The Uncanny Raven Winston

by Tammie Painter

  "I demand a stay," called Mr. Tenpenny from the stands. A flash of relief crossed Olivia’s face, but she quickly put on her businesslike mask once more.

  "Someone must second it," she said, darting her gaze around the arena.

  "I demand a stay," said Alastair. The words were clear, but his voice shook with wavering emotion as if fighting back tears.

  "You cannot second for her," Olivia told him, her own voice weakening. "As you are in a relationship with Miss Black, your opinion is biased."

  Alastair nodded, wiped his eyes, then stared at the dahlias in his lap.

  "If we have no other—" Olivia began.

  "I demand a stay."

  I jerked around. The voice was familiar, but not in a million years could I fathom him coming to my rescue. But there he was, dressed as ever in cargo shorts and a dingy tank top. Morelli. My heart leapt with surprise and delight. Then I remembered I was his only tenant. No wonder he wanted to keep me alive.

  Olivia turned her attention back to me, her eyes showing some amount of hope. "You will have a stay of twenty-four hours while we decide your case." Olivia took my hand and shook it, sending her apologies into my head. Which was a trick I would really have liked to learn. Too bad learning was going to be a bit impossible since my brain would soon be nothing more than mush.

  I nodded to show I’d heard.

  And then I left the arena.

  Just left.

  I didn’t want to hear people congratulating me for "giving it my all" and "making a good effort." I didn’t want to hear condolences that it would all be alright. I didn’t want to hear lies that Mr. Tenpenny and Morelli would be able to change the minds of HQ. I was through. Even though I knew my own capabilities, even though I’d realized my own potential in this very arena, I was through.

  Of course Banna had won. She was the epitome of magic. She was the mother of magic, for Merlin’s sake. Why did I even bother to fight after seeing she was my opponent?

  It had been planned from the start. Maybe since the day I’d come through the London-Portland portal. Maybe that’s why Olivia’s file had been faked. To lure me here so they could do away with me.

  I should have felt sad, annoyed, dismayed, but the lingering buzz of my magic being returned to me had me rippling with focus and determination. Besides, I hadn’t come here to prove myself to these people. I’d come to find my parents. I’d already lost valuable time coming to this pointless test.

  I had twenty-four hours left.

  I didn’t plan to waste them.

  45 - WINSTON THE RAVEN

  UNTIL I COULD act, I craved privacy. I raced along corridors and up stairs to my room, only giving in to the burn in my thighs once I’d locked myself in. I stayed silent as people kept coming by and knocking on my door. Alastair was the only one I wanted to let in, but what was the point? He couldn’t console me without me exhausting him, nor could he change the Magics’ minds. I was going to be extracted and it was time to cut my losses.

  I sound like I was wallowing in self pity. I wasn’t. I was a dog paddling in a huge vat of pissed-off stew complete with chunks of bitterness and morsels of unfairness. The Magics may have beat me, but I wasn’t down for the count yet. I refused to be magically lobotomized knowing my parents might be trapped in some sort of eternal limbo.

  While I waited, while Alastair pleaded outside my door, I checked my phone. Mr. Wood and Lola had sent me more messages. They’d come through at some point, possibly when I’d snuck out the other night, but in the madness of the previous day I hadn’t thought to look at them.

  Without warning and before I’d even glanced at a single message, tears dripped onto my phone’s screen. Pablo would have a good home with Lola. I could picture him getting grossly obese on her coconut cookies; and with his expanding wardrobe, I imagined he’d soon need his own closet. Mr. Wood was on the road to recovery. Once things were up and running, he’d have no trouble finding another assistant. Maybe Daisy was looking for permanent work. At the very least he’d be able to hire someone who had the proper licensing and didn’t raise the dead. Someone who wouldn’t run the risk of putting him out of a three-generation long business.

  I wiped my eyes and nose, then dried the phone’s screen on my shirt sleeve before checking my messages. Most of the photos from Mr. Wood were of increasingly elaborate BLTs, but there was one surprise: a single crochet creation that was actually recognizable as a granny square.

  I’m going to make a blanket! He’d added below the photo.

  He’d then sent another message: Eugene tells me you might be in trouble there. I hope not. Despite your little problem, I would miss you. I never had kids, but you’re just what I’d have hoped for if I did. He says he will do his best. Please call if you get a chance.

  And my phone screen was a salty, wet mess again. I couldn’t reply. My hand was trembling too much and I doubted autocorrect would be able to make any sense of what I might type if I tried.

  I dried the screen and my eyes again, then went to Lola’s messages.

  Chip, chip, cheery-oh, guv’nuh!!

  It was so stupidly silly, I couldn’t help but laugh as I scrolled down to see the photo.

  There was Pablo. Lola had outdone herself this time. He was dressed in the full regalia of a Yeoman Warder. Jacket, hat, neck ruff, and even a tiny toy raven perched on one shoulder.

  Do you think they’ll hire me?

  I was about to type back that, no, they definitely would not, when a thought struck me harder than Banna’s magic hail.

