Beautiful Freaks (12 page)

“A little difficult to say; we managed to
fully extract him
after some considerable effort, but i
t was as if the tree had started to
meld
with him.
If we had left him any longer, I think he would have turned to wood.
”

“Have you heard of anything like this before, Sir?” Steptree
addressed Heartlock and
watched
as
the old man raise
d
his glass in a hand that had a slight tremor. Steptree recognised
it as
the sign of excitement.

“Yes, I have heard of something like this before. In fact I have heard of similar cases to both of the ones you have spoken of.” He took a large gulp before continuing. He was waiting for the attention of his audience and now he had it
, he
began.

7

EVANGELINE

Evangeline delved deep between the folds of her silk skirt and recovered her notebook.
With
well-practiced movement
,
she fished in her waistcoat pocket for her watch and once snagged, she pulled it out and flipped it open. It wasn’t an ordinary watch, although to an onlooker that’s what it would have looked like. This was a piece of extraordinary equipment that worked on equal measures of magic and science. It had been her father
’
s. He had come by it on his travels in some exotic place, in some exotic time.

The case was silver, decorated with filigree and fitted with a star sapphire; a large, dark blue stone polished into a cabochon. In the right light a white star blazed on its surface.

Inside, the dial was divided into thirteen segments, each engraved with a small symbol. Even at first glance it was clear that there was something mystical about them. Some were immediately recognisable
;
a mermaid, a wolf, a fairy
.
B
ut others were more cryptic. The apparatus had a hand that was enamelled in red and wavered on
a
pivot. Every now and then it would spin wildly, like the hand of a compass.

Evangeline adjusted her monocle and tapped the glass cover as if to calibrate the dial. She seemed dissatisfied with what it was telling her
,
but she knew better than to doubt her apparatus.

She snapped it shut and placed it back into the pocket
that
lay next to her heart. She li
c
ked the nib of her pen and scratched a line of code into her notebook
that only she
could decipher
.

She had stumbled upon the boy by accident
,
but as soon as she had seen him, she had known – even without the detector. Since her first sighting of
Kaspian
, he had haunt
ed
her dreams. Evangeline rarely dreamt
, not since Eli,
and so the experience was at
once
curious and unsettling. In her dreams the two of them were always dancing
a
waltz. It made
her feel as light as a
ghost. Cherry blossom fell over them like snow
,
or maybe
it was
confetti. The dream was so vivid that she could feel his arm around her
,
but it
felt
like
porcelain
,
so that although solid
,
it was also fragile and she knew that she might break him.

Where their hands touched there was soft light. They danced and danced, faster and faster until it became almost crazed and the world around them started to slide and crack.

Through those cracks, the demons swarmed.

Evangeline believed in demons because she knew that angels existed. She was also wise enough to know that the two were sometimes indistinguishable.

Although she was only twenty-
one, Evangeline had already lived a whole lifetime. From the age of fifteen she had travell
ed
the world, both the real world
,
and the one that existed in legends. Her father had been an anthropologist. Some
say
a fantasist. His fascination with folktales and fairytales had started when he had travelled The Grand Tour at the age of eighteen. He only got as far as B
udapest before leaving the well-
travelled trail and
taking
a tour of his own. He
journeyed
through the forests and mountains of Eastern Europe
.
In e
very village he
stayed
,,
he
wrote down the stories that the locals were only too keen to tell him. They were the
kind of stories told from the bottom of an ale tankard.

In the
forests of Germany,
he
’
d heard tales of the werewolves, in Romania
,
vampires, in Russia
,
hags and so on and so on
.
C
reature after creature, devil after devil.
The only pause in his relentless journey of discovery was when he fell in love with an angel. Evangeline had never been certain if her father had been speaking figuratively or not. It ended badly, nearly destroying them both. In the end it was just
his angel
who perished.

Desolate with grief, Evangeline’s father had lurched from place to place. Somewhere on this desperate journey he ended taking comfort with a pretty barmaid in a country tavern. This one sad, lonely encounter ended in the creation of Evangeline. The barmaid, young and poor as she was, was only too happy to rid herself of the burden
,
and so it was that Evangeline’s father returned home to London with a babe in his arms.

Being the only child of
his very
wealthy parents,
he was instantly
forg
iven. They
construct
ed
a story about them fulfilling their god
-
parenting duties for a distant relative who had sadly died during childbirth. In this way, Evangeline was raised a lady. Her father
,
however
,
could not bear
the city. He longed
for the forests and mountains of Europe. After less than a year, he left to chase his own demons. Even though
Evangeline
only saw him once a year, she loved him
. A
s soon as she was old enough
,
she left
London society
to travel
alongside
him. They were a kindred spirit and as they travelled and researched it became clear that Evangeline had a gift.

