Essence of Magic (Ruby Morgan Book 1)

by LJ Rivers

  “It’s not,” I said, doing my best not to giggle at her wide eyes. “My mum and I are descendants of Morgana Le Fay, the first of all Faes and ruler of Avalon. The Morgana blood runs strong in our family, or so my mum says anyway. That is, until my dad was the first human to father a child in our line.”

  “Mental!” Charlie exclaimed. “It’s all real! You have to tell me everything!”

  “I will, but perhaps not all at once, though? We have more important things to do.”

  “Right.” The glow from the screen lit up Charlie’s face as she opened the laptop again. “Watch me do my magic. It might not be Avalonian, but I bet you don’t know how to get into the darkest corners of the web the way I do. First, let’s close this browser and use a safe one instead.”

  This girl was full of surprises. Her typing was just short of super speed as she navigated us deeper into the web than I knew possible.

  “Where did you learn all this?” I asked.

  Charlie looked up at me while continuing to type at a blistering speed. “Here and there,” she said. “There was this coding club for kids, and it was free. Piano lessons were not, so I played my own kind of keyboard. Maybe I’ll tell you about it some time.” She hunkered over the computer again.

  “Magic market,” she mumbled after a while.

  “What now?”

  “Here.” Charlie pointed at the screen. “It’s huge. See? You can buy magical trinkets, learn spells, find others with similar interests.” She clicked onwards a few times. “Not to mention get in contact with MagX dealers.”

  “Holy Lady of the Lake!” I said.

  “Don’t tell me you swear in Avalonian, too?”

  “That’s not swearing,” I said. “And I don’t know the first word in Avalonian. Guess I picked up some of Mum’s expressions. But never mind that, you are a freaking genius.” I nodded at the screen, thoroughly impressed.

  “They don’t call me Einstein for nothing.”

  “Do they, though?”

  “They should,” she said, feigning insult.

  Something caught my eye. It was an ad on the sidebar. MagX is yesterday’s drug, it said. Want to feel PURE magic? I frowned, but Charlie had already clicked onto another page about something called Harvester Academy before I could think to ask her about the ad.

  “Holy macaroni!” Charlie gaped. “It’s a recruitment agency for Harvesters!”

  “Can you dig into it?” I asked.

  She opened a little window, typed some code into it and made a few more clicks, then shook her head. “Nah, this is heavily fortified. It’s 3FA.”

  “Right,” I said. “Hate when that happens.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. 3FA means three-factor authentication, which in layman’s terms means I can’t get in. That’s right—not even I.”

  An academy for Harvesters? That sounded all kinds of wrong, though I supposed Harvesters didn’t just appear out of thin air. I guess I always thought they were more like dealers, working on their own volition. How delusional. This was a bigger network than I had imagined. I would have to ask Mum if she knew about it, but not now. At least not until the mystery of the missing girls had been solved.

  We sifted through as much of the magical market as we could, though none of it made us any wiser on the subject of the missing girls, so we decided to leave it for now and try again later.

  Jen stopped by to tell us we were going to the Old Willow. She didn’t ask, merely stated it as fact. And as had become our usual routine, we did as Jen said. As I was getting ready for our night out, I got a text from Brendan asking if we were going to the Willow. I hadn’t even had a spare moment to think about him all day. The tension in my chest subsided at the thought of seeing him again, however. Our date hadn’t exactly been daisies and rainbows, but it had brought me closer to him, and I was eager to see him again.

  Deciding to push my troubles aside, I focused on Brendan to cheer me up, wrapping the encounter with the police and all the stuff we had found on the magical market to the back of my mind. I couldn’t completely free myself from the thousand questions buzzing in my head, but I wasn’t about to let it ruin my night either.

  As we strolled past the lake on our way to the Old Willow, my gaze darted to the other side where the shadow had been the last time I saw it. That was an entirely different nest of worms to uncover, too.

  Jen linked her arm in mine and whispered into my ear.

