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indriSUMMARY: Giles and Ethan, the electric Kool-Aid funky Satan groove year, in the early seventies. Rated M. Spoilers to Band Candy. Acknowledgements and disclaimers.
55.
Ethan sat in the remarkably ugly cafe of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Tan-and-white Corinthian columns stretched up to gilt arches and a painted ceiling. Ethan tried to concentrate on his piece of cake and the letter in his hand.
He'd started out at the British Museum around noon, following Mr Grey's instructions regarding a message left in a telephone booth. Of course, with the Museum being the size it was, there was more than one booth next to it. Ethan had annoyed quite a few tourists as he'd examined the one closest to the Great Russell Street entrance. Then he'd methodically walked the museum's perimeter, checking every telephone until he'd found one on Montague Street. The envelope was there, smelling of fresh magic, tucked into the back of the phonebook. It contained, as promised, a pound note and a second letter. It didn't make sense that no-one had found it before him, unless some sort of illusion had been used. What an odd thing for Mr Grey to do.
This letter was in a different hand. It read, "Clapham Junction, Platform 4. Chalk a cross on the right spot." There was no information about what "the right spot" meant or whether he'd be paid.
The weather hadn't been too bad. He could have decided to go back to Russell Street and busk. But his curiosity had compelled him.
He'd bought a ticket to Clapham Junction and made his way to the specified platform. He'd walked up and down it twice before he picked up a faint aura of magic in one of the further stretches. Feeling around, he found a loose tile on the floor that he was able to wedge up. And there had been the third letter, telling him to go to the V&A. There were two pound notes inside. After replacing the tile, he chalked the spot.
In the V&A cafe there had been an envelope taped to the underside of a table. Unfortunately, the table had been occupied when he'd arrived. It was only once it had become vacant that he'd been able to find the fourth and final letter, complete with a ten pound note. The next instruction was simply to call Mr Grey.
What this charade told him was that Mr Grey was looking for a London errand boy, with some magical abilities, who was able to take instructions without inquiring into the meaning of the whole. This was not the most glamorous self-portrait that Ethan could imagine, but it beat busking.
He finished his cake and found a phone outside. The phone rang out four or five times before it was picked up. "Grey's Gift Shop is closed on Sundays," Ethan heard.
"You'd didn't say that there was a particular day you wanted me to ring," said Ethan.
"Mr Rayne," said Mr Grey, with a note of pleasure in his voice. "How good of you to call. There'll be more work for you, Mr Rayne. I'll send you a letter." Then Mr Grey hung up.
Ethan got home around dinner time. Rupert was out at his rehearsal, so Ethan spent his evening finishing off the spells in Spivak and then starting to read The Glass Bead Game. Sometimes he could hear the television playing upstairs: the theme music from the news, or a rousing ditty from The Good Old Days.
Rupert got home very late and very drunk. He crashed into the room and had to be reminded to put down his guitar before he got into bed. Rupert cringed. "I'll have woken everyone up!" he said, with a cringe.
"Don't worry about it," said Ethan. "Randall sleeps like the dead."
56.
The train took them past Maidstone and Ashford. Rupert looked out of the window, his fingers twitching slightly through some air guitar chords. He really should be at home practising for tonight's gig. Instead he was reading the graffiti written on the wall: "Jenny and Joe" inscribed inside a heart, plus some scrawled initials in another hand. He wished he'd brought a book. It was the late morning, and he and Ethan were very nearly the only passengers in the carriage.
"All I meant," he said, "was that we could have waited until Sunday. I have an entirely free day then. What if we run into trouble? I really have to be back in Chelsea by seven o'clock."
"We can't go on Sunday, we'll be in Hampshire," Ethan said. "Diedre's birthday? And this is just a reconnaissance trip. If she's there we won't approach her. We'll wait until we're more sure of our ground. Don't you want to see one of the country's most powerful witches in her native habitat?"
Rupert reflected that he had, in fact, already seen a couple of Britain's greatest practitioners, albeit not in their "native habitat", and at something of a distance in the Watcher's Council Headquarters: a glimpse in a corridor during the Unfound Slayer Crisis of '69. From what little he'd been able to see, they'd looked old and somewhat eccentrically dressed but otherwise quite ordinary. They'd stand out in a queue in a bank and not at all in a folk band.
