“Absolutely not,” Sophie glared at Diana. “No way, no way!”
“Why not?” Diana said, reasonably. “It’s a perfect system.”
“Perfect?” Sophie screeched. “Perfect? Zephyr was my friend! She’s dead! She’s murdered! You can’t just…just…let people die!”
“Sophie,” Celia sighed, “Diana has a point. If Chrysanthemum is right, the four points of the compass are what we’re talking about here. Four points of the compass, around a central location. With a map, we can work out where Mr Shadow is hiding.”
“Celia, I have a point,” Sophie insisted. “If we do that, that’s three innocent people brutally murdered and the Necromancers complete their spell!”
“They need four more murders,” Celia argued. “Remember what Chrysanthemum said? North, South, East, West and Centre. The next will be West. We can start to find their location the moment that happens.”
Sophie stared at her. “So those three dead people don’t matter?”
“Sophie,” Celia said, calmly, “my life is about making sure dead people don’t matter. That’s what I do. As a job. Three dead people is a lot less than the alternative. Besides, I don’t think we can abort the spell.”
“I might be able to,” Chrysanthemum said, quietly. “But not now. Not without time, patience and a lot of power. I have less power than I used to. Times have changed.”
Sophie growled in the back of her throat. “I don’t like this.”
“No, Sophie,” Celia grinned. “But you’re not very powerful, not very experienced and not very clever. So your opinion is going to be ignored.”
Sophie stuck out her tongue. Celia laughed.
“Anyways, I’ve got the go ahead from Miss Butterfly. I’m in charge of this murder investigation, seeing as it has been successfully linked to Necromancers. Therefore, we can start working. We find the Necromancers, destroy them, and voila.”
“Ok,” Sophie took a deep breath. “Destruction of Necromancers. Right. Good. And about finding the Scroll ourselves?”
“He won’t be looking for the Scroll,” Chrysanthemum sighed. “He knows what the Key is. That’s what he’ll be searching for.”
“And the Scroll?” Sophie asked, impatiently. “Adele went on about time loops and things but can’t the convenient time traveller just pop out of nowhere and tell us where to look?”
The world blurred, froze, and then resumed with a slightly grey and tinny quality. A man stood in the middle of the room and offered Sophie an old-fashioned bow.
“Oh,” she rolled her eyes skywards. “Apparently he can.”
The man laughed. “Timing is crucial, and I own time.”
“And you are just as arrogant as every other Traveller I’ve ever met,” Sophie muttered. “This gets better and better.”
John Graham was tall, dark-haired and could have been aged anywhere between twenty and seventy. He was timeless, not frozen but absent. He moved around in time, not forward through it. Time got confused around him. It wasn’t like Chrysanthemum’s very slow aging. It was an inability. He could never get older, never change.
“My dear girl,” he spread his hands. “The moment I heard about you, I rushed here. Fascinating…”
“You’re the time traveller,” Sophie said, carefully. “And you know where the Scroll is.”
“Of course,” John laughed. “It’s mine, after all.”
Sophie frowned. “It’s…yours?”
YOU ARE READING
The Necromancer Trilogy - Eachanstone
FantasySophie Merith is still alive, and still being hunted. From all sides, people want to kill her. If anything goes wrong, Sophie will destroy the world. The race is on now, to find the legendary Eachanstone and prevent the fatal Prophecy from ever c...
