Marc Chadbourn - The Queen of sinister

'No great loss. Well, Mahalia, anyway. Carlton's a different story.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't know exactly. There's something about him… I can't help feeling as if he's the key to what's happening.'

'Can you explain it?'

She sat back down on the bed, but left a gap between them. 'I don't know… it's in here.' She tapped her heart and her head. 'Instinct. I just think there's something locked away inside him, something important, if we could only get at it. He knows things…'

Matt clearly knew what she meant, judging by the expression on his face.

'We can't afford to sit around any longer, whatever Lugh said about time being strange in this place.' She stood defiantly and waited for Matt to join her. 'We need to get whatever information we can from this place and get back on the road. And,' she added flintily, 'Crowther is coming with us. We need him.' Caitlin and Matt decided to split up to search for the professor, and soon after Caitlin found herself in a maze of mews that had a faintly menacing air. She was the only one walking the cobbles, but occasionally she would catch a glimpse of someone standing in a darkened doorway. They would beckon to her, whispering promises of something or other — magic, escape, things she didn't understand but which sounded threatening or perverse — and she hurried on, knowing it would be dangerous to get too close.

The mews grew thinner and darker the further she progressed into the heart of that quarter, so that eventually she could touch both walls at the same time if she reached out. The sky had almost disappeared behind the overhanging upper storeys. The oppressive atmosphere at that point became more than she could bear; she couldn't shake the feeling that someone, or something, was waiting behind the doors to grab her and drag her in, never to be seen again.

It was at the moment when she decided to turn back that she heard her name. It sounded like the buzz of an insect, almost lost beneath the echoes off the cobbles.

She stopped sharply. 'Who's there?'

No immediate reply came, but her instincts were sharp enough to make her move quickly away. Yet after a few yards, the sound of her name made her glance back again. At the end of that section of mews was the knight with the boar's-head helmet who had pursued her at the Rollrights, his gleaming black armour almost lost in the shadows.

Caitlin didn't wait to see any more. She ran as fast as she could through the labyrinthine streets, not even pausing to see if the knight was in pursuit. Yet in her keenness to escape, she missed her turning and found herself in an area she didn't recognise, and soon after that she came up sharp against the end of a twisting cul-de-sac.

Her hopes that she would have time to retrace her steps were dashed when she heard the clatter of the knight's approach. He appeared around a bend and stood in the centre of the street, arms at his sides.

'What do you want?' Caitlin said defiantly.

'Caitlin Shepherd.' The same fizzing voice, distorted, like high-tension wires. 'None of this is real, Caitlin Shepherd.' There was an awkwardness to his intonation, as if he wasn't used to speaking.

'What do you want?' Caitlin repeated.

'You.' The word chilled her. 'I want you.'

A nearby door opened with a loud creak and a short man with wild white hair emerged carrying a box of empty bottles. Caitlin saw her moment and dashed through the gap, almost knocking the man over. His curses rose up behind her as she scrambled through a dark, dusty back room into what appeared to be an apothecary's shop. Bottles and jars of herbs and coloured liquids filled shelves on every wall.

She burst out of the front door on to a main thoroughfare and continued to run for several minutes, only resting when she was sure the knight had not followed her. The experience troubled her immensely. It wasn't only the Whisperers who were tracking her incessantly. Who was the knight? What did he want? And why did she feel so scared by his presence? Caitlin finally found Crowther sitting at the back of the Sun tavern. The place was deserted, but he looked happy enough. She'd spent most of the morning scouring the rain-swept backstreets, ignoring the uncertain glances of the strange, gloomy residents, poking into bakeries where the scent of fresh bread almost turned her head, or strange emporia filled with disturbing and magical objects that appeared to have been lost from the pages of a fairy-tale.

'Hail and well met,' Crowther said tipsily, raising a foaming mug.

'You're in a good mood.' Caitlin sat opposite him on a rickety stool.

'And why not? Food whenever I call for it, good beer — and all for free. What more could a man want?'

'How about survival for his fellow man?'

He made a flamboyant gesture of weariness. 'Please, don't get on that moral high horse. I've done my bit. I got you here.'

'We need you, Professor. Wherever we have to go, it's not going to be easy, and the more help we can have on the road, the better.'

'That may very well be the case, but I'm not your man.'

'Why? Are you afraid?'

'Of course I'm afraid. At my age you're afraid of everything… afraid of dying from some hideous illness, afraid of spending your last days eking out a miserable existence, afraid of… of… loneliness.' He stared into his beer for a long moment, then flapped the thought away with a hand.

'You don't need to be afraid…'

'Really? And I should be taking life advice from someone who hasn't crossed thirty, why exactly?'

'You don't gain wisdom just through years. You get it from experience, and tragedy…'

'And I've had my fair share of that, believe me.' He slammed his pint down so hard beer slopped across the table. 'Listen to me. We move from innocence, hope and joy to compromise, disillusion and misery,' Crowther said. 'Why do you think no one wants to grow up?'

'I don't believe you,' Caitlin said.

'Of course. Because you haven't grown up yet. It's waiting for you, make no mistake.'

The happiness had drained from his face once again, and in the harsh lines that remained, Caitlin saw hints of what lay behind his posturing. 'What tragedy, Professor Crowther?'

His eyes misted, the repressed emotion released by the alcohol. 'Just the usual. Wife taken in the Fall. Children missing and grandchildren…' His shoulders loosened and sagged so that he appeared to diminish in stature. 'You're never happy with what you've got until what you've got has gone. I had no time for them, no time for anything apart from myself. The whole family taken, and I couldn't do a thing about it. Useless, you see. All my life being an academic… wasted time. It didn't help me one jot. My whole ethos has been pointless.'

'That's not true-'

'It is true.' Caitlin leaned across the table and grabbed his wrist supportively. He flinched as if he'd been burned. 'You don't have to feel this way. I've suffered loss too and I-'

'Ah, but then you're stronger than me, you see.' He pulled himself free of her and took up his drink.

'You were brave enough to come here.'

'Brave enough?' he laughed bitterly. 'This is my refuge, my escape from the world of tears. Here I don't have to face up to anything. I can live for ever, or near enough, free of fear. I can just… be.' He looked deep into her eyes and forced a smile. 'I needed you to help me cross over here. Most people can't activate the transition unless they have the untrammelled force of the Blue Fire in them. And you're one of them, one of the few. I went to the college in Glastonbury with the explicit aim of gaining the abilities to seek you out. And once I'd done that, I left, taking with me all I needed to find you.'

Caitlin pulled back as his meaning slowly dawned on her. 'Then you lied to me — I wasn't some chosen one destined to cure the plague. You just needed me to get you here…'