Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (41 page)

S
omehow or other I ended up with Garrick. We worked our way through the factory’s ground floor, searching methodically.

The bodies of the barghest’s victims were in a side room off from the factory floor. There were seven, in varying states of decay. I didn’t look too closely.

“Had an appetite,” Garrick remarked once we’d left the room and called it in.

“That’s why we came,” I said. I was trying not to think about the corpses.

“Really?” Garrick looked mildly interested. “My contract was to make sure it was dead.”

“Looks like someone did your job for you.”

Garrick shrugged. “I get paid the same either way.” He gave me a glance. “So how far into the future can you see?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

I returned Garrick’s gaze. “On who’s asking.”

Garrick looked back at me, then gave a very slight smile. It made me think of an amused wolf.

I went back to the factory floor and found Talisid. “The bodies are in the second room off the back corridor. Nothing else worth checking.”

Talisid nodded. “I’ve called in the cleanup crew. You may as well take off.”

I looked at the barghest’s body, still undisturbed amidst the rubble. “Sorry I couldn’t help more.”

Talisid shrugged. “The problem’s been dealt with.”

“Even though we didn’t do anything?”

“Does it matter?” Talisid said. “There’ll be no more killings and we took no losses.” He smiled slightly. “I’d call this good enough.”

I sighed. “I guess you’re right. Did you find anything else?”

Talisid’s smile faded into a frown. “Yes. Scorch marks on the walls and signs of weapons fire. Several places.”

I looked at Talisid. “A battle?”

“It seems that way.”

I nodded at the barghest. “But that thing wasn’t burnt or shot.”

“Not as far as we can tell.”

“So what happened here?”

Talisid surveyed the dark room, sweeping his gaze over the rusting factory floor. With everyone else gone the place looked like it had been abandoned for a hundred years, and once we left there would be no trace of our visit but for footprints. This was no place for living people, not anymore. “We’ll probably never know,” Talisid said at last, and gave me a nod. “Good night, Verus.”

I
left the factory, passed Talisid’s new Mercedes, and turned right at the corner of the street. I walked half a block, turned back towards the river again, then slipped down an alleyway next to a dark, squarish building. A fire escape took me up to the roof.

Stepping onto the roof felt like coming out of the woods. The Thames was just a stone’s throw away, the vastness of the river winding past like an enormous serpent, forming a
huge meander around the Isle of Dogs. Surrounded by the Thames were the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, reaching up into the night, shining from a thousand points, the white double strobe of the central tower flashing regularly once a second. The lights of the skyscrapers reflected off the black water, forming a second set of towers that seemed to reach down into the darkness. Off to the west I could see the lights of Whitehall and the West End and the landmarks of central London. I could still hear the sounds of the city, but this close to the Thames it was almost drowned out by the rhythmic
shhhh
of the water, the waves lapping against the banks as the water continued its steady flow out to sea. The air carried the scent of the river, not pure, but not unpleasant either.

“It’s me,” I said into the darkness.

There was a moment’s pause, and then a girl stepped out from the shadow of the building. She was a touch below medium height, with wavy brown hair held up in two bunches, and had a careful, deliberate way of moving, always looking where she was going. Her age would have been hard to guess—she looked perhaps twenty-one, but there was a distance in her manner that didn’t match her youth. Her name was Luna Mancuso and she was my apprentice.

“It’s cold,” Luna said with a shiver. She was dressed warmly, in a green pullover and faded jeans, but it was September and there was a chill breeze blowing off the water.

“There’s a warmer spot down in the alley.”

Luna followed me quickly, leaving her corner perch. The roof of the building had a clear view down onto the factory, which was why I’d picked it. If anything had gone wrong, I’d told her to get out. “Did you get a count?”

“You went in with six others. That was it.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“No. Was there?”

“No.”

The alleyway bent through an S shape at the bottom of the fire escape, leaving a corner sheltered from the wind, obscured by machinery and old boxes. It was the kind of place that would make most people afraid of being mugged, but one of the fringe benefits of being a mage is that you don’t have to worry much about that kind of thing. A pair of hot-water pipes ran vertically into the concrete, raising the temperature a few degrees, and I let Luna huddle against them, keeping my distance. There was space for me, but that would mean coming within arm’s reach of Luna. “What was I watching for?” Luna asked.

“No idea,” I said. “You don’t bring backup for the things you know about. You bring backup for the things you
don’t
know about.”

Luna was silent for a moment, rubbing her hands together next to the heating pipes. “I could have watched a lot better if I’d been closer.”

“Luna …”

“I
know
I can’t go inside,” Luna said. “Not that close. But can’t I meet them?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“You said the barghest was inside the factory.”

“I meant the mages.”

That made Luna look up in surprise. “I thought you were working with them?”

“Today?” I said. “Yes. Tomorrow?” I shrugged.

“Seriously?”

I sighed. “Luna, if an order went out tomorrow to bring the two of us in, those guys would be first in line to do it. I might not be on the Council’s hit list anymore but that doesn’t mean they
like
me. I don’t think they’re out to get me. But if it ever became in their interests to get rid of me, I doubt they’d think twice. And every bit of information they have on you makes you an easier target.”

Luna was silent. I hoped she was listening because
I wasn’t exaggerating. Tonight I’d worked with Garrick and Ilmarin and the security men, and we’d done a good, professional job. But if one of those same men tried to threaten or kidnap or even kill me, a week or a month or a year from now, it really wouldn’t surprise me much. “What about Talisid?” Luna said at last.

“He doesn’t know everything that you can do, and the more time you spend with him, the harder it’ll be to keep that secret.”

