Lost spirits, p.10
Lost Spirits, page 10
It’s a bad idea, Cassandra. A very bad idea.
Shut up, Estelle. I can hardly concentrate as it is.
Down on one knee at the door to Sir Alric’s study, Cassie put her ear to the wood. All was silence and stillness. The shiny new replacement lock didn’t look as if it would be a problem at all, but she still felt sick at the thought of what she was about to do – maybe even finishing off what whoever had tried it first had started …
And so you should! Disobedient, traitorous child! After all he’s done for you.
Cassie ignored the spirit, closing her eyes and focusing on the inner workings of the lock. She felt her eyes redden as the power swelled, but despite her misgivings, she was calm and in control as she manipulated the mechanism. It gave way with a sudden click that made her catch her breath.
Cassie pushed the door gently open with one finger, creeping silently inside and closing it behind her. Pausing to glance around, she let her eyes focus in the darkness. Most likely, given Sir Alric’s fondness for the familiar in some respects, the safe was in a similar position to the one in the Istanbul office. And sure enough, it took her only a few seconds to sense it there, hidden behind a row of book spines. Her fingertips tingled as she stroked them.
Lifting the books carefully down, she reached into the dark space and felt the heavy door of the safe. Now her skin was prickling with the nearness of the artefacts; she could almost hear the Knife calling to her. It had always held such a strong attraction for her, that beautiful weapon with its twisting, living carvings. She ached to touch it again, and not just because she had to steal it.
That Knife. That evil thing! It will be the death of us, Cassandra.
Estelle’s voice was quiet, vicious, controlled. It wasn’t like her; Cassie felt a growing sense of unease as she concentrated on projecting her strange, unique power out in front of her once more. The red point of power coalesced before her into a glowing orb …
And exploded. The force of it flung Cassie back. She collided with the low table and tumbled backwards with a crash.
It was shock more than pain that left her reeling. Stumbling to her feet, she shook her head violently.
‘Estelle? Estelle! Let me do this!’
The voice was a triumphant hiss in her head. That Knife is not for us, Cassandra!
‘Oh yes, it is, you obnoxious—’ Cassie concentrated once again and directed the power back at the safe, but once more it ricocheted, scattering a rain of ornaments and pens and books that struck Cassie’s head and body.
‘Why, you—’ Cassie gritted her teeth, clenched her fists.
No!
‘Yes!’
This kind of power will not even be within your reach for much longer if you have your way! You stupid girl!
Wrestling her mind back to the safe, Cassie gripped the edge of the bookshelves and fought the obstructive spirit, her head and chest ripped with the pain of trying to wrest control. It took all her strength, and she was only vaguely aware of the crash and shatter of objects around the office as the two of them duelled. A heavy book thudded on to her toe, and Cassie yelped with anger.
‘Stop it!’ she barked, and with a final violent thrust, she hurled her power at the safe door. With a shriek of metal it shuddered, rattled, and swung open.
In the sudden silence, Cassie stood panting for breath, her head still throbbing.
‘You old bitch,’ she growled. ‘What was all that for?’
You know very well. I had to try. You are DOOMING US BOTH.
With an acute awareness of the amount of noise they’d been making, Cassie hurriedly scooped the Knife and the Pendant, wrapped in soft velvet, from the safe. Even through the layers of fine fabric she felt the hilt of the Knife stir, stretch, move to her touch, and she couldn’t help smiling tightly.
But there was no time to be lost. She had to try to set things to rights in this office before—
Oh, God.
The footsteps echoed at some distance along the corridor, but there was no doubt they were coming her way. It had to be Marat, surely; no one else would be around this part of the school at this hour? There was no way he’d fail to check on Sir Alric’s study; no way he’d miss the chaos, especially after what had happened at the beginning of term. There was no time to do anything but hide.
