by ‘I’m building alliances,’ said Zareen a little later, once George Mercer had gone. ‘Which is the first thing anybody in our situation would do. What can we expect to achieve with exactly three people?’
Jay was not impressed. ‘You couldn’t have consulted us about this brilliant plan?’
Zareen wasn’t impressed either. ‘You couldn’t have chosen a different pub to have dinner? Or did you think George couldn’t see you sitting there?’
Jay shot me a look, which I interpreted to mean it was all my fault.
‘Mercer was never going to believe you just wanted to see him, whether we were there or not,’ I said, in my own defence.
‘Quite,’ said Zareen shortly. ‘And I wanted to distract him. Note all those questions he was asking?’ She smiled mirthlessly. ‘You were listening?’
‘We were,’ I said. ‘And I did.’
‘If Katalin knew he was with me, so did his superiors. He was sent to bleed me for information, just as I was trying to bleed him. Well, he can take that snippet of gossip back with him and we’ll see what they do.’
‘They’ll agree,’ I said. ‘It’s the perfect way to keep tabs on us.’
‘Supposing they want to,’ said Jay.
‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Why would they?’ Jay countered. ‘As Zareen has just pointed out, there are exactly three of us. Without the Society at our backs, what can we be expected to achieve that would put Ancestria Magicka in a tizz?’
‘We may be only three, but we get results,’ I objected. ‘Who was it that found out about the Greyer cottage?’
‘They did. We may have found it first, but only by about twenty-five minutes — and they were on the trail well before we knew anything about it.’
That was, annoyingly, true. ‘Well then, the Redclover brothers and the Spire. We did that on our own.’
Jay patted me on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure they’re quaking in their boots.’
George Mercer had left with a promise to think over Zareen’s offer, which Zar had interpreted to mean “receive instruction from his bosses”, whoever they were. The rest of their conversation had yielded very little, for they’d put each other on guard by then, and they were both skilled conversational fencers. Zar had dropped lots of intriguing, but not very informative, hints about our recent discoveries, all of which Mercer had failed to follow up on — which might mean that he already knew all about them, or merely that he was too clever to take the bait. Zar treated his various light-hearted queries, jokes and remarks in the same fashion. She hadn’t been able to draw him on the subject of his trip to Gloucestershire, either. He’d claimed to have gone there on a mundane errand (picking up a new recruit). It could have been true.
I was privately horrified at the idea of our developing a close association with George Mercer, or anybody else from Ancestria Magicka. It’s difficult to pretend to help somebody without actually doing anything useful for them. Sooner or later you do actually have to help, and how was that going to pan out? I didn’t want to help them. Neither did Jay. They’d take anything we gave them and find a way to do something terrible with it, and there was no guarantee that we’d glean anything of much use in return.
But Zar was serene. I hoped fervently that she knew what she was doing.
We spent an uneventful night at The Scarlet Courtyard. No one came to spy on us, no one tried to kidnap us, nothing went mysteriously missing… all told it was a bit disappointing. We awoke in the morning feeling a touch let down.
That lasted until I was approximately halfway through a plate of eggs and toast in Mrs. Amberstone’s pretty east-facing morning room. I received a call.
‘It’s Rob,’ I said to Zareen and Jay as I picked it up. ‘The bonds of the Society have begun to chafe and you’re ready to join us?’ I said into the phone.
‘Not just yet,’ said Rob in his deep, calm voice. ‘But I’m seriously thinking about it, Ves.’
‘I could be very persuasive.’ And I might, too. For all that I’d argued, I privately agreed just a bit with Jay: the three of us could use some help.
‘This I know, to my cost. Any news for me?’
I relayed Zareen’s surprise manoeuvre regarding George Mercer.
‘Keep your enemies close,’ remarked Rob.
‘There’s such a thing as too close.’
‘So there is. Do you want my news?’
I desperately did. Rob talked for a couple of minutes and then rang off, with a solemn promise to send me all further developments as soon as they arose.
‘There’s been an outbreak of Dappledok pups,’ I told my trusty companions, and began hastily scooping up the remains of my breakfast. ‘Three spotted at different places around England. Two of them popped up in magicker communities — Rob’s sending details — but one’s been seen scurrying around in the Cotswolds.’
‘That house,’ said Jay.
I nodded, my mouth full of toast.
‘Right.’ He stood up. ‘We’re going.’
I took the toast with me, and followed.
‘Where the bloody hell are they coming from?’ said Zareen.
I didn’t have the slightest idea either, but it was definitely time to find out.
Jay whisked us away to Gloucestershire, and I soon developed the feeling that I might never want to leave again. We came out in a featureless field, notably devoid of visible henge — ‘Stones are gone, still works,’ said Jay briefly in answer to our puzzled faces — and set off in the direction of habitation.
And habitation proved to be a drippingly gorgeous Tudor manor set among wooded emerald hills, the latter dotted about with the kinds of places people mean when they talk of the English country cottage. Pure idyll. The walk to Owlpen village took us only a few minutes, but I would’ve been happy had it taken an hour. Golden morning sunshine drenched everything around us, making the greenery glow with a light almost magical, and the air smelled fresh in the way that only spring can bring.
