Darkwater

twenty-one

“Is this it?”

Steve prowled around the secretary’s office in disgust, tugging out the few unopened drawers and flinging them down. “Where’s the cash?”

“I told you! They don’t leave money here during the holidays.” Tom shoved a drawer back, terrified. “Scrab might be around. We should go!”

Steve gave him a glare. “No chance!” He came around the desk and grabbed Tom’s arm, close. Tom struggled.

“Maybe we should try upstairs, eh? All those well-heeled little kiddies’ goodies. Come on!”

He was out of the office and racing up the great stairs two at a time; Tom hurtled after him in panic, past the Christmas tree, desperate for Simon to come, or even Scrab. “Where are you?” his mind thumped, over and over. For an instant outside the staffroom he thought Simon was there, but it was only his own reflection in a thin mirror, and Steve was already inside, rummaging in desks and cupboards, grabbing a screwdriver and wrenching open the gray metal lockers.

“Don’t!” Tom whispered, appalled. “It’s just school stuff. Papers. There’s nothing valuable here.”

“Rubbish!” Another locker clanged back.

Tom took a step toward the door.

“You stay put!” Steve swung around with the screwdriver in his hand. Quickly he swept the shelves clear; exercise books and folders of notes came down in a waterfall of paper. He kicked them in disgust. Tom turned and fled. He got as far as the door, before the crash of the screwdriver sliced his ear and splintered a chunk out of the doorframe. Then he had the door open, but Steve had grabbed his hair; his head was yanked back, eye-wateringly hard.

“Don’t think about turning me in.” The voice was cold and quiet in his ear. “Or I’ll tell them it was you had the key copied. And all about your squatter girlfriend.”

Tom breathed out, a shuddering effort. Steve loosened his grip a fraction.

“So then. Where are the computers?”

“You can’t take them.” Tom tried to shake his head; the vicious jerk brought his chin up and water into his eyes. “They’re all marked. They’d be traced.”

“I know people.”

Tom didn’t believe him. Suddenly, Steve let him go, then shoved his face hard into the door. “Show me!”

Pain burst like a star in his forehead; his lip felt bruised and cut. Holding it, desperate for Simon, Tom stumbled down the dark corridors. There were few lights on up here; the Hall was deserted, a dim icy place, with only the cold disdain of the Trevelyans in their dusty ruffs and gowns. Tom tripped on a mat, and thought suddenly of the Waits, roaring out “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” at some pub. Was Simon with them? Was Simon even real?

Behind him, Steve said, “What about here?”

It was the door to the library wing.

Tom’s heart thudded. “No. There’s nothing . . .”

But Steve had flung the door open and shoved him in, and was already flitting from room to room, picking up books and hurling them away in fury. “Books! Nothing but bloody paper in this place. What’s in here?”

It was the lab.

Tom picked himself up and shrugged, praying that Azrael might still be here.

But the room was empty.

A lamp had been left lit, and it gleamed on the astrolabe and bizarre contraptions of glass, the tubes, one still bubbling, the stacked crucibles and open pages of Azrael’s alchemic books.

“More junk.” Steve ran his hand down the telescope, then headed directly for the computer. “This is better. State-of-the-art!”

He unplugged it greedily. “I’ll take this. You carry the monitor.” The thought of Azrael’s precious research being lost sent shivers down Tom’s back. Despite himself, he glanced at the wall safe.

Steve saw him. Instantly he dumped the computer and swung his legs over the bench, smashing a crucible and grinding it to powder under his boot. “What’s in there?”

“I don’t know.” Tom stood rigid. Sweat prickled his back.

Steve grabbed the handle and yanked it.

The safe opened.

At once, out in the corridor, a board creaked. Both of them froze, Tom’s heart thudding, a point of pain throbbing in his bruised forehead. In the warm room the planets swung on their invisible wires.

The door moved, a fraction. Terrible darkness widened.

Then, into the thousand glass surfaces in the room a small black cat strolled.

“Bloody thing!” Steve breathed out and turned back to the safe. He flung out papers, a parchment that fragmented as it skittered across the floor. Tom darted over and picked it up. “Be careful! I keep telling you . . .” He stopped. Steve had the glass dome in both hands.

“For God’s sake. Don’t touch that.”

