The Skeleton Key Read online

‘Oh yes,’ she said, unsurprised. ‘There is indeed a powerful force here. Oh, and don’t forget to tell Deus about the trouble you are having with those two friends of Athanasia’s.’

  She knows about that?

  ‘Of course I know,’ she said.

  By the time midnight loomed I still had not found Lieutenant Luke.

  I’d tried to summon him several times using his cavalry sword, finally tiring out my right arm to the point where I wondered if I’d even be able to raise a glass of water. Eventually I placed his heavy sword across the top of the antique writing desk in my room on its soft velvet cloth, where it sat under the open windows, shining in the moonlight.

  I stared at it, feeling empty inside.

  There was no way I could bear to put it away under the bed. Not yet.

  All that excruciating anticipation. And disappointment. Where had we gone wrong, exactly? It had all happened so fast. Was there some sort of time limit on Luke’s ability to escape the mansion walls? I had no idea. I had to work at Pandora in the morning and I didn’t know if I could go to sleep yet – or if I’d be able to at all, worrying as I was about Luke – but regardless, there was one more thing left to do, and that thing gave me little comfort.

  I emerged from my room at midnight sharp, wearing my good jeans and my best vintage blouse. It was time to meet with the ancient Sanguine.

  Deus.

  Celia had already fixed a fresh pot of tea and arranged it neatly on her silver tray. She handed it to me and I looked down at the two cups – one for me, and one for her undead friend – and I felt a little afraid.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said quietly.

  I carried the tray as Celia led me down the hall to her end of the penthouse, my right arm shaking a little. For the first couple of months that I’d lived here, this end of the penthouse had been strictly forbidden territory. My great-aunt liked her privacy. I totally understood that. But I suspected she’d also been wanting to protect me after I’d first arrived, because now that I was more aware of the potential dangers in the house she’d given me her blessing to investigate its secrets – in particular, the hidden corridors and stairwells that snaked through this end of the building. The architect Dr Barrett had a laboratory in the lower floors somewhere, and he’d made it hard to find so that he wasn’t disturbed while he was working. Barrett had been into some dark stuff, it seemed. Necromancy and who knew what else. Celia had, however, been quite firm that I was absolutely, under no circumstances, to venture below the basement. So far, I hadn’t even found the basement, Barrett’s laboratory, or let alone anything lower.

  The room where I was meeting Deus was a special, sunken chamber just beyond the main hallway, and it suited our meeting because it was separate from the rest of the penthouse. No Sanguine could venture into the main penthouse. (Which seemed like an awfully good rule as far as I was concerned.) The skeleton key did fit the lock of this door, but I didn’t need it tonight. The door was unlocked and Celia pushed it open for me with one pale hand and gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder with the other, urging me inside.

  ‘Good luck.’

  I took a breath and made my way down the three stone steps, balancing the tray, before Celia closed the door behind me. Oh boy, I thought as the door shut. I was more than a little nervous about seeing Deus again, especially considering the circumstances of our last meeting.

  He hadn’t arrived yet, I noted, but he would soon enough. He wasn’t the type to be late.

  In part because he could fly.

  Oh boy.

  The antechamber was candlelit and it smelled pleasantly of frankincense. Carved wooden furniture decorated the space, along with heavy velvet drapes that hung over the stone walls, suspended from ornate iron rods. A velvet chaise longue. Persian rugs. The effect was luxurious and intimate, if dark. It spoke of another time, somehow even older than the uniquely Victorian feel of the rest of the house, though it seemed unlikely that it could have been built before 1880. I noticed that Celia had lit the three special candles of different colours that I recalled having seen before, an offering to the ‘Triple Goddess’ – the Maiden, Mother and Crone.

  I placed the silver tray with its tea fixings on the low, circular table in the centre of the chamber. After a moment I took my place on the burgundy velvet seat of one of the two ornate wooden chairs. While I waited, I looked around, trying to calm my anxiousness about Luke and about Deus, and prepare myself for what was to come. My eyes continually wandered back to the chaise longue, which I’d woken on, after being rescued by Deus under the last full moon.