Still, he was rather interested, especially if they could see her up-close. "Of course I am," he said.
"She's supposed to have mastered ectoplasm in her early teens," said Ethan. "Able to extrude immense quantities of the stuff and form it into living beings."
Rupert vaguely remembered reading about this. "Sounds rather revolting, although obviously, a remarkable, ah, technical achievement."
"Do you think it was more akin to matter transmogrification or a demonic conjuration in an unusual substance?"
"More the latter," said Ripper. "Evelyn gave you the address?"
"Not 'gave', exactly," said Ethan. "She doesn't like to give me information for free. Or when she does, I have to look like I've been given a treat. She's a patronising bitch, really."
"If we're just looking things over," Rupert said, "could you manage to follow my lead for a while? I have a good idea of what to do." He could employ Standard Investigation Pattern #4 for low urgency and mild risk situations.
He'd need a clipboard.
The train pulled up and they stepped out into a station painted a dispiriting shade of grey-green.
"Folkestone," he heard Ethan mutter. "Who'd retire to Folkestone?"
"It was a bustling seaside town in its hey-day," said Rupert. "It's probably quite nice when you get to know it. Railway stations aren't usually the most attractive parts of a town."
They walked past suburban houses in the direction of the sea. "Doesn't look like much, does it?" said Ethan. "All that power and she decides to move here."
The houses closer to the sea were older. Some streets were mildly picturesque but everything had a rundown look. There were a few obvious holidaymakers, but most of the other people they passed had a weary, local look to them.
By the time they reached the seashore, the town looked like every other late Victorian or early Edwardian seaside town that Rupert had ever been to. Rows of tall and grey-white terraced houses lined the street, looking out over the sea. It was exactly as he remembered Llandudno.
A little further down the road they found their way down to a derelict amusement park on the foreshore. There were boarded-up domed buildings and an entire abandoned rollercoaster.
"Dear God, but this is bleak," said Ethan.
Rupert was thinking the same thing himself, but he was also a little annoyed that Ethan's pessimism had proved to be well-founded. "Can't you say anything nice about the place?" he asked.
Ethan paused and looked around. "I like the colour of the sea," he said.
It was rather lovely: a pale, sometimes glittering blue. They stood and watched the waves roll in for a while. They could hear the cries of gulls and of distant, playing children. There was the sea smell and the wafting scent of fish and chips.
"Let's get something to eat before we go and investigate," Ethan suggested.
Back up on the main road they bought cod and chips and then sat on a park bench, eating from a newspaper. A young family walked past, the children carrying buckets and spades. Then an elderly woman shuffled by. Rupert and Ethan both looked at her intently.
"Doesn't look old enough," Ethan said, finally.
"Doesn't look Italian," said Rupert.
"Still, perhaps we're eating fish and chips from the same shop Eusapia Ciccarello gets hers from. If she eats fish and chips."
They bought a map and a few stationery items from a newsagent. 131 Esplanade was a short walk to the east.
Ripper lit himself a cigarette as they walked. He offered to Ethan, who declined, as always.
"Why don't you smoke?" Rupert asked.
"I don't want to need a fag break in the middle of an hours-long ritual," said Ethan.
"You take magic pretty seriously, don't you?" said Ripper.
"There were years when it was the only thing stopping me from trying to kill everyone I'd ever met."
"I can't always tell when you're joking, you know."
"Good," said Ethan.
131 The Esplanade was part of yet another dilapidated Edwardian terrace. This one had been turned into flats. There was an unlocked door that led to a stairwell.
"She can't live here," said Ethan. "Why would she live here?"
"I'm going to try the ground floor flat first," Rupert said. "Wait outside? If I need you, I'll, um--"
"Scream?" said Ethan. "Good enough."
Rupert held the clipboard in front of him as he waited for Ethan to walk a bit down the street. He tried to look bored and uninterested as he knocked.
A woman in late middle age answered the door.
Ripper switched to his North London accent. "I'm from the Gas Board," he said, tilting the clipboard a fraction. "I'm looking for Mrs Ciccarello. Is that you?"
"Show us your I.D. then," said the woman.
"I don't have it with me," he said.
"Then I'm not letting you in. For all I know, you're a burglar." She shut the door in his face.
