A Life Less Ordinary (7 page)

I looked up, breaking free of the near-kiss. Master Revels was standing there, leaning on his cane. His eyes were very cold as they stared at Cardonel, who flinched before he could help himself. I realised that Cardonel had been right, at least to some extent. I
was
caught in the middle.

“I suggest that you find someone else to bother,” Master Revels said, calmly. “Dizzy and I have other work to do.”

Cardonel bowed and pressed my hand, just for a moment. “I will see you for our date,” he said, and headed off into the market. He turned when he was at a safe distance and waved. “Somewhere nice and new for us both, I think.”

Master Revels watched him stride away. “You should know better than to talk to strangers, even in the mundane world,” he said. “Here...it can be very dangerous.”

I stared at him. There was something in his expression that I didn’t like. “Why...?”

“Your new friend isn’t human,” Master Revels said. “Well...not
completely
human. Didn’t you see the ears? Your friend is a half-elf. They’re dangerous.”

He shrugged and turned back to me. “Come on,” he said, before I could ask any more questions. “We have a job to do.”

With that, he led the way out of the market and I followed him.

Chapter Six

“So,” I said, as we returned to the mundane world. “What is a half-elf when it is at home?”

Master Revels ignored my question. As soon as the market faded away into whatever pocket dimension it occupied, he started to walk towards the Mound as fast as he could. I followed him like a lost sheep, wondering just what had gotten into his head. We were crossing the Royal Mile by the time he slowed down and started to walk towards the New Town. I was somehow unsurprised to realised that the glow of magic was dimmer towards the newer regions of Edinburgh, while the Old Town glowed brightly even in daylight.

“All right,” I said, as we reached Princes Street. “Why didn’t you like me talking to that man?”

“He isn’t a man,” Master Revels answered. “He’s a half-elf. You cannot – ever – trust an elf.”

I frowned, puzzled. Now I was away from his presence, my thoughts were a confused jumble. I had felt attracted to him, yet...there had been a real person under that glamour, one that had been impressed with me and had tried to warn me about my teacher. How much of that, I asked myself, had been the glamour-spell surrounding him? There was no way to know. Glamour-spells were subtle magic, so subtle that plenty of people in the mundane world had some ability to use them, without knowing what they were doing.

He turned to face me. “Listen to me,” he said, sharply. “Elves are
dangerous
. They’re a society so different from ours that the only reason we imagine that we have things in common is because of the fact they look humanoid. They do things that make no sense to us because their culture is entirely unlike ours. You cannot trust one to act with anything you consider a sense of morality. And they are composed of raw magic, not flesh and blood. You cannot trust them, ever!”

“So you keep saying,” I said, slowly. It sounded racist to me, yet...I knew almost nothing about the elves. “If they’re that bad, where do half-elves come from?”

Master Revels snorted. “I hope I don’t have to tell you about the birds and the bees,” he said, dryly. I flushed and he laughed. “Somewhere in the past, an elf thought it would be funny to seduce a human maiden and get her pregnant. There was probably pain or trickery involved, because elves think that that is hilarious. Perhaps his father posed as the woman’s husband or perhaps he used magic to rape her. She would have died in childbirth so there is no way to know for sure.”

I stared. “She would have died?”

“Elves are composed of raw magic,” Master Revels reminded me, patiently. “A human body isn’t built to contain that kind of magic. Even the most powerful witch in the world couldn’t have warded herself to ensure her survival. The child would be safe because the magic and flesh would have bound themselves together in the womb, but the mother...the mother would wind up dead, leaving a child behind.”

“And the father doesn’t take care of the child?”

“The elves would not accept the spawn of any interracial mating,” Master Revels said, flatly. “Your new friend isn’t a pureblood elf and so he would not be accepted by the elves in their homeland. I guess that he spends most of his time on the fringes of the magical world and rarely has anything to do with pureblood elves. They’d walk all over him if they knew he existed.”

