Taken

chapter 4

I woke up very slowly.

I felt awful. My muscles were like water and my head was dizzy. I felt like I’d caught a fever, starved for two weeks, then gotten the worst hangover of my life to top it off. As soon as I realised how bad I felt my first reaction was to try to go back to sleep.

I stayed like that for a while, drifting in and out of consciousness. What finally pushed me awake was realising how hungry I was. I opened my eyes.

It was morning and bright sunlight was streaming through the window. There was something odd about the quiet, and it took me a moment to realise what was missing: the background hum of the city. I wasn’t in London anymore.

I was in a guest room with plain white walls and I was lying in a bed. I was still wearing my clothes but my shoes had been taken off, and looking to one side I could see that the contents of my pockets had been neatly stacked on a bedside table. The room was familiar, as was the sound of the river outside, and a moment later I realised where I was: my safe house in Wales. I just wasn’t sure how I’d got here.

Then I remembered. Anne; the taxi; the battle and the gate. I tried to pull myself up and failed. My muscles were ridiculously weak; I couldn’t even sit upright. My body felt different too, lighter.

Footsteps sounded from the corridor and I looked up to see Anne’s head poking around the door. She vanished and reappeared a second later holding a tray.

Anything I’d been planning to say went right out of my head as soon as I smelt the food. My stomach growled and I realised I wasn’t just hungry, I was ravenous. “Um,” Anne said. “I think you should eat-”

I didn’t quite grab it out of her hands but I came close. The food was oatmeal and fairly bland, not that I cared. Anne went back to the kitchen and got a second bowl, which lasted about as long as the first.

As I was starting on the third bowl I felt the stirrings of a spell and glanced up to see Anne reaching out towards me. As I looked at her she stopped. “May I?”

“As long as it’s not whatever you hit me with last night.”

Anne flinched as if I’d slapped her. I shook my head. “Sorry, didn’t mean it like that. Go ahead.”

Anne placed her hand against my shoulder. A faint green glow, the colour of new leaves in spring, welled up around her hand to soak into me. I could feel it spreading through my body but I couldn’t tell what it was doing.

As I ate I studied Anne out of the corner of my eye. She was wearing a white T-shirt that left her long arms bare, and her skin was a healthy colour again. The bloodstains and bullet holes in the T-shirt were very obvious but she moved without any trace of pain or stiffness. In fact she looked a hell of a lot better than I felt.

I finished up the third bowl. Now that I’d taken the edge off my hunger, it was a little easier to think. Anne was still working her spell through the touch of her hand, and I could feel a faint tingle within my body. “What are you doing?”

“Ah. .” Anne said in her soft voice. “I’m rebuilding your reserves.”

“How?”

“Your body converts food into energy,” Anne said. “I’m. . speeding that up. You’ll feel better soon.”

“Okay,” I said. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but unless my memory’s going you stopped seven bullets with your chest last night while I only got a few bruises. So could you explain why you’re looking the picture of health when I can’t even get out of bed?”

Anne made as if to speak, then went out of the room, coming back with another two bowls. She put them on the table and sat on a chair, not meeting my eyes.

I started on the next bowl. “You’re not very used to talking about this stuff, are you?”

“Sorry.”

“Well, if you want to eat too and don’t fancy oatmeal, there should be something in the kitchen.”

“I don’t think it’s there.”

“It’s in the cupboard under the sink.”

“I know.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I. . already ate it.”

“You can’t have eaten all of it. There was three days’ worth.”

Anne looked embarrassed.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Sorry,” Anne said again.

I looked at Anne’s slim figure in disbelief. “Where do you put it all?”

“I used too much last night.” Anne brushed her hair back, looking down at the floor. “I burnt all my reserves. Muscle and fat. It took. . quite a lot to rebuild them.”

I looked at Anne a moment longer. “You’re a life mage.”

Anne nodded.

“That was how you survived those injuries,” I said. “You were repairing the damage from the bullets.”

