Part 16 (1/2)

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.