Hidden

Chapter 2

Anne lives in Honor Oak, a mostly forgotten part of South London with an abundance of hills. Pricewise it’s not as expensive as the inner city, but nothing in London is exactly cheap and I was pretty sure the only reason Anne could afford to live there was because Sonder had set her up in Council-owned property. (The Council is not known for its spontaneous generosity but it owns a lot of buildings it doesn’t use, and given the amount of stuff it’s responsible for, a lot gets by under its radar.) Anne’s place is near the top of a hill, by the side of a gateway leading down into a wooded area. It was after working hours, but as I looked ahead I was surprised to see a small crowd.

Anne’s flat was on the first floor of a converted building, and there was a line of people outside her door. As I studied them from a distance I realised that they were queued up (more or less) and waiting to go inside. Now that I thought about it, I remembered Luna had told me something about Anne running a clinic out of her flat. Luna had made it sound small-scale, though. By my count there were a good fifteen people there.

There wasn’t any danger, but it did pose a problem. Anne had never explicitly told me to stay away, but I knew that her current feelings towards me were ambivalent at best. Getting her to talk to me was not going to be easy, and having a crowd waiting outside would more or less guarantee a response of not-now-I’m-busy. No obvious solution presented itself, so I found a nearby spot to observe from.

The people outside Anne’s flat were a mixed bag: male and female, white and Asian, short and tall. The youngest was a babe in arms while the oldest looked to be fifty or so. Most were working class, a smaller fraction were middle class, and there were two or three that I was pretty sure were addicts. The different members of the queue were very obviously uncomfortable with each other, and there was the sort of low-grade tension in the air that you get in job centres and NHS waiting rooms. From within the flat I could just make out Anne’s soft voice, along with the sound of the man she was talking to.

I sat on the landing above Anne’s flat and waited. Twenty minutes passed, then forty. Every now and then Anne would finish with one person and admit a new one, or a new arrival would show up at the back of the queue. The queue seemed to be getting longer rather than shorter, which didn’t bode well for the “wait for her to finish” plan. I toyed with a few ideas to speed things up; the plan involving a smoke bomb and the fire alarm was tempting, but I had the feeling Anne wouldn’t appreciate it. In the absence of anything else to do, I fell back on my short-range eavesdropping to see what Anne was up to; it’s not as reliable as other methods of magical surveillance, but it’s virtually impossible to detect. (Yes, it’s spying. I’m a diviner, it’s what I do.)

Just as Luna had said, Anne was running a clinic, and she was getting a really big variety of patients. Some were what you’d expect, like the woman with flu or the man with backache. Some were odd, like the guy claiming he’d been bitten by his cat. And some were depressing, like the girl who’d cut her wrists and now was afraid someone would see it. Anne asked, gently, why she’d done it. After some probing, the girl revealed it was because her boyfriend had been threatening her. Anne asked if she’d considered leaving; the girl said she couldn’t, she loved him. The conversation more or less hit a dead end from there.

Watching Anne’s technique for treatment was interesting. She hardly used any active magic at all; she’d just do a quick check-over, then recommend a remedy. She’d make a show of doing a physical examination, but I was pretty sure what she was really relying on was her lifesight. It’s one of the signature abilities of life mages, letting them “see” someone’s physiology and the workings of their body just by looking at them, and it makes diagnosis really easy, not to mention being great for spotting people. Lifesight’s probably the weakest spell Anne knows, but in magic, as with many other things, the most powerful techniques aren’t necessarily the most useful. In theory Anne could just cure anybody who walked in, healing their wounds and rebuilding their bodies, but doing so would exhaust her quickly—healing spells consume a lot of physical energy, as well as being really hard to pass off as coincidence. By using her abilities to diagnose people and then recommending a nonmagical treatment, she could help them a lot more efficiently and without any risk of being revealed as a mage. It was a smart way to handle it.

As I kept watching, though, I started to notice something odd in how the patients reacted to Anne. Anne didn’t seem to be charging money, she was attentive and polite to everyone who came through the door, and she was faster and more accurate than any doctor. Her patients ought to have been grateful, and some were . . . but a surprising number weren’t. Many had a kind of entitled attitude; they didn’t seem to acknowledge anything that Anne was doing for them, they just treated it as their due. Others would argue when they didn’t get the diagnosis they wanted. Strangest of all, though, were the ones who seemed weirdly uncomfortable in Anne’s presence. They’d ask for her help but with reluctance, as though even being near her made them uneasy. And it wasn’t just one or two; it was something like every third person through the door.

