Chapter Nineteen – Ancient Sisters

In a small dark office, lit only by a reedy yellow light emanating from the lamp posts outside the window, a computer monitor gave off a surge of static electricity as it sprang to life. A dark cloud fell like a shadow from the screen and began to expand. It crackled with violet light that deepened to the edge of black as it swirled around the room. The room filled and the cloud began to break apart, gradually taking on the shape of a single cloaked figure.

“What’s this book about?” Adam asked as soon as he was fully re-formed.

“I am not exactly sure.” D’Scover shook his head.

“Why do these spirits, whoever they are, want it?”

“It was written by Father Dominic, the first person to identify the secrets behind spirit retention,” D’Scover explained in hushed tones. “He founded the Brotherhood and was my mentor. I watched him write this volume and later I watched Dee add to it. Dee deciphered Father Dominic’s code and added considerably to the book, writing between and around the pictures drawn by the father. I was sent to keep an eye on the books by the Senior Council, as you know, but that one was lost when he fled persecution to Prague. It resurfaced in nineteen twelve in Italy after it was found in a chest in a monastery library by a book dealer called Wilfrid Voynich. It is commonly called the Voynich Manuscript now.”

“Why is it so important?”

“As I said, I am uncertain,” D’Scover said. “The book was entirely written in Father Dominic’s code and, apart from Dee, no one has ever managed to unlock it. Voynich worked on it for twenty years before he sold it, by then a broken and bankrupt man. Others have worked on it throughout the decades, and there have been hundreds of theories about it – even ridiculous ones that suggested it predicted the arrival of aliens on Earth – but to this day the Brotherhood has managed to prevent it from being decoded.

“In the beginning, the Brotherhood managed to disguise the origins of the book by implying that it was written by the monk Roger Bacon. This meant that it was assumed to have been written almost three hundred years before Father Dominic was born. Eventually the notebook was donated to a library in America and, with a bit of influence from the Senior Council, it was placed in secure storage in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. I have been protecting this book for most of my time in the Brotherhood.”

“That’s what they said, the voices in the dark,” Marcus said. “Beinecke, not by Newquay.”

“Yes,” D’Scover agreed, “it would seem they are looking for this book, but for the first time in many decades it has been moved.”

“Moved?” Adam asked. “Where to?”

“Here, to London. Sadly it seems that somehow they have discovered it is now here. I suspect someone has betrayed me. I fear they are heading straight to where the Voynich is. Edie’s vision has confirmed it,” D’Scover said. “With a little help from a friend inside, we will be there in a moment or two. One of my contacts, a living agent, has arranged for one of the computers to be left on overnight.”

“How’s Edie going to get there? She can’t travel like us,” Adam said, looking around the room. “Hey, where’s she gone?”

“Do not worry about her,” D’Scover said without turning away from the screen. “She is already on her way; we will meet her there.” He tapped the keyboard a few more times and stood back from the desk.

“Are you ready, Adam?” he asked.

“I’m coming too!” Marcus said.

“No, you are not.”

“You have to take me, after all the help I’ve given you.”

“Your help is not reason enough for me to have you tagging along like a lost pet.”

“OK.” Marcus thought for a moment. “That means you’ll have to leave me here in your lovely office. Is that OK for you?”

D’Scover sighed and rolled his eyes in despair. Adam had to turn away and stifle a laugh.

“Very well, you may come with us. But,” he growled into Marcus’s face, “if you cause me any trouble, I will permanently Disperse you on the spot.”

“You can rely on me, sir,” Marcus grinned. “You’ll hardly even know I’m there.”

“Hmmm,” D’Scover mused, “that remains to be seen.”

He turned back to the computer and, taking a deep breath, tapped the ENTER key. A deep blue wave of sparks rushed out from the screen, enveloping Adam first, who crackled and broke up into red beads of intense light. The wave rolled over Marcus, Dispersing him into bright neon-blue fragments, and finally D’Scover, who broke down into his glistening grey globules before the wave disappeared back into the computer screen.

