The Invitation (3 page)

What was that supposed to mean? Tim stopped struggling.

“We're not going to hurt you,” the man continued. “We just want a word with you, see?”

Tim couldn't place the accent, though he guessed the man wasn't from a posh neighborhood. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Police?”

He knew he'd never done anything that would cause the police to come after him, but he kind of liked the idea that perhaps he was a suspect. It made him feel dangerous and interesting.

“Nah. I'm a private operator,” the blond man said. “So are the other three.” He smiled as if he was telling a joke. “About as private as you can get, in the usual run of things.”

He released Tim then, and leaned back against a brick wall. He studied Tim as if he were some kind of specimen. It made Tim feel self-conscious; he ran his hand through his shaggy hair and wondered if he needed a haircut.

The blond man's hair was cut short, and his narrow face had deep creases. Tim guessed he was nearly forty. Either that or he'd lived a whole lot.

What did they want with him? Was he in trouble? Maybe they were gangsters and they wanted to use him in some crime spree—in a no-one-would-suspect-a-kid setup.

What should I do if they want me to rob a bank with them or something?
Tim felt his pulse race.

The blond man must have sensed that Tim was becoming more agitated rather than less. “Relax,” he said. “We're not here to hurt you. There won't be any trouble. Well, not of the kind you're imagining.”

Tim flushed. He wondered what scenarios the man thought he'd been running in his head.

“The others will be here in a sec.”

As if the man's words had made it happen, Tim was suddenly surrounded by all four men, all in trench coats. All a lot bigger than he was, he noticed.

A man with a dark-brimmed hat pulled low over his forehead stepped in closer. He had a strong, square face, but the hat shadowed his eyes. “Timothy Hunter, my associate asked you a question,” he said. “Do you believe in magic?” He spoke like a headmaster, as if he was accustomed to be in charge. It annoyed Tim.

That and the daft question.
These guys sure are bozos.

“Yeah,” Tim retorted. “And I believe in the tooth fairy and the Loch Ness monster, as well.” Tim crossed his arms defiantly. “Don't be stupid.”

“I am not stupid,” the man said. He didn't sound mad, just like he wanted an answer. “I'll ask you again: Do you believe in magic?”

All four men focused their attention on Tim.
Their intensity made a tiny trickle of sweat tickle under his scalp. They were serious. He decided if he kept talking back he'd never ditch these losers. He thought about the question and decided to answer it honestly.

“I…I did when I was a kid. And sometimes I wish there were magic. It would make things…I dunno…better? Weirder? More exciting?” He dropped his gaze and stared at his feet. “But it's like Father Christmas, isn't it? You grow up and discover there's no such thing.” Tim shoved his hands into his pockets. He fiddled with the loose change, his keys, his yo-yo.

“Child, magic does exist.”

Tim looked up. He could see white hair peeking out from under the hat. This one seemed to be the oldest of the group. No wonder he sounded so much like a headmaster. “There are powers and forces and realms beyond the fields you know.”

Tim snorted. “I don't know any fields,” he said. “I'm a city boy.”

“When I say ‘
fields
,' child, I do not mean—”

The blond man gave a sharp laugh and grinned at Tim. “Don't you know when someone's winding you up?” he taunted the white-haired man. He turned to Tim, humor glinting in his blue eyes. “You're okay, kid. We haven't been properly introduced. I'm John Constantine.”

Tim found himself warming to this one. Something about his attitude made him seem…cool. Like nothing fazed him. The way Tim hoped he'd be by the time he got to secondary school. “Uh, hello. I'm Tim Hunter.”

“Yeah.” John Constantine dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out. “First rule of magic—don't let anybody know your real name. Names have power.”

“You told me your name, though,” Tim argued.

“Did I?” Constantine gave him a wry smile and a wink. “Don't forget there's a difference between a person's
name
and what they're
called
. We know that you are called Timothy Hunter, but if that's not your true name, it can't be used to wield power over you. Anyway, perhaps I'm just along for the ride. Not like these three.” He jerked his head, indicating the other three men, each more serious than the next.