Ripper walked back to where Ethan was standing. "That didn't go very well. She thought I was casing the joint."
"I told you, it's the jacket," Ethan said. "My turn for the first floor flat?"
"OK."
"Come with me anyway," Ethan said, "but let me do the talking."
A woman in her late twenties opened the door this time. Ethan evinced surprise, very nearly convincingly.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I must be in the wrong place. Is this Flat Two?"
"Yes," she said. "Who are you looking for? I might be able to help."
"Mrs Ciccarello? She's my great-grandmother."
The woman looked at them solemnly. "I think you'd better come in."
The living room was freshly painted in light beige. Two small children -- possibly twins -- were playing on carpet tiles. They had a toy train that was chasing a toy car under the sofa.
"I'm Ethan," said Ethan. "And this is my cousin, Rupert. We've been trying to find out about the Italian side of our family. Our gran was estranged from them a long time ago. Around the time of the First World War, of course. We were given this address."
Rupert perched on the sofa, trying to look like Ethan's cousin, and also part-Italian.
"You never met her then?" the woman asked. "Oh, where's my manners, would you like a cup of tea and a biscuit?"
"I'd love one," said Ethan, with a particularly winning smile.
She went to fuss around in the kitchen.
"I think I'm doing better than you did," Ethan said, sotto voce.
"You got lucky," Rupert whispered hotly. "The woman downstairs is a paranoid."
"My name's Sarah," said the first floor woman, returning with a pot of tea and a plate of gingersnaps.
Ethan took a cup. "She's moved, hasn't she?" he said. "We were given the right address."
Sarah sat down. "I'm sorry," she said. "I think your great-grandmother is dead."
Ethan looked genuinely crestfallen.
"We bought the place in an estate sale. It had belonged to a -- it was a funny name -- it began with an E? Looked foreign."
Ethan didn't seem capable of speech, so Rupert said, "Eusapia Ciccarello. That would be her. Is there anything you could tell us?"
Sarah thought. "I don't think there's much. The place was gutted when we moved in -- I think there'd been a fire. There was a bit of smoke damage to the walls. Everything had been stripped out. I'm so sorry."
"A fire?" said Ethan. "But it didn't spread to the other flats?"
"Or just some smoke, maybe, I don't know."
"Have the neighbours said anything to you about her?" Rupert asked.
"They didn't see very much of her," Sarah said. "She kept to herself and got her groceries delivered. Didn't get many visitors, they said. They were always a bit worried she wasn't looking after herself. That's all I can tell you, I think." She shook her head. "I have to go and pick up my eldest from school now."
"Of course," said Rupert. "Thank you, thank you very much for helping us."
"I'm just sorry I haven't got happier news," she said.
They left the flat and took the stairs to the ground floor. Sarah called out from above, "You could ask at the Catholic Church," she said.
"She won't be buried there," said Ethan, not loudly enough for Sarah to hear.
"Thank you," shouted Rupert. "Goodbye."
Outside and across the road, Ethan stood with his hands in his pockets, apparently looking at his shoes.
"She was old," said Rupert. "We knew that."
"A fire?" said Ethan. "Smoke?"
"Maybe she dropped her cigarette in bed."
"A witch of her calibre?"
"Well, what do you think it was? Something demonic?"
"Perhaps. Smoke wouldn't be unusual for any sort of demonic summoning I've heard of. But who stripped out the house? Where are her books? Her artefacts? Her notebooks?"
"Where were her friends and family?" asked Rupert.
Sarah came out of the front door then, struggling with a large pushchair. It wasn't clear to Rupert whether she'd seen them standing there. He didn't think so.
Ethan waited until she was around the corner before marching back to the house. Rupert sighed and followed.
Back up the stairs they went, and Ethan unlocked the door. Then they were back in the toy-strewn living room.
"Sarah seemed quite nice," said Rupert, as he stood there in her living room.
"I thought so too," said Ethan, his hand held in the air as if he were straining to hear distant music. "There must be something left here of her."
"Sarah?"
"Ciccarello."
Ripper started to tap on the walls and floors, to see if anything sounded hollow. Nothing doing, though.
The kitchen was harder to check, because of all the built-ins. Rupert looked in at tins of tuna and Tommee Tippee sipper mugs. "What if she comes back?"
"Ciccarello?" asked Ethan, looking startled to consider it.