After I’d been watching for somewhere over an hour, I heard a commotion. A new guy had arrived at the end of the line; apparently he hadn’t been pleased by the length of the queue, because he’d started shoving his way to the front. The people already in the queue—some of whom had been waiting for over an hour—objected. The shouting and swearing grew steadily louder until the new arrival barged into Anne’s flat. I listened to the raised voices for a few seconds before rising to my feet and slipping downstairs past the crowd, homing in on the noise.

The room inside Anne’s flat was sparsely furnished, obviously meant for public access rather than her own use, but there were touches of her personality all the same: green-upholstered chairs, potted plants by the window. Two doors led inwards, both closed. The crowd had spilled a few feet inside but were hanging around the door, apparently unwilling to get any closer.

The reason for their reluctance was standing in the middle of the room, shouting at Anne. He was a big guy, powerfully built with a scarred and shaven head. There was a spider’s web tattooed on the side of his neck, and ACAB was spelt out across the knuckles of his right fist in blue India ink. His speech was a little hard to decipher but he seemed to want something, and Anne was standing right in front of him.

Anne is tall and slim, with black hair and reddish brown eyes. She’s got a quiet way of speaking and moving which tends to make her blend into the background, although it wasn’t working very well this time. Some people seem to find her looks off-putting, though I’ve never really understood why.

Anne is one of the few people I know who could make a legitimate claim to having had a worse childhood than either Luna or me—about five years ago, while she was still in school, she was kidnapped by a Dark mage named Sagash who wanted to mould her into his apprentice. With Variam’s help she managed to get away, but it took most of a year, and Anne’s never told either Luna or me exactly what happened in those nine months. She gave me a quick glance with no sign of surprise as I walked in; she’d seen me coming. “Hi,” I said.

“—can I?” the man was demanding in a loud voice. “I’m what this government’s made me, aren’t I? My dad sent me to reform when I was a kid, and they treated me like a criminal. Well, now they’ve got what they—”

“Need a hand?” I asked.

Anne held a hand up and turned halfway between Tattoo Guy and me, speaking with her soft voice. “Not a good time.”

“I’d go through the public and the police like they were nothing. They wouldn’t know what hit them. They’re vermin, they’re nothing to me. They wouldn’t know what—”

“Do you mind?” I asked the man.

Tattoo Guy glared at me. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Friend of a friend. Sorry, do I know you?”

I watched as the guy’s brain switched gears. It was a slow process, and I saw the possible futures branch out before me. He could bluster, he could back down, he could kick off a fight. I was kind of hoping he’d choose the last one. Tattoo Guy was big and nasty, but my standards of “nasty” are seriously skewed compared to normal people, and as far as serious threats went he didn’t even make it onto my radar. I’d had a stressful day and the prospect of taking it out on someone was more attractive than it should have been.

“Alex!” Anne said.

I gave her a sideways glance. “What’s up?”

“Please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“You know what.” Anne looked slightly frustrated. “I appreciate the help, but I’m fine.”

Tattoo Guy had been looking between us in confusion; now his expression changed to something uglier and I felt the futures shift. With me, Anne, and the crowd in the door all watching him, he would have to be seriously stupid to start something, but stupid and aggressive people are in absolutely no danger of extinction and Tattoo Guy was proving a fine example of the breed. “Hey! I’m fucking talking to you!”

“I’m sorry,” Anne told him. “I don’t keep any drugs here. If you sit down I can—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Tattoo Guy took a step forward, leaning over Anne. He didn’t have much of a height advantage to lean with, but his bulk made up for it. “Don’t bullshit me. They all lied and I fucking made them pay for it, yeah?” He started to take another step forward, and as he did he reached out for Anne. “I—”

As the man’s hand reached out my fingers twitched. I wanted to step in and I could see the sequence of moves with crystal clarity: I’d block his arm, he’d grab me, I’d shrug him off, he’d have all the excuse he needed to swing at me, and I’d have all the excuse I needed to drop him. He might be strong, but I was quicker and better trained and could predict his every move. There was only one way it could end . . .