Tim pulled the yo-yo from his pocket and started playing with it. He wanted to seem as casual as John Constantine. “So, what's your name, then?” he asked the man standing beside him.

“Weren't you listening?” the man admonished him. This one also wore a brimmed hat, but his hair was dark brown—darker than Tim's. “Never ask for a name. Instead, ask those you meet what they would like to be called. It will save you problems.”

Tim rolled his eyes. He didn't need a lecture.
“Yeah? So what are you
called
?”

“Men call me Dr. Occult.”

Tim wanted to ask what women called him, but decided against it. Instead he did another pass with his yo-yo and turned to the man on his other side.

Before Tim could even ask, the blind man said, “I am known as Mister E.”

Some trick
, Tim thought.
How'd he know that I was looking at him?
Maybe he wasn't really blind. Maybe it was an act. Then he realized what the man had claimed his name was.

“Mystery?” Tim said.

“Mister E,” the man corrected.

How lame
. “Did you make that up yourself?” Tim taunted. He turned to the white-haired man who seemed like a headmaster. “So, who are you?” he asked. “Professor Esoteric? Captain Nobody?”

“I claim neither a name nor a title, Timothy Hunter. Although I hope one day, perhaps, you will call me friend. Until that time I must remain a stranger.”

This was all too much. They were so ponderous and heavy. They were up to something, but he couldn't begin to guess what it could be. He wished they would get on with it. “I don't believe any of this!” he exclaimed. “What's going on? Some kind of joke? Some twisted reality TV show?”

“No jokes,” said the Stranger. “No tricks.”

“We're here to give you a choice,” Dr. Occult said. “Do you want magic in your life, child?” He crossed his arms over his chest and gazed down at Tim.

I'm surrounded by four loonies
, Tim thought. “This is stupid. There's no such thing as magic.” He flipped his yo-yo back up onto his palm and gave the four men a dismissive wave.

In a quick move, Dr. Occult snatched the yo-yo from his hand.

“Hey!”

Dr. Occult cupped the yo-yo between his palms. Tim's eyes widened as the man opened his hands and an owl appeared in a shimmer of light.

“Wh-What? That…b-b-but…” Tim sputtered. He watched as the owl flapped its powerful wings and flew up to perch on a window ledge above them. The owl held Tim's gaze for a moment, then Tim turned back to Dr. Occult.

“You…? No.” He shook his head firmly. “It was just a trick. A magic trick.”

“No,” John Constantine answered. “Not in the way you mean, anyway.”

“Not a trick,” Dr. Occult agreed. “But it
is
magic.”

Tim looked up at the owl again. Amazing. One minute Dr. Occult held a plastic toy in his hands. Now a living, breathing bird stared down at them.

If I could do tricks like that
, Tim thought,
Molly would be really impressed. And why stop with making birds out of toys?
With magic, he could get Molly's family a nanny, so Molly wouldn't always be stuck babysitting. He could make sure they always had enough to eat, and that her flat stayed clean even when her mum went a little funny. Magic could do a lot.

Tim felt excitement grow somewhere deep inside him, something that had been waiting to come out. He turned back to Dr. Occult. “Could I do that?”

The four men exchanged a silent look. Tim could not read it at all. They each wore different impenetrable expressions. Had he said something wrong?

The Stranger answered. “If that is the route you wish to walk, then yes.”

Tim felt his heart pick up speed, the way it did when he grabbed air on his board and landed perfectly.

“That is why we are here,” the Stranger continued. “Our role is to educate, Timothy. To show you the path of enchantment, of the art, of gramarye and glamour. Whether you choose to walk it afterward, that will be your own affair. Will you take this journey, Timothy Hunter?”

If I could do tricks like that
, Tim thought,
they'd
all have to treat me different. I wouldn't have to take any crap from anybody. Not ever. Not ever again.

He swallowed hard. He had no idea what it would mean to say yes—to keep talking to these weirdos. But he didn't care. He knew his answer.

