Chapter Twenty-Five
Invisibility

Most books on sorcery have a chapter on how to make yourself invisible. According to the Grand Grimoire, you need a black cat, a mirror, and a pot filled with water collected from a fountain at the stroke—ah, but which stroke?—of midnight. You put the cat in the pot, then boil it for twenty-four hours, take it out, and throw it over your left shoulder with the words, “Take what I give you, and no more.” Now comes the fun bit. You dismantle the cat and, looking in the mirror, stick the bones, one at a time, behind the teeth on the left side of your mouth until you see your reflection vanish. You say, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” and keep the bone that did the trick for future use. The grimoire doesn’t say what to do with the rest of the cat. Or whether it should be alive or dead when it goes into the pot.

Alternatively, you can draw symbols on a piece of paper with octopus ink, say a few invocations, make a couple of passes over it, and pin it to the front of your coat. It took this clever kid called Zebediah Wharton the best part of seven years to figure it out. His work only came to light posthumously when the Society found his notes in his lab. They never did find his body.

So how does it work? You know when you’re walking up the road and you’re so busy worrying about something that you pass people you know and you don’t even notice them . . . Well, it’s like that, only someone’s made it happen. It’s a form of misdirection, the technique that conjurers and pickpockets use to distract their victims.

An invisibility spell “forbids” anyone to see the invisible object. The viewer fills in the gap either by patching in other parts of the visual field or by contriving to think about something else at the critical moment. Either way, it’s exhausting for them—which of course helps the spell work.

The unsettling thing about actually being “invisible” is that you can still see yourself. Fortunately, self-confidence is not a requirement.

“Angels.” That’s what James Groce said. He looked upward and said, “Angels.”

It’s just after half past two in the morning. I’m still not on my way to Rome. Instead, I’m at the main palace entrance, trying to sneak past the knock-kneed old porter and his crutch. A stone crunches under my foot. He stumbles around and stares suspiciously. I freeze. There’s enough light to see his eyes glaze over as the spell kicks in. I stoop and manage to pick up a couple of pebbles without making any noise. I toss them against the wall behind him. He spins around and trips over the crutch, and by the time he’s back on his feet and has pulled his tights up, I’ve scuttled off up the drive to the palace.

There’s a small oil lamp burning in the entrance hall. When I peer up the stairs I can see another light flickering dimly on the second floor. Not a sound, apart from my own breathing.

There’s all sorts of clever spells for generating light, but they take time and a certain amount of gear. However, two years ago a small electric flashlight was found at a crime scene. It subsequently disappeared from the jack shack and turned up unexpectedly in my studio. Getting batteries for it is a nightmare—they cost a fortune—so I use it as little as possible.

It takes me down the corridor and into the library, where I shine it up at Groce’s angels—the cherubs prancing across the ceiling. When I turn the flashlight off, there’s enough moonlight filtering through the curtains to see by. I lock the door and turn the contents of my satchel out onto the desk.

Item: one small compass.

Item: one copper disc on a copper chain. The disc is about four inches in diameter, engraved with the first pentacle of the moon. Not a thing of beauty, but it has the power to make the invisible visible. I put it around my neck.

Item: one copper wand, nineteen and a half inches long.

Item: one sachet of copper filings.

I feel sick, which is actually encouraging. I sit down in the chair behind the desk, where the body was found. I close my eyes. I listen. I smell. I feel. My chest rises and falls. My heart beats. I open my eyes.

Nothing.

I’m not psychic. I can’t read minds or pick things up and tell you who they belong to. I don’t even get insights, like Marvo; just wild guesses—usually wrong. I stare up again at the cherubs on the ceiling. They stare down at me, like they know a fool when they see one.

I get up from the chair, lift the rug, and find nothing more sinister than floorboards. I walk the perimeter of the room. This is a waste of time. I’m too tired to think. My head hurts. My legs are shaking. A healer would say I was coming down with the flu, but I recognize the symptoms of psychic resistance. I know there’s something here. It knows I know and the spell that protects it is doing everything in its power to knock me over.

It’s a battle of wills. My powers against those of sorcerer or sorcerers unknown.

The compass finds magnetic north for me. I close my eyes and spread my arms and shuffle around—I practiced this over and over at Saint Cyprian’s—to face true north. Wallace stares disdainfully down at me from the portrait above the mantelpiece. The hell with him; he’s dead anyway and he probably asked for it.

I bow. I manage not to spill any copper filings as I sprinkle them into the palm of my hand. I mutter the incantation and blow them across the room.

