An Unkindness of Magicians

by Kat Howard

  “It would have remained blank, and I would have been disappointed.”

  He had done this spell while sitting across from her. Very elegant—she hadn’t even felt it. Miranda smiled as she countersigned, secure in the knowledge that her House would not only survive the Wheel’s Turning, but triumph. “Excellent,” she said. “House Prospero appreciates your service.”

  “I believe it will.” That slight bow of the head again as he left.

  Miranda watched him go, heard the House close its doors after him. “Thank you,” she told the House. “This should be interesting.”

  If the House had an opinion, it did not share it. The mirror remained blank.

  • • •

  Harper pressed send on her latest CV, rolled her head from side to side until her neck cracked, then leaned back in her desk chair. She closed her eyes, balanced on her toes, holding herself in place just on the edge of tipping backward, then heaved a sigh and dropped back down. She’d spent the last few months researching what were usually called Special Projects Divisions at various white-shoe New York law firms. It had taken some time, as that wasn’t the sort of practice group that generally got listed on the letterhead. Having a Special Projects Division almost always meant that the firm handled the legal affairs of at least one of the great Houses of the Unseen World. Magicians, as it turned out, needed lawyers, too.

  Working for a firm like that, one that would almost certainly have at least one magician attached as counsel, was one possible way into the Unseen World, the one that seemed most likely to work. Two of the firms she had recently sent her CV to had scouted her in law school, before she’d even heard of the Unseen World. Both had expressed happiness on hearing from her now. She had an interview with a third later this week.

  Whatever it took, she’d find her way in. She had a promise to keep.

  On the wall over her desk was a framed photo of Harper and the woman who had been her best friend, Rose Morgan. They were smiling, arms slung around each other, faces shining with delight. Rose had been the person to teach her to light the candle, the person who had cracked open the doors of the Unseen World and let her look inside.

  Two years ago someone had killed her, and Harper had been the one to find her body.

  She had gotten there almost in time. In time to see a man—his face obscured by shadows—stand up from Rose’s body, his hands covered in blood. In time to see him carve a doorway out of darkness with those same bloody hands, step through it, and disappear. Needless to say, no one believed her. They had been kind about it, blaming it on the stress of finding her murdered best friend, but they hadn’t taken her seriously. When it came down to it, she understood. If she’d heard her story from someone else, she wouldn’t have believed it either.

  The police had no leads. Harper didn’t think they’d ever find any—Rose had said the one thing the Unseen World was best at was keeping secrets. So Harper had decided that she would find her way into that world.

  She would find her way into that world, and she would figure out who had killed Rose, and she would finally get justice for her best friend.

  Harper touched her fingers to Rose’s picture, then turned back to her computer. She entered a password and opened the locked file, the one where she kept information on magic and magicians. She marked her locations from yesterday on the map. Rose had said that they tended to live in the same areas of the city, and so there wound up being enclaves—the magical equivalent of Billionaires’ Row. Harper didn’t have enough data points to make any guesses, not yet—she had the most near Central Park, but everyone went to Central Park, so she didn’t weight those all that heavily—but she could almost, sort of, out of the corner of her eye, see patterns forming.

  That done, she checked her automated searches. Most of the results they found were crap, although there was a link to a new Penn and Teller illusion. Not exactly the kind of magic she was looking for, but she bookmarked it for later. They were always fun to watch.

  Then a YouTube video. Twenty-seven seconds long and uploaded with the title “Sxxxy Hogwarts.” Probably nothing, and almost certainly something she’d regret clicking, but it was only twenty-seven seconds, and it wasn’t like she had to watch the entire thing if it really was awful.

  She clicked, then sat up straight and hit the expand screen button. There was the Trinity Church steeple, out of focus in the right-hand corner of the frame.

  It was the same intersection she’d been at yesterday.

  The recording jumped, glitched, and then. Her. The magician, standing in the intersection, cars flying around her.

