Midnight Hour Page 12

  ‘She is here by my invitation, so under the Ancient Law that binds us all, she is offered safe conduct.’

  It sounded even more beautiful this time. Emily was seized by a warm rush of affection for the owner of the Voice that was saving her. The owner was undoubtedly gracious and beautiful and good. Emily straightened up, unafraid. As she did the Bear lowered his killing paws and stepped back, his shaggy head bowed.

  ‘Beg pardon,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I should think so too. We will resolve all this without such old-fashioned brutality. Let us talk as civilized people.’

  ‘Quite so, old chap.’ Another speaker now, with tones far less beautiful. They sounded braying and harsh in comparison. When would the Voice speak again?

  The Bear shuffled away, contrite. As he did, the other people behind him came into view. First was the flattened vampire, still draped in his Transylvanian opera-cape finest. He was a lot less flat now, but there were bumps and scratches visible on his pale skin. His flowing blond hair had been primped and arranged to cover a hoof-print on his temple. It wasn’t him Emily was interested in though, it was the owner of the Voice.

  When she appeared, she was just as Emily had imagined. A perfect beauty, yet kind not austere. She was tall, with long sweeping black hair, with a distinct thick streak of grey through it on either side, pinned back from her high forehead with silver combs. Her skin was pale and delicate, and her eyes a midnight blue. A graceful neck plunged into a dress the colour of her eyes, which flared out into a billowing trail of pearls. She looked like the sea, and sounded like the wind, and Emily was entranced.

  She took graceful steps towards Emily, who stood rapt in the corner. The lady spoke only one word, ‘Come’, but it was enough to fill her up with its honeyed warmth. They sat by the fire, opposite each other, and the lady smiled and Emily smiled back, happy to be where she was.

  ‘Now,’ said the Voice, and it was still beautiful, but not overwhelming with its glory, and Emily leant forward to listen.

  ‘Introductions. You, I know, are Emily, and I am very pleased to meet you at last.’

  Emily glowed with pleasure at that.

  ‘I have lots of names’, said the lady, and wrinkled her nose as if to show they were a burden. How awful for her. Poor thing, with all those names.

  ‘For instance, I’m sure Lord Stabville-Chest here would think you should call me “Great Lady”, as he does. Is that not right, Peregrine?’

  The vampire was leaning, in an effortless, graceful pose next to the fireplace.

  ‘Well, it does seem appropriate given the difference in rank, Great Lady.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ The lady wrinkled her nose again and rolled her eyes at Emily. See what I have to put up with? Emily smiled back, happy to be conspired with. ‘No, that’s far too stuffy.’ She leant closer to Emily.

  ‘My closest friends call me Melpo and I hope you shall too.’

  She reached across and patted Emily on the knee, and Emily blushed. Melpo regarded her, lips pursed in concern.

  ‘Oh, but my dear, look at you.’ She turned back over her shoulder. ‘Burke, bring us tea please. Young Miss Emily has not been looked after properly.’

  The butler, who Emily hadn’t spotted lurking in the shadows, strode straight for the door, but was halted by that golden voice again.

  ‘Oh, and some of those tiny cakes. The poor child looks starved.’

  Emily was in love. The tea came straight away, along with some excellent cakes, and the next few minutes passed in a dream. Melpo asked her about how she had travelled here and nodded with grave concern and real interest as Emily told of her adventures. Emily told her about some of the things she’d found out, about being chased by the Bear (who she curiously didn’t care was sitting in the same room with them), and was just about to launch into talking about what her dad had done at the Night Post, when all of a sudden that odd, liquid sensation returned. But this time it was in her head, not her chest, a growing heat behind her ears.

  The first time she’d been given tea and biscuits in this world it had been at the Night Post, by a demonic, red-eyed woman with talons, but that woman had been kind, had been a friend, and Emily had felt that to be true despite the evidence of her eyes. Now, there was this woman, this beautiful woman with the perfect voice, who’d asked her to use a name reserved only for friends. Well, there was something just not right, and Emily could once again feel that to be true, no matter what the rest of her senses told her. Her head pulsed with the sensation, her story trailed off, and she put her hand in her pocket to cup the Hog and was then completely sure.

