CHAPTER TWO

Wanted

The hours of the night, at least I assumed it was night as without a window there was no way to tell, passed with me dozing fitfully. When the overhead light came on I shaded my eyes and waited. It wasn't long before the same voice I had heard the night before said, 'Good morning, Grace. I hope your headache's better, though it would have been much less bothersome had you taken the offered tablets.'

I sat up and perched on the edge of the bed pleased to notice the nausea and dizziness had gone. 'Let me out. You can't keep me locked up like this.'

'I can, and I will until we can come to some agreement.'

I narrowed my eyes and looked into the tiny lens. 'What agreement?' I said, but felt that just didn't cover it so I tried again, 'Agreement about what?' Still not much better but to be fair I didn't have much to go on.

'Your breakfast will be brought to you shortly, after that we will talk.'

'Talk now!' But the speaker's tiny, tinny hiss had clicked into silence. I got to my feet and gave vent to my frustration and yelled, 'Hey, I want some answers, why am I here?'

I didn't expect a response but I couldn't help being unsettled by the silence. In an effort to calm myself I splashed lukewarm water on my face in the tiny basin and cleaned my teeth with the thoughtfully provided toothpaste and brush. Then I sat back on the bed. The weeping woman had returned while I was busy and I snuck sidelong looks at her. She was, I guessed, in her late twenties maybe early thirties when she died. Judging by her clothes she could not have been dead long. That is, she wasn't wearing outdated fashion like Joshua, the Pennington's long-dead gardener, or Elsbeth, who was the great, great grand-mama of Henry Pennington and who still resided at the hall along with her descendants. This woman wore up-to-date clothes in the shape of a pair of pale pink jeans and a tee-shirt which boasted, 'I helped save a whale'. Her brown hair was short but the ends were wispy and curled around her neck as if needing a trim. She held onto the edge of the wooden chair and rocked gently backward and forward. She looked up and I quickly averted my eyes. Her sobs subsided and I could feel her watching me as I took a sip from the almost empty bottle of water. So she was not in a 'loop' then, she was present, at least in a none corporeal sense. That is she was aware of her surroundings, and me. I studied my nails, finger combed my curly hair, straightened my shirt, picked at a splash of cerise paint on my trousers, anything so I didn't inadvertently make eye contact.

The sound of someone on the other side of the door was a welcome distraction. I stood and waited for the door to open but instead a small flap opened in the middle and a tray was slid in.

'Open the door. Do you hear me? Open the door and let me out.'

'Take the tray.' The voice was gentle and male. Not Jeremy.

'Open this damned door, now!'

'If you don't take the tray I will post it like a letter and you will be eating your breakfast off the floor before you get another meal.'

I took hold of the tray and slid it into my cell. Not because of the threat but because the voice had remained calm and reasonable, matter of fact.

'Thank you,' it said.

'Wait, who are you, open the door.' I tried to see through the narrow slot but caught only a glimpse of a pale blue shirt before the hatch was closed again.

'Damn.'

I put the tray on the small table at the foot of the bed and sat on the vacant chair staring at the covered plates. Cautiously I lifted the lids and uncovered porridge, bacon, eggs and fried bread. The tea was lukewarm when I felt the cup. I sighed and pushed the tray away from me.

'If you don't eat it they won't feed you for a full day.'

'I'll not be here...' I sighed. It was a while since I'd been caught out that way.

'I knew you could see me. You're a necromancer aren't you?'

'Very clever, now leave me alone. And I prefer 'spiritualist'.'

She spluttered. 'Yeah right, spiritualist.'

'Go away.'

'Okay, but I know things. We could talk but you would have to be careful. They'll be watching you, listening to you. If I were you I wouldn't let them see me talking to me.'

I gave her what I hoped was a withering look.

She wiped a damp eye and gave a half-smile and a wet sniff. 'Eat your breakfast.'

'This is obviously some mistake and I will be out of here just as soon as I get to talk to someone and explain. Someone living that is,' I muttered. She was probably right about it not being wise to let them see me talking to her. Visitors, even dead ones, would almost certainly not be approved of. Besides, talking to her went against the habits of a lifetime.

'Yeah, right. So they'll just open the doors of hell and let you walk out and go tell all your friends about how you were held prisoner by a group of religious deviants.'

'Religious what?' I mumbled through a mouthful of porridge. When I looked up she was gone.