“I'll come with you,” Tim declared. “Show me what I have to do.”

T
IM WAITED FOR THE
men in trench coats to react. Instead there was a thick silence.

“I gave you your answer,” Tim said. “Let's go.” They had bugged him long enough—and now they were dragging their heels? It made no sense. Of course, he realized, none of this exactly made sense.

“He has given us his answer,” the Stranger said. He seemed to be waiting for the other three to acknowledge this, but none of them said anything. Constantine dropped his cigarette butt and ground it under his heel. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his long trench coat. Dr. Occult nodded slowly and smiled, breaking up the strong planes of his face. Mister E stayed motionless, silent, with his mouth set in a firm, angry line.

The quiet made Tim nervous, but he wasn't going to let them see that. He stepped up to
the Stranger. “So, where are we going?” he demanded.

“Through the door,” the Stranger answered.

As if that answered anything. “Do you get paid for speaking in riddles or something?” Tim asked.

With a flutter of wings, the owl settled onto Tim's shoulder. Tim tried to duck away, startled by the sudden movement, but the owl clung to his sweatshirt, as if the bird were claiming him. “Ow,” Tim complained. He twisted his neck to peer at it. “You need to have your nails clipped, Yo-yo.”

“You've named him,” Dr. Occult observed. “The bird is now yours.”

“Of course he's mine,” Tim declared brashly. “Didn't I skip Cadbury's Creams for three days to buy that yo-yo?”

The owl settled itself more comfortably on Tim's shoulder, and Tim began to relax under its weight. Not quite like a parrot on a pirate's shoulder, but the bird somehow felt right, sitting there. “Now about this door you mentioned,” Tim said to the Stranger.

“The past is always knocking at the door, trying to break through into today,” the Stranger said. “We will see the past, but we cannot influence it.”

“Kind of like in that Christmas story with all the ghosts,” Tim said. “Christmas Past, Christmas Future…”

Constantine chuckled. “But with better special effects,” he said.

Tim grinned back. But then his smile froze. Behind the Stranger, blocking out a boarded-up billiards hall, a gigantic rectangle was materializing.

“Walk with me through the door,” the Stranger invited him.

Tim was surprised. That was a door? It was a big block of…nothing. Just a large shape. It had no substance, no structure, only blankness.

The Stranger took a few steps toward the empty-looking rectangle. It was now at least three stories high, bigger than the building it blocked. Tim couldn't make his feet move.

“I—I'm scared,” he whispered finally, knowing that the four men were waiting for him to do something. “I'm really scared.” He ducked his head in shame. After all his bravado—his smart mouth that his teachers always complained about—after standing up to the these weirdos, and worst of all, after choosing the tempting possibility of learning magic, he now found himself unable to take a single step.

As if it sensed Tim's fear, the owl took off,
fluttering away. Its departure made Tim feel worse. Even his toy yo-yo was disgusted with him.

“Yes,” the Stranger acknowledged. To Tim's relief, the man didn't sound angry or even disappointed. “You are afraid. There is nothing wrong with being afraid. It is not your feelings but your actions that matter.”

Tim nodded. He didn't want to humiliate himself by backing out now. How could he live
that
down? For some reason, he wanted their respect. Particularly the blond one, that Constantine guy. Tim could feel his narrowed blue eyes on him.

One step at a time
, Tim told himself. He moved his foot a few inches. His other foot followed. One step followed another until he found himself standing beside the Stranger at the edge of the “door.” This close, Tim realized the Stranger towered over him by a good two feet. He hadn't seemed so large a moment ago. He also noticed that the Stranger's eyes were pure white! He had no pupils. Tim took a tiny step backward. What kind of being was he?

“If it is any reassurance,” the Stranger said, “nothing can harm you. At least, not in the past. Ready?”

Too late to back out now
. Tim nodded, shut his eyes, and stepped through the door.

“Agh!” He doubled over, his stomach twisting up inside him. He felt as if he were falling at a great speed. His entire frame felt stretched out and squashed, centrifugal force trying to flatten him like a pancake.

