Seven Sorcerers (28 page)

She smiled. ‘Better now?’

Jonas tried to focus on her. He could feel cool air around him and soft sheets on his skin. He felt clean.

‘Much,’ he mumbled, his voice blurring.

‘We don’t have long to talk,’ said the woman. ‘I’m just a memory, you see, a kind of ghost. I can only speak to people at times like this, the instant between oblivion and consciousness.’

‘I’m waking up?’

‘Yes, but I can hold on to the moment for a little while.’ She smiled at him and his breath caught in his
chest. ‘My sisters have been singing Pleads for you all night and the candles that you see there each have one drop of unicorn blood in them. They were the last drops of the last unicorn ever and we were saving them for such as you.’

‘For me?’ Jonas watched her, transfixed. Her voice sent fingers of silver into his heart and made him want to laugh or cry or both. ‘Why me? I’m not important.’

The woman looked at him gravely. ‘No. You are not important. But you are part of something that is. It would take months to chase the Hounds entirely from your heart, but we have only this one night to do the best for you that we can. And so we used the candles. They will give you the strength you need to fight the battle when it comes, but in the end it will be down to you.’

‘Thank you. But why only one night?’

‘That you will know soon enough.’ She smiled. ‘Always remember that the feeling of power never lasts. Those who run with the Hounds soon become desperate and unhappy, chasing across the sky, forever hunting their lost life. You have been saved from that fate in the Storm, don’t let it claim you on the Land.’

The woman was blurring in front of him, blending into the light.

‘Don’t go! I don’t know your name!’

She laughed. ‘I am Enid Lockheart,’ she said. ‘Remember me.’

Jonas sat up and the room was filled with nothing but
early-morning sun. The door banged open and Jik tumbled through, clutching a scrunched-up piece of paper.

‘Yik bikik?’

‘I am, thanks.’ Jonas shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.

A tall, fair woman dressed in blue appeared behind Jik. Her eyes were golden and her face held an echo of Enid Lockheart. But only an echo. Jonas wondered what sort of Grimm the sisters were, what kind of Fabulous ran in their blood

She smiled at Jonas. ‘I am Elinor, one of those who cared for you last night.’

‘IK,’ said Jik impatiently. He held out the paper and Jonas saw that it was singed around the edges and had writing on it. He took it nervously. It said:

‘Skerridge,’ groaned Jonas.

‘Nice of him to send a note,’ said Elinor. ‘Even if it is written in blood. Bogeymen don’t usually bother about the kids after they’ve delivered them.’

‘Blood?’ said Jonas anxiously. ‘Whose blood?’

‘There’s a PS on the back.’

Jonas turned the paper over and sighed. It said:

The kid in the bed looked insufferably cute, snugged up under the covers with only a tuft of dark hair showing. Skerridge made a gagging face and reached for his sack.

He paused. He had been feeling edgy after the Redstone fiasco and decided on one final check to make sure he had not forgotten anything. Carefully, Skerridge ticked everything off his mental list.

He had spun the memory of the boy out of his mother’s and father’s heads. Tick.

He had paid a visit to both sets of grandparents and spun their heads empty too. Tick. And three of his best friends. Tick. And, just to be on the safe side, he had even done the cat. Tick.

Skerridge frowned. Maybe he had overdone it with the cat. BMs didn’t normally bother with pets, but cats were tricky things and liable to remember stuff when other people forgot. He nodded firmly. Best to be sure.

Next Skerridge had erased all physical traces of the kid, from his favourite toys right through to every photograph of him that had ever been taken. Big tick.

Nope, nothing missed. Satisfied, Skerridge was just about to wake the boy when a chill ran down his spine.

He
had
forgotten something after all. Something so important, so much a part of the job, that he might as well not have bothered.

He was a bogeyman and bogeymen scared kids, it was in their bones. Normally he took at least a couple of
weeks, but this time he had gone straight to the snatch. This time, and this was a ghastly fact indeed, HE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE KID LOOKED LIKE!

Horror brought him out in an icy sweat. He gave a strangled half-sob as the terrible truth dawned. Somehow, during the great chase across the Drift after the Redstone brat, Skerridge, Chief Bogeyman and Champion Kid-Catcher, had lost it. And then things got even worse.

All of a sudden, Skerridge realised that the thought of crouching in a closet and laughing maniacally at a kid was dreary. Hiding under the bed and tickling the backs of their ankles as they sat on the edge of the mattress? Tedious beyond belief. Skerridge moaned and hid his face in his hands.

It was earth-shattering. It was a revolution. It was like a vampire discovering that, actually, sucking blood was a bit of a bore. In an instant his world had turned upside down and he had no idea what to do about it.

After a moment, he looked at the kid again, then up at the window. It was early morning and if he didn’t hurry it would be dawn. Skerridge stared at the pale square of window, just above the humped shape of the sleeping boy. He wasn’t thinking exactly he was just … waiting to see what came next.

A beam of sunshine broke in over the sill. It crept across the bed and on to a red-eyed, bony thing with too many mismatched teeth and a fancy waistcoat.
Skerridge blinked.

Then he reached into his pocket and took out the memory pearl that he had just made from the kid’s loved ones and woke the kid up. It gave one brief squawk then shut up as Skerridge scowled at it.

‘Right, kid. Know what I am?’

‘B-b-bogeyman?’ the kid wailed and burst into tears. When it had its mouth open for a particularly loud wail, Skerridge popped the pearl in.