. . . and Anne had just specifically told me not to do that. Anne knows what I can do, and that was why she’d said don’t. She wasn’t in any danger—up close she’s far more deadly than me. If I stepped in, I wouldn’t be doing it for her sake; I’d be acting out of pride, trying to prove something.

I held my ground. The man grabbed Anne, thick fingers going all the way around her upper arm. “I’m not fucking telling you again.”

Anne held the man’s gaze and all of a sudden she looked subtly different. Most people flinch when they’re grabbed, but Anne didn’t. She stared up at the man without reacting; it didn’t even look as though she was breathing. “I don’t have what you’re looking for,” she said clearly. “Let me go, please.”

I saw the man hesitate. Somewhere in his toxin-fogged brain, the message was probably trying to get through that Anne wasn’t acting very victimlike. But if someone’s dumb enough to start a fight in front of a crowd, then it usually takes clearly overwhelming force to make them back down, and Anne doesn’t look dangerous. He reached for her neck.

Something flickered in Anne’s eyes.

Divination magic can look forward in time, but not back. When someone’s making a choice, then if you’re quick you can get a glimpse of what they’re choosing between. For a fraction of a second, as Anne raised her hand, I saw a spread of possibilities open up, fleeting images jumping out from the branches: a subtle spell, stillness and quiet, a slumping body, someone screaming their lungs out, more talking—wait, back up, what was that last—?

—and gone. Anne’s fingers touched the man’s wrist and green light glowed, there and gone in an instant. The spell was complex, one I hadn’t seen before.

The man staggered and stopped. The aggression went out of his eyes and all of a sudden he just looked confused.

“Please sit down,” Anne said. Her voice was still polite, and the man obeyed, collapsing into one of the chairs as though his limbs were very heavy. Anne turned to me. “I’m a little busy.”

I looked back at Anne—what had I seen for a second there?—then shook it off. Maybe I’d imagined it. “Is this your way of asking me to come back some other day?”

“Yes.” Anne looked at me steadily. “I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”

I paused, then nodded. I left through the crowd, pushing my way past. Behind me, I heard Anne start to shoo them out.

Beside the building that held Anne’s flat was what looked from the outside like allotments or a small park, sealed off behind an iron fence and a locked gate. It wasn’t signposted but my phone labelled it as the Garthorne Road Nature Reserve.

Inside, the reserve was much bigger than it looked from the street, spreading out to either side and forming a long strip of land behind the houses that hid it. A railway cutting ran through the centre, forming a fenced-off valley with forested slopes. I got in over the fence, did a quick scout, then sat at a wooden bench and waited.

Time passed. The sun set and the sky faded from blue to indigo to black, lit from below by the orange glow of the London skyline. I’ve always been drawn to places like this, hidden away behind streets and buildings—I like nature, but I’m an urban person at heart and it’s deep in the city where I feel most comfortable. The nature reserve was very nearly pitch-dark, the streetlights blocked off by trees and houses, and the wind rustled in the leaves in a steady rise and fall. From time to time a train would pass along the railway line, rattle and bang and roar, leaving an eerie quiet in its wake. As I sat still and silent, rustles of movement began to filter through the undergrowth, the reserve’s nocturnal inhabitants growing accustomed to my presence. I saw the quick scuttling movements of rodents, and a hedgehog bustled past only a few feet away. The wind was beginning to blow away the clouds, and stars gleamed down from patches of clear sky.

It was nearly ten o’clock when I heard the sound of someone moving from the direction of the entrance to the reserve, footsteps on grass coming downhill towards me. I could tell the exact moment that I came within Anne’s lifesight, because she stopped. I saw the possibilities branch—would she keep coming, or would she back off?—but just as I knew that she’d seen me, she knew that I’d seen her. The future in which she left winked out, she kept coming, and a moment later I saw a slim shadow against the trees. “Hey,” I said.

“I thought you were going,” Anne said. I couldn’t see her face in the darkness.

“I didn’t say where.”

I heard Anne sigh. “I’m going to have to phrase what I say more carefully, aren’t I?” She paused. “How did you know I’d come here?”

I shrugged. “This place suits you.”