"Sarah," Rupert said.
"She has three children," said Ethan. "We'll hear her coming."
There was nothing in the bathroom or the main bedroom. But in the twins' bedroom, Ethan pointed inside the airing cupboard. "Look in there," he said.
Rupert perched next to the boiler and reached around to the back.
"It'll be near the front," said Ethan. "She was a small Italian woman. She didn't have long arms like you do."
Ripper tapped around until he heard the right sound. "There's a loose board." He wedged his fingers under and pulled.
"There," said Ethan.
It was just a few bookshelves. They were empty.
"There's still something there," said Ethan. "Keep looking."
Rupert groped around a bit and found a small gap in the woodwork, a crack below the bottom shelf. He could feel the edge of a hardback book but couldn't get a good enough grip.
Ethan was peering over his shoulder. "Stand back," said Rupert, and he kicked the bottom shelf in with his heel. Underneath, he found... the front cover of a book, with a few pages still clinging to it. There was nothing else.
"A Book of Dargoth," Ripper read.
"Give it to me," said Ethan.
Rupert didn't.
"I'm serious. You can't read it."
Rupert didn't let go of the book.
Then they heard from outside, the wailing-in-unison of two toddlers, followed by an exasperated cry from Sarah.
"Bugger," said Ethan.
"There's no fire escape," said Rupert, as he replaced the airing cupboard panel. "I already looked."
"It's all right," said Ethan. "We go out the front."
"She'll see us."
"We go out the front now."
They stepped into the stairwell just as Sarah reached the outside door. Ethan muttered a chant and then headed further up the stairs.
"Oh," said Rupert.
They paused on the staircase as Sarah struggled to get her pushchair into the vestibule. "Hello again!" said Ethan cheerily. "Rupert," he said. "Go and help her then."
Rupert had to hand him the fragment of book. Then he went down and helped Sarah carried the pushchair up to her flat while she cajoled the children. From upstairs, they could hear Ethan knock on the second-floor door, and then say, "I'm looking for anyone who might have known my great-grandmother, Mrs Eusapia Ciccarello."
Rupert declined a second offer of tea from Sarah and went outside to sit on a park bench. He waited until Ethan came out of the house to come and join him.
"There was a fire," said Ethan. "A small one, electrical, very contained, but by the time the fire brigade got there, she was dead. An eccentric assortment of relatives turned up within hours and took away boxes of stuff the same night."
"I didn't enjoy that," said Rupert. "In fact, I didn't like that all."
"What?" said Ethan.
"She invited us in for tea and then we broke into her house."
"We got what we came for and we didn't disturb anyone."
"We looked in her underwear drawer," said Rupert. "And I don't understand why you won't let me look at the book."
"Only worshippers of Dargoth can read his works," said Ethan. "I'd be very surprised if you were one of those."
"And you are?"
"Technically, yes. It's Evelyn's fault. Please don't ask." Then his face took on a funny look and he said, "Oh God."
"What?"
"Evelyn. She obtained her Dargoth book three months ago."
"Not long after Eusapia Ciccarello died," said Rupert. "Do you think she had something to do with this?"
"I don't know," said Ethan. "She might have bought it in a fire sale."
"Nice friends you've got," said Rupert.
Ethan flicked through the few pages. "It's just the introduction. A reminder of basic principles from the first volume, that kind of thing. Easy demons for conjuration."
"No genius loci?"
"No."
Rupert checked his watch. "I really need to get back to the train station," he said.
Ethan read aloud passages as they sat on the train. "At one with the darkness, Dargoth is master of many. In world after world he is called to. He is lord, not of the waking mind, but of the dream mind, the nightmare mind, and the mind under trance or wine. Legion are his servants--"
"Do you mind," said the man sitting next to them, waving his copy of The London Mercury at them.
"Not at all," said Ethan. "Legion are his servants--" and the man got up and left for a different seat. "Eyghon the Sleepwalker, Neremsis the Bringer of Bad Dreams, and Leremtip or is that Lemsip, or Pitmerel backwards, Addler of--" Ethan put the book down for a moment. "I can't say much for the prose style," he said.
"Do you think she died alone?" asked Rupert.
"I expect so," said Ethan.
Rupert closed his eyes and tried to remove the vision he had in head, of a frail old woman gasping for air and breathing in only smoke.
