beats per minute (24 page)

‘Excellent,’ Bree sounded relieved. ‘Wasn’t one hundred
percent sure that would work with you here too.’

‘Great.’ Raegan felt faintly sick. ‘Would my eyeballs have
boiled in my head or something?’

‘Something
like
that.’

Bree was busy fiddling with what looked like a safe set into
the wall, so it was impossible to see her face. Raegan hoped she was joking.

To distract herself, she went over, reaching for her
friend’s hand. ‘How’s the finger?’

‘Already healed,’ Bree replied, pulling away, but not before
Raegan noticed the blood still beading from the small cut.

‘Hey, it’s not!’ Letting go of her finger with concern,
Raegan rooted around fruitlessly in her pockets, patting herself up and down.
‘Crap, I don’t have a tissue. We should really stop the bleeding, you touched
your finger to the wall and I know it’s enchanted and everything but you could
get an infection, it looks pretty old-‘

The expression on Bree’s face stopped her. It
was almost pitying
.

‘What?’ Raegan asked, puzzled. ‘You probably think I’m
overreacting, but you can get blood poisoning from the smallest cut, you know.
My grandda knew this bloke who lost both his legs-‘

 ‘It’s closed.’ Bree held up her finger. ‘See?’

The finger was clean and unmarked – and completely different
from how it had looked just a second ago.

‘But...’ Raegan stepped forward, peering at the digit. ‘Did
you just heal on the spot?’

‘No, the cut closed almost immediately. Quick healing is
part of the gig, remember?’

‘But- but – no.
You were bleeding
and it was scabbing over, just then! I saw it.’

‘Like you saw Marie’s bruises?’

At first, Raegan was so shocked to hear Marie’s name – even
spoken in such a deliberate, gentle tone – that she did not register exactly
what had been said.

Eventually, ignoring the rising creaking and groaning
emanating from somewhere behind the safe, she stuttered, ‘How did you know- I
mean, yes, there were- but- what?’

 ‘The Fay
don’t
leave bruises,
Raegan. When they steal time, it’s like everything is washed away. They leave
no mark.’

‘But I saw her,’ Raegan repeated stupidly. Bree’s words rang
in her ears, but there was no sense to be made from them.

‘Yes.’ With careful patience, Bree held up her finger once
more. ‘Look.’

Dully, Raegan looked at the skin: it was
clear
,
unblemished, as she now expected. ‘I get it. There’s nothing there.’

Moving with the same painful care, like a parent with a
small child, Bree lifted her other hand and interlaced it with Raegan’s
,
the same finger still in the air.

‘Now look again,’ she said softly. Her eyes did not leave
Raegan’s face.

Raegan started. She blinked, once, twice, but the sight was
undeniably there: the skin of Bree’s finger had morphed minutely before her,
and now it appeared to be freshly bleeding and bruised as she had originally
thought it to be.

‘If I let go of you it will disappear again,’ Bree said,
finally. ‘Do you want to see?’

‘Yes,’ Raegan croaked.

She did. And it did.

In the ensuing silence, a thousand things could have flitted
through Raegan’s mind; they did not. A curious blankness reigned. As if frozen,
she stared at the spot where Bree’s finger had once been, waiting for the
lightening moment of realisation to arrive. It did not. Instead, the
nerve-endings in her brain flailed about as helplessly as wet noodles. Bree
watched her worriedly.

The safe clanked on.

‘Was this... was
this what
you
wanted to show me?’ she said eventually.

‘Partly.’
Bree sighed. ‘I wanted to
explain why I thought Max was involved in our little scuffle earlier. But in
truth, I wanted to be sure myself.’

‘Sure that I was actually insane?’

‘You’re not insane.’

Raegan’s bark of laughter echoed horribly in the enclosed
space. ‘Normal people don’t tend to see things that aren’t really there.’

‘But what you see is there! Or rather, it was. Shit! I’m not
explaining this well.’ Bree wrung her hands. ‘Ah. Look. I’m sure you don’t need
to brush up on your history, so forgive me for the reminder, but you’ve been
taught that the Regency gift differs from person to person – correct?’

Raegan nodded.