  ‘No.’

  Melpo looked up from the teapot she’d just picked up, with an enquiring smile.

  ‘No more tea?’

  ‘No. No more of this. I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not working anymore.’

  Out of sight in her pocket, she jabbed her finger down on one of the Hog’s spikes until her eyes watered with the pain.

  ‘I’m difficult. You can’t affect me like other people. I know you’re not my friend.’ As she spoke, the pain helped clear her head. ‘I’ve got something you want and you can’t take it, and we both know it. So let’s stop being nice.’

  Emily put her cup down and sat back, scared but exhilarated. She may have ruined the effect a second later by leaning forward to grab another cake in case they were taken away, but figured she was ahead on points whatever.

  The Nocturne, for that’s who she truly was, not nice Melpo, not the beautiful Voice, granted her a nod of respect.

  ‘Your mother’s daughter, I see.’ The voice was still musical and enticing but now it only swirled around Emily, not through her and into her heart. The distant music that had haunted the room hovered around the Nocturne like a cloud. She was music.

  The Nocturne finished pouring herself some tea, and sat back with it, casting an assessing gaze over Emily as she did.

  ‘Very well, child, let us talk without the veils. We each have something the other wants. How shall we trade?’

  ‘Don’t know why we do not just take’, rumbled the Bear from his seat of shame in the corner. The Nocturne raised a finger without looking at him.

  ‘Ursus, I shall not tell you again. There is Ancient Law, that has bound us all since before we left the forest shadows, and it binds me as any other. An invite to the table opens the right of hospitality, and until the talk is done and boons and price agreed, all will be safe from harm.’

  The Bear subsided and the vampire, Lord Peregrine, smirked at his discomfort.

  ‘So, name your boon, and your price.’ The Nocturne’s eyes were now almost totally blue; barely a hint of white in them. She was less human than when she’d come in; it had dropped away from her when the Melpo guise did. Paler, thinner, and more vivid, she was the realest thing in the room, even against the heft of the Bear. Emily was a shadow in comparison. How had she ever imagined she could deal with this . . . Power? What was she doing?

  ‘Boon?’ she asked.

  ‘The item or favour you want. What do you wish of me in exchange for my desire?’

  ‘You’ve got my mum and dad, right? And they’re okay?’ She cringed at how pathetic she sounded.

  A tiny movement of the head from the Nocturne. Yes.

  ‘Why did you take them?’

  ‘Is that your boon? Just that knowledge?’ The Nocturne smiled without humour. Emily flinched. She was doing it all wrong!

  ‘No! It’s not. Wait, is this one of those three-wish things?’ She waved the pointy finger of suspicion at the Nocturne.

  A wrinkle formed in the perfect forehead, which was probably as close as the Nocturne got to looking frustrated.

  ‘No, child. I am not a genie. You can ask for what you want, and I will ask for what I want, and we will make a deal, or we will not. It has been this way for more years than even I can remember.’

  I can remember . . . The Library had said she was losing herself in memories but the Nocturne was not some
how. She was certainly more together than the Library as she sat there, back straight and eyes bright. What had Cornelius called her? Magically huge. Those eyes stared at Emily, questioning and vast, and she had to look away.

  ‘Well?’ said the Nocturne.

  It was the rigid tension of being put on the spot in class with a tough question. What was she meant to say? She wanted her mum and dad back, but this was all starting to sound tricksy. What if she said the wrong thing?

  ‘Wait! What do you want?’ Emily gabbled out, trying to buy some time to think. ‘You said we’ll both say what we want. What’s yours?’

  The Nocturne inclined her head, a swan dipping its neck.

  ‘A fair question. I want the coins, known in this age as the bad pennies, delivered unto me today, given freely and with no onus nor géis.’

  As she spoke, the pennies weighed heavy around Emily’s neck, burning hot and cold and unseen under her T-shirt.

