The Black Amulet Read online

  Ed wanted to shout or run after him. But he didn’t. Creating a scene would only make things worse and he was doing his utmost to fit in at St Joseph’s. So he stayed where he was, trying to let the anger drain out of him, as the other boy dared him down the steps, waggling a crooked finger. In another life, Ed might have reached into his pocket for his catapult and whizzed a silver ball bearing close enough to the boy’s ear to graze it as a warning and melt the grin off his face.

  But Ed wasn’t a Badlander any more. He was an ordinary boy now, wearing a blazer, not an overcoat with limitless pockets. When the other boy gave up and walked off, laughing, with his friends, Ed’s fists uncurled, and his sweaty palms started to cool.

  Ed was still taking time to adapt to school, even though he was bright and quick-witted. Lessons weren’t the problem. It was adjusting to how life at St Joseph’s worked that made him stick out as being different. And standing out was not a good thing if you wanted to get on quietly with making friends and trying to be ordinary.

  Occasionally, Ed would stop and stare in the mirror at the new version of himself, without his overcoat, wondering if he should go back to live in the Badlands, even though it was a dangerous place. It was a world he knew so well, better than the new one he found himself in now. Ruby and Thomas Gabriel were in the Badlands too and he knew he could count on them, especially Ruby, who’d been so brave, helping him and taking on creatures and showing she could be as good as any boy. But she’d also proved that the things a person really wanted the most never came easily and that’s what made them so precious. So Ed would always walk away from the mirror, convinced he didn’t want to return to his old life because being an ordinary boy had always been his dream and he couldn’t give up on it now.

  But there was something Ed couldn’t ignore as easily about his past as a Badlander. There was still magic inside him after his Commencement in the Badlands. The ceremony had gone wrong after Ruby had Commenced with him by accident, leaving them with half the amount of magic a Badlander would normally have received. It meant they could only perform spells together.

  Ed heard the magic whispering to him in quiet moments, addressing him as Jones, the Badlander name his Master, Maitland, had given him as a baby. The magic kept telling him to give up trying to be an ordinary boy called Ed because he’d been so good at taking on monsters and protecting people.

  Ed did his best to ignore the magic, but it never seemed to give up. It was in pain. Ed knew it wasn’t meant to be in the ordinary world where he wanted to be. It wanted to be back in the Badlands where it could be used, so it kept urging him to return there.

  Some weeks earlier, in class, he’d lashed out without thinking because the constant whispering had made it seem like a person had been there, right beside him. All the other kids had burst out laughing. Even the teacher told him ‘to pay attention’ before droning on again. At lunchtime, he’d had to wade through looks and sniggers. Kids had tapped him on the shoulder, tempting him to turn round and take a swipe at them. He’d stared at them through tired eyes, the bags beneath them so dark they were almost purple because the magic was whispering to him at night too, keeping him awake, and disrupting his dreams.

  School was an unforgiving place. No one forgot things. Ed had learnt that once you were seen as a certain person you could never be anyone else. Everyone had looked at him differently after that day in class.

  Today all the other kids seemed to be hurrying somewhere important as he walked down the steps. He had nowhere to go except home. He loved his parents, but he missed having friends his own age he could talk to. He missed Ruby and Thomas Gabriel.

  He’d tried inviting kids from his classes to his house, but nobody came, not even the ones who seemed to have no one else either. Once, a group from school had turned up at his door to see if he wanted to play football in the park and, for a brief moment, his face had lit up. But that was before he’d noticed a sly look between two of them, something his clever eyes had spotted because, in the Badlands, he’d always been on the lookout for anything suspicious, however subtle, in case it was a clue about a monster or something that might save his life. Standing on the doorstep, Ed had known the only thing being kicked in the park would be him, not a football. So he’d shut the door quickly.

  Usually, his walk home took about twenty minutes, but he chose a longer route that afternoon, wending his way through the streets, wanting time to think. There seemed to be no prospect of fitting in at school, however hard he tried, and the magic inside him seemed to take heart from it, addressing him more and more, and urging him to give in to it.