A small information screen in an empty cloakroom of the British Museum gave off a single blue spark that bounced across the dusty floor, sending a scavenging mouse hurrying to its hole. Other bouncing embers came and soon the small cloakroom was filled with a cascade of them and a hot smell of singed cloth rose from the uncollected coats dangling along the wire racks. The sparks spiralled and whirled around the room and, gradually, separate colours became clear within the maelstrom. Grey first, then red and finally a sharp and vivid blue and D’Scover, Adam and Marcus re-formed inside the room.

“Why do cloakrooms always smell of feet?” Marcus asked. “I mean, it’s not as if they leave shoes here, is it? Or maybe they don’t smell of feet – maybe it’s because I remember that they smell of feet. Maybe this one smells of roses – what does it smell like to you?”

“I have a poor memory for smells.” D’Scover checked if the way was clear.

“Is that so?” Marcus pondered. “Do I actually smell feet or what?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Adam said, rolling his eyes. “Where’s Edie?”

“We are only a few stops on the Tube from my office,” D’Scover replied, striding across the marble floor of the lobby and stopping in front of a pair of huge oak doors, “and that means that she should be on the other side of this set of double doors.”

Adam joined him and looked all around the doors while Marcus wandered over and stared into the glass cabinets that flanked the walls of the lobby. He touched the lock and the first set of doors opened easily, revealing the second pair which were stronger and far more secure.

“What do we do about the alarms?” Adam asked. “We can’t just open the door. Look.” He pointed to a wire that skirted the top of the door, trailing off and disappearing into the frame. “It’ll go off as soon as the door’s opened.”

“Hmm, good point,” D’Scover said. “Travelling with the living is always difficult, but it is imperative we have Edie with us as we need her to tell us if everything fits with her vision.”

“Why don’t you just make sure the door thinks it’s still closed?” Marcus said over his shoulder.

Adam and D’Scover looked to where Marcus now stood, peering into a display case, matching the dead gaze of an elaborate Aztec mask.

“What’re you on about?” Adam asked.

“Simple trick really,” Marcus said, joining them by the door. “Used to do it when I was still alive. Oh, only if I was locked out of my own house or something, you understand.”

He took a deep breath and slowly rose into the air until he was level with the exposed section of wiring. He drifted gradually around the door, carefully examining the slim gap between door and frame.

“The security system needs to believe that the door’s still closed, yes?” Marcus asked. The other two nodded.

“The trigger for this is a small section where the wiring has a gap in the frame that’s matched by a patch of wiring on the door,” he continued. “This means that when the door’s closed, there’s a perfect circuit. All we have to do is to create a circuit of our own and it shouldn’t set the alarm off. When I was alive, I could do it by finding the gap and slipping in a piece of tinfoil or wire to bridge it. It was time-consuming but effective, but we’ve got a much better solution now.”

“Marcus, you do have your uses after all,” D’Scover said. “I shall take this side, you take the other and Adam, you tackle the lock when I tell you.”

Adam and Marcus nodded in agreement and got into position. Marcus and D’Scover both breathed deeply and each placed his hands as if in prayer. Drawing their hands apart and then cupping them together, Adam could see a ball of sparks resting in the hands of the two Shades. These they tipped towards the door and the sparks trickled round the frames until the whole door was ringed with a grey and blue halo.

“That should do it,” D’Scover said. “Your turn, Adam.”

Adam reached out for the dark, tarnished metal of the door handle and concentrated on generating his own electrical field around the handle and lock. The mechanism gave a few cracks and scrapes in protest, but grudgingly the handle began to turn. A moment later and they all flinched in anticipation as the door opened a small crack – but no alarm sounded.

“About time too!” Edie said as she slipped into the lobby, pushing the door closed behind her. “What now?”

“Now we have to get to the Great Court,” Marcus said. “I’m pretty sure it was the place you saw in your vision.”

“What about other security?” Adam frowned. “I can’t believe that there aren’t guards and stuff.”

