Fleeced (17 page)

Of course, there was another ingredient that Medea intended to add to Rose’s evening. More bewitching than her herbal mix, more ancient and powerful, too, this one isn’t found in any flowerbed, but since she intended to serve it later, that’s when I’ll tell you about it otherwise you’ll only forget and we’ll have to go through it all again.

Rose stepped back in from the balcony into her room and gazed at the gorgeous four-poster bed that stood at the far end, made up with cream sheets and an embroidered emerald silk cover. It was a world apart from her faded duvet cover at home. Whilst her bedroom at home was carpeted in one of her mother’s bargain buys, now stained and patchy
with wear, the polished wooden floor here was scattered with sumptuous rugs. An ornately carved chair stood plumped with velvet cushions in front of a huge dressing table spread with jewel-coloured bowls of powder puffs, lipsticks and pots of glittering eye shadows, and a basket brimming with bottles of nail varnishes in golds and pinks and reds. Rose had never seen such beautiful things and she longed to try them.

She walked over and sat on the dressing table’s stool and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. She smiled as the mixture of poppies and moonwort washed away her worries, and, unclipping her hair, shook it free. She imagined Alex and Aries in equally exquisite rooms. Perhaps, right now, Alex was relaxing in a room full of ancient Greek boy stuff, whilst Aries was munching through a tossed salad of olives and nettle.

Giggling, she felt a fuzzy warm glow rise up from her toes, through her legs and body, muffling the tiny squeak from some remote part of her brain that tried to tell her that it wasn’t likely. She glanced into her bag, noticing that the Scroll had now folded itself tightly into what appeared to be a half-hearted origami elephant.

“Everything’s all right,” she soothed, stroking its paper edges. “You don’t need to worry.”

At which the Scroll shrank into itself even more tightly.

Rose frowned, wondering fleetingly why the Scroll was behaving so oddly but the thought was instantly snuffed out like a bonfire smut in rain as she felt her legs growing heavier and her whole body filling with a warm sleepiness, like being snuggled under a duvet on a winter night.

Behind her, the wardrobe was reflected in the dressing table mirror, its doors open to reveal an interior crammed with clothes and boots and shoes. She turned and walked across the room to take a closer look. Reaching into the wardrobe, she clicked the hangers over the rail one by one to reveal glitzy silver tops, cashmere sweaters in sapphire and
ruby-red
, short skirts and long skirts and four pairs of jeans, some ripped denim and others sparkly with glitter swirls, and all in her size. Spotting a flash of candy-pink, Rose pulled out a pair of jeans and caught her breath, recognising them as the same design that Hazel Praline had worn for her last music video.

Rose glanced down at her old sun dress. Two minutes later she had changed into the pink jeans, teamed with a pair of over-the-knee grey suede boots and a grey T-shirt splashed with pink glitter.
Smiling, she twirled a full circle before reaching for a pot of pink nail varnish and, pulling out the brush and breathing in the heady scent from the bottle, she began to paint her nails.

What’s that?

You want to know about Alex, pinned to the plinth in a tomb room filled with breathing? Well, all right, but I’m not staying down there long.

Unfortunately, the breathing outside the crypt had now become the breathing
inside
the crypt. It had grown louder, closer and – worse – much shallower. Worse, that is, because Alex now recognised it as the sniffling snorts a snake makes when it’s about to attack, and straining against the straps, he twisted his head to see Hex slithering towards him, the snake’s tail whipping furiously over the dusty floor. Seconds later Hex sprang up beside him, the top third of his body as stiff as a broomstick, his tongue frantically quivering in the air.

“What’re you doing?” spluttered Alex, feeling a sudden panic punch behind his ribcage.

Hex’s eyes glittered like emeralds. “I’ve decided to kill you,” he hissed, flinging open his jaws to display two enormous fangs hanging like glittering stalactites a centimetre from Alex’s nose. Staring
into the inky black coffin-shaped void of the snake’s maw, he imagined the even darker void that Hex could send him to with a single bite.

