Page 70 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“Who’s that?” James asked. “That’s not Maddox, is it?”
“Don’t like the look of him,” Henrietta said. “Literally. Just looking at him is turning my stomach, like I need to be sick. Is that just me?”
“No,” James confirmed. “Not just you.”
“No,” Magda agreed, not taking her eyes off the figure despite the twinge of discomfort she felt.
The man stopped four or five steps away from them. Magda glanced behind her, but Masters was still quiet. The blue light from the sign in the diner window coloured the darkness down at the junction.
“Hello,” the man said. “My name is Lukas.”
His voice was thin, like an announcer’s on an old radio broadcast, Magda thought. His mouth stretched into a smile, and for Magda, his smile made everything worse. It was like a dangerous creature that had once seen a smile and was trying to replicate it, but without any understanding of what a smile actually was. His mouth was smiling but his eyes were not; his eyes wereflat,like the eyes of a badly painted portrait.
The man turned his head to regard each of them in turn. “I could sense you,” he said. “I can see the things you are carrying because I drank from the flask. I came to see them.”
Magda blinked away this incomprehensible statement. “I don’t know who you are, but you have a box that belongs to us. How did you get it?”
The man’s smile faded slowly, and Magda got the sense he was thinking very deeply about the question. When he spoke again, it was not an answer: “I want to see the things you are carrying. The magic things. I can sense them.”
“What?” Henry murmured next to Magda.
The man smiled again, teeth beneath dead eyes. “I like magic things.”
Magda felt the need to look away, so she dropped her gaze. Strangely,impossibly,she felt immediately better, as if looking at Lukas’s face was what made her feel unwell.
That makes no sense. Who is this? Where is Owen? And why do I feel so sickall of a sudden?
Her gaze, flicking around at anything except Lukas’s face, landed on the bag on his hip. It was a canvas bag with a flower stitched clumsily into the flap, a flower Magda recognised, and her whole body flinched as if she had unexpectedly touched something scalding hot.
That’s impossible.
“Oh my god,” she gasped. She was aware of both Henry and James looking at her sharply, of Henry’s hand squeezing her own. The bird in the distance called again—hoo-woo!—as if sharing the shock of Magda’s realisation. “That’s my mother’s bag.”
The stranger’s smile relaxed, his face becoming expressionless, flat eyes staring.
“Where did you get that?” Magda demanded of him, arm shaking as she pointed at the bag with her free hand. “That’s my mum’s. She had it with her when she died.”
Lukas looked down at the bag.
“Hey,” Magda shouted, ferociously angry. “Where did you get it?”
“You’re Magda!” Lukas cooed, as he looked at her again. “I think about you all the time!”
He took a single step forward, smiling his awful pretend smile at her. “I’ve wanted to meet you for so long, Magda.”
Will Pinn Discovers a Secret
After Magda and Henrietta and the man from Hong Kong had left him, Will had endured an endless day of work. Normally he enjoyed being in the workroom. He took great satisfaction from the job of repairing and servicing watches. He always felt that he was contributing something meaningful and positive to the world, even if only in a very small way. The watches he repaired would live on after him, perhaps being handed down through generations, carrying the memory of his touch. Will liked to imagine the many different timepieces he had worked on and how they would be scattered around the world, carried by all of his customers. These thoughts often cheered him.
But that day, Will had found himself restless and unable to concentrate. Everything that Magda had told him sat in his mind like an unwanted visitor demanding conversation. And the book she had given him lurked in the corner of the workroom, catching his eye every now and then and dropping a heavy stone of dread into his stomach. He found himself muttering under his breath, cursing Magda and Henrietta. Just when he had made the break to leave the Society for good it had forced its way back into his life.
Lunchtime came and despite his best intentions Will didn’t takeMagda’s book to the bank. He went instead for a walk around the streets of Marylebone and Mayfair, trying to clear his mind with exercise and distraction. When he came back to the shop he felt a little more settled and was able to work through the afternoon with more focus. And then the day grew dark and wet and it was time to lock up. Will completed his usual closing-up routine and then stood staring at the book for a few minutes. He hadn’t forgotten about it, but he had consciously avoided making any decision about it. The end of the day demanded an answer. With a sigh and moving quickly, almost as if he were trying to tell himself he was doing it without thinking, Will slid the book off the bench and into his satchel to take home.
He walked to the tube station, rattled through the tunnels in a packed carriage full of people soggy from the rain, and then walked the short distance to his small semidetached home at the end of a cul-de-sac of identical houses. He watched the evening news as he ate a sandwich he had bought from one of his favourite delis the previous afternoon, then he had a shower and changed into pyjamas, his dressing gown, and slippers, and then finally sat at the dining table with an espresso and the radio in the kitchen playing 1960s music. He opened the satchel and removed the book.
Will inspected the book carefully, taking his time, as he would with a broken watch sent to him for repair. Precision and patience were important, and Will was always precise and patient. He inspected the cover first, the thick brown paper that had been neatly taped to the front of the book to protect it. Will had done similar things to his schoolbooks as a child, so that he could protect them from scuffs and stains. He opened the book and studied the entries on each page, brushing the paper with his fingers as if he could feel the indentations of the pen. He read about magical items that had been created over many years and learned all the wonderful and terrible things that people had wanted to do with them. People like his father and his friends. He read about a crucifix that could wake the dead and a pendant that could let people fly. He read about a charm bracelet that would make the wearer irresistible to others, and a deck of cards that would curse anyone who played with them. There was a silver knife that could control the wind, and a pair of gold cuff linksthat would produce a duplicate of anything the wearer touched. There was a black leather glove that could reshape flesh and turn ugly into pretty and the beautiful into beastly. And there was the map that Magda had told him about that morning, a map that would lead whoever held it to lost magical items wherever they were around the world.
The final entry in the book was another map, this one to show Magda Sparks where the Impossible Box was.
