Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (119 page)

An uneasy expression flickered across Rachel's face. “Like who?”

“I don't know,” Shireen said. “But I've heard stories. Sometimes magic-users around our age just . . . go missing. And no one seems that keen on talking about where.”

Shireen and Rachel stayed silent for a moment. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and the light on the houses outside was muted. “Look,” Shireen said. “You've been wanting your magic to be stronger, right? This guy can teach us.”

Rachel sighed. “Fine, I'll listen to him. But he's going to have to be
really
convincing.”

* * *

T
he shift was quicker this time, and in only an instant I was in another bedroom, this one expensive-looking and cluttered with clothes. I recognised it as being like my room in Richard's mansion but the layout was different, and it took me a moment to realise that it was one of the girls' rooms, either Shireen's or Rachel's.

The door slammed open and Shireen stormed through in midsentence. “—self-righteous
assholes
!” The door banged off the wall and Shireen kicked it before turning on Rachel, who'd been following behind. “Can you believe this? What century do these guys think they're in?”

Rachel shrugged and shut the door. “They act like we're pretty little dolls on a shelf,” Shireen said, pacing up and down. “And they expect us to be
grateful
. ‘Oh yes, sir, I'm a good little girl.' Never any respect. We just don't matter.”

“I told you,” Rachel said. “Back home we were special. Now we're just two more apprentices.”

Shireen flung herself into a chair, brooding. “I bet they'd act different if we were boys. They pay attention to Tobruk.”

“Do you think—” Rachel began.

There was a tentative knock on the door. “What?” Shireen shouted.

The door cracked open and a nervous-looking face appeared in the gap. “Get us something to eat,” Shireen said.

The face hesitated. I vaguely remembered him: Zander, one of the easily forgotten, often-changing servant population of Richard's mansion. “Uh—” Zander said.

“Did I stutter?” Shireen said. “You want me to tell Richard you're not doing your job?”

Zander paled and vanished. The door clicked shut and the sound of his hurrying footsteps faded away. Shireen shook her head. “Even the servants are taking the piss now.”

Rachel hadn't paid attention to Zander; she was looking thoughtful. “Do you think this was what Richard meant?”

“The whole power thing?” Shireen said. She drummed her fingers. “Maybe he's right. It's the only way we're ever going to change anything, isn't it?”

“It's the only way they're ever going to respect us.”

“Fine,” Shireen said. “Let's teach them some respect.”

As she spoke the words Shireen faded, and so did Rachel. The clothes vanished and the windows darkened, layers of dust covering the furniture and bed. I was alone in an empty room.

A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I spun with a yelp. Shireen gave me a quizzical look. “What's wrong?”

“Don't scare me like that,” I muttered. The room around us looked decayed and abandoned, as though it had been deserted for years.

“Who did you think I was?”

“A minute ago,” I said. “I thought I saw . . .”

“Saw what?”

“Never mind.” I looked at Shireen. “So that was the way it happened? Richard came to you and you went to Rachel?”

“I could always talk Rachel into things.” Shireen walked over to inspect the chair where her younger self had been sitting. It was worn and faded now, with holes in the fabric. “She'd argue but she'd go along with it in the end.”

“You were stupid.”

“We were teenagers,” Shireen said. “Anyway, it's not like you can talk.”

“Oh, I haven't got anything to be proud of either,” I said with a sigh. “My reasons for signing up were much dumber than yours . . . What were you talking about at the end?”

“When?”

“About respect. Changing things.”

“We always figured we were going to do something special with our magic,” Shireen said. “Like in the movies, when the heroine gets her powers, you know? She always ends up fighting a bunch of bad guys and saving the world.”

“Saving the world?”

“I'm not saying we went out to do charity work,” Shireen said. “But we saw a lot of mage society while we were with Richard and we didn't much like the way it treated women. Too many apprentice girls getting stepped on and
way
too many female slaves.”

I looked at Shireen for a moment. “If you had a problem with slaves,” I said at last, “maybe you should have tried doing something about the ones in your basement.”

