Veiled

Chapter 6

I handed Chalice a cup of tea. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

We were up in my living room. Chalice was sitting on the sofa, knees together. I sat in the chair opposite her and put my own cup of tea on the table with a click. The sounds of the Camden night came filtering faintly through the window—shouts and laughter, running footsteps, the thumping of music from over the rooftops—but inside, the room was quiet.

I studied Chalice. Her coat was slung over the sofa along with her scarf, and she was leaning back, apparently relaxed. She wasn’t obviously pretty but she dressed well and held herself with a sort of pleasant confidence. She didn’t look like a Dark mage, or any sort of mage for that matter. She looked like a professional London woman in her late twenties or early thirties.

But she was a Dark mage, and the fact that she didn’t look dangerous just meant that I hadn’t yet figured out how she was dangerous. Being Luna’s master has given me a good basic understanding of chance magic. Chalice would be able to lay curses, protect herself with good luck, arrange for coincidences to happen when they most benefited her . . . and unlike Luna, she’d be in full control of it. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Chalice spoke with a faint Indian accent, but her English was perfect. According to what I’d been able to learn, she’d grown up and trained in India before coming here in her midtwenties. “I had a free weekend, so I thought I’d drop by.”

“Hope you didn’t have to wait long.”

“I didn’t wait at all.”

“Actually, I was out of the shop all day. You rang just as I was getting home.”

Chalice smiled at me. “Just good luck, then.”

“Very.”

Silence fell. From outside, men’s voices echoed down the street, laughing and drunken. Inside, Chalice and I watched each other across the coffee table. If we’d been cats, our tails would have been twitching.

“I like your house,” Chalice said.

“It’s pretty small by mage standards.”

“I know, but the places most mages live are so cut off.” Chalice glanced back at the window; the sound of the boys had faded away to be replaced by the rumbling of a car engine as someone tried to park. “This feels more like the middle of the city. More alive.”

“That’s why I do it. I grew up here in London; I don’t like to be too apart from it.”

Chalice nodded, and I felt the tone shift. Pleasantries were complete. “So I understand you’re looking for a teacher.”

“That’s the idea.” I leant forward, picking up the teacup. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Usually, when a mage is thinking of taking on a new student, the first thing they want to do is talk to the student,” I said. “You wanted to talk to me.”

“Oh, I’d like to talk to your apprentice, too,” Chalice said. “But I thought it would clear the air if I spoke to you first.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“You’re deciding whether you trust me enough to teach her. Yes?”

“That’s pretty accurate,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’m a little curious as to why you approached Luna in the first place.”

“Actually, I’ve been aware of Luna for a while,” Chalice said. “Word got around when you started looking for a teacher. She’s an unusual girl.”

“And how much do you know about her?”

“Her name’s Luna Mancuso and she’s twenty-four years old. She has an Italian father and an English mother, no brothers or sisters, and she was born and went to school in southwest London. She left school at age sixteen and started living away from home shortly afterwards. She became your apprentice at age twenty-two, two and a half years ago, and joined the apprentice program at the same time. She’s at the bottom of her class in magical history and metaphysics, and at the top of her class in duelling. She won the Novice Open in early spring last year, placed third at Greengrove, practices at the Islington gym in her spare time, likes Japanese food, and she’s a Leo.”

I looked at Chalice. “Also,” Chalice continued, “she’s the carrier of a family curse that protects her and harms everyone else. Which makes her an adept, rather than a mage. Which technically means it’s illegal for her to be in the apprentice program.”

“Technically, adepts are defined by being only able to use one spell,” I said. “You just said that her curse protects her and harms others. That’s two effects, not one. Which makes her a mage.”

Chalice smiled. “You sound like a lawyer.”

“I’ve become very familiar with the adept laws in my spare time.”