  Cars. Flying.

  Even the recorded magic was enough to make Harper’s head ache from watching, but she did, again and again. Beneath the headache, adrenaline fizzed through her, lightning in her veins. This, this was what she’d been looking for.

  Flying cars. In the air like it was nothing. Unfuckingbelievable. She barely breathed while watching.

  Then the video caught. Hung. Announced that it was rebuffering. Harper’s internet signal dropped. She knew. She knew what it meant, knew that once again the secrets of the Unseen World were keeping themselves. She cursed herself for not taking a screencap, at least getting a picture of the woman’s face.

  When her internet reconnected, the video was gone.

  Harper leaned back in her chair and reminded herself to be logical. This was just a video confirming what she already knew: Magic existed, and she’d been close enough to almost make contact with someone who could do it.

  Still. She’d been trying for two years, and this was the closest she’d come to anyone. She hadn’t really understood what Rose meant about the Unseen World being good at secrets until she’d tried to talk to Rose’s parents after the funeral. Never mind that she’d had dinner at their house twice before, she couldn’t find the place, not without Rose there. Well, she could find the address, but she’d walked up to an Apple store in a commercial district, not an elegant home in a quiet neighborhood. She’d called the phone numbers in Rose’s contacts and had gotten nothing but white noise.

  She’d slowly come to realize that the only way to find someone who could help her would be to physically find another magician, to tell them in person what she’d seen that night. This video was proof she almost had.

  Harper scrubbed at her eyes and rolled the stress from her shoulders. Then she got up to put a pot of coffee on. She still had contracts to review.

  • • •

  Grey stood on worn carpet in a hallway that stank of mildew and boiled cabbage. He set his hand on his apartment door’s lock and made a clicking sound in the back of his throat. The metal went cold to the touch as the wards released. He jiggled his key and opened the door.

  Inside, he reset the useless button lock, the slightly less useless chain, and the wards that were technically a violation of his lease. “There’s wards on the building, and those’ll do you just fine. I gotta be able to get into the place if there’s a leak or something,” his landlord had said.

  Grey had nodded, signed the lease, and installed personal wards anyway. The amount he was paying in rent meant that the landlord’s wards could be trusted about as much as that chain lock.

  Today he was adding a second layer of personal wards. He placed thumbtacks in the window frames and then stretched thin wire over the glass, anchoring it on the tacks. He stepped into the center of the apartment and clapped his hands together in an off-rhythm pattern. The scent of hot metal rose into the air.

  He choked on the smell and reached his hands through the wires to open the windows. “Fuck!” The back of his left hand, scraped raw and bleeding. Too much effort to take the wires down and recast the spell—he’d just let the stench of the magic add itself to all the other smells in the place. After a minute or two, there wouldn’t be any difference.

  He hated this shitty apartment, with its cracking floors, the toilet that refused to stop running, and the massive roach problem. As soon as the Turning was over
and he was named a House, he was out of here. He tapped his hand on a broken piece of mirror on the wall. “Soon.”

  The mirror was why he’d cast the extra wards, even though a private residence should be off-limits except in case of an active challenge, and he’d never agree to allowing anyone to see that this was where he lived. Even Laurent had never been here—he sure as hell wasn’t going to host a challenge in this rat hole.

  But the mirror was proof that not everything went as planned in a Turning, was a reminder of what had been stolen from him. A piece of a spell that had gone wrong—cracked and come apart. One of its larger pieces had flown into his father, killing him instantly. The smaller section, the one he’d kept these thirteen years, had lodged itself in Grey’s shoulder. He had been twelve.

  His magic had never fully recovered from the injury. Still, he’d learned how to compensate. He opened a cupboard above the oven and took out an almost empty glass jar. One small bone rattled loosely in it. He dumped the bone into a mortar, then said a rough, consonant-filled phrase. The air in the room flashed hot, and the bone crumbled to dust. Grey poured in enough honey to bind the particles of dust, some wine to cover the taste, then thinned it with water to make it drinkable.

