Nightmare

26

‘You stupid prick!’ shouted Wainwright, staring down at Nightingale, his eyes blazing. ‘Didn’t you listen to anything I said?’

Nightingale looked up at him but had trouble focusing and he blinked several times.

‘Do you have any idea of the risks you’re taking?’ shouted Wainwright. ‘How stupid are you, Nightingale?’

‘I’m not feeling too bright at the moment, that’s for sure,’ said Nightingale. He touched his face gingerly. ‘Am I bleeding?’

‘Bleeding is the least of your worries,’ said Wainwright. ‘I told you: you can’t mess around with these things. They’re not toys.’ He saw the book by Nightingale’s feet and he picked it up. He looked at the spine and wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘What do you think magic is, Nightingale?’ He held the book up. ‘This isn’t a cook book, with recipes that you follow. It’s a way of handing down knowledge from one generation of practitioners to the next. It’s not a do-it-yourself guide for amateurs.’ He tossed the book onto the top of a display cabinet.

‘It worked,’ said Nightingale. ‘I saw Sophie.’

The American sneered. ‘You’ve no idea what just happened, have you?’

‘You smashed a fifty-grand mirror,’ said Nightingale. ‘That much I know.’ He held up his hand. ‘Help me up, yeah?’

Wainwright shook his head, sighed, then grabbed Nightingale’s wrist and hauled him to his feet. Bits of glass tinkled to the floor. Nightingale brushed his raincoat with his hands but winced as a splinter of glass speared his left thumb. He pulled it out and sucked on the wound.

‘You’re an idiot, you know that?’ said Wainwright.

Nightingale stopped sucking his thumb. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I knew what you were going to do. I told the pilot to bring me back.’

Nightingale looked down at the shards of glass on the tiled floor. Among the glass was a Nokia mobile phone. He bent down, picked up the phone and handed it to the American. ‘Why did you do that?’ he said, nodding at the broken glass.

‘You were being pulled into the mirror,’ said Wainwright, examining the phone. ‘And if you’d crossed over, there’d be no coming back.’

‘That’s not what was happening. It was Sophie, the little girl. She wanted my help.’

Wainwright held up the phone. ‘It’s bust,’ he said. ‘You owe me for a new phone.’

‘It’s your own fault. What were you thinking?’

‘I saved your life, Jack,’ said Wainwright, slipping the phone into the back pocket of his jeans.

‘In what universe? I was fine. I was talking to Sophie.’

Wainwright took out a black leather cigar case and lit a large cigar. ‘Jack, whatever was trying to pull you into that mirror, it wasn’t a young girl.’

‘It was Sophie. Sophie Underwood.’

‘And this Sophie is dead, right?’

‘I saw her die. Two years ago. She jumped off a balcony.’

‘Jack, listen to me very carefully. It wasn’t a young girl I saw pulling you into the mirror.’

‘How could you see anything?’ Nightingale jabbed a finger at the stairs. ‘You were up there. You couldn’t possibly have seen what was happening.’

‘I could see just fine,’ said Wainwright.

‘So what did you see?’

Wainwright shook his head again. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you didn’t get pulled in.’ He bit off the end of his cigar, looked around and then spat it onto the broken glass.

‘I wasn’t being pulled in,’ said Nightingale. ‘She wanted my help.’

‘What help could you possibly be to her? Think about that, Jack. She’s dead, and dead is dead. There’s no coming back.’ He lit the cigar with a match.

‘I don’t know what she wanted, but she said that I was the only one who could help her.’

‘You were being pulled in, and if you had crossed over you’d never have come back. It was a trap.’

‘I summoned her. How could that be a trap?’

Wainwright puffed on the cigar before answering. ‘Because when you stand in front of a dark mirror you have to be in complete control. I told you how dangerous it was. But, as always, you weren’t listening.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘How did you know what I was doing? How did you know to come back?’

Wainwright chuckled. ‘Maybe your guardian angel was on your case,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what happened, Jack. We were flying back to Stansted and I had one of those hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-my-neck moments. I tried to ignore it but the feeling got stronger and stronger.’

‘So it was what, a premonition?’

‘I knew you were in danger. Can we leave it at that?’

‘How do I know you weren’t sent back by someone who wanted to stop me helping Sophie?’

‘Now you’re sounding paranoid,’ said the American. He walked over to the seating area and sat down on one of the red leather sofas.

‘I’m serious, Joshua,’ said Nightingale. He nudged a piece of broken glass with his foot and it scraped along the tiles. ‘With the best will in the world, I hardly know you. And you turn up just in time to smash the one chance I had of talking to Sophie.’

‘You think that’s what happened? Proserpine or one of the other Fallen sent me to screw things up for you?’

‘Why would you mention Proserpine?’

‘Because she’s your nemesis,’ said Wainwright. He put his feet up on the coffee table and stretched out.

‘Did she? Did she send you back here?’

Wainwright took the cigar from his mouth. ‘I told you what happened, Jack. Don’t start accusing me of lying.’

