Scepter of the Ancients (16 page)

H
OW ARE YOU
?”

Stephanie shrugged and managed not to wince. She handed the gun back to Skulduggery. Her entire body ached. “I’m good,” she lied.

Skulduggery glanced at her as he drove. “Are you hurt? Are you injured?”

“No, just a bruise or two. I’m fine, really. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Stephanie, you jumped off a building.”

“Yes, but the branches broke my fall. Every one of them.”

“And how
were
the branches?”

“A lot unlike pillows.”

“You could have been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“But you could have been.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“I’m not denying that you make a good point, but the fact is you could have been. I’ve already lost a dear friend to all this, and I don’t want that to happen again.”

She looked at him. “Are you saying you’d be very upset if I died?”

“
Very
is such a strong word. …”

“Well, if you teach me some magic, maybe I won’t get hurt as badly next time.”

“You said you weren’t hurt.”

“Are you kidding? I jumped off a building—of course I’m hurt.”

“Stephanie—”

“Yes, Skulduggery?”

“You can be really annoying at times.”

“I know. So where are we going?”

“We’re going to at least
find
the doorway to the caves. Then we’ll concentrate on finding the key to open it.”

Half an hour later they arrived at Gordon’s
estate. Stephanie climbed stiffly out of the Canary Car and followed Skulduggery inside.

The cellar was chilly and dark, and the single bulb hanging amid cobwebs wasn’t doing its job very well. Countless years’ worth of junk was collecting dust down here, and from somewhere in the dark corners came the occasional scuffle of rats. Stephanie wasn’t scared of rats, as a rule, but she wasn’t too keen on them either, so she stayed away from the corners.

Skulduggery had no such qualms. He examined the walls, scanning the surfaces as he moved sideways along them. Now and then he’d tap the wall, mutter to himself, and move on.

“Is this the same as the way into the Sanctuary?” she asked. “Are you looking for a secret passageway?”

“You watch too many haunted-house movies,” he said.

“But
are
you looking for a secret passageway?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But that’s just a coincidence.”

She pulled up the sleeve of her coat, revealing an ugly bruise on her arm, and covered it up again before Skulduggery glanced over.

“Did Gordon build the passage?” she asked.

“No, it was included in the original designs. A few hundred years ago, this was a sorcerer’s house.”

“And he built a secret passageway to the caves? I thought you said the caves were a death trap for sorcerers.”

“I did say that, yes.”

“So why did he build himself a shortcut? Was he a stupid sorcerer?”

“No, he just wasn’t a very nice one. He used to drag his enemies down there and leave them to whatever creatures were hungriest.”

“What a charming history. I can see why my uncle bought the place.”

“Aha.”

Stephanie moved closer. Skulduggery’s hand was flat against the wall. He moved it, and she could see a slight indentation, almost invisible to the naked eye.

“That’s the lock?”

“Yes. This is one of those good old-fashioned key-required locks—the kind a spell won’t open. Damn it.”

“Can you break it?”

“I
could
break it, but then it wouldn’t work, and we couldn’t get the door open.”

“I meant break
through
it.”

“That would work if the door was in the same place as the lock, but things are rarely that straightforward.”

“So we need the key.”

“We need the key.”

“I don’t suppose we’ll find it on one of Gordon’s key chains.”

“Indeed. This is not a regular key we’re looking for.”

“We don’t have to solve a puzzle to get to it, do we?”

“We may.”

She groaned. “How come nothing’s ever simple?”

“Every solution to every problem is simple. It’s the distance between the two where the mystery lies.”

They turned off the light and climbed the stairs out of the dank mustiness of the cellar. They walked into the living room, and a man in a suit—a suit that looked almost Victorian in design—turned to them.

He had black hair and thin lips, and his right
hand, which was skinless, glistened with blood and wet muscle. Before Stephanie could even register her surprise, Skulduggery was pulling the gun from his jacket. The man moved as gunshots filled the room, stepping to one side and waving his right hand.