  I needed to speak to Nigel.

  I had to wait over an hour, but eventually Alastair gave up — and I have to say, even my tough-as-nails heart had been melting at his pleas to let him in, to at least talk to him. Once I heard the muffled sound of his footsteps retreating down the carpeted corridor, I skulked my way out to the Tower grounds, moving cautiously to avoid bumping into anyone I didn’t want to see. Which, I’ll admit, was everyone.

  Despite the thick layer of clouds, it still hadn’t rained, and visitors were taking advantage of the weather. I made my way straight toward the raven enclosure. Winston was nowhere to be seen, but a chill soon danced up my arms just before Nigel appeared. As ever, he was eager to impart information.

  "Looking for me? I might have to start charging you for these tours."

  "You. And Winston," I added.

  "Ah, I believe I saw him eyeing the entry to the crown jewels. He’s always had a fetish for shiny things. Come along, I’ll tell you about the royal zoo that was once here. Did you know they used to keep dolphins in the moat?" I gave him a skeptical look. "No?"

  "Not quite."

  I strode alongside him. The idea that Pablo’s photo had given me couldn’t wait.

  "How long did you say you’ve been here?" I asked as we headed around the White Tower and toward the Waterloo Barracks. I did wonder what people thought when I asked questions or spoke to Nigel. From what I could determine, only Magics could see him, so the Norms either thought I was talking to myself, or they didn’t notice a thing and assumed I was just another person gabbing into a bluetooth headset.

  "Oh, going on twenty-five years now."

  "Were you here when my parents came? Chloe and Simon Starling. Did you ever meet them?"

  "Why, yes," he said with delight. "I told you I had."

  "No, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that."

  "I did. My friend who was just like you, teaching me some history. And then she left and I didn’t see her again. I was fascinated by both of your parents because we don’t get many Americans here," he said as a group of ten Americans passed us, each munching on a bag of Cheetos and speaking twice as loudly as anyone else. "American Magics, that is. They were part of a very important mission. They were so brave, and, well you probably guessed, I had the most terrible crush on your mother." Nigel gave a wistful sigh. "She was, I mean, they were really
your parents?" He stopped and scrutinized me for a moment. "Yes, I see some resemblance. The face shape. Don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Sometimes I can be so forgetful."

  Which was the understatement of the decade.

  We turned a corner, and as the Waterloo Barracks — the building where the crown jewels were housed — came into sight, I asked, "And do you know anything about that mission they were working on?"

  Just then Winston soared down from the sky and landed on Nigel’s shoulder.

  "There you are, you rascal. Did you know we were talking about you? No, wait, I hadn’t gotten to that part of the story yet."

  "What part?" It was only then that I wondered if there was any way I could trust Nigel’s information. He’d been wrong on so many other things.

  "The mission. It was named for Winston here. Operation Winston."

  "Winston was here then?" I asked, unable to hide my skepticism.

  This was pointless. Nigel had confused his facts again. I’d seen Winston come in on the delivery system when I’d arrived. I wasn’t up on my bird biology, but I didn’t think ravens lived that long. Poor Nigel. Did ghosts suffer dementia?

  "Well," Nigel said, reaching up to scratch Winston’s head, "he had been alive. He was such good bird, weren’t you?" Winston bobbed his head in agreement. "You see, he couldn’t be held back. The ravens are supposed to be the symbolic guards of the Tower, and the realm, really. He didn’t want to be a symbol. He wanted to protect England. And so when the Mauvais appeared here, Winston went on the attack.

  "Now," Nigel continued, sounding very much like the knowledgable tour guide he aspired to be, "a raven is not a bird you want to tangle with, and the Mauvais certainly came out of the fight bloodier than he’d entered it. But Winston didn’t win the battle. The Mauvais killed him. This wasn’t long after I’d lost my own life. Ever since, we’ve been partnered up.

  "Anyway, to honor our feathered friend, Busby Tenpenny — he was in charge of recording everything for that operation — named the mission to hunt down the Mauvais, the mission your parents were on, Operation Winston. Now, would you like me to tell you about the story behind the crown jewels? Did you know the original crown was square?"

  "Sorry, Nigel," I said, charged with impatient urgency, "but I’ve got to cut the tour short."

  "That’s alright, then. We can take it up where we’ve left off later."

  "Sure thing." I looked at Winston. Could Nigel be right, just this once? I had to get to the file room. Hadn’t I told Tobey we should look up the mission names?

  I made a quick goodbye, then ran back to the White Tower. Because of the tangle of stairways and hallways and floors that didn’t seem to know what level they belonged on, I somehow ended up having to make my way past Olivia’s office to reach the other stairwell that would take me to the file room.

  I eased up to the room. Thankfully, the door was mostly closed and would be easy to get past, but from inside I could hear Alastair, Morelli, and Busby, pleading my case.

