Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (109 page)

Anne smiled, but it faded quickly. She looked like she was working her way up to asking something. “What is it?” I said.

“Um . . .” Anne said. “It's just . . . You don't get uncomfortable when I'm near you, do you?”

I looked at her in surprise. “That's a weird question. No, why?”

Anne looked away. “Mages . . . usually don't like it if I'm close to them.”

“Why not?”

“You know . . .” Anne stopped and started again. “People show their feelings in their bodies. The tension, the way they move . . . If they're afraid or uncomfortable I can see it.”

I looked at Anne, puzzled. “Okay.” I had the feeling she was trying to tell me something, but I wasn't sure what.

I heard the sound of the back door from below. “Vari's back,” Anne said before I could check. She got up, taking the plates to the sink. I thought about asking more, but I could already hear Variam running up the stairs and decided to leave it for another time. A second later Variam came in, and by the time we'd sorted out who would get to use the shower first I'd forgotten about it.

chapter
2

A
nne and Variam's appointment was for eleven o'clock; they were seeing a mage who'd been recommended to me as someone who might be able to help out with their finding-a-master problem. After they were gone I went to wash up, found that Anne had done it already, and went downstairs to open the shop.

My day job when I don't have anything life-threatening to deal with is running a business called the Arcana Emporium, the name of which is a long-winded way of saying “magic shop.” I don't publicise that I'm a mage, but I don't exactly hide it either, and one of the odd things I've learnt over the years is just how much you can get away with if you're blatant enough. Hide something behind smoke and mirrors and make people work to find it, and they'll tear the place down looking for what's there. Put up a sign up saying
magic shop
, and no one believes you.

I still don't know where most of my customers come from. I don't advertise and I'm off the main street, so most of it has to be word of mouth. Every now and again I'll Google my shop to see what people are saying about me and I swear I get the
weirdest
results. There are people out there who think I'm everything from a reincarnated angel from the pharaoh dynasties of Egypt to a thousand-year-old half dragon who's secretly sponsoring a quest across time and space in an attempt to kill himself. (No, I don't know why.) I suppose I should be grateful there isn't any slash fiction. On second thought, I'm not going to look too closely just in case there is.

Anyway, the result of all this is that I get a pretty bizarre mix of customers. The biggest group are the tourists and curiosity-shoppers, and they're pretty easy to deal with. They take for granted that magic isn't real, and so for them it's a simple business transaction. I get money, and they get something weird to take home, where they'll tell stories about the funny guy who pretends to sell magic items. Mixed in with the normals are the clued-in—sensitives, adepts, apprentices, and even the odd mage. They're the ones my stock is actually
for
, and they're definitely the only ones who have any idea how to use it. I like talking to these guys.

The problem customers are the ones in between. They know that magic's real, but they expect it to behave like . . . well, like what they mean when they say “like magic.” Now don't get me wrong, magic can do some pretty impressive stuff, but it has limits and it has rules. If you try to mess with it without knowing what you're doing, it's far more likely to complicate your life than it is to help. It's not a universal solution to whatever issues you might currently have.

None of which stops people from coming in here expecting me to fix their problems for them.

* * *

T
he man stepped forward and slapped something down on the counter with a
thump
. Then he glared at me. “Well?”

“Um,” I said.

He pointed. “Do you know what that is?”

I looked at the thing on my counter. It was covered with silver scales, and it smelt. “It's a fish.”

“Do you know where it came from?”

“I'd guess the sea.”

“It was on my chair. That's where it came from.”

“Okay,” I said. “Does this happen often?”

“This is the third time!”

“So . . . you've attracted the attention of a compulsively generous fishmonger?”

“What?” The man stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry. What seems to be the problem?”

“The
problem
,” the man said, speaking slowly and clearly, “is that it's a curse.”

“Ah,” I said. “And you know this because . . . ?”

“My cat told me.”

“Your cat,” I said. “Right. It's all starting to make sense now.”

The man rolled his eyes. “You know what, forget it, I'll do it myself. Where are your spell components?”

I pointed. “Second rack in the corner.”