The kid gulped in surprise and swallowed. Thin strands of silver light began to waft away from him. It went on for about half a minute and then faded. His parents would have trouble figuring out where the kid’s things had gone to, nothing Skerridge could do about that, but they would at least remember that they had a kid in the first place.

‘There ya go,’ said Skerridge. ‘Fink yerself lucky ya got me when I was ‘avin’ a crisis. By the way, just as a side issue like, d’you know any scary places round ’ere?’

The kid blinked.

‘’Urry up or I’ll eat yer ears.’

‘T-T-Tanglewood!’ gulped the kid and went back to screaming.

Somewhere down the hall a door was thrown open and a voice called, ‘Mikey? Are you all right?’ followed by the sound of someone hurrying to the room.

Skerridge grinned and left by the window.

All the other bogeymen would sneer at him and say he wasn’t a proper bogeyman if he didn’t want to hide in
dark places and scare kids, but quite frankly he didn’t care. There were far more interesting things to do in the world than catch kids for Mr Strood and Skerridge intended to do them. He knew it didn’t do to get curious about the Quick, but it was too late to worry about that now. So he was going to start his new life by finding out if the Redstone girl had been eaten by the Maug. Because Skerridge was ready to bet his fancy waistcoat that she hadn’t.

He found Tanglewood easily enough in a hidden stretch of wilderness, surrounded by overgrown hedges, dark trees and the distant backs of houses. Hurtling through the suspiciously rustling undergrowth, Skerridge found himself back in the Drift in a wood some miles south of the House. Miles are pretty much nothing when you can move at superspeed and in less time than it would take a Quick to walk down to the end of the road for a newspaper or some sweets, Skerridge was back in the garden of the House, looking up at its uninviting face thoughtfully.

The problem was how to get inside. Normally, bogeymen just walked in through the front door, but that was when they were taking a kid to Mr Strood. It would be so weird for a bogeyman to turn up at the House without a kid in a sack that rats might be smelled and questions might be asked.

So, Skerridge had to find another way in. He stared at the house for a few minutes, looking it over carefully. Then he grinned. It was obvious really. It wouldn’t do
for a Quick, but for a bogeyman it was near perfect.

He set off towards the house, approaching it from the side rather than up the path, just in case someone was watching. When he got there he avoided the guard at the front door and scurried swiftly up the wall and on to the roof.

Nin was dreaming about darkness that came alive and ate her slowly from the feet up. It was trying to get to her heart and however hard she fought, it kept on, relentless. And then the world began to tremble and shake and come apart around her.

She woke up. It was early morning and a boy was shaking her. For a moment he looked so like her stolen brother that she gasped.

‘Toby?’

The kid stopped shaking her and stared. It wasn’t Toby at all. Toby was only four and this one looked like a very small eight. Although the sun made his hair shine it was really brown, and his eyes were black instead of deep blue. Nin burst into tears.

‘It’s OK. Really,’ the boy sat down next to her. ‘I won’t tell the guards you’re here.’

Nin tried to get her face under control by wiping her eyes on her sleeves and sniffing a lot.

‘How did you get here?’

‘Oh – um – I just – a bogeyman brought me,’ Nin said, still sniffing.

‘If a BM got you this far, he would have given you to Mr Strood.’

Nin stared at him blankly. ‘Um … he t-tried to feed me to the Maug only it w-went wrong and the guard got eaten, so I ran away,’ she stuttered after a moment.

The boy gaped, then reached out and touched her hand.

‘Here, you look like you could do with some breakfast. I always bring mine down here to eat while I sweep. You can have it. Samfy’ll give me some more later. My name’s Milo,’ he added, pushing a hunk of bread made into a jam sandwich into her hands. ‘I’m one of the up-house servants. And I’m betting you’re Ninevah Redstone.’

Still sniffing, Nin took a bite. ‘You know me?’

‘I know
about
you. We all do. You’re the girl who gave Skerridge the slip, made a Fabulous and got away from the Hounds. Looks like you escaped the Maug too! Wait till I tell Samfy!’

‘Who’s she?’

‘Samfy looks after me since my mum and dad died. My mum got blown up in the laboratory and my dad got eaten by the Maug.’

‘How … um … old are you?’

‘Ten,’ said Milo, ‘but we aren’t as big as normal human Quicks. We’re part mouse, you see, Mr Strood made us to be timid so we wouldn’t cause any trouble.’ He smiled at Nin. ‘We’re his servants and we keep his rooms clean, serve his meals, do his washing and that.
We live in the attic, the one next to the pet tigers. We’re called the up-house staff and we’re run by the housekeeper, Mrs Dunvice. She’s a werewolf Grimm, so you have to watch out. Then there are the down-house servants to look after the servants. And the servants to look after the guards, plus the guards themselves and Mr Strood’s Eyes.’

Nin coughed on a mouthful of juice. ‘Mr Strood’s Eyes,’ she repeated and shuddered, remembering Errol’s last words. ‘And – um – what exactly are Mr Strood’s Eyes?’

‘Oh he made them too,’ said Milo cheerfully. ‘He likes to distil things down to their basic elements then blend them with other things to make … well, creatures really. The Eyes are made from the essence of one of those big blue spiders from the garden mixed with an imp and with liquid crowsmorte for blood. Samfy says Mr Strood can look out of their eyes any time he wants. They run round the house checking everything, but they’re getting old now and they keep exploding and he can’t make any more because there are no more imps.’ Milo smiled. ‘I expect he’ll find a way round it though.’

He glanced out of the crystal wall. The sun was well on its way up the sky by now.