Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (124 page)

By the time we made it up to the second floor Caldera was staggering and I knew we wouldn't make it out of the mansion in time. I made a snap decision and pulled a door open. “In!” Once they were inside I slammed it behind us.

Sonder looked around, dismayed. We were in a bedroom, old and neglected, the bed covered in dust and the light dim through the grimy windows, and I realised that it was my old room. I hadn't been intending to pick it but my feet had remembered the way. “There's no way out!”

“You'll have to gate us from here,” I told Caldera.

Caldera looked around and I knew what she was thinking. Gating is one of the more general elemental spells, but also one of the most dangerous; it works by creating a similarity between two points in space and to do it reliably you have to be very familiar with both the place you're leaving and the place you're going to. Caldera had studied the copse of trees on her last visit here; that was why she'd gated us there and not directly inside. She hadn't studied this room. Gating from here would be risky.

On the other hand, trying to make the run out of the mansion with a bunch of homicidal adepts on our tail would be a lot
more
risky. I felt the futures fall into line as Caldera made her decision, and she began the spell. “Cover me,” she ordered.

I could hear the battle going on downstairs, and I didn't know how much time we had. Nocturnes are semi-insubstantial and shooting them just draws their attention, but they can still be burnt and they're still alive. If Will's group could get organised—and unfortunately for me, they seemed to be pretty good at getting organised—then they'd be able to banish it. “I've got a forcewall,” I told Sonder, nodding at the door.

“I can do better than that,” Sonder said, and raised his hand towards the door. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the area around the door seemed to twist and warp before suddenly reflecting our images back at us. Where the door had been was a mirrored sphere, radiating from the wall. I could feel the time magic in the effect but it wasn't a spell I'd ever seen before. “What is it?” I said.

“Stasis,” Sonder said, not taking his eyes off the sphere.

I raised my eyebrows. Even slowing someone down as Sonder had done a minute ago isn't easy, and a temporal stasis is supposed to be even tougher. Sonder had gotten a lot better over the past year. From below I felt a flare of life magic, the draining, tugging sensation of Ja-Ja's spell, and there was a whining, rasping sound just on the edge of hearing that made both me and Sonder flinch. The stasis flickered briefly, then strengthened. “I think the nocturne just lost,” I said. “Caldera?”

“Working on it,” Caldera said.

Sonder and I glanced at each other, then Sonder focused again on his stasis and I started calculating probabilities. I couldn't see any future in which the adepts got through the stasis . . . yet. I also wasn't sure how long it would take Caldera to pull off the gate, or whether she could manage it at all. From the stairs I heard running footsteps. They paused briefly in the corridor, then started towards us. “Caldera?” I said again.

“I'm working on it!”

The footsteps halted. The stasis was muffling the sounds, but I was pretty sure they were on the other side. I wondered what would happen if they opened the door into the spell. I couldn't see the answer from my angle; in all of the futures I could see, the stasis remained as it was, smooth and unbroken. I heard a distant banging sound.

Then from behind I felt the catch as the gate spell took, and the portal opened behind us. Looking around, I saw the brown-rimmed oval hanging in the air, and through it someone's living room. “Move!” Caldera shouted.

I didn't argue, jumping through and landing on carpet. Caldera followed and Sonder came last, backing through the gate, still holding his focus on the stasis spell. The instant he was through, Caldera let the gate collapse and I had one last glimpse of my old bedroom before the gate winked out and was gone.

We were in the living room of what looked like a flat, an old sofa and armchairs surrounding a messy coffee table piled with books and letters. Dirty glasses and tea mugs were scattered around the papers, and one shelf was filled with bottles of spirits. It was a comfortable sort of untidy, the kind of room where it's easy to fall asleep on the sofa. Through the window I could see London houses: we were on the second floor. I checked and rechecked the futures and confirmed that we were safe. No one was following us . . . at least not soon.

“What the hell was that?” Caldera said.

I turned to see that Caldera was glaring at me. “What?”

“How long have you known that Will and his Nightstalkers have been trying to kill you?”

“Since the last couple of times they tried.”

“And you didn't tell me?”

“No.”

Caldera grabbed at me, trying to shove me up against the wall. It caught me by surprise and Sonder jumped back wide-eyed, but Caldera wasn't fast enough to catch me, at least not wounded as she was. I knocked her hand away and she stumbled past. “What were you expecting?” I snapped. “I met you three days ago and you're a Keeper. You think I'm going to tell you everything?”

Caldera rounded on me. “You put us in danger! You nearly got us killed!”

“And
you
led us in there! Which part of ‘going into Richard's mansion is fucking insane' did you not follow, Caldera? Was I not clear enough?”

“You should have told us!” Caldera still looked furious, but at least she didn't seem about to lunge for me again. “We could have—”

“You could have
what
? I told you going into Richard's mansion was suicidal. I told you Deleo had the place warded and there was nothing to find. I told you we were staying too long and it was time to get out, and you didn't listen! You didn't pay attention to anything I said that didn't relate to your bloody job!” I shook my head in disgust. “Mages like you treat diviners like we're some kind of information feed. You ask us a question, we pull out the answer, and you forget about us. Well, we don't always have the answers you want, but what we
are
good at is telling when something's dangerous. So next time a diviner tells you that, try
listening
!”

Caldera and I faced each other, glaring, until a cough broke the silence. We both turned to see that Sonder was raising his hand nervously. “Um,” he said. “Could we maybe talk about this quietly? Without the shouting and grabbing?”

All of a sudden the tension ebbed away. Caldera swayed on her feet and I caught her shoulder, staggering a little as I tried to hold her up. I'm pretty strong, but Caldera wasn't light. “I'm fine,” Caldera muttered, trying to push me off.

“You're not fine,” I said. “You need a healer.”