“Well, we should be fine as we can Disperse quickly if we only hold half-substance whilst we move around,” D’Scover explained. “I can generate a thin electrostatic field around you so that any cameras are fooled. It causes them to freeze for a moment until you have passed, but it only works for technology, not the human eye. You are going to have to use your gift to tell if someone is coming near you and then hide.”

“Give me a minute, and I’ll unlock my mind,” Edie said, taking a seat on a low wooden bench.

She closed her eyes and leaned forward, her head in her hands as she concentrated.

“D’you think it’s difficult for her?” Adam whispered to D’Scover.

“She told me she has spent the last couple of years perfecting a sort of lock on her gift so she does not see into every mind around her,” D’Scover said. “She says it is terrible to see what everyone is thinking all of the time, and to have their futures laid bare for her.”

Edie lowered her hands and, still frowning, shook her head. “Nothing, I’ll try again.”

She repeated the motions and, after a few seconds, lowered her hands and again shook her head.

“Something wrong?” Adam asked.

“I must be confused, or out of practice. This can’t be right,” she said.

“What is it?” D’Scover asked.

“I can feel nine, possibly ten, different minds in this building, but I must be messed up by something.”

“In what sense?”

“Well,” Edie said, “they all seem to thinking the same thing. That can’t be right.”

D’Scover sighed and looked around the lobby, walking towards the stairs that led to the galleries and the Great Court.

“I have a theory,” he said, “and now is the time to test it. Come.”

“What about the field around me?” Edie asked. “The one you were going to generate?”

“I have a very strong feeling we will not need it,” D’Scover said. “If I am correct, we need not have worried about the alarms on the doors either.”

“I thought you said you didn’t have psychic powers,” Marcus grinned.

Ignoring this sarcastic remark, D’Scover made his way to the stairs, closely followed by the rest of the group.

They were in almost total darkness. Feeble blue moonlight fell in through a high window and barely illuminated the vast bells on display in the stairwell. They made their way upstairs and reached the first long gallery leading to the Great Court. D’Scover went first, peering round the corner and into the first gallery. A security guard sat in a chair just on the other side of the door, facing away from them towards the main doors to the Great Court.

D’Scover gestured to the others to pull back into the shadows and he walked forward, straight out in front of the guard. At the last minute Edie, realising what he was going to do, reached out to pull him back, but her hand slipped through him. Silence welled up around them and Marcus opened his mouth to speak, but Adam flicked a single red spark instinctively towards him and he thought better of it and kept his mouth shut.

“You can come out,” D’Scover said from around the corner. The group walked out and joined him where he stood in front of the security guard.

“What’s up with him?” Adam asked. “Is he dead?”

“No.” D’Scover leaned over the guard’s tipped back head. “What do you see, Edie?”

Edie reached out, placed her fingertips on his forehead and snatched them back quickly.

“Whoa, he’s freezing! How can he be that cold and not be dead?”

“Did you see anything in his thoughts?” D’Scover asked.

“Yes, he’s seeing the same thing as all of the other guards.” She blew on her cold fingertips. “He dreams he’s patrolling the corridors and knows that everything’s fine. He feels quite content and occasionally drifts off to thoughts about his summer holiday.”

“As I feared,” D’Scover said.

“What’s going on?” Adam asked.

“He is caught in a Hypnagogic state; he has also been cooled down to slow his heart rate. That should keep a simple repetitive Hypnagogia like this going for much longer without extra prompting. This is a very powerful influence upon him.”

“But didn’t you tell me that these Hypnagogic states could only be induced by you or a member of the Senior Council?” Adam asked.

“That is the current assumption. I think we had better continue.”

The group gathered together and walked through the long, empty gallery to the doors leading out on to the floor of the Great Court. When they reached them, they could see that the doors stood slightly ajar and the handle still gave off faint purple and black sparks.

“It cannot be,” D’Scover muttered.

“What now?”

“I fear that our hidden nemesis has beaten us here,” D’Scover said. “We must remain alert.”