55.
Ethan sat in the remarkably ugly cafe of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Tan-and-white Corinthian columns stretched up to gilt arches and a painted ceiling. Ethan tried to concentrate on his piece of cake and the letter in his hand.
He'd started out at the British Museum around noon, following Mr Grey's instructions regarding a message left in a telephone booth. Of course, with the Museum being the size it was, there was more than one booth next to it. Ethan had annoyed quite a few tourists as he'd examined the one closest to the Great Russell Street entrance. Then he'd methodically walked the museum's perimeter, checking every telephone until he'd found one on Montague Street. The envelope was there, smelling of fresh magic, tucked into the back of the phonebook. It contained, as promised, a pound note and a second letter. It didn't make sense that no-one had found it before him, unless some sort of illusion had been used. What an odd thing for Mr Grey to do.
This letter was in a different hand. It read, "Clapham Junction, Platform 4. Chalk a cross on the right spot." There was no information about what "the right spot" meant or whether he'd be paid.
The weather hadn't been too bad. He could have decided to go back to Russell Street and busk. But his curiosity had compelled him.
He'd bought a ticket to Clapham Junction and made his way to the specified platform. He'd walked up and down it twice before he picked up a faint aura of magic in one of the further stretches. Feeling around, he found a loose tile on the floor that he was able to wedge up. And there had been the third letter, telling him to go to the V&A. There were two pound notes inside. After replacing the tile, he chalked the spot.
In the V&A cafe there had been an envelope taped to the underside of a table. Unfortunately, the table had been occupied when he'd arrived. It was only once it had become vacant that he'd been able to find the fourth and final letter, complete with a ten pound note. The next instruction was simply to call Mr Grey.
What this charade told him was that Mr Grey was looking for a London errand boy, with some magical abilities, who was able to take instructions without inquiring into the meaning of the whole. This was not the most glamorous self-portrait that Ethan could imagine, but it beat busking.
He finished his cake and found a phone outside. The phone rang out four or five times before it was picked up. "Grey's Gift Shop is closed on Sundays," Ethan heard.
"You'd didn't say that there was a particular day you wanted me to ring," said Ethan.
"Mr Rayne," said Mr Grey, with a note of pleasure in his voice. "How good of you to call. There'll be more work for you, Mr Rayne. I'll send you a letter." Then Mr Grey hung up.
Ethan got home around dinner time. Rupert was out at his rehearsal, so Ethan spent his evening finishing off the spells in Spivak and then starting to read The Glass Bead Game. Sometimes he could hear the television playing upstairs: the theme music from the news, or a rousing ditty from The Good Old Days.
Rupert got home very late and very drunk. He crashed into the room and had to be reminded to put down his guitar before he got into bed. Rupert cringed. "I'll have woken everyone up!" he said, with a cringe.
"Don't worry about it," said Ethan. "Randall sleeps like the dead."
56.
The train took them past Maidstone and Ashford. Rupert looked out of the window, his fingers twitching slightly through some air guitar chords. He really should be at home practising for tonight's gig. Instead he was reading the graffiti written on the wall: "Jenny and Joe" inscribed inside a heart, plus some scrawled initials in another hand. He wished he'd brought a book. It was the late morning, and he and Ethan were very nearly the only passengers in the carriage.
"All I meant," he said, "was that we could have waited until Sunday. I have an entirely free day then. What if we run into trouble? I really have to be back in Chelsea by seven o'clock."
"We can't go on Sunday, we'll be in Hampshire," Ethan said. "Diedre's birthday? And this is just a reconnaissance trip. If she's there we won't approach her. We'll wait until we're more sure of our ground. Don't you want to see one of the country's most powerful witches in her native habitat?"
Rupert reflected that he had, in fact, already seen a couple of Britain's greatest practitioners, albeit not in their "native habitat", and at something of a distance in the Watcher's Council Headquarters: a glimpse in a corridor during the Unfound Slayer Crisis of '69. From what little he'd been able to see, they'd looked old and somewhat eccentrically dressed but otherwise quite ordinary. They'd stand out in a queue in a bank and not at all in a folk band.
Still, he was rather interested, especially if they could see her up-close. "Of course I am," he said.