“Don’t worry,” Chalice said. “That wasn’t a threat. I’m sure that if you had to, you could prove to the Council that Luna’s a mage. Or at least muddle things enough.” Chalice paused. “But you’re still wrong. She isn’t using different spells; she’s using one spell. She’s simply channelling it in different ways.”

“Why are you interested in her, then? If you don’t think she’s a mage—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So what do you think she is?”

“I think where you get your power from is less important than what you do with it. Have you tried teaching her any other spells? Luck control, blessings, slay machine . . . ?”

“We’ve done some practice.”

“Did you get anywhere?”

I hesitated an instant, deciding how much to give away. “No. Directing the curse, focusing it, yes. But we haven’t managed to change that into anything affecting probability more generally.”

“That’s because you’re doing it the wrong way.”

“How do you know?”

“Because of what you just said,” Chalice said. “Probability. Diviners always see it like that.”

“Isn’t that’s exactly what chance magic does?”

“Probability is mathematicians’ language, something separate from you. For a chance mage, it’s not separate. Chance is the air you breathe and the ground under your feet. You can’t set yourself apart.”

I thought about it for a second. I didn’t really follow what she was saying . . . but then, I didn’t need to. “Can you teach Luna?”

Chalice nodded. “I think so.”

I looked at her. “So.”

“So?”

“What’s in it for you?”

“There are a few minor things. I’m curious to see how that apprentice of yours develops. Then there’s the chance to study—”

“How about you just skip to the big one?”

“I want an alliance,” Chalice said. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “Which means your help. If I need information, or a favour of some kind, you give it.”

I looked back at her for a second. “That sounds dangerous.”

“Magic is dangerous. Your apprentice is dangerous. You’re dangerous. From what I understand, you’ve dealt with much worse.”

“That doesn’t mean I do it by choice. Isn’t there anything else you want? Money?”

“You couldn’t offer me enough.”

“Items?”

“More tempting, but I’m afraid I’m not bargaining. I told you my price and I meant it.”

I checked to see what Chalice would do if I said no. Sure enough, every future in which I turned her down led to her walking out. She wasn’t bluffing. “Your price isn’t cheap.”

“Don’t act as though you were expecting to get this for free. Did you think the Light chance mages were going to give lessons away?”

“No, but I wouldn’t jump on that kind of offer from a Light mage either.” I thought for a second. “What kind of help?”

“Right now, there’s nothing I need,” Chalice said. “I expect that’ll change, sooner or later. Most likely, I’ll need your help against other Dark mages.”

“Because that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”

“You’re qualified to deal with it, aren’t you?”

I was silent. “Besides,” Chalice said. “I did say an alliance. You can call on me for help too.”

“Except that you’d expect that to happen less often, since you’re also teaching Luna.”

Chalice shrugged. “It’s only fair.”

“I’m not going to sign any blank cheques,” I said. “There are things—a lot of things—that I won’t do. If you’re expecting me to . . .”

“No blank cheques,” Chalice said. “No oaths of obedience. You can always turn me down. But I want good faith. If I ask you to do something, and it’s something you would be willing to do for an ally, then you should be willing to do it for me. If you say no, and you don’t have a very good reason, then no more lessons.”

We sat in silence for a minute.

“What are you thinking?” Chalice asked.

“I’m thinking . . . it sounds like a fair offer.” I met Chalice’s eyes. “If I trust you.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Chalice tilted her head. “How about I give you a little good-faith gesture? I’ll help you out with your current problem. Then if it checks out, maybe you’ll be a little better disposed for the next time.”

“How are you going to help me?”

Chalice smiled. “You’ve never worked with a real chance mage before, have you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“If you had, you wouldn’t have that tone of voice.” Chalice extended her hand. “For this trick, I’ll need a pen and paper.”

I looked back at her for a second, then walked over to the desk to get them. “Want a top hat too?” I said as I put them on the coffee table.

“Is this one of your British humour things?” Chalice pushed the pen and notepad over to me. “Now, are there any things you’re looking for at the moment? People, places, items?”

