by Alix Hadden
He looked up again. Zach was looking at him with an expression Kir couldn't quite read.
"You said I wasn't helpful," Zach said. "You said -- "
"I said a lot of things," Kir interrupted. He wasn't sure he could bear to sit through a full run-down, even if that was what Zach wanted. "I was wrong, okay? We'd have been screwed without you."
"It's not so much that," Zach said, slowly. "It's more -- you seemed to see it as how it just wasn't a good idea for me to be involved in anything, you know. Magic-y." He wiggled his fingers in a way clearly meant to imply 'magery'.
"I -- it's just, you don't have any magic. Yourself," Kir said.
"I do know that," Zach said, rolling his eyes.
"So I -- it worries me. And I've not been out with anyone who doesn't who knows about it, before," Kir said. "We generally don't tell people, you know?"
Zach regarded him, head on one side. "So you just shag other magic folk?"
"Or shag people who I then can't tell about most of everything," Kir said. "Yes."
"I'm guessing that makes for a limited pool."
"You might say that," Kir said, dryly. "Highly limited, what with one thing and another."
"Are there a lot of queer mages, then?" Zach asked, with a tiny smirk.
"I like girls too," Kir said. "But to be honest the pool is limited enough that it doesn't help much. Though as it happens actually there's probably more queer mages than is normal in the population, which is weird, I grant you. Still not many."
"And going out with people you're hiding big stuff from probably doesn't go so well either," Zach said.
"Not so as you'd notice, no," Kir agreed.
"So is this your way of saying that you freaked out and you're sorry?"
"I freaked out and I'm sorry," Kir said. "And -- I'd like to carry on seeing you. If you want."
Zach licked his lips. "All other things being equal -- yeah, I'd like to carry on seeing you."
Kir's heart leapt.
"But only if you can stop fussing about protecting me, okay? Treat me like an adult who knows what he's doing?"
"I know I screwed up," Kir said again. "I'll -- I'll try, okay?"
Somehow, they'd moved closer to each other during the conversation.
"Trying I can work with," Zach said.
He was smiling properly now, looking up at Kir as he reached out a hand to curl around Kir's neck, and tug him down, just a little, so their lips met.
It was a gentle kiss, their lips meeting and parting just a little, but even so it sent fireworks shooting through Kir's veins. Zach tasted of coffee, and of himself, and Kir very badly wanted to be somewhere private, somewhere they could do more than kiss. His own hand was on the small of Zach's back, and Zach swayed slightly towards him.
"So!" he heard Ali's voice behind him, loudly, and they reluctantly let go of each other.
"Glad to see you two have sorted yourselves out," Ali said. "Very sweet. Right. Zach, thank you for letting us in, very kind. Kir, I found the door to that balcony. It's just next to the Ladies."
"You're going into that building site?" Zach said. "Okay. I'm coming with you." His chin was up, and his voice was challenging.
Kir winced. "We don't know what's in there. It could be anything. And you're not -- "
"It could be another of those mud-things, right?" Zach said. "Or, if that is somehow the source, a whole load of them. Or something like that. That's what you're worried about?"
"I guess," Kir said. "Or of something we haven't thought of yet. I just don't know, and..."
"And last time around I was able to help, despite not having any magic," Zach said. "And Ali's on a bloody crutch, for god's sake, with an injured arm as well. At least let me come along to help with having a full complement of operational limbs."
"It's keeping all of your limbs operational that I'm worried about," Kir said.
"And I'm worried about yours," Zach said. "I don't want to let you in there then hang around waiting for something to happen without being able to help, okay? I don't want to watch you getting injured, or worse, when I might be able to help if I was there."
They stared at each other. Kir swallowed.
"You said you're prepared to trust me, and you're not going to freak out about my safety, and all that," Zach said. "Prove it. Take me along with you." He folded his arms.
"Okay," Kir said, hating himself a bit for how hard this was. Zach was right. Kir had to trust him. "Okay. Let's do it."