There isn’t much left of the village, though there are signs that it used to be rather larger. Jay led us to a spot some thirty feet from the narrow village road, hidden from the few scattered stone houses that made up the settlement. ‘The vanishing house was seen around here,’ he said, stamping lightly on the grassy earth with one booted foot.
A swift look around confirmed that no, there really wasn’t an eighteenth-century farmhouse loitering in the bushes. ‘It always appears in the same place?’
‘So say the reports. But they aren’t always very specific. You know the kind of thing. “Well, it was near the gate into that field that used to belong to Farmer Wells — the one with the twisted oak at the north-west corner? Where Marjorie fell and broke her leg last winter.” And it’s no use asking which of several possible fields they’re referring to, or what “near” means anyway.’ Jay walked as he talked, hands in the pockets of his jacket, moving in ever-widening circles.
Zareen and I joined in, watching for any sign of a two-hundred-year-old building hidden among the trees, or crouched behind a rambling hedgerow.
‘Should be anywhere within about a mile’s radius…’ said Jay, then stopped. ‘Aha. Farmhouse ahoy, suitably incongruous. Looks like flint?’
I hurried to catch up with him. ‘That is indeed flint,’ I said, which is relevant, I promise. Flint stones are not a popular building material in those parts of the country supplied with better options, like limestone, or good clay for bricks. Flint properties are usually found in East Anglia, which has a lot of flint and not much of anything else. So I’d wager this farmhouse originated from somewhere nearer Norwich than Stroud.
‘Good work, men,’ I murmured.
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Jay tipped an imaginary hat to me, and off we went.
‘Wait,’ I said, stopping. ‘Where’s Zar?’
Jay gave a cursory look around. ‘Doubtless off getting into mischief. She’ll catch up.’
Knowing Zareen, that was fair enough.
The farmhouse had parked itself on the edge of a tiny copse of ash and birch trees. It looked innocuous enough, flint excepted, and quite as though it could almost belong there. The place had not been well maintained, for parts of the walls were crumbling, chunks of flint having dropped out long ago, and the white paint adorning the sash windows was peeling. Jay and I approached cautiously, half-expecting to be challenged, but the morning air was breathlessly still and nothing moved.
‘I think I’ll try your trick,’ said Jay, and walked up to the blue-painted front door. A dull brass knocker hung there; Jay rapped loudly with it several times.
Nothing stirred.
‘Hello?’ called Jay, and when that, too, was productive of nothing he raised his voice still further. ‘Come on! There must be someone in residence, even if you aren’t alive. Someone of a Waymasterly persuasion, probably long dead, wrapped around this house like a bad smell… aha.’ Rudeness apparently had its benefits, for the heavy blue door creaked open and swung ponderously inward.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said a cool, female voice. Refined. She had undoubtedly been gentry when she was alive.
‘Just trying to get your attention,’ said Jay, with one of his more charming smiles. I wondered if it would still work on someone who’d been a house for longer than she’d been a woman.
Apparently it did, for the door opened a bit wider. ‘Do you play whist?’ said the house.
‘No, but I’m sure you could teach me.’ Jay paused upon the doorstep. ‘Whom do I have the honour of addressing?’
The door swung back and forth a bit, creaking. ‘Mellicent Makepeace, of the Newmarket Makepeaces,’ she said. The voice had definitely warmed. ‘And who calls upon me?’
‘Jay Patel, of the Nottingham Patels.’ Jay peered cautiously through the half-open door.
‘A pleasure, Mr. Patel,’ said Mellicent, and the door swung wide again. ‘I am perfectly safe, I can assure you. There is no one home this morning. I am quite alone.’
‘Then you must be lonely,’ said Jay.
‘I am!’ The words emerged as a forlorn wail. ‘Will you keep me company?’
‘For a little while, Miss Makepeace. I believe you may be able to help me with something.’
I’d joined Jay at the door by this time, but I said nothing, preferring not to interrupt his rapport with little Miss Makepeace. Jay leaned towards me and whispered, ‘Wait here a minute?’
I opened my mouth to ask why I was to be left languishing on the doorstep but Jay had already gone, darting through the door before I could utter more than two syllables.
To my dismay, the blue door shut crisply behind him.
‘Miss Makepeace?’ I called.
Either I did not have Jay’s charm or she was unresponsive to my particular brand of it, for there came no reply.
I began to have a bad feeling.
This feeling quadrupled when a tremor ran through the ground beneath my feet, and all the misshapen flintstones in the farmhouse’s walls rattled. I jumped back instinctively. Mist rose up in a thick, billowing cloud, obscuring the lower half of the house — and then the whole thing was gone, leaving the copse of youthful ash trees swaying dreamily in the winds of its passage.
I stared numbly at the spot where the farmhouse had been.
‘Jay?’ I called.
Of course, there was no reply.