After what seemed an eternity, Tim abruptly felt like himself again. He could sense the Stranger behind him. They were floating in what seemed to be empty space. There was no sound. Nothing. Nothing but dark and silence.

“Where are we?” Tim asked. At least, he thought he asked, though he wasn't sure if he'd said anything out loud or just in his mind. In any event, the Stranger answered.

“This is no place, child. This is the void, the space before there was any
where
to travel to.”

Tim tried to wrap his mind around that concept:
We're at the beginning of time?

Then—Tim covered his ears.
That sound!
It was awful! Enormous! “What is it?” he cried.

“It is a cry of pain, child. The pain that comes with birth.”

“Birth? Who's being born?”

“Not who,” replied the Stranger.

“It's so loud. And it hurts!” Tim clutched his head, squeezing it hard, trying to push out the pain.

“Your pain is only the tiniest fraction of the pain that brought forth all that would become all. Time. Heat. Life. Everything.”

“Everything?” Tim repeated. As intensely and immediately as it had invaded, the sounds and the pain stopped. Tim lowered his hands and looked around. “We're really at the beginning of everything?”

“In a manner of speaking. We are here as observers, not participants. Now, child, look upward. Do you see the silver city?”

Tim saw tiny sparks of light all around him. He was floating among the stars. He had no idea what was holding him up, or how he could breathe, but that didn't seem to matter. In the area the Stranger had indicated, there was a beautiful cluster of lights, swirling, moving, but all contained, like the most extraordinary constellation. He thought he could see castle like structures, but it all kept moving, coming together, dancing apart, then coming together again.

“Watch closer.”

Tim kept his focus on the constellation. Suddenly, there was a bright flash, a burst of light, of new colors raining down, scattering, breaking up the cluster. He wondered what had happened. It seemed that something exploded in
the midst of the sparkling lights. Was it some sort of supernova?

“Wow! That's wicked,” Tim said. John Constantine wasn't kidding about the special effects. “Like
Star Wars
.”

“A strange analogy, child. But indeed there was a war in heaven and you see the vanquished now, burning as they fall, like stars. In the darkness before dawn, theirs was the first folly, theirs the first rebellion.”

“What—What are you talking about?” Tim asked. “Whose rebellion?”

Some of the sparkling lights streaked past him, and Tim gasped. They weren't meteorites or spaceships—they were winged figures!

“They look like…angels.”

“Precisely,” the Stranger said.

Tim watched the angels fall, one after another. The Stranger named them as they dropped down: Lucifer, Uriel, Raphael, Michael, Saraquel, Gabriel, Raquel…

They looked so powerful, masculine, muscular. Tim felt puny beside them. He had always thought of angels as chubby little Cupids on valentines, or as Christmas ornaments, not anything like these creatures.

“They're so big!” he said.

The Stranger brought his face closer to Tim's, his white eyes glowing like the stars around them. It struck Tim that those white eyes were energy, and that the Stranger's human flesh was merely a container for it. “That is your perception. But, child, space is large, and there are many planes and viewpoints and dimensions.”

“So you're saying they look big to me, but in the whole scheme of things, maybe they're not so huge?” Tim replied, trying to piece it together. “It all depends on your point of view?”

“Precisely.” The Stranger straightened up again.

Tim felt as if he'd passed a pop quiz, and his forehead unfurrowed.

“Let's examine
your
world,” the Stranger said. “See that star? That's your sun. Or it will be, eons hence.”

This is unbelievable
, Tim thought as he and the Stranger strolled through the night sky toward a glowing red sphere.
Is this really happening to me? Or is this all some wacko dream, and I'm lying in the gutter after being clonked on the head in a skateboard accident? Dad's always on me about wearing a helmet. I'd hate to prove him right
.