  The Nocturne continued: ‘I would see them proved first, and I would have them given safely into my keeping in a manner that will not harm me.’ She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘That is all I desire, from you at least.’

  ‘Why do you want them?’ said Emily. She really didn’t like the sound of that ‘at least’. ‘Are you going to destroy Big Ben, the Great Working, I mean?’

  ‘That, child, is knowledge beyond the terms of this exchange. You may offer for it, but I do not have to tell you now.’ Emily started to speak, but the Nocturne raised a hand to stop her.

  ‘I will say, as I see your heart is entangled in all this, that I seek only my own freedom, not the destruction of the great spell that holds my people. I will do no harm to it.’

  The Nocturne leant in close.

  ‘So, I ask, one final time. What boon do you seek in exchange for my desire? You will tell me now or, as is permitted by Ancient Law, our truce will end.’

  Everyone in the room stared at her, and she squirmed in her chair. The language the Nocturne had used was so complicated. What the hell was a ‘gesh’? How was she supposed to phrase what she wanted? She wasn’t a lawyer.

  ‘No, no, just hang on, I need to think.’

  The Nocturne was paler than before and her eyes were glowing sapphires. She was less human than ever. She was no longer the elegant woman who had taken tea, but a terrible and ancient thing. A wild and violent music crept into hearing, emanating from all around her, quiet but growing louder. She tapped one finger to it as she spoke, and her voice had changed to screeching violin strings. How had she ever appeared beautiful?

  ‘The time to think is over. Speak your desire!’

  ‘E rm, okay. Here’s what I want . . .’

  Oh god. Emily closed her eyes and tried to get it all in order, but the music skirled and whirled around her, and her nerves were on fire. It wouldn’t all line up straight in her head.

  ‘I-I want my mum and dad back, unharmed, and to be able to go home back to my world, the Daylight realm.’ She counted off points on her fingers as she spoke. ‘And for you not to do anything horrible to us whilst we’re trying to go, or after. With no bonus or gesh, or whatever it was you said.’

  ‘Very well.’ The Nocturne started to nod.

  ‘Wait, I’m not done,’ Emily gabbled over her. ‘I want Tarkus and his family to be left alone, and the Hog, and for you not to do anything bad—’

  The Nocturne held up a hand.

  ‘This is not a Christmas list.’

  She narrowed her blue, blue eyes.

  ‘I am prepared to grant the boons asked for so far regarding your family, and these others, and no more. Do not dream to dictate my actions.’

  Her eyes, which were full blue now, no whites, blazed bright at Emily, who shrank back in her chair.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘This is acceptable?’

  ‘I-I suppose so, yes.’

  There was a horrible yawning worry she had forgotten something or messed it all up. The Hog was squeaking and ferreting around in her pocket. What had the Nocturne said exactly? The words were like a contract, so were there any loopholes or—

  ‘Then we have made an agreement, and Ancient Law is satisfied, and we are each tied to surrender the boon offered.’

  She held a shimmering hand out. Emily hesitated, then held hers out too. When the Nocturne touched her, it was so cold it burnt. She flinched back with a yelp. Her hand must be black and . . . but there was nothing there, apart from a deep ache. The music had softened right down, and the room now echoed only to the Nocturne’s cold voice.

  ‘So then. Grant me my boon, child, and I will grant yours.’

  ‘Wait, how do I know you will?’

  There was a trace of a smile, a real one, and in that moment she resembled the Library and it was possible to see them as sisters.

  ‘Because these powers that bind us are older even than I, and I can no more cheat them than not be myself. Grant me my boon, child. Show them to me.’

  Emily inched her jacket open and pulled the necklace out from against her skin and laid it on top of her T-shirt. The distant background music flared up and became a howl before dropping away again. The Nocturne’s eyes changed from the blue of glacial ice to that of a stormy sea, and her face showed the naked hunger of something starving.

  ‘Yes.’

  Just one word but it contained lifetimes of longing. The Nocturne had eyes for nothing else, and the Bear and Peregrine were both leaning in to try and see.

  ‘Go stand under the light, girl.’

  Emily stood up and walked a few paces towards the chandelier. The Nocturne’s eyes never left the coins.

