Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (44 page)

“H
ey, man.”

“Oh, for the love of God.
Why
are you still
here
?”

“Look, I’m just curious. Now, I know you don’t sell tricks over the counter—”

“We. Don’t. Sell. Tricks.”

“Hey, what are you so angry for? I’m just asking.”

“I’m going to go through this one last time. This is a shop. There are things on the shelves. You want to buy the things on the shelves, bring the things on the shelves to the counter.”

“C’mon, I’m not that stupid. I’ve seen loads of guys coming up. You must have some good stuff, right? I mean, for people in the know?”

“And you want to know the secret?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. It’s a secret.”

“Fine, I get it. I’m going.”

“…”

“Oh, one more thing—”

A
fternoon edged into evening. It had been raining all day, but as evening drew near, the clouds became thicker and the rain heavier. By five o’clock the light was dim, the window was translucent with running water, and the raindrops were drumming so hard on the pavement outside that I could feel the vibration through the legs of my chair.

The weather had finally driven the customers away and only one was left, a guy in his twenties. He circled the shop a couple of times before drifting over to the counter. I didn’t lift my eyes from my paperback. He cleared his throat.

“Can I help you?”

“Oh, hi. Yeah, I was wondering if I could ask you something.”

“I don’t sell spells.”

“…Okay.”

I turned a page. “I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I can not sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I don’t have a psychic hotline to your dead relatives, I don’t know if you’re going to be successful in your career, and I don’t know when you’re going to get married. I can’t get you into Hogwarts or any other kind of magic school, and if you even mention those stupid sparkly vampires I will do something unpleasant to you.”

“…Ookay?”

“Good. Now that’s settled, what do you need?”

“You’re Alex Verus, right?”

“That’s me.”

“Hi, good to meet you.” A hand appeared above my book. “Martin.”

I looked up and got my first good view of Martin. He was twenty-four or twenty-five, slim, with small blue eyes and dark blond hair that was spiky from gel and swept in a fashionable style from left to right. I guessed most women would have found him good-looking. He was wearing a button-down shirt and trousers, with a coat slung over one shoulder, and moved with a sort of casual confidence that made me think of money.

I disliked him on sight. I probably would have disliked him anyway, but the haircut made it a lot easier. I said, “Hey,” and reached out to shake his hand.

In the fraction of a second before our hands touched, I focused on Martin with my mage’s sight. The technique isn’t really sight—it’s a whole other sense, separate from the five—but for whatever reason sight seems to be the way all mages interpret it. It lets you perceive magic directly rather than just the vague feelings a sensitive or adept gets, all the wisps and auras and strands that make up the currents in the world around you. Most are so faint you have to strain to see them but anything really powerful, like a mage’s spell, is dazzling. If you’re good—and I’m very good—you can pick out what the spell does, how long it’s been there, and even the nature of whoever cast it. I didn’t need any skill to recognise the silvery mist around Martin though. It was Luna’s curse, and it meant he’d been close to her. The mist was only a thin layer swirling gently around his skin. Despite all the time I’ve spent around Luna I’ve rarely seen her curse in action, and I wasn’t sure how long it would have taken for Martin to pick this much up. I didn’t think it was enough to put him in serious danger, but it might be.

My hand clasped on Martin’s and the moment was gone. I couldn’t feel the silver mist over Martin’s skin but I could see it. It didn’t spread from him to me; that’s not the way the curse works. “Great to finally meet up,” Martin said as he shook my hand. “Luna’s told me a lot about you.”

“She’s not supposed to.”

“Not— Oh, ha-ha! Yeah, I see what you mean. Don’t worry, I won’t spread it around.”

I had my doubts about that. “Looking for something?”

“Yeah, I really wanted to have a look at some focuses and one-shots. They’re over there behind the rope, right? Mind if I have a root through?”

“You don’t want to mess with those things unless you know what you’re doing.”

“It’s fine, I know the score. Besides, you can tell me what they do, right?”

I really wanted to say no. But the aura on Martin confirmed he was the guy Luna had been talking about and I didn’t have a good reason to tell him to get lost. Reluctantly, I walked over as Martin unhooked the rope and started looking through the contents of the shelves, asking me questions all the while.

In between answering Martin’s questions, I asked a few of my own. According to Martin, he’d grown up here in London, moved away for university, then moved back to get a place of his own. He was a musician and played in a band. He was vague on the details of exactly how he’d learnt about the magical world. He’d just picked things up, he said. He’d been trying to break into mage society but was finding it difficult. He’d met Luna through a mutual friend. She’d mentioned my shop to him and he’d wanted to learn more.

