Page 19

Chapter 19

Bastion stayed tense and ready behind the illusionary bookcase, poised to leap through if the 4pm ended up being an appointment with death. It was not. It was Mr and Mrs Gilden, who wanted to know if their baby daughter had bred true and was going to be a wizard.

Melva held the babe, looking into her eyes, then intoned some Latin and anointed the six-month-old with oil, at which point the kid started wailing. Melva passed the baby back to her mother and brought out a crystal ball. I noted with approval that it had been safely secured in a cloth bag inside a drawer. No accidental crystal-ball fires here.

Melva looked into it for five long minutes. Even I started wondering about the fate of Gilden Junior as various expressions danced across her face. Finally she slumped back in her seat and covered the ball.

‘Well?’ Mr Gilden asked eagerly. ‘Is she? ’

‘She’s a wizard,’ Melva confirmed with a smile.

‘Thank God!’ Mrs Gilden murmured, cuddling her baby close. ‘If she was a Common realmer it would have been so hard to keep magic from her. I would have hated it.’

I was glad to hear that her main concern had been that, rather than building up a wizard dynasty. It wasn’t unheard of for children that hadn’t bred true to be put up for adoption. At times the Other realm could be cold and hard.

Melva gave some cryptic words of advice to guide the young child and the Gildens left. The baby didn’t have a prophecy of her own. Lucky her , I thought mutinously.

The Seer busied herself making a cup of chamomile tea while we stayed hidden and silent in the orb room. She drank her tea then ate a bar of chocolate. It riled me: she was drinking her favourite drink and eating her favourite food as if she really thought she was going to die. She had Bastion in her corner. She wasn’t going to need a last meal.

Melva pulled out her phone and sent off a few messages, then put it down and waited. Her hands were folded in her lap and she was gazing a little to her left. I swallowed. She knew what was coming.

She wasn’t kept waiting long .

A vampyr slid out of the shadows to her left. His eyes were jet black; he was being controlled by a necromancer. ‘Bastion!’ I shouted but I needn’t have bothered – he was already moving.

Vampyrs are insanely fast, though, and he had phased out of the shadows right next to Melva. He had a syringe in his hand; he stabbed it into her neck and pushed down the plunger.

I ran through the illusionary wall, opening my tote as fast as I could. I plunged my hand inside and wrestled out the potion jars. Bastion was already on the vampyr, fury written on his features. His chest heaving, he tore its head clean off its shoulders.

As I looked at Melva, she smiled at me. Her chest rose once and she gave a gasp, then her chest didn’t rise again. ‘No!’ I pleaded. ‘No, I’m here to save you! Don’t die, Melva!’ Her glassy eyes ignored my heartfelt pleas.

No doubt it was exhaustion that made the tears pour down my face. I was just so damned tired. I went to touch her neck, to check for a pulse before I let myself give up – even I couldn’t heal death – but Bastion gently pushed my hand away .

‘Don’t touch the body. The last thing we need is another trial because your prints are found on it,’ he said grimly. His expression softened. ‘She’s gone, Bambi.’

‘But…’

‘She’s gone,’ he repeated with absolute certainty. ‘I can reach out with my magic but I can’t coax her. There’s no life to coax with.’

Next to him, the vampyr’s corpse disappeared into dust. ‘We’d better tidy that up,’ I said absently. ‘Nell will go mad if we leave all that dust.’

Bastion nodded then his arms circled me and he tucked me under his chin. We stayed like that for several minutes. My heart was hurting.

‘We need to tidy,’ I repeated. There hadn’t been a pile of dust when we’d arrived at 8pm.

Bastion gave me one last squeeze before he stepped out of the room. He found a vacuum cleaner somewhere in one of the offices and I watched, still in shock, as he calmly removed all the vampyr dust. Dust to dust, ashes to hoover bag.

While he cleaned, I checked the wards on Melva’s room. Sure enough, the vampyr-repelling wards had been cancelled with a neatly inscribed ezro . Her offices were a commercial property so without the active ward there had been nothing to stop her killer from phasing in. She’d had a meeting with the vampyrs earlier on that day; no doubt she’d had the wards cancelled for that. She should have met them off site. She should have told me she’d had the anti-vampyr runes cancelled. It was a grave mistake that had led to her death.

But I should have checked the runes. I knew an attack was coming, so why didn’t I check the damned runes? What was I thinking? I rubbed a hand across my face. I was exhausted. My brain wasn’t working at optimum capacity and, because of that, Melva was dead.

Bastion hoovered on, sparing me worried glances now and again. I wanted to wave away his concern because I deserved the guilt that was swamping me. I’d dropped the ball and now Melva was dead.

When the room was pristine – apart from the body at the desk – we went back into the orb room again to await our own arrival and a startled Frogmatch. We talked quietly until eight o’clock rolled around, and then we waited in silence.

Nobody tells you how crushing it is when you can’t save someone. I’d experienced it before, of course; even potions and magic can’t save everyone. I’d had people die on me before. But Melva … it was personal. I had been so sure that our jaunt through time would save her.

Her destiny had had other ideas.