“Why?” gasped Alex, trying hopelessly to shrink back further against the plinth as the snake puffed out his neck-flap to make himself even more menacing. His mind scrambled back to what had happened in the cellar, desperate to discover what had made the snake suddenly so truly ferocious. And realised.

Alex snatched a breath, hoping it wouldn’t be his last. “This is about London Zoo, isn’t it?” he said. “You want to prove yourself to Medea!”

The snake jerked to a standstill and blinked. “Yesss,” he said, his eyes glittering with surprise. “The mistressss always loves an agonisssing death.”

Alex shook his head. “You poor thing,” he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

Hex snapped his mouth shut. Throughout his life he’d been called many things: Silver Bringer of Death, Murder-Fangs, He Kills in Screams, Middasypoo-poos (although that was his mother and he didn’t make it public) but not once had anyone called him a poor thing.

Or ever felt the teensiest bit sorry for him.

Until now.

“Medea doesn’t treat you very well, does she?” said Alex, sensing the snake’s breathing start to slow. “I expect she’s always been short-tempered and unduly disappointed at the things you do, hasn’t she?”

Slowly, the snake nodded and opened its mouth.

“Then why don’t you tell me all about it,” soothed Alex, trying not to notice the venom dripping from Hex’s fangs. “I’m sure it’d make you feel better to get it off your chest. And you can always kill me afterwards.”

Hex considered this for a few seconds before slithering up onto the plinth and lacing himself over the boy’s body like icing on a doughnut.

“You wouldn’t believe what ssshe did to me with a bucket of frozen sssquid,” he began softly, his face a few centimetres above Alex’s neck. “It wasss ten yearsss ago now, but I can ssstill remember the headache. And asss for the black ssstains on my ssstomach ssscales…”

“That’s dreadful,” said Alex.

“But that wasss only the ssstart,” Hex sighed. “Ssshe sssaid ssshe couldn’t be ssseen with sssuch a sssplotchy familiar and decided to get the ssstains out in the fassst cycle of the wassshing machine. I wasss burping bubblesss for weeksss.”

For the next ten minutes Alex listened as
Hex rasped about his miserable life with Medea. Glad to have stalled the snake’s attack, the boy’s mind fizzed, desperate to think of something to steer Hex from his murderous plan. Yet, despite facing near-certain death at the fangs of the world’s most venomous snake whilst being trapped in a sorceress’s crypt full of coffins, Alex couldn’t help feeling both angry and sad on Hex’s behalf. Like the monsters in the Underworld Zoo, like the sheep in Medea’s cellar, Hex had been cruelly mistreated. But as Alex consoled the serpent, he slowly became aware of something slightly more useful to him than sympathy: the unmistakable tingle of an idea forming in his mind.

“Ssso you sssee,” concluded Hex, pausing to utter a long hissing whoosh of dismay, “I can’t bear the thought of a one-way trip in a sssewing basssket to ssshare sssome glassss box with a podgy boa conssstrictor,” he said. He rose up and regarded the boy with wide gentle eyes. “Thanksss for lissstening. If you try and relax, I’ll make thisss asss painlessss asss possible.”

“Hold on!” said Alex, as Hex loomed above him. “You’re a clever reptile. What you do think killing me will really do?”

“Endear me to Medea, of courssse,” said Hex.

“Today, perhaps,” said Alex thoughtfully. “But what about tomorrow? Or next week? How about the next time you annoy Medea? You know she’ll go back to her old ways again. So, you’d be no better off.”

“No better off,” muttered Hex, his tongue drooping like a bootlace between his lips.

“Unless…” said Alex.

“Unlessss what?”

“Come closer,” said Alex, trying not to imagine just how big those fangs would look close up. “I’ve got an idea.”