‘We’re all better at different things,’ Bree continued. ‘Sam
is fantastic with the Heart, and I, as you say, launch myself in with fists
flying – I’ve always excelled with the Body. You’re familiar with the three
main disciplines by now. But there are other strains. Years and years ago there
used to be another gift that popped up every few generations. It was known as
the Trace.’

Raegan did not react.

‘We thought it was lost – that it had died out. It just
stopped appearing. I think the last recorded Tracer was sometime in the 1800s.’
Bree wondered how best to continue. She had already negated her agreement with
Max, a choice which could have disastrous consequences. She’d gone this far;
she might as well go for broke.

‘The Trace is the ability to see time as it was; to be
connected, through touch, to the previous state  of any given object or
set of objects. It’s enormously valuable. My own grandfather used to boast that
we once had a Tracer in the family.’ At that, her clipped, patrician tones took
on a sardonic tinge; the vocal equivalent of an eye-roll.

 
‘You?’
The question was
delivered listlessly.

‘No,’ Bree said carefully. ‘Like I said, the gift died out
yonks ago – or so we thought. But the bragging of old man Clifton should give
you some idea how well-regarded it is. Just think of the strategic advantages
it once gave the Regency in the War. Skilled Tracers were known to be able to
trace the footsteps of Fays to their hiding places. In the end, this might have
led to us discovering the location of their Kingdom – but sadly we never got
that far, because we lost our Tracers.

‘The Sentinel thinks that you have this gift. That’s why you
thought you saw bruises on Marie’s body; you saw the damage once inflicted on
her, instead of the body as it was. With a little honing and concentration you
might have been able to find the killer.’

‘He found me, instead.’ The thought seemed to distract
Raegan, but nonetheless Bree was encouraged that she was responding at last.
She put a hand on her arm.

‘Max wanted to me to keep an eye on you.
To
try and find out as much as I could about the Trace.
See if it had taken
hold. He didn’t want to interfere directly as he thought it best for the gift
to evolve naturally. That’s why he didn’t tell you. The Sentinel are always
concerned with themselves first and us later,’ she added bitterly. ‘‘I hope you
can forgive me. I haven’t told him anything about you, and I won’t.’

There was a brief pause while both were lost in thought.

‘Can you, do you think?’ Bree asked anxiously, coming back
to herself. ‘Forgive me?’

Her concern roused Raegan from her stupor. ‘I’m sorry. Just
a lot to take in,’ she muttered. ‘So this gift... is a good thing?’

Bree nodded.

‘And I should just wait and see how it goes? There’s nothing
else I can do?’

‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘We don’t have reams of
information on the subject. I’ve tried to suss it out myself, subtly, but even
Ingmar doesn’t know too much - I expect because it hasn’t cropped up in
anyone’s living memory. Based on the accounts I did find, it seems the Trace
can’t really be harnessed in the beginning stages. That’s what Max said, too.
It needs to develop of its own accord. Also, though I hate to ask... it would
be best for all of us, and particularly me, if Max didn’t find out that you
knew.’ Apparently embarrassed, she made a face.

Raegan nodded. Then, all of a sudden, her mouth lifted in a
slightly lopsided smile. ‘Well, things could be worse. When I’m not completely
weirded out about the fact that I am now even more of a freak, it might even
feel kind of cool. I get a fancy new title, at the very least.’ Her voice
softened. ‘And I forgive
you,
of course I forgive you…
if you can forgive me about the thing with Adriana? I mean, we’re pretty much
even.’

‘Well put,’ Bree said gratefully. At that moment, the dial
on the safe began to spin madly, around and around. The two women looked at
each other.

‘Except you don’t know everything.
Not quite.’ Bree looked at the safe again.

‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ Raegan sighed. ‘This isn’t
the end of the line?’

A tiny, tight smile on her face, Bree shook her head; in the
next moment, she gripped the dial and the door swung open, revealing a tunnel.
Just large enough for a human to squeeze into initially, Raegan could see that
it opened out as it went along - but not much.

‘Is this a good time to mention that I am claustrophobic?’
Raegan quipped to hide how scared she was.

