Between Two Thorns (3 page)

He was talking about her freedom like it was a holiday fling with a barman but she kept silent, not at all certain that she could speak without getting herself into more trouble or bursting into tears.

“There should be a third rule,” he muttered, glancing at the faerie. “It’s prettier that way. Three wishes, three rules.”

“I have an idea!” It pirouetted in delight. “The wishes have to be made before the grand ball opening the season in Aquae Sulis.”

“Exquisite!” Lord Poppy blew a kiss to the faerie, rustling the petals of its dress. The tiny creature’s wings fluttered so much they left a trail of faint sparkles. “Then you can begin the season as a fabulous success. Or as a faint shadow of yourself. Oh, I didn’t mention the penalty, did I?”

Tears or vomiting, Cathy wasn’t sure which now. He’d removed the Shadow Charm but instead of delivering her to the family, Lord Poppy was toying with her. He knew as well as she did that it was inevitable they would find her without magical protection and there was no way the Shopkeeper would dare sell her anything useful now one of the Fae lords had personally intervened. She didn’t need a penalty to feel absolutely screwed.

“Should you fail to impress me by the first ball of the season, I shall reach into your soul and pluck out that bright source of your initiative. Then you can spend the rest of your life doing as you are told, perfectly incapable of forming a desire or opinion of your own.” He waited a beat, but she remained in horrified silence. “I think that’s fitting.” He glanced at the faerie who nodded with glee.

 

4

 

Max slid the lockpick back into the leather case, tucked that into his inside pocket and pushed the door open. One last check up and down the corridor and there was no one in sight. He stepped inside.

The air inside the studio flat was as stale as he’d anticipated, an unpleasant odour leaking from the fridge in the tiny corner kitchen. The place was very small with huge sash windows letting in light and noise from the London street below. Up here, the traffic was a constant background roar, punctuated by the odd siren and beeping car horn. He could see the roof of the building opposite, and noted no windows or balconies overlooked the flat.

He swept his eyes over the mess as he quietly closed the door behind him. Takeaway cartons were piled on the tiny table in the corner and the sofa bed had been left unfolded with sheets and pillows rumpled on top of it. Clothes were strewn all over the floor and the rickety canvas wardrobe was full of empty wire coat hangers. A couple of drawers were open, but it didn’t look as if the place had been turned over. There were too many things still in place that a burglar would have snatched: a jewellery box, a laptop, a small plastic tub of loose change and a few notes.

Even though he was fairly certain what the results would be, Max took the Sniffer out of his pocket, wound it up and set it down on the kitchenette worktop. The squat brass container ticked as its spring slowly wound down, at first looking like an octagonal musical box on stout legs. The eight segments forming its top telescoped open and a tiny horn emerged, not unlike that of a miniature gramophone. The ticking was then masked by a gentle whirring as the device sucked in the air from the room and blew it out of a vent in its underside.

All Charms used by the criminals in the so-called Great Families left a residue in the air, tiny amounts of the fragrance associated with the Fae who originally created the Charm. It was too little to detect with a human nose, and dogs couldn’t be trusted, so the Sniffer was used to extract the trace amounts from the air and analyse the strength of the Charm used. Even derived Charms, created by the criminal families themselves, still had the original scents, and thankfully none of them knew the Arbiters had figured out how to trace their handiwork. No perfumes, nor any of the bizarre air-fresheners that seemed to be more popular in Mundanus each time he came in, interfered with the sensitivity of the device, but it was just a question of time before the Fae-touched families found another way to cover their tracks.

As it did its work, Max picked his way across the room, navigating past skirts and dresses, glancing at the stack of well-thumbed fashion magazines by the bed. Not a book in sight. It looked as if she’d been choosing what to wear; most of the garments were in piles around the long mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed. He didn’t bother to look in it himself. He knew what he was wearing and how ugly his face was. He’d been living with it for years.

He glanced inside the corner of the room partitioned off for a tiny bathroom. Every surface was covered with bottles and make-up. Taped to the mirror over the sink was a picture of a brunette with smoky eyes. Perhaps she’d been copying the make-up; speckles of rouge covered the sink and brushes were piled up behind the taps.

He knew the brunette in the picture wasn’t Miss Brooks because she was the fourth blonde to disappear from London’s St Pancras ward in the last month. He wanted to confirm his theory as soon as he could, so he went over to the coffee table on the other side of the sofa bed, seeing a notepad with something scrawled on it. He hoped that Miss Brooks liked to write things down rather than tapping them straight into those infernal mobile phones.

