"So, Jack," said Charlie's dad, turning heavily toward him, "how're things with you? Got any plans for the summer?"
"Er, nothing much," Jack said. He wanted to look at Charlie, to take his cue for how to speak to Mr. Farnsworth from him. Luckily, he had his pancake to work on.
"You still skateboarding much?"
"Dad, that was years ago," said Charlie.
"Oh," said Mr. Farnsworth.
By now, Jack's first pancake was ready to eat. He'd laid out just the right proportion of cucumber, spring onion, and mashed-up duck on top of the sauce, and he'd successfully rolled the whole thing up into the proper cigar shape. He lifted it to his lips and took a bite: it was delicious.
"That's a very neat job you've done of that," said Mr. Farnsworth.
"Thanks," managed Jack through his mouthful. "Peking duck's one of my favorites."
Mr. Farnsworth smiled at him. Jack smiled back uncertainly.
Then Charlie threw his pancake down on the table.
"Dad, why did you do it? " he asked.
It was hot and bright in the restaurant, especially next to the window where they were sitting. Slowly, Mr. Farnsworth put down his pancake.
"Charlie," he said wearily.
"Yes?"
"Well..." prompted Mr. Farnsworth, "don't you think... ? You know, with Jack here?"
"Why not?" said Charlie, in a voice that made Jack squirm in his seat. "I want him to hear this too."
Mr. Farnsworth sighed. Then he dabbed at his lips with his napkin, spread it back across his lap, and looked up at Charlie again.
"All right," he said, and he took a deep breath.
"Your mother and I..." he began. "Well... we've never been really happy."
Now Jack really didn't know where to look. He certainly wasn't going to look at Charlie or Mr. Farnsworth, so he was reduced to fidgeting with his pancake. It was ridiculous and horrible at the same time — but suddenly he couldn't help wondering if he just had to sit there, or if it was okay for him to take another bite. Peking duck was his favorite, after all.
"I tried to make it work," said Mr. Farnsworth, staring earnestly at his son. "I tried to keep it going, for as long as I could. But, well..." He shrugged. "I'm not getting any younger. And when the chance came up for me to be really happy, I had to take it. Do you see?"
Charlie's mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he got his words out. His voice, when it came, sounded high and strangely muffled.
"But you left," he said, "so... suddenly."
Mr. Farnsworth sighed again. "Charlie, there's—"
"'Never a good time for something like this.' Yes, you said."
Mr. Farnsworth blinked, surprised.
"Good for who, though?" asked Charlie, his voice getting louder. "Good for who?"
"Charlie—
"Mum was happy. She thought you were happy. We were happy! And all the time you were... making arrangements."
"Charlie—"
"Do you have any idea how stupid you've made us feel?"
"Now, Charlie," said Mr. Farnsworth, "you've got a right to be angry..."
Charlie said nothing. Jack looked from his friend's expression to the last of the pancake — the perfect, mouth-size morsel of duck, rich sauce, and crisp, pale green vegetables. Slowly, he put it down.
"But you've got to let me make things right between us," Mr. Farnsworth was saying. "Charlie, you've got to understand that nothing's really changed between me and you, nothing. And if you'll just—"
"And I want you to understand," Charlie cut in, in a voice that made his father stop dead, "that I am never, ever going to forgive you for this. Do you understand that? Never."
He paused.
"Come on, Jack., we're going."
He stood up. Hurriedly, Jack stood up too.
"Charlie, wait," said Mr. Farnsworth. "Please?"
But Charlie didn’t wait. And Jack, of course, had to follow. When Jack looked back, Mr. Farnsworth was sitting absolutely still at the table, staring straight ahead. Then the door swung shut behind them, and they were gone.
"Er... Charlie?" said Jack.
Charlie didn't even turn, just kept stomping straight ahead, head down. Jack sighed.
For a good two minutes they strode on together without speaking, and before long they were coming out into Cambridge Circus. The big crossroads was packed as always, full of shuddering red buses, gaggles of tourists, brightness, noise, and heat. Looming over it all was the Palace Theatre.