They walked out into the British Museum’s Great Court and, as if on cue, the clouds above the building parted and a clear full moon lit the sky, shining in through the great span of glass and steel of the roof. Edie staggered backwards and leaned against the cool of the limestone wall for support as the powerful recollection of her psychic vision filled her head.

“This is it! The white building and the spider web roof, look!”

She pointed up, and Adam nearly fell over as he took in the enormous arc of the roof and the ice-white moon shining through it. The roof had been built to cover the old museum courtyard, and to help protect the Round Reading Room, and was a vast mesh of glass and steel that arched high above them. The walls and floor were as white as clouds and the magnificent space was littered with statues and monuments from antiquity.

In front of them stood the limestone-encased Round Reading Room. It was all that was left of the old British Library, a circular library space filled with dark oak desks underneath a domed and gilded ceiling. The shelves were filled with some of the rarest and most significant books in the world. Countless great minds had studied and read in this room. Here Bram Stoker had researched his Dracula story and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had fleshed out Sherlock Holmes. To protect the building from the relentless destruction of time it had been wrapped in the same limestone as the rest of the court and now stood gleaming white in the moonlight.

They walked on into the court, reaching the doors of the Reading Room past the shutters of the gift shops that nestled under the two vast staircases that wrapped themselves round the old library in two protective arms.

“The door’s open,” Marcus whispered. “I think we’re too late; maybe we should just leave . . .”

But Edie was already walking ahead and into the Reading Room.

“Oh well . . .” He trotted after her. “Not up for discussion then?”

Inside the library the shelves curved away around them and climbed to the ceiling with high walkways edged with dull brass railings. The shelves were filled to bursting with some of the rarest books in the world, all offering their decorated spines to view. At floor level dark wooden desks fanned out across the floor behind a desk carrying three computer screens. Above the group rose the great dome of the building, a beautiful confection of gilded plasterwork framing perfect curves of duck-egg blue.

“It’s so beautiful.” Edie breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Yes, it is exquisite, is it not? It is amazing to think that the living could have created something that seems so close to heaven.” A cold female voice cut in behind them.

The group spun round as one and there in the doorway stood a hooded figure, framed in the moonlight as a silhouette.

“Who the hell are you? Adam demanded.

“Oh, Toby knows, do you not, Toby?” the voice mocked.

Everyone looked at D’Scover who showed no emotion on his face.

“I rather feared it was so,” he said. “There is no further need to disguise yourself; the end game has been reached.”

“How very dramatic,” the figure said, the voice taking on a softer tone. “You really do know how to play to the gallery.”

Taking a step backwards, the cloaked figure threw back its hood.

“Sister Goodman!” Adam was shocked. “But how could you . . .?”

“Toby, it is such a tragedy you had to interfere with my plan. I hoped that this brat would prove to be enough of a distraction to you to keep you out of my way,” she sighed. “It really is a shame to have to Disperse you all, but I simply cannot have you getting in my way now – everything is ready, you see.”

“I take it you have broken the Voynich code?” D’Scover asked.

“Not quite,” replied the sister, “but I do have the key and so the next step will be much easier.”

“Key? I was not aware Father Dominic left a key,” D’Scover said, playing for time.

Sister Goodman laughed and the sound echoed around the Great Court behind her.

“Father Dominic?” she guffawed. “That fat old fool? He did not know what he had! He spoke to the demon Uriel and, mistaking him for the Archangel, wrote down all he had to say. Uriel and his servants dictated to him the methods for keeping the spirits of the dead on Earth, and for controlling the living. He wrote it all down, here in this manuscript.” She waved the small book at them, laughing as she did so.

“Dee thought him the Archangel too – the folly of the living to reach out for their self-created gods for explanations to their confusion. Why do the living need such pathetic delusions? How typical it is of humankind to invent gods in an attempt to try and explain all that they do not understand. And then to believe all of the answers that come from them.”

She laughed again. “Dee and Kelly sought out this book and added to it. Two more ignorant men caught in a trap and feeling as if it was a blessing. Both of them even more stupid than the pious fool who first wrote it.”