Certain elements
were
pulled to her.
C
reatures
from
myth and legend revealed themselves to Evangeline in the same way
that
the birds came to Saint Francis. By the age of eighteen she had
ran
with wolves and swam with mermaids. She had also fallen in love with a vampire. Her father killed him for her own good. She understood that, but it still hurt
. She had never found it in her heart to forgive him.
Her vampire had been beautiful
,
i
n the same way
as the ocean or molten lava
. It was a beauty that held the possibility of destruction.

It was the same kind of beauty that was Kaspian Blackthorne.

She tried not to think on the boy’s name. It made the attraction between the two of them stronger and she knew they were already on an inevitable path towards one another. But she wasn’t ready yet. She needed to prepare
;
s
teel her heart and build her defences.

She’d taken to spyi
ng on him like he was her enemy: l
earning his weaknesses. This is what she said to convince
herself
. In truth, the seed of love had been planted on their very first meeting and each sight of
Kaspian
nourished its growth.

At the back of her notebook, the corner of a photograph stuck out. Without being aware of it, her finger found its edge and before she could prevent it, the photo sat on top of the notebook pages. She looked down on the small figure on the beach. It had been raining and it had given the picture the impression of being stained with tears.

Even though the picture showed only
Kaspian’s
back, she could see his face; pale as the moon
, h
is eyes
liquid brown. The photograph was a poem without words
.

“
Kaspian
, who are you?” she whispered into the night
air. “What will our story be?”

8

BURNING

It had been ridiculously late by the time Steptree had left Heartlock’s supper party and made his way home to his wife and
,
hopefully sleeping baby. The old man, Heartlock
,
sure was a kook, Steptree thought to himself
.
B
ut at least he was now under no confusion as to why the old man had been nicknamed The
Witch Hunter
General – that was if his stories were to be believed.

Even Steptree, Mr
.
Ration
alist and s
ceptic
,
had wavered in his trust of scientific understanding when Heartlock recollected the anecdote of how he had pursued
the
Goblin Prince across the wilds of France.

 
Steptree
put his key in t
he lock as quietly as his drink-
softened mind would let him
,
and made his way in. His home
was his own private sanctuary, a
place where he could hide from the horrors of the world. Somehow tonight they seemed to have followed him here and he felt the indefinite stain of their presence as if they had just stolen in on his shadow. The grandfather clock chimed the hour, causing him to startle and his heart to skip. He chastised himself immediately, hating
this new and fledgling
feeling of being a prisoner to superstition.

He’d left Chester with Heartlock and half a bottle of good port. The rest of the guests, except for Professor Malfent and his ‘companion’
,
had all made their leave. Steptree knew that if he hadn’t left when he had, he would still be there in the morning – sprawled out on some stranger’s sofa. He had not seen much of the boy Kaspian, which considering the supper was in his name, seemed a little strange. At some point he’d s
een the boy go off with Hugh-whatever-his-
name. Steptree had taken an
instant dislike to the man
,
recognising
a snake when he saw one. “If Heartlock has any sense at all, he’ll terminate that friendship as soon as possible.” Steptree
flinched
at the sound of his own voice.

He
sat at his desk
,
not quite ready for bed
. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers
,
which with the amount of alcohol coursing around his system, didn’t actually feel of anything.

“We’re living in crazy times,” he said into the darkness.

Steptree’s desk looked
down
onto the street below. He li
ved in a pleasant neighbourhood
;
a
crescent with its own park in the middle. His house was probably the only
one
that did not have staff and its own carriage
,
but his income wouldn’t quite stretch to that. He had
bought
the best house he could
afford
in the best neighbourhood he could. He wanted his family to be safe
;
as safe as possible
in
the
dark and violent labyrinth of the city. Meg was a good woman with no delusions of grandeur. She knew the house was not a real reflection of their income and never complained or made fuss about not being able to keep up with the neighbours. They had a good life, visiting the opera once a month and taking afternoon tea at Fortnum’s at least twice a month. They were far from poor but not quite rich enough that they could both live a life of complete leisure.

Steptree’s Oxford degree in Literature had provided him with exactly the right type of lucrative analytical skills. Although in his youth
,
he’d had romantic notions about
becom
ing
a poet, he
’d
found that his
talent lay in the dissection of others’ art
rather than the creation of his own. He
’d fallen into detective work by accident and discovered that
murder
was a craft
very similar to that of a writer’s work
;
both act
s
of creation and imagination
.
It was no puzzle to Steptree
why
so many murder
er
s were influenced by authors
,
and so many auth
ors influenced by murderers.
In
many
way
s
they were the same kind of beast.