Tim once again felt a swirling, dropping sensation, his stomach leaping to his chest and back
down. The skin on his face pressed against his bones, and he was certain anyone looking at him would be able to see his skeleton through his flesh. He could sense images, feel darkness battle light, and then light push it back. Energies of all kinds charged through him, but they were moving so quickly, he couldn't see anything clearly. The ether through which they moved was thick with souls—human, divine, demonic, animal—and all of them pressed against him, making him cry out, until he and the Stranger burst through the mass of entities into a brilliant blue sky.

They floated gently above an island of gems and crystal, glistening in the moonlight. “It's beautiful,” Tim murmured. “Where are we?”

“We are about fifty thousand years before your time,” the Stranger answered. “We are here to see the last and the greatest of the mage-lords of a land the people of your time scarcely believe existed. It was long since taken by the sea.”

“Are you talking about Atlantis?” Tim asked incredulously. He watched as the waves below them began churning, sending up huge plumes of spray. “I thought that was just a fairy tale.”

“You'll find that many a tale holds deep truth,” the Stranger said.

Tidal waves rose up, smashing against the
glittering buildings below them. They were too far away to see details; all they saw were structures toppling, and Tim could feel the sadness and horror of destruction emanating from the doomed island.

“There,” the Stranger said, pointing toward a small seated figure at the edge of a cliff. Thick mists obscured the cliff's bottom—and even the mountain it jutted from.
Or else
, Tim thought,
the cliff was floating in the air, like they were
. He and the Stranger approached, and Tim could see by the seated figure's change of posture that their presence had been detected.

The wizened old creature—he couldn't tell if it was male or female—seemed ancient. Wrinkles and very thin gray hair framed a thin and leathery face. The mage—for so the person seemed—wore a heavy tunic and sat cross-legged at the edge of the abyss, watching the beautiful city collapse into the ocean.

“What you have to understand about Atlantis is this…” The mage's voice quavered with age and emotion. “Are you listening, boy?”

Startled, Tim turned to the Stranger, who kept his white eyes forward, not responding to his confusion. Tim turned back to the mage. “Can you see me?” he asked.

“Of course I can't see you,” the mage snapped. “But you ought to be here at this time, or so my spells have said.”

Tim thought the ancient magician sounded cranky. He supposed that if he were that old, he'd be cranky too.

“Anyway,” the mage continued, “where humanity gets it wrong, in your time, is in imagining Atlantis as having any kind of quantifiable existence. Which of course it hasn't. Not in the way they imagine, anyway. There have been many Atlantises, and there will be quite a few more. It's just a symbol. The true Atlantis is inside you. Just as it is inside all of us.”

“What do you mean?” Tim asked. This creature spoke as enigmatically as the Stranger.
Do they all talk like this?
he wondered. “How can a city be inside us?” he asked.

“It is the sunken land lost beneath stories and myths. The place you visit in dreams and which occasionally breaks upon the shores of our conscious minds. Atlantis is the birthplace of civilization, the shadowland that is lost to us, but remains forever the true originator and true goal.”

“You mean…” Tim said, trying to figure it out, “it's like what the Stranger said. That fairy tales can be true. Atlantis is just a name—for
something else?”

“Close,” the mage said. “Close enough for a start. It is a source.
The
source.”

“Ooookay,” Tim said uncertainly. He would just have to pretend he fully understood, otherwise they'd spend the rest of eternity trying to grasp this one concept. He could work it out later, the way he did with algebra.

“Now about the art itself,” the ancient mage continued. “About magic. I think I speak with some authority here. I have lived for many, many years—more years than you can imagine. And I've had time to do a great deal of thinking. And what I think is this.” The ancient creature turned his—or her—face straight in Tim's direction. Tim could see the eyes were red-rimmed—whether from weeping, age, or exhaustion, he could not tell.

“The whole thing is a crock,” the mage said flatly. “Not worth the price I paid—not for one second!”

Surprised by the statement and the anger, Tim instinctively stepped backward. Why would the Stranger bring him to meet someone who obviously hated magic? Was this meant to be a warning?

The old creature looked into the distance.
Is the mage watching the scene in front of us
, Tim wondered,
or seeing memories of the past?