Desperately, Cassie glanced around. There was nowhere to go – nowhere but the very unsatisfactory space beneath Sir Alric’s desk, shielded from the rest of the room only by a delicate latticed panel of wood. Taking time only to close the safe door and shove some random books back in front of it, she scrabbled behind the desk, clutching the Knife and the Pendant against her chest. She huddled stock-still, trying to control her breathing, praying not to get caught, with everything that was at stake…
For a hopeful instant she thought whoever it was had passed by, but that hope shattered quickly. It was Marat. He turned the office door handle, pushed it open, and walked in.
And stopped.
Cassie held her breath. Through the holes in the lattice she could make out his stocky form: turning, eyeing the devastation and the broken objects strewn all over the floor. She couldn’t see his face, but any minute now. Any minute now he would raise the alarm, and she’d be discovered, and it would all be over for her and Ranjit. Maybe if Marat left the room long enough to fetch Sir Alric, maybe then she could take her chance and run. But where to? She would be the first person Sir Alric would question about this catastrophe and the missing artefacts.
The stillness was agonising. Cassie risked a slight shift in her position so that she could peer up and see Marat’s ugly face.
He was smiling. The bastard was smiling.
Cassie’s heart thudded with anxiety and incomprehension. She daren’t move again, so she could only watch as he moved silently around the office: picking up books, righting lamps, replacing ornaments. When he removed the books that covered the safe she almost shrieked aloud, but all he did was replace them with other books, presumably the right ones. Then he carefully lined up the others on their original shelf.
Cassie swallowed hard, fighting to control the thrashing of her heart.
Marat was checking the room over again; adjusting the position of a table slightly, straightening a chair. Casually, he tilted a glass lampshade to a lower angle, and brushed a broken piece of porcelain into his hand and then his pocket. He smiled once more, his face a picture of satisfaction.
And then, very quietly, he left the office, and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
What the hell was that? Cassie crawled out from under the desk and shook her head, looking around the now-tidy office. But she didn’t really have time to fret about Marat’s odd behaviour. Because of it, there was a good chance Sir Alric wouldn’t realise for a little while that he’d been burgled, but that breathing space wouldn’t last for long. She had to get out of there, and get north as fast as possible.
The Academy was in darkness and silence as the night pressed on. Cassie wished that there were more than half of her twenty-four hours left, but it couldn’t be helped. Her heart pounded as she ran silently through the school grounds and out to the road.
There was very little traffic at first and she had to walk some distance, but as the sky lightened the roads grew rapidly busier, and she could flag down a succession of rickety matatus that took her north towards Mombasa, the artefacts now tucked inside Ranjit’s bloodstained backpack. From her now-solitary room, she’d grabbed a few thousand Kenyan shillings (rather a lot of them Isabella’s, she remembered guiltily), along with her passport and smartphone.
Look on the bright side, she told herself, glancing at her watch. She had as good a head start as she could possibly expect. This latest brightly coloured matatu was full at six in the morning, but it made pretty good speed up the coastal road – sometimes too good, she thought, glad they’d made the drivers fit seatbelts as she was thrown against hers for the umpteenth time. She still hugged the backpack tightly against her body; it might make it look more valuable and worth stealing, but let anyone try. She wasn’t letting it out of her sight or touch.
It would all be over soon. She’d have Ranjit; defeat the Svenssons; take the artefacts back to the Academy. How hard could it be?
Cassie let out a short, hysterical laugh, earning odd looks and a few comments from her fellow passengers. She was absolutely exhausted, she realised. By the time she’d changed minibus in the thronged streets of Mombasa, she had decided that, Few or not, it was really not a good idea to draw attention to herself. She curled in her seat, head against the window and huddled round the backpack, and pretended to go to sleep.
And promptly did.
When Cassie woke with a start, the sun was high and her body was sticky with sweat. Oh God, how could she have actually slept? Apart from the fact she hadn’t done so for four nights …
For a hideous instant she imagined her arms were empty, but as she stirred, pains shooting through her limbs from stiffness and immobility, she felt the backpack clutched against her, her whole body wrapped around it. A skinny guy on the other side of the matatu was sitting sideways, staring at the backpack with a calculating expression, but one look at Cassie’s eyes – reddened not just with sleep – and he swung round to face forward again.