“You could say that.”

“Think about them and draw something.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What kind of something?”

“Whatever you like.”

I shrugged and decided to play along, taking the biro and beginning to draw. I’ve never been much of a sketch artist, but I’m good with patterns. I let the pen move across the paper as I thought about what I was looking for right now. Straightaway my mind went to the case with Caldera. Xiaofan’s three owners, and where they were now. The boy Caldera had seen on the camera footage. The assassin who’d wounded me, and who was still out there . . .

“Done?” Chalice asked.

“More or less.” I studied what I’d drawn for a moment—it looked like a sea, the shapes of creatures beneath the surface, with a sky above. Geometric shapes formed a border over the water.

“Now give it to me.”

I handed Chalice the notepad. She glanced at the picture, took up the pen and scribbled something on it, then stood up and reached for her coat. “There you go.”

“Wait, what?”

Chalice put her coat on, flipped her hair out, and began winding her scarf around her neck. “You were looking for something, weren’t you? That’s where you need to go.”

I looked at the pad. A two-digit number was written on top of the picture, followed by what looked like a street name and postcode. “An address?”

“Looks that way.”

“What’s there?”

Chalice finished with her scarf, then gave me a smile. “How should I know? You’re the one who picked it.” She walked to the door. “Send me a message once you’ve made up your mind. I’ll let myself out.” She disappeared down the stairs.

I stared after Chalice, listening to her go. When her footsteps faded away, I switched to the future in which I followed her, tracking her movements. She crossed the shop floor and let herself out into the street, shutting the door behind her, before walking away down the street.

So that was Luna’s potential teacher. I tried to figure out how I felt about her, and didn’t come up with any definite answers. She wasn’t telling me everything . . . on the other hand, I hadn’t been telling her everything, and it’s not like I’d expected more at a first meeting. I still didn’t completely trust her, but I didn’t know whether that was just natural suspicion.

I did know that I wasn’t a hundred percent comfortable with leaving Luna in her hands.

But Luna wasn’t a child anymore. I had a responsibility to protect her, but not to overprotect her. This was a decision I should be making with her.

I looked down at the pad Chalice had written on. She’d taken two of the lines I’d sketched, and turned them into the numbers of the street address, 34. If I squinted a bit and looked sideways, those lines I’d drawn did kind of look like a 3 and a 4.

That didn’t make any sense. I’d just been sketching. How could she turn that into an address that I didn’t even know?

But hadn’t that been exactly what Chalice had been getting at? That chance magic didn’t work by the same logic as divination? Maybe that was why I’d never managed to make any real breakthroughs with Luna . . .

I shook my head and stood up. No point thinking in circles. I walked to my computer, typed in the postcode, and hit Search.

A map result came up of a district in west London. The postcode was UB8, out in Uxbridge. I switched from map to satellite view and saw nothing but a street full of houses. I wanted to path-walk and see what I’d find, but I didn’t have an unobstructed route. If I could gate to that location it would have been easy, but I didn’t have a gate stone that went anywhere near. That just left car or train, and the cumulative uncertainty of that kind of transport would cut off any path-walking before I’d covered a fraction of the distance.

But I had time to spare, and my divination magic to warn me of danger, and Chalice’s visit had left me wide awake. The sounds of the Camden night were all around me, life and noise and activity, and I felt full of energy. Nothing makes me more curious than a mystery. I wanted to go and see what was there.

I grabbed my coat off the hanger . . .

. . . and . . .

. . . wait a minute. This was exactly what I’d done last night. I’d gone rushing off on my own to investigate, without my armour and without backup. It hadn’t turned out well.

Maybe I ought to do this the smart way. I laid my armour out on the bed, then started making phone calls.