The Palace Theatre is one of the most impressive buildings in the West End — a grand and ostentatious mass of stripy pink brick festooned with turrets, glittering windows and fat stone cherubs. Jack was looking up at it, distracted, when—
WHUMP! A passerby barged into Charlie's shoulder, sending him staggering sideways.
"Hey!" Charlie shouted.
The man, who'd continued on his way as if nothing had happened, stopped and turned.
He was dressed in black from head to foot: black suit, black shoes, a black shirt, and black silk gloves on his hands.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Did I knock into you?"
"Why don't you watch where you're going?" said Charlie.
The man's eyes narrowed a little. "I've told you I'm sorry," he said.
"Yeah?" replied Charlie, "Well, sorry's not good enough!"
Jack held his breath.
The man raised an eyebrow. His face seemed to take on an odd, calculating sort of expression. There was a long, slow moment of silence, then—
"Suit yourself," said the black-clad man, and in another second he'd vanished into the crowd.
"Jesus," said Charlie. "Some people. Come on, I need to get some cash."
Jack followed without arguing.
The queue for the cash machine was seventeen people long. A very smelly, very dirty young man with sunken-in cheeks and a filthy blue sleeping bag slung over one shoulder was squatting in the alcove at the side of the machine.
"Spare any change, lads?" he asked when they eventually got to the front.
"Piss off," Charlie replied. He shoved his card into the machine and jabbed at the numbers.
Jack sighed again. It was going to be a long afternoon.
"'Scuse me," said a voice.
The boys looked around.
"'Scuse me," said the sleeping-bag man again. "It's just... I think you've dropped a fiver." He pointed at the ground next to him. The boys looked. It was true: lying on the pavement not two inches from the man's bare and astonishingly dirty feet was a crumpled green five pound note.
"Er... cheers," muttered Charlie. He bent down to pick up the money, and then everything happened very fast.
The man shot out an arm, yanked Charlie's card out of the machine, leaped to his feet, and ran off down the street, shoving tourists aside as he went.
"What?" said Charlie. "He's got my card!" He ran off after him. Jack watched Charlie haring up the road. The thief, it seemed to Jack, was impossibly far ahead. But then something amazing happened. The thief stopped running.
He'd stopped dead, in fact, in the middle of the pavement, right in front of another pedestrian.
It wasn't, was it? The black-clad man! And as, panting heavily, Jack arrived at the scene, he could hear the man speaking, slowly and carefully.
"Give it to me," the black-clad man was saying, holding out a gloved hand. "Give me what you've stolen. Now."
His voice was strange: it seemed to echo in Jack's head, making small flowering explosions go off behind his eyeballs.
For another moment, the thief just stared as if mesmerized. Then his hand was coming out.
No way!
"Now go," said the man, and the thief ran off, even faster than he'd been going before.
Jack gaped.
Charlie gaped too.
The black-clad man just smiled and handed the card back to Charlie.
"Whoa," said Charlie, looking at the card in his hand. "I mean... thanks," he added quickly.
&
nbsp; The man shrugged, but he kept looking at Charlie with the same calculating, almost greedy expression that Jack had noticed before.
"Uh... listen," Charlie began, "I'm sorry about before."
"Think nothing of it," said the man. "You look like you're having a rough day. I'm Nick."
"Charlie."
"I'm Jack," said Jack — but suddenly, it seemed, no one was listening.
"I, uh, really appreciate you, y'know, getting my card back," said Charlie. "Is there anything I can do to, ah, thank you?"
"Well," said Nick, "there is one thing. I'd like you — both of you," he corrected himself, "to come with me and take a small test. It won't take more than a few moments of your time, and it's something you might find... interesting."
"What kind of test?" asked Charlie.
"Actually," said Nick, "words don’t really help. It's something you have to see for yourself. But I rather think," he added, smiling at Charlie again, "that you're exactly the person I've been looking for. What do you say?"
