Walking Shadow (The Darkworld Series Book 2) (10 page)

“Maybe it’s a myth?” I retorted, though I couldn’t suppress a shudder. I didn’t want any more to do with graveyards right now.

“Anyway, I’d watch out for yourself. I recommend carrying garlic.”

“Thought that was for vampires, not ghouls,” I said. “And I’m not dead, so I won’t need to worry about anyone digging up my grave.”

We talked like this for a while, but I got the impression my flippancy hadn’t entirely convinced her that supernatural things didn’t bother me. Maybe I used to be able to do that, when the world had made sense, like when we were twelve years old and borrowed her dad’s camera to film our own horror movie in the woods near the park. But after the first time I’d seen a demon, everything I thought I knew about what was real and concrete had been thrown out of whack. Maybe there really
was
a murderous gang of ghouls on the loose.

Whatever my views were on the supernatural, my liking for walks at night had never quite diminished, and my room felt stifling after being out all day. Back at home in one of the less appealing areas of Greater Manchester, the threat of muggers and knife-wielding maniacs kept me confined to the house, but I felt safe enough to wander around at all hours here. So I grabbed my coat and left the flat.

The woodland path was fairly straightforward to navigate, even in the pitch-dark. In a way, I enjoyed the challenge of feeling my way forwards with my feet, treading a now-familiar path. I let my thoughts drift, enjoying the silence and the fantastical patterns the moonlight created on the frost-coated trees.

Then someone stepped onto the path in front of me, breaking my contemplation.

“Ash?” It was Leo.

“Hey!” I said, surprised. “What’re you doing in here?”

“Same as you, by the looks of things. Walking.”

I nodded. I knew he had as much on his mind right now as I did, if not more.

“I like walking in here at night. No one else is around.” This was a pretty lame thing to say, but now I’d run into the one person I wanted to talk to, my mind had gone totally blank.

“Yeah,” he said. “Are you okay? You haven’t heard anything else from the Venantium, have you?”

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “Um, how are you doing? I mean, have you found out anything…” I trailed off.

He seemed to guess what I was thinking. “I’ve been doing a little investigating of my own. Turns out Melmoth had a secret store room even the
venators
didn’t know about. Should have known, really. He never trusted them after they ousted him from the Inner Circle. It’s in our old house, I was gonna go check it out tomorrow. Want to come with me?”

“I―really?”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to. It’s hardly a fun trip,” he said. “Just thought it might take your mind off shit. And you might learn an interesting thing or two about the Venantium. But if you already have plans…”

“No, I’m not doing anything tomorrow. I’ll come. Where are you living now, anyway? I mean, when you’re not at uni.”

“Cy’s got a place in town. I’m over eighteen. I can do what I like anyway. Might go travelling over the summer.”

“Do you have the money?”

“My dad gave me some. To make up for utterly failing at parenthood.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I knew I was lucky to have both parents, but I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be in Leo’s position, without parents and now completely alone.

Maybe that was why he wanted me to come to the house with him tomorrow. He needed someone there.

“What about Cyrus?” I said. “Is he in on this investigation thing?”

“Cy thinks we should leave it to the Venantium. He and Melmoth never got on.”

“Ah, right.”

“He’s an idiot. There’s something seriously messed up going on here, and if Melmoth never mentioned it to the Venantium, he must have wanted me to find it before they could. I can’t think of any other reason why he’d come to campus. It must be important.”

“Yeah.” I looked up, and was surprised to see fields ahead. Without realising it, we’d walked all the way to the other side of the woods, to the road leading to Blackstone. Fields lay on either side of us, like pits of blackness in the gloom; down the road, the village was a cluster of glittering lights. There was no one else around, but I had the sudden feeling of someone watching me.

I turned around in time to see someone duck out of sight into the forest. It happened so quickly, the only impression I got was of a girl with shoulder-length dark hair wearing a black coat, like I was. Then she was gone.

A shiver danced up my neck. I turned to Leo. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Never mind. We should head back.”

“Sure,” he said. “So can I count you in for tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll come.”

e set off for Blackstone through a gale that threatened to whip us off our feet, under a slate-grey sky. Rain pelted down as we waited in the small station for the hourly train to Crowley, a village on the other side of Redthorne. I looked ruefully at the remains of my umbrella.

“Sixth one this year,” I said, and I wasn’t exaggerating. The north of England boasted some pretty intense weather.

“Get a wind-proof one next time,” said Leo, who hadn’t bothered with an umbrella, or even a coat, instead wearing a Pac-Man hoody. His curly hair soon dripped with rainwater.

“Is there a way to repel rain using magic?” I asked, curious.

“Probably, but you’d walk into things if you spent every second of the day willing raindrops not to hit you. It’d be funny to watch, though.”

I rolled my eyes. “Magic isn’t good for anything useful, is it?”

