Alex Verus 5: Hidden

by Benedict Jacka

  “You guys have been in the program for years. They should be used to it by now.”

  “Well, yeah, but . . .” Variam frowned. “You know what their issue is with Anne, right?”

  “Honestly?” I said. “No. Yeah, I know there’s the whole ex-Dark thing, but it always seemed like a pretty lousy reason. You only have to spend a few minutes around Anne to figure out she’s not like that.”

  Variam stared at me, then shook his head. “You really are strange, you know that?”

  “What?”

  “Half the time you act like you know everything, then you say stuff like this.”

  “I don’t know everything, I’ve told you that enough times by now. What are you getting at?”

  “The Light mages don’t like Anne,” Variam said, “because she comes across as incredibly creepy.”

  I blinked. Whatever I’d been expecting Variam to say, it hadn’t been that. “What?”

  “Creepy. As in weird and disturbing. The Light apprentices think she’s creepy, the non-Light apprentices think she’s creepy, even the teachers think she’s creepy. Literally everyone sees it except you. Dunno why.”

  “She’s not creepy.”

  “She acts like she can see under everyone’s skin, she doesn’t blink or sleep or breathe except when she wants to, and she’s got this way of looking at people like she’s thinking how difficult it’d be to stop their heart.”

  “Well . . . I guess.” I didn’t really see what Variam was getting at. “But she’s a life mage.”

  “Okay, first,” Variam said, “life mages creep people out already. Second, the way Anne comes across, she looks like she might have done the heart-stopping thing a few times already.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “Argh.” Variam covered his eyes. “I don’t even know how to explain this. I mean, it’s good, we haven’t exactly got many friends, I’m not complaining or anything. I just don’t get how you’re the one mage who can’t see how this would freak anyone out.”

  “Well, it’s not like she’s going to do anything to hurt us.”

  Variam was silent. I frowned. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I shook my head. “So how are we going to get Anne somewhere safer?”

  “We can’t,” Variam said. “She said no and she meant it, so unless you’re planning to knock her out and carry her off somewhere, you might as well give up.”

  I thought about it for a second.

  Variam scowled at me. “I was kidding.”

  “Yeah,” I said, abandoning the plan. I could probably pull it off, but Anne would kill me when she woke up. Well, she wouldn’t kill me, but it wouldn’t exactly improve our relationship and . . .

  . . . and that was quite possibly the most stupid plan I’d ever come up with in my entire life. Why was I even thinking about this? If I’d gotten to the point where I was considering something this crazy, it was time to give up.

  “Look, this isn’t anything new,” Variam said seriously. “I’ve got a couple of new ideas to bounce off her tomorrow, and if she doesn’t answer I’ll keep calling till she does. It’s not like this is our first fight.” He paused. “But thanks for trying. Back when things were bad, you and Luna were about the only people who cared enough to help. I haven’t forgotten that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. I’ll leave it to you.”

  The teas had grown cold on the table, and we left them there when we got up to leave. Variam returned to Arachne’s lair to gate back to Scotland, and I caught a bus home.

  | | | | | | | | |

  I had another nightmare that night.

  It started as they always did, with me being chased. I kept moving, trying to put enough turnings between me and my pursuer, but every time I stopped I could hear him coming closer. Finally I stopped running and waited around a corner to ambush him. He came around into my reach and I caught him, forcing him to the ground and breaking his neck.

  There were more people in the next room. All were sitting and they didn’t seem to have noticed me. I went to the first and tried to wrestle him down, but it was taking too long so I had to go back and get a knife and start stabbing him instead. I kept it up until he stopped moving and went on to the next. He took longer, and the one after that took longer still. I kept stabbing his torso but there was so much resistance that the blade was hardly going in and the wounds weren’t bleeding. The man I was stabbing didn’t fight back, and no one else in the room seemed to even notice.

  The next one was a woman, and as I moved in she looked up at me. My arms were sticky and my movements were tired and slow. Something made me stop and turn around, and as I did I saw bodies lying behind me. Some of them were still moving and with a thrill of horror I realised there weren’t just two or three, there were dozens. I turned back to the woman, trying to say something to justify myself, but the words died on my lips. She didn’t scream or run or try to defend herself; she just sat there looking at me. The knife was still in my hands and I could see the target area at her neck. I stepped forward, and as I did I realised that this was a dream, had to be a dream, and I tried desperately to wake up and escape. I caught the woman’s hair with my left hand, forcing her head back and exposing her throat, while the knife came across to—

  | | | | | | | | |

  —I came awake, breathing hard. I felt sick and wanted to throw up and I clawed open the window next to my bed. Cold air rushed in and I knelt up on the bed, leaning out into the night, taking deep breaths in and out. Gradually the nausea faded and I reached for my bedside table, fumbling for my phone. I needed to call Anne. I knocked my clock off the table, along with my keys, two different one-shots, and a scattering of coins before my fingers found my phone and activated it, casting a faint bluish light over my bedroom. The clock on the screen said 02:49.

