Winter grunted. From the expression on his face, even he seemed to think this place was a step too far.
The kitchen was all stainless steel and more shiny black marble stuff. There wasn’t so much as a kettle on display. Winter began to open drawers and cupboards but nothing seemed to take his interest. I left him to it and ambled over to a wall of smoky mirrors. There wasn’t a single smear anywhere. I shook my head in amazement. If I lived here, it would take less than an hour for them to become permanently streaked with a combination of grease, dust and goodness knows what else.
It rankled that we’d been able to stroll in here so easily. Blackbeard thought very highly of himself. He obviously expected someone to look for the murdered coven members sooner or later, hence the booby traps he’d left on their doors but there had been nothing preventing our entry here. He didn’t think that anyone would be smart enough to catch up to him – or maybe he didn’t care. It wasn’t as if there was much lying around to give us clues about what he was planning next.
Irritated by both the cleanliness and Blackbeard’s apparent arrogance, I exhaled onto the mirror, steaming up as large a section as I could. While Winter’s huffing from the kitchen grew louder, I used the tip of my index finger to draw a smiley face. Whatever happened, I liked the idea of Blackbeard sitting on his perfect white-leather sofa and suddenly realising that someone had been in here and marred his Zen bachelor pad with a cheeky smile.
For effect, I reached over to add two bushy eyebrows. As I did so and pressed down on the mirror, I realised that it felt loose. The mirror moved when I touched it. I knocked on the smooth surface; it definitely sounded hollow.
‘Rafe!’ I called. ‘Something is here!’
He was by my side in an instant. ‘What?’
‘This mirror,’ I told him. ‘It’s concealing something. There’s definitely something behind here. It’s a cabinet or a false wall.’
He stretched out his fingertips, splaying them across the glass. There was a faint clunking sound when he pressed down and he sucked in a breath. ‘There must be a way to open it properly.’
I nodded. It is one thing to use magic to open a door when you can see the mechanism and understand how it works, but you can’t just throw a spell at something you don’t understand and expect it to do what you want. Life doesn’t work like that and neither does magic.
I took a step back and looked around. ‘There has to be a remote control or a button. The glass is too clean. There’s no way Blackbeard uses his grubby mitts to open his bat cave. It would ruin his perfect aesthetic.’
Winter pursed his lips in agreement and we started searching. There wasn’t much lying around; in theory, it shouldn’t have taken long to find the secret key.
‘We know his name now,’ Winter said, as he delved in between the sofa seat cushions. ‘You don’t need to keep calling him Blackbeard.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But Hal sounds like a friendly guy. The sort you’d invite round to a barbecue and let play with your kids. Blackbeard is an evil bastard.’
‘I don’t think we’re likely to forget that anytime soon.’
Indeed. ‘He’s as calculating and clever as he is cold.’ I didn’t think I’d ever come across anyone who was genuinely evil before. Since meeting Winter, I’d met a whole range of plonkers, from selfish and nasty to stupid and self-centred. There had been thieves and murderers and general evil-doers. But while each of them had committed evil acts, there had been a certain method to their madness. They all had motives for doing what they did; I couldn’t condone their actions but I could understand them a little. Blackbeard was different – there was a wellspring of darkness inside him. Yes, he purportedly killed Clare’s coven because he hated witches but I was sure that was an excuse. The man needed to justify his actions to himself but I’d lay money on the theory that he just enjoyed killing.
With that thought bouncing around my head, I straightened up and abandoned my bid to search for a key to open Blackbeard’s den. No, I didn’t know how this door worked but I did know how glass worked.
I raised both hands. ‘Winter?’ I said calmly.
‘Yes?’
‘Duck.’ I flicked out the rune and the glass instantly shattered into a million pieces. I have to admit that the effect was pretty amazing although the sound was bloody loud. So much for my smiley face. Oh well. I rarely did subtle – Blackbeard would definitely know we’d been here now.
Winter didn’t move a muscle. ‘You just broke a mirror,’ he said.
‘Yep.’
‘A very large mirror.’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s seven years bad luck.’
I glanced at him. ‘Not according to you.’
‘I might not have faith in superstitions, Ivy, but you do.’ Winter’s blue eyes swept across the damage. ‘And both the police and Arcane Branch won’t be happy about what we’ve done to their crime scene.’
‘Neither the police nor Arcane Branch have got as close to Blackbeard as we have.’ I sniffed. ‘They’ll just have to deal with it. And I have faith in you. That will have to be enough.’ I pointed. ‘Look. There’s the secret door.’ I stalked up and kicked it open. I didn’t do that for effect – my hands were shaking so much that I didn’t think I could turn the handle.
‘We’ll catch him,’ Winter said. ‘His days are already numbered.’
I just nodded and walked into the claustrophobic darkness in front of us. It was Winter’s spell that lit the small room. To be honest, when I saw what Blackbeard had been concealing, I almost asked him to extinguish the light. If the flat outside was pristine, this was its natural opposite. After the bleakness of the other rooms, it almost hurt to look at it.
Every inch of wall space was covered with something. In some places, he’d pinned up yellowing news articles, all of them related to either magic, witches or the Order in some way. None of the headlines were positive. Other parts of the walls were plastered with sticky notes of all shapes, sizes and colours. Random words and numbers were scribbled on them, some as chilling reminders like ‘track down strong rope’ and others which made no sense whatsoever such as ‘here 6731’.
There were haphazard piles of books on the floor and several plastic bags that seemed to contain clothing. In the furthest corner, there was a towering stack of ornate boxes and urns similar to the container in which we’d found Clare’s ashes. Winter reached for one while I suppressed a shudder. He flipped open the lid and breathed out before showing me that it was empty.
‘There are still three missing coven members,’ he said. ‘Their remains have to be somewhere.’
I flattened my mouth into a thin line. ‘There’s been no sign of their spirits yet. They might not be here.’