  The pulverized bones still caught in his throat and tasted more like grit than sweetness. But in the grit was stored power—magic that would aid his own.

  Grey set the mortar in the sink with the rest of the dishes. He’d have to go out, refill his supply soon, but this should get him through his first challenge. And when the Turning was over—when he had his own House, maybe even all of the collected power of the Unseen World to call on—he wouldn’t have to resort to this. He’d have what should have been his all along.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Miles Merlin, leonine and silver-haired, nose like a crag and bright blue eyes that missed nothing, was the current leader of the Unseen World. But like all its members, he, too, was subject to the turn of Fortune’s Wheel. The Turning carried the same risks for House Merlin as it did for any other House—loss of position and power balanced with a chance for prestige. It was a great, pleasurable game, and one he relished playing.

  Although officially structured as a series of individual duels pitting one House—established or candidate—against the next, the Turning wasn’t ever only that. It was strategy—which Houses to challenge early and which it might be safe to save until after an invocation of mortality was required. And once the Turning officially began, those wouldn’t be questions to contemplate in solitude. InterHouse alliances would be built, future promises made, unHoused candidates cultivated. But tonight, tonight was for quiet. Tonight was for planning on his own.

  Sitting at the head of his white marble kitchen table, enjoying the steak and potatoes he’d made himself, he passed his hand over the collection of images on his tablet. Everyone participating in the Turning was required to register and officially name their champion. He was looking over the current list for pressure points. It was his favorite part of a Turning, these moments before. They felt like holding a full hand of cards, all possibility.

  He had won the last time, securing House Merlin’s place at the pinnacle of the Unseen World once again, cementing his position here and his influence over events in the mundane world as well. He hadn’t won because he was the best magician—he allowed himself no illusions on that score. He won because he was able to see weak points and exploit them. Because he was smart enough to point dangerous Houses at each other and then stay out of the way until the dust settled.

  But the Turning had come again soon—the shortest interval yet. Too soon. Things were unsettled, uncertain, even in his own House. He’d expected Ian to apologize by now, to come back. He’d held off naming his champion in the hope of that return. And here he was, still waiting, only a matter of hours left.

  Merlin ate as he read, cutting sliver-thin pieces of rare steak. The Turning wasn’t only a time to increase House Merlin’s influence directly. It was a time to be subtle. To push the Unseen World—both directly and less so—in his chosen directions. There would be people on the list who would help him do this, some of them even voluntarily. He made notes, highlighted names, shuffled his deck and his strategies.

  He paused. Laurent Beauchamps had hired an outsider. Strange, that. Magic coming from outside the Houses was unusual enough, but for there to be two people, for them to both find each other and work together, that was even more so. He took another bite, washed it down with a swallow of an excellent Burgundy. That pair would bear watching if they made it out of the opening round. Any new source of magic was worth keeping track of, perhaps worth cultivating. And if it wasn’t possible to cultivate it, new magic was worth keeping out. There were such things as standards, after all.

  He clicked to the next page and nearly choked. Merlin spat the piece of half-chewed steak into his napkin. Set down his fork. Looked at the picture again. He twisted his mouth and pushed the plate to the side. After tossing away his inheritance and disappearing for years, to come back like this. Slinking like a dog and lapping for scraps from Miranda Prospero.

  Miles pressed a hand to his stomach. The news had given him indigestion.

  Still, Ian was a smart boy. Now that his little fit of petulance was over, now that he was back in the Unseen World, he’d come to regret his decision, his foolish reasons for breaking with his family. Once he did, it might be useful to have an ally inside Prospero. Champions’ decisions were final during challenges. And if he continued to refuse to see reason, it wouldn’t be that hard to manipulate him into Miles’ own desired outcome. His son always was too soft-hearted.