“But it’s hard,” Anne said. “When I heal someone else, some of the energy comes from me and some comes from them. When I heal myself I can’t. .” She trailed off.

I stared at her for a second, and then it clicked. “Was that what you did to me? You took energy from my body and used it to keep yourself alive?”

Anne nodded again. She didn’t meet my eyes.

Well, that explained why I felt so terrible. I’d never been life-drained before and I shivered a little as I remembered the feeling. Having the strength drained out of every part of your body at once is a uniquely nasty experience.

Anne still had her eyes downcast, and I realised suddenly that she felt ashamed. “Ah, relax,” I said. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Anne looked up in surprise. “You’re not. .?”

“Well, I feel like crap,” I said. “But all in all, I’d rather feel like crap than have you dead. Be a bit of a waste after I went to all that effort. Just try and take a bit less next time, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Anne said again. “I was-”

“I’m kidding,” I said. “And you can stop worrying, I’m not going to report you to the Council.”

I saw Anne relax a bit. Life-draining is outlawed by the Council-it’s too close to the forbidden technique of Harvesting-and in her position she’d be in serious trouble if accused. “Thank you.”

“So I’m guessing this is why I’m so hungry?”

Anne nodded. “Your body stores short-term and long-term energy. I. . took most of it. You’ve been burning body fat all night.” Anne hesitated. “You, um, might find you’re a bit lighter.”

I lifted the covers and looked down at myself. “Huh. You know, you could make a lot of money in the weight-loss business.”

“Everyone says that.” Anne sounded faintly exasperated. “You’re supposed to have some fat.”

I noticed with mild surprise that I’d eaten the last two bowls of oatmeal without realising it. “You can read bodies, right?”

Anne nodded.

“How am I doing?”

“You’re fine,” Anne said at once. “You’ll need to eat about three times as much as normal for a while but your body will tell you that. Just be careful for a day or two while your energy reserves build up again. But you could get up now if you wanted.”

I suited the action to the word. My legs felt a little wobbly and there was a lingering weakness in my limbs, but I was feeling better and managed to stay on my feet. My phone was on the table, and looking at it I saw that it was past ten. “Ah hell,” I said as I remembered my appointment with Sonder. “I’m supposed to be somewhere.”

“Wait!” Anne said in alarm. “You can’t use a gate stone already. You need to-”

“I’m all right,” I said. “I just need to make a call.”

* * *

Once I was in the corridor and out of sight I took out my phone and saw that I had four missed calls. As I did, I saw that my hand was shaking. I leant against the wall and closed my eyes. It wasn’t the physical drain that was getting to me, not really. I’ve been hurt before and I’m used to it. It was the memory of last night.

Killing with a knife is much more personal than with a gun. A gun is detached, clinical. Aim, squeeze the trigger, see the puff of red. Even looking down at the body afterwards it doesn’t really feel like you did it. A knife is different. You feel the impact as the blade goes in, the warmth of the blood on your hands, the struggles of the man you’re holding. It’s harder to shut out.

I didn’t try. Instead I ran through the events of last night, deliberately replaying the battle in the flat step by step. One after another I thought about the choices I could have taken and the other ways the battle could have ended. I thought about the men killing Anne or killing me and compared that to my memory of stabbing the man in the back. If I had to do it all over again, would I make the same choice?

Yes. I would. As I decided that, the memory loosened a little. It wasn’t any easier, but facing it, understanding it, made it bearable. I stayed there for another few minutes, then once I was calm again I tapped a stored number on my phone.

The phone rang once and was picked up on the second ring. “Alex?”

It was Luna’s voice, anxious and hopeful, and hearing it pulled me the rest of the way back to the world of the living. Suddenly I was awake again. “It’s me.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

I heard Luna sigh in relief. “It’s him, he’s okay,” she called to someone else, then came back to the receiver. “Where have you been?”

“Long story.”

“I called last night and I thought you were just asleep. Then I met Sonder this morning and he hadn’t heard anything either! We’ve been worried sick.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I got held up.”

“Don’t scare me like that. I was afraid you’d been kidnapped again or something.”