Seconds later, excited hisses punctuated by the slap of snake tail against coffin sides echoed around the ancient stillness of the crypt, as Alex told Hex his, quite frankly, brilliant idea.

And no doubt you want to know what Alex was saying, too. Well, I’m sorry. I said I’d tell you whom the breathing belonged to and to be honest I’ve hung around in this grubby crypt far longer than I intended. I’m going back to Rose.

So there.

XXI

D
ADDYS'
G
IRLS

I do so enjoy a good meal out, with interesting company and an enormous sticky pudding and Rose was on the point of enjoying all three. Of course, it was a pity she'd be sharing it with an ice-hearted sorceress, but then you can't have everything in life, can you?

Blissfully relaxed thanks to the blackcurrant potion, Rose stretched back in her chair and gazed admiringly at the dining table laid out before her. Candles in crystal holders twinkled, making the silver cutlery sparkle. Ruby-red goblets gleamed. A bowl of fresh white roses glowed like a fresh fall of snow. She sighed, comfortably. It was all so different from the draughty old terrace she shared with her mother, with its hard wooden chairs, cramped rooms and windowpanes that rattled in the slightest wind. Smelling the scent of jasmine blossom drifting in through the open doors to the garden, Rose closed her eyes and listened to the tinkle of wind chimes hanging from the roof of the quirky little temple building that stood amongst the trees.

However, charming as it is up here, I'm afraid I have to tell you that there was nothing
jasmine-scented
or tinkly-winkly happening two floors below, where at that precise moment Medea was chanting over a vast iron pot.

And I am sorry to have to do this to you, just when you thought the day couldn't get any worse, but I have to tell you something dreadful: Medea had taken a shine to Rose.

That's right.

And if there's one thing worse than incurring a sorceress's wrath, it's winning her admiration. But Medea liked Rose's courage and the way she'd squared up to Ms De Mentor that morning. She liked her curiosity too, and how it had led her into the secret room at Seamed Desires. Then there was her loyalty – even if it was wasted on those two over-baked baklavas, Aries and Alex – in searching for an answer in the pictures she found down there. All wrapped up in her willingness to accept crazy things like Greek ghosts running around London in the first place. But, unfortunately for Rose, all of these traits are essential in budding sorceresses. And rather like a judge on one of those talent shows on telly, Medea had spotted a potential in Rose, a flair ripe for twisting into sorcery, a sort of Hexfactor, if you like.

But she would still have shrugged and dispatched
Rose horribly if it hadn't been for one other thing and that was how Rose so strongly reminded Medea of herself at that age. Even all these hundreds of years later, the sorceress still remembered how it stung to be twelve years old and forgotten by a distracted parent; more importantly, she recalled just how delighted she'd been when her Aunt
Circe
had turned up and taken Medea to live with her to teach her the dark arts. Now, spotting that same brittle loneliness glittering in Rose, Medea was drawn like a magpie to a gold ring left by an open window.

However, before Medea could enrol Rose into her private school of sorcery, there was the small matter of winning Rose's trust. And that was why Medea was at that moment steeped in tendrils of smoke that wreathed upwards and pooled beneath the ceiling in a cloud the grubby-green hue of an alligator. Having used her blackcurrant potion to soften Rose, as a chef might tenderise meat with a hammer before tossing it into a sizzling pan, Medea was now preparing the evening's final ingredient, the one I mentioned in the last chapter.

You remember that I mentioned another ingredient?

Good.

Lifting her hands over her head, the ruby-red sleeves of her cloak fell back to reveal pale arms
marked with strange symbols as she hurled a handful of dried crocuses into the crucible. Picked hundreds of years ago, these were the first flowers to clamber through the war-torn rubble of Troy. Now they hissed and bubbled, their purple and green essences mingling with the silvery deposit in the bottom of the dish.

As the mixture hissed and spat, Medea tilted her face to the ceiling.