I took the tube out west to Hillingdon, then caught a bus for the last leg. I think I’m possibly the only mage in London who uses public transport on a regular basis. Most use gate magic or get a bound creature to ferry them around, and the ones who don’t either get chauffeured or drive a car. Part of it’s paranoia—I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with taking cabs, and while the tube can be crowded and slow, being several hundred feet beneath the surface of the earth makes it much harder for someone to pull an assassination attempt in the middle of your commute. But if I’m being honest, the real reason’s something else. When you’re a mage, you live in a different world from normal people. Your lifestyle is different, your problems are different, you have a new set of hopes and fears and worries. And the longer you spend in magical society, the further away you get. If you put a sixty-year-old master mage in the same room as a twenty-year-old college student, they can’t hold a conversation with each other. Their lives are so far removed that they don’t have enough points of similarity to be able to meaningfully communicate.

Something about that bothers me. I’d have trouble putting my finger on exactly what it is, but I don’t like the idea of ending up like that. So I take public transport and go shopping in Sainsbury’s and skim the news on the internet. It’s part of the reason I run my shop too. I don’t know if it really accomplishes anything, but I do it all the same.

The address Chalice had given me was just off Uxbridge Road. I walked down the side streets, hearing the rush and noise of the main road fade away behind me. The sky had cleared a little, and a half moon shone down brightly through patches in the clouds. Stars twinkled above and to the east; we were far enough away from the centre of London that the constellations were a little easier to see. I came to a halt one street away and scanned ahead.

The address was a house, small and cheaply built, with a concrete drive for parking at the front. Red-brown peaked roof, two floors with no basement, square windows looking out onto a curving street. It was the kind of house you find all around the suburbs of London, duplicated a hundred times in this street and ten thousand times in this borough. More streets like this one wound away to the east and west, with a small park to the north. There were no real landmarks; a couple of small tower blocks rose up a mile away, but for the most part the area was flat and unremarkable.

In a way, places like this are the real London. When most people think of my city, they think of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street, the parks around Buckingham Palace, and all the other tourist spots that show up on TV and in the movies. But if you marked all those places on a map, you’d find you’d dotted only a tiny little patch in the middle of a vast sprawl. London is huge, and most of it isn’t tall historic buildings; it’s streets like the one I was standing in now, row after row of suburban houses that all look pretty much the same. For most Londoners, these are the places that matter—the school around the corner where they spent their childhood, the council estate where their friends live, the high street where they go to work. The landmarks at the centre of London are where people go to visit, but streets like this are where they live.

I sensed Caldera coming a long time before I saw her; like me, she’d made the last part of the journey on foot, though she’d probably used a gate to shortcut the journey. I waited on the pavement for her to approach.

Caldera turned the corner onto my road, walked up, and looked at what I was wearing. “Expecting trouble?”

“Let’s just say I wanted to be prepared this time.” My armour is a full-body suit of coal-black mesh, moulded plates covering vital areas. It doesn’t exactly look like most people’s idea of what armour’s supposed to look like, but it sure as hell doesn’t look normal either.

“So,” Caldera said. “If you’re out in the open, I’m guessing we’re not in danger.”

“Not yet,” I said, and pointed around the corner. “Though if we go in there that might change a bit.”

“What’s inside?”

“First off, the house is warded,” I said. “Subtle, but it’s there. No attack spells or barriers to entry, but scrying spells won’t work and you can’t gate in or out. Standard privacy wards. Also, there’s someone inside.” I’d had plenty of time to explore the futures in which I broke in, and while they’d been chaotic, it hadn’t been hard to notice a pattern. “A kid, and he’s aggressive. If we just smash the door down and go charging in, he’s going to attack us.”

“With what?”

“A knife.”

Caldera shrugged.

“Yeah, I know, not exactly a threat to you. I think it’s a panic attack, not something calculated. He’s scared, and if he’s cornered, he’s going to fight.”

“Can we talk him down?”

“Not sure. But I don’t think he can hurt you, so it’s not like we lose anything for trying.”

Caldera nodded. “Okay, let’s do it. Stay behind me.”