Shireen didn't meet my eyes and there was an awkward silence. “Sorry,” she said at last.

I kept gazing at Shireen. For a moment I felt the old rage starting to rise, then with an effort of will I shook it off. “Forget it.”

“You said something like that to me back then,” Shireen said at last. “That time I came to your cell. Remember?”

I looked at her curiously. “So you
were
listening? I was never sure . . .”

“I didn't want to,” Shireen said. “I went upstairs and tried to forget about it. But it was like . . . a seed, I guess. All the next few weeks I'd be in the middle of doing something and I'd start thinking about you and Catherine. It wouldn't stop bugging me.”

“Well, I'm sorry if thinking about what was happening to the two of us was making your life less convenient.”

“You can really be a dick sometimes,” Shireen said. “But you know what? That was kind of why it worked. I didn't like you and you didn't like me, and so you were the one person who told me the truth.”

I looked at the empty space where Rachel had stood. “Do you think this is how it works for all Dark mages? Just drifting, going a little further each day? Then one day you look around and realise what you're turning into . . .”

“It was for me,” Shireen said simply.

“What happened when you want back to the mansion, Shireen?”

Shireen went still.

“The last I saw you, it was at the abandoned block,” I said. “You said you were going back to find Rachel and Catherine, and I watched you walk away and I never saw you again. What happened after that?”

Shireen was silent for a moment. “When I left the mansion I was looking for you,” she said at last. “But I didn't know what I was going to do when I found you. I didn't know if I wanted to fight you or talk to you or bring you back or . . . The one thing I was sure of was that we were out of time. Either it was going to be Tobruk, or . . .” She stopped, frowning.

“Or what?”

“You have to go.” Shireen turned on me. “Now!”

I looked around in confusion. The room was empty. “Go where?”

“Out of Elsewhere. You're in danger. You have to wake up.” The lines of the room around us began to blur and dissolve, the colours fading into each other. Shireen advanced until she was right in front of me, staring up at me. “Wake up!” The colours blurred into grey and we were falling, my stomach lurching as we dropped. I couldn't see Shireen or anything else but I could hear her voice shouting at me. “Wake up! Wake—!”

* * *

“—up! Alex,
wake up
!”

I came awake with a start. My room was dark and a slim figure was leaning over me, shaking me. “Huh?” I sat up, shaking my head. “What?”

“Will's friends, the adepts, they're back.” Anne's voice was low and urgent. “They're here.”

My precognition was nagging at me, warning of danger. The clock by my bed said 3:17 and the city outside was quiet. From the direction of the living room I could hear movement; Luna and Variam were up. I was still disoriented from waking and couldn't process it all. “Where?”

“I don't know—” Anne looked back over her shoulder. “They've gone.”

“Gone where?” The warning of danger was getting louder and louder. Something was coming for us but I couldn't see what. Nobody was going to come through the door, but . . .

“I can't see, they're out of my range. They came onto the roof and they were doing something, then they started running.”

“On the—?” Suddenly the visions of the future ahead snapped into focus and my eyes went wide. “Oh
shit
.” I lunged off the bed, grabbing Anne. She made a startled noise as I dived for the side of the room, shoving her under the desk before rolling in myself.

There was a roar and what felt like a blow to every part of my body at once. The floor bucked and settled, and a vibration went through the building as what felt like a landslide hit all around us with a thundering crash. Dust filled the air.

I tried to roll back out from under the desk and scraped against something jagged; there was rubble piled across the floor. I scrambled out on my hands and knees and felt a breeze: looking up, I saw sky. Half the roof of my flat was gone.

It had been some kind of explosive, and from the mess it must have gone off right above my bed. Where my bed and table had been was a pile of rubble, forming a slope up to the hole in the roof. The wall onto the street had survived but half the interior wall was gone, including the door through to the living room. Anne struggled out from underneath the desk, coughing, and I helped her up. “Can you move?”

Anne shook her head; she hadn't had the second's warning I had and she looked dazed. “I'm okay.”