He snorted. “When they discover what they are – because the elves don’t try to hide it from their half-breed children – most of them walk completely into the mundane world and abandon their other halves,” he added. “There’s more magic in humanity’s bloodline than you might expect. There’s even a school of thought that suggests that humanity’s magicians are descended from half-breeds. No one knows for sure.”

“And no one takes care of them?” I asked, astonished. “Why are they just abandoned?”

“Like I said, most people don’t trust elves,” Master Revels said. “You cannot trust them, ever.”

“But why can’t you trust them?” I asked. I knew that I was pushing it, but I wanted to know why elves were so untrustworthy, even half-elves. “What is wrong with them?”

Master Revels sighed. “Have you ever felt the urge to murder someone, or to do something you really shouldn’t do?”

“Yes,” I said, puzzled. A long time ago, I had fought the temptation to push one of my playmates off a wall after we’d been arguing over whose turn it was to have the CD we’d bought by combining our funds. I couldn’t even remember the band’s name now. “Why...?”

“Elves are creatures of pure impulse,” Master Revels explained. “If an elf thought that it would be funny to tear you into a thousand bloody chunks he would do it – instantly. Think about how many times humans have powerful impulses – to kill, to rape, to steal – and multiply it a million times over. That is an elf and your half-blood friend will have inherited those impulses and the power from his father. You might go out on a date with him and halfway through he decides that turning you into a statue would be hilarious, or worse.”

“Oh,” I said. “And is there no way to stop them?”

“If you want to stop them from doing something, you have to make them swear by their names not to do it,” Master Revels said, reluctantly. I got the feeling that he knew I was considering accepting the offer of a date. “And you have to be careful. They’re very good at spotting loopholes and jumping right through them. Their names are the only thing they regard as sacred.”

I said nothing for the remainder of the walk, thinking hard. It hadn’t really dawned on me that magical creatures would have their own rules and laws. I’d known people from many different cultural backgrounds in school and I’d had problems understanding them...and they had been human. We had shared the same biology. How different might an elf be to a human, or a dragon, or a werewolf, or...who knew how many childish monsters truly existed in the magical world? There could be everything from ghosts and demons to monsters under the bed.

“Here we are,” Master Revels said, finally. I looked up in surprise. We were standing in front of a police station. I’d only ever been in a police station once and that was after I had been arrested for underage drinking, along with several of my friends. There were no charges, thankfully, but it had still been an alarming experience. “Just keep your mouth shut and follow me.”

He waved a hand, casting a glamour-spell of his own, and then he pushed the door open, walking right into the station. I followed him, and then stopped dead. The police station was populated by ghosts. I saw a man holding a chainsaw, his hands dripping with blood, leering towards a policewoman at the desk. There was a girl with Asian features, her hands cuffed in front of her, staring down at the floor as if she were trapped in a nightmare she couldn’t escape. There was an older man who cast a very long and dark shadow. I shuddered as the ghosts turned to look at me, their cold eyes seeming to dig into my very soul, before I managed to start walking again. Three policemen nodded to me as they emerged from the rear of the building and headed out onto the streets, one of them followed by four ghosts who seemed to be constantly attacking him. I didn’t want to know what
that
meant.

“Detective-Inspector John Smith,” Master Revels was saying, as I came up behind him. “This is my assistant, Penelope Creighton-Ward. I believe that you have a set of files reserved for us?”

The policewoman didn’t look surprised by the request. Perhaps she’d seen it all before, or perhaps it was the fact that she was clearly tired and nearing the end of her shift. She would have been pretty, were it not for the ghostly scars I could see covering her face. I looked into her eyes as she glanced up at me and knew part of her story. Her family had abused her and she’d set out to join the police to ensure that no one else was abused in quite the same manner.

“You’re booked into room seven,” she said, finally. Her voice was tired and worn. She sounded as if she were reciting from rote. “The files will be brought to you. Do not attempt to take any of them from the station. You will be searched upon departure.”

