Soul Stealer (2 page)

“Thank you,” said Pip, taken aback with what she assumed was a present. “It’s very pretty.”

Tim winked at Pip and raised his eyebrows again. She cast him another dirty look in return, yet she did feel flattered.

“This is not a gift,” Sebastian announced solemnly as he hung the chain around Pip’s neck, securing the clasp, “nor is it
mere ornamentation. It is called the Eye of Innocence and Experience and belonged originally to Queen Joan.”

“Queen Joan?” Tim repeated.

He had heard of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and Queen Anne, even Queen Boudicca, but Queen Joan? The name, he thought,
did not exactly have the right regal ring to it. He and Pip had a great-aunt called Joan, and she was an evil old woman.

“Joan of Navarre,” Sebastian explained, “was the wife of King Henry the Fourth of England. When the King was absent fighting
in France,” Sebastian went on, “she was accused by her enemies at court of witchcraft and of trying to kill him by magic.
She was arrested and cast into a dungeon.”

“And they executed her?” Tim guessed.

“No,” Sebastian replied, “she was released when the King returned and showed that the pendant had protected him.”

“That must mean the King wore it in battle…” Tim said.

Sebastian nodded.

“Cool!” Tim exclaimed.

“How did you get it?” Pip asked.

“My grandfather fashioned it for the Queen in the year of Our Lord 1400. She later returned it to him, for she became afraid
of its ability.”

Pip looked down at the pendant where it hung against her skin. It seemed utterly incredible that she was wearing a piece of
magical jewelry once owned by
a fifteenth-century queen of England and carried by the King into battle.

“What do you mean, its ability?” Pip repeated. She was beginning to feel apprehensive herself.

“So,” Tim said, “all your family were alchemists then, not just your father?”

Sebastian chose to ignore the questions but smiled faintly and said, “Study well the gemstone. At this moment it is murky,
but there will be times when it is crystal clear. It may also shiver. At that moment, you must be especially aware.”

Eight weeks earlier, both Pip and Tim would have treated this remark with considerable cynicism and wondered which computer
games Sebastian had been playing. Yet, after all they had gone through together, they now knew better.

“Aware of what?” Tim asked.

“One cannot say,” Sebastian replied, enigmatically. “Accept just that it will warn you of close danger, for it has seen much
evil itself and has absorbed much understanding and learning thereby.”

“Better wear it in math class,” Tim advised with a smirk. “Not your strongest subject, sis.”

Sebastian looked askance at Tim. “It will not provide solutions to problems,” he said, “but only give caution of matters beyond
your perception.”

“Shall we really need it?” Pip ventured, ignoring Tim’s attempt at humor. “I mean de Loudéac’s gone and…”

“You are stepping into a new world,” Sebastian replied.

“It’s a new school,” Tim rejoined, “not a new planet.
We’ve already seen the headmaster. He’s definitely not the spawn of Satan.”

Sebastian said casually, “Appearances can be deceptive. It is ever best to be prepared for any eventuality.”

“Come on! Shake those legs!” their father shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

Pip held the pendant up. It weighed, she reckoned, barely five grams and seemed almost to float in the air above her palm.

“One more thing,” Sebastian added. “It is just for you and Tim. Share it not with others. Keep it suspended within your clothing.”

“If Pip keeps it hidden, how will we know when it changes?” Tim asked.

“You will know,” Sebastian replied, adding, “May your day be bright.”

With that, he turned and left the room. The last they saw of him was the corner of his cloak sweeping around the door.

“Do I detect the heady perfume of romance in the air?” Tim ventured.

“No!” Pip retorted sharply. “You do not! And if you would now get out, I can get dressed.” She pushed Tim through the door
and shut it firmly behind him.

As they sat facing each other at breakfast, Pip and Tim were silent, thinking not so much of the daunting prospect of starting
at secondary school but of what had happened during the summer.

It seemed quite incredible that, since leaving their junior school in June, they had changed homes, and had discovered and
been befriended by the centuries-old son of an alchemist. Even more amazing was the fact that Sebastian had been kept alive
through the centuries in order to foil the evil of de Loudéac, his father’s enemy — and now they were also involved. They
had helped to stop de Loudéac from creating a homunculus — an artificial man — which persisted in giving Pip nightmares.

She looked up at her mother, standing by the toaster, removing the crumb tray and shaking it out over the sink. What, Pip
wondered, would her parents think if they knew they had bought a house once owned by the royal court alchemist to King Henry
the Fifth of England, who had been burned at the stake in the field outside and whose six-centuries-old son lived in a laboratory
in the bowels of the earth beneath the building, approached by a secret passage from their daughter’s bedroom?

Pip’s thoughts were broken by the sound of her father’s car starting up. That morning, he was leaving for a business meeting
concerning his television production company and was going to take them to school on their first day.

“Hurry up, you two!” their mother goaded them as she started to gather the breakfast plates and load them into the dishwasher,
pushing two lunch boxes across the kitchen table.

Gathering up her school bag, Pip pondered in passing what her mother would say if she discovered the
house was being protected not just by an alarm system panel between the fridge and the back door, but also by Sebastian, her
children’s new friend who wandered through the house at night, somehow avoiding setting off the movement sensors in the downstairs
rooms.

