A Hero at the End of the World (16 page)

Movement in front of Bancroft’s home caught Ewan’s attention. It was the postman knocking on his door, a large parcel in his hands. When Bancroft answered, he wasn’t what Ewan had expected: he was short and portly, with a head of wiry silver hair and a deeply lined face. He practically snatched the parcel out of the postman’s hands and slammed the door behind him, but not before giving the street a long, suspicious look.

“I think he knows we’re here,” Ewan said. The interior of the car was slowly growing colder, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his down-filled vest.

“Most likely,” Archie agreed. “By this point, he’s probably been approached by members of our organization several times, hoping to end this peacefully. He’s being stubborn.”

That made Ewan frown. “Why do you need to get rid of records, anyway? Did your mum do something bad?”

Archie sniffed. “Of course not. But there are people out there who are determined to bring down the Society and keep anyone from practicing Zaubernegativum. Did you know it’s still illegal in France, Belgium, and Germany to use it as your source of magic?”

“Why?”

“Their governments paid off scientists to say it’s a destructive force.”

A flare of unease went through Ewan. “But that’s not true, is it?”

Archie looked surprised. “Obviously it’s a lie,” he replied vehemently. “They’re simply afraid of how powerful we are. They want to control how the people use magic; they’re afraid that if one person becomes too powerful, we’d have another Duff Slan on our hands.”

“Like Oliver,” Ewan murmured thoughtfully.

A strange look passed over Archie’s face. “Anyway,” he said, brushing dust off the car’s clock, “you’d be surprised how easy it is to frame someone for a crime.”

Ewan arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Is it?”

“After I left uni I helped frame an important state official who shall remain nameless for embezzlement,” Archie boasted. “We did it so convincingly that he’s now in his second year of a decade-long sentence.”

“What did he do to deserve that treatment?” Ewan asked.

“He insulted Mother. In
public
.”

Ewan’s stomach twisted. Looking into Archie’s proud face, he felt a bit ill.

“You know, you’re a hypocrite,” he said.

Archie’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve spent all this time telling me how I can better myself, how I don’t have to be the former slayer of Duff Slan, but in the meantime you have no life outside of your mum’s organization.”

“That’s not true,” Archie insisted. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I help her because I want to.”

“Have you ever done something she explicitly didn’t want you to do?” Ewan asked.

“At least I haven’t let one event define my entire existence,” Archie snapped.

That stung. Ewan looked away, biting the inside of his cheek; Archie fell silent as well, and they sat there in angry silence.

“I’m not being fair, I suppose,” Archie said eventually, and Ewan glanced over at him in surprise. “I know you’re trying to change your life. But it’s hard, seeing as how you’re in love with Oliver and all.”

“In love with
who
?” Ewan demanded, sitting up straight.

Archie finally looked over at him. “Aren’t you? You’re so obsessed with him.”

“Love and obsession have nothing to do with each other.”

Archie rolled his eyes. “They have
everything
to do with each other.”

“This is a really troubling conversation,” Ewan said unhappily. “Believe me when I say I’m not in love with Oliver. He’s so... Oliver. If you’d met him, you’d understand.”

“Hmm,” Archie replied, looking pensive.

The way Archie was looking at him caused butterflies to flutter in Ewan’s stomach. “At any rate, I’m the wrecker of Ralph the Ravager now,” he said, squirming. “I’m going to be a whole new person. And I know you don’t do everything your mum wants, so I’m sorry, too,” he mumbled.

“No, I do,” sighed Archie. He turned to look out his window. “It’s just easier that way. We’re not all you. We can’t all change our destiny.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Ewan muttered.

“You really aren’t in love with Oliver?” Archie asked.

“Not even a little,” Ewan replied, shuddering in horror.

Outside, gray clouds began rolling in. Ewan slouched down further in his seat, feeling flustered but not certain why.

¤

It was nearly an hour on the Tube back to Walthamstow from High Street Kensington. After switching lines at Victoria, Ewan was crammed in the middle of a crowd of German teenagers clearly on holiday; two girls kept leaning over his legs to loudly talk to each other, and, across from them, a few of the boys were laughing over pictures on their cameras. Painstakingly avoiding eye contact with any of them, Ewan stared up at an advert for toothpaste.