“Do not talk about the good father,” D’Scover growled. “He was a great man, an honest man, and the Brotherhood would not exist without him.”

“Yes, I will give him that.” She smiled a cold and emotionless smile. “He did create the Brotherhood, but it did not take quite the path that the demons chose for it. Sadly you were the first chosen initiate into the Brotherhood and your vile innocence corrupted it and forced it down quite another path. That was when Uriel came for me.”

“You?”

“Yes, me; who better to keep an eye on the Brotherhood and follow the notebook until the right time? I took my own life a year after you passed into the Brotherhood and my true master showed me the path of my destiny. As I watched my own blood ebb away on the cold stones of the convent floor, I felt the cold grip of death and I knew that I had made the right decision. I passed into the World Between and they whispered to me. The demons who first spoke to Father Dominic knew it might take centuries before they could rise, but the time would come.

“They needed me,” she sneered, “but I needed Father Dominic’s notebook, and that was always the plan. Right from the first moment I learned of its existence I knew that it would give me the power I craved, the power to reach out and control the dead and give my master the darkness he required to step into this world. Without it, he is condemned to wait in the World Between. I alone deserve the honour of bringing him and his servants from the shadows.

“I have suffered and searched for centuries for it and, even before I opened my veins for my masters, I knew that this simple and battered notebook held the key to controlling the Spirit World. The Senior Council hid the book well after they had retrieved it from Dee in Prague. The Jesuits in Italy kept it concealed until Voynich found it and tried to sell it on the open market. I tried to buy it but could not engineer the monetary funds for the living – a profound annoyance.”

“Is that why you were removed from the Senior Council,” D’Scover asked, “because of your searches for the manuscript?”

“She was on the Council?” Adam gasped.

“Those idiots,” Sister Goodman spat. “They said I was spending too much of my time in ‘private pursuits’. Yes, I was removed, but they never actually discovered what I was doing. My removal from the Council made my searches more difficult, but not impossible. I had to rely on other sympathetic agents within the Brotherhood to help with the hunt for it. I have been able to use secured lines from the Natural History Museum thanks to the help of two sympathetic Shades there, and recently your secretary has proved most helpful when I needed to gain access to your office. She has been a mine of useful information.”

“Not Emma?” D’Scover asked. “Please tell me you have not corrupted Emma?”

“Not her,” Sister Goodman scoffed. “Her pathetic loyalty to you ran true. No, your new girl, Julie. She is keen to get ahead and gain power for herself. She told me that an important text was due to be moved from the Beinecke. I had followed the Voynich for so long that I had almost given up hope of ever gaining access to it. It had been a long struggle to keep track of it and when it finally ended up being donated to the Beinecke, and held there sealed and well-guarded, I thought our plans were permanently delayed. But, with some distractions for the Senior Council, kindly created by yourself and your idiotic companions, and a few hundred old spirits stirred up for good measure, we managed to gain access to the Beinecke computer and find out the Voynich was coming here. Coming to the very place that held the key to finally breaking the code.”

“The key!” Edie gasped, clutching her head in pain as an image burned across her memory in a searing flash. “The key is the black mirror that I saw in my vision, an obsidian mirror. It belonged to Dee and it is here – in the British Museum. She needs it to decode the manuscript!”

“Ah.” Sister Goodman smiled her cold rictus grin once more. “This must be your little witch – how charming of you to bring her along. What more proof do you need that the witch trials should have continued? Tell me, my dear, what do you see of our future?”

“I know that good beats evil every time,” Edie snapped.

“Oh, how very quaint,” the sister replied. “And tell me, witch child, who defines good and evil in your neat little world?”

“We all do,” Edie said angrily. “In our hearts we all know the difference. You don’t understand because you’re missing a heart.”

The sister laughed again and Edie gave an involuntary shudder at the chilling sound.