"She's supposed to have mastered ectoplasm in her early teens," said Ethan. "Able to extrude immense quantities of the stuff and form it into living beings."
Rupert vaguely remembered reading about this. "Sounds rather revolting, although obviously, a remarkable, ah, technical achievement."
"Do you think it was more akin to matter transmogrification or a demonic conjuration in an unusual substance?"
"More the latter," said Ripper. "Evelyn gave you the address?"
"Not 'gave', exactly," said Ethan. "She doesn't like to give me information for free. Or when she does, I have to look like I've been given a treat. She's a patronising bitch, really."
"If we're just looking things over," Rupert said, "could you manage to follow my lead for a while? I have a good idea of what to do." He could employ Standard Investigation Pattern #4 for low urgency and mild risk situations.
He'd need a clipboard.
The train pulled up and they stepped out into a station painted a dispiriting shade of grey-green.
"Folkestone," he heard Ethan mutter. "Who'd retire to Folkestone?"
"It was a bustling seaside town in its hey-day," said Rupert. "It's probably quite nice when you get to know it. Railway stations aren't usually the most attractive parts of a town."
They walked past suburban houses in the direction of the sea. "Doesn't look like much, does it?" said Ethan. "All that power and she decides to move here."
The houses closer to the sea were older. Some streets were mildly picturesque but everything had a rundown look. There were a few obvious holidaymakers, but most of the other people they passed had a weary, local look to them.
By the time they reached the seashore, the town looked like every other late Victorian or early Edwardian seaside town that Rupert had ever been to. Rows of tall and grey-white terraced houses lined the street, looking out over the sea. It was exactly as he remembered Llandudno.
A little further down the road they found their way down to a derelict amusement park on the foreshore. There were boarded-up domed buildings and an entire abandoned rollercoaster.
"Dear God, but this is bleak," said Ethan.
Rupert was thinking the same thing himself, but he was also a little annoyed that Ethan's pessimism had proved to be well-founded. "Can't you say anything nice about the place?" he asked.
Ethan paused and looked around. "I like the colour of the sea," he said.
It was rather lovely: a pale, sometimes glittering blue. They stood and watched the waves roll in for a while. They could hear the cries of gulls and of distant, playing children. There was the sea smell and the wafting scent of fish and chips.
"Let's get something to eat before we go and investigate," Ethan suggested.
Back up on the main road they bought cod and chips and then sat on a park bench, eating from a newspaper. A young family walked past, the children carrying buckets and spades. Then an elderly woman shuffled by. Rupert and Ethan both looked at her intently.
"Doesn't look old enough," Ethan said, finally.
"Doesn't look Italian," said Rupert.
"Still, perhaps we're eating fish and chips from the same shop Eusapia Ciccarello gets hers from. If she eats fish and chips."
They bought a map and a few stationery items from a newsagent. 131 Esplanade was a short walk to the east.
Ripper lit himself a cigarette as they walked. He offered to Ethan, who declined, as always.
"Why don't you smoke?" Rupert asked.
"I don't want to need a fag break in the middle of an hours-long ritual," said Ethan.
"You take magic pretty seriously, don't you?" said Ripper.
"There were years when it was the only thing stopping me from trying to kill everyone I'd ever met."
"I can't always tell when you're joking, you know."
"Good," said Ethan.
131 The Esplanade was part of yet another dilapidated Edwardian terrace. This one had been turned into flats. There was an unlocked door that led to a stairwell.
"She can't live here," said Ethan. "Why would she live here?"
"I'm going to try the ground floor flat first," Rupert said. "Wait outside? If I need you, I'll, um--"
"Scream?" said Ethan. "Good enough."
Rupert held the clipboard in front of him as he waited for Ethan to walk a bit down the street. He tried to look bored and uninterested as he knocked.
A woman in late middle age answered the door.
Ripper switched to his North London accent. "I'm from the Gas Board," he said, tilting the clipboard a fraction. "I'm looking for Mrs Ciccarello. Is that you?"
"Show us your I.D. then," said the woman.
"I don't have it with me," he said.
"Then I'm not letting you in. For all I know, you're a burglar." She shut the door in his face.
Ripper walked back to where Ethan was standing. "That didn't go very well. She thought I was casing the joint."
"I told you, it's the jacket," Ethan said. "My turn for the first floor flat?"
"OK."