  I’d opened my Contacts list and scrolled down to W for Anne Walker before my thoughts caught up with what I was doing. What was I going to say? “Hi, I had a bad dream and I wanted to—” . . . what? Why did I want to call her? Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember why.

  I stared down at the Call button and just out of habit looked to see what would happen if I pressed it. Anne wasn’t going to pick up, which quite frankly was exactly what you’d expect.

  I put the phone down and leant back out the window, breathing in the fresh air. The dream had shaken me, partly for what it had been but more for the memories it had pulled up. Last year I’d had a nightmare in which I’d been seeing through Rachel’s eyes. Nightmares aren’t anything new for me, but this one had been vivid and horrible, and what I’d seen had been enough to terrify me. I’d seen Richard return, step back through a gate and into our world.

  I hadn’t slept well for a month. Every night there’d been the fear hovering at the back of my mind that it had been real, that it was going to start all over again. But as week after week went by and nothing happened, the fear began to recede, and slowly I was able to convince myself that it had just been a dream. If only the damn rumours would stop.

  The sky had grown overcast again and the orange glow of the London streetlights reflected off the bottom of the clouds. I stayed there for a good twenty minutes, looking out over the Camden night and listening to the distant traffic and the rumble of trains. When the nausea was gone and I felt calm again, I closed the window and pulled the covers up. It took me a long time to get back to sleep.

  chapter 3

  When I woke up the next morning it was raining. It wasn’t a passing shower but a steady drumbeat of water, the kind of rain that settles in, puts its feet up, and makes it clear that it’s not going to leave. Water poured from the gutters above and spattered on the street, and cars rolled slowly through the sheets of falling raindrops, their wipers flicking back and forth. The clouds were heavy and grey with a look of permanency to them, and I was probably going to have to
leave the lights on all day.

  I opened the shop but business was slow; the inhabitants of London didn’t seem in the mood for shopping and I couldn’t really blame them. The day wore on and morning turned into afternoon, but neither the weather nor the attendance improved, and when Luna finally dropped by I gave up and closed early to do inventory.

  | | | | | | | | |

  “Okay,” Luna said. “The next one’s a teacup.”

  “What colour?”

  “Cream.”

  “You mean white?”

  “Not all of us have sixteen-colour vision, you know. It’s got a picture of a sailing boat on the side.”

  “Got it,” I said, tapping the notebook. “It’s a water magic focus.”

  My shop’s called the Arcana Emporium, and if you live in London and want a magic item then it’s the place to go. Most of the items I sell aren’t actually magical, but then most of my customers don’t know the difference. I do have a collection of genuine magical items in the roped-off area in the right corner, but I try to avoid selling them to anyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing because quite frankly it’s dangerous and someone could get hurt. The downside to this is that the magic-item shelves get kind of crowded. When the stacks get high enough to start causing landslides, I go through the piles and try to match the items with the notes I scrawled when I got them. This time I’d pulled in Luna to help, partly so she could get some practice at identification and partly because if you’ve got a boring job you might as well have some company.

  “What does it do?” Luna asked.

  “When you pour any liquid inside, it changes the flavour over the next five minutes.”

  “Sounds pretty useful.”

  “Yeah, except the guy who made it had really specific tastes. His favourite seasoning was chilli sauce, so if you put anything in there, then after a few minutes that’s what it tastes of. Chilli-sauce-flavoured tea, chilli-sauce-flavoured beer, chilli-sauce-flavoured milk, chilli-sauce-flavoured apple juice—”

  “I get it,” Luna said with a shudder. “Storage?”

  “Storage. Unless I find someone who really likes chilli sauce.”

  Luna craned her neck down. “The next one’s a book. It doesn’t have a label.”

  “Colour?”

  “Teal.”

  “Why can’t you just say blue or green like a normal person?” I flipped through the notebook. “What’s inside?”

  “Hang on . . .” There was a rustling sound. “Okay, what’s next?”

  “What about the book?”

  “What book?”

  “The one which is apparently teal, whatever that means. What’s inside?”

  “Uh . . .” Luna paused. “What were we doing?”

  “Looking at the book.”

  “What book?”

  I looked up in exasperation. “Will you stop being a smart-arse?”

  “Look, it kind of helps if you tell me what you want.”

  I started to answer, then frowned. “Hang on a second. Take a look at that book on the shelf.”

  “That one?”

  “Yeah, that one. Open it and tell me what you see.”

  Luna picked up the clothbound book, the silver mist of her curse folding around it, and this time I watched closely. She opened the book, glanced briefly at the first page, then her eyes unfocused and she closed it and replaced it on the shelf before turning to me. “Hm? What?”

  “What was in that book?”

  “What book?” Luna stopped and frowned. “Wait—didn’t I just say that?”

  Empirical testing confirmed what I suspected: the book had some kind of mind or enchantment effect, causing anyone who opened it to replace the book and forget about it. The pages seemed blank, but it was hard to concentrate long enough to be sure. “Huh,” I said eventually. “I wonder what’s powering it?”

  “Am I some sort of guinea pig here?” Luna asked sceptically. “Is that why I’m the one picking these things up and you’re over there going through the records?”

  “Risk builds character.”