We turned the corner and walked down the street, passing a scattering of parked cars. Out of habit, my eyes went left and right, checking the terrain. Electrical substation on the corner, leading to a small park and a council estate. Not much cover apart from that—nothing but rows of houses. Number 34 was a detached house with no car in the driveway and no lights in the windows. Streetlights cast it in a dim orange glow. Caldera walked up to the door and knocked.

Silence.

Caldera knocked again.

“He’s not going to answer,” I said.

Caldera looked at the route around to the back of the building. “He going to do a runner?”

I shook my head.

“All right.” Caldera took out a focus and channelled her magic into it. I watched with interest. After a second, the door rattled open and I followed Caldera in.

The inside of the house was dark and silent. I tapped Caldera on the shoulder and pointed upstairs. She nodded and we climbed to the top floor. The stairwell was cramped, a little too low for me and a little too narrow for Caldera.

There were three rooms on the top floor, and the house’s other occupant was hidden behind the middle one. I started to signal to Caldera but she was already moving in that direction; she’d probably sensed him through vibration. “Hello?” Caldera said, stopping in the doorway. “Anybody there?”

Silence.

“I’m Keeper Caldera of the Order of the Star. I’m with the Council. I’m not going to hurt you or arrest you. I just want to talk.”

More silence.

“Look, I know you’re in there. You don’t have to come out if you don’t want to. How about you tell me your name?”

The futures shifted, started building. “He’s going to make a break,” I murmured.

“Okay, how about you tell me what you’d like to do?” Caldera said. I saw her shift position slightly. Through the open doorway I could see a desk and the window. The boy was just on the other side of the door, only a few feet away. “We can just stay here if you want. You can—”

A shape bolted for the window, trying to pull it open. Caldera was on him in two strides. The shape turned on her, there was the flash of light off a blade, then they were struggling. I held back: if I went in, I’d only be in Caldera’s way. I heard a thud, fast breathing, then a clank and a pause. More struggling. Silence.

Caldera spoke. “Get the light.”

I flipped the switch. Yellow light flooded the room and I shielded my eyes.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw that Caldera was holding on to a boy dressed in ragged jeans and a sweater. He was young, no more than ten or eleven, and small and thin to the point of looking actively malnourished. His chest rose and fell with rapid breathing, and his eyes flicked back and forth, trapped. A knife lay on the carpet in front of him; I stepped forward and picked it up.

“Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you,” Caldera said. She was holding the boy by his wrists, and compared to him she looked like a giant. Even without her magic, she could probably have picked him up one-handed. “If I let you go, you going to stop trying to stab me?”

A pause, then the boy nodded.

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Yeah,” the boy said in a high voice.

“You going to tell me your name?”

“. . . Leo.”

Caldera let the boy go. He stepped back, watching us silently, rubbing his wrists. Futures in which he made another dash for it flickered and disappeared. Caldera pointed to the bed. “Sit down.”

It was an order, not a request, and the boy sat instantly. “There anyone else around?” Caldera asked.

The boy shook his head.

“You hurt? Hungry?”

Another head shake. He was watching the two of us very closely.

“Go check out the house,” Caldera told me.

I nodded and left the room. Behind me, I heard Caldera start questioning the kid.

The house was small: an open-plan living room and kitchen on the ground floor, a bedroom, spare room, and bathroom upstairs. There were basic furnishings, but no posters or paintings on the walls and no books or DVDs on the shelves. I hadn’t seen any personal items in the bedroom either. It was the sort of look a house has if it’s just been rented or sold.

I took a closer look at the knife I’d taken from the boy. Kitchen knife, black-handled. No blood on the blade. I opened one of the kitchen drawers and . . . yep, this was where it had come from. The kid had taken the knife upstairs. What had he been scared of?

Checking the cupboards, I found canned and long-life food. Judging by the date stamps, all had been here for some time. I used my magesight to study the wards and found a similar story. This place hadn’t been used in a while.