Perhaps an hour after breakfast I heard someone at the door again. This time the door was opened and two men entered. I stood up but their hostile expressions temporarily shocked me into silence.

'Come with us.'

The larger of the two spoke. He had sandy brown hair and a slight paunch protruding over his regulation belt. I suddenly felt less than certain that I wanted to leave the room. At least not in the company of these two.

'Where to?'

'You were shouting for answers not so long ago,' paunch said, 'so why not come get some.'

'I'm fine, just show me the way out.'

'Not an option 'till you've seen the boss.'

I hesitated.

'Don't make me carry you.'

At five foot six and the wrong side of eleven stone I'm no light-weight, but I had no doubt that between them, one way or another, they would carry out the threat. I walked through the door. The passage beyond the door was as bare as the cell. The same recessed lights the same mushroom coloured walls and green linoleum. We turned left and through another door at the end of the short corridor. The lights were a good deal brighter on the other side of the door. There was a threadbare carpet on the floor and a functional desk with another guard behind it. He nodded to my companions and watched as we crossed the room to the lift. The youngest of my guards went ahead. He moved smoothly almost sinuously. I re-evaluated my previous estimation. He undoubtedly could have carried me without any help from paunch. I wondered irrelevantly if he had been the one who had brought my breakfast. He called the lift and I was herded inside.

The doors slid shut behind us.

'Where are you taking me?'

'We told you,' paunch said in a toneless drone, 'to the boss.'

'Jeremy?'

'That's right. At least it is today.'

I decided to hold on to my questions until I met Jeremy. The doors slid open again and the contrast of where we were to where we had come from could not have been greater. As I stepped out of the lift my feet sank into plush carpet. The walls were painted in pastel shades to compliment, what looked to my practiced eye, to be original watercolors. Winder, Higgins and if I wasn't mistaken there was even a Blake depicting semi-mystical, semi-biblical figures. Paunch placed his hand in the middle of my back and shoved. I followed the athlete through the ante-room to a white door on the right. He knocked once and opened the door. The room matched the opulence of the ante-room and bettered it. The views from the windows showed we were high over the city. I could see Tower Bridge and beyond it the unmistakable shape of The Tower and its surrounding walls. But it was the man sitting behind the desk who commanded my attention. His pale, almost white hair was immaculately cut and when he stood he towered above my five-foot, six inches. I found myself staring at him. He came toward me his hand outstretched a smile on his lips.

'Ah, Miss Doyle, welcome, I'm Jeremy Blyth.'

This man had me abducted, imprisoned and yet he had the nerve to greet me as if I were a willing guest. And the worst thing was I could not find the words to berate him. His pale blue eyes held mine and I meekly held out my hand. Then he looked away and the spell was broken. Despite my mental alarm bells warning me to be careful I glared at him.

'What the hell do you mean, 'welcome?' Why am I here?'

'I told you, we need you.'

'For what? And haven't you heard of the telephone? Of asking for my help, in a normal, civilised way? You never know, I might have said, yes. But now I'm going home.' I turned toward the door only to have muscles step in front of it. I turned back to Jeremy and saw him nod to the roadblock. Muscles stepped to one side and I resumed my interrupted exit.

'But we are not 'normal people', Grace, are we? And by collecting you in the way I did I had hoped to remove any danger to the innocent.'

I paused. 'What?'

'Well, as I could not have traveled to your little studio myself I would have had to send, maybe Karl there,' he indicated muscles, 'and Leon,' he indicated Paunch. 'And they have been known to get a little carried away. I could not have guaranteed the safety of those around you.'

My stomach flipped and my internal alarm bells clanged louder. 'Are you threatening me?'

'No, no, not you. Haven't I already said? I need you. They would have resisted their natural urges as far as you were concerned. No, it was... what're their names now?' he put a finger to his head, 'Pennington. Henry and Beatrice isn't it? It was the Penningtons I was concerned for.'

I felt sick. 'What is it you want?' I said through gritted teeth. 'What have you done with Meredith?'

'Meredith?'

'You took me from her flat. Where is she? What have you done to her?

'Let me assure you we have done nothing to or with your friend. She is, as far as I know, safe and well and going about her business.'

'Then how did you know I would be at her flat?'

'We have been watching you for some time now, Grace. You seem to have stayed mostly beneath the radar but we have our sources. You coming to London the way you did saved us from having to go fetch you from your studio.'

'Meredith. Meredith told you about me, didn't she?'