  Merlin made a note in his tablet to tell his daughter, Lara, that she’d stand as champion for the House in place of her brother when they had breakfast tomorrow. For all his flaws, Ian loved his sister and would never hurt her. And while Lara returned that affection, Ian’s soft-heartedness was not a flaw that Lara shared. Which meant that one way or another House Merlin could beat House Prospero in a mortal challenge. That would help his position in the Turning nicely.

  There. He felt much better. He would, he thought, have dessert.

  • • •

  Ian’s wards slid into place as his door closed and locked behind him. Word would get out soon enough, if it hadn’t already, about House Prospero’s new champion. His father would be furious, and there were plenty of people willing to court Miles Merlin’s favor.

  Easy enough for a stray spell to go awry, for a misplaced bit of magic to have unforeseen and oh-so-tragic consequences. It was a Turning; accidents not only happened, but they were expected, and if anyone knew how to help one along, it was his father. Miles probably had a list, rank-ordered and waiting, of people he could call on to assist with the problem of his recalcitrant son.

  Ian made himself a caprese sandwich and took his laptop to his rooftop garden, where he could sit high above the city, above the noise and the crowds, surrounded by the fading flowers of late summer, Central Park green and blooming below him. He could see the shadows that clung together on the reservoir. They looked like nothing from here, though that was true for him even when he was standing on the reservoir’s edge. The House of Shadows knew how to stay hidden. But he knew it was there, even if he couldn’t see it, and its presence was malevolent. It was something that should never have happened, and it had been there for far too long.

  He angled his chair away from the view and put Shadows at his back.

  After he’d eaten, he pulled up his thin file on the one magician he didn’t know: Laurent Beauchamps’ champion, Sydney. No last name. The video he had started after the spell began, so he couldn’t see her set up. But the ease with which she stood and the command precision with which she worked was incredible.

  He froze the screen, enlarged the image. She wasn’t even sweating.

  Ian knew nothing about her. She hadn’t come up through the Houses or gone to any of the usual schools, but she certainly had been trained. Which meant she was p
robably a Shadow. Which was interesting. He’d heard nothing about one of them getting out recently, not even from Verenice. Maybe Sydney had been hiding, waiting until now to make her presence known. Surprise was as much a weapon as anything else.

  Whoever she was, wherever she’d come from, he doubted she’d be any kind of secret much longer. He watched the video again. She was like no one he’d ever seen.

  He looked up the list of declared challenges. He wanted to see her cast in person. Wanted to see her in person. Anyone who could do magic like that was worth getting to know, preferably before they met on opposite sides of a duel.

  Ian closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. The air felt heavy, electric. There was a storm coming in. He was ready.

  • • •

  “I would prefer,” Laurent said, “not to challenge Grey directly.”

  Sydney looked up at him from her perch in the window seat, the whole of the city spread out below her. Laurent’s penthouse apartment stretched much higher into the air than her own seventh-floor rooms, and after the huddled darkness of Shadows, she reveled in high, open places. This much sky below her felt glorious. The sunlight, the empty space, all possibility.

  “Any particular reason?” she asked. Shara had given her files, histories, background on the major players in the Unseen World, everyone she was likely to encounter and their connections to one another. She knew the two men were friends. But there was always more to relationships than facts in files.

  “He’s my best friend. Maybe that sounds ridiculous, since this whole thing is full of friends and families who are competing against each other, but he’s the first person who told me I was a magician. He’s been there for me ever since.” Laurent shrugged, brushing the words away.

  “You didn’t grow up here, either?” Again, she knew the answer, but wanted to hear his response.

  “Here as in, in the city? Sure. Here as in the Unseen World? Not even a little bit. No, I got all the way through middle school before I clued into the fact that I was luckier than anyone had a right to be, particularly if I said out loud what I wanted to happen. I mean, for a long time, I just figured that ‘throw a penny in the fountain and make a wish’ stuff was true.” His grin lit his entire face.