  “Shake it off, Red. Nothing bad will happen to you while I’m around.”

  I leaned closer to her. “My guardian angel, are you?”

  She bumped her hip into mine. “Something like that. Now—” She stopped momentarily to pinch my cheeks. “You look perfect. Let’s go and leave that Brendan of yours slobbering like a wet rug on the floor. He won’t be able to refuse a kiss from you looking like this.”

  Charlie didn’t say anything, but her expression was reassuring. I wasn’t quite as confident, although the girls helped. I did want tonight to be about Brendan. And whatever came next, at least I had friends by my side to back me up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first lecture of my academic life had just finished, and if I was being honest with myself, I was a bit disappointed. It was just some introductions to the various courses in the journalistic programme and the professor, Zhang, sounded quite monotonous. Still, I was sure the pace would pick up and that I’d soon be flooded with work and deadlines.

  As I entered our flat, I was met with music streaming from Charlie’s room. I ditched my backpack on my bed and went to say hello. She sat by her desk, her fingers tapping away at the small wireless keyboard. She had been very persistent about my old laptop being junk, and that her beloved iMac was much better suited for browsing the magic market on the dark web.

  I dumped down on the bed and rested my head on the backpack, my fingers brushing over my lips, recalling the night before. Once again I had missed my chance at a kiss, but I could almost taste it. My entire body was aching to be near him again. Even knowing how he felt about Mags, valid reasons or not, I couldn’t dictate my feelings, and they were fully latched onto the dashing Brendan O’Callaghan.

  “Ru!” Charlie shouted.

  “Huh? Why are you screaming at me?”

  “I’ve said your name like five times already.”

  “Oops.” I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.

  “You’ve got the BB, haven’t you?”

  “The BB?” I looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

  “The Brendan Bug. And you have it bad, baby.”

  “So bad,” I admitted and forced myself to a sitting position. “Find anything?”

  “Ok, fine, let’s change the subject, then.”

  “You came to me, Charlie.”

  “Oh, right. Well, mostly the same we looked at yesterday. I tried all night to access the Harvester Academy server, thinking we might find some records of something useful, but no luck in that department. That site has better security than the Pentagon.” She folded the screen down a little to let me have a look. “I did find a couple of interesting things, however, though I’m not sure if any of it means anything.”

  I squinted, not able to read it all from my bed, so I stood and stepped to Charlie’s side.

  The page was filled with ads and banners, surrounding what appeared to be chat forum topics. Cheap and clean MagX, MagX Swapping, Camelot Inc., MagX Emporium and dozens more.

  It was shocking. Disgusting. And one particular ad caught my attention. “PureX,” I mumbled. “What the hell is that?”

  “From what I gather, sifting through the forum, it’s a new drug on the market.”

  “A new drug?” I swallowed hard. “As in a magical drug?”

  “It says here that PureX is a pure form of MagX, not as easily tainted as the latter. This one guy says the effect lasted for days.”

  “Holy Lady,” I exclaimed, reading comments from the thread. “Manufactured from pure magical blood. No half breeds here.” My breath
caught in my throat. This was bad, really bad.

  Charlie patted me on my arm. “It seems to be very rare, though, judging by the fact that they literally auction the blood away to the highest bidder. See?” She pointed at a section on the screen.

  The last vial of PureX had been sold for millions of pounds. It definitely was a commodity. It hit me like a freight train. Pure blood could only mean it was taken from pure Magicals—like Mum!

  “You all right, Ru?”

  I shook my head, trying desperately to collect my thoughts. “I—I think I need to talk to my mum about this.”

  “If you think that will help,” Charlie said reassuringly, though I wasn’t so reassured. “Unfortunately, I’ve not seen anything yet that might link back to whatever has happened to—what was her name again?”

  “Iliyana,” I said. “Ilyana Makarova. But probably easier to keep calling her Liv.”

  “True.”

  A Nightwish song blasted through our flat, and Charlie and I went out into the hallway. Jen’s door was open, and she was sitting on the windowsill, doing her makeup.