'She may have mentioned you. But you have to excuse her, after all, it's not as if she was sharing that information with the general public. We are a professional organization with a strong vested interest in all things supernatural.'

I stared at him, unable to form a coherent sentence.

'Please, sit down and let me explain what it is we need from you.'

I sat in the chair he indicated almost without noticing I was doing so. Jeremy sat opposite, across an occasional table loaded with a metal coffee pot and ugly, angular, super-modern cups.

'I am not talking to your damned ghosts for you.' I said but my voice was quiet, subdued even to my ears. They would hurt Beatrice and Henry just to get me here? Keep me here? Why? What was it they so desperately needed?

Jeremy smiled. 'No, I didn't think you would. And believe me, I prefer my ghosts to stay silent.'

'Then what do you want? What's worth threatening the lives of two harmless old people for?'

'Oh, many things I would guess but you misunderstand. I am not threatening, only pointing out the dangers to them if Karl and Leon were let loose on their estate. They can be impulsive. But you are here and everything is fine.'

My stomach clenched. 'What do you want? Why am I here?'

'Meridian Clinic is a research facility, Grace. We are interested in people like yourself who have, shall we say unusual gifts.'

'I am a spiritualist. We are not that uncommon. Choose someone else. But phone them next time, like a regular person.' As I said it I remembered the ghost in the cell and her snort of derision at my suggestion that I was a spiritualist. Jeremy didn't snort, he didn't seem the type but he smiled and this time the smile reached his eyes. It was not the least bit reassuring.

'Who told you that you're a spiritualist?'

'Nobody told me! Nobody needed to. As you obviously know, thanks to Meredith, I see ghosts. I can talk to ghosts. It is self-evident,' I snapped.

There was a pause before Jeremy said, 'In the right environment you could do so much more, Grace. We want to help you and people like you to reach their full potential.'

'I don't want to reach my full potential. You said you needed me. You still aren't telling me why. Why me?'

Jeremy leaned forward and poured out two cups of coffee. The smell drifted up and I breathed it in despite myself.

'Cream? Sugar?'

I glared at him.

'It is, I promise you, perfectly safe.'

'Cream.'

He handed me a cup.

'As I say we are a research facility. We help gifted people like yourself. In return, we expect certain things from you.'

'Like?'

'We expect you to show an interest in assisting our research.'

Images of circles and stars came to mind. You know the kind of thing; the 'guess which one I'm holding up' type of game. I could only hope. But the abduction, the cell and the impressive facilities seemed a bit over-the-top for that kind of innocent research.

'Why the abduction? Why not just ask for my help?'

Jeremy sipped his coffee and looked at me over the cup. Again the pale blue eyes met mine and again I felt the compulsion to cooperate. I pulled my eyes away and took a sip of my coffee.

'As in all innovative research, there are those who do not want us to continue. We have to be careful in our choice of subjects and what we allow the world to know.'

'Innovative?' The stars and circles game dissolved. 'So, you're trying to tell me I've been specially selected from thousands of others,' I said putting as much scorn in my voice as I could muster, 'to partake in this innovative research. I've seen adverts like that before. I don't believe you anymore than I did them.'

'No, Grace, not thousands. Not even hundreds. In fact, all things considered, you are quite a rare individual. I could even go so far as to say unique. Oh don't get me wrong, there are others like you. But none of which are of the least use to us.'

I stared at him. 'Just what is it you think I am?'

'You're a necromancer, Grace, as I think you know.'

There it was again; that word. Necromancer. 'Necromancy - a method of divination through communication with the dead as practiced by witch or sorcerer'. I had read it in some dictionary years ago when Meredith had first suggested in excited, mock-scared whispers that that was what I might be. The definition had stuck in my mind. As welcome as acrylic paint on your best jumper.

'I am not a necromancer, a witch or a sorcerer.' I said through gritted teeth, and my words echoed those of years ago.

Jeremy smiled again, 'If you were a witch you would not be here. At least not sipping coffee. And I agree you aren't a sorcerer. But that does not preclude you from being a necromancer.'

I opened my mouth to speak but Jeremy held up his hand. 'Before you say any more let me show you who we are and what we do here. When you have seen something of our work we will talk about how we can be of use to each other.'

Jeremy stood and indicated that I do the same. Reluctantly I put down my coffee cup and stood up. It was obvious I was not going to get out of here until I had seen what it was he wanted me to see. Maybe then he would take my 'no' for a final answer.