She didn’t know what he did, but it worked, and no bullets hit him.

“Run!” Skulduggery said, pushing her out of the room.

She stumbled and something moved beside her, and she turned as another man came at her. There was something wrong with him—something wrong with his skin, with his features: they didn’t look real, they looked almost papery. She tried to hit it, whatever it was, but it was like hitting a bag of air. A fist swung at her, but unlike its body, the fist was heavy and solid, and it snapped her head back. She staggered and it reached for her, but then Skulduggery was there, hurling it away.

Three more of them came through the front door. Stephanie ran to the stairs, Skulduggery covering her escape. Halfway up, she looked back as the man in the suit strolled into the hall. She shouted a warning and Skulduggery turned to face him, but it was too late. Purple vapor gathered in
the man’s left palm, and he released it in a stream that flowed into Skulduggery and arced out behind him and above, flowing back into the man’s other hand, forming a circle. Skulduggery dropped to his knees, trying to raise the gun but unable to hold it, and it fell to the floor.

“Take him,” the man said, cutting off the purple stream. Skulduggery sagged, and three of the paper men grabbed him, started dragging him out of the house. The man motioned to the fourth. “You, kill the girl.”

And he walked out.

Stephanie sprinted to the landing, the papery thing clumping up the stairs behind her. She ran to Gordon’s dark study, slammed the door, and pushed over one of the bookcases. It toppled and crashed, and books spilled across the floor.

The door opened an inch and hit the bookcase. Heavy fists started to pound on it from the other side.

She went to the window, opened it, and looked down. Even if she made the drop without breaking her legs, she’d land right in front of the man with the red hand. She backed off, looked around for a weapon.

The bookcase slowly scraped across the floor.
The door was opening wider.

Stephanie turned, moved behind the desk, and hid. The pounding continued. She peered out. She could see a papery arm now, reaching around. Then a shoulder, and a head. She ducked back into hiding.

One last heave, and the door was open wide enough for the thing to step over the fallen bookcase. Stephanie stopped breathing.

She peeked out. It crossed to the window and leaned out, hands on the sill.

Stephanie rose and launched herself forward. It heard her and tried to turn, but she slammed into it. Its heavy hands slipped off the sill and dragged it through the window, and Stephanie reached down, grabbed its lower leg, and hauled. The thing tried to turn, tried to reach back through the window, but it was too late, and out it went with a faint rustle of paper.

It landed in a heap, and she saw the man in the suit glare up at her. He waved his arm, and she threw herself away from the window as the air turned purple and the window exploded. Glass shards rained down on her back, but they didn’t tear through the coat.

She lay where she was, hands over her head, until she heard a car start up. Then she got up, glass and splinters of wood falling from her, and reached the window just in time to see a silver car leave the estate. They’d left her, obviously deciding it wasn’t worth the effort to make sure she was dead.

She pulled the crumpled business card from her pocket, got out her phone, and dialed the number. The call was picked up almost immediately. She spoke urgently.

“I need help. They’ve taken Skulduggery.”

“Tell me where you are,” China Sorrows said. “I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

C
HINA
S
ORROWS WAS
very still. She sat with her legs crossed at the knees, hands flat on the arms of the chair. The sounds of the city at night did not seep into her apartment—they were alone in here, the only two people left on the face of the Earth. Stephanie watched her and waited.

The apartment was vast, occupying the space across the hall from her library. Stephanie had leaped out of the car China had sent, run up the stairs, and been directed in here by the man in the bow tie. No time had been lost. Skulduggery was in
danger, and they needed to get him back
now
.

China spoke at last. “How can you be sure it was Serpine?”

“What?” Stephanie said, exasperated. “Of course it was Serpine! Who else could it have been?”

A delicate shrug of delicate shoulders. “We have to be sure, that’s all.”

“I
am
sure, okay?”