"Right," Ali said, flopping down onto one of the reception sofas. She sat back and looked at Kir and Zach. "We should probably have some kind of plan before we go wading into this."
"If there is any 'this'," Kir said. "We could be about to just spend an hour poking round a building site and getting ourselves covered in mud for nothing."
"Yep," Ali agreed cheerfully. "I honestly don't know what to hope for, you know? On the one hand: not finding anything is boring, and also then we still haven't gotten very far with working out what's going on. On the other hand, potential of mud-thing central."
"The map has the lines going straight through the centre of that plot of land," Kir said, "but I don't know how accurate they are."
"If we're lucky we might get something once we get a bit closer," Ali said.
"So...we get onsite, stop for a bit of a sniff," Kir said, "then try the centre if we can't feel it anywhere else? Zach, can you stay back at the edge of the site, keep an eye on the perimeter?"
Zach eyed him, looking less than impressed. "You trying to keep me out of trouble? Didn't we just have this discussion?"
"We do need backup," Ali said. "Someone to go 'it's behind you!' or whatever."
Zach's lips twitched. "I see your point. Going to be tough in the dark, mind."
Ali shrugged. "Better than not having anyone doing it."
It was true, enough; they'd do better with a third pair of eyes. He should have phoned Matt, tried to get him involved for perimeter backup. After all, what could Zach do? Shout at the mud-things and run?
Phoning Matt. Zach could do that, at a push. Matt was probably closer than either of the West London mages, and Kir had talked to him more recently.
"If something goes really badly wrong," he said, "I'm going to give you my friend Matt's phone number. He's a mage, too. If it looks like we're in serious trouble, call him, okay?"
"Not just find a fire-hose?" Zach said. "Water seems to have been pretty key, here."
"Phone Matt first," Kir said. "If we do run into anything, it might not be the same as what we've run into before, you know?"
In the absolute worst case, Matt would be able to come in and mop up and try to keep everything quiet. And in fact it would take him long enough to get there that it probably couldn't be more than that. But Kir seriously hoped that Matt wouldn't need to be bothered at all tonight.
Zach pursed his lips, then shrugged and handed Kir his phone to put Matt's number in.
"Does Matt know he's on call?" Ali asked.
"No," Kir admitted. "And -- I'd rather not tell him." He wasn't quite sure why; it just seemed better that way. "We almost certainly won't need it, and if we do, he won't mind."
"Fine," Ali said. "Let's go, then, if we're going."
"This way," Zach said, and led them out of the lobby.
The smoking area was small enough that it smelt slightly of cigarettes even when there was no one smoking there. A plant pot held a very sad-looking plant and a healthy pile of cigarette butts. It was a square area, cut out of the corner of the building, so the building itself formed two sides of the square, and a waist-high metal fence, painted green, formed the other two sides. One of the fenced sides looked nearly directly onto the wall of building next door, with only a couple of feet between them; the other one looked onto the building site.
And this was where they'd skimped on the wire fencing. Zach's office building obviously ran right up to the edge of the building plot, so they hadn't bothered to put fencing along that shar
ed edge, figuring, presumably, that a four-storey brick wall did the job well enough. And this little three-meter patch at the end; well, it was only accessed from the office building, you couldn't reach it from the road, and what office worker is going to climb over a fence and go messing about in a building site? Clearly not worth shoving a fence panel up just for that.
Kir climbed over the fence, to go messing about in the building site. The mud squelched slightly under his feet as he landed.
"There's a bit more of a drop on this side," he said to Ali. "If you can get up onto the fence, I can lift you down, that's probably the best bit."
Zach helped her up to sit on the fence, and Kir plonked her unceremoniously down on the ground.
"So undignified," Ali grumbled, poking at the mud with her crutch. "And really, clomping around in bloody great muddy holes with a crutch is probably not such a great idea."
"You stay here, I'll go with Kir instead?" Zach suggested.