The train rolled out of the dark tunnel and into Oxford Circus. He had been hoping that they would get off there, as most tourists tended to, but none of them budged.

Ewan knew at least three silencing spells, but it was rude to use them in public. Maybe if he could use Zaubernegativum, he could do it without anyone noticing.

The thought made his stomach twist with both nerves and excitement. He had never tried any magic other than alapomancy—he wasn’t sure he could stand the way people would look at him if they knew that he used a different way of channeling magic. But there was something about the illicitness of it that made him want to try it.

Closing his eyes, he opened himself up to the dormant magic around him, hoping to draw in waves of power from—from what, exactly? His instinct was to take it from the totems of the people in the carriage and from the inanimate objects around him, charging up his own totem like a battery, but he shoved that thought out of his mind. He had to take magic from the universe, the Gardener Hobbeses had said.

He focused his thoughts on all the magic that the world could hold; there had to be so much of it floating around that surely even someone like him could tap into it.

Nothing happened.

Someone laughed loudly, and suddenly all Ewan could picture was his totem, heavy against his chest. It was impossible to concentrate over the sounds of people chatting, throats clearing, and wheels screeching, and when the train jerked left he lost his focus entirely.

Ewan opened his eyes. None of the teenagers around him seemed to notice, or perhaps they thought that he had dozed off.

“Stupid Archie,” he muttered under his breath.

Chapter 17

I
t took three charity shops in Kentish Town before Oliver found a cheap, portable cassette player.

He walked along what he assumed was the same path that he and Ewan had taken past the bowling green, up over Parliament Hill and across the grass. But instead of having a single ounce of recollection of his attack, all he could remember was him and Ewan playing there in the summer holidays. There was the tumulus, where they had played war; the Highgate Ponds, where they had spent the long, hot summer days; and the Kenwood Estate, where Ewan had fallen out of the trees and broken his arm, twice. He’d had his first snog on the East Heath with Claire Frimpong, who afterwards had dumped him for a boy from her swimming club. Those memories, as fond as they were, didn’t help him at all.

It had rained overnight. Oliver’s feet sunk into the cold, wet earth. Maybe he shouldn’t have worn his smart shoes for this.

Up ahead, Boudicca’s supposed burial mound rose out of the hills. A ring of yellow police tape surrounded it; Oliver knew from personal experience that the tape had been enchanted so that wildlife wouldn’t chew on it. Still, he kept an eye out for some of the more dangerous woodland creatures.

Oliver stared at the strange, tree-covered lump of earth and grass, trying to remember anything he could. Yet all he drew was a blank—he couldn’t even remember whether or not it had been raining that day. (It probably had been, knowing Britain.)

As he tore down the police tape and stepped up onto the tumulus, a black spot in the corner of his vision moved. He glanced up to see a blackbird sentry gazing down at him with large, unblinking eyes.

Oliver tugged on the knot of his scarf, loosening it enough to flash the ID card clipped to his jumper. “I’m with the SMCA,” he told it.

As he knew it would, once it had registered his ID number, the sentry turned its head away from him, giving him permission to poke around.

“All right then,” Oliver murmured, half to himself, half to the mechanism. He walked around the circle of trees, searching for any sign of plastic peeking out from the grass.

There was a simple location spell, but it would only work with people or items that didn’t have protective enchantments on them—the kind of spell that kids used to find their toys, or teachers sent out to make sure no one was cheating on an exam. Oliver had learned a far more complicated and precise one during his SMCA training, but, after his head injury and the black spot in his memory, he struggled to remember it.

“
Ic gewite secan
,” he began after the basic spell failed, but then he stopped himself. That didn’t sound right. “
Ealle menn spyriath—
bollocks.”

He shouted the last up at the sentry, which had gone back to observing him. It displayed no visible reaction.

“Sorry,” he said to it, feeling ridiculous, since sentries weren’t equipped to record audio, “but I normally never have a problem remembering spells. I’m the ruddy slayer of Duff Slan.”

