Meanwhile, Imp’s regular schoolwork suffered, even though his memorization techniques and his facility with maths were amazing. He had the most peculiar lucid dreams: his school had an art department and still taught the subject to GCSE and AS level, but he was asked to drop it. (One of his teachers took a funny turn after inviting Imp’s class to try their hand at drawing something based on M.C. Escher’s tessellations: she was still signed off sick at the end of term.) This, paradoxically, pushed Imp towards other, related subjects. His ability to memorize his lines for a school theatrical production was prodigious, his performance at English was good, and he was outstanding in mathematics. But he seemed uninterested in IT skills and business studies (to Mum’s despair) and goofed off in science class.
As for Evie, she was studying hard for her A-levels with next year’s university selection round in mind. Dad wanted her to study Accountancy; Mum leaned towards Law. In the event, she split the difference, getting into a former redbrick university to dutifully study Business and Economics, her ticket to the paperwork entitling her to get into job interviews.
There were special lessons, taught one-on-one by Dad, as they grew older. Dad would sometimes take Evie out for an afternoon or evening of what he called special training: it was all very mysterious and Evie refused to tell Imp about it, beyond a terse “When you’re older.” It had to be carried out at an undisclosed location that was difficult to get into. In his imagination, Imp built up a college of mages who ran open day sessions for amateur sorcerers, or maybe a crypt in a graveyard that had to be broken into after dark. Dad didn’t help by dropping occasional hints about Grandpa and his ancestors—the all-important bloodline—and the old family home. Apparently six (or more) generations of oneiromancers had lived in the big house and used it as their occult laboratory, trafficking with the inhabitants of dreams and building new imaginary rooms whenever they added a new spell to their growing inventory. When they’d been forced to sell the manse to cover death duties, they’d lost a lot of mysterious-but-unspecified stuff. Hence the memory palace. If it was encoded in your head, it would take more than a house fire or bankruptcy proceedings to take it away from you—nothing short of a death in the family could cost you knowledge.
So things continued until Imp was eighteen. Evie had graduated the year before and was working as a management trainee at a large financial consultancy, hoping to get onto their promotion fast-track. (Evie was, as usual, eager to please.) Meanwhile, Imp was … not off course, exactly, but the course he’d chosen did not meet with his parents’ full approval. Imp was applying to art schools with the goal of pursuing a career in media production. Mum and Dad weren’t exactly opposed to it, but they didn’t understand what it involved, or how it could possibly work. He could quote figures about the creative sector’s financial output and the demand for video editing professionals and scriptwriting opportunities in the gaming industry until he turned blue in the face, but they still didn’t understand why he couldn’t try for law school, then take the Bar Vocational Course and get pupillage. He was a bird trying to explain air to fish, a fox cub raised among wolves.
And that’s how things stood until the catastrophic Sunday when Imp learned about the family curse.
“This isn’t like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate at all,” complained Game Boy.
“Yeah, because your PlayStation games stink like raw sewage,” Wendy snarked. They paused at the darkened maw of an unlit street where buildings clumped like rotting teeth in the mouth of a blind drunk. “Where is everybody?”
“Don’t know.” Del turned in place, checking the tunnel they’d just exited. It looked as if it had once been a night soil alley, and backing onto it were the privies of actual houses with yards. Now it was almost roofed-over in places, the sky blocked out by overhanging rickety balconies to either side, and it was awash with ankle-deep filth so vile it stunned the nose like a fist to the face. Something twitched and scuttled close to one wall, half-submerged in ordure: a rat, perhaps, or the world’s biggest cockroach. “Staying out of this crap, I’m guessing.”
“No, I mean—” Wendy gestured past Imp and Doc, who were poking around a doorway further down the alley, possibly because it was all they could see by the light of Doc’s flashlight—“isn’t this place supposed to be densely populated? Sleeping twenty to a room, stacked up like timber?” Mist swirled just beyond the reach of Doc’s light, deadening all sound but a steady plop plop plop of filth dripping onto bricks streaked white with saltpeter.
“It’s nothing but a dream,” Imp said loudly.
“But the kind of dream that kills,” Doc cautioned. “Don’t ever lose sight of that.”
“A