“I don’t
care
about keeping everything a secret. What’s the point in staying safe if I can’t
do
anything?”

I could hear the frustration in Luna’s voice and was about to reply but stopped. I could have told her she needed to be patient. I could have told her mage society was a dangerous place, and that sometimes the best thing was to stay away from it. I could have told her that her position as my apprentice wouldn’t do much to protect her if things went wrong.

All of those things would have been true, but they wouldn’t have helped. Luna is an adept, not a mage. An adept is like a mage with a much narrower focus; they can use magic, but only in a very specific way. In Luna’s case it’s chance magic, altering the flow of probability. Chance magic can only affect things that are sufficiently random. It can’t win you a chess match or make money appear out of thin air, because there’s nothing for the magic to work on. But it can send a breeze a different way, make someone slip a fraction, cause something to break at a certain point: countless tiny changes that can make the difference between success and failure, danger and safety, life and death. It’s not flashy, but it can be powerful.

Unfortunately for Luna, her magic isn’t a gift; it was laid upon her as a curse, passed down through the generations all the way from one of her ancestors in Sicily. The curse twists bad luck away from Luna and onto everyone nearby. For Luna, it’s like she has a charmed life. She doesn’t get sick, she doesn’t have accidents, and any bit of random ill
fortune will always hit someone else. You’re probably thinking that doesn’t sound like much of a curse, and you’d be right … except that all that bad luck gets intensified and redirected to everyone nearby. To my mage’s sight Luna’s curse looks like a cloud of silvery mist, flowing from Luna’s skin to surround her in a protective cloud. To anyone who comes too close, that mist is poison. Passing within arm’s reach is dangerous, and a touch can be fatal. There’s no way to defend against it, because there’s no way to know what it’ll do—it might be a scraped knee, it might be a heart attack, and you’ll never know until it happens. Luna knows, every minute of every day, that simply by being near anybody she’s making their life worse, and that the best thing she can do for them is to stay as far away as possible.

It adds up to a pretty horrible form of isolation, where every time the bearer lets herself get close to another living thing, something terrible happens. From what I’ve learnt, most victims go insane or kill themselves within a few years. Luna grew up with it. She survived … but not by much. Luna told me once that the reason she started the search that eventually led her to me was because she realised that if she didn’t, there was going to come a day where she simply didn’t care enough to stay alive anymore.

And what all that meant was that warning Luna of the dangers of the mage world wasn’t going to work. Not because she didn’t understand the danger, but because she’d quite coldbloodedly decided a long time ago that any amount of danger was better than the life she’d had. “All right,” I said at last. “Next time, you can come along.”

Luna blinked and looked at me. She didn’t smile but she seemed to
lift
somehow, as if she’d grown a couple of inches. With my mage’s sight, I felt the mist around her ripple and recede slightly. I turned and started walking back towards the main road, and Luna followed at a safe distance.

Somehow, as of a little while ago, Luna’s started to learn
to control her curse. I still don’t know exactly how she managed it, partly because I don’t really understand how her curse works in the first place and partly because it happened in the middle of a rather eventful few days during which I was trying to keep myself from being killed, possessed, or recruited. Since then Luna’s been training to master it, under what guidance I can give her. “Next session is Sunday morning,” I said. “Make sure you’re at Arachne’s for ten.”

Luna nodded. We’d reached the railings where Luna had locked her bike—she can’t take public transport without killing whoever sits next to her, so a bike is about the only way she can get around. Luckily no one had tried to steal it. I watched as Luna unlocked it, but instead of getting on, she hesitated. “Um …”

“What’s up?”

“You’re at the shop tomorrow, right?”

I nodded. “Coming in?”

“Yes. Well … Could I bring someone?”

I blinked at that. “Who?”

“A friend.”

I almost said
but you don’t have any friends
. Even I’m not usually that clumsy, which should tell you how surprised I was. Luna’s company is lethal to anyone who doesn’t know to stay clear. How did … ?

It must have shown on my face, because Luna ducked her head with an expression that didn’t look happy. “I know,” she said at the pavement. “I won’t go near him. I just … he was interested. In your shop. He wanted to see.”

I looked at Luna; she didn’t meet my eyes. Again I wanted to warn her and again I held back. God knows I don’t need to remind Luna of how bad her curse is. But if she was just setting herself up for something worse …

“What’s his name?” I said at last.

Luna looked up with a quick flash of gratitude. “Martin.”

I nodded. “I’ll be in all day. Drop by whenever you like.”

“Thanks!” Luna climbed onto her bicycle. “Bye!”

I watched Luna as she cycled out of sight, checking quickly through the futures to make sure she’d be safe. Her curse protects her from accidents but not from things done on purpose; it wouldn’t stop a gang from deciding to pick on her, though it’d mess them up pretty badly if they were stupid enough to go through with it. But that wouldn’t be much consolation to Luna, so I watched until I was satisfied she’d make it out of Deptford safely before turning to leave myself.

I’d been planning to go home to bed but instead found myself taking the trains past Camden to Hampstead Heath. Once there, I got out and walked, passing Parliament Hill and carrying on, heading deeper into the Heath. Within a few minutes the lights and sounds of the city had been left far behind, and I was alone in the vastness and silence of the park.

Not many people go into Hampstead Heath by night. Partly it’s because of crime, but there’s something else as well, something more primal: the ancient fear of the woods. The Heath is the wildest of London’s parks. During the day it’s easy not to notice, but at night, when the rolling hills blot out the lights of the city to leave the park in utter darkness, when the branches and undergrowth rustle and whisper in the silence, when the forest itself seems to be watching and waiting …