"You're staying here to watch our backs, remember?" Kir said, tamping down an anxious impulse to insist that he go straight back in again. He'd briefly considered 'accidentally' shutting Zach back in the building, but as Zach was the one with the keys that wasn't all that likely to work. Also, he'd promised to trust Zach a bit more. He had to actually do that, not just talk about it.
Didn't make it easy.
"Also, in the nicest possible way, you are not as equipped as I am to deal with certain sorts of trouble," Ali added. "Even if I am all dot-and-carry-one right now."
Zach scowled at both of them. "I'm going to be on your side of the fence, though, okay?"
Kir bit his lip, hard, then said, "Okay. Hop over."
Zach scrambled over, and Kir turned to try to get his bearings over the whole of the site. The streetlights on the streets that overlooked two sides of the site gave some light, but there were deep shadows throughout the site as well. A lot of which were cast by assorted JCBs and diggers and other large pieces of machinery that Kir didn't recognise. The ground sloped downwards into the big hole at the centre of the site, which was obviously where the diggers were concentrating their attentions.
Underfoot even up here the mud was damp and squelched underfoot; presumably as they got further into the site and deeper into the hole, it was likely to get wetter. London clay wasn't renowned for its fast drainage, after all. It hadn't even been all that wet, lately; it seemed kind of odd that it was quite this damp here.
"No plants," Ali said.
There weren't, either. Kir could feel the street trees beyond the fences, but they felt strangely attenuated. And it was odd that there were no wildflowers or weeds of any sort growing on the edges of the site here. Surely it couldn't all be walked over regularly enough to discourage all the plant life.
He shut his eyes for a moment and concentrated. "There's that -- it feels like something's sucking at me, very gently."
"Pulling towards the centre of the big hole," Ali said, nodding down the slope. "Which -- I mean, I can't help thinking that it ought to be about something being underground, but Jean said no death magic, so we're not talking a grave, or anything."
Kir took a deep breath. "Well then. I guess it's time for us to go in and find out."
Zach was tense beside him. "I'm going to follow you down."
"No," Kir said. "You need to be far enough back to call for reinforcements if we need them, okay?"
Zach didn't look entirely happy -- as far as Kir could tell in the sodium-orange light -- but he nodded once, tightly.
"Right then," Kir said. "Ali, I'll go first, then if you slide down I'm there to stop you. Yell if I go too fast or if you think I'm going the wrong way."
Ali was right about the source of the pull; it was down the slope, and it got worse as Kir cautiously headed down into the big hole, testing his footing as he went.
He'd expected it to be increasingly muddy underfoot; it was, but it was also stony and uneven, with lumps of rock that nearly twisted his ankle more than once.
"Footing's shit," he said over his shoulder, to Ali. "Be careful."
"Nooo, I was going to run before you'd said that," Ali said. "Of course I'm being careful, you dipshit."
"Look, I've nearly fallen over twice, and I've got two good feet," Kir said, and then actually fell over.
Ali didn't help at all by laughing at him.
"You okay?" Zach called down from the top of the slope.
"Fine," Kir called back, picking himself up. He had mud right down the side of his jeans and soaking through. "Though, you know, we should probably not be shouting when we're breaking into a building site at night."
The traffic noise was going to cover most things, and there weren't that many passers by, but the last thing they needed was the cops called on them. Kir didn't think that 'we were looking for weird magical shit' was going to go down all that well with the Met, nor indeed the site owners, as an excuse for trespassing.
"Come on," Ali said, a couple of feet ahead of him. "Have you noticed, it's getting stronger?"
It was hard to miss. It was starting to make Kir feel a bit nauseated, in fact.
They skirted around a JCB, giving it a wide berth. Presumably these things were carefully parked with the handbrake on but Kir didn't want to find out the hard way that someone had been careless when they knocked off tonight.
"Do you think it's actually draining us?" Kir asked Ali, quietly.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Ali said. "But generally, right, that's hard work and it has to be someone who's doing it deliberately, and they have to use their own power to do it. So I reckon probably not. But I know what you mean."