“As you are well aware,” she laughed, “my heart has not beat out a rhythm for over four hundred and fifty years, a situation that suits me nicely. I have no desire to walk amongst the pathetic flesh of the living.”

“What about the Vision?” Adam defiantly shouted. “You know you’ll be beaten.”

“Vision?” She spat the word with venom. “You really do not understand, do you, child? There is no such thing; I have always believed it to be a lie to keep us all under control. I merely used Toby’s belief in the Vision to distract you all. You know in your heart there’s nothing special about you. You are, and always will be, a fouled little boy who nobody wanted, not even his own mother. Now, if you will excuse me.” She took a step away from the door. “I have work to do and you, my dear Toby, have an appointment to keep with an old friend.”

She folded her cloak back and tucked the manuscript into a cloth bag under her arm. They caught a glimpse of the round black slab Edie had described from her vision. Sister Goodman laughed her chilling cackle and the sound dissipated as she vanished into Dispersal, leaving violet sparks flying around the doorway.

“What did she mean, ‘old friend’?” Adam asked, looking around the library. “And where’s Marcus?”

“He must have taken the opportunity to flee,” D’Scover said through gritted teeth. “I should have known the coward would not last. Come, she must not escape with that book.”

The three of them ran for the door and entered the vast silence of the Great Court, but this time something was different. The moon was now partially obscured by torn fragments of black clouds and only brief shards of light broke through to penetrate the glass roof. The air inside the court felt heavy and hot and Edie felt the hairs stand up on her body with the static electricity buzzing around them.

“What’s that smell?” she asked. “I can hardly breathe.”

“What does it smell like?” D’Scover asked.

“Rotten eggs,” Adam and Edie said together.

“Brimstone, sulphur – keep your eyes open, and be prepared for anything.”

The three of them took a few more steps out into the court, stopping opposite the library doors, between the bottom treads of the two huge staircases. A thick cloud overhead plunged the court into sudden darkness. Edie reached out for Adam’s arm and was relieved when he boosted his substance so she could hold on to him. The air pressure in the court began to build and Edie felt as though a great weight had been placed upon her.

“Something’s coming,” she gasped and clutched her head. “I can’t stand it for much longer. I can hardly breathe. The pain in my head is almost unbearable.”

“I can feel it too, like pressure building before a storm,” Adam said. “Who’s coming?”

“Not who,” D’Scover said softly, “what.”

A sudden hot wind rushed around the court and the floor beneath them heaved and pitched so that Edie could not keep her balance and she tumbled forward and fell over.

“The floor!” she shouted, holding up a dripping hand. “It’s all wet – look at the stairs!”

They all turned to see rivulets of water cascading down the stone steps. The water gathered at their feet and spilled out past them, quickly covering the floor in a creeping lake.

“What the hell is this?” Adam asked. “Some kind of earthquake? It must’ve cracked a pipe.”

“An earthquake in Russell Square?” Edie said doubtfully, trying to avoid the puddles forming round her feet. “Get real.”

But Adam was not listening to her as his attention was caught by a dark mark spreading across the white floor in front of them. It started as a small charred spot and gradually grew to form a full circle on the floor.

Edie sniffed the air. “Something’s burning. D’you think something caught fire when the ground heaved? A gas pipe?”

“No,” replied D’Scover, staring straight ahead, “far worse. Get in the library and shut the door. And do not come out under any circumstances.”

His voice remained calm, but the way he spoke made Adam and Edie act unquestioningly and they began to back away towards the open door of the library. Edie slipped in the water on the floor and her wet trainers squeaked under her as she tried to regain her footing. Adam reached out to steady her.

The circle on the floor in front of D’Scover now darkened and a thin yellow flame ran round it as though a fuse had been lit. The flame licked a little higher and a little darker and Adam and Edie waited in the doorway, captivated by the dancing light. A rush of wind through the court fed the flames and they suddenly surged upwards and whirled in on themselves like a fiery tornado. They twisted and contorted and gradually the figure of a woman formed within the fire and the Elemental that in 1666 had confronted D’Scover in the crowded streets of London stepped out from the inferno. The hypnotic figure of Fire once more stood before him.