  And my eyes went again and again to the full-sized coffin in the corner.

  It will be fine. It will all be fine, I told myself, though my mouth was dry.

  Thankfully the wait was not too long. After a minute I heard faint footsteps below me. Then there came the knock.

  ‘Um, come in,’ I said in an exaggerated voice, and the casket creaked. A single smooth hand pushed the lid open, fingers curled around the edge. Slowly, my visitor revealed himself, rising up from the base of the coffin inch by inch, giving me a little shiver. The creature who emerged was a couple of inches taller than me – perhaps five foot nine or so – and he was about as far from a rotting corpse as one could imagine. In fact, he looked rather chic in a slim-fitting dark suit and white, crisp shirt, the collar sitting high on his neck. His skin was darker than you might expect of someone who’d been dead for so long. His eyebrows were dark and dramatic, his eyelashes inky black and distractingly long.

  And he was smiling.

  Deus.

  ‘Good evening, Pandora English,’ he said in his curiously attractive accent.

  ‘Good evening, Deus,’ I replied, panicking a little inside.

  That smile.

  Deus was a Kathakano – the traditional Sanguine of ancient Crete. The Kathakano always smile. That trait was peculiar to their race and I fully suspected those Kathakano smiles had deceived many an unwary victim over the centuries. As a member of one of the oldest race of Sanguine in the world (perhaps even the oldest?), Deus was undeniably powerful. As a rule, the older a Sanguine is, the more power, skills and ‘trickery’ they have mastered, and the more magnetic they are. Deus had no weakness for counting rice, that was for certain. In fact, I found it hard to imagine he had any weaknesses at all.

  ‘Thank you for meeting with me.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Please take a seat.’ My voice sounded level. I was proud of that.

  He lowered himself into the chair opposite me, as smooth as water.

  ‘Tea?’ I offered.

  He folded one leg over the other. ‘That would be most kind. Thank you,’ he said.

  I poured him a cup, irritated that my strained right arm was not as steady as my voice had been. I didn’t bother with the jug of milk. Deus was lactose intolerant, I knew. He accepted his cup with a courteous nod. Those eyelashes. They are so long. Look at them. He was still grinning, of course, and I smiled back, a bit flushed. I reminded myself that it took a certain level of conscious concentration to avoid staring at him. It wasn’t because he was so beautiful. He wasn’t, really. It was his natural, predatory effect at work, that was all. Celia had assured me that I’d grow used to it in time, that I’d eventually find it a little easier to resist. But so far this evening it felt harder, not easier.

  I poured myself a cup of tea and took a sip. I swallowed. ‘Do you know where Luke is? Did you do something to him?’ I managed.

  Deus was sipping his tea, and now he paused and gave me a curious look. ‘The soldier?’

  ‘Yes. My friend Second Lieutenant Luke Thomas,’ I said. ‘He disappeared tonight.’

  ‘Isn’t that common?’

  Very funny.

  ‘I was with him in Central Park and he disappeared. I can’t find him,’ I explained, though it was already fairly clear that Deus did not know about the situation and was unlikely to be able to help me with it.

  ‘I have no dominion over his kind, Pan
dora English. He is departed. That is rather more your department.’

  I frowned. Was that true? Perhaps it was. There was certainly a big difference between dead and undead.

  ‘Will you please keep your eyes open, in case . . .’ I trailed off. Deus could not see Luke’s ghost. Neither could Celia. How could they help me find Luke? ‘Never mind,’ I said, holding my cup of tea and saucer in my lap. I looked at the cup, considering what to say. ‘What I mean is . . . just, if you hear anything about him, will you please let me know?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Deus replied, smiling, and I kind of believed him. So far I’d found him to be fairly honest. That didn’t seem like a typical trait for the Sanguine, but perhaps deceptiveness was like arithmomania and it was something Deus had learned to master over the centuries. Like flight.

  His ability to fly was precisely how he’d saved me from falling several storeys to my death – a fact that made me deeply uncomfortable. So was the realisation that I was staring at him again.

