched him walk out of the room and close the door.

She
was
sorry. She’d just done something stupid. So very, unbelievably stupid. Still – had she misread him completely? He’d looked almost upset, like this meant more to him than she thought …

Cassie shook her head violently. She couldn’t afford to worry about someone else on top of Ranjit – feel something for anyone else.

She had to focus.

What had Ranjit been looking for? Maybe she should get some sleep and this would all make more sense in the morning. But, turning back to the pages that detailed the artefacts, she stared at them once again.

Oh. God.

She flipped a sheet of paper.

Cassie blinked. What had Ranjit said to her, at the start of term?

I know a way for us to be together. We will be together, I
promise you that!

That didn’t have to mean anything sinister. It didn’t. But it was more than that. Something else was at the edge of her mind, something she didn’t want to remember, but something she had to. Come
on
, Cassie! She tugged at her hair, trying to wrench the memory free. And then, she did remember.

Ranjit’s last hyper, frantic phone call.

I know how, now. How to heal old wounds
.

BREAK OLD TIES!

A cold shiver of dread ran down her spine. Ranjit had asked her about the Knife. And the symbol he’d photographed at Hagia Sophia: she was almost certain it bore a distinct similarity to that engraving of the symbol under which the Pendant supposedly lay. Had he found it, then?

All at once, it hit her. She knew, very suddenly and sickeningly, what had been missing from Sir Alric’s study that day. Darke had been so distracted, so nervous, and he’d turned his own office upside down looking for something. Yes, something had been missing. That pale, ornate jade vase, the one that reflected the light so prettily. A vase?
No.