Anne had come to a halt beside an old clay oven. I’d expected her to keep her distance but she started forward, slipping around the edge of the woodpile before sitting on the bench opposite me, curling her feet up to sit cross-legged. We sat for a little while in silence.

“It’s nice here,” I said eventually. I meant it. Despite the railway line and the streets all around, the reserve felt peaceful.

“It’s not mine.”

“You come here often, don’t you?”

“When I can,” Anne said. From across the bench I could just make out her features, dim in the starlight.

There was a pause. “So,” I said. “How’s the clinic going?”

“It’s okay.” Anne sounded tired.

“Are you still working at that supermarket?”

“Yes.” Anne looked up at me. “I don’t think you came to ask about my job.”

“I heard you left the apprentice program.”

“Is that what they’re saying?”

“Not exactly.” I paused, but Anne didn’t fill in the gap. Oh well, tiptoeing around wasn’t working anyway. “They’re saying that you got expelled because you attacked Natasha.”

Anne was silent.

“Is it true?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. Don’t you at least want to give me your side of the story?”

Anne sounded weary. “Why bother?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Did Natasha attack you? Or set you up, or something?”

“No,” Anne said with a sigh. “She just . . . acted like Natasha.”

“So . . . what did you do?”

“Do you really want to know?” Anne looked up at me, meeting my gaze in the darkness. “I triggered all her pain receptors and looped them so that they’d keep firing for a couple of hours.”

I stared. I couldn’t picture Anne doing something like that. Okay, come to think of it I had seen her do something exactly like that—worse, in fact—but . . .

“It doesn’t do any permanent damage,” Anne said when I didn’t answer. She sounded defensive.

“What did she do?”

“Nothing,” Anne said in frustration. “Nothing different. She said something about what I must have done to stay in the program. It wasn’t the worst thing she’s said, it’s probably not even in the top ten, and Natasha isn’t even the worst of them. There wasn’t anything special about it. It was just . . . one last straw. That was all.”

“What were all the other straws?” I said quietly.

Anne let out a long breath. “Do you know how long I’ve been in the program?”

“No.” The first time I’d met Anne had been at Luna’s apprenticeship ceremony, almost two years ago. “Two years?”

“Three and a bit.” Anne looked at me. “Do you know how many days I went to classes and someone didn’t remind me that the Light mages didn’t want me there?”

I shook my head.

“None of them,” Anne said. “They don’t like me. Because I used to be with Sagash. Because I was staying with Jagadev. Because I’m a life mage. Because I was arrested for murder and some of them think I should have been found guilty. If it’s not one reason it’s another, and I’m tired of it. You know the first thing I felt when I found out that I was expelled? It was a relief. Because I wouldn’t have to keep seeing them every day. Back when I joined the apprentice program I thought I was going to be part of the Light mages, that I’d get accepted someday. Then when I had to deal with girls like Tash and Christine I thought they’d get over it, it wouldn’t last, but . . . it never stops. I’m so sick of the way things work in the classes, with the Light mages. I’m tired of the other apprentices whispering behind my back, of how whenever we do pair work the teachers take my partner aside where they think I can’t hear and ask if they’re okay with being paired with me. I’m tired of being shut out, the looks, the jokes. I’m just tired.” Anne fell silent.

“That’s been going on all this time?” I said quietly. I’d known that Anne and Variam weren’t popular, but I’d never known it was this bad.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” Anne said wearily. “And it’s not that bad, not any one day. It just . . . it adds up. Most of the Light mages, the teachers, they’re not horrible. But I’m not one of them. And they never let you forget it.”

I was silent for a moment. “I know what you mean.”

Anne wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t found out myself. The Light mages of the Council are close, an extended family—even when they fight amongst themselves they still basically understand one another. To them, Dark mages are the other, their ancient enemy, and if you’re associated with a Dark mage then you’re always on the outside, never fully trusted. It’s part of the reason I’ve always felt a kinship with Anne and Vari—I know what it’s like to be shut out. “Do you need any help?”

“I don’t want to go back to the apprentice program.”

“You don’t have to.” I chose my words carefully; I was getting onto dangerous ground now. “You could move back in at my shop.”

Anne was silent. “I know you’re settled here,” I said, “but it’s not the safest place long-term. Your flat doesn’t have any wards, and with what happened . . . well, people are going to be sniffing around.”