He nodded as he read the scrawl. “2 pm!!! Photo shoot – casual and glam – contracts – passport!!!!” He could picture her taking the call, scribbling notes as she held in the excited scream until she called her best friend to give her the news.

It all led back to the talent agency; the theory was confirmed. A tiny
ping
from the Sniffer drew him back. The horn retreated as the pointer on the side spun to… white. Good, no trace of Fae magic.

Once it was closed again, he dropped the Sniffer into his pocket. He had just enough time to send his findings back to the Chapter and make the rendezvous with Montgomery. If he could help the London Arbiter crack the case he could be back in Bath for dinner.

The windows were large enough to climb out of and he’d seen the narrow walkway outside from the street below. Leaving his trilby on the bed, he forced one of the windows up, admitting the city’s roar into the flat. He stepped outside and sent a pair of pigeons up into the sky, cooing in alarm. The walkway was little more than a ledge with an ornate stone safety rail. Being incapable of fear in that moment was a boon.

The clear autumn day was a bonus; in the rain the lead roofing would have been even more treacherous. He edged his way to the corner where he’d seen the angel. London architects liked the idea of heavenly figures watching the streets and he could see why. London was loud, fast and crowded, even compared to his native Bath on a summer Saturday. Yet again he questioned the sense of helping Montgomery with a case outside his own territory.

The angel was twice his size, classical beauty and marble toga both covered in pigeon droppings. A grand lady with a bad job, she was holding up an equally filthy cornice. If he stretched, he’d be able to reach her.

He fumbled under his coat and shirt and brought the chain up over his head, his neck feeling naked without the thick, heavy links. It was a suitably ugly thing, engraved with formulae and carrying the Wessex Sorcerer’s seal, still warm from resting against his chest.

Climbing onto the folds of the angel’s dress, he caught hold of one of her arms and swung round to drop the chain over her head. After a few pokes and nudges, it dropped past her nose and fell with a dull chink around her neck. By the time he’d clambered back down onto the walkway her stone eyes were blinking, and once his coat was straightened and buttoned back up again her head twisted round to look at him.

He took a deep breath, preparing himself for the rush of connection and then rested a hand on her arm to keep contact. “Personal diary entry,” he said, and the angel nodded. “I have confirmed my suspicion regarding the talent agency’s involvement after searching the studio flat of a Miss Clare Brooks, the fourth missing person on the list.”

He paused to give the statue a chance to repeat his report back to the Chapter.

“I was right about that damn talent agency.” Max’s soul’s voice was far too low and gravelly to suit the angel’s face. “I’ve found evidence connecting it to the fourth missing person on the list, Miss Clare Brooks, after searching her flat. I’m seriously concerned that something is very wrong in the Kingdom of Essex.”

Max blinked at the angel. Was that how he really felt? He cleared his throat. “Montgomery has failed to make contact at the prearranged location. If it happens again I’ll have to assume the individual or individuals involved have learnt of his suspicion.”

“And I’m worried that the rat Montgomery called me in to find is on to him.” The angel’s previously serene face was now distorted by a deep frown.

“Maybe he’s lying low, or…”

“He might be dead!” the angel interrupted. “This is getting serious and it’s not my territory and I don’t know what I’ll do if this gets any worse.”

“All right, all right,” he said to the angel, “let’s stick to the facts.”

“This is a personal entry,” it replied peevishly. “It’s so rare I get a chance to express myself, I have to make the most of it.”

“I’m not going to stand here and argue. I’m going to stake out the agency. It’s been a week since Miss Brooks went missing and I know I’m close. I can’t trust anyone in London, so I’ll stick with it until Montgomery shows up.”

The angel’s report was closer, though still embellished with “until Montgomery shows up dead or apologetic” tacked onto the end. When it was done, he climbed higher up the sculpture to retrieve the chain, ready for the familiar lurching sensation when contact with his soul was severed.

He’d lost count of the times he’d reported back to the Chapter from Mundanus, but every single time he broke contact it brought back the memory of the day he qualified. That was the last time he’d felt excitement, when he heard he’d passed all the tests and showed enough promise to work in the field as an Arbiter. He was thirteen, and, an hour after they’d told him, they’d dislocated his soul and put the chain around his neck, too tight then to take off.

He knew he’d screamed so much he was hoarse by the time the links were closed, but he knew it only intellectually, like a memory of a scene in a play he’d once watched.

