Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences by Pip Ballantine Page A

whites were clearly visible. He saw her just as she fired, and while the panic that filled his face gave her pause, it was nothing to the sudden, pointed silence that followed when the small board set up on the table beside him flew into the air.
    The pieces upon it—one gold figure and twelve of bone—scattered over the ground. Blood spilled in a red gleam, to spatter to the floor.
    For a long moment, nothing in the cellar moved. Not breath, not body, not time.
    Bannigan’s eyes bulged.
    “Caity, get down!” Miss Snow rushed through the narrow divide, seized Caity by the shoulders and wrenched her from view. A wind blasted through the cellar, so cold and foul-smelling that Caity gagged before Miss Snow covered her face with her gloved hand. “Don’t look,” she shouted, needing to despite their proximity; the screaming now erupting from beyond the barrel flooded through the ears and turned the blood to ice.
    It seemed as it might go on forever. She squeezed her eyes closed, her face buried in Miss Snow’s jacket. On and on, the wind howled and raged—but it did not turn over the barrels. She heard no crashing, no splintering.
    Just as soon as it began, it was over.
    Miss Snow eased to her feet, dusting off her trousers, and then helped Caity stand. Her expression was rather more sad than accomplished. “I had hoped to avoid this,” she sad, though low enough that Caity wondered if she spoke to herself.
    “Where’s—”
    “Mr Bannigan?” Miss Snow stepped out from behind the stack of barrels. She gestured.
    Much to her chagrin, Caity was not wholly surprised at what she found.
    Bertie Bannigan lay dead, his neck twisted at an odd angle and slashed ear to ear as if in sacrifice. A bullet hole marred the surface of the board he lay sprawled upon, courtesy of her wild shot, but it was the scattering of white crystals all over that caught her eye.
    She knelt beside his twisted body, the first wash of tears pricking at her eyelids. There was no pulse in his limp arm, nor any signs of life behind his wide, staring eyes.
    Miss Snow crouched beside her, one hand coming to rest upon Caity’s shoulder. “They’d claimed him, in the end.” She reached over, brushing the white grains from the dead man’s cheek. “The Folk always do. It’s the price, you understand?”
    Caity dragged a forearm across her burning eyes. “I don’t. I thought this was the doing of...” She halted, the name placed already on her tongue but panic gripping her throat when she tried to say it.
    Miss Snow’s smile was small and compressed. “Being unable to say his name was a subtle clue, but one I should have paid attention to earlier. They wouldn’t stand for it, here.”
    “I still don’t understand.”
    “I mean,” Miss Snow explained patiently, “that Mr Bannigan here dabbled in a bit of old magic that should have been left well alone. By utilising the artefact he’d found, he attempted to call forth the god who could end the famine. Unfortunately, his methods...” She reached over the corpse to pick up one of the scattered twigs, stained and wrapped with twine. “The god’s symbol is that of a golden figure surrounded by twelve smaller figures in stone. By taking twelve sacrifices, the first born, he would guarantee a harvest.”
    “That’s bone, isn’t it?” Caity did not attempt to touch the board, or the droplets of red scattered amidst the crystals. “And chicken blood, I think. It smells like it.”
    “Correct.” Miss Snow sighed. “By failing to uphold the old ways as written, he only caught the eye of them eager to subvert such things. His intent was pure, but the dead are drawn to the dead. No god came here.”
    Caity clasped her hands together around the pistol she had wielded to such strange success. “The bells were the clue, weren’t they? The Folk are said to be repelled by them.”
    “Some are,” Miss Snow confirmed, and looked up as a dull report echoed faintly through the still air.