I went back upstairs to find Caldera and the boy talking quietly. To my surprise, Caldera wasn’t pressuring the kid—she was firm, but her voice was gentler than usual and she wasn’t pushing him too hard. I guess after seeing how Caldera had dealt with Anne and Xiaofan, I’d been expecting her to play the threatening cop, but she wasn’t, and the kid seemed to be responding. “No,” he said. “No one.”

“No family you could go to?” Caldera asked.

Leo shook his head.

“You were at Pudding Mill Lane station two nights ago, weren’t you?” Caldera asked.

Leo hesitated, then nodded.

“Did you go there alone?”

Another nod.

“What happened when you got there?”

Leo’s eyes flickered from me to Caldera. He hunched his shoulders. He’s scared, I thought. Scared of what?

“It’s all right,” Caldera said, and her voice was reassuring. “I’m not going to get angry.”

Leo didn’t answer. Caldera kept trying to talk to him, and I searched through the futures, trying different lines of questioning. Most petered out in silence, others led to nothing. One approach caught my attention. “Leo?” I said. “Where did you stay before?”

Caldera shot me a warning look. “At Phil’s,” Leo said.

“But that was connected to a group, wasn’t it?” I said. “An organisation. What’s their name?”

Leo was silent. “It’s okay,” Caldera said. “You can tell him.”

Leo looked down at the floor. “White Rose.”

I felt Caldera go still. Leo didn’t meet our eyes. “You mean the ones here in London?” Caldera asked. “Around Leicester Square?”

Leo nodded.

Caldera got to her feet. “I’ll be back in a second, okay?”

“How did—?” I started to ask Leo.

Caldera walked past me, grabbed my arm, and towed me out the door. “Come with me a sec.”

Once we were out in the hall, Caldera let go. “You could have asked,” I said. She hadn’t been trying to crush me, but my arm still hurt. Earth and force mages tend to forget their own strength.

“We might be in over our head,” Caldera said quietly.

I blinked at that. “Wait. Who are these White Rose people?”

“Independent group based out of London,” Caldera said. “Did you check this place out?”

“I think it’s a safe house. Supplies, gate wards, shroud wards. No one lives here.”

Caldera frowned. “That woman, the one you said divined this address. She tell anyone else?”

“She didn’t divine it—” I saw Caldera’s expression and decided this wasn’t the time to get into technicalities. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Caldera shook her head. “I’m calling for backup.”

“Wait.” I caught Caldera’s shoulder as she started to move past. “Why? Who are these guys?”

“They’re a brothel.”

“You’re scared of a brothel?”

“I’m not scared of them, and if you knew more you wouldn’t be arguing. These people are bad news.”

I looked towards the room where we’d left Leo. He hadn’t moved. “So he’s . . .”

“The kid’s a sex slave.”

I stared at Caldera. “How did—?”

“If he’s with White Rose, that’s what they use him for,” Caldera said. “Look at the way he sits and the way he answers. He’s used to adults telling him to do a lot worse than that.”

I looked towards the room again. Now that Caldera had said it, it fit in an unpleasant way. “I didn’t spot that,” I admitted.

“You run a shop,” Caldera said. “If you were an expert on sexually abused ten-year-olds I’d be a bit worried.” She shook her head. “But I’m not an expert either. I’ll try and get someone from the psych unit.”

“I don’t like this.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“Not just that.” I gestured around to the house. “This. The kid’s been here for two days. Okay, what you said, if he’s a slave . . . why hasn’t someone from White Rose come to get their property back?”

“It’s warded. They can’t find him.”

I was silent. “What’s getting to you?” Caldera said.

“Something about this feels wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“I don’t know. Just . . . out of place. Do you ever get the feeling you’re being set up?”

“You looked for danger?”

“As far as I could. Nothing I could see.”

Caldera didn’t answer. “You think I’m being paranoid?” I asked.