  Their words, words like "talented" and "extraordinary" and "can’t lose her" — words I couldn’t believe were being used to refer to me, especially not from Morelli’s mouth — made it suddenly hard to swallow. Morelli even said something about how "he didn’t protect Black all this time just to have her brain drained." Alastair put in a comment about his efforts to safeguard me and how he wasn’t about to stop now.

  I appreciated those words, but they didn’t matter. I knew they wouldn’t change HQ’s minds. The words were, however, keeping them occupied and I slipped undetected past the door, down the hall, and to the lower level.

  46 - REVELATIONS

  AS I EXPECTED, the door to the file room was locked. Tobey had always brought the key. Still, despite being unable to defeat the mother of magic, I knew my way around a lock. The others would detect my magic on the door, but what did that matter now? A scolding over breaking and entering would simply bounce off my extracted head.

  The trick with magic I’d learned is that you had to know how something worked. I couldn’t just make the lock pop off, I had to know what the internal mechanism looked like so I could picture the lock’s parts that needed to shift to open the door. Granted, I could have just given the lock a jolt to make it explode, but I was going for subtly and stealth, not blow-em-up, action-movie antics.

  I imagined the lock’s components. It took a few moments to settle on the right kind of mechanism, and if I weren’t going to mentally die the next day, I would have made a note to myself to study up on these things so I could do this trick more quickly. Eventually though, the lock’s tumblers fell into place and I slid back the bolt to enter.

  The room was fully dark. I fumbled for the light switch, but when I flipped it, the room remained black. Sometimes the universe just hates you.

  I didn’t want to do the Solas Charm, not if I could be traced with it. I thought of my lessons in MagicLand, specifically those from Fiona’s copy of The Principles of Physics and Magic she had loaned me. It had briefly covered quantum physics, explaining how it could only make sense in a world filled with magic, but that it was fun watching Norm physicists trying to sort it all out.

  I’d been practicing the Light Capture Charm before I left, now it was time to put that practice into action. I don’t know, maybe because it was based on physics, but I found this spell far easier than the Solas one. I imagined a light bulb with a magnet instead of filament. The magnet pulled in photons, and voila! I had some light. Sure, the rules of entanglement meant that somewhere someone’s headlight probably just went out, but it wasn’t like I pulled in enough photons to wipe out all the bulbs in a hospital or anything.

  With my captured light glowing above me it was time to get a move on and find the file for Operation Winston. I went straight to the O cabinet, then opened the drawer that held the Om to Oz files.

  And cursed.

  The only Operation folders were surgery notes from the Magical Medi Unit. I slammed the drawer shut. I thought of looking up Winston, but I’d already gone through the Ws. I was about to try the R files for Ravens, when my heart jumped with excitement.

  I had gone through the Ws, but in my rush to get to the Tenpenny file I’d barely flicked through the W drawer. If I’d seen a Winston file, I probably ignored it, assuming it held information on Winston Churchill. I raced to the W cabinet and whipped open the Wa to Wi drawer.

  "Oh, you have got to be kidding!"

  There was no Winston folder. Not for the bird, not for the prime minister, and not for the damn operation. Maybe there never was an Operation Winston. I mean, it’s not like Nigel was a reliable source of facts and figures.

  I kicked the drawer shut. My jaw shaking with irritation, I stared down the row.

  Files, files, files.

  I didn’t have time either tonight or in what remained of my coherent life to get through all of them. There had to be another way, a faster way to find what I was after.

  I closed my eyes and recalled what I knew of the Mauvais. When I’d fought him — or rather her since he was in the form of Vivian at the time — he had been coated in perfume. But when someone tries to rip the magic out of you, steals a watch from you that could help him take over the world, and grapples you to the point your hand breaks, you get acquainted with that person in a squeezed-onto-a-crowded-bus-during-rush-hour kind of way.

  Under the perfume there had been a scent of something like burnt cinnamon. A smoky, spicy scent of baking gone wrong. So, like a dog scanning the parquet for a lost biscuit, I smelled my way back and forth across the cabinets. And let me tell you, that’s not easy work. A couple times I thought I was going to pass out and had to remind myself to take a few deep breaths to refresh my head.

  I sniffed high and low with my captured photons following along. I got down on my hands and knees, sucking in who knows how many particles of dust and mouse feces, but from the A cabinet to the Z cabinet th
ere was no sign of the Mauvais’s scent.

  I suppose it made sense. The Mauvais wouldn’t have handled the paperwork here. He wouldn’t have been processing reports of his own whereabouts. But who would? Who was working here at the time of the Mauvais and would have been recording things?

  Busby Tenpenny.

  He was in charge of recording everything for that operation, Nigel had said.

  I stood up. Hadn’t I detected the scent of bergamot somewhere about a quarter of the way down the row? I couldn’t tell which file it had been coming from at the time, but I had at least narrowed down my options.

  I sniffed, honing in on the D cabinet. Then the Da to De drawer. I soon realized it was mostly filled with De files: De for "Death Report." Just briefly looking them over, I began to truly get a sense of how awful the Mauvais had been. The things he’d done would have made even the likes of Stephen King and Wes Craven seem unimaginative in their horrors.