I turn around to face south. Bow. Mutter. Blow.

West.

East.

I stumble across to the fireplace and an infinite weariness descends upon me. I have to lean against the mantelpiece and beg my legs not to give way on me. My mind has gone blank. What am I doing here? It’s a couple of seconds before I can remember what I’m supposed to say—

“Nitrae, Radou, Sunandam.”

I pull myself upright and put the tip of the wand against the wall, immediately below the portrait, and start tracing a wavering line along the wall, counterclockwise—widdershins, if you want to be a smart aleck. I scrape along the backs of a shelf of books and turn the first corner.

One of the French windows bangs open. The curtains billow in the draft and wrap themselves around me. I try to twist my way out of them and succeed only in tangling myself even more tightly.

I panic. The drapery feels alive. It has forced my left arm down to my side and is grasping and pulling, trying to wrestle the wand out of my fingers. It has pulled the pentacle tight and wound the chain around my throat. It covers my nose, and is forcing itself into my mouth and tightening around my chest, squeezing the breath out of me.

My instinct is to fight it, but I know there’s nothing to fight. I stop struggling. I make no effort to breathe. I let go and fall back into the drapery’s hold. It clutches me, like a mother rocking a child. The world is dark and warm . . .

The floorboards are cold against my cheek. The curtains hang motionless.

“Looking for something?” Wallace is grinning down at me from the wall.

“Yeah, your murderer.” I realize I’m hallucinating, but I can’t stop myself. “Are you going to help me?”

“Help you do what? Make a fool of yourself? You don’t need my help for that. Skinny little freak!”

“Arsehole!”

Sorry, I keep saying that. I roll away from the curtains and struggle to my feet. Where was I? Oh yes:

“Nitrae, Radou, Sunandam.”

More bookshelves. Another corner. The wall behind the desk. My legs are like rubber. The wand shakes uncontrollably in my hand.

I stop to catch my breath. The rows of books are writhing before my eyes, stretching and contracting like giant accordions. I can feel Wallace staring down at my back like a father watching a toddler mess about in a playpen.

I struggle on, supporting myself with my free hand, as far as the door. I’m close to throwing up. There’s a noise like a steam hammer in my ears. I close my eyes to stop the room spinning. I can’t breathe . . .

It takes an enormous effort of will to carry on. I realize that I’m wrong. I should be out looking for the girl I love. Instead I’ve made a complete fool of myself and narked everybody off. Marvo’s bound to spill the beans about Groce and then I’m sunk.

One of the necessary attributes of a good sorcerer is that you keep going when any normal, responsible person would stop. The downside is that ninety-nine times out of a hundred you make a complete arse of yourself.

Like I have now. Big time.

Only I haven’t. My spell bites, and I realize that although I looked all around the library the morning after Wallace was killed, there is one spot that I never actually managed to see. It’s the corner to the right of the fireplace, left of the door. And I’ve found what I was looking for: a second door, invisible until this moment. It’s narrow and comes to a pointed arch at the top, and it’s covered with magical symbols. Some of them look centuries old, carved and scratched into the surface. Some are recent, drawn in what looks like blood. The tip of my wand scrapes a shower of dust from the dry, gray wood.

“Hey!” it growls. “Do you mind?”

I can breathe now. The room has stopped spinning and I’ve wiped that smug grin off Wallace’s face. The copper disc has done its work: I take it off and stick it in my pocket. I turn the ring handle slowly and silently, and feel the latch lift on the other side of the door. There’s a flight of stone steps leading down through the darkness toward a hint of light.

I listen. Nothing.

I take my boots off and carry them as I creep silently down the steps. The tingle of magic through my socks gets steadily stronger until I find myself standing in an arched colonnade that runs all the way around a candlelit circular space at least twenty yards across. The outer wall has shelves, cupboards, and several doors, all closed.

I put my boots down on the bottom step. The cellar floor is made of black tiles and although it’s been washed I can still make out the remains of five concentric circles, the outermost about seven yards across, and of various letters and symbols scattered around them. At the center is a triangle containing a circle large enough for one person to stand in.

Just beyond the outer circles—to the east, I guess—a dozen or so scattered strips of what looks like goatskin. Before they were kicked loose, I figure they were pinned together to form a triangle. I can see a couple of the fastenings: bent iron nails traditionally taken from the coffin of a dead child.

There are a few unorthodox touches, but what we’re looking at here are the remains of a Grand Honorian Circle. It’s not something I use myself. It’s mainly associated with a ritual described in the Roman Grimoire and used to summon up Lucifuge Rofocale, but it will stretch to any demon. It’s simple and powerful, but hard to control, so the Society deprecates it. A lot of unlicensed sorcerers like it for its rapid response time: the quicker you get an illegal summoning over, the better!