The sentry cocked its head. It was almost as if it had understood him.

“I know that you’re not alive or anything,” Oliver asked, “but... you didn’t see anything, did you? When I was here with Ewan?”

It stared at him for a handful of heartbeats before spreading its wings and lifting itself into the air.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Oliver murmured.

He sighed and looked back at the trees, feeling hopeless. He knew that the tape had to be there somewhere—unless the pixies had gotten to it and had ripped it apart, scattering the bits in their nests around the Heath.

A shadow passed over him. He glanced up at the sky, frowning; the sentry was circling the tumulus, its head moving left and right as it peered down, as if searching for something.

Was the mechanism helping him after all?

Suddenly, it dove, disappearing from sight.

Oliver pushed his way through the bushes. Moments later, the trees thinned and the ground began to incline downwards; just outside the tumulus, he found that the blackbird sentry was pecking at something half-hidden in the green and gold grass.

He sucked in a cold breath when he spotted the rounded corner of a cassette tape.

He knelt down on the cold, damp ground and dug it out. Happily, though parts of it were caked with mud, it still looked like it would work without trouble; he used his thumbs to wipe off most of the soil.

“I don’t know if you can understand me, but cheers,” he said to the sentry.

It ducked its head slightly, as if nodding, and then took to the sky again. Oliver watched the black speck disappear into the horizon, feeling grateful, confused, and well creeped out.

Oliver looked back down at the cassette. He flipped it over and frowned at the label, which was speckled with black dirt. “‘Becks’?” he murmured.

He rewound a bit before hitting the play button.

“
—haven’t been in the middle of it. Things
have
changed—granted, not loads, but... but it
is
different, okay? I’ve been doing all I can to make sure of that. It’s why I came to meet you.
”

That was his own voice, scratchy and higher-pitched than he would have liked. He hit the fast-forward button for a few seconds.

“
Did you know that I’m here speaking to you at Ralph the Ravager’s bequest? He—I mean, we—knew you’d come if I asked.
”

“
You know the Sazzies are evil, right?
”

“
They’re not evil
.”

“
Now you’re just being judgmental.
”

“
So this means you know what they’re up to. Do you have evidence of what Louise Gardener Hobbes is trying to do? She was trying to send that power
somewhere
—where? What’s her plan?
”

“
What are you on about? I’m not talking about Louise. I’m taking about myself.
”Ewan’s voice took on a strange, choked quality. “
About
my
plans.
”

Ewan hated him, Oliver realized as he listened.

Lightheaded, he leaned against the tree, the rough texture of its bark digging into his back. Ewan had gone to the hospital with him; he’d picked Oliver up and made sure he’d arrived home safely. All that time he’d behaved as if they were still the best of friends, when he had been the one who had drawn Oliver into a fight. Ewan had been trying to kill him.

Oliver pulled out his mobile. He had to walk in a circle for a while until he had a signal.

“Sophie,” he asked once she had picked up, “who’s Louise Gardener Hobbes?”

Chapter 18

E
wan’s mobile began buzzing even before he walked out of Walthamstow Central station, leaving the warmth and darkness of the Tube behind him for the cold, gray light of day. Unlike West London, in the North East it was drizzling. His glasses misted over with rainwater.

Hunching further into his hoodie and winter vest, Ewan strolled down Walthamstow market’s long, pedestrian road. As usual, it was busy and loud out. He passed the familiar stalls loaded with fruit and veg, Polish sausages and Caribbean rice, and toys and clothes; behind him, people drifted in and out of shops, off-licenses, bakeries, and restaurants. Even in the rain, people were sitting at the café tables that lined the pavement. Across the way, he spotted his neighbor buying olives, oblivious to the fact that the wrecker of the Ravager was living right next door.

Once he reached the junction of his road and the high street, Ewan pulled out his mobile. It turned out he had seven missed calls, all from Oliver.

“Huh,” he murmured to himself, “that’s odd.”

He wiped water off his mobile’s screen with the cuff of his hoodie and dialed him back. Seconds later, he heard the shrill music of a ring tone.