I opened my mouth to complain, but Master Revels gave me a sharp look and I shut it again. Another policeman appeared and led us into the rear of the station, past a long line of holding cells – populated by ghosts, as far as I could tell – and into a small office. I took the seat he pointed to and watched as he left, clearly heading off to pick up the files. Master Revels touched his lips and I stayed quiet, waiting impatiently for the moment when I could speak again. Finally, after the files had been delivered and placed on the table, Master Revels cast another spell into the air and smiled at me.

“What did you think of the ghosts?”

I shuddered. “How many ghosts are there in this place?”

“I have no idea,” Master Revels said. “Some ghosts are little more than psychic imprints on the surrounding area, created when a person is stressed or terrified or dying. Others are the remains of a mortal soul, trapped on the earthly plain. No one knows why.”

He shifted into lecture mode as he opened the files. “Some believe that the ghosts have business left on Earth and refuse to leave until it is done,” he said. “I saw a wife’s ghost remaining with her husband until he died a few years later and then they both vanished. Others think that the ghosts are terrified of what they will meet in the world beyond and choose to cling to our world rather than face the unknown country. Pick whichever theory you like.”

I shrugged. “All right,” I said. “Why are we here?”

Master Revels passed me one of the files. I opened it and read through it quickly, struggling to decipher the jargon and legalese that seemed to take up more pages than were strictly necessary. It seemed that Jenny Dover, the twelve-year-old child of Mark and Rose Dover, had vanished two weeks ago after a field trip to the National Art Museum. She had had a happy life, according to her friends and family, and there had been no reason for her to run off and hide. There had been no abuse, no fights with her family or friends, no bullies at school...it looked as if Jenny had had pretty much the perfect life. That suggested that someone had abducted her, perhaps with very dark intentions, but the police had been unable to turn up any leads. I assumed that they’d already searched the houses of every known paedophile in the vicinity. A photo fell out of the file and I picked it up, scowling. Jenny was blonde, with an enchanting smile; a girl right on the edge of blossoming into womanhood. She looked innocent and harmless.

“Summarise it for me,” Master Revels ordered. I did as he asked, condensing the entire file into two lines. “You may be unsurprised to discover that all of these files hold a similar story.”

I picked up the next file and skimmed through it. Aisha Patel had vanished a week before Jenny, also after a trip to the museum. She was eleven, with the same sense of childlike innocence on the verge of bursting into flower. There were fourteen other girls, with ages ranging from ten to fifteen, who had vanished...after taking a trip to the museum. They had little else in common. Five of them attended schools with one of the other vanished children, seven of them came from Christian families, three came from Muslim families, one came from a Jewish family...the only things they had in common was that they were all female and had all gone to the museum before they vanished. I had some difficulty imagining a paedophile being interested in both sexes, which might mean that his victims would always be female. Or perhaps I just wasn’t vile enough to comprehend their line of thought.

“I’m sure the police would have noticed that after the third or fourth abduction,” I said, finally. I had never been too impressed with the police, yet anyone could have noticed that pattern. “Didn’t they think to search the place?”

Master Revels shrugged and passed me another file. The police
had
noticed the pattern and requested – and received – warrants to investigate everyone who was even remotely connected to the museum. They’d searched the place from top to bottom, interrogated everyone who worked there and found nothing. Nothing relating to the investigation, that was; they’d found several stolen artworks, a missing handbag that had been reported lost in 1967 and discovered that one of the cleaners was supplementing his salary by selling drugs to local teenagers. They’d thought that they’d found their man until they discovered that he had an airtight alibi for most of the abductions. And, worst of all, they’d found no trace of the girls.

“I see,” I said, finally. I felt a shiver running down my spine as I contemplated the girls and their possible fates. I knew that there were plenty of mundane horrors in the world, yet...this was something worse than a vampire or a werewolf. “I assume that we’re going to do something about it?”

“You assume correctly,” Master Revels said, dryly. He finished skimming through the files, allowed me to read through the summaries quickly, and then stood up. “The police found nothing and there are signs that suggest that magic was somehow involved. The girls may have blundered into the magical world, but the pattern suggests otherwise; they have almost certainly been abducted. I think we’d better take a field trip to the museum.”