I’d been rereading
Harry Potter
the night before, for the hell of it, and I couldn’t help but think their magical system was far more convenient. It wasn’t as if I could bewitch my laptop to write my essays for me or anything―not that I, as a self-confessed workaholic, would ever do that. Lame, but true.

“Depends what you define as useful. I for one find the ability to become a human torch incredibly convenient. If there’s a worldwide power cut, we’re set.”

“True.”

His light tone didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was silent as we got off the train and walked along a cobbled street similar to the one in Blackstone. I glanced at him occasionally, but his face was expressionless. I wished I knew what to say. I’d been lucky in my short life not to lose anyone close.

“Here it is,” he said, as we came out of the other side of the main street and into an area where the houses were larger and more spread out. He pointed at a large, grand old house, identical to its neighbours. Arched windows looked out over a sprawling garden which was overgrown with weeds.

“You
lived
here, Leo?” I said. “This place is huge!”

“Yeah,” said Leo, with a shrug, “But I wasn’t allowed in half the rooms. Old Melmoth didn’t trust me so he locked them using magic. But the
venators
broke through it easily. I’m pretty sure they’ll have cleared everything out of there by now.”

“I can’t believe they broke into your house,” I said. “They shouldn’t even be allowed to do that!”

“The Venantium operate on their own laws,” said Leo dismissively. “I have most of my stuff at uni with me, anyway. I’ll be pissed if they broke anything, but it isn’t that important. I wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as I could.”

He pulled out a key and unlocked the front door. The wind followed us in, sweeping clouds of dust into the air. It got in my mouth, making me cough.

“Sorry,” said Leo, “Melmoth never really cleaned the place. He practically lived in his study.”

We stood in a grand entrance hall with walls panelled in dark wood and carpeted in blue. An old-fashioned chandelier hung above a wide staircase. The dust and lack of light accentuated the gloomy atmosphere; it didn’t feel like anyone had lived there for a long time.

“Where’s this hidden room?” I said.

“In the cellar. Typical Melmoth, really, he had to be boring. I was a bit disappointed in him to be honest.”

“And the Venantium didn’t find it?”

“Apparently not. Melmoth was more inventive than I gave him credit for. I just need to check upstairs, first.”

We climbed the staircase onto a landing with more doors than I could count. I couldn’t believe how many rooms there were. It seemed absurd that only three people could ever have a use for all of them. Leo opened a door at the end of the second-floor hallway.

“This was my room.”

It was completely bare, save for a wooden bed, desk, and chair. No posters marked the walls, and there was nothing to suggest that a teenage boy had ever lived there.

“Like I said, I have most of my stuff at uni. It’s not that I didn’t trust Melmoth, but he had a lot of enemies and I didn’t want to get dragged into anything. I don’t think many people even knew he was my guardian. Cyrus never told anyone except Claudia and Howard. And Berenice found out, obviously.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I was conscious that I wasn’t being much help, standing there awkwardly whilst Leo paced the room, checking underneath all the furniture. A large window overlooked a back garden as overgrown as the front, backing onto a patch of trees. Behind that was a cluster of low hills, extending into the distance. I could see the shape of a cottage at the top of the one nearest to the house.

“There’s Tombstone Hill,” said Leo, noticing where I was looking. “That place almost beats Blackstone Cemetery for creepiness.”

“Who lives in the house?”

“That’s the old gravedigger’s cottage,” said Leo, in a spooky voice. “No one’s lived there for years. It’s the classic horror-story scenario. If I’d lived here when I was a little kid I’d probably have had nightmares about it.”

“Creepy,” I said. Then I frowned. “Wait a minute, isn’t that a light in the window?”

“Yeah,” said Leo. “Kids are always breaking in. Of course it started all kinds of rumours in the village. The locals scare easy.”

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Well, the demons seem to love the place, anyway,” said Leo. “I think it might be because they can’t get at Blackstone, so they go for the next creepiest-looking place.”

“I thought demons were drawn to people,” I said. “I always see more of them in crowded places.”

“Generally, but they’re also drawn to sites of strong magical activity. There are a bunch of sorcerers buried in the catacombs under the chapel up there―mostly Venantium members who lived a bit farther away from Headquarters.”

I nodded. “I guess that makes sense, then. I was wondering, can ordinary people feel demons? At all? You know you sometimes get that feeling of being watched?”

“Who can tell? Maybe,” he said.

“They don’t know how lucky they are,” I said.

“Some people would say we’re the lucky ones, because we can see the world the way it really is.”

“That’s exactly what the fortune-teller said when I first met her,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s her kind of thing. The woman’s an enigma, almost as much as you are.”

“
Me
?” I said. “Since when do I talk in riddles?”

Leo blinked. “I meant… I don’t know. You always look kind of haunted. The demons are fascinated by you and no one knows why, right?”