Glory and Angeline’s first meeting with ‘Harry Jukes’ was scheduled two days before he was due to join the coven. It was a Saturday, and Glory had only known the full story for a week. She remained in turmoil about every aspect of Auntie Angel’s revelations but accepted that, for the moment, coming to terms with them was impossible. I’ll think about it all later, she kept telling herself, suppressing another of those hiccuppy little bursts of hysteria that kept catching her unawares. Not now. I can’t, I mustn’t. I’ll go mad.
For events were out of her hands. Angeline had already got in touch with her contact at the Witchcrime Directorate to confirm that her great-niece was on board. Apparently she had insisted from the start that Glory’s involvement was essential if Harry was to be accepted into the coven, and from there introduced to the Morgan clan.
So on Saturday afternoon, she and Angeline set off for the WICA safe house where they were to meet Harry Jukes, and be briefed on the task ahead. They told the coven that they were going to try to track down an old forger pal of Angeline’s. Both carried an elusion amulet that Glory had made. She’d bought two cheap toy compasses, which she stamped underfoot. Then she knotted her fae into an intricately tangled web of string around the broken compasses, and put them in two small cloth pouches. The tradition was to bury them at a crossroads. Since it wasn’t practical to dig up city roads, Glory had fixed them underneath a pavement grating instead. It would take a few hours of pedestrians tramping back and forth over the amulets for the witchwork to set.
Today, she had retrieved the amulets and they were wearing them tucked into their shoes. It was not comfortable but it was effective. If anyone tried to follow them, they would be caught in a web of confusion, unsure of their quarry, and mistaking right for left, north for south. No one could scry on them either. Even so, Angeline favoured a roundabout route on foot and bus. It made for a long journey, especially since she needed several rest stops along the way.
Their final destination was an unremarkable apartment building in an unremarkable residential street. They dismantled their amulets at the end of it, in case they were searched. They weren’t of any more use to them anyway – an elusion only lasted as long as a single journey.
Glory’s insides were bunching into knots as they turned into the road. The authorities knew Angeline was a witch, but her own status was secret – and at least one inquisitor would be present during their meeting.
‘Bear in mind,’ Auntie Angel had warned her, ‘that we won’t see what this Harry Jukes and his witch-friends actually look like. It’ll be glamours all round, mark my words.’
Glory and Angeline’s appearances were already known to the authorities. But Angeline underwent a physical transformation all the same. She’d left off her curlers last night, was without her usual coral-pink lipstick and rouge, and wore a shawl over a frumpy paisley smock. As they walked along the street, her upright figure slumped and shrank. It wasn’t witchwork, just good acting. Glory watched her turn into a doddery crone before her eyes.
The door to flat 9a was opened by a tall, sandy-haired young man with an awkward smile. He introduced himself as Officer Branning. When he went to shake hands with Glory, it took all her nerve not to flinch. He was the first inquisitor she’d ever met. As soon as his back was turned, she wiped her hand on her leggings.
Officer Branning led them into the kitchen-living room. It was a little too clean and bare to feel as if it had ever been lived in. The inquisitor helped Auntie Angel into a seat at the table; Glory couldn’t tell if her great-aunt’s tremors were a pretence. Her own body clenched in sympathy. She put some gum in her mouth, as she often did when she was nervous. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ the young man asked, and she nearly gave a spurt of disbelieving laughter.
His pocket beeped and he checked a pager. The officer looked relieved. ‘The others are here. I won’t be a moment.’
The moment passed too quickly. In seconds, Harry Jukes and his handler were standing in the room.
Glory folded her arms protectively across her chest. No more handshaking for her. She chewed the gum mechanically, trying to soothe herself with the familiar rubbery motion. The boy pulled out a chair opposite her. He looked her up and down with cool interest and she stared boldly back. He had a thatch of dirty-blond hair and a fleshy pink face. The woman who accompanied him was a freckly redhead.
‘I’m Harry,’ the boy said. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ The voice: smooth, rich, leisurely. Was that faked too?
‘And I’m Anne,’ said his companion. ‘Anne Jones.’ Glory nearly laughed again: the name was so obviously an alias. She’d bet ‘Anne’ was wearing a glamour too.
It went against every particle of Glory’s body and soul to sit at the same table as an inquisitor but this pair must collaborate with the Inquisition on a regular basis. ‘Harry’ and ‘Anne’ had clearly been brainwashed into believing all the propaganda crap that said if they gave up their freedom to do the State’s dirty work, they’d be given some kind of legitimacy. As if, after suffering centuries of persecution, witchkind still had something to apologise for. As if the fae was a handicap, not a gift!