  ‘Now, prove them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I would see them at work. I will not be bought for some trickster’s fairy gold.’

  Emily rubbed her hand back and forth across them, all the staring giving her the fidgets.

  ‘Erm. Someone needs to touch them, I think. To show the bad luck.’ Her head filled with Tarkus pleading with her from the manhole and his face as she’d left to do this idiotic thing. ‘It’s pretty bad though, you should—’

  ‘Peregrine. Bring them to me.’

  The Nocturne’s voice was cold as deep, dark water.

  ‘Er . . . what? Sorry, must have misheard—’ said the vampire.

  ‘Bring them to me.’

  He twined his fingers in his cape.

  ‘But Great Lady, surely . . .’

  The Nocturne gave him the benefit of her piercing gaze.

  ‘They must be proved. Redeem with bravery your failure to bring them to me, Lord Stabville-Chest.’

  Peregrine was fidgeting on the spot now, the Bear’s grin growing wider and wider behind him.

  ‘Ah . . . they are indisputably meant to be quite nasty.’

  ‘Who better than our boldest then?’

  At that he stiffened, and his chest puffed up within his cape.

  ‘You’re right, of course.’

  The Bear snickered.

  In a flash of movement that Emily missed by blinking, the vampire was in front of her. It made her jump, and the coins jingle. Up close, he wasn’t as handsome as the picture he presented from afar. His skin was parchment thin and yellowing, with white bone showing through it. His eyes were sallow and red-pupilled, and he stank of old blood and grave-mould. He leant in close, his voice no more than a whisper.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten about your horse-tricks, you filthy nag.’

  Fangs crept from his mouth, as yellowed as his skin.

  ‘Peregrine,’ the voice again.

  ‘Right this instant, Great Lady. Come child, render unto Caesar. Ha.’ The smile came again but behind it was a bad and rotting thing only playing at being human.

  He held his pallid hand out and twitched the fingers. Gimme.

  Emily reached back behind her head with both hands for the clasp, and all the times her mum had done the same thing came flooding back. All the times she’d taken the necklace off for Emily to play
with, and all the times her mum had hugged her, and the necklace had been there at eye-height as she’d been held, and how the coins and their curious symbols and her mum’s perfume all combined in her head to mean love, and she knew she was doing the wrong thing and there was no way to stop it happening. As the clasp came loose under her fingers, her memories came loose inside too and faded to black.

  ‘Here.’

  Emily took a certain amount of pleasure in the way Peregrine dodged back as the pennies swung towards him. He braced himself and reached for them as though he was putting his hand into a fire. He took them with eyes and teeth gritted tight, and there was a moment in which she felt sorry for him. It didn’t last long. He held them and nothing happened. Nothing happened for a bit longer and he turned back round to face the Nocturne, delicate as if he were holding dynamite.

  ‘Right. I’ll walk back over then. I imagine I’ll trip and stub my toe or something, so you mustn’t be alarmed, Great Lady.’

  In the corner of the room, the Bear had leant forward and put his chin on both hands. All he needed was popcorn.

  Peregrine set off, walking with exaggerated care, placing each foot deliberately on the smooth floor. Just before he passed under the chandelier, he looked up, and bared his teeth in a grin, eyes agleam with cunning. The chandelier trembled, crystals swaying as it moved. He edged round instead of walking underneath it.

  ‘Ah, you’ll have to be cleverer than that!’ He grinned his foul grin at the Nocturne who sat watching him, her face impassive. ‘You know, I think a cunning man could best these accursed coins with care, Great Lady. Luckily, I am that cunning mAAAAAAARGH!’

  He didn’t finish his sentence because, in an explosion of wood and glass, one of the black rhinos charged straight through the wall of windows overlooking the lawn, straight across the ballroom, and straight through Lord Peregrine Stabville-Chest. It went on through the big door and into the hall, taking the mangled vampire with it on the end of its horn. The necklace fell to the floor where he’d been standing and glinted with malevolence. From within the house came the distant sounds of crashing and screaming.