Adam and Edie were frozen to the spot, too afraid to move. Adam had been terrified by this creature when he had seen her in the Hypnagogia but here, in front of him, the spectacle was truly awesome. Her beauty was overwhelming, but her crimson eyes bore a stare of such cold hatred that it belied the fierce heat she generated. He looked to Edie and could see the heat turning her pale cheeks a vivid red. But Edie did not look away and her eyes carried a look he had not seen before – one of pure determination.

“It is the little boy again,” the Elemental said, and in her voice echoed the sharp cracking of bones in fire. “I drove you back once, child, and I shall do so again. The days of the living are numbered – why do you persist?”

“Because I know that I shall win,” D’Scover said. “This time the victory will be mine.”

He took a deep breath and smoothed his hands over his body and the man in front of Adam and Edie changed. His modern tailored suit disappeared to be replaced with the outfit he had worn the last time he had taken on this battle. A man still, but with his simple clothing punctuated only by the sleek silver flash of the sword at his side.

“Why has he changed?” Edie whispered to Adam.

“I dunno, but he always has a sword when he’s dressed like this so maybe that’s why,” Adam whispered back. “Maybe it’s the only way he can have a weapon.”

“You cannot win, boy,” Fire said, and as she smiled, the heat rose so suddenly that the glass in the gift shop windows hissed and cracked and fell like a hard rain to the floor. “I, like you, have not come alone. I have my sisters with me this time.”

She gestured with her two long and flaming hands to the paired staircases and D’Scover instinctively turned to look up, first one way, then the other. At the top of the stairs appeared women, on either side, each as physically stunning as Fire, but quite different in appearance. One shimmered with a deep blue light that glowed from within, changing as the seconds passed from blue to green to grey and to blue again in a moving liquid wave of colour. The other female was harder to focus on as her shape shifted and moved, whirling around in a tempest of clouds that danced across her gown.

“My sisters, Water and Air,” Fire said as they took an exaggerated bow.

“I thought there were four Elementals?” Edie whispered to Adam.

The ground beneath their feet shifted again with a fearsome rumble and a deep crack split the floor wide open between Fire and D’Scover. The limestone heaved wide and the cement splintered with a deafening roar. The white floor of the Great Court fractured, sending dusty fragments high into the air, which slowly rained back down.

“You had to mention it, didn’t you?” Adam shouted above the chaos.

Within the chasm in the floor, a dark shape began to emerge: long and thin, it flickered over the edge of the rift and took hold. One hand of slender, dark-brown fingers clawed the edge of the crack, and another soon joined the bony set. The hands tightened and pulled the rest of the body from the pit, lifting it to the floor to stand alongside its sister.

This figure was shapely and slim like her siblings, but there the beauty ended as her body was made of all things underground. It was formed of earth the colour of chocolate shot through with thick red seams of clay and lumps of rock and moss. She was clothed in rotted leaf matter that shielded her nakedness. Rising to her full height, she tossed her head from side to side, shaking free what at first glance seemed to be matted reddish brown hair.

“Her hair!” Adam gasped. “It’s moving.”

They both stared as the hair waved and writhed on its own as the fat worms that made it up tried to bury themselves again. Earth tossed the squirming mass once more and smoothed her body down with both hands, causing clods of dirt to fall from her on to the floor. She cocked her head to one side and looked past D’Scover to where Adam and Edie stood behind him.

“Who is the little living one, sister?” she asked, and in her voice they heard the cold and hollow sound of wet stones moving against one another. “I am so very fond of the recently deceased, and my worms are hungry. May I have her?”

D’Scover turned and shouted angrily at Adam and Edie who stood as if frozen by the door of the library.

“GET INSIDE AND SHUT THE DOOR!” he bellowed. “AND STAY INSIDE NO MATTER WHAT.”

Without further prompting, the two of them ran inside the library and slammed the heavy door shut behind them, leaving D’Scover to his fate.