The man turned and walked off. “Hey,” I called. “Could you take your fish with you, please?”

The next three customers wanted a knife, a selection of herbs, and a crystal ball, respectively. The fourth harangued me at length about why the shop had been closed yesterday even though the sign said that it didn't close until five and did I know how much travelling time I'd cost her? By the time she'd finished threatening to report me to the Office of Fair Trading and stormed off, a queue had grown up behind her.

Luna came in just as I was dealing with customer number . . . something or other, a bearded guy in a worn leather jacket. He smelt of beer and was taking much, much longer than he should to get the message that I was not going to sell him a love potion. “Hi, Alex!” Luna called over the sound of the bell.

“I already told you, there isn't a formula,” I told the man. “If there were, Chanel would be selling it already . . . Where have you been?”

“Duelling class ran late,” Luna said, weaving between the customers. As she moved I saw the invisible silver mist mould itself to her body, clinging in a tight, dense layer on top of her exercise clothes instead of reaching out to the people in the shop. Once upon a time Luna could never have gotten that close to a crowd—she would have stopped at the edge and hesitated—but she's been my apprentice for more than a year and she's done a lot of growing. Not just in magical skill, but in confidence too. “I can use the shower, right?”

“Huh? Yeah, sure.” Luna disappeared into the corridor leading to the stairs up to my flat, and I turned back to the man at the counter. “Look, man, you got to help me,” the man began again.

“Look,” I said. “Even if I could make you a love potion—which, by the way, I can't—have you any idea how unethical this is? You're screwing around with someone's emotions. It's not something you do without a
really
good reason.”

Luna stuck her head back into the shop. “Hey, Alex? Is there supposed to be a fish out here?”

I covered my eyes. “No. There's not.”

“What should I do with it?”

“Look,” the man started again. “You got to help me.”

“No, I don't,” I told him, and turned to Luna. “I don't care. Put it in the freezer or something.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why?”

“Isn't that supposed to spoil the taste?”

“Look, man, I really need this,” the man said.

“I don't care,” I said to both of them, then looked at Luna. “Put it wherever you're supposed to put it.”

“Where's that?”

“How should I know?”

“Well,” Luna said logically, “are we having this for dinner, or is it for something else?”

“I don't care! Just get rid of it!”

Luna disappeared with the fish. “Um, excuse me,” a boy in his twenties said. He'd been waiting behind Love Potion Guy for five minutes, tapping his foot. “Do you have—”

“No,” I said, and turned back to Love Potion Guy. “I can't help you, and I guarantee that if you try to go through with this plan it'll make things worse. Just sort things out the normal way.”

Love Potion Guy stared at me hopelessly. “I can't.”

Mr. Impatient started up again. “Excuse me, I need—”

“I don't have them,” I said.

Luna stuck her head back in. “Hey, Alex?”

“
Now
what?”

“There's about a dozen more fish in your bedroom.”

I closed my eyes. “Please tell me you're making this up.”

“Yup.”

I opened my eyes and stared at her. Luna was grinning. “Couldn't resist, sorry. First fish was real, though. I put it in the fridge.”

I took a deep breath, mentally calculating throwing angles between the items within reach and Luna's head, but she beat a quick retreat. “Listen,” Love Potion Guy began again.

“No,” I said. “You've told me that story twice and a third time's not going to help.”

“I need—” Mr. Impatient began.

“I already told you, I don't have them.”

“You haven't—”

“Doesn't change the fact that this isn't that kind of shop.”

“But—”

“They're real, not fake, and just because I sell knives doesn't mean I sell cards.”

“Look—” Love Potion Guy said.

I looked back and forth between Love Potion Guy and Mr. Impatient, answering the questions without waiting for them to ask them. “No, no, yes, no, it wouldn't help, yes every day, it doesn't matter because I still wouldn't do it, I've already tried that, just try talking to her, first because they're not profitable enough and second because I don't care, if you do it's because they're trying to con you, the Magic Box on the other side of Camden and here's one of their cards.” I dropped a business card into Mr. Impatient's hand and looked between them. They were staring at me. “Are we done here? Because there's a guy behind you who wants to find out how much money he's been left in a will and
he's
not going to take no for an answer either.”

