Catherine Fisher - The Slanted Worlds

Venn came last. Glancing back she saw he too was looking over his shoulder; between the trees the lakeside was ablaze, as if all the lanterns had flared into a great conflagration. Lightning, swift as a silver dagger, stabbed from the sky.

A branch above her cracked like a pistol shot; leaves and foliage crashed.

Wharton’s hand grabbed hers. “This way!”

Flying leaves blinded her. Then, far over the darkened countryside, thunder came, a low, angry, incredibly sinister rumble that seemed to shake the Wood and the landscape even to the horizon.

“She’ll kill us,” she gasped.

A snort behind her. She realized it was Venn’s bitter laugh. “Not yet.”

They floundered through the undergrowth and out onto the black lawns. As suddenly as if all its switches had been pushed at once, the Abbey burst into light, windows blazing, its door wide open, a small figure in a white lab coat hovering anxiously on the threshold.

Even as Sarah ran for the steps, the rain crashed down, a deluge that soaked her in seconds, plastered her hair flat, streamed in her eyes and down her neck.

She scrambled up the wet stones, her hand slipping from Wharton’s, and stumbled into the black-and-white tiled hall.

Breathless, she crouched on the floor.

Wharton was bent double, gasping. Venn crashed in last; the wind gave a wild screech, snatched the door from his grip and slammed it in his face. Breathing hard, he shot home the bolts, top and bottom.

“Do your worst, Summer!” he yelled.

Outside, like a scornful answer, the thunder roared again.

Piers, wearing a wine-red waistcoat under his lab coat, stood gripping his hands together. Venn turned on him. “Where were you? What sort of coward are you?”

“She terrifies me.” Piers shrugged. “Sorry. Sorry. But there was no way . . .”

“Shut up.” Venn swung on Sarah. “If you weren’t telling me the truth . . . If I’ve just lost my only chance . . .”

“Relax.” She stood, wearily, pushing her wet hair back. “Like I told you, we don’t need her. I’ve got Dee’s page. Well, photos of it.”

“And,” a low voice said from behind them, “you’ve got me.”

Gideon sat, knees up on the stairs. He wore the green patchwork clothes of the Shee, and his eyes glinted with their alien brightness. But his ivory-pale skin was human, and his voice was full of scorn.

“If you want Jake found, let me find him. I’ll go into the Summerland for you. And out the other side, into wherever he is.”

Venn stared at him, intent. “If Summer knew, she’d destroy you.”

Gideon looked at Sarah. “Let her. It would be a relief.”

“What would?” she asked.

He shrugged and leaned back, and she saw his bitterness was so deep now it burned him.

“Death,” he said.

5

Tonight I try again. I have the table set out, and the cards, and the board. I have the mysteries of the tarot and the scrying ball. I have my father’s black mirror propped near the window.

One of these things must have engendered the power, the thrilling, quivering power. After all these years, to see a spirit! Right there, Jane, in my room!

No one will laugh at me now. The ladies of the League for Psychic Research will no longer titter into their handkerchiefs. Oh my dear Jane, my spirit guide even told me his name!

It is David!

Letter of Alicia Harcourt Symmes to Jane Hartfield

“SIT DOWN.”

The interview room held one chair, a stool, a table.

Jake perched warily on the stool.

The night in the cells had been a living hell of noise, fear, and hunger. He was sore from the straw mattress, itching from fleas, and had a bloody lip from stupidly yelling at a drunk to be quiet.

All he wanted was some hot food and a bed.

Instead he had to keep his wits alert.

Inspector Allenby sat on the chair, a lean man in his neat gray suit. He said nothing. Instead, in an ominous silence, he took out from his pocket the small wallet they had found on Jake when they searched him. Opening it, he laid the contents out deliberately, one by one, on the table.

Jake watched, trying to look unconcerned.

A comb. Wooden, not plastic.

A purse of money. Safely pre-decimal.

The med kit. Tablets, a small glass syringe.

“What are these?” Allenby’s nicotined fingers separated the painkillers and antibiotics.

Jake shrugged. “My aunt’s prescription. Some stuff for her heart.”

“I see. And this?” Allenby looked up.

The gun.

Jake’s heart sank.

It was a lady’s tiny pearl-handled pistol from about the 1850s. Piers had found it somewhere in the Abbey’s storerooms, brought it down, cleaned it, loaded it. It looked ridiculous but it was deadly, because Wharton had insisted on him bringing a weapon. Jake sat back, silently cursing Wharton to hell.

“Just an antique.”

“Illegal.”

Jake shrugged. “There’s a war on. My aunt wanted it. In case.”

“In case of what? Nazi parachutists breaking into her house?”

“I don’t know! The blackout. Burglars. Whatever. She was old . . . nervous. She got scared.”

Allenby took out a cigarette and lit it. Shaking the match out, he said, “Tell me about your . . . aunt.”

Jake didn’t miss the hesitation. With a feeling he was digging himself into a deeper hole, he dragged up the snippets of information he had glimpsed in the suitcase of documents.

“Well, her name is . . . was Alicia Harcourt Symmes. She lived . . .”

“I know where she lived. I also know she was an elderly woman of seventy-two and unmarried and an only child. What I don’t know is how she suddenly acquired a loving nephew.”

Jake was silent.

Allenby leaned forward, curious. “In fact, you really puzzle me, Jake. There’s something . . . foreign about you. Something alien. And here we are in the middle of a war.”

He slid the cell phone across the table. “What is this?”

Jake was sweating. “I don’t know. I found it.”

“Found it?”

“On a bomb site.”

“Remarkably undamaged. What is it made of?”

“Bakelite?”

“What does it do?”

He kept his voice light. “Absolutely nothing, as far as I can see.” Which was perfectly true.

Allenby sat back. He stared at the phone, down where it lay on the table between them. Tapping the cigarette on an ashtray full of butts, he said, “Shall I tell you what I think? Shall I cut to the chase?”

Jake shrugged. It was better to say nothing at all.

“We know what Alicia Symmes was. To all the neighborhood she seemed a dotty old lady who read tea leaves and held séances. Eccentric, well-off, harmless. Middle England in person. Lace handkerchiefs, tea with the vicar, no one you would ever suspect of anything. And yet we had a tip-off that she was the spider in the heart of a spy ring that maybe goes all the way up to the German Secret Police—to the SS itself.”

Jake stared. He felt a terrible cold chill down his spine. “Now wait a minute . . .”

“Three days ago she realized we were onto her. One of our watchers got too close, maybe. Maybe the spirits told her. She packed a suitcase and went to St. Pancras. We were following, all ready to close in. Maybe she knew that too, because she didn’t get on any train. She put the suitcase in the left luggage office and then went and had a cup of tea at the station buffet. She chatted, knitted, read the newspapers. The bloody infuriating old biddy wasted a whole afternoon of my men’s time. And then she went home for tea.”

Amused, he stubbed the cigarette out. “I have to say I had a sneaking admiration for her.”