Suddenly the room exploded in a storm of green lightning, splintering the air with skittering veins of electricity before vanishing with a squeal. Every candle extinguished as the eerie sound of a girls' choir rose in the velvety darkness only to dissipate in a hiss of whispers, like a room full of snakes each calling Rose's name.

“Illuminati!” commanded Medea.

The candles instantly relit.

Smiling, Medea pushed back the hood of her cloak and peered down into the crucible at a puddle of smouldering mercury-bright liquid. Consisting of
a mixture of those Trojan crocuses, splinters from the anchor of a Greek ship that survived ten storms, the wick of a candle that'd burned through the night and a snip of the red wool that had led Theseus out of the Minotaur's maze, all melded with Medea's dark incantations, it was the very essence of hope.

That's right: hope. The same stuff that knots your stomach on Christmas morning when you spy your wrapped presents under the tree and so want them to be what you've hinted for since September; the same stuff that fizzes in your chest when you long for something so much it hurts. One of the most powerful forces on Earth, hope has stuck to human hearts throughout history, like a blob of chewing gum on the bottom of a shoe that no amount of common sense or logic will clean off.

Medea took a small square of card from her robe pocket and dipped it into the gleaming liquid, coating the card's surface with a skin-thin layer. For a moment she waited for it to dry, watching its colour fade from silver to the creamy-yellow of a pearl before shrugging off her robe, tucking the card into the back pocket of her jeans and hurrying up to the dining room, a fresh spring in her steps.

Back in the dining room, Rose was busy gazing at
her kooky grey boots when Medea appeared in the doorway.

“Hey! Look at you!” gushed Medea, admiring Rose's outfit.

“Do you like it?” said Rose, who would usually have shrivelled up at such a compliment. But not tonight, oh no, tonight she was ready to believe whatever Medea said and now she sprang out of her chair to perform a model's twirl complete with pout.

“Way cool!” enthused Medea, her grey eyes twinkling. Wearing a simple white T-shirt and jeans, Rose thought Medea looked more like a big sister than the mega-famous fashion designer she'd seen countless times on television and in the pages of magazines. She pointed at Rose's feet. “I just love the way you teamed those jeans and boots. Look, they're the same as mine!”

Rose giggled and looked down to see Medea wearing exactly the same style grey suede boots.

“Have a seat,” said Medea.

Rose sat down and looked over the table at Medea. Dappled by candlelight, the sorceress's face looked
softer tonight, the sharp bones of her face mellowed in the golden glow.

“Apologies first,” said Medea, watching Rose's reaction carefully. “I'm really sorry about the way you were brought here, but as you can imagine it's difficult for me to invite people to my house without the paparazzi turning up.”

Rose smiled and shrugged at a foggy memory of an ice-cream van, the tender patchwork of bruises on her elbows and knees for the moment dissolved by the blackcurrant drink.

There was an uneven click of heels on the marble floor as the butler, who'd escorted Rose down from her room, wheeled in a trolley laden with food. Despite his dark green tail coat and bowtie he was still the strangest looking butler she'd ever seen (not that she'd seen many, of course, and then only in old films) but there was definitely something odd about that lolloping walk of his. Perhaps, she thought sympathetically, as he set out hamburgers and hot pizza, bowls of chips and tacos, dips of guacamole, salsa sauce and soured cream, he had a touch of gout
26
.

“I wasn't sure what you'd like,” shrugged Medea, “so I thought we'd have some of everything! Tuck in!”

Rose glanced at the other chairs around the table. “Shouldn't we wait for Alex and Aries?”

Medea looked up, a flicker of annoyance passing over her face. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, “don't worry about those two. To be honest with you, I expect they're absolutely exhausted.”

Which was true, of course. The fact that they were exhausted because she'd imprisoned them horribly was, however, something she didn't bother to point out.

“They were a bit worried about meeting you,” Rose went on, reaching for a burger.

