didn’t, people would soon lose interest, wouldn’t they? If those girls out there buy that potion and use it and it doesn’t work, well, I’ll have lost two customers and they’ll tell all their friends and before long the shop will be out of business.’
‘But I thought you had to believe for magic to work.’
‘Well, you could say that about medicine,’ said Mrs Steadman. ‘With most illnesses, placebos work almost as well as the genuine article. Not for antibiotics, of course, but for the drugs that treat depression or high blood pressure or relieve pain it’s more a question of belief than of a true chemical effect. People believe that paracetamol will take away their headache so it does, when in fact a sugar pill would do the job just as well.’
‘You see, now you’re confusing me,’ said Nightingale. ‘Is it the spells that do the business, or is it believing in them that makes them work?’
‘Belief helps,’ said Mrs Steadman, patiently. ‘It probably makes the spells more efficient, but even someone who didn’t believe would get results. It’s like cooking. You don’t necessarily understand why yeast makes bread rise, but follow a recipe for bread and you’ll get a loaf.’
‘And what about black magic?’
‘The chocolates?
Nightingale chuckled. He was starting to like Mrs Steadman – she had a sense of humour not dissimilar to his own. ‘I mean spells that perhaps aren’t as well meant as the ones you sell in your shop.’
‘There’s no such thing as black magic,’ she said earnestly. ‘There’s no black magic and no white magic. There’s just magic.’
‘But I thought-’
Mrs Steadman silenced him with a wagging finger. ‘It’s like electricity, young man,’ she said sternly. ‘You can use it to power a life-support machine, or an electric chair. One saves lives and the other takes them, but the electricity itself isn’t good or bad. It’s just a power to be used.’
‘But stuff like selling your soul to the devil. Is that possible?’
Mrs Steadman looked concerned. She reached forward and put her hand on his. ‘Is that what this is about? You want to sell your soul?’
Nightingale shook his head emphatically. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said.
‘You swear, on all you believe in?’ She stared deep into his eyes.
Nightingale met her gaze levelly. ‘I swear,’ he said quietly. ‘I just need to know, that’s all. Is it possible?’
She pulled her hand back and sipped her tea, still watching him with those intense black eyes. ‘There are spells that supposedly enable you to give your soul to the devil,’ she said eventually. ‘One I know is actually quite simple. You go to a churchyard at night – any churchyard will do, but the older the better – you draw a magic circle on the ground, and within it you draw two crosses. You take some wormwood in each hand and hold a Bible in the left. Toss the wormwood in your right hand up and the wormwood in your left hand down taking care not to drop the Bible. Then you say the Lord’s Prayer backwards.’ She sipped her tea.
‘And that’s it?’
‘That’s it. Bob’s your uncle. On your way home, you leave the Bible on the steps of a church.’
It sounded too easy. ‘So there’s no contract? You don’t do a deal?’
‘It’s a spell,’ said Mrs Steadman. ‘Quite a simple one.’
‘And what if you change your mind? What if you want to take it back?’
‘That’s just as easy,’ she said. ‘You renounce Satan. Three times.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Did you expect something more dramatic?’
Nightingale reached for his cigarettes again, but remembered her no-smoking policy. ‘I thought there were contracts, I don’t know, signed in blood or something.’
‘Ah…’ She winced as if she’d bitten down on a bad tooth.
‘So there is more?’ said Nightingale.
‘You asked about making a pact with the devil – with Lucifer or Satan or whatever you want to call him. That’s simple. But contracts with minor devils are a much more complicated matter. There are sixty-six princes under the devil, each with 6,666 legions.’
‘And each legion is made up of 6,666 devils,’ said Nightingale.
‘You’ve been doing your homework,’ she said.
‘I’m been doing a bit of research,’ admitted Nightingale. ‘So, to do a deal, you approach one of the devils?’
‘Or one of the princes. But the devil himself can’t be summoned by mere mortals.’
‘I know, I tried.’
Mrs Steadman’s eyebrow shot skywards. ‘I do hope you’re being flippant, young man,’ she said.
‘I found a book with a spell or something. You recite the words and the devil appears.’
‘I think not,’ she said.
‘Well, it didn’t work,’ said Nightingale. ‘But it’s possible to summon a particular devil? One of the princes?’
‘I wouldn’t know, young man,’ she said. ‘Now you’re talking about Satanism and devil-worship and that’s as far removed from what I do as you can get. Wicca has nothing to do with the devil or devil-worship.’
‘Do you believe in it, Mrs Steadman?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t believe in hell and I don’t believe that there is an entity called Satan. But I believe in good and evil. And I believe that there is a power in the earth that can be harnessed and used.’
‘But there are ways of selling a soul, aren’t there? As opposed to giving yourself over to the devil.’
‘Mr Nightingale, I’m not even sure I believe in souls, not in the sense you mean. My beliefs are more that everything is connected, everything flows, that we are one with the earth.’
‘But for someone who did believe, there are things they could do to sell their soul? Or a soul?’
‘In theory, yes.’ She was clearly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going.
‘Please tell me,’ said Nightingale. ‘I need to know.’
‘You’re talking to the wrong person,’ she said. ‘It’s like asking a doctor how to commit murder.’
‘In my experience, doctors make the best murderers,’ he said.
‘In your experience?’
‘I was a policeman in another life.’
‘So you believe in reincarnation? At least that’s something.’
Nightingale laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that literally,’ he said. ‘Mrs Steadman, please, how does one go about selling a soul?’
‘Oh, Mr Nightingale…’
‘Just hypothetically. What would one do?’
Mrs Steadman put her mug down. ‘Hypothetically, then,’ she said. ‘You have to renounce God and the Church. You pay homage to the devil, drink the blood of sacrificed children, and strike your deal with whichever devil you summon. A contract is drawn up and signed with blood drawn from the left arm. Then your name is inscribed in the Red Book of Death.’
‘And if you wanted to sell the soul of a child, could you do that?’
Mrs Steadman spread her hands, palms down, on the table. ‘Why are you asking these questions? You seem like a nice man, a good man. What you’re asking, it’s not…’ She shivered. ‘It’s not right.’
‘Have you ever heard of a man called Sebastian Mitchell?’ asked Nightingale, quietly.
Mrs Steadman stiffened. ‘You know him?’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘I have a book he wrote. A diary.’
‘Burn it.’ Her tiny hands clenched into fists.
‘It’s handwritten. In Latin.’
‘Burn it,’ she repeated. ‘Go home now and burn it.’
‘You couldn’t sell it for me?’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘The sort of people who’d want to buy a book like that, I wouldn’t want to do business with,’ she said.