Nightingale sat down opposite Wainwright and lit a cigarette. ‘Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I decide who to trust.’

‘Well, you can start by considering the fact that if you’d gone I’d probably be able to pick up your library for a song.’

‘What?’

‘I’m just saying that, with you out of the way, I’d get this for next to nothing. So I had a vested interest in you being trapped in there.’

‘You keep saying that, but how do I know that would have happened? How do I know that I wouldn’t have been able to bring Sophie back?’

‘Sophie’s dead. She can’t come back.’

‘She’s talking to me. She’s asking me to help her. She couldn’t be doing that if she was.?.?.’ He tailed off, realising that he wasn’t making any sense. Sophie was dead. He’d seen her fall to her death from the balcony at Chelsea Harbour; he’d seen her broken body lying on the tarmac. And Wainwright was right. Dead was dead. The dead didn’t come back and there was nothing he could do to help her. He ran a hand through his hair and then down along the back of his neck. ‘This is doing my head in.’

‘I hear you,’ said Wainwright. ‘I’m not saying you can’t communicate with spirits. But you can’t take someone who’s dead and bring them back to life. That’s the prerogative of.?.?.’ He shrugged and left the sentence unfinished.

‘So if it wasn’t Sophie, who was it? Who was I talking to? And what did they want?’

Wainwright took his feet off the coffee table and leaned forward, the cigar in his right hand. ‘It could have been anyone, Jack. But whoever it was didn’t have your best interests at heart.’

‘What did you see, in the mirror?’

‘I know what I didn’t see. I didn’t see a little girl.’

‘Why are you being so evasive?’

‘Because at the end of the day I think you don’t believe me. I came back here because I thought you were in trouble, and now you’re making me out to be one of the bad guys.’

Nightingale nodded slowly. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. I apologise. Put it down to shock. You did scare the hell out of me, smashing the mirror like that.’ He grinned at the American. ‘The mirror that you were going to pay me fifty grand for, remember?’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not worth that now, that’s for sure.’

‘Because you smashed it.’

Wainwright laughed. ‘I’ll write you a cheque,’ he said. He took a pull on his cigar and then flicked ash into the ashtray. ‘It was a demon, Jack. Big. Scales. Wings. Claws. I couldn’t see much but it was big.’

‘I was definitely looking at Sophie.’

‘They can take on any form they want; you know that by now. So it appeared to you as Sophie but it didn’t know that I was there so I saw it as it really was. Trust me, it was a demon and it was about to pull you into the mirror.’

‘Is that how it works? I’d have been trapped inside the glass?’

Wainwright shook his head. ‘The dark mirror is a portal. If used properly then it’s a way of communicating with spirits. But if you should try to pass through it then you’d go to wherever they were. Or they could come through into this world.’

‘But if it was a devil, it could appear here anyway, right?’

‘It’s not as simple as that. Some can; some are limited in what they can and can’t do.’

‘You think it was trying to pull me in because it couldn’t get to me here?’

‘That’s possible. It could have been appearing as Sophie so that you’d lower your defences.’

‘And it would take me where? To Hell?’

‘Possibly,’ said Wainwright. ‘But not all demons are in Hell.’

‘And what about Sophie?’

‘What about her?’

‘Where is she?’

Wainwright sighed. ‘Who knows? You say she’s been trying to contact you. Maybe she has, but what if it’s been a demon all the time?’

‘You mean it was never Sophie? It was always something pretending to be her?’

‘I can’t answer that, Jack.’ He looked at his wristwatch, a gold Cartier. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go.’ He stood up and flexed his shoulders. ‘Promise me you won’t mess around with things you don’t understand.’ He grinned. ‘At least until we’ve done a deal over the stuff you’ve got down here.’

‘Cross my heart,’ said Nightingale.

Wainwright jabbed his cigar in Nightingale’s direction. ‘I’m serious, Jack. You’ve been lucky so far. But you’re messing with things that you barely understand and if you carry on it’s going to end in tears.’

‘I hear what you’re saying, Joshua. Message received and understood.’ He stuck out his hand and the American shook it firmly.

They went back up the stairs and Nightingale walked Wainwright outside. His helicopter was back on the lawn, its rotors turning slowly.

‘I’ll call you when my people are ready to inventory the books and artefacts,’ said Wainwright. ‘But I’ll send you a deposit first. How does a million sound?’

‘Like music to my ears,’ said Nightingale. ‘Pounds, euros or dollars?’

‘You choose,’ said Wainwright. ‘Call me with your bank details.’ The helicopter turbines began to whine and the rotors picked up speed, their wash pulling at Nightingale’s raincoat as Wainwright clapped him on the back. ‘You be careful, you hear?’

‘Always,’ said Nightingale. He watched Wainwright jog towards the helicopter. The American turned and waved before climbing in. Nightingale waved back as the helicopter lifted off, circled above the trees at the edge of the grounds and headed north.