“Me?” Medea looked puzzled. “Oh, because of our differences in the past, you mean?” She shook her head. “That was all so long ago. Time to let bygones be bygones, if you ask me.”

Rose listened happily and took a giant bite of her burger, feeling the warm cheese trickle over her fingers as she munched on the beef and spicy jalapeños.

“They thought you,” she began, between mouthfuls, “were the last person to see the… the…” Rose stopped, aware of her thoughts trickling away like rainwater down a drain. “The…” She stared down at her plate and shrugged.

“Mmm!” said Medea, dabbing a dot of tomato puree from her lips. “This pizza is absolutely delicious! Like some?”

Rose took a slice, sinking deeper still into her carefree torpor, rather like one of those lizards
basking in the sunshine, but unfortunately in her case, without hope of scooting down a sand hole when danger's looming.

“'S fun to have a girls' night in, isn't it?” said Medea. She poured some red wine into her own glass and more blackcurrant into Rose's. “Especially when you and I have such a lot in common.”

Three hours before Rose would have choked on her pepperoni at this remark. But now she simply looked up expectantly. “We do?”

“Certainly!” Medea nodded. “We're both cool, we're good to our friends, we love animals, hey, we even have the same taste in boots,” she said, giggling. “And,” she added, fixing Rose with her silvery eyes, “we both lost our fathers when we were little girls, didn't we?”

Despite her super-chilled mood Rose felt the pizza cloy in her mouth. Her heart drummed against her ribs and she had to lay down her knife and fork in order to concentrate on swallowing.

“My mother,” Medea went on, watching Rose over her wine glass, “died when I was born. My dad and I were everything to one another.” She sighed. “Until…”

Rose cupped her chin in her hands. “Until…?”

“Until my cousin, Phryxus, brought some special
treasure to Kolkis.” Medea paused for effect. “It was so remarkable, so sought after, that Daddy simply doted on it and forgot all about me.”

“Forgot you?” said Rose, shocked.

Medea sniffed theatrically. “I never saw him from one morning to the next. I missed him so much. So, I know what it's like for you. One parent lost, the other always so horribly busy, hardly even noticing you're there and—”

“Mum just wants to—”

Medea held up her hand. “No, I understand,” she said. “Your mother is grieving. But that's hardly a consolation for you, is it? Day after day, so lonely.” Medea leaned forwards on her chair. “It was just the same for me as a child, until my Aunt Circe took me under her wing and taught me all about magic.”

Rose felt her eyes grow wider.

“I was never lonely again, Rose. It utterly changed my life.” Medea spread her arms, indicating the beautiful room. “This house, my career, my life, my friends, my success. Everything. It's all built on what she taught me.”

Delighted by Rose's transfixed expression, Medea took the magical piece of paper from her back pocket and slid it across the table. “Just imagine what it could bring you. All the things your heart
ever wanted.”

Rose stared at the paper.

Were you or I to look over her shoulder, it would have only appeared as a piece of shiny white paper. But for Rose's eyes its creaminess melted into a twirling spiral of colours, colours that swam and blended into a photograph of her father. He grinned up out of the picture at her, his lopsided smile framed by a neatly trimmed beard, his eyes twinkling and loving.

“Dad?” whispered Rose.

To anyone but a sorceress with a freezer box where her heart should be, the moment would have brought tears to the eyes.

But not Medea.

All she felt was the delightful fizzy
frisson
of knowing her plan was working perfectly.

“You can have it all. The things you want the most, Rose,” she murmured. “And I can teach you how.”

Now unless you have a relative who disappeared in the Amazon jungle, and have since spent countless nights worrying that they became an anaconda's breakfast, you can't imagine what feelings even the tiniest chance of finding them elicits: delight, trepidation, disbelief, euphoria, impatience, all of those. But for Rose they were galvanised by a bewildering red-hot explosion of hope as the
blinding magic that Medea had saturated the paper with erupted, zapping through her like a shower of sparks, electrifying every cell in her body.