“Why not?” He turned it to the light, and swore. Something moved inside, and then in the glimmer of the lamp they saw it was a small red, scuttling thing, its tail raised to sting, deadly and venomous. “It’s a bloody scorpion!” Steve dropped the jar; Tom made a grab at it, clutching it tight to his chest with sticky hands. “Leave it!” he gasped.

“Too right. What sort of nuthouse is this?”

Tom shoved the jar back into the safe, slammed the door and turned his back on it. He dragged in a deep breath and snapped, “Right. You win. The stuff you want is downstairs. Right down in the cellars. They lock everything up there over the holidays. Cash, jewelry, you name it. All the boarders’ stuff.”

Steve stared at him, incredulous. “And you can get in?”

“It’s just bolts.”

Still wary, Steve approached him. “Changed your tune, haven’t you, Tommy?”

“Maybe I’ve just made my mind up about things.” Tom turned. “Come on.”

He ran. He ran because his whole body was hot with excitement, because if he stopped, it would all go cold on him, all the sudden intent, the wild plan that had come from nowhere. Simon wasn’t coming. He had to sort this mess out himself.

Without looking back he raced down and down, leading Steve’s greedy shadow into the darkest recesses of the house, down to the cold kitchens smelling of school dinners, through the sculleries, down the cellar steps, through the double doors at the bottom where the cider casks of the Treveyans’ vast banquets had once rolled.

It was cold here. Numbingly cold.

At the farthest end of the last vault was an ancient strong-door, studded with nails. Tom unbolted it and dragged it open, and the dank opening stank of rats and stale beer.

Steve pushed past and stopped. Far down in the dark, echoes rumbled.

“What’s that noise?”

“The Darkwater. They say it runs in a chasm under the house.” The reverberation of the water faded, into silence.

After a minute Steve groped around the walls. “Where’s the light?”

“Here.” Tom reached past him. He could do this. He would do it.

“Well, put the bloody thing on!”

It was easy. Tom shoved; Steve gave a yell and pitched forward. There was a clatter of rolling barrels, then Tom had the door slammed shut and was driving the bolts hard across, top and middle and bottom, solid Victorian rods of iron, and all the yelling and beating of hands from inside suddenly muffled to a dull thumping in his head.

Icily calm, he turned and leaned his back against the door, listening. No one else would hear, unless they came down here.

And no one would.

Because it was Christmas.

“Three days,” he said to himself aloud. “That was what you gave me. You never told anyone where I was. You just watched and laughed. Three days in the underworld. Three days in hell.”

Then he went up the stairs slowly, his mind cold and clear. Closing every door after him, he went into every room where Steve had been, wiping fingerprints off, replacing books and papers, closing the lockers, plugging Azrael’s computer back in.

The cat was still there, watching.

“And you can shut up,” he said.

By the time he got down to the hall and out onto the front drive, it was midnight. His breath crisped in the damp, smoky air, and the chimes of the church clock seemed to hang over the village, the woods, and frosty roofs. Everything was silent when they stopped. Except, far along the road, the Waits were coming back, a ghostly whisper of chatter getting louder, the faint crunch of feet on gravel.

He shouldn’t be seen here.

Slipping into the bushes he made a stealthy detour around by the Devil’s Quoits, and to his surprise, as the moonlight lit them Simon was there, standing by the largest, hands in pockets.

“Look at this,” he said as Tom came up.

Steve’s scrawled name, the white painted letters, had gone. And they hadn’t been scrubbed off. They were gone, as completely as if they’d never been there.

“Weird,” Tom said.

Simon looked at him. “Not as weird as you. What on earth are you going to do with him? He’ll kill you!”

“Let him rot,” Tom said fiercely. “Or give him to Azrael.”

Turning his back he pushed through the laurels and out into the straggle of Waits, and as the band wearily struck up “The Holly and the Ivy” he saw the Gray Mare cavorting like a skeletal ghost in the moonlight, and his mother, and Sarah.

She was carrying a lantern. He pushed up behind her. “Listen. Come over to us tomorrow. For Christmas dinner.”

She stared in surprise. “Where have you been?”

He looked flushed, she thought, and different. For a moment she wasn’t sure if it was Tom or Simon, and then she felt a chill of fear. “Tom, you haven’t made any bargains with him, have you?”

“No. I told him I can sort things out for myself.”

She snorted. “I used to think that.”

“Well, I can. Will you come? Christmas?”

Sarah shrugged. She was going to say no, but then her face softened and she laughed. “It’ll be my last. I’d like it to be at the old place.”