“What’re you working on now, Dad?” Tim inquired as they drove towards the school, which was on the outskirts of the nearby
large market town of Exington.

“You really want to know, Timbo?” his father said.

“Yes,” Tim replied, “and I’m not five any more. Let’s drop the Timbo handle.”

“Sounds like a dog food,” Pip added.

“It is,” their father replied. “Comes on the market next month.”

“And I’ve you to thank for this?” Tim asked, mortified by the thought.

Mr. Ledger just grinned.

“If this ever gets out,” Tim threatened Pip, “the world will know your middle name.”

To defuse the situation, their father went on, “I’m actually working on the promotion of a new store loyalty card.”

“What’s it called?”

“The Kard. With a K.”

“Krap name!” Tim declared. “With a K.”

“Aren’t you ever going to do music videos?” Pip asked longingly.

Ahead, a pupil in a Bourne End Comprehensive uniform was walking by the side of the road. He was
stocky and looked scruffy, his clothing creased. He moved in a vaguely apelike fashion.

“I didn’t know your school took in pupils from the monkey house,” Mr. Ledger quipped.

T
he school day began with all the pupils lined up in the main hall. On the stage, in front of an oak table which displayed
an impressive array of sporting cups and shields, stood the headmaster, Dr. Singall.

“Welcome, everybody,” he announced, “either upon your return to Bourne End Comprehensive or into its ranks for the first time.
I trust we all have a happy and rewarding term ahead of us. Our academic results in the summer exams were our best yet and
we look forward to going from strength to strength in the future.”

He waved his hand in the direction of the trophies. “As you can see, we also have a great field of sporting excellence here.
And our congratulations go out to Stephen Wroxall who has, during the summer, won the All-England Under-Fifteen Marathon.”
At this point, his speech was interrupted by loud applause.

“However,” Dr. Singall continued as the clapping died away, “school is more than winning cups and
passing exams. It is also the forging of your futures, molding the person you are to be throughout your life through friendship,
consideration for others, diligence, hard work and, dare I say it, hard play.” He looked around the hall to where the staff,
accompanied by the school prefects, were lining the sides, standing beneath photographs of various school plays or victorious
sporting teams. “We all welcome you, myself and the entire staff. For those of you who are new, it will be a puzzling first
few weeks, but bear with us. You will soon feel at home in the community which is Bourne End Comprehensive.”

At that, he stepped aside, and the deputy headmistress took over, reading out the bulletin. When this was done, the teachers
stepped forward to gather their individual classes, picking out each line that was to be their homeroom and taking them around
the school to their various bases. Pip and Tim found themselves in a line of Year Sevens being led towards the science wing,
where the classrooms were filled with scientific equipment and furnished with stools and workbenches rather than chairs and
desks. The specific room into which they were taken was, according to the sign on the door,
Chemistry Laboratory One.

The class filed in silently, looking around. Some of the pupils were clearly awestruck by the sight of the scientific apparatus.
The wide workbenches were lined with retorts, bottles of common laboratory chemicals or reagents in central wooden and metal
racks. Tripods and Bunsen burners stood in rows beside polished brass gas taps and, every meter or so, there was a white porcelain
sink with two brass taps arching over it. Whereas in
many of the classrooms the floors were made of wood, in this room they were made of hard formica tiles, many of them stained
where chemicals had been spilled on them over the years. Along the walls were glass-fronted cabinets filled with jars and
tins of chemicals and equipment such as beakers, racks of test tubes and white electronic chemical scales.

The pupils shuffled about and sat down on the stools behind the benches. The teacher they had followed there stood behind
the large demonstration bench, which was slightly higher than the pupils’. Behind it, set into the wall next to a very large
whiteboard, was a fume cupboard with glass doors and sides and a silver foil-lined chimney flue leading up from a hood in
the center towards an extractor fan in the ceiling. Through the fume cupboard could be seen the next-door preparation room
where experiments could be made ready. Like the classroom, it too was lined with cabinets of chemicals and equipment. To the
left rear of the demonstration desk was the door into this inner sanctum, a label stuck to its single glass panel reading
starkly:
Absolutely No Entry to Pupils.

“Good morning,” the teacher greeted them when everyone was settled and looking in his direction. “My name is Mr. Yoland. I
am the head of chemistry. This is my laboratory but it is also your homeroom and, for as long as it is your home base, you
must be…” he looked around the class, his eyes passing from face to face, “…
exceedingly
careful in here. These chemicals are dangerous, many of them are poisonous, and you must not touch anything without my express
permission. Furthermore,” he added curtly, “much of the equipment
is very expensive and I will not — I repeat, not! — condone breakage.”

Pip and Tim looked briefly at each other. This was not what they had expected. In junior school, the classrooms were cozy
places, almost friendly, the walls decorated with pictures, murals, friezes and project folders. This room was, in stark contrast
to all they had known before, foreboding. Yet both of them were excited by the prospect of what lay ahead. As for their new
homeroom teacher, he was clearly a very strict and stern man, yet the reason for his brusqueness was obvious to both of them.
The laboratory was indeed a dangerous place, and it was clear that there had to be rigorous rules governing it for safety,
if nothing else.