Her limbs ached, and she stretched as well as she could, peering out of the window. She had to be close to Malindi now, and far north of Mombasa; wasn’t that what the message had said? Even as she reached for her phone she felt it suddenly vibrate in her pocket, and she snatched it out, peering desperately at the screen.
Ranjit Singh
Even though she knew it wasn’t really him, only his stolen property, her heart gave a lurch of sickening hope. Cassie thumbed the screen desperately to read the message.
Gedi ruins. Driver will stop.
Cassie glared around, eyeing her fellow passengers – the potential mugger now looking downright nervous – and shading her eyes to gaze at the road and countryside beyond the rickety bus. There was no one she could detect who might be tracking her for the Svenssons, and she hated the very idea, but one of them must be. The thought that her enemy knew her movements, yet she could not see them, made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. The driver showed no sign of either watching her, or slowing the matatu’s hectic pace.
She sighed. Gedi ruins? Tapping open the internet browser on her phone, she scrolled down the search results.
Gedi: the ruins of a fifteenth-century Arab-African town on the Mombasa–Malindi road, ten miles south of Malindi. Founded in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century and abandoned in the early seventeenth. Archaeological fragments indicate that it had a large and prosperous population.
So far so normal, Cassie thought with a roll of her eyes. There was nothing the Few liked better, for an assignation, than a pile of old ruins. God forbid they should ever arrange a showdown in a nice clean shopping centre.
Idly she tapped a link and opened another website. There wasn’t much.
In the sixteenth century, an unexplained occurrence brought the life of Gedi to a temporary end.
Cassie frowned. Curiouser and curiouser, she thought. Unexplained occurrences were another of the Few’s favourite things …
For what felt like the hundredth time, she was jolted against her seatbelt as the matatu swerved to an abrupt halt. Cassie looked up sharply. The driver’s eyes met hers in his cracked rear-view mirror.
There didn’t seem any need to ask if this was her stop. Grabbing the backpack, pocketing her phone, she felt the eyes of every passenger follow her as she swung down out of the matatu. The driver gave her one more look, entirely expressionless.
She didn’t wave. He gunned the rickety vehicle into life and roared away in a cloud of red dust.
Cassie stared after it, her stomach like lead. She’d half-expected – half-hoped for – tourists, crowds of them; and yet why would she imagine such a thing? It wouldn’t suit the Svenssons to have people around, and besides, they’d want to unnerve her, to make her feel wholly alone. That certainly wouldn’t be such a terribly difficult thing to arrange, in this deserted site where only dust and ghosts seemed to move among the stones.
Face it, Cassie: you haven’t a clue what you’re going to do about all of this. She shut her eyes, allowing the fear and apprehension to wash over her like a gigantic wave, just for a moment.
No! No time for that. Cassie swallowed hard. Hoisting the backpack on to her shoulder, she walked silently towards the empty ticket office and beyond it into the ruins. In the empty vastness, the air felt ancient and heavy around her, thick with spirits.
Not too many of my kind, I hope, she thought with a shiver.
Cassie stepped through an arched doorway into a roofless courtyard, her heart banging her ribs. Many of the walls were worn down to their foundations by the centuries, but the outline of a town lay there like a skeleton, or perhaps a ghost. At the flap of wings she looked up, startled, and saw a dusty-looking buzzard watching her. Trees grew where people must once have lived and worked and laughed, their branches overhanging the old rooms; an eerie sensation skittered down Cassie’s spine with a frisson of familiarity.
She’d never been anywhere like this, she was sure of it, but there was something haunting the edges of her memory. Then she realised: Angkor Wat.
She hadn’t ever actually been in the Cambodian temple ruins where Jake’s sister Jessica had died. But she felt as if she had, and she was certain that the place where Keiko had discovered the Knife must have this same sense of ancient ruins only sleeping. Only sleeping, but still breathing, still living.