But she remained curious. Whoever this Harry character really was, he couldn’t be older than late teens or early twenties. If he was already a field agent, then he must be a strong witch.
Glory was thankful she wasn’t called upon to contribute much to the discussion. Auntie Angel had already explained her task: to help get Harry accepted by the rest of Cooper Street, and to use her family connection to get him introduced to the Morgans. All this was gone through in more detail, along with boring stuff about protocol and procedure and the Chain of Command. Glory nodded from time to time to show she was listening, but was otherwise free to follow her own thoughts.
She paid more attention when Harry talked about how he’d first made contact with the coven, ostensibly to buy drugs, and how from there he’d formed a casual acquaintance with Nate and his crew.
Glory had only heard Nate mention Harry on a couple of occasions, and always in scornful terms. Even so, she suspected Nate was secretly proud of the connection. The Starling Twins used to party with aristocrats and playboys, and it was part of his mobster aspirations to hang out with posh dropouts who ought to know better. The Inquisition and WICA had exploited this. They thought Cooper Street and everyone in it was a soft touch.
Fools, thought Glory. Just you wait. The satisfaction must have momentarily shown on her face, for she caught Harry looking at her and frowning a little. His eyes were brown, slightly bloodshot. She stared back until he looked away.
It bugged her, the fact this person could look her in the eye yet keep his own hidden. Like a ghost. Somewhere there must be an amulet that contained the raw material of his illusion. There and then, she decided she would make it her mission to find it. His fae might be strong but she was a Starling girl, a prodigy – one in a million. There was no way he could compete.
The first time Lucas Stearne turned into Harry Jukes was Wednesday evening, three days after joining WICA. Since Agent Barnes remained in hospital, Lucas never saw what his predecessor actually looked like, though he studied his case notes as well as film footage of him in the role of Harry. As part of his cover, Barnes had spent the last month enrolled in a private school in North London, so Lucas also had to familiarise himself with Harry’s teachers and classmates. WICA had already assembled various accessories – from an MP3 player loaded with Harry’s music to a closet of Harry’s clothes.
There was other research too. Harry could be expected to be fairly ignorant of coven life, but Lucas still had to swot up on names, places, faces, business dealings and family history. Getting to grips with all this took up more time than the actual witchwork. There was a lot of this to practise, though he was relieved to learn there wouldn’t be time to test his ability to sky-leap. Of all the facilities witchkind had, sky-leaping was the most abnormal.
Crafting a glamour was his hardest task yet. Agent Barnes had originally created Harry’s appearance from a computer-generated illustration. Lucas had a photograph to reference instead. Dark blond hair, brown eyes, plump cheeks. Otherwise, his looks were deliberately nondescript.
He began the glamour by drawing two small pictures: one of Harry, one of himself. He had no artistic ability, as the end result proved. It didn’t matter. The point was to draw out his fae with each line of the pencil, every stroke of colour and shade, so that the crude image on the paper could channel the strength of the image in his head.
Under Zoey’s direction, he placed his self-portrait on a mirror laid flat on the table, then set it alight. As the picture turned to ash, his reflection in the mirror became faint and blurred, as if his own features were dissolving. Zoey had already warned him of this: for onlookers, it was as if he’d suddenly gone out of focus. Jonah, who was watching from a corner, looked a little green.
Ignoring his own queasiness, Lucas stirred a wisp of fair hair, a tear from a brown eye and a sliver of fingernail into the ash. He didn’t know where any of this had come from and he didn’t ask. He was concentrating on the mental image of Harry Jukes he’d taken from the film footage and photograph. He spat on the ash mixture, working the fae into it through his fingertips, and using the mirror as a work-board.
Finally, he smeared the ash-paste on to his drawing of Harry – a glorified stickman, with small brown eyes, a round pink face and scribbly yellow hair. As he folded the grimy paper into a sachet about the size of teabag, the mistiness of his reflection began to clear. And after he’d squeezed it hard between his palms, whispering the name of Harry Jukes, the mirror showed him a face to match.
Zoey nodded. ‘Nice work. Your nose is too blobby, though, and you forgot to make your eyebrows match your hair.’
Tentatively, Lucas touched Harry’s nose. It felt as straight as usual. The contours of his face felt exactly as he remembered, yet the mirror showed his hands moving over the shape of another boy’s cheekbones and chin. He could still feel the coarse grey streak he’d put in his hair on the day of his assessment. But when he pulled out a strand – using Harry’s big soft hands – it looked blondish, and was longer than it should have been.
