The Master Of Misrule Part 13

"Are you sure your stepdad's in the Arcanum?"

"The King of Wands told me he'd got lost there, but could still get out. He said he had 'everything to play for.' And when you come to think of it, the Game Masters haven't lied before."

Cat considered this. The old kings and queens were coldhearted and calculating. However, it was true that she'd never caught them in an outright lie.

"There's been no sign of him inside or out, so I reckon he's still stuck in some move. I'm sure of it, in fact."

"And-and your mum? Where is she?"

"Back home. A neighbor checks on her. After everything that happened, she finds it easier if I'm not there." He stared down at his feet. "My stepfather had-has-quite a hold on her."

Cat swallowed. "There're monsters in the Arcanum," she said finally, "monsters and darkness, and things strange enough to send you mad. But at the end of the day, none of it's any worse than the stuff you get in the real world, or the things that real people do."

Then she reached over and pushed up Blaine's sleeve and, gently and deliberately, placed her hand on his arm, so that it rested on the line of puckered skin left by the knife. He tensed, and she thought he would move away. Instead, he brushed her hand with his own, light as a whisper. Their eyes met.

The ringing of her cell phone made them both start. Cat jerked away, flooded with an inexplicable guilt, as if she'd been found out at something.

"Sorry," she said with effort. "My aunt. Won't be anything." She pressed the Ignore b.u.t.ton.

Blaine had begun to cough again. "She raised you after your parents died?"

"Mmm. Bel was only nineteen when it happened."

"And she treats you right?"

"More than right." Cat wanted to explain how it was between them, but she had never before tried to find the words for a love that was lived in but not looked at. She and Bel came first for each other, that was all. "It makes me wonder what her life would've been like if she hadn't had me to worry about. Bel's always been restless-moving around, chopping and changing-but she's smart enough to do anything. People start off wanting her, and end up needing her. It's just the way she is."

"Must be hard, having to keep the Game a secret from her."

"Yeah. That's what the Game does, doesn't it? It puts up barriers, creates obsessions. Sometimes I ... sometimes I think that's the worst thing about my parents' deaths."

"How do you mean?"

She took a deep breath. It seemed today was going to be a day for revelations. "One or the other of them might've got an invitation to the Game. That's why they were killed: someone was looking for it."

Blaine didn't say anything, but shifted closer to her again, so that his arm was next to hers. This time its warmth steadied her.

And so Cat told him about going into the Six of Cups, the Reign of Past Pleasure. About wandering through layers of long-lost memory brought to new life. About being three years old again, and playing under her parents' bed, where she found a richly colored card tucked in the slats. And how after that the memories had shifted and grown shadows, until there was no pleasure, only a gathering foreboding....

At this point, Cat had to halt the narrative. This part was still too raw, too real, to be shared with anyone. Instead, she related the barest of facts: an unseen stranger with a stutter demanded her parents give up a card belonging to the Game; her mother told him there'd been a mistake, but he shot them nonetheless.

"I'm sorry," Blaine said at the end. She felt his gaze on her, the weight of its seriousness. His voice was almost formal. "I'm sorry it happened, and I'm sorry you had to see it."

She shook her head, not to deny his words but to distance herself from the truth of them.

"As you see, everything's a mystery," she continued, trying to sound practical rather than plaintive. "I don't know if and how the invitation was hidden under the bed without my parents knowing, or what happened to it afterward. But if my parents knew about the card, why didn't they hand it over? Was it just that the killer didn't give them the chance? Or was it so important to them that they thought it worth risking their lives for?"

Not for the first time, Cat wondered what the Game could have offered her parents that they didn't already have. They were young and in love; they had a home, a child.... Such a fulfilled family shouldn't have needed anything else.

"Getting invited to the Game doesn't mean they did anything about it. Or ever intended to," Blaine pointed out.

"I'd like to think so." She sighed. "Still ... the Game gets a hold on people, and quickly. That's why Misrule is so dangerous, right? People can't resist his scratchcards, just like I couldn't resist trying out the Arcanum."

"D'you regret it?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'd be better off-happier-still believing that my parents were killed in a car accident, but that'd be living a lie. As for the Arcanum, it's h.e.l.lish most of the time, and I should hate it, and yet ..."

"It can be beautiful, too."

"Yeah."

"I remember one of the first times I went in," Blaine said slowly. "It was a really cold, wet night, early in the year, and I was trying to find a shelter. Then this man started following me around, offering to help, said he knew how to take care of me. I didn't like the look of him, so when I came across a threshold, it seemed like a good way out."

"And was it?"

"It took me to the Triumph of the Sun. I found myself in a meadow, with all these white horses. Yellow flowers and white manes blowing in the breeze. I've never seen skies so blue. Even weeks later, when I was out in the cold and the rain again, just thinking about that meadow made me feel warm."

Cat watched the London street in front of them, picturing it unraveling into fields of green and gold. She thought of the bygone l.u.s.ter of Temple House, remembered the glow of oil lamps on ancient stone. "It's my life before the Game that feels otherworldly now. Strange to think that without it I'd never have met Flora or Toby. Or you."