  Ed took his frustration out on a white pebble, kicking it so hard across the pavement he almost lost his balance. He wondered whether going to see Ruby or Thomas Gabriel to talk to them about how he was feeling might help, even though it meant returning to the Badlands.

  The white pebble had pinged off the wall beside him and landed further on and he kicked it again, even harder this time. Going back to the Badlands, if only for a moment, would feel like a failure.

  Maybe you are a failure, Jones? taunted the magic inside him.

  Ed stopped, his foot raised, ready to kick the pebble again, and then the anger inside disappeared like a burst balloon, and he put his leg down.

  ‘I’m not a failure,’ he whispered. ‘My parents wouldn’t love me otherwise.’ The magic didn’t say anything back and Ed felt a little fizz in his veins at silencing the voice.

  Ed’s parents were the bright spot in his new life. They’d welcomed him back into their lives with open arms. He had been stolen from them as a baby by his Master, Maitland, and replaced with a fæcce that had died. Not only were his mother and father kind, they were loving too. Ed had known it when he’d listened to them lying about his adoption in the headmaster’s office at St Joseph’s, the story they’d come up with to avoid any difficult questions about where Ed had come from. Their ‘new-found joy’ was how they’d described him and Ed felt the same.

  It hadn’t been so easy at first, though. Ed’s parents had been under a curse for years, until Ruby killed the Witch that had enslaved them. Like Ed, they were readjusting to normal life. He’d heard them at night, crying out in their sleep, shouting for Mrs Easton the Witch, whom they’d worshipped.

  Thomas Gabriel had told Ed that other people in Hampstead, who’d been under the curse of the Witch, were creeping out at night, looking for her, still under her spell somehow. On hearing this, Ed had worried for his parents, fearing they would never fully recover. But they had settled quickly as he’d spent more time with them and the connection between them had strengthened. Victor Brynn had mixed potions for them too, helping their minds become calmer and clearer. And, now his mother and father had improved so much, Ed worried about them very little.

  A noise made him come round from his thoughts. He’d been walking automatically, and it took him a second to get his bearings. The street was lined with houses on either side that looked sleepy in the afternoon sunshine. At first glance, there was no one about. And then Ed caught sight of them. Kids from his school, peering round the corner back down the road. He recognized one of them immediately, the brown-haired boy who had tried picking a fight on the school steps. All their heads jerked back out of sight when they saw him looking. There was laughter followed by sounds of them shushing each other.

  Ed was already on the move. He took a left down a cobbled alley between two houses and heard distant shouts and the clatter of shoes. He knew the alley, having taken it occasionally on his route home from school. It connected to a main road beyond. Ed knew if he got to the busy street he’d be safe enough with other people about.

  But as he walked briskly down the alley, his shoes ringing on the cobbles, he saw a section of metal grille fencing, rooted in two concrete blocks, blocking his way. Clipped to it was a sign saying ‘Urgent Works in Progress’. Ed rattled the fencing and tried to get a grip, but the wire was stitched too tightly to poke his fingers through and get a hold.
He took a running jump to grab hold of the top and haul himself up, but it was too high to reach.

  The voices grew louder.

  But then a sharp gust blew down the alley and a body materialized beside him. It was Ruby. She gave him a big grin.

  Ed’s mouth managed exactly the opposite shape as the faint smell of Slap Dust faded.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Ruby. ‘According to my scrying mirror, you’re in a spot of bother.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be spying on me. You’re not supposed to be here.’

  ‘Victor Brynn sent me. I’ll tell you why if you come with me.’ She waggled the bottle of Slap Dust she was holding. Ed looked at her and shook his head.

  ‘I ain’t a Badlander no more.’

  Ruby put her hand to her ear as the voices neared the alley. ‘Okay, well, I can scare them off if you like.’ She pulled the gun out of her waistband.

  ‘Jones!’ it shouted. ‘How the devil are you?’