“No, I-Wait, what do you mean ‘again’?”

“You know, like with Morden.”

“That happened once.”

“And the time with Belthas.”

“I got caught that time because I was going after you.”

“No you weren’t. Anyway, what about-”

There was the sound of someone else clearing their throat. “Oh, right,” Luna said. “Where are you?”

“Wales.”

“Wales?”

“Wales.”

“Why are you in Wales?”

“Three men tried to kill Anne last night. There was a fight and we evac’d to the safe house. Has anyone come after you or Sonder?”

“Tried to kill-? No, no one’s come after us. Alex, what have you been doing?”

“Good.” The weariness in my limbs wasn’t going away and I realised Anne had been right. I didn’t have the strength to use a gate stone yet. “Listen, I’m going to be laid up for a few hours. I want you to work with Sonder on those reports. Get as familiar with the information as you can.”

“Are you going to be here?”

“No, I’m going to be following up on something else. Have you got any classes today?”

“Just one. It finishes at five.”

“Good. When you’re done go to Arachne’s and ask her to fit you a dress. Ask her to find me something too while you’re at it. I’ll meet you there, but I might be late.”

“You’re finally getting a better wardrobe?”

“No, we’re going to a party.”

“Oh,” Luna said. “Something really dangerous.”

“As long as I don’t have to arm-wrestle you to make you go this time. Now put Sonder on, I need to ask him something.”

“Say please.”

“Just do it.”

“Sonder!” Luna called. “Alex wants to talk to you. He says he’s got a date tonight and wants some advice on what to wear.”

I rolled my eyes. When Luna took the formal oath of apprenticeship, she swore to obey me “without question.” Luna’s way of getting around this has been to follow orders to the letter but add some creative misinterpretation. I heard the clunking of the phone being put down and picked up, then Sonder’s voice. “Um, hello?”

“Ignore Luna,” I said. “Listen, I need you to do me a favour.”

“Oh,” Sonder said. “Okay. Sure.”

“Three assassins tried to kill me and Anne last night in Archway. I’ll send you the address. I need you to look around and find out whatever you can about those men. One’s dead but two got away and I need to find them. There’ll be police lines so it might be difficult to get in, but do what you can.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Do you think there’s a connection?” Sonder said at last. “I mean. . right after you were asked to do the-the other job. It’s a bit of a coincidence.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

“Do you think it’s the same person?”

I frowned. “I don’t know. What I really want to know is what linked them to me.”

“That’s why you want me to find out about those men?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll try. And I’ll take Luna through the files.”

“Thanks. See you tonight.”

* * *

I found Anne in the kitchen washing up. There was a stack of plates on the dish rack, and I could see from the empty cupboard that she hadn’t been exaggerating about how much she’d eaten. I guess every kind of magic has its quirks. I sat at the table, not letting myself show how much of a relief it was to get off my feet-I could feel my strength returning but slower than I was used to. “Okay,” I said. “So who do you know who wants you dead?”

Anne turned to me, face troubled. She was drying her hands with a towel and it would have been a peaceful domestic scene but for the bloodstains on her clothes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve tried to think of anyone but I can’t.”

“Offended any Dark mages lately? Made any new enemies?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about that girl from duelling class?”

Anne looked surprised. “Natasha? She’s just a bit nervous about me and Vari.”

I thought it had seemed a bit more serious than that but kept my feelings to myself. Besides, I couldn’t really see an apprentice sending gunmen. “Well, someone wants to get rid of you,” I said. “And they weren’t kidding around. Those men were no joke.”

“I know,” Anne said. She looked at me. “Thank you. Not just for coming to help. For afterwards.”

I nodded.

“But. .” Anne hesitated. “How did you know?”

“I’m a diviner,” I said. “It’s what I do.”