Probably not; or they had stumbled across something that broke the existing rules. Kir was hoping that Ali's answer was the correct one, but it really did feel like something was tugging at the marrow of his bones. And he was getting more tired than seemed reasonable for going a couple of hundred feet even if it was on uneven ground and with him strung piano-wire tight.
"Hang on," Ali said. "Left a bit. It's not quite in the centre of the hole."
Slightly to their left, Kir thought he could see something gleaming, very softly. Not something that you'd notice if it wasn't for the fact that it was caught in a deep shadow between the light thrown by two different streetlights. Even more cautiously now, he and Ali moved towards it.
They stopped just on the edge of the trench. It was maybe two foot long, a foot wide, and two foot deep; and there was something at the bottom of it that was giving off a faint orange light.
"Like a dead glowstick," Ali said, looking down at it. "Except, obviously, not."
"What is it, then?" Kir asked.
"I'm trying to think of a way that we can find that out that doesn't involve us touching it," Ali admitted.
This close it felt horribly wrong, like something you just didn't want to be near, like the psychic equivalent of nails down a blackboard. Kir found himself breathing shallowly, his shoulders tight, the ache in his bones intensifying. And yet it wasn't doing anything that he could see.
A little bit of soil crumbled away from the edge of the trench and fell inwards.
"Right in the centre of the leylines," Ali said. "Where they cross, I mean. Man, that's kind of annoying somehow, you know what I mean? Like, leylines, am I right?"
"We don't actually know it's anything to do with the leylines yet," Kir said, absently. "It could just be coincidence. Or it could be planted by someone because they believe the leylines stuff, not because it's true."
Footsteps sounded behind them, slithering down the slope, and Kir and Ali both spun around. Ali wobbled slightly as she did, and Kir put a hand out for her to grab onto. He grabbed outwards for magic and nearly fell over himself; there was nothing there to use, except that trench, pulsing like a beacon with power, but power that felt somehow wrong.
"Jesus," Ali said under her breath, and he knew she'd felt it too.
Then the figure coming down the slope resolved into Zach, and Kir relaxed, the
n tensed up again. "Zach? Is something wrong?"
"I was coming down to check on you two," Zach said, with a shrug, as he reached them.
"I thought you were staying at the perimeter," Kir said.
"Got bored," Zach said. "What's the situation."
"Glowing thing," Kir said, jerking his head backwards.
Zach looked around, puzzled. "Glowing thing? What glowing thing?"
"Huh," Ali said. "That's interesting. Over here -- you see that trench?"
Zach squinted down, as though looking into darkness. "Yeah. I see it."
"Is it glowing?" Ali asked.
"Glowing? Nope, can't say that it is. Pretty much just a trench."
"Okay. To me and Kir, it's glowing."
Zach looked between them. "Right. Some kind of magic glowing, then."
"I guess," Kir said, and bent down to peer at it again. "Can you see anything in the bottom of it?"
Zach knelt down beside him. "Bunch of -- I dunno. Sticks, or something?"
"God, please say they're not bones," Ali said behind them.
"I don't think they're knobbly enough for bones," Zach said, a bit doubtfully. "Stones, maybe. Sticks. It's really dark down there, I can't see for certain."
"And I can't see properly because the glow makes it too difficult," Kir said.
"Glowing things should be easy to see," Ali objected. "Because they're glowing."
"Fine. You come down here and have a look, then," Kir said. "I take your point, but all I can see is glow, and not what's underneath it."
"Do we try to fish it out?" Ali asked.
"Hang on," Zach said, suddenly tense. "I heard something, back there."
They all looked round, scanning the site for movement. Kir bit back on the instinct to say that this was why they wanted someone watching the perimeter.
"Over there," Ali said. "Moving down the slope. Kir, I think whoever it is, they've cut us off."
"And whoever it is, we've got to assume they're here for this," Kir said, speaking as quietly as he could. He glanced around. "We can get behind that JCB. Come on."
The three of them crouched behind the JCB, watching the figure across the other side of the site make their way down into the hole.