  ‘I’m called Ed now, remember?’ groaned the boy. ‘And put it away,’ he hissed at Ruby. ‘It’ll only make things worse.’

  ‘Worse?’ Ruby’s face melted into a grin. ‘Oh, yeah. I remember how school works now. So what do you want to do then? We could try magic of course.’

  ‘Give me a boost up so I can climb over the fence.’

  ‘Only if I get to call you Jones.’

  ‘Ruby!’

  ‘It’s weird calling you Ed.’

  The boy muttered something dark and not very cheerful under his breath. When he nodded curtly, Ruby clasped her hands together and he stepped up on them and reached up for the top of the fence and scrambled over.

  Ruby tipped a speck of Slap Dust into her hand and popped the cork back in the bottle before announcing where she wanted to go and slapped her hands together. She vanished and reappeared at the end of the passageway just in time to see the boy she knew as Jones run past her.

  When she looked back, she saw a group of boys sprinting towards the other end of the alley. They piled into the fencing with a great clatter and then started to hoist each other up after realizing it was the only way over.

  Ruby turned and started running. ‘Hey, Jones! They’re still coming.’

  ‘Yeah, well, run faster then!’ he shouted without looking back.

  She caught up with him. ‘I know school isn’t supposed to be fun. But it really shouldn’t be as bad as this. What have you done?’ The boy just gritted his teeth and kept running. ‘I mean, do you really want this life? Are you sure you—’

  He ran even harder so what she said next was lost in the air behind him.

  The main road wasn’t that busy and they found a place to hide after ducking into someone’s back garden through a hole in the fence. The group of boys came running past soon after. It took another five minutes for the two of them to be sure the coast was clear.

  When all they could hear were the normal sounds of the city, and the beating of their hearts, Ruby reached into her pocket and pulled out a small glass vial full of red liquid.

  ‘Victor Brynn made this potion for you. Said it might help with the “you know what?” ’ She waved her hands as if she was casting a spell.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Apparently, you told him the magic’s getting louder.’

  ‘A bit,’ shrugged the boy as if it was no big deal.

  ‘Really?’ Ruby’s forehead wrinkled as if she was trying to see right inside him. ‘I know you’re not sleeping. You wake yourself up.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be scrying on me.’

  ‘Victor Brynn asked me to. He wanted to know how bad it was, so he could judge the strength of the potion.’

  Ed held up the vial. The red liquid looked like blood. But he popped out the cork and glugged down the mixture, handing the empty vial back to Ruby. She rolled it between her fingers and Ed knew she wanted to say something else. He looked at the ground, wishing she would just get on with it, and sighed to hurry her up.

  ‘I don’t get the magic speaking to me like you do because I’m in the Badlands, but I’m finding it hard too. Last night I tried taking on a Vampire without magic and I was lucky to get away.’

  ‘I’m not coming back to the Badlands, Ruby.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, trying not to sound too disappointed. ‘It’s just, well . . . it’s just a shame how things have ended up, isn’t it? We’re not exactly living the way we imagined, are we? Victor Brynn hasn’t got a potion I can take to help me with magic.’

  ‘It would have been all right if we hadn’t Commenced together,’ said Ed, raising his voice.

  ‘And what if we hadn’t? Do you really think you’d have got your parents back if I hadn’t taken that key? Without magic, or me, you’d never have got what you wanted.’

  Ed thought about that.

  ‘The only reason you saved me from that Ogre the first night we met was so I could help you become an ordinary boy. Well, I’d say it all worked out better than you expected. What’s that thing called again? The wee . . . ?’ Ruby clicked her fingers. ‘You know? To do with fate.’

  ‘The wyrd.’

  ‘Yep, well, I’d say fate’s worked out pretty well for you, right?’

  Ed looked down at his school shoes and decided Ruby was just letting off steam. It was like that in the Badlands with no one to talk to about how you felt.

  ‘If you’re finding it too hard being a Badlander who can’t do magic, maybe you should give up,’ he said.