As I said it, though, something nagged at my memory. When I’d told Sonder about the attack, he’d leapt to the conclusion that it had been aimed at me. It hadn’t been, not directly: Anne had been the gunmen’s target and they hadn’t attacked me until I’d intervened. But maybe Sonder had been on to something. “You know,” I said slowly, “you might not have been the only target last night.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were meant to be the victim.” I looked at Anne. “I was meant to be the suspect.”

Anne looked puzzled, but it fit. If her assassination had gone as planned, I would have been the last mage to see her alive. The Council Keepers would have come asking questions. Everyone knew I’d been responsible for the deaths of two Light mages already. Having yet another vanish so soon after meeting me. .

It probably wouldn’t have been enough to get me arrested, not on its own. But I’ve got enemies on the Council, enemies who’d be more than willing to overlook the holes in the case and maybe fiddle a bit of evidence to help things along. Even if the charge didn’t stick, it would have made it a lot harder for me to go snooping around.

I tried to explain that to Anne in my halting way but didn’t do a good job. “They wouldn’t have blamed you, though, would they?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “It’d be less effort than sending those gunmen.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”

I looked at Anne, watching me seriously out of those odd reddish eyes, and couldn’t help but laugh. But it gave me an idea. “Have you called anyone yet to tell them you’re okay?”

A shadow passed over Anne’s face. “No.”

Now why not? I thought curiously. You obviously thought about it. But you didn’t call Variam and you didn’t call this Lord Jagadev, whoever he is.

What was the story with Anne? There was no way she should still be an apprentice with the amount of power she’d displayed last night. And her lack of fear or panic was telling. She was used to danger, even if she didn’t look it. She was a weird mixture altogether-grave and wary and oddly naive underneath it all.

I wanted to keep asking questions but held back. Some instinct told me that pressing Anne for information now would make her shy away. So instead I helped her with the dishes and wondered if there was anything edible left in the house. As it turned out, there was.

* * *

The building was an old farmhouse at the very end of a Welsh valley. I’d rented it a few months back during one of my more paranoid moments, as a getaway in case someone attacked my London home. As a place to live it’s a joke-it’s fifteen miles from the nearest village, there aren’t any phone lines, and it floods every spring. But if all you want is somewhere to hide, it’s a good deal.

On Anne’s advice I rested for several hours before trying to travel, and I spent the time talking to her. I sensed she was uncomfortable with talking about herself and her powers, so I didn’t ask. Instead I settled for getting the details of how she’d been attacked last night.

It had been done very simply. While on her way to Archway Anne had received a text message, supposedly from Jagadev, directing her to go to a different address and send the car away once she arrived. Anne had obeyed. She’d noticed the men but hadn’t spotted the guns, and as she pressed the button to call the lift they’d shot her in the back.

Anne hadn’t recognised any of the men, and neither had I. They hadn’t been carrying magic, which along with the guns suggested they were normals. But they hadn’t been fazed by my mist effect either, and from the few words they’d exchanged over Anne’s body they’d known getting too close to her could be dangerous, and that made me think they were at least clued in to the magical world. Maybe ex-Council security, or some Dark mage’s private army. Either way, I’d know more once Sonder had had a chance to investigate.

It was two o’clock when we left the house. I locked it behind us, then slid the key under the door-I didn’t need it to get back in. “Are you sure you don’t want to catch a train or something?” Anne asked.

“There are some things I need to get done,” I said, and gave Anne a glance. “Besides, I think you might attract a bit of attention.”

Anne looked embarrassed. She’d gotten the blood off her skin and out of her hair and had even had a try at washing her clothes, but they still looked exactly as you’d expect clothes to look if their wearer had been shot repeatedly in the chest. “I couldn’t find anything else to wear.”

“Yeah, I didn’t stock the place very well.” I started walking towards the river, picking my way through patches of grass. “Let’s get going.”

The end of the valley was cold and had a desolate look. Thistles sprouted between the rocks and grass, patches of nettles grew around the outbuildings, and there were bramble thickets under the bare trees. But the air was clear and the hills rose green around us and the place had its own kind of quiet beauty, even if few would come to see it.