We weren't done. Getting rid of the whole crowd took the best part of an hour, but at least the crazies all left at more or less the same time, possibly because of some weird kind of magnetic principle. By the time Luna came back, the shop was empty. I was slumped in the chair and gave her a glower. “Sorry,” Luna said in an I'm-not-sorry-at-all tone.

“Funny how you always time your jokes for when I'm too busy to go after you.”

“Oh, come on,” Luna said with a grin. “Your face was hilarious.”

“I'm getting a vision,” I said. “It's my mystical diviner's powers. I foresee myself suddenly assigning you many more shifts at the shop.”

“No, you won't,” Luna said with perfect confidence.

“Oh, really?”

“You're not going to make me do it on my own,” Luna said. “The only reason you keep the shop is so you can run the counter yourself.”

I blinked and looked at her. “How do you figure that?”

When I first met Luna she was twenty-one. She's twenty-three now, a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, wavy-haired half-English-half-Italian girl whose life's been trending steadily upwards over the past two years despite occasional interludes of danger and violence. Luna's always been fit, but lately she's turned into quite an athlete—she was introduced to azimuth duelling last winter and took to it like a duck to water, and she's been practising hard ever since. “Well, it's not like you do it for the money,” Luna said. Her hair was damp, the water darkening it from its usual light brown, and as she spoke she started untangling it with the aid of a hairbrush.

“It makes a profit.”

“Not much.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I used to get your stock, remember?” Luna said. Before Luna had been my apprentice she'd worked for me part time, searching for magical items. I'd bought them from her and divided them up; the weaker ones I put up for sale in the restricted section, and the dangerous ones I kept for myself. “You hardly ever sell the expensive stuff.”

“Have you been going through my records?”

“You don't have any proper ones; I checked. Anyway, if you cared that much about it you'd keep regular hours.”

“I have regular hours.”

“Unless something comes up.”

“Stuff
does
keep coming up.”

“But you could hire an assistant,” Luna said. “If you really wanted to dump the work on someone else you could have done it by now.”

“Well, yeah.” For years I've had vague plans for getting someone to help run the place, but I've always put it off. For one thing there aren't many people I'd trust with the job, but even if I
could
find someone I'm not sure I'd do it. The people in the magical community whom I feel closest to aren't the established mages but the have-nots—apprentices, adepts, lesser talents, and all the other small-time practitioners out there—and those are the people that my shop lets me meet.

Luna finished brushing her hair and started tying it back in a ponytail. “So who are Anne and Vari seeing this time?”

“Her name's Dr. Shirland,” I said. “Mind mage. She's an independent.”

“If she's a mind mage, how's she going to teach Anne and Vari?”

“She's not, but she might know someone who will. From what I've heard she's supposed to be some kind of consultant. I'm hoping she can get Anne and Vari an interview with a life or fire mage who could teach them.”

“Oh, like that guy they met in the spring?”

I rolled my eyes. “Let's hope it goes a bit better than that. Last thing we need is another . . .” A future ahead of us caught my attention and I stopped, concentrating.

Luna tilted her head. “What is it?”

“Someone's coming,” I said. The pattern was different from a regular customer; as I focused on the future in which she walked through the door I saw the flicker of auras. “A mage.”

Luna had been sitting on the counter; now she hopped off, suddenly alert. “Trouble?”

“Don't think so.” I was already looking for the flash and chaos of combat and couldn't see it. “Get your focus just in case.”

Luna vanished. I walked forward and flipped the sign in the window from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
before returning to my desk to quickly check the weapons underneath. As Luna reappeared I stood behind the counter and waited. A few seconds later the bell rang and the door swung open.

I'd been watching the woman as she'd walked down the street, and by the time she stepped in I'd had the chance to take a good look at her. She was big and hefty-looking, with brown hair and a round, pleasant face, and she wore a wide-cut suit. “Hi,” she said, looking from Luna to me. “Verus, right?”