  ‘And go back to being an ordinary girl?’ Ruby shook her head. ‘No chance. My life was horrible, being shipped from one foster home to another.’

  ‘My parents could adopt you.’

  Ruby sighed. ‘But I’ve got my own home now and Victor Brynn to look out for me. And don’t forget I’m a runaway. I bet social services and the police are still looking for me.’ And she folded her arms as if daring Ed to say something else just as stupid.

  The boy looked at her and then just gave up thinking and laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘We’re exactly the same.’

  Ruby thought about that. ‘Stubborn, you mean?’

  Ed nodded. He turned and walked away. ‘Thanks for the potion,’ he said without looking back.

  ‘It’s been nice hanging out,’ said Ruby, raising her voice, and rising up onto her tiptoes as though taking the strain on some invisible rope tied between them. ‘Maybe we could spend more time together?’ But the boy didn’t look back. ‘From what I’ve seen, you’re not exactly building up much of a birthday card list. Friends are important.’

  ‘We’ve swapped places, Ruby,’ said the boy as he kept on walking. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea we see each other. Thank Victor Brynn for the potion. And stop scrying on me.’ He walked on, scuffing his feet, when he heard a whisper in his head.

  She’s right. Friends are important. Why don’t you go back to the Badlands and be with her?

  Ed strode on, taking bigger strides as if trying to leave the magic inside him behind. Eventually, he glanced back, but Ruby was gone and his heart wobbled for a moment.

  It was the middle of the night when the magic woke him up. The voice spoke to him clearly, louder than ever before, telling him it would never go away, potion or no potion, and, for the first time, Ed was afraid. In the dark on his own, it was hard not to believe it was telling the truth.

  You know you’ve made the wrong choice, Jones.

  He put his head under his pillow. But the voice kept on and on, like a finger picking at a scab. As Ed tried to ignore it, his mind drifted back to what Ruby had said.

  Friends are important.

  Spooked by the magic knowing what he was thinking, Ed got out of bed and went downstairs to fetch a glass of water. But the magic inside him came too, like a moth trapped in a jar.

  When his mother shuffled in, slip-sliding in her slippers, she took him in her arms and Ed remembered how glad he was not to be in the Badlands any more.


  ‘I thought I heard you. What’s keeping you awake, darling?’ He looked up at her and, when she realized he’d been crying, she hugged him closer. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘You and Dad like having me around, don’t you?’

  ‘Like?’ His mother shook him. ‘Ed, we love it.’ She looked deep into his eyes. ‘Aren’t you happy?’

  ‘Most of me is.’

  ‘You mean the magic isn’t?’

  ‘It keeps telling me to go back to the Badlands. Calls me Jones.’

  His mother leant in. ‘Leave my son alone,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘He doesn’t need you. Just like his father and I don’t need that Witch any more.’ She grabbed Ed’s shoulders and beamed at him. ‘Know what I’ve learnt? Love’s much more powerful than magic.’

  No, it’s not.

  At the whisper, Ed heard his heart shatter into pieces, but he still kept smiling at his mother because he didn’t want hers to break too.

  After he’d gone back to bed, he lay awake, thinking hard about what to do. The magic was his problem so it was up to him to solve it.

  There’s no one who can help you, especially here. And I won’t stop speaking until you go back. Or go mad.

  Ed’s jaw ticked hard as his brain thrummed. Then he wrote down a name in the journal he kept beside his bed for writing in when his mind was so full of thoughts he couldn’t sleep.

  Du Clement

  The old Lich at St Crosse College? He can’t help you!

  ‘Maybe he can,’ whispered Ed. ‘He did before. Told us about Dark Bottles and whispering gravestones last time. He knows more about the Badlands than anyone else.’

  But Ed knew going to speak to Du Clement meant going back to the Badlands and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He decided to sleep on it.

  When he woke up a few hours later, with the morning light creeping its fingers round the edges of the curtains, he panicked for a moment, before realizing it was a Saturday. No school, for two whole days.