He shook his head. “I can’t. I can only do it at home because they gave me the Freedom of the Graveyard when I was a baby.” He looked up at her, under the electric light. It was hard to see her properly, but Bod had spent his life talking to dead people. “Anyway, what are you doing here? What are you doing out from the graveyard? It’s daytime. And you’re not like Silas. You’re meant to stay in the graveyard.”
She said, “There’s rules for those in graveyards, but not for those as was buried in unhallowed ground. Nobody tells me what to do, or where to go.” She glared at the door. “I don’t like that man,” she said. “I’m going to see what he’s doing.”
A flicker, and Bod was alone in the room once more. He heard a rumble of distant thunder.
In the cluttered darkness of Bolger’s Antiquities, Abanazer Bolger looked up suspiciously, certain that someone was watching him, then realized he was being foolish. “The boy’s locked in the room,” he told himself. “The front door’s locked.” He was polishing the metal clasp surrounding the snakestone, as gently and as carefully as an archaeologist on a dig, taking off the black and revealing the glittering silver beneath it.
He was beginning to regret calling Tom Hustings over, although Hustings was big and good for scaring people. He was also beginning to regret that he was going to have to sell the brooch, when he was done. It was special. The more it glittered, under the tiny light on his counter, the more he wanted it to be his, and only his.
There was more where this came from, though. The boy would tell him. The boy would lead him to it.
The boy…
An idea struck him. He put down the brooch, reluctantly, and opened a drawer behind the counter, taking out a metal biscuit tin filled with envelopes and cards and slips of paper.
He reached in, and took out a card, only slightly larger than a business card. It was black-edged. There was no name or address printed on it, though. Only one word, handwritten in the center in an ink that had faded to brown: Jack.
On the back of the card, in pencil, Abanazer Bolger had written instructions to himself, in his tiny, precise handwriting, as a reminder, although he would not have been likely to forget the use of the card, how to use it to summon the man Jack. No, not summon. Invite. You did not summon people like him.
A knocking on the outer door of the shop.
Bolger tossed the card down onto the counter, and walked over to the door, peering out into the wet afternoon.
“Hurry up,” called Tom Hustings, “it’s miserable out here. Dismal. I’m getting soaked.”
Bolger unlocked the door and Tom Hustings pushed his way in, his raincoat and hair dripping. “What’s so important that you can’t talk about it over the phone, then?”
“Our fortune,” said Abanazer Bolger, with his sour face. “That’s what.”
Hustings took off his raincoat and hung it on the back of the shopdoor. “What is it? Something good fell off the back of a lorry?”
“Treasure,” said Abanazer Bolger. “Two kinds.” He took his friend over to the counter, showed him the brooch, under the little light.
“It’s old, isn’t it?”
“From pagan times,” said Abanazer. “Before. From Druid times. Before the Romans came. It’s called a snakestone. Seen ’em in museums. I’ve never seen metalwork like that, or one so fine. Must have belonged to a king. The lad who found it says it come from a grave—think of a barrow filled with stuff like this.”
“Might be worth doing it legit,” said Hustings, thoughtfully. “Declare it as treasure trove. They have to pay us market value for it, and we could make them name it after us. The Hustings–Bolger Bequest.”
“Bolger–Hustings,” said Abanazer, automatically. Then he said, “There’s a few people I know of, people with real money, would pay more than market value, if they could hold it as you are”—for Tom Hustings was fingering the brooch, gently, like a man stroking a kitten—“and there’d be no questions asked.” He reached out his hand and, reluctantly, Tom Hustings passed him the brooch.
“You said two kinds of treasure,” said Hustings. “What’s t’other?”
Abanazer Bolger picked up the black-edged card, held it out for his friend’s inspection. “Do you know what this is?”
His friend shook his head.
Abanazer put the card down on the counter. “There’s a party is looking for another party.”
“So?”
“The way I heard it,” said Abanazer Bolger, “the other party is a boy.”
“There’s boys everywhere,” said Tom Hustings. “Running all around. Getting into trouble. I can’t abide them. So, there’s a party looking for a particular boy?”
“This lad looks to be the right sort of age. He’s dressed—well, you’ll see how he’s dressed. And he found this. It could be him.”
“And if it is him?”
Abanazer Bolger picked up the card again, by the edge, and waved it back and forth, slowly, as if running the edge along an imaginary flame. “Here comes a candle to light you to bed…” he began.