I looked around to see that the doorway to my living room was a pile of shattered bricks and plaster. We were sitting ducks in here, and the only way out was up. I started climbing. “Come on.”

The rubble was unstable and the jagged edges hurt my skin, but at least barefoot I could climb well. “Can you spot Luna and Vari?” I called down to Anne as I reached up for a handhold. I was about to grab a piece of the ceiling but saw that it would start a landslide and reached for a broken beam instead.

“They're okay but there's someone coming!” Anne called up. “Ahead and to your left.”

I took one look into the futures, saw the flicker of combat, and put on a burst of speed, scraping my elbow as I scrambled up onto the half-destroyed roof. Where the front of my roof had been was now a pit, dust still swirling in the night air. I could hear shouts and noise from the buildings around.

A figure came jogging out of the shadows ahead. He was only a silhouette in the darkness, but I knew who it was—Jaime Cordeiro, aka Ja-Ja, aka the life-drinker, the one Caldera had warned me about and the last person on Will's team I wanted to get close to. He swerved towards me, his palm coming up.

I reached into my pocket for a weapon and my fingers closed on nothing: my items were buried under the rubble ten feet below. Ja-Ja lunged and I dived, rolling and coming back to my feet to turn and face him. Ja-Ja managed to brake before going over the edge and started back towards me. I danced back, the roof cool under my bare feet, not taking my eyes off Ja-Ja's hands. One touch and I'd be dead or crippled. Ja-Ja lunged again and I dodged behind a chimney. He moved left, then right; I matched him, keeping the brickwork between us.

Ja-Ja crouched, tensed. From the faint glow of the city lights I could see he was wearing clear plastic goggles; Will's lot were learning from experience. Bad sign. I heard a crash from the direction of my flat, followed by a surge of fire magic, and I knew that more were coming in from below but I couldn't take my eyes off Ja-Ja. I had to take him down, but I didn't have a weapon and I couldn't risk coming within reach—

A hand touched Ja-Ja from behind, and he spun to face Anne. She was standing close, her arm extended and the fingers of her left hand resting lightly against his chest. Ja-Ja looked at her face to face and his expression was ugly. “Back off or I hurt you, bitch.”

Anne met Ja-Ja's gaze, her eyes steady. “Don't.”

Ja-Ja didn't ask twice. His right hand came up fast and he slapped it into Anne between her breasts. Green-black light flickered around his arm and I had an instant to see the attack in my mage's sight: focused and lethal, designed to rip the life from Anne's body. One hit from that spell would kill most people. Two hits would kill anyone. Before I could move the spell flashed through Ja-Ja's palm and into Anne.

Nothing happened. The green-black light vanished. Anne looked at Ja-Ja.

Ja-Ja looked taken aback. He looked down at his palm, then up at Anne, then tried again. Again the lethal green-black light flickered from his hand and into Anne's body. Again nothing happened.

“Please stop doing that,” Anne said.

“That should have worked,” Ja-Ja muttered. He was still standing with his hand against Anne. All of a sudden instead of looking threatening he looked faintly ridiculous.

“It's okay,” I said brightly. “It happens to a lot of guys.”

“Shut up,” Ja-Ja snapped.

“I'm sure it doesn't happen to you usually. Maybe you can take a rest and try again in a few minutes.”

Ja-Ja snarled. “I said
shut up
!” He drew back for a punch.

Anne's fingers hadn't left Ja-Ja, and as he started to swing, leaf-green light flickered from her hand into his body. He crumpled instantly, unconscious before he hit the floor. Anne glanced at me. “Maybe you should stop taunting them.”

No one else had come; we were alone on the roof. Ja-Ja was out but I could still sense fire magic and there was danger ahead. “What's going on down there?” I said. “Are Vari and Luna okay?”

“They're not hurt,” Anne said, looking down through the roof. “They're at the top of the stairs; Will and the others didn't—” She cut off, frowning. “That's strange. They're pulling back.”