Cassie shook herself. There was no sign of modern life, that was for sure, but she knew it was here somewhere. They were here somewhere … and that meant he was too. The knowledge of Ranjit’s nearness gave her a surge of hope, but she couldn’t be complacent. She had to stay alert.
Still nothing moved but trees and birds and insects, and a snake that slithered quickly into the undergrowth as she walked carefully on. Where the hell were they? The sun blazed down on her unprotected head; wishing belatedly that she’d remembered to bring a hat, she stood in the shade of an archway and thumbed the screen of her phone once more. It was more to pass the time than out of genuine curiosity, but a paragraph caught her eye. She scrolled quickly back up to it.
Earthenware pots with a magical purpose have been found buried at several points throughout the ruins. A charm would be placed in the pot by the homeowner which, together with special rituals, enticed a djinn to enter them. This guardian spirit, should anyone enter the house with evil intent, would drive the thief mad.
Cassie’s throat felt suddenly very dry. No, she thought. Don’t be silly. That’s old superstition, no more. The Svenssons had doubtless brought her here knowing how unnerving the place was – and how conveniently abandoned.
All the same, she wished they’d hurry up and show their hand. The sun was beginning to dip back towards the horizon, and Few or not, she did not want to be here in the dark, with djinns and ghosts and who knew what else …
Cassie’s fingers tightened on the backpack strap. Come on. She was being foolish, not to mention cowardly. She couldn’t let any fear cloud her mind, or she’d never pull this off. Of course she wouldn’t simply hand the Knife and the Pendant to those two evil bitches. She’d beaten them before, and with ease; and she was more confident in her power now than she had been, even in New York when she’d given them such a thrashing. True, she had no particular plan, but she’d play it by ear. When she left this place – and she’d be more than happy when that moment came – she’d have Ranjit and the artefacts. The Svenssons, damn their icy eyes, would have nothing.
It wasn’t as if she thought for a moment that they’d hand Ranjit over. More than likely the Svenssons were planning their own double-cross, and intended to kill them both. Cassie was not going to let that happen.
She jumped as the phone in her hand vibrated again.
Ranjit Singh
Angry with herself for the leaping of her heart, Cassie tapped the message.
The Palace. Turn right. Then 40 metres.
Cassie swallowed, assailed again by that horrible sense of being watched. But at least it was time to move and to act. She didn’t know how much longer she could have stood it, waiting in the eerie silence of the ruined town.
The shadows of the crumbling walls seemed to grow longer as she walked the last few metres and climbed ramshackle steps. Throat tight and blood pounding, she stepped through a pointed archway and made her way silently through the roofless rooms. The walls were pocked with holes where lamps must have once burned, but there were none now, of course: only the shifting low sunlight and the unnerving shadows.
At the entrance to a smaller chamber Cassie stopped, listening. Now. She was sure.
As if waiting only for her thought, the two women stepped out into the gathering twilight: Katerina and Brigitte Svensson, palely beautiful and haughty. And triumphant, thought Cassie bitterly.
And there, between them, sagging in their grip, they held the wounded Ranjit Singh.
Cassie couldn’t help sucking in a lungful of air. For an instant she felt dizzy, but she got a grip on herself fast, gripping the backpack strap so hard her fingernails dug painfully into her palms.
Ranjit wasn’t looking at her. His head drooped forward, and when Katerina seized his hair and yanked it up, Cassie wanted to be sick, and her heart choked her throat. His face was bruised and bloody, but that wasn’t the worst of it; the worst was his eyes, which had the stunned, unseeing glaze of the deeply drugged. She had to restrain herself from crying out, dropping everything and rushing over to him.
Gritting her teeth, Cassie stepped up to meet her enemies, swinging the backpack carefully down from her shoulder.
‘Give him to me,’ she growled.
‘Give us the artefacts,’ snarled Brigitte.
Immobilised by indecision, Cassie looked for the first time beyond the two women. No, she hadn’t imagined it: there was a light, glowing softly in an alcove behind them, but growing more intense as she watched. There was something about that light she didn’t like one bit. Cassie frowned, and met Katerina’s eyes.