China looked at her, and Stephanie felt ashamed of her impatience. She lowered her eyes and closed her mouth. She was so sore, her body was so sore, but it was all right now, because she was safe, and China would know what to do. Everything would be okay. Stephanie would wait for her to make a decision, no matter how long she deliberated, and she felt sure that Skulduggery would be safe and well. Even if he wasn’t, what did it matter? China knew what was best, and if she wanted to wait, then Stephanie would be happy to wait with her.

No
, she said to herself
, that’s the spell, that’s China’s spell working on me
. She dragged her eyes up, met China’s gaze, and thought she saw a flicker of surprise.

“What are you going to do?” Stephanie asked.

China rose from the chair in one graceful movement. “I will see to it,” she said. “You should
go home, dear; you look dreadful.”

Stephanie felt herself blush. “I’d rather stay,” she said.

“It could take some time before plans are in place. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in familiar surroundings?”

Stephanie didn’t like disagreeing with China, but she couldn’t go home, not while Skulduggery was in trouble. “I’d rather stay,” she repeated softly.

“Very well,” China said with a small smile. “I must leave, but I’ll return when I have news.”

“Can I come with you?”

“I’m afraid not, child.”

Stephanie nodded, hiding her disappointment.

China left the building, accompanied by the man in the bow tie. Stephanie stayed in the apartment for a while, but despite the fact that it was almost three in the morning, she couldn’t relax. There was no TV, and the only book in a language she could read was a leather-bound address book on a small table.

She crossed the hall and stepped into the library. She passed a man in a porcelain mask, too engrossed in his reading to notice her. She walked slowly, reading the titles on the spines of the books,
trying to keep her mind occupied. If she could find something here, a book that had what she needed, then maybe she wouldn’t be so helpless next time she went up against Serpine, or anyone else. If she’d had even a slight bit of power, she might have been able to help Skulduggery.

She followed one shelf to its end, then chose another one, wandering deeper into the labyrinth. She couldn’t work out the system—the books weren’t arranged alphabetically, or by author, or even by topic. It all seemed completely random.

“You look lost.”

She turned. The young woman who had addressed her slipped a book back into its place. She had tousled blond hair and was pretty, but her eyes were hard, and she wore a sleeveless tunic that showed her strong arms. She spoke with an English accent.

“I’m looking for a book,” Stephanie said, unsure.

“This would seem to be the place for that.”

“Are there any books here on magic?”

“They’re
all
books on magic,” the young woman replied.

“I mean learning magic. I just need something.
Anything
.”

“You have no one to teach you?”

“Not yet. I don’t know how to find anything in here.”

For a moment, Stephanie felt she was being studied. Finally, the young woman spoke again. “My name is Tanith Low.”

“Oh, hi. I’m afraid I can’t tell you my name. No offense.”

“None taken. The books are arranged in terms of experience. These are far too advanced for someone without instruction. Two rows over, you might find what you need.”

Stephanie thanked her, and Tanith walked away, disappearing in the maze of shelves. Stephanie found the section she was referring to and started scanning the titles.
An Introductory Guide to Monster Hunting
,
The Sorcery Doctrines
,
A History So Far
,
Three Names
…

Stephanie took
Three Names
from the shelf and flicked through it. She came to the part on taken names, a chunk of the book that went on for roughly two hundred pages, and scanned the headings in bold print. She turned pages, skimmed paragraphs, looking for anything that stood out. The best advice it had for taking a name was this: “The
name you take should fit you, define you, and already be known to you.”

She put the book back, unimpressed, and scanned a few more titles before she found it:
Elemental Magic
. She took it down, opened it, and started reading. This was it. This was what she was looking for. She found an old chair in one corner and sat, bringing her legs up under her.

Her mobile phone was perched on the arm of the chair. Stephanie held her hand closed, trying to think of the space between her hand and the phone as a series of interlocking objects. Moving one would move another, which would move another, which would move the phone. She focused, opened her hand slowly, and then snapped her palm, as she had seen Skulduggery do.