  “Last month you said people trying to kill you builds character.”

  “So think what a wonderful person you’re growing up to be. Anyway, you need the practice.”

  Luna muttered something under her breath which I didn’t try too hard to hear and reached for the next thing along. “Okay, next one’s . . . a little figure of a cat.”

  “Can you tell what it is?”

  “Kind of . . . It feels like it’s something for talking. Communicating? Does it let you talk to cats?”

  “Not bad,” I said. That had been right on target. “It’s a summoning focus. Toss it over and I’ll show you.”

  Luna slid the figurine across the desk and I picked it up. It was made of alabaster, and I traced a finger across the smooth surface to the cat’s chest and tapped it. “See this point? When you channel your magic there, it sends out a call to the nearest feline within range of about the right size and draws it to you.”

  “So it summons a housecat?”

  “As long as there’s one around.”

  “That sounds cool. So what, you can get it to spy on people and stuff?”

  “No, it acts like a normal cat. It checks to see if you’ve brought it anything to eat, and if not it buggers off.”

  Luna gave me a look. “You know, I think I’m starting to see why no one uses these things.”

  “It works on dogs as well, if that helps.”

  “I’ll pass. So . . . ?”

  “So?”

  “How’d the meeting with Anne go?”

  “I asked if she wanted my help, she said no.” I stuck the figurine into my pocket. “Several times. By the way, you might have mentioned that Anne specifically asked you not to bring me in on this.”

  “If I’d told you that you wouldn’t have gone.”

  I glared at Luna.

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” I’ve developed a fine ear for Luna’s apologies over the last couple of years, and this was one of her I’m-not-sorry-but-I’ll-pretend-to-be varieties. “So what did you do?”

  “I left.”

  Luna paused. “That was it?”

  “For the purposes of what you’re talking about, yes. And because I know you’re going to ask: Yes, we talked about other things and no, none of it made her even the slightest bit inclined to come back. What were you expecting me to do, anyway?”

  Luna scratched her hair. “I don’t know. I just thought you might be able to talk her into it.”

  “You have a really inflated opinion of what I can do.”

  “I’ve seen you talk to Dark mages who want to kill you, and you get them doing what you want inside five minutes.”

  “Okay,” I said. “There’s a bit of a difference there. Tricking people who want to hurt or manipulate me? Something I’m good at. Getting people to like and trust me? Something I’m bad at. Even if I could, I’m running out of motivation to do it.”

  Luna frowned. “Why?”

  “Because Anne’s made it beyond clear that she’s not interested and it’s getting to the point where carrying on is starting to feel like harassing her.”

  “So what should we do?”

  “Nothing. I’m not Anne’s master. She’s an adult and it’s her decision.”

  “It’s a stupid decision,” Luna said angrily. “I don’t care if it’s up to her, she’s my best friend. I don’t want something to happen just because you two had a fight!”

  I sighed. “Look, I know this hasn’t turned out well, but sometimes relationships just end. Maybe you’ll get back in contact someday and maybe you won’t, but forcing it doesn’t help.”

  Luna looked back at me, her face stubborn and set. “I’m calling her again,” she told me, and walked out the back door. There
was a bang and I heard her feet racing up the stairs. I rolled my eyes and went back to inventory.

  | | | | | | | | |

  Luna stayed in her room for the rest of the day—strictly speaking it’s not “her” room, but it’s the only spare bedroom and now that Anne and Variam don’t live here anymore she’s the only one who uses it. I was less than halfway through the items by the time the sun had set, and was just debating whether to put in a couple more hours or leave it to another day when Luna reappeared in the doorway. “Can you get through to Anne?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Check.”

  I wanted to tell Luna to go away, but something in her voice made me glance at her, and the look in her eyes changed my mind. I took out my phone and studied it. “She’s not going to answer.”

  “She hasn’t been picking up all day.”

  “So maybe she left her phone off.”

  “She never leaves her phone off, and if she does she always calls back. Even if she doesn’t want to talk she leaves a message.”

  I opened my mouth, but Luna cut me off. “Look, I’ve talked to Anne more than you have. The only times I’ve ever seen her do something like this is when something’s wrong. I want to go and check up on her.”

  I looked at the pile of uninventoried items. “Can it wait?”

  “No,” Luna said. “I’m worried and I’m going to her flat. Coming?”

  “Why should I come?”

  “Because I think something’s happened to her,” Luna said. “And if I’m right, then it’ll be dangerous. You’re my master so you’re supposed to protect me, and the only way you can do that is if you come too.”

  “How about I just order you not to go?”

  “I only have to follow your orders when I’m acting as your apprentice. You can’t order me not to visit my friends.”

  “You just said it might be dangerous and that you’d need my help.”

  “So you agree it’s dangerous?”

  “No! There’s no reason to believe it’s dangerous!”

  “Well, in that case, you shouldn’t mind me going, should you? You know, to the place you just agreed might be dangerous. And if I do just decide to go, you can’t actually stop me. So you can let me go off on my own to something you’re supposed to be protecting me from, or you can come too.” Luna looked at me expectantly. “Up to you.”