Anne didn’t look at me. “Did someone tell you to ask me that?” she said at last.

I didn’t want to bring up Luna’s name. “Ah . . .”

“It was Luna, wasn’t it? Was this whole thing her idea?” Anne shook her head. “I asked her not to do this.”

Anne can be scarily good at reading people. “She’s worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m not a wilting flower.” There was an edge in Anne’s voice. “I can take care of myself.”

“That’s what everyone thinks until they find out they can’t.”

Anne turned to look at me. “Is that what you’re here for? To tell me that?”

“I’m telling you that you’re painting a bull’s-eye on your back,” I said. “You and Vari aren’t exactly short of enemies. What do you think they’ll do if they find out that you’re not under anyone’s protection?”

“When I was living with you last summer, I had a bomb go off over my head,” Anne said. “You aren’t exactly the safest person to be around either.”

“You know what I mean!”

“No, I don’t. What do you want?”

“I’m trying to stop you from doing”—something really stupid—“something that might get you killed. Okay, you don’t want to stay in the apprentice program. But if you’re not doing that, then you’re going to have to do something else. Can we at least sit down and go through the options?”

Anne looked back at me for a few seconds before answering. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m tired of spending my life being told what to do,” Anne said. “Sagash, Jagadev, the Light teachers. You.”

“Okay, what?” I said. I was starting to get angry now. “All the time you and Vari were staying with me, I barely asked anything from either of you.”

“No,” Anne said. “You killed five adepts instead.”

What felt like cold water spread through me, and my anger flickered and died. “I know you didn’t do it yourself,” Anne said. “But you were the one who set it up.” She looked at me. “I thought I could trust you.”

“Then what do you think I should have done?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said simply. “All I know is that the longer I spend with mages, the more I get shaped into what they want me to be. And I don’t want to become the kind of person who could do what you did.”

I didn’t meet Anne’s eyes. “Sometimes there aren’t any good choices,” I said at last, my voice quiet in the darkness. “Some things you do because everything else is worse.”

“And then it’s easier the next time,” Anne said. There was something distant in her voice and I looked up sharply, but in the darkness I couldn’t make out her features. It lasted only a second, then she looked aside and her voice was back to normal. “Maybe there’s nothing better. But at least you can make up for it afterwards.”

“And is that what this is? Your clinic?”

“Maybe,” Anne said. “Yes. If you spend your time using your magic to help people, then maybe if you do it long enough it’ll make you into a better person. Won’t it?”

“I . . . guess.” Something about the way Anne was saying that made me uneasy. I felt as though something was missing. “I guess you could make a living out of it if you wanted to.”

“The way those other life mages do? Sell healing to rich people?” Anne shook her head. “I just want to be left alone.”

“And does that include me?”

Anne didn’t answer.

“Do you want me to go away?” I asked. “Is that it?”

Anne was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” she said at last.

Silence fell. I waited a long time, but Anne didn’t speak again. “Fine,” I said, and rose. I began to walk past Anne up the slope, then paused and turned. “But let me tell you something I’ve learnt the hard way. You think you can take care of yourself? Well, you’re probably right. But if you have enough enemies then it doesn’t matter how good you are at taking care of yourself. One apprentice on their own isn’t a hero, they’re a target. If you can beat another mage, then someone who wants to hurt you won’t send one mage, they’ll send three. If you can beat three, they’ll send ten. Maybe if you follow other mages, then you do have to pay a price for it, but they’re not just doing it for themselves. The only kind of safety that lasts involves other people.”

Anne didn’t meet my eyes, and this time I didn’t have anything more to say. I walked away.

I rode the Overground back north, the train rolling through the darkness. Other people crowded the seats, the couples talking and the singles bent over their phones, but I didn’t pay them any attention. When I reached Camden Road I stayed on the train, getting off at Hampstead Heath station instead. The Heath was empty and black and I walked into the darkness of the park, hearing the sounds of voices fade away behind me until I was alone in the night.

Hampstead Heath is the home of a magical creature named Arachne. She’s probably the closest friend and ally that I have, and I often come out here when I’m worried or unhappy about something. Arachne’s very old and very wise, and talking to her usually helps me decide what to do.

