coming out of someone . . .

This startled a laugh out of Ellen, one that felt guilty and surrept.i.tious. She'd begun to dislike the tone of the site so much that she might almost have been sharing someone else's resentment. She propped her chin on her fist, at least one of which yielded more than she appreciated, and scrolled down.

Doyle was just the best-known writer to get into the

occult. William Butler Yeats, horror writers like Stoker and

Machen and Blackwood, Sax Rohmer that thought up Fu

Manchu a they all joined the Order of the Golden Dawn,

Victorian England's cult sensation. So did the Astronomer

Royal (just the Scots one) and the President of the Royal

Academy (no Scot him) and Oscar Wilde's wife (b.u.g.g.e.r her).

The Order didn't order Baldy Crowley, but he was the

magician that got all the publicity, and maybe he gave away

what it was all about deep down. One thing was having

magical duels. Baldy challenged the founder to one, and a

couple of magic men who'd gone up north had a real old

witchy rumpus. Step forward Arthur Pendemon, who

sounds like he fancied himself as some sort of demonic

economist, and Peter Grace . . .

Ellen pushed herself to her feet and leaned forwards to drag up the sash of the window. Perhaps the cloying smell that reminded her of digging in the earth was outside the building, because her action seemed not to affect it. Of course, someone must be gardening. As the girl on the balcony raised a slim arm to acknowledge her, Ellen retreated behind her desk. She pa.s.sed a hand over her moist forehead and wiped it on her old baggy trousers before closing her fingers over the mouse.

The story goes Pendemon thought Grace was calling up too

many spirits and devils and the rest of that lot when he

wanted to use them himself. Seems like even demons get tired

and want a night off now and then. You'd think these two

masters of the occult might have learned to share and be

good little boys, but Grace told Pendemon if he wanted any of

the powers Grace was supposed to have made slaves out of he

could fight him for them. He must have thought his were

bigger and nastier, but Pendemon had a trick under his pointy

hat if it wasn't up his robe. 'All flesh incubates the dark,' he's

meant to have said, and 'At the core of every soul horror waits

to gnaw forth' and 'The ma.s.s of men are vessels of dread for

the thaumaturge to draw upon.' In English that means he

thought he could use anybody handy to send Grace something

as horrible as horrible gets. Anyone who wandered near

Pendemon's house . . .

What use was this to Ellen's book? She let go of the glistening plastic lump and raised her ponderous hand to dab her infirm forehead. She was lowering her hand to wipe it when it faltered in front of her nose, that pallid excrescence that appeared to have split in half to trouble both inner edges of her vision. With a good deal of reluctance she brought the hand closer. Was it the source of the underlying smell? She wasn't sure, though her hand was certainly as moist as an imperfectly squeezed sponge. She let the flabby appendage flop on the desk, only to wonder which she found less appealing a the hand or the prospect of reading the rest of the text. Couldn't she look at Pendemon's house instead? Even that would involve wielding her fat etiolated sweaty hand. It and the insidious smell, which she was increasingly unable to believe had any source besides her own dank self, had begun to sicken her. She was staring at the hand as if this might render it no longer part of her, except that the rest was at least as bad, when her mobile wriggled against her padded hip before emitting its protracted note.