Blaine pushed himself away from the wall and stretched, getting ready to move on. "Don't be so sure of that. Fate works in mysterious ways." But his voice was light, and she couldn't tell if its mocking note was meant for himself or her.

Instead of catching a bus home, Toby decided to walk for a while. The altercation with Cat had shaken him more than he cared to admit. Although his arms and shoulders ached from his rooftop exertions, his body was still charged with adrenaline. His tiredness was evident mostly in the jittering of his thoughts. The images that accompanied them were colorful but remote, already the stuff of legend.

He wandered along a couple of streets like the one on which Flora lived, the houses rising on either side like the iced tiers of a wedding cake. The next corner led to a row of boutiques. A window display of silver-and-scarlet baubles put him in mind of the shopping mall in the Chariot, and he wondered what Mia was doing now. It occurred to him that she, too, could have been a phantom of the Arcanum when he last saw her, but he immediately dismissed the idea. Perhaps she had not been quite the dreamy schoolgirl he remembered, but if anything, she had seemed more real as a person, not less.

Toby came to an incredulous halt. It was as if thinking of Mia had summoned up other ghosts from his past, for he had just seen Seth, lounging at a table outside a bar.

As usual, there was a girl draped over him. Toby tried not to stare too obviously at her thin caramel limbs and mane of glossy hair.

"Er, hi, Seth."

Seth looked at him blankly. "Do I know you?"

"Well, sort of. Back at school ..." His voice trailed off.

"One of the squirts, right?" Seth was smirking and the girl didn't bother to hide her yawn. "The one who liked dares." Lazily, he flicked a bottle top in Toby's direction, just like he had in the clock tower, all those months before. "Run away and play, squirt."

Toby thought of Cat's taunt that he didn't take their quest seriously, and felt anger boil helplessly inside him. He knew he wasn't stupid or ugly or uninteresting. Why, then, did these people make him feel so? If he was a true king of the Arcanum, how come he couldn't stand up to a jerk like Seth?

I could bring the Game of Triumphs to its knees, Toby thought. I could save the world with all the powers of Eternity, and yet once I return from the Arcanum, I will still be nothing but background noise.

After she said goodbye to Blaine, Cat took the rest of the afternoon easy. She had a long shower and spent a while getting dressed, taking the time to paint her nails in smooth, careful strokes. It felt good to concentrate on this one thing. Afterward she lounged on her bed, listening to music and flicking through Bel's gossip magazines. Like the nail polish, the mags weren't something she usually bothered with, but they provided a different kind of otherworldliness to lose herself in. She found it amusing to skim pages of rock royalty, pop princesses and beauty queens while testing the sound of her new t.i.tle: Cat Harper, Queen of Swords.

Although the idea of this should have been fateful and threatening, just now it felt mildly comic. As Cat slipped into a doze, she was conscious only of a dim happiness. I wish I could have seen those white horses, she thought.

The slam of a door startled her into wakefulness. She found Bel stomping around the kitchen with more than her usual vigor.

"h.e.l.lo," said Cat through a yawn. "I thought you were still in staff training today."

"Got let out for good behavior, didn't I? Which is more than I can say for you." Bel's tone was snappish. "Why didn't you answer your phone when I called?"

"Sorry. I was in the middle of something. You didn't leave a message...." Cat took another look at Bel's face. "Is there a problem?"

In answer, Bel pulled a battered hardback book out of her bag and smacked it down on the table. Its cover, a rainbow of psychedelic swirls, proclaimed The Wondrous World of Tarot. Until recently, it had lain under Cat's bed. "What are you doing with that?"

Cat couldn't help feeling they were acting out a bizarre parody of Charlie and Blaine, in confrontation over the leather notebook.

"I found it when I was cleaning your room."

"Since when do you clean?"

"Since you stopped bothering."

Cat winced. What with one thing and another, her usual ch.o.r.es hadn't been much of a priority recently. And it was true that her room had looked tidier than she'd remembered.

"Well?" Bel demanded.

"Well, what? It's nothing. Just a tacky book someone lent me."

"Which someone? One of that gang you were with in the caff at lunchtime?"

Cat stared. She and Bel didn't have these sorts of conversations. It was like being in some lame soap opera, something out of one of those magazines. "Have you been spying on me?"

"I saw you in the window, on my way to the post office. You were with that boy, the moody, thuggish one who's been hanging around. Plus another kid covered in leaves and muck, and some cheerleader type in the corner. An odd-looking bunch, aren't they? Not your usual type of friends."

But I don't have a type, Cat thought with an unfamiliar spurt of resentment. We never stay in one place long enough.

"Are they the ones who got you mixed up in this?"

Cat was afraid that guilt showed on her face, in spite of herself. "Mixed up in what?" she asked as lightly as possible.

"This Tarot card junk. It's morbid and nasty and I don't want you getting involved. All that mumbo jumbo is for people who're wrong in the head."

