Modern Magick

The Fifth Britain: 12

On the other side of the door was House's favourite room. I had been there just once before, in search of the third key to Farringale. In character it is a pretty sitting-room, a perfectly preserved specimen of mid-to-late seventeenth century style, with elegant floral wallpaper, wrought-silver candlesticks (never tarnished) and a tall grandfather clock. House keeps it well hidden.

Val sailed her chair over to a wall and stopped, promptly producing a laptop from somewhere. She started it up and began typing furiously.

I took one of the tall, pale-upholstered chairs, and spent a moment collecting my thoughts.

'What are we working with?' said Val. She'd stopped typing and was waiting expectantly.

'Lost islands,' I said.

'You mean like Atlantis?'

'A bit more real.'

'Atlantis isn't real?'

'It... is it?' I stared.

Val grinned. 'Might be.'

'You did say is, not was?'

With a flick of her fingers, Valerie waved this away. 'Another time. So like Atlantis or more like Ferdinandea?'

'That's the one that keeps vanishing and popping up again? No. No volcanic activity involved, as far as we know. It's more like Bermeja.' (I had done some research already).

'Gulf of Mexico,' said Val promptly. 'Marked on a few ancient maps but nobody can find it today?'

'Exactly. Or any sign that it ever existed at all.'

'Okay. But you're certain this island of yours did exist.'

I told her everything we'd heard so far, every miserably insufficient clue we had mustered, and spoken all together it did not sound like much. But Val listened with close attention, and as I'd hoped, the question fired her interest.

She began typing again.

'Could be vanished,' she murmured, half to herself. 'Islands vanish all the time, but they're usually discernible lying right there on the sea bed, and you say this one was never on any maps?'

'That's one of the questions I had for you. Can you find a map with an island marked off the Scarborough coast? Pre-sixteen-hundred, it would be.'

'Working on that. Really though, Ves, how could anybody hide an entire island? Especially so close to shore.'

'Well.' I sneaked a look at the Baron. 'Er. You know when you're working on a valuable book, and you want to take a bathroom break, but you don't want to have to put the book away only to haul it out again ten minutes later?'

Val stopped typing. Her face said: You know about that?

I gave her an apologetic look, and said no more. I'd seen her pull a sneaky trick with just such a book, once. It was incredibly rare, one of the few copies of Agadora's Miscellany still extant. The library had been empty other than the two of us, and I was at the other end of it, apparently absorbed in a book. Val had left the room — leaving the Miscellany on the table before her.

I thought she had forgotten to put it away, or perhaps trusted to me to guard it. But when I'd looked at the table, there was no book there. I went over to investigate, and I still couldn't find it, couldn't see it, couldn't feel it.

When Val came back, there it was again, in the same spot as before, as though it had never moved at all. Which, in all probability, it hadn't.

'So, that trick,' I continued. 'How big an, er, object could you hide like that?'