  His skin. It’s so luminous. So . . .

  ‘I have come to warn you,’ he said abruptly.

  I tore my gaze from his features again. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  He unfolded his legs and placed his tea on the tray. ‘Pandora English, you need to be aware that there is a powerful force in Spektor.’

  ‘A powerful force.’ Luke had said the very same thing before he disappeared, but it was especially alarming to hear someone as powerful as Deus talk of ‘powerful’ forces. ‘What does that mean exactly?’

  ‘There is a powerful force here. Something new. Beyond that, I cannot say,’ he replied, much to my frustration.

  ‘Cannot or will not?’

  It was then I could tell that his effect on me was wearing off a bit. I was becoming more confident in his presence. Deus seemed to sense it, too. He smiled more broadly.

  ‘What kind of force? Do you mean like the spider goddess?’ I didn’t think I could survive another encounter like that.

  ‘There have been no sightings of that nature, thankfully. The spider is still well?’

  I nodded. She was being kept safely in Celia’s lounge room in her little cage, reduced to life as a normal black widow. ‘Thank you, by the way, for . . .’

  ‘Naturally,’ Deus said, and waved his hand, as if saving me had been nothing. No human could have been quick enough. No human could have done what he had.

  ‘There is no debt. You did save Spektor,’ he said. ‘So, in a way, you’d saved my life already. You’d saved all of us.’

  I did, didn’t I? That was still a bit hard to comprehend. But I truly hoped that Deus meant what he said about me not being indebted to him.

  ‘So you have come to warn me that there is a powerful force in Spektor, but you can’t or won’t tell me what it is?’

  His eyes glinted at me, that eternal smile unfaltering. I leaned back in my seat.

  ‘I come to you with a warning, Pandora. The time is approaching.’

  ‘The time? What do you mean, “the time”? You mean the revolution?’

  He nodded, that smile ever more unnerving. ‘You know about the revolution of the dead.’

  ‘I do,’ I said boldly, though the thought that such a thing could be real made me want to run screaming. There was much I did not know, and of what I had been told by Celia and Luke, there was much I did not understand. Every hundred and fifty years, or seven generations, there is an ‘agitation’, an uprising of sorts. The last time was during the Civil War, when Luke was alive. Millions of living had perished, though balance between the living and the dead had ultimately been restored.

  ‘And you are the Seventh,’ Deus said. It was not a question.

  ‘I am,’ I replied.

  I managed to say the words convincingly, though I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. I knew the Lucasta women all had certain gifts. Madame Aurora, for instance, was a great fortune teller and the obsidian ring I wore had belonged to her. I was the Seventh Lucasta daughter, the one who came every hundred and fifty years at the time of the revolution, and my gifts were supposedly pretty specific to that. Somehow. Frankly the whole thing smacked a bit of those prophecies that I’d read about in my mother’s books on ancient mythology and folklore – so many of which had not come to pass. I really, really hoped that would be the case with this whole revolution of the dead thing. Still, my great-aunt Celia put great weight on it. Luke seemed to as well.

  ‘Lieutenant Luke told me that a powerful force was present in the house, and then he disappeared. Can you tell me why he disappeared, or what he meant?’ I asked, trying again to get some information out of Deus.

  ‘Myself, I do not see ghosts. It must be very strange for you,’ he remarked.

  Myself, I do not drink blood, I thought. That must be strange also.

  I folded my arms. ‘You are avoiding the question. Is this some sort of game for you?’

  ‘Miss Pandora English, this is no game. I can assure you of that,’ he said, leaning forward and gazing at me with an intensity that made the breath catch in my throat. ‘The revolution of the dead is coming and when it does we will all be in peril. We will rely on you.’

  ‘Rely on me? Because I am the Seventh?’

  He nodded, still grinning, though I thought I detected something new in his eyes. Something sombre. A subtle hint of vulnerability even?

  The idea of Deus relying on me, of all people, was frankly incomprehensible. He was the most powerful and self-assured creature I’d ever met. He was immortal, for heaven’s sake. Or not heaven’s, exactly . . .