"Come with me anyway," Ethan said, "but let me do the talking."
A woman in her late twenties opened the door this time. Ethan evinced surprise, very nearly convincingly.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I must be in the wrong place. Is this Flat Two?"
"Yes," she said. "Who are you looking for? I might be able to help."
"Mrs Ciccarello? She's my great-grandmother."
The woman looked at them solemnly. "I think you'd better come in."
The living room was freshly painted in light beige. Two small children -- possibly twins -- were playing on carpet tiles. They had a toy train that was chasing a toy car under the sofa.
"I'm Ethan," said Ethan. "And this is my cousin, Rupert. We've been trying to find out about the Italian side of our family. Our gran was estranged from them a long time ago. Around the time of the First World War, of course. We were given this address."
Rupert perched on the sofa, trying to look like Ethan's cousin, and also part-Italian.
"You never met her then?" the woman asked. "Oh, where's my manners, would you like a cup of tea and a biscuit?"
"I'd love one," said Ethan, with a particularly winning smile.
She went to fuss around in the kitchen.
"I think I'm doing better than you did," Ethan said, sotto voce.
"You got lucky," Rupert whispered hotly. "The woman downstairs is a paranoid."
"My name's Sarah," said the first floor woman, returning with a pot of tea and a plate of gingersnaps.
Ethan took a cup. "She's moved, hasn't she?" he said. "We were given the right address."
Sarah sat down. "I'm sorry," she said. "I think your great-grandmother is dead."
Ethan looked genuinely crestfallen.
"We bought the place in an estate sale. It had belonged to a -- it was a funny name -- it began with an E? Looked foreign."
Ethan didn't seem capable of speech, so Rupert said, "Eusapia Ciccarello. That would be her. Is there anything you could tell us?"
Sarah thought. "I don't think there's much. The place was gutted when we moved in -- I think there'd been a fire. There was a bit of smoke damage to the walls. Everything had been stripped out. I'm so sorry."
"A fire?" said Ethan. "But it didn't spread to the other flats?"
"Or just some smoke, maybe, I don't know."
"Have the neighbours said anything to you about her?" Rupert asked.
"They didn't see very much of her," Sarah said. "She kept to herself and got her groceries delivered. Didn't get many visitors, they said. They were always a bit worried she wasn't looking after herself. That's all I can tell you, I think." She shook her head. "I have to go and pick up my eldest from school now."
"Of course," said Rupert. "Thank you, thank you very much for helping us."
"I'm just sorry I haven't got happier news," she said.
They left the flat and took the stairs to the ground floor. Sarah called out from above, "You could ask at the Catholic Church," she said.
"She won't be buried there," said Ethan, not loudly enough for Sarah to hear.
"Thank you," shouted Rupert. "Goodbye."
Outside and across the road, Ethan stood with his hands in his pockets, apparently looking at his shoes.
"She was old," said Rupert. "We knew that."
"A fire?" said Ethan. "Smoke?"
"Maybe she dropped her cigarette in bed."
"A witch of her calibre?"
"Well, what do you think it was? Something demonic?"
"Perhaps. Smoke wouldn't be unusual for any sort of demonic summoning I've heard of. But who stripped out the house? Where are her books? Her artefacts? Her notebooks?"
"Where were her friends and family?" asked Rupert.
Sarah came out of the front door then, struggling with a large pushchair. It wasn't clear to Rupert whether she'd seen them standing there. He didn't think so.
Ethan waited until she was around the corner before marching back to the house. Rupert sighed and followed.
Back up the stairs they went, and Ethan unlocked the door. Then they were back in the toy-strewn living room.
"Sarah seemed quite nice," said Rupert, as he stood there in her living room.
"I thought so too," said Ethan, his hand held in the air as if he were straining to hear distant music. "There must be something left here of her."
"Sarah?"
"Ciccarello."
Ripper started to tap on the walls and floors, to see if anything sounded hollow. Nothing doing, though.
The kitchen was harder to check, because of all the built-ins. Rupert looked in at tins of tuna and Tommee Tippee sipper mugs. "What if she comes back?"
"Ciccarello?" asked Ethan, looking startled to consider it.
"Sarah," Rupert said.
"She has three children," said Ethan. "We'll hear her coming."