Cynical, Jack crooked an eyebrow. But then—
"Sure," said Charlie, "why not?"
"Splendid. Well, follow me," said Nick, and with that, he set off across the road.
Charlie turned, but before he could follow this total stranger that he'd just randomly decided to go off with, Jack grabbed him.
"Charlie!"
"What?" asked Charlie, shaking Jack's hand off and scowling.
For a moment Jack just stared at him.
Jack and Charlie were teenagers now. Maybe there was some point after which "talking to strangers" was okay, some point at which the rules changed and you were less likely to get kidnapped, murdered, or whatever.
Jack sighed. Of course there wasn't.
"Charlie, what are you doing?" he asked, gesturing and trying for a smile. "That guy could be anybody!"
"So?" Charlie asked.
Jack blinked.
"You coming?" Charlie asked. "Or what?"
Without waiting for a reply, he set off after Nick, leaving Jack staring at his back.
Well, thought Jack, there it was. With Charlie in this kind of a mood, there was no telling what he was going to do — or what kind of trouble he was going to get into. And just as before, when they'd been standing outside the restaurant, there was no choice for Jack, not really. Sighing uselessly, he set off after his friend.
They were heading back toward Cambridge Circus, back the way they'd come, but then Nick turned left, taking Charlie down a side street. When Jack caught up with them, they were standing outside an old and solid-looking black back door that looked strangely small in the mountain of red brick that surrounded it. Nick smiled thinly at the boys and pressed the buzzer. Jack looked up at the Palace Theatre again.
It was odd how different the back looked from the front. There were no fancy windows and statues here, just a vast Victorian clod of red brick with a cast-iron fire escape sticking out the top. The afternoon sun was very bright, so Jack looked down — and that was when he glimpsed something strange.
There was a weird kind of shadow on the back of Nick's neck: weirder still, it was moving. Curves and spikes of inky darkness were drifting across the man's skin. Jack blinked.
But when he opened his eyes again, whatever he'd seen was gone. Except for the glossy comma of Nick's long black ponytail, the back of his neck was bare.
Jack shook his head to clear it. Should've brought my sunglasses, he told himself.
"Yeah?" grunted a voice from the intercom.
"It's me," said Nick.
The door buzzed. The black-clad man pushed it open, and he gestured the boys inside.
THE TEST
Nick led them up a spiral staircase to a set of double doors. Jack had been feeling more uneasy with every step — but then the doors opened, and he suddenly found he was looking at the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen in his life.
She was dressed in a red hooded top and green combat trousers. Her thick black curly hair was tied back tightly in a bunch, leaving dark little wisps at her temples. Her face was angular and fiercely elegant, her skin was the warm color of milky tea, and her eyes were the most extraordinary shade of amber. They flicked from Jack to Charlie, and the fine black curves of her eyebrows arched at Nick in a quizzical expression: evidently, she wasn't too impressed by what she'd seen. As far as Jack was now concerned, however, following Nick didn't seem like quite such a bad idea.
"Esme," said Nick, "I'd like you to meet Charlie..."
"Hi," said Charlie.
"...and, I'm sorry, what was your name again?"
"Jack," said Jack, annoyed.
"And this is Raymond," Nick said, joining the large and frankly terrifying-looking hairy man who was standing by the long conference table in the center of the room. "There. Now the introductions are out of the way, perhaps we can get started."
"Hold on," said Raymond. "These are the new recruits you wanted? Two kids you just found on the street?"
"That," said Nick crisply, "is precisely what we're about to find out."
Esme frowned at the boys, shrugged, then closed the doors, leaving Jack and Charlie just standing there.
The room they were in was very big. The wide walls sloped inward toward a high, arched ceiling and were covered with a pattern of regularly spaced, strange-looking blotchlike things. The only light in the room came from a great round window at the far end, so Jack was having trouble making out the details.
"My colleagues and I," said Nick, leaning back against the table, "belong to a small yet ancient organization know as the Brotherhood of Sleep. We're... jailers," he said. "Of a kind, anyway; our prisoner is a demon. We call it the Scourge."