  ‘So this powerful force you have come to warn me about is related to the revolution?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  I sighed. ‘But you believe this revolution is coming?’ I said.

  ‘It does not matter if we believe it. The revolution will come regardless.’

  Okay. So Celia, Luke and Deus all really believed this prophecy. That much was clear. ‘But why would you rely on me if the revolution came? You are – excuse me for saying so – undead.’

  ‘No offence taken. I am not living.’ He took another sip of his tea and put down his cup with a clink of china. ‘And you are the Seventh. No one else can do what must be done.’

  ‘What must be done . . .’

  ‘Yes, what must be done.’

  I sighed again. Always riddles with Deus. He was as bad as Celia like that. They seemed unwilling or unable to give me straight answers. Yet even Luke had told me he was unable to tell me certain things, certain supernatural secrets.

  In that moment I was tempted to press him about what that meant, yet Deus did not seem the right person to ask when Celia, as a Lucasta herself, would surely know more. Or perhaps I felt reluctant to ask Deus questions simply because I found myself eager to impress him? To seem like I was more confident than I really was. Was that his trickery at work?

  ‘Perhaps you can explain this, then. Why, if you are not living, would the revolution be a problem for you?’

  ‘You misunderstand my nature. I am not dead. I do not wish for the destruction of the living world. The undead require balance to survive. Without the living . . .’

  Without the living you would have no one to feed on.

  We were both silent for a while.

  ‘I need to know, is my boss, Skye DeVille, Sanguine now?’ I found myself saying.

  ‘We do not reveal our numbers,’ was his immediate reply. It sounded rehearsed, I thought.

  I took a deep, deliberate breath and folded my arms again. ‘Well, Celia told me about a bunch of different Sanguine. She named names, like Napoleon and Nietzsche and Marie Antoinette, and Frida Kahlo and Oscar Wilde, and even Queen Victoria, Widow of Windsor. Shall I go on?’

  Deus chuckled softly. ‘Some of those are rumours, and the others are well known,’ he said, though I thought I detected a slight edge in his voice. I took it as irritation with the fact that Celia had given me names.

  ‘I live among the living and I can tell you it is not well
known that Queen Victoria is a va—’ I covered my mouth. ‘Um, that she is Sanguine,’ I finished awkwardly.

  I nearly said vampire in front of Deus. Of all the undead I could say the V word to!

  ‘So surely you can tell me if Skye DeVille has been turned,’ I said.

  ‘Turned? Like a leaf?’

  ‘Come on. She’s my boss.’

  ‘I am sorry. As I said, we do not reveal our numbers.’

  ‘Unless they first reveal themselves?’

  He nodded and then to my surprise, he stood.

  ‘Now I must go, Pandora English, the Seventh.’ He said the title with considerable respect. ‘I regret that I cannot be more helpful.’

  My throat constricted a little. I stood. ‘Well, thank you for the . . . warning.’ Though it had not been much help at all.

  Deus gave me a little bow, which I returned. It was an immense relief when he turned and left the room, walking back through the casket. The lid closed and I stood in the antechamber for a while, holding my head.

  We will rely on you.

  My great-aunt somehow looked more beautiful when I emerged. She’d redone her hair and makeup, those red lips perfectly painted, and she’d put on a striking lace dress that showed just the right hint of pale décolletage, accessorised with pearls and her usual black veil.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, taking in her transformation. ‘You look lovely.’

  ‘I have an appointment,’ she said, grabbing her fox stole and wrapping it around her.

  It looked more like a date than an appointment to me. Would she meet up with Deus?

  ‘Are you okay? You seem a bit shaken,’ she remarked.

  I was shaken. That was true. Actually, I was downright exhausted, I realised. ‘Deus came to warn me about some powerful new force in Spektor, though he couldn’t say what it is. And well, you know, I thought for a second there that I was getting better at being around Deus, as you said I would. But . . .’

  My great-aunt bit her lip. She actually bit her lip. I hadn’t seen this expression from her before.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘About that . . .’