There was nothing in the bathroom or the main bedroom. But in the twins' bedroom, Ethan pointed inside the airing cupboard. "Look in there," he said.
Rupert perched next to the boiler and reached around to the back.
"It'll be near the front," said Ethan. "She was a small Italian woman. She didn't have long arms like you do."
Ripper tapped around until he heard the right sound. "There's a loose board." He wedged his fingers under and pulled.
"There," said Ethan.
It was just a few bookshelves. They were empty.
"There's still something there," said Ethan. "Keep looking."
Rupert groped around a bit and found a small gap in the woodwork, a crack below the bottom shelf. He could feel the edge of a hardback book but couldn't get a good enough grip.
Ethan was peering over his shoulder. "Stand back," said Rupert, and he kicked the bottom shelf in with his heel. Underneath, he found... the front cover of a book, with a few pages still clinging to it. There was nothing else.
"A Book of Dargoth," Ripper read.
"Give it to me," said Ethan.
Rupert didn't.
"I'm serious. You can't read it."
Rupert didn't let go of the book.
Then they heard from outside, the wailing-in-unison of two toddlers, followed by an exasperated cry from Sarah.
"Bugger," said Ethan.
"There's no fire escape," said Rupert, as he replaced the airing cupboard panel. "I already looked."
"It's all right," said Ethan. "We go out the front."
"She'll see us."
"We go out the front now."
They stepped into the stairwell just as Sarah reached the outside door. Ethan muttered a chant and then headed further up the stairs.
"Oh," said Rupert.
They paused on the staircase as Sarah struggled to get her pushchair into the vestibule. "Hello again!" said Ethan cheerily. "Rupert," he said. "Go and help her then."
Rupert had to hand him the fragment of book. Then he went down and helped Sarah carried the pushchair up to her flat while she cajoled the children. From upstairs, they could hear Ethan knock on the second-floor door, and then say, "I'm looking for anyone who might have known my great-grandmother, Mrs Eusapia Ciccarello."
Rupert declined a second offer of tea from Sarah and went outside to sit on a park bench. He waited until Ethan came out of the house to come and join him.
"There was a fire," said Ethan. "A small one, electrical, very contained, but by the time the fire brigade got there, she was dead. An eccentric assortment of relatives turned up within hours and took away boxes of stuff the same night."
"I didn't enjoy that," said Rupert. "In fact, I didn't like that all."
"What?" said Ethan.
"She invited us in for tea and then we broke into her house."
"We got what we came for and we didn't disturb anyone."
"We looked in her underwear drawer," said Rupert. "And I don't understand why you won't let me look at the book."
"Only worshippers of Dargoth can read his works," said Ethan. "I'd be very surprised if you were one of those."
"And you are?"
"Technically, yes. It's Evelyn's fault. Please don't ask." Then his face took on a funny look and he said, "Oh God."
"What?"
"Evelyn. She obtained her Dargoth book three months ago."
"Not long after Eusapia Ciccarello died," said Rupert. "Do you think she had something to do with this?"
"I don't know," said Ethan. "She might have bought it in a fire sale."
"Nice friends you've got," said Rupert.
Ethan flicked through the few pages. "It's just the introduction. A reminder of basic principles from the first volume, that kind of thing. Easy demons for conjuration."
"No genius loci?"
"No."
Rupert checked his watch. "I really need to get back to the train station," he said.
Ethan read aloud passages as they sat on the train. "At one with the darkness, Dargoth is master of many. In world after world he is called to. He is lord, not of the waking mind, but of the dream mind, the nightmare mind, and the mind under trance or wine. Legion are his servants--"
"Do you mind," said the man sitting next to them, waving his copy of The London Mercury at them.
"Not at all," said Ethan. "Legion are his servants--" and the man got up and left for a different seat. "Eyghon the Sleepwalker, Neremsis the Bringer of Bad Dreams, and Leremtip or is that Lemsip, or Pitmerel backwards, Addler of--" Ethan put the book down for a moment. "I can't say much for the prose style," he said.
"Do you think she died alone?" asked Rupert.
"I expect so," said Ethan.
Rupert closed his eyes and tried to remove the vision he had in head, of a frail old woman gasping for air and breathing in only smoke.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 08:49 pm (UTC)Hah, good point! Nice stopping point for the chapter break, too, the differences between them all during their adventure.