“I could call Anne,” Sonder said.

“That girl from the shop? Isn't she ex-Dark?” Caldera shook her head. “I'm not letting her touch me.”

I sighed. “Caldera, you might be an asshole, but you just got hurt because you stepped in the way of a bunch of people trying to kill me. I'm not leaving until I know you're okay.”

“Yeah, thanks for that.” Caldera dropped into one of the armchairs. “I'll call one of the Keeper healers.”

“Then do it.”

Caldera gave me a look. “You aren't supposed to be around.”

“Oh, you've got to be kidding me,” I said. “What, you're not supposed to have non-Light mages around for medical care? What exactly are you afraid I'm going to see?”

“It's procedure, Verus,” Caldera said. She looked very weary all of a sudden.

“I'll stay with her,” Sonder volunteered.

I looked at him for a second. I would have liked to stay, and despite everything I had the feeling Caldera didn't really want to throw me out. But Caldera was probably right; if she was going to call in Keeper personnel they weren't going to have much use for a non-Light diviner of questionable background. I wouldn't be doing anyone any favours by staying. I turned to go.

“Verus,” Caldera said.

I stopped and looked back. Slumped in the chair, Caldera looked weary but still alert. “Don't go after Will. Stay away from him.”

“That's kind of easier said than done.”

“They attacked a Keeper,” Caldera said. “This isn't your problem anymore. Just keep your head down and we'll take it from here.”

I looked at Caldera for a moment. “I'll give it a try,” I said at last, and walked out into the hall. The door to the flat was warded. I let myself out.

* * *

I
had a lot to think about on the journey back.

There's a feeling you get when you're under pressure: a kind of nonstop anxiety, where it seems as if you're spending all your time reacting to one crisis after another instead of doing anything yourself. I've had that feeling before, and one of the things I've learnt over the years is that when you get it, it means you're doing something wrong.

I'd just nearly been killed three times in four days. The first time I'd been saved by Luna, the second time by Anne, and the third time by Caldera. If I kept this up, then sooner or later Will's lot were going to catch me when I
didn't
have a super-powered woman around to help me out. When what you're doing isn't working, you stop and figure out what's wrong.

What was I doing wrong?

The first time, Will and the adepts had found me at the casino. The second time it had been at my house, and the third time it had been at Richard's mansion. But looking back on it, I had advance warning each time. Before the casino, I'd met Lee on the rooftops, and I'd gone out anyway. I'd spoken to Will in the shop, and even though it was obvious they knew where I lived, I'd gone to sleep in my flat. And then, even knowing that they had a way to track me, I'd gone to Richard's mansion. I'd used the annuller, which would have blocked most tracking spells . . . but I hadn't known for sure that it would block
their
tracking spell. What I should have done was find an empty, quiet place and then look into the future for however long it took to confirm that they weren't going to find me. Trying to make sure that something can't happen is slow and frustrating work, but I should have spent the hours to do it and I hadn't.

Arachne was right—I
had
been careless. And I'd put Caldera and Sonder at risk as a result.

It's an unpleasant feeling to realise that other people are paying for your mistakes. Worse, this was something I was supposed to be
good
at. I'd been careful about this kind of thing once. Back in Richard's mansion I never would have been so thoughtless—if I had, I wouldn't have survived. The only thing that had kept me alive through those two years had been a hair-trigger sense for danger. Every second and every thought had been utterly focused on survival. What had changed?

I'd changed. It was as simple as that. For most of the past year I'd been spending my time teaching Luna, helping Anne and Variam, dealing with customers, working, relaxing, socialising, and generally having something much closer to a normal life. Oh, there had been danger, but it had been the sudden kind of danger, usually solved by running away. I'd never been seriously and persistently hunted. Even when I'd realised that Will and the adepts were coming for me, I'd treated it as a problem to be investigated.

But right now I wasn't an investigator, I was prey. If the Nightstalkers caught me, they would kill me.

First they'd have to catch me.

Understanding that felt like opening a door to a part of my mind that had been closed for a long time. I felt the old animal wariness start to seep back, and I looked at the problem coldly and dispassionately. As long as the Nightstalkers had a reliable way to track me, they could keep forcing fights on their terms. If I allowed them to do that then sooner or later I'd be brought down and killed. The first priority had to be to break their tracking link.

The only thing so far that seemed to have blocked the link was Arachne's lair. I'd been there for a day and a half after the casino fight, recovering, and the Nightstalkers hadn't gone after me there. It had taken them much less time than that to track me down everywhere
else
, so evidence suggested that the wards on Arachne's lair were strong enough to hide me. Which meant that whatever their spell was, it wasn't unstoppable.

But I couldn't stay in Arachne's lair forever. I needed a way to hide while moving, and my best chance at doing that was my mist cloak. The first task was to retrieve it.

* * *

G
etting past the police was the easy part.

I could only guess at the number of detectives who must have been swarming over my flat throughout the morning, but London's a busy place and, no matter how spectacular the explosion, sooner or later the police have somewhere else to be. There was only one PC on duty, standing at the front of my shop and waving tourists away from the blue-and-white
POLICE DO NOT CROSS
tape.

Humans have a habit of thinking in two dimensions rather than three. We remember to guard the back door and the front door; we don't usually guard the roof. I got onto the rooftops via the nearby flats, passed the railway line where Anne and I had made our escape last night, then crouched in the shadow of a chimney stack and looked into the future of what would happen if I stayed here.

The Nightstalkers were on their way, which wasn't good news but by this point really wasn't much of a surprise. Not only had the nocturne not shaken them, they actually seemed to be homing in on me faster and faster each time. I followed up the routes to check and . . . yes, they were going to gate onto the roof ahead, probably at the same spot they'd used to try to cut me and Anne off last night. I had maybe five minutes before they arrived.