At that, Jack gave up looking around and stared openly at Nick instead.
"I'm sorry," said Charlie, "but I don't think I heard you right. Did you just say 'demon'?"
"That's right," said Nick. "A demon. A being of pure liquid darkness, bent on a path of destruction."
Jack raised his eyebrows.
"Many thousands of years ago," said Nick, "the Scourge was defeated by a powerful curse. The curse kept the demon imprisoned where it could do no harm, and the Brotherhood's task was to make sure that it stayed that way. However, as the centuries passed, our order became complacent: our numbers thinned, and those who remained grew... weak. One day, over a decade ago now, one of our members betrayed us."
Nick walked slowly around the table until he stood at the far end, resting his black-gloved hands on the chair at its head.
"Hungry for power, the man — Felix, his name was — allowed the Scourge to possess him. The demon took him over and became very strong: we only just managed to recapture it. In the battle another member of our group — Esme's mother, Belinda — was killed."
Jack looked at Esme, but she showed no reaction. Her strange amber eyes were bright as she concentrated on what was being said. (She was, Jack decided, really very pretty indeed, actually.)
"In the years since that night, I've traveled the world," said Nick, "searching for new recruits to bring the Brotherhood back up to strength — without success," he added, with a wan smile at Charlie, "until today. But now, with the Brotherhood still in tatters, I find we have been betrayed again."
He sighed (a bit dramatically, Jack thought).
"The Scourge has been unleashed once more," said Nick. "For thousands of years it has been biding its time, waiting for the moment to come when it can put its terrible plans into action. Now, I fear, it will succeed. Unless we have your help."
Nick paused.
"I need the three of you," he said, looking at Esme, then Jack, then back at Charlie again, "to take a small test. This test will decide which of you is going to become the Brotherhood's next leader."
"But Nick!" Raymond spluttered. "You didn't mention this was about who's going to be leader!"
"Frankly, Raymond," said Nick, "I'd've thought it was obvious. You and I no longer have the strength to do what must be done: it is time to
pass the burden to the next generation. The one who performs best in the test will take on as much of my own power as I am able to give, becoming the new leader of the group."
"But... that should be Esme, shouldn't it?" Raymond asked. "She's been training all her life."
"So you keep telling me," said Nick. Then, seeing Raymond's and Esme's shocked expressions, he sighed.
"Look," he told them, "I know this might seem strange to you. But the Brotherhood needs reinforcements and time is short. You've always trusted me before, Raymond: trust me now, Trust me," Nick repeated. "That's all I ask."
Raymond and Esme looked at each other but said nothing: already, Nick had gone back to concentrating on Charlie.
"Now, what you're being offered here," he went on, staring at Charlie intently, "is something in the way of a proper adventure. A chance to battle an ancient evil and — quite possibly — save the world. And all I need from you, at this stage, is a simple yes or no. So... what's your answer?"
There was a pause.
Jack had loved fantasy, science fiction, and horror all his life — the films, the games, and the books. He'd heard worse stories, and frankly, he'd heard better ones, but no one had ever expected him to believe one was actually true before. He was so nonplussed, he wasn't sure how to react, so he turned and looked at Charlie.
To his amazement, Charlie wasn't even smiling: he was looking at Nick with fixed attention — giving every appearance of having listened seriously to every word Nick had said. Jack waited for him to say no. He waited for Charlie to burst out laughing — for him to do anything, in fact, except what he did, which was shrug and say—
"All right, sure."
"Splendid," said Nick, already setting off back round the table toward them.
Jack stared at his friend.
"Wait!" he said, his voice coming out (infuriatingly) as a kind of squeak. "Er... what sort of 'test' are we talking about here?" he asked, in the gruffest voice he could manage.
"I'll show you," said Nick.
Slowly, grimacing with pain, he began to pull off his gloves, one finger at a time. Then, when the gloves were off, he turned his hands and held them out in front of him, palms out. There was a sharp intake of breath from everyone in the room.