“No, I was getting the same feeling.”

I looked at her in surprise. “If you got this address, other people might have got it, too,” Caldera said. “Besides . . . it’s White Rose. There is a lot of shit going on with that group. I’ll feel a lot better when we have some support.”

I nodded. “I’ll watch him. You make the call.”

Caldera disappeared downstairs and I heard her start talking into her communicator. I hesitated, glancing through the futures again, but with Caldera talking they were too unpredictable to search far ahead. That’s the problem with divination—it doesn’t handle free will well. If I’m on my own somewhere deserted, I can look ahead hours, maybe even a day or more. But when you have people talking to each other, making decisions, then the futures keep changing and fuzzing, like clouds in a strong wind. You can see the shape, but they change so quickly.

I went back into the bedroom. Leo was still sitting there, tense. He hadn’t relaxed, and now that I knew what to look for, I could see the signs. His expression was blank, but his eyes didn’t move away from me, always watching. He was looking for any signs of a change in my mood. I wanted him to trust me, but I knew that would be almost impossible. The best I could hope would be that he would answer my questions.

“You remember two nights ago?” I said, sitting down. “When you went to the station at Pudding Mill Lane?”

Nod.

“You had something with you, didn’t you?” I said. I was careful to make my voice normal, unthreatening. “A little green marble.”

Leo hesitated, but I already knew the answer was yes. It’s one of the tricks of divination: by looking ahead to catch glimpses of replies, you can see all the possible answers that someone might give. Very revealing when someone’s deciding whether to lie. More experienced mages know to guard their reactions, making it harder, but Leo was too young. “Yeah.”

I looked to see what would be the best path to take. I wanted to find out who’d given him the focus, but that line of questioning would make him freeze up. I’d have to go the other way. “Were you supposed to take it to someone? Give it to someone?”

Another nod.

“Who were you supposed to give it to?”

“Dunno.”

“But you know what he looks like,” I said. I was trying to sound reassuring, though I wasn’t sure how good a job I was doing at it. I wished Anne were here—she’s good with kids. “Don’t you?”

Another nod, this one reluctant.

“Could you describe him to me?”

“I dunno.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Caldera walked back in. “They’re on their way,” she said. “Should only be a few minutes.”

I nodded and turned back to Leo. “But it was a man?”

Leo nodded.

“Tall? Short?”

I kept asking, drawing information out piece by piece. Leo answered reluctantly, but he still answered—he was probably afraid of what we’d do if he said no. I didn’t much like that, but it didn’t seem the time to push it. The person Leo had met at Pudding Mill Lane had been a mage. Male, brown hair, tallish but not too tall, suit, light skin . . . “How old was he?” I asked.

“Old.”

“Forty? Fifty?”

“Twenty-five or something.”

Caldera didn’t smile. She pulled out her phone, tapped at the screen, then held it out to him. “Was this the guy?”

I looked at Caldera curiously. There was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before, and Leo seemed to sense it. He shrank back. “I dunno.”

“Leo,” Caldera said. “I need you to look at this picture. Was this the man you saw on Thursday night?”

Unwillingly, Leo looked at the phone, stared at it for a few seconds, then nodded.

Caldera didn’t take her eyes off Leo. “Are you sure?”

“I guess.”

Caldera swore under her breath and got to her feet. “Find out what happened at the station. Fast. I need to call this in.” She disappeared downstairs again.

I frowned after her. What was that about? “So you took the green marble to Pudding Mill Lane,” I said to Leo. “And you met that man there.”

Nod.

“Were you supposed to give it to him?”

“I guess.”

“You were supposed to give it to him, if . . . ?”

“If he said the right thing.”

Code phrase, I thought. Leo was getting uncomfortable again. The subject he didn’t want to talk about seemed to be the person who’d sent him to the station. I was getting the strong feeling that was who he was scared of. “What happened at the station?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“We know it’s not your fault.”