The gate stone I’d used to bring us here had been made out of a rock from the bank of the river I was standing beside now. Gate stones have a lot of drawbacks, but the biggest is that they’re always one-way. They can only take you to a single location, set when you create the stone. So if you want to travel around using gate stones you have to take a selection with you-which means you risk losing them if anything goes wrong.

The gate stone I’d used was keyed to the kitchen of the farmhouse behind us. I’ve also got gate stones for the ravine outside Arachne’s lair, the Great Court of the British Museum, a mountaintop in Scotland, and a fairly random selection of other places, none of which I’d brought with me today. I’d brought the gate stone to my shop, though, and it was this one I took out now. “Ready?” I asked Anne.

Anne nodded and stepped up next to me. She seemed to be watching me closely for some reason but I couldn’t see why, so I shrugged it off and spoke the activation words. Again the air shimmered and formed into a translucent oval, and again it shifted colour to a leaf green as Anne’s fingers closed over mine and she channelled her power into my spell. Anne’s magic worked much more easily with gate stones than mine did, but that wasn’t surprising-even if it can affect only living things, life magic can still change the physical world.

We came down into the little back room of my shop and the air went from winter in Wales to room temperature in London. “Will you be okay making it home on your own?” I asked as I led Anne to the back door.

Anne nodded. “There’s somewhere safe I can go.”

“Good.” I looked at Anne. “Can you do me a favour? Could you stay hidden until tonight?”

“I. . suppose,” Anne said hesitantly. “Why?”

“If I’m right, someone was trying to get rid of both of us,” I said. “If I show up at the party without you, they may think you’re dead after all. Maybe I can get them to tip their hand.”

Anne thought about it, then nodded. “All right.”

We both stood in the doorway, and I realised with a feeling of surprise that I liked this strange girl. “Be careful,” I said.

“I will.” Anne smiled. “See you tonight.”

I watched Anne go, then went inside.

* * *

I had a few hours before I needed to get ready for the party, and I’d already decided what to do with them. I was going to Fountain Reach.

Given that I’d been sure only the previous day that the message pointing me to Fountain Reach had been a trap, you’re probably wondering why I’d changed my mind. It’s a fair question, and to be honest I wasn’t quite sure myself. I just had the vague feeling that I needed to do something, keep searching and looking around. With hindsight, I think the attack on Anne and me had made me suspect someone was moving against us, and I wanted to try to turn something up before they made their next move.

I made my preparations, choosing my equipment more carefully than I had for my hurried departure last night. I kept the gate stone for my shop; it would be useless for getting there but would speed up the journey back. A second gate stone keyed to Fountain Reach would have allowed me to travel back and forth at will, but I didn’t have one. I took another pair of condensers as well as a handful of extra items picked with an eye towards trickery and concealment. Finally I took my mist cloak from my wardrobe. When it comes to stealth my mist cloak is far and away the best item I own, and I’d already decided that stealth was exactly what was needed.

As well as my mist cloak, there’s something else I always used to bring with me on these sort of trips: a thin glass rod, designed to call an air elemental named Starbreeze. Starbreeze is scatterbrained and ridiculously unreliable, and she forgets anything you tell her almost before you’ve said it, but she can turn a person to air and carry them faster than a bullet. If I’d been able to call her, she could have whisked me across the length of England and dropped me next to Fountain Reach in the time it takes most people to check their e-mail.

Unfortunately I don’t have the caller anymore. I blew it up in the autumn getting away from a bunch of enemies, and I haven’t managed to contact Starbreeze since. I worry sometimes that I never will: Starbreeze might wonder eventually why I’m not talking to her and come looking for me to find out, but Starbreeze is immortal. It might take her ten or twenty years to even notice.

So in the absence of gates or elementals, I took the train.

* * *

The directions I’d found placed Crystal’s family home in the Cotswolds, between Oxford and Gloucester. I got off at the nearest station and took a taxi most of the way before walking the final stretch on foot. I crested a rise and found myself looking across a small valley at Fountain Reach.