‘Nothing’s physically changed,’ Zoey reassured him. ‘You’re still there; the glamour’s just a veil you hide behind. That’s why your identity can be exposed by biometric tests, though the technology for this isn’t yet fail-safe. We’ll create false records for your fingerprints and so on as a precaution.’
There was a knock at the door. It was Jack Rawdon. ‘Very impressive,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have done it better myself.’
He came over to shake hands. ‘We’re delighted to have you on the team, Lucas. I’ve always had a lot of respect for your father, and I’m sure your work here will do him proud. After all, there are many ways to serve your country. My own path in life has taken some unexpected turns, but I don’t regret any of them. I hope you’ll come to feel the same.’
Though not a large man, Rawdon’s presence filled the room. Even in a business suit he managed to look rugged. The grizzled hair and square jaw, the frank and manly gaze . . . Lucas was starting to see why Rawdon was the poster-boy for high-profile witchkind. He could almost have been one of the models in those hideous Living With Fae brochures.
‘I’m glad you two finally got to meet,’ Zoey said to Lucas after Rawdon had left. ‘Jack’s been closely involved in this operation from the start. He and Agent Barnes pretty much created Harry Jukes together.’
‘You think he ever misses being a proper spy – out in the field, I mean?’
‘Right now, Jack knows the greatest challenge is in the boardroom. It’s still early days for this organisation, and we need a leader that the public can trust.’ She glanced quickly at Jonah. ‘There’s a hell of a lot to prove, and a lot of people wanting to see us fail.’
In which case, thought Lucas, maybe Rawdon should cut back the press appearances and photo calls. His frequent proclamations that witchwork was the best answer to witchcrime might raise his and WICA’s profile, but they raised hackles too.
He turned his attention back to the glamour. ‘All right. How do I get rid of Harry?’
In answer, Zoey took a lighter and held it to the paper and ash amulet. As the little sachet burned, the air surrounding Lucas rippled and blurred. In seconds, his reflection was his own again.
‘See? Easy. The time you spend with the amulet close to your skin extends the life of the illusion. It’s a bit like charging a battery. So if you sleep with the amulet for eight hours, you can go without wearing it for another eight the next day, and still keep the glamour. We’ll show you ways to hide it too. Andrew’s was small enough to tuck in the band of his watch.’
By the time Lucas went to meet Glory and Angeline, he was much more at ease in his second skin. He could craft Harry’s glamour in under fifteen minutes, and get the perfect image each time. Zoey also used a glamour for undercover work, but even though she’d had much more practice than Lucas, it took her considerably longer to complete. It left her tired and dizzy too.
‘OK?’ she asked as they stood outside flat 9a, waiting for Jonah to let them in. Lucas nodded. It was ironic, but disguised as another person – a person who didn’t exist – he was starting to feel more like his old self. Maybe this sense of control was as much an illusion as his appearance, but he was determined to make the most of it.
They entered the kitchen-living room, Lucas using Harry’s slouchy, rolling walk. There was a guard stationed in a corner and two people at the table, an elderly woman and a teenage girl. Lucas sat down in front of the girl.
Glory Wilde was pretty much as he expected. Too much make-up, badly dyed hair scraped back in a ponytail, a large and sulky mouth. She was chewing gum loudly, and as he pulled out his chair, folded her arms in an aggressive sort of way across her chest.
Lucas was more interested in Angeline. Here was a witch who’d successfully evaded registration all her life, but was now voluntarily cooperating with the law. Maybe the Inquisition’s outreach programme was more successful than it was given credit for.
He already knew about Angeline’s sisters. Everyone did. The Starling Twins had clearly had star quality, even though it was of a criminal sort. This hardly justified some people’s attempts to rehabilitate them as folk-heroines, but it was still kind of sad to see what remained of their legend: a decrepit old lady and a hard-faced chav.
As the meeting wore on, he found that there was something naggingly familiar about Glory, and it wasn’t just because he’d already seen her photograph. At one point she turned her head towards Jonah so that her hooped earrings swung, and he realised she was the same girl who’d shouted at him and Tom the day of the Inquisition’s careers talk. It had been something about frogs. For a moment, her raucous laughter echoed in his ears . . . But she’d caught him scrutinising her, and now her glare had daggers in it. She didn’t look stupid, at least. Lucas supposed that was a good thing.