  I walked over to her Alexa and turned the sound of Floor Jansen’s booming voice down.

  “Going somewhere?” I asked.

  “I am indeed.” Jen winked at me, her eye shadow covering half of her eyelids. “I’ve got a date with the janitor tonight.”

  Charlie leapt onto Jen’s bed. “Seriously. He’s super hot!”

  “I know, right?”

  “I wish I was going on a date, too. Between you and Ru, I’m starting to feel like an old maid.” Charlie pouted, though her eyes were bright with mischief.

  I shared a glance with Jen, and we both burst out laughing.

  Jen was the first to collect herself. “Maybe if you start by remembering their names, you could move on to an actual date. It’s not like you’ve been lacking attention or anything.”

  Charlie cradled Jen’s pillow, giving Jen a wry smile. “You’re right. It’s just, I want that spark. That human connection. I don’t much care where it comes from, but until I find it, I’ll enjoy the company of whoever swings my way. Lord knows I swing every which way there is.” She shrugged. “Besides, relationships are complicated.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real modern-day hippie,” I quipped, and we all started laughing again.

  It was so good to feel like I had an actual connection with these girls, as if we would be friends forever. Somewhere in me, however, I had doubts. Someday they would both discover the extent of what I was capable of if we stayed close. And if I were them, I would think twice about staying friends with me. I sighed, shoving the devil’s advocate in me to the back seat. It might not end that way. They might both accept me—all of me. I clung to that sliver of hope with every fibre of my being.

  “Hey,” Charlie said. “Didn’t you say you had to ring your mum?”

  I slapped myself on my forehead. “So I did. Excuse me.”

  Moving back to my room, I shut the door firmly behind me and stuffed my earbuds into my ears, climbing onto the windowsill with the phone in my lap as I hit the caller button. It rang three times before Mum picked up.

  “Hello, darling.” She sounded as warm as ever. “I was wondering if I would hear from you today.”

  “Hi, Mum. I thought I should check in on you, being the annoying overprotective daughter and all.”

  That prompted a chuckle from my mum. “Glad to hear it,” she replied.

  “How’s Kit?”

  “The little rascal is growing, and he loves to cuddle. But stop deflecting and tell me what I want to hear. How was your date with the dashing Brendan? Tell me everything!”

  Biting my lip, I knew I had to bend the truth a little. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

  “He took me to a place called the Halfway,” I said. “Best burgers you will taste in your entire life.”

  “I do like burgers,” Mum teased.

  “He wouldn’t share the bill with me, but I made him promise to let me pay next time.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it, sweetheart.”

  Brendan wasn’t the reason I had wanted to talk to Mum, and I wasn’t looking forward to asking her about the things I needed to ask. No time like the present, though.

  “So, Mum, I was wondering about a couple of things. And promise me you won’t freak out.”

  “Ok?” The warmth of her voice subsided slightly, her scepticism coming through quite clearly.

  “Well, Charlie and I, we’re doing some research for a story I’m working on for the Whisper, and we happened to stumble upon a few things. Have you ever heard of the Harvester Academy?”

  Seconds went by in complete silence before she exhaled sharply. “I have. Ruby, you have to promise me not to dig any deeper into the Academy!”

  “But, Mum.”

  “They have ways of tracking people—Magicals—that would make your skin crawl. If you get on their radar, they will find you.”

  There was an edge of terror in the way she spoke. This was more than a little fear about dealers or the common Harvester on the street. This Academy sounded like it frightened her more than anything. I had never heard her this scared in my life.

  “Sounds bad,” I said.

  “It is. Listen, the Academy recruits and trains Harvesters. They keep a low profile, and when you’re recruited, you’re not allowed to leave. They are ruthless. Killers of the worst kind, and highly organized. Now, I’ve told you all I can. Promise me you’ll stop digging into this.”

  Not sure if that was a promise I could keep, but I had to calm her down. “I promise.”