My first thought was that it was the weirdest-looking house I’d ever seen. Mages like unusual homes and I’ve seen some strange ones in my time, but this was the strangest. It looked as if it had been grown rather than built, extra wings and storeys added on one at a time, each in a different architectural style. The windows were irregular and didn’t match, changing in height and design, and there were too many chimneys and too many gables. The mansion was blockier and more cubical than it should have been, rather than the extended oblong common to most country houses. The inner rooms must have had no natural light at all.

The mansion was isolated, but not terribly so. The hillside cut off the view of the nearby town and rail line but the sounds of activity drifted up through the trees. The slopes were forested and I left the access road to angle upwards through the woods and look down on Fountain Reach from above. The gardens were extensive and looked carefully tended, beautiful flowerbeds mixing with copses of exotic trees. Birds pecked on the lawn, their calls echoing through the leaves, and the winter sun was dipping in the western sky, casting a yellowish light over the scene and giving a perfect view across the countryside below.

It looked about as unsinister a place as could be imagined, enough to make me feel a bit foolish. I half-expected a coach to show up and a bunch of European tourists to go wandering across the lawn with their cameras or something.

But I was here and I might as well do the job I’d come for. I found a good vantage point beneath an ash tree and crouched down, concentrating on the futures of me exploring the mansion below.

The technique is called path-walking, and it was the same one I’d used the night before. Basically, instead of looking forward into your various futures, you isolate just one future and follow it through the choices ahead. I’d tried it during the train journey in an attempt to speed up any search of Fountain Reach but hadn’t had much luck. Hopefully it’d be easier now that I was closer.

To my surprise it wasn’t. I could trace out the futures down to the mansion but as soon as I entered the images became narrowed, fuzzy. I kept trying for ten minutes before giving up with a frown.

I’d seen this effect before. You got it when attempting to use divination magic within an area that had been warded against scrying-heavily warded against scrying. As I focused on the mansion with my mage’s sight I realised that the walls were layered with overlapping shields of magical protection, so thick that from my position I couldn’t see through them at all. They were messy, uneven, but extremely powerful.

Now why would a private residence in the middle of nowhere have such heavy defences?

The obvious answer: because they had something to hide.

I waited for sunset. English winter days are short and it wasn’t even four o’clock before the sun began dipping behind the hills. As soon as the sun vanished the temperature dropped like a rock, but my cloak kept me from more than the odd shiver. I know from experience that it’s actually harder to spot someone in twilight than nighttime-the eye has trouble adjusting from the light sky to the dark ground-so once the sky had faded to blue-grey I set off downhill.

The dark woods were filled with roots and traps for unwary feet but my divination magic guided me safely through. My breath was visible in the cold air and the stars shone down from above, Orion and Sirius glowing brightly in a clear sky. I vaulted the garden wall and stole across the lawn, just one more shadow in the evening gloom.

Fountain Reach was occupied-that had been obvious from the cars and vans-but having watched the place for an hour I was fairly sure that there wasn’t much security and I didn’t pick up any danger as I approached. I reached the back of the mansion and studied the wards.

The more I looked at them, the more puzzled I got. Like the house, the wards had an organic look, as if they’d been grown rather than constructed. The design was massively inefficient but the sheer volume of energy made them formidable all the same. There was a gate ward, of course, and shields against spatial and temporal scrying, but search as I might I couldn’t discover any barrier to physical entry. Which was very strange-why would anyone expend so much energy on making a place impossible to view or gate into but do nothing to stop anyone from just walking in?

The divination ward worried me, though. It’s almost impossible to shut down a diviner’s magic completely but the wards were powerful enough to damp it, and as I looked into the futures of my entering I found that I could see much less further than normal. Futures thirty seconds away were fuzzy, and beyond that they degraded quickly into uselessness. My ability to see into the future is the only major edge I have. Having it even partially suppressed makes me very nervous.

But if I was careful thirty seconds ought to be enough. There were windows all along the ground floor and it took me no time at all to find one that had been left unlatched. I pushed it up and climbed inside, and into Fountain Reach.