Four silver candlesticks have been pushed to one side. Three still hold red candles, as thick as my wrist and burning steadily. Shattered fragments of the fourth have been swept into a pile with chalk dust, herbs, lumps of charcoal, several gold coins, and more nails from the goatskin triangle.

I peer up into the dome, where gold stars twinkle in the candlelight. My God, I’d kill for a place like this! They should open it up to the public: a perfect example of a medieval sorcerer’s lair.

I find a mop sticking out of a bucket of dirty brown water, an overturned brazier, a linen coat and paper crown thrown over a chair. I crouch beside a bundle on the floor and open the silk wrapping to reveal several knives and a ceremonial sword. One of the knives still has dark smears along the blade. I examine the sword: the blade is short—probably less than two feet—but razor sharp. Some attempt has been made to wipe it clean, but I can see the traces of written characters and more dark brown smears.

Moving around in my socks, trying to avoid spatters of dried blood, I step on something sharp. I stoop and pick up a big, ugly, square ring. Gold, with a whopping great amethyst. I slip Henry Wallace’s episcopal ring into my pocket.

Let me conjure you up a dirty old man who fancies one of the housemaids; only she doesn’t fancy him. But he’s got a card up his sleeve: a young secretary who can do a bit of illegal magic and summons up a demon to go and compel her to come to him.

The trouble with unlicensed sorcerers is, they don’t get the training or the practice. So mistakes get made. The spell is supposed to put the maid’s boyfriend into a deep sleep. But it doesn’t. He follows her and the demon . . .

That’s what Amber Trickle said she saw. Not a dog, a demon leading Alice Constant through the gate from the riverbank, past an elemental who just falls over, and into the palace where James Groce catches up with them and finds . . .

Well, all this stuff I can see lying around the place. And a naked bishop.

People start forgetting that they’re grown-ups. Groce grabs a knife. Wallace’s chest looks like a good place to park it. Alice, I assume, snaps out of the spell and runs for it, leaving Groce and Akinbiyi standing over a dead bishop. I bet it was Akinbiyi who had the bright idea of covering up the use of black magic and preserving his employer’s reputation by making it look like a political assassination. They cut off Wallace’s head and stick it in the reliquary. Totally barmy, but it works. It looks like the nutty wing of the Anti-Sorcery Brotherhood has dreamed up this grotesque gesture . . .

Until I come along and find no affinity between the head and body. OK, Ferdia comes along behind me and does find contiguity; but like I said he’s post-peak and not very clever, so he’s just getting the result he expected.

The guy who hits the nail right on the head is Cimerez. “Fact is, Frank, this guy has no head.”

I get the joke now.

Conjuring a demon is a risky business. If you don’t dismiss it properly and put it back where you got it from, it’s like it’s got this hook into your soul and it can just reel you in. Might take years, but it’ll land you eventually. So you’ve got to cut the line . . .

This ceremonial sword I’m clutching, it’s been consecrated. I’ve got a dozen just like it: I use them at the end of a ritual to sever the affinity with any Presence I’ve summoned—like I did with Cimerez. And I figure that if I hacked off a human head with it . . . well, despite Einstein’s second law, the natural affinity between the head and body would be destroyed. They would be magically traumatized into forgetting each other. No contiguity. A body with no head.

I’m feeling good. Like I’m on top of this. Like it all makes sense.

Like my Gift is still holding.

Except I’m juggling my flashlight, my wand, several knives, and a sword . . . and something’s got to give. The sword rattles on the tiles. And as the echoes die away I hear something move.

I do magic, OK? Not tough guy stuff. I leave the sword lying where it fell and duck behind one of the columns. A door creaks open. I peer around the back of the column and wait for Akinbiyi to step out.

It’s all so obvious, once you’ve worked it out. I’m remembering the first day: how he came running after me and Marvo on our way down to the riverside gate; the look on his face when Charlie suggested sorcery. He’s around the palace, doing stuff for Wallace all the time. OK, Kazia said he was twenty-one or something, so it’s a bit of a stretch, but he’s not too old to do a bit of informal sorcery for his boss . . .

But of course I’m wrong. It isn’t Akinbiyi, is it? He’s no more a sorcerer than Caxton is. The only person I’m fooling is myself—and I’m not making a very good job of that.

A silhouette appears. My heart stops dead as Kazia stumbles out into the chamber.