The Templar's Curse by Sarwat Chadda (classic books to read TXT) 📕

to them, they wanted to be inside the circle. They belonged there.

She couldn’t call her dad. She knew he’d back up Gwaine. Not because Gwaine was right, but because those were the rules. Arthur, the biggest rebel of them all. It didn’t make any sense, but that’s how it was. He’d have to side with the Seneschal.

Billi stormed into her bedroom and tipped up her saddlebag over her bed. The dress fell out with the skipping rope and her pads. And something else.

A book.

It was a large kid’s scrap book. The sort you’d fill with drawings, birthday cards and postcards from relatives. Scrawled in painfully neat writing on the front was the title.

The Research Book of Erin FitzRoy, Aged eight and a half.

Billi flicked through it. A sheet of tissue paper had been carefully pasted onto each page. Tissue paper bearing cuneiform rubbings, taking from the tablets that Simon had brought from Mesopotamia, and that Erin’s mother had subsequently destroyed after his death.

Why had Erin given her this book? Why had she sneaked it in without telling her?

Damn it, SanGreal. You know what this means, don’t you?

Gwaine wasn’t going to help. She couldn’t ask the squires.

Billi picked up her mobile and dialled.

It didn’t ring for long before it was answered. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

He sounded tired. “I need your help, Faustus.”

“Of course you do. Same answer. Goodbye.”

“Don’t hang up! Ivan’s been kidnapped by, er, a ghost! Possibly demons!”

There was a long pause. Then Faustus laughed. “I leave you alone just for a minute and look what happens. To lose a boyfriend is unlucky, but to undead? To demons? That takes some effort, congrats. He wasn’t for you, anyway.”

“Really?” Billi snapped. “In what universe do I ask for your advice on relationships? I know I don’t owe you anything but you know what? That shouldn’t matter when you’re being asked to do the right thing. There ain’t a price to that. Maybe you got better things to do, maybe you don’t want to take risks, maybe there are places you don’t want to go, or look. I know what you see, Faustus. You’re a medium. They’re out there, all the dead souls that never made it across, never found any peace. I know they hound you. If there was a way I could protect you from them, I truly would. But I need your help and I’ve no one else left to turn to. So, please. Do this for me. Not because I’ll owe you, we don’t bargain or haggle over peoples’ lives, but because it’s right.”

She heard him breathing. Then, in a low whisper, Faustus answered. “No.”

The final door had closed on her. She stood there, staring down at the scrap book, at the tangled dress. Her training gear. This was the extent of her life, wasn’t it?

“Not for any of those reasons,” said Faustus as he stepped into the lobby.

It took a second to realise what he’d done. “Then why?”

That look from him made Billi step back. He wanted to speak, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he was going to say. Instead Faustus chuckled to himself. “Show me what you’ve got and I’ll try my best to save your boyfriend.”

CHAPTER 18

Billi explained it all as best she could as she made the tea. It was a jigsaw, so many pieces scattered over the table and she didn’t even have the corners done yet. And time was running out.

Faustus sat, listening as he looked through the scrap book. He scratched his tattoos as he read, as if they were helping him translate.

“You understand any of that?” Billi asked.

“Understand what? Your story or this writing?”

“Either. Both.” Why was she feeling so flustered? “I thought Elaine taught you how to translate cuneiform.”

“It’s not that simple. Cuneiform was used for Ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian to name but a few. It was used for thousands of years. There are plenty of different versions and the rubbings don’t give you the most perfect copies.”

Billi sat down heavily on chair opposite him. “You saying you can’t do it?”

“I’m saying it’ll take time, and I could do with Elaine’s help. I got a postcard from her last week.”

“She sent you a postcard?” said Billi. “She’s never sent me one.”

“Why should she? It’s not like you liked each other.”

“That’s not true. There was this one time...” she paused. Surely there was some story, some moment when she and Elaine had laughed together. But now she thought about it... “no. Actually there wasn’t. We didn’t get along over anything. How’s she doing?”

Faustus mimed lighting up a fag. “She’s got a side-racket smuggling cigarettes into the old people’s home. She goes there Fridays for yoga.”

“Elaine in lycra doing the ‘downward-facing dog’? Thanks for that image. It’s gonna haunt me forever.”

“You think Reggie is still alive?”

“No. Lawrence would have been thorough. He’s too old and canny to let something like that happen. I think Reggie’s ghost, or something, somehow made it back. You remember when we saw Simon’s ghost? Someone had hounded him to take his life. They guy was a soldier, so it won’t have been some conventional threat. But how would you react if you saw your grandfather’s ghost?”

Faustus’s gaze darkened. “I know exactly how you’d react. You’d think you were going insane.”

“Was that how it was for you?”

He looked up suddenly. She guessed he’d never shared this with anyone, except maybe Elaine. He’d never shared because no-one had ever asked. They were afraid of what he’d tell them. But if he was willing to do this for her, then this was the least she could do for him.

“I thought they were my friends. My invisible friends. Kids have them. You ever wondered how many of them are actually ghosts? Kids are more sensitive to the supernatural, but they grow out of it. They’re raised not to believe until, one day, they don’t. I carried on believing. So they put me on medication. I still carried on believing so they put