But while Arachne might be my friend, she doesn’t just sit in her lair all day waiting for me to drop by. From time to time she disappears, often for several days in a row, and as I looked ahead I saw that this was one of those times. I’ve never figured out where Arachne goes on these trips. Given her appearance, I’m pretty sure it’s not a case of going out for a walk. I suspect it’s got something to do with the tunnels under her lair and what’s in them, but she’s never brought up the subject and I haven’t asked.

The dark and empty Heath was well suited to path-walking, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that Arachne wasn’t home. I should have checked in advance, but between Talisid, Anne, and my father, I’d had a distracting sort of day. I kept going anyway—Arachne might not be at her home, but it’s deserted enough to work pretty well as a meeting place, and looking ahead I saw that while Arachne might not be available, someone else was.

I reached the ravine with the oak tree that hid the entrance to Arachne’s lair, then took out my phone. The touch screen was bright in the darkness, and I tapped a name and put the phone to my ear. “Hey,” I said into the receiver when I got an answer. “You up for a chat? I wanted to talk something over . . . Not that long . . . At Arachne’s . . . Yeah . . . Okay. See you in a bit.” I hung up, leant against the tree, and waited.

For five minutes nothing happened. Then in the air in front of me an orange-red flame kindled and grew, lighting the ravine and the grass in a fiery glow. The light spread, forming a vertical oval six feet high, before its centre darkened to form a window into somewhere far away. I had a brief glimpse of a room, clothes scattered across the floor, then someone was stepping through in front of me. As soon as both his feet were on the ground, the gateway winked shut behind him. An orb of firelight hovered at his side, casting his dark skin in a reddish glow.

“Hey, Vari,” I said with a smile. “Good to see you.”

Variam is small and wiry, quick to move and to speak. He used to go to the same school as Anne, and they both got caught up in some kind of nasty magic-related business involving one of their teachers that I don’t know the details of. Then Anne got kidnapped by Sagash, Variam went to rescue Anne, and the two of them stuck together from that point on, for self-protection as much as anything else. Despite their shared history, they’re less close than you’d think; they might have spent a lot of their lives together, but the more I’ve gotten to know Anne and Variam, the more I’ve come to realise just how different they are.

The major break came last year. At the same time that Anne left to live on her own, Vari got apprenticed to a Council Keeper. He took to it pretty well, after the initial rough patches, but the two of them don’t do everything together the way they once did. “So what’s so important?” Variam asked. “I’ve got an op tomorrow morning.”

“It’s about Anne.”

Variam made a face.

“This is about her getting kicked from the program, isn’t it?” Variam said.

We were in a café near the Heath, a little off Highgate Road, seated on plastic chairs at a two-person table where wisps of steam rose from two untouched cups of tea. A waitress was half asleep at the counter, and weak lights struggled against the darkness outside. “I found out from Luna,” I said. “I went by Anne’s flat this evening.”

“And it didn’t go so well, right?”

“I’m worried about her,” I said. “You guys have got almost as many enemies as I do. Right now you’re protected, she’s not. Any chance she’d listen to you?”

“Tried it,” Variam said with a grimace. “Didn’t work.”

“When?”

“Last month after the Legion first picks. There was a Council sponsorship going, so I tried to get her to apply. She said no.”

I tilted my head. Variam didn’t look happy, and I had the feeling there was more to the story. “That was it?”

“We had a bit of a fight,” Variam said reluctantly. “Haven’t talked since.”

“Hard to imagine you two having a fight.”

Variam snorted. “You never saw us at Jagadev’s.”

“I always thought Anne followed your advice.”

“When she wants to,” Variam said. “When she doesn’t it’s like talking to a bloody rock. She doesn’t even argue, she just sits there and says no.”

Which come to think of it had been how most of my disagreements with her had gone. I drummed my fingers on the table. “Are there any Light types she’d trust? I thought she got on with some of the apprentices.”

“Only the younger ones, and that was before that whole murder charge thing at Fountain Reach.”

“How can they take that seriously?” I was getting frustrated with this—it should be such a simple problem. “They have to know Anne wouldn’t do something like that.”

Variam raised his eyebrows. “Uh, no they don’t.”

“Oh, come on. Why do the Lights and independents have such a problem with Anne, anyway?”

“You mean apart from the obvious?”

“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.