"Bel, it's just silly fortune-telling. Like horoscopes."

"Or those scratchcards you got so worked up about?"

"That's different. They-"

"I don't care. I'm having none of it. Not in my house." It could almost have been funny, Bel laying down the law like this. But although her eyes flashed, and her hair seemed to flare redder, the way it always did when she was riled, Cat could see that her aunt's hands were trembling as she lit a cigarette.

"Why are you being weird? I don't get why you're so freaked out." Then a horrible thought struck her. The force of its impact was physical, and she had to sit down, as if winded. "Wait-unless ... Bel, has this got something to do with my parents?"

Bel's lighter dropped onto the floor with a clatter. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"No. Don't mess with me, Bel. Not after everything. I need to know."

The power balance had changed. Now it was Bel who was looking shifty, Cat accusing.

"All right," said her aunt, heaving a shaky sigh. "Fine. It was your mum. She set a lot of store by those Tarot cards, till it got to the point she'd hardly make a decision without them. That's what these things do, see. They start off as a bit of fun, and before you know it, you're hooked."

"My mum was ... hooked?" Cat whispered.

Bel looked even more uncomfortable. "Not really. I think she was just looking for some ... distraction."

"I didn't know this. I didn't see this."

"See it? You were barely more than a baby. How could you?"

In the Arcanum. But of course the Six of Cups had given back only rose-tinted memories-the past's pleasures. The memory of tangling her arms in her mother's hair and being swung up onto her father's shoulders. Candles on the birthday cake, stars on the Christmas tree. Her father's smile and her mother's kisses, their every glance abundant with love ... There had been no shadows in that paradise. At least, not until her three-year-old self found an invitation to the Game.

"Did Mum ... did she ... did she ever talk about trying to win-trying to-using the cards to-" But Cat couldn't go on. The shadows had lengthened, solidified, and the perfection of her memories was spoiled.

Bel leaned across the table. "Listen here, puss-cat. n.o.body's one hundred percent sunshine one hundred percent of the time. That doesn't mean your mum and dad didn't have a good life, or that they didn't love each other and you. Don't ever think different."

Cat gulped, blinking furiously to keep back the tears. "OK."

"And I'm sorry I had to bring any of this up. It's just ... well, you haven't been yourself lately. Stands to reason, what with finding out about the murders and everything. But coming across that Tarot book gave me a shock. I started fretting you'd been sucked in by all kinds of crazy ... Anyway, I should've known better. Should've reacted better, too."

"Don't worry about it. Because you're right-Tarot's a load of rubbish and I don't want anything to do with it."

Bel smiled, relieved. "That's my girl."

FLORA ARRIVED AT MERCURY SQUARE with the relevant pa.s.sage from Ezekiel typed out, but even with the full text in front of them, n.o.body was any more enlightened as to the High Priestess's prophecy. Wheels, cherubs, cloud and creatures were as much a mystery as they'd always been. And there was more bad news on the Lottery front.

"I checked for updates online," Toby explained. "The websites are full of Lottery of Luck stuff. They say the cards have started popping up in other cities and countries, too. Just this morning there was a stabbing in Earl's Court-two blokes fighting over who got to play a scratchcard they'd found. One's dead; the other's in intensive care. Of course it turned out to be tails."

Blaine grimaced. "There're definitely loads more posters and flyers about. A grand prizegiving is set for New Year's Eve, apparently. I saw it advertised on those ma.s.sive video displays at Piccadilly Circus."

"That's not good," said Cat. "Remember my prophecy? 'Misrule's wheel shall burn at the turning of the year....' "

The sun was setting, and the sky over the rooftops was a medley of crimson-washed clouds on a lilac sky, shot through with low amber light. At Cat's words, the red-stained horizon seemed to take on a particular menace.

"Time for us to get going, then." Toby held up the playing card he had taken from the High Priest. Like the other cards the old man had given them, it was blank on one side, with a pattern of interlocking wheels on the other. "Our first move in the Quest for Eternity. Who wants to do the honors with the die?"

He looked around at the others' tense faces.

"C'mon, team, this isn't the moment for hanging back. We're kings and queens of the Game now-"

"If you're going to say, 'With great power comes great responsibility,' I will kill you," Cat told him.

Toby grinned. "Not quite. Except-well-it's just ... OK, none of us ever thought we'd end up fighting the Forces of Darkness. But here we are, with not much more than a blank card and a murky prophecy to go on. So ..." He took a deep breath. "I suppose what I'm trying to say is, never mind about being in the grip of Fate and Luck and the rest of it. We're our own people doing our own thing. And that's what'll count, in the end."

"The end of what?" Flora asked. But n.o.body cared to answer.

The sunset filling the windows was exactly the same as the one over Mercury Square, but was even more spectacular seen at this height. Across the river, the jumble of office blocks and apartment buildings was silhouetted against the horizon, windows as small and bright as sequins.

"So what's the story?" Blaine asked Toby as, slowly, the ill.u.s.tration on the playing card swam into view.