With each successful year in the field under his mentor, a link was added until he was trusted to manage the connection himself and act independently. He had no idea where exactly in the cloister his soul was kept. Nor did he have any idea how it was stored, how the reports he sent back were recorded or how the Chapter Master was informed. But he didn’t need to know. He just got on with the job and did his best to ignore how his soul leaked emotion into his reports.

The dislocation was ninety years ago. If he’d spent all that time in Mundanus he’d be a frail old man now, if not dead. He’d have got married, had children, grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren. Sometimes he looked at the people, the ones the Fae-touched so disparagingly called “mundanes”, and wondered what it was like to be them, if only to try and understand and predict what the criminals would be interested in next. But he had no regrets when he observed them. That was impossible.

Chain back around his neck, window closed, flat swept for any trace of his break-in, and he was on his way to Judd Street. He kept an eye out for statues that could make valid connection points in case of emergency. In Bath he knew every single statue, gargoyle and grotesque in a five-mile radius of the city centre. His knowledge of London was insufficient for this case.

Case? That made it sound official, and it was far from that. He wondered where Montgomery was. It was rare for an Arbiter to ask for help, but to ask someone from a different Chapter? That was unheard of. For Montgomery to ask meant it was serious. That, and the fact they’d collaborated on a tough case in the Fifties, was what made him agree. That had only been an exchange of information, however, not trips to each other’s territories without official permission. It had prevented some of Lady Rose’s puppets from getting a foothold in Bath and he had found Montgomery to be reliable and thorough. Max wondered why Montgomery had missed the latest rendezvous.

Speculation was futile. Max had no means of contacting him outside the prearranged meetings. They didn’t use mobile phones, the Chapter couldn’t guarantee their security yet, and being in different Chapters meant they couldn’t coordinate as easily as he would with a fellow Wessex Arbiter.

Instead, he turned his mind to the evidence. One innocent could be lost to Exilium owing to poor luck, but to lose four in as many weeks? Montgomery was right; there had to be a crooked Arbiter in the pay of the parasites for something so blatant to happen in such a small geographical area. If Max’s suspicions were correct the talent agency operating out of 191 Judd Street was a front organisation for the London Fae-touched. They were probably using it as a means of drawing blonde men and women who fit a profile to a location where they could be kidnapped. Why hadn’t the local Arbiters spotted the pattern? Perhaps the more pertinent question was: why were they ignoring it?

Max couldn’t understand how corruption of that magnitude could even be possible. A dislocated soul protected them not just from Fae magic but also from temptation, and the greed that fuelled corruption. As far as he knew, no Arbiter had ever been compromised; that was one of the many reasons why the Fae and their puppets were so terrified of them.

He found a café a few doors down. It took him a moment to adjust to the new prices, then he ordered a coffee and settled down at one of the outside tables with a newspaper. He wanted to watch the comings and goings at number 191 whilst waiting for Montgomery. London was becoming more continental every year; he couldn’t remember this street café culture from the last time he’d been there. But a lot had changed since the Fifties.

The disappearances were on a seven-day cycle, and Miss Brooks had disappeared exactly one week before. It was quarter to two in the afternoon, a good time to watch as all of the previous appointments had been for 2pm.

He didn’t have to wait long. A woman with honey-blonde hair and extraordinarily long legs was tottering towards the agency’s door. He quickly fished out his glasses. He’d almost forgotten about them; it was the first time they’d been tested in the field, and they were not part of his usual repertoire.

Through the glasses, she faded to the same grey as everything around her. She hadn’t been charmed, and, interestingly, the agency frontage and threshold hadn’t been glamoured either. It looked as if it was still a normal mundane office with no anchor for a Nether property. That was good. If they wanted to kidnap her, they’d have to take her somewhere else. He put the glasses away. Wearing them too long made him feel sick, and if anyone inspected them closely they’d see the modifications.

There was a bounce to her step and a smile that suggested she’d had the same phone call as the previous victims. All he had to do was wait.

It was unlikely they’d take her in broad daylight. They’d wait until dusk, first taking her to another location, probably a bar, before posting her through to Exilium. By then he should have passed on his findings to Montgomery. If Montgomery didn’t show, Max was on dodgy ground by not having a local contact, but he hadn’t had time to resolve that. He would follow them to the temporary location then call in to his Chapter Master if Montgomery didn’t show up in the next half hour.