“They’ll say it was.” I realised suddenly that Leo was trembling. He wasn’t scared—he was terrified. “I was supposed to give it to the man in the suit.”

I tried different lines of questioning. Not that one, not that one . . . ah. “But someone else came,” I said. “A man with a beard, wearing sunglasses.”

Leo nodded.

“And there was a fight, so you ran away.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“I know.” So Leo had been there to meet the mage at the station when Chamois had attacked. “Did you see anyone get hurt?”

Leo shook his head. He’s leaving something out . . . “There was something you were supposed to do,” I said. “Wasn’t there?”

Leo nodded.

Say something? No. Take something? “Was the man in the suit supposed to give you something, too?”

“I was supposed to take it back,” Leo said. He’d started trembling again.

“It’s not your fault,” I said again. “You did what you could.”

“He was supposed to give me another one back,” Leo said. He hunched up defensively. “She’s going to be . . .”

“She’s going to be what?” I kept my voice calm. I was right on the edge of getting him to talk. I tried out different routes through the futures, probing delicately. I just needed to find the right thing to say.

There was a clumping from the stairs and Caldera appeared again. “We might have to move him.”

I didn’t take my eyes off Leo. “Can this wait a sec?”

“Leo,” Caldera said. “Who sent you to Pudding Mill Lane? Can you tell us?”

Leo looked back at Caldera with wide eyes and hunched over on the bed. All the futures in which he spoke to us vanished.

I sighed and got up. “Let’s talk outside.”

We went back into the hall. “Wrong question to ask,” I said once we were out of earshot.

“Priorities just changed,” Caldera said. “That guy in the picture? That was Rayfield.”

“Who?”

“You remember the guy Haken and the others were looking for? Nirvathis’s apprentice? That guy.” Caldera shook her head. “This is getting too big too fast. I’m trying to get the station but I can’t raise them. If the guys don’t show up we might have to take him there ourselves.”

“If they’re coming here we— Wait. You can’t raise them?”

“Com disc’s dead.”

I frowned. “Just now?”

“What did you manage to get out of him?”

“Leo? Uh . . . yeah, he saw Chamois. That was why he ran . . .” Something was bugging me. “Wait. Your communicator focus isn’t working?”

“Yeah, let me try it again.” Caldera pulled out a serrated blue-purple disc and focused on it. The design was similar to mine, though slightly more streamlined.

I waited. Thirty seconds went by, a minute. “Anything?”

“Worthless piece of crap,” Caldera muttered. “‘Work every time,’ my arse. We could just use radios but no, they’re not secure enough . . .”

Something was nagging at me. “Those things have a locator beacon, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You activated it?”

“Yes,” Caldera said shortly.

“Should they be here by now?”

“Yes.” Caldera shot me an annoyed glance. “I’m going to try out back. Wards must be screwing with the signal.” She started down the steps.

I frowned, watching her go down. I’m not an expert on defensive wards, but I’d had a close look at the ones on this house, and as far as I could tell they were low-power and basic. They shouldn’t block communication—definitely not something as advanced as a synchronous focus. Anyway, hadn’t Caldera used that same focus to call for backup just a little while ago? Why should the wards suddenly start blocking it now?

Something was wrong. Caldera was heading for the back door. I looked ahead, searching for danger.

And froze. Something was about to . . .

. . . oh, shit.

“Caldera!” I shouted down the stairs. “Get up here NOW!” Then I ran for the bedroom.

Leo looked up as I burst in, then as I reached for him he flinched and shielded his head. I grabbed his wrist and hauled him off the bed before pulling the wardrobe door open and shoving Leo inside. Coat hangers bounced off his forehead but he was small enough to duck under the clothes rail and I slammed the door, shutting him inside.

The window burst inward in a spray of glass and something sleek and deadly hit the bed right where Leo had been sitting. Its momentum sent it to the floor, and as it landed it turned its head towards me.