LITMIR.BIZ

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recently.

      Emma still prioritised any report of spirit disturbance, no matter how minor it appeared, as occasionally a spirit showed a particular sign of compatibility and could be recruited into the Brotherhood. Such sensitive spirits were rare, none had been found now for nearly a decade, but the search still went on. Recently Emma’s time had been taken up logging reports of disturbances and unauthorised hauntings.

      “Emma,” D’Scover called. “I have given Marcus Resnick a reallocation to the Natural History Museum. Will you contact one of the agents inside and sort the details for me?”

      “Certainly, sir,” she replied. “Will you be Dispersing now . . . or will Sister Goodman be visiting again? I just wondered . . .”

      “I will be Dispersing very soon,” he interrupted, “but I would like a Code Red placed on my office to lock it down for at least six hours. I have some papers to work on and I do not want any interruptions. I will Disperse afterwards.”

      “Yes, sir, not a problem.”

      He turned back towards his office and Emma’s hand hovered over the panel in the desk that would apply the Code Red. Before he closed the door he turned back to face her.

      “Emma, would you give me an honest answer about something?” he asked.

      “If I can, sir, yes,” she replied.

      “Do you trust her?” he asked. “Julie, I mean, the new secretary.”

      “Well.” She shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. “I really don’t know her very well yet, but she was in a position of great trust before she died and the Senior Council feel that that trust should not have been damaged by her Passing,” Emma said. “She died a natural death of cancer after a short illness. There’s nothing in her file to suggest that she shouldn’t be trusted.”

      “So you have read her complete file?” he queried. “I am not sure it is appropriate for you to read such documents. Do you read all files of this nature?”

      “I’ve only read the files of all the people who have close access to you,” she reassured him. “It’s part of my job description to be aware of anything that may affect you or this department. Is there any specific concern that you have about Julie?”

      “No, at least not yet,” D’Scover replied enigmatically and walked back into his office, allowing the Code Red to seal the door closed behind him.

      Alone in the huge room again, he strode towards the icon of the Virgin Mary. He gazed at the gilt-framed image for a few minutes as if awaiting approval from the serene face on the blue-cloaked young woman. Breaking concentration, he raised his hands, palms facing upwards, and began to murmur in a low, indistinct voice. A steady hum began to fill the room and the air prickled with static electricity. Silver sparks began to appear around his hands, running over them in a seething, almost living, pattern – like tiny, dazzling insects. He turned his hands towards each other and pinched his fingertips closed, then, with a movement that looked as though he was trying to tear the air itself, he pulled them apart.

      The silver mass collected in the space between his fingertips and started to form a shape in the air. D’Scover lowered his hands to his sides and waited for the shape to settle. Gradually the rain of sparks calmed into a silver haze that hung like a mirage in front of him. In the centre of the wavering haze there lay a key. It was the silver crescent that had been hanging round the neck of the Madonna in the painting and now it shimmered in the air in front of him. D’Scover held his hand under it and it dropped, ice-cold, into his palm. The key was so thin that it could only be seen straight on. From the edge it was still as two-dimensional as it had been in the painting and it looked as though it was no more than a brief wobble in the air, like a heat haze on a hot surface.

      He closed his hand round it and, with his empty one, gestured for the balcony doors to open. Obediently they slid back and out he walked on to the windswept balcony.

      The weather had changed and the breeze that had once toyed with the leaves now ripped around the building like an angry beast. D’Scover shifted his substance to allow the sharp wind to pass through him as he walked the length of the balcony to the end where the blank wall looked out over the sprawling city. He turned to face the wall, opened his hand carefully and looked at the key that lay in his hand, stuck fast under a lustrous silver haze. Lifting the key hand, he placed it against the wall, palm first, and the silver haze bled out from underneath, forming a liquid that trickled over the brickwork and ran along the mortar cracks like mercury through a maze. The silver liquid soon crept across a large rectangle area on the wall in front of him and then, abruptly, it stopped and sank in. Gradually the bricks and mortar began to blur and fade away until they were replaced instead with a smooth black stone surface shot through with silver veins. D’Scover stood back and waited for it to finish taking shape and, with the hollow sound of stone scraping against stone, a door appeared.

      Chapter Seven – The Keeper of the Texts

      The huge dark room had only a weak square of light at its centre. This trickled down from a glass pyramid that rose from the ceiling, cutting into the churning winter sky. D’Scover looked up to see the bruise-coloured clouds tear across above him, pushed rapidly by a vicious and aggressive wind.

      He walked across the dark room with the confidence of someone who knew every square centimetre of this cavernous space. At the circular table in the middle of the large square room, he reached out and waved his hands over it and a green glass lamp standing in its centre gradually illuminated much of the room, forcing the shadows into reluctant retreat. The conjured light trickled slowly like glowing treacle into all four corners of the room and showed the walls to be entirely covered with books. Tall mahogany shelves climbed to the ceiling and towered over D’Scover, groaning under the weight of countless tomes. Volumes of all description were crammed into this library and each looked older than the last with the oldest of all high up on the soaring shelves.

      Walking towards one of the bookcases, D’Scover counted his way along, looking for just the right one. Stepping backwards into the thin pall of natural light, he cast his eye to the very top where the cobwebs hung like gossamer bunting in a macabre parody of decoration. Still staring upwards, he gestured towards the remaining shadows in the darkest area furthest from the light and a narrow wooden ladder, supported by a rail on one of the uppermost shelves, rolled towards him, stopping just a few centimetres away. He climbed up and, as he reached the upper level, brushed away the cobwebs to reveal the ancient texts beneath.

      As he pulled one from the shelf, it sent a cloud of spiralling dust into the room, which caught the thin light and danced around him. Ignoring the dust, he opened the book and scanned down a few pages quickly before replacing it. The ladder moved steadily along from shelf to shelf and D’Scover continued to pull out book after book, each time searching the pages carefully for the correct content. Occasionally something would catch his attention and he would place a text carefully in the air behind him and gradually it would descend to rest on the table below, drifting slowly like a leaf dropped by the wind.

      Time passed and the pile grew; soon nothing could be seen of the table except the brass stem of the lamp and its glowing green shade. D’Scover looked at the table and grudgingly descended from his lofty perch and returned to the desk. Pulling an imposing oak chair towards him, he sat and gave a beckoning gesture to the lamp. The light from it dutifully crawled back towards him and arranged itself in a thick golden puddle, concentrating its greatest strength over the chosen volumes. D’Scover opened the first one and began to read.

      The paper was brittle with age and only D’Scover’s carefully diminished substance allowed him to turn the pages without them shattering in his hands. The Texts had been in the possession of the Brotherhood since its founding, but many were much older. Father Dominic had collected manuscripts from all over the world, from the small works of fables by twelfth–century scholars and the human-skin-covered grimoire of the fourteenth century, to the sixteenth-century works in his own hand.

      The history of civilisation was laid out between these faded covers on countless elaborately decorated pages. Here fabulous animals and flowers of all description wound their way

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