  “Good. Now, you said there was something else?”

  I hesitated. Mentioning the Harvester Academy hadn’t been well received. Still, I was already head deep as it was.

  “I did, yes. We also discovered something else while we were researching. There’s a new drug on the market. The magical kind. They’re calling it PureX. Ever heard of it?”

  Mum scoffed. “It’s not that new. That atrocity has been known for a few years. Problem is, they need pure-blooded Magicals to manufacture the drug, and we are one in ten thousand, maybe even fewer than that.”

  “But they are getting to it, though. There was mention of a vial sold for millions of pounds.”

  Mum paused again. “Likely a rare occurrence, though I’ll do some digging to see what I can find out. There aren’t a lot of us Pure Bloods left. You, however, should find yourself a different topic for your article. What on earth are you writing about anyway, that brings you close to this atrocity?”

  Stupid, Ru. Why hadn’t I come up with a fully fledged cover story before I rang Mum?

  “Uhm, it’s an article on drug addiction. Not the magical kind, though we accidentally stumbled upon it on the dark web.”

  Shut your trap, Ru. My big mouth always got me in trouble. I hadn’t needed to say anything about the dark web at all.

  “Is that so? And how, pray tell, did you find yourself in the darkest corners of the internet?”

  Mum was suspicious, and with good reason, but this was all I wanted to share with her for now. I couldn’t have her worry about all the strange things that had been going on.

  “Charlie is a computer whiz. We were tracking some names on suspected truckers, transporting pills, and Charlie dug as deep as she could, which is when we came across the magic marketplace.”

  Holy Lady of the Lake. I really put my foot in it this time.

  “Ruby Guinevere Morgan! You stay away from places like that, you hear me?”

  “Mum, I had to hold my phone at arm’s length.” I tried to laugh a little, but she didn’t react. “Yes, sorry, I hear you.”

  “They could trace your address or maybe even your computer, making you a target yourself. You promised me you’d be careful, and this, young lady, is a far cry from being careful.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “It had better not.”

  We said ou
r goodbyes quickly after that. Mum was furious, and with good reason. I couldn’t bear to listen to her anger for another minute, however. Sure, I knew it was dangerous, but she couldn’t stop me from digging deeper. My earlier euphoria had drained completely and a pang of guilt settled in my stomach. I had lied to her again, good intentions or not, but I wasn’t a baby anymore. Not only did I want to find out what had happened to Liv and Corinne, but I also needed to find out what had really happened to Dad. Something told me I was getting closer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The sound of wailing sirens made me jump, my phone falling from my lap to the floor. I picked it up and noticed the small crack on the screen just as Charlie came into the room. “I don’t want to go full Luke Skywalker,” she said, “but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Me too,” I said, looking out the window. “I can’t see any police cars from here, but it sounded close. On campus kind of close.”

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  We went outside, the chilly afternoon air nipping my skin, and sure enough, a steady flow of students moved in the same direction. I noticed the punk rocker from the altercation with Charlie at Freshers’, hand in hand with what I assumed was “her man”. Two guys ran past us, almost clipping my shoulder.

  “I heard she was dehydrated,” one said to the other.

  “It’s exsanguinated,” the other replied. “When they drain the blood out of you.”

  My heart jumped at his words, and as we joined the flow of people, I sensed I would learn something horrible in a few minutes.

  Near the southernmost end of campus, four identical three-storey, redbrick buildings surrounded a small square. In the middle stood a statue of a man on a horse, some thirty feet tall. I seemed to remember having read something on the uni app about that man being one of the founders of the university.

  A crowd had already gathered, but they were kept out of the square by a line of yellow police tape. I spotted at least five officers, none of them Fernsby or Paddock, guarding the perimeter and telling people to stand back. Charlie and I worked our way through the crowd. That is, Charlie worked her way, and I tagged along as close as I could, saying “sorry” left and right. It was effective, however, and we eventually stood by the tape, looking at the scene.