Bree grimaced sympathetically. ‘Thing is, I can’t really
take you back at this point; the only way is in, as it were.’

 
‘Fan-frickin’-tastic.
Well,
then... age before beauty.’

There was no time to really process the hammer blow Bree had
just delivered, the impact of which left Raegan reeling, squirming with
anticipation. This feeling quickly faded as she climbed inside the dreaded
tunnel, following Bree on her hands and knees.

***

The temperature dropped more steeply the deeper they got
into the tunnel, and after ten minutes or so Raegan half expected to see
icicles dangling from the ceiling. Her claustrophobia was getting worse. She
inhaled and exhaled slowly in an attempt to relax, watching as her breath
materialised in a frosty cloud.

‘How much longer?’

‘We’re nearly there.’ The tunnel was so small that Bree
could not even turn her head back to face Raegan; her voice, travelling in the
other direction, sounded very far away.

Finally, thin shafts of light began to pierce the darkness,
creeping into the gaps between Bree’s crouching form and the walls of the
tunnel. Raegan’s heart picked up speed. She hadn’t really imagined what might
be waiting at the end of the passage.

After such a build-up, the sight that greeted her was
admittedly a little disappointing.

The tunnel had opened out into an ordinary corridor, walled
with concrete which was also pretty ordinary. The only non-boring feature was a
line of gold-burnished alcoves set into the wall at regular intervals, each
housing a lantern and a statue. Raegan’s knowledge of sculpture was woeful,
particularly for the daughter of an art expert, but their long hair and heroic
poses made her think of the Greek gods in her mother’s Hellenistic art book.

It struck Raegan as an odd place to keep such a collection,
and she told Bree so; but her friend did not reply. She had stopped in front of
one of the walled gaps between statues. Raegan waited next to her and tried not
to fidget. By this point she knew to keep her mouth shut.

But she couldn’t help the tiny gasp that escaped her lips a
few moments later.

The stone wall began to mutate before their eyes. Like
strands being spun in a spider’s web, shards of material appeared in thin
threads, weaving together rapidly and delicately into the surface of the stone.
A faint wind blew through the tunnel and Raegan’s teeth chattered – whether
this was due to the chill or jaw-dropping shock, she did not know.

The honey-gold web was darkening and changing texture:
smooth, layered, with a delicate grain pattern.
Oak.
The slit that appeared in the middle and the wrought iron handle also pushing
through the web seemed like a jokey afterthought. The doors, now fully formed,
were massive, solid, and darkly imposing.

Bree turned around; even in the shadowy gloom of the tunnel,
she could see the lift of her friend’s cheek. The smile was comforting. 
‘It was always there, you know. Only now you have been allowed to see it.’

 ‘But... why?’

‘Best not to ask.
For your own
protection – the less you
know,
the better.’

Raegan stared at the door, brain working excitedly. Whatever
was inside must be important to the whole Regency - not just Bree - or it
wouldn’t warrant such tight security. But why was her friend involved in the
first place?

Bree was already reaching for the iron handle. Her hand was
about to make contact when she hesitated. ‘I can trust you, can’t I?’

As Raegan stepped forward the stiff line of her friend’s
back greeted her. She wished she could see her face. ‘Of course you can.’

‘This must stay between us.’

She settled for touching her friend’s shoulder. ‘I’ll never
tell anyone. I promise.’

It was like for the first time the shutters had come up
behind Bree’s hazel eyes, showing the vulnerability within. ‘I’ve never brought
anyone here, Raegan.
Never.’

A lump formed in Raegan’s throat that made speech
impossible. She settled for nodding.

Bree pushed the doors open.

A white and black chequered marbled floor, like a huge
chessboard, stretched as far as the eye could see. Rising like islands from the
polished stone were vast, round plinths, velveted in duck-egg blue, with small
railings of gold wrapped around each one. These varied in size, with some
higher and some wider than others. Some were interlinked with delicate golden
footbridges. Some were so tall she could not even see the surface.

Above these plinths, the huge, oval walls stretched,
encircling the room like great arms. Shelves of books were broken up by dials,
maps, and even screens which might have been for computer data -though the
figures whizzing past looked unlike anything Raegan had ever seen.