Devil’s Kiss

22

Billi ran. She ran down Stoke Newington Church Street. Past the dustmen loading up their lorry, past the old Sikh arranging fruit outside his grocery shop, past the office workers at the bus stop. Billi’s feet hardly touched the ground and her rage wouldn’t let her stop. The gates of Clissold Park stood open and the park beyond was carpeted in a low, white mist. Billi ran in. She didn’t care where, just away.

I’m proud of you.

She couldn’t get it out of her mind, the way her dad had smiled. At Kay.

Oh, yes. She should have known; Kay was the Oracle after all. He was important. And she? What was she?

She wasn’t a Templar.

Billi barged past two joggers in their Day-Glo Lycra outfits, and overtook a trio of nannies with their designer prams and designer babies. The west exit on to Green Lane suddenly appeared ahead out of the mist, mere metres away.

As did Kay.

Billi was almost on top of him when she realized he was there. He raised his hand and smiled and found himself lying on the dewy grass, groaning and clutching his face. Billi stood over him, the knuckles on her right fist hot and bruised.

‘What the hell d’you do that for?’ he cried.

Would Arthur be so proud of him now? She wanted Kay to be angry, to get up and fight. Just so she could smash him in the other eye.

Some Templar.

She nudged him with her foot. ‘Get up.’ He didn’t respond. She kicked him.

‘Ow!’

‘Just get up.’

The three nannies passed by, giving Billi long sideways glances, no doubt memorizing her face in case of a police line-up later.

‘What the hell are you looking at?’ she shouted, then slumped down on a bench, her fists still tightly clenched, struggling to get her rage under control. But all she could see was everyone praising and adoring Kay. Marvellous Kay.

It wasn’t his fault, though. Not really. She tried hard to believe it, but the urge to punch his pasty white face in remained incredibly strong.

She had to take it out on someone!

She lowered her hands and stared at the ground. And at Kay’s boots.

‘Why?’

He shuffled, perhaps wary of a second attack. ‘Why what?’

‘Why did you come after me? You always do. Like some…’

‘Guardian angel?’ Kay suggested.

‘Like some stalker.’

Kay laughed and the bench creaked as he sat beside her. He’d lowered his hands and Billi could see the dark purple swelling around his left eye. It was going to be a big, fat, ugly bruise.

Really big.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

Kay sat very close beside her, but for some reason she didn’t feel like moving away. She looked at him sideways. He was actually quite good looking, in that malnourished indie pop-star kind of way. Kay watched the magpies flutter from the bare branches to search among the damp soil. Those bright eyes took in everything; he seemed to be amazed by it all. There was that secret smile again, that one of seeing things Billi wished she could see, just once.

‘Looks like it’s clearing,’ said Kay. The mist had evaporated, leaving only wispy tendrils stubbornly clinging to the ground and the morning sun was bright in the sharp blue sky.

‘Why do you think my dad’s like that?’ She couldn’t bring herself to ask what she really wanted.

Why doesn’t he love me?

‘You’re wrong about your father.’

‘You know that? For certain?’

Kay held up his hand, blotting the sun from his face. ‘Have you ever stared straight into the sun, Billi?’

‘Yes. So?’

‘It hurts. Sometimes brightness can be painful. Sometimes we need to live in the shadow, to protect ourselves.’

Billi frowned. ‘And what’s that, in English?’

He moved closer. His voice was quiet and Billi could feel his breath move in and out, gently caressing her cheek. His hand touched the side of hers and she sat very still. She waited, heart pounding, part of her telling herself this was just Kay, the boy she’d grown up with.

But it wasn’t. This Kay was very different. She turned her head slightly so his breath was on her lips. She lowered her eyes, looking at the curve of his throat down into his T-shirt and the way his chest moved as he breathed.

Kay stood up.

Billi sat there, stunned, as he broke away. What had just happened?

He pushed his hand through his hair and, not knowing which way to look, he stared down at his feet.

‘Just that you’re wrong about your father.’

No one commented on Kay’s black eye when they came back. Arthur and Elaine were still at the table, but the breakfast had been cleared away. Instead there was a plain pristine white linen cloth over the table. On it sat a large round biscuit tin and a leather-bound book, small, wrinkled, old.

‘There’s a packet of peas in the freezer,’ said Elaine. It took a second for Billi to realize she was talking about Kay’s eye. Kay found it himself and pressed the saggy bag against his bruised face.

Billi moved to the other side of the table, putting as much distance between her and Kay as possible. They hadn’t said a word to each other on the way back from the park.

The biscuit tin had a coppery tinge, and the lid was engraved with a profile of Queen Victoria and Albert. But Billi didn’t think there were digestives within. The book she didn’t recognize.

‘A diary?’ The bindings were similar to the others she’d seen in the Templar library, though this one was far older. It bore small bronze clasps, and the title was in gold leaf. Billi leaned over to read it. But as her eyes passed over the minute, faded letters a cold, creeping dread crawled into her.

‘The Goetia,’ she said. She looked up at her dad. ‘It’s not possible.’

The Lesser Key of Solomon. King Solomon’s occult writings on how to summon and bind Ethereals: devils, malakhim and Watchers. She didn’t know the book still existed. It was a book of the necromancy: the darkest maleficia.

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘Off some fool who thought he could summon the Devil,’ said Arthur.

‘You’re joking, of course.’

Arthur looked at her. It wasn’t his joking face.

‘What happened to him?’

‘Something bad,’ said her dad in the tone that meant this conversation was now over.

He pulled off the lid of the tin. Inside, covered in bubble-wrap, was the Cursed Mirror. Its surface seemed to ripple like oily water.

This was what it was all about, this small copper disc. How much pain, torment and slaughter was bound in its surface? Billi thought about the trapped Watchers, about the Nights of Iron, and about Percy, sitting there with his lifeblood dribbling down his chest. How many had already died because of it? And how many were still to die?

‘This is the only way,’ said Arthur. ‘We can’t kill Michael. But we can bind him. Trap him in Limbo forever.’

‘You can’t. Even Solomon never managed that. Michael’s an archangel.’

‘Solomon faced Michael at the height of his powers. He’s not the archangel he used to be.’

Billi shook her head. ‘Still, there’s no one powerful enough to try.’

Arthur’s stood up. ‘Yes, there is,’ he said, and slid the small, deadly book across the white tablecloth.

To Kay.