I learnt other things about Martin too, not so much from what he said as how he said it. He had charm, knew how to be funny, and knew how to flatter. He was clever, though maybe not as clever as he thought. Although he didn’t come out and say it, he knew I was a mage. He knew the basics of how magic worked but couldn’t use it himself—he was only a sensitive. That was the only point at which his smile slipped a little. It was only for a second, but enough to make me wonder if it was a sore spot. Maybe he’d just made friends with Luna to take advantage of her connection to me.

And maybe I was just being jealous. I didn’t like Martin,
but if I was being honest with myself I had to admit I didn’t have a good reason for it. He was pleasant, charming, and probably the only new friend Luna had made in months.

Which also put him in danger, as the silver mist hanging off him proved. I’d have to find out from Luna how much she’d told him. As if I didn’t have enough to remember already. “So would any of the focuses work for me?” Martin was asking.

“Probably not. They’re for helping with a spell or a type of magic you have trouble with. They don’t let you cast from scratch.” I nodded at the twisted wand of rowan in his hands. “That’s a defensive focus. If you could put together a protective spell and if you put in the work to attune yourself to the wand, it might help, but on its own it’s just a stick.”

“How do you attune it?”

“Trial and error. You have to figure out how the thing interacts and adapt your own way of doing things to match it. Sometimes it’s impossible and there’s no way to know without trying.”

“Can’t you just make it do what you want?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t work that way.”

“Okay, what about something that worked on its own?”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re talking about imbued items.”

“That’s how they work, right? Anyone can use them?”

“Not … exactly. Imbued items choose their bearers. They decide when to use their powers, not you.” I thought of an ivory wand beyond a sealed door and pushed the memory away.

“But I’d be able to use one?”

“If you ever got one, yeah. And no, before you ask, I don’t have any here.” Which was true, if by
here
you meant
on these shelves
. I had several upstairs, which I was most definitely not telling Martin about. Imbued items are priceless, and mages will quite literally kill for them.

Martin was quiet, no doubt dreaming of an imbued item
of his own. If he’d known more, he might not have been so eager. Imbued items have minds of their own and the stronger their power, the stronger their will. The most powerful imbued items can reduce their bearers to little more than puppets. Oh, it looks like the bearer’s in charge—but somehow, everything they do ends up being what the item wanted.

I scanned through the futures, looking to see when Luna was going to turn up. Her arrival had been vague all through the day but as I looked I saw that she was due to knock on the door any minute. I was glad. The rain hadn’t let up and the glass of the shop window still ran with water.

And then I felt something snap and change. I jerked my head around, looking for danger. The shop was quiet and Martin was holding a white and blue lacquered tube in his hand. The silver mist of Luna’s curse was gone. “What’s this?”

I stood dead still. The two of us were alone in the shop, and the only sound was the steady patter of rain. Martin looked at me. “Hey, Alex? What’s this one?”

I spoke quietly. “I wouldn’t take that if I were you.”

Martin frowned and looked down at the tube. It was ten inches long and two inches wide, its ends rounded, made out of what looked at first glance like lacquered wood. The tube was white, with raised engravings of blue flowers twining about its length. A braided cord hung from one end. “Why not?”

I didn’t answer. Martin started to return the tube to the shelf and stopped. He stared at me. “Wait. This is one of those, isn’t it? An imbued item?”

I stayed silent, and Martin’s eyes went wide. “Thought you said you didn’t have any?”

“It’s not mine.”

“So why’d you put it on the shelf?”

I looked at Martin and spoke quietly. “I didn’t.”

Martin didn’t seem to hear. He held up the tube to the light, turning it around. When nothing happened he shook
it gently, and there was a faint
katta-katta
sound. “There’s something inside.”

“Yes.”

“How much is it?”

I took a deep breath. “Martin, listen very closely. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but you have to believe me when I tell you that if you take that thing away with you, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

For an instant Martin hesitated and I saw the choices branching before him. Then his eyes narrowed and the choice was gone. “Imbued items choose their wielder, don’t they?”

I sighed. I could see the futures laid out ahead of us and in every one of them, Martin was going to leave my shop with that item. “Yeah,” I said with an effort.

Outside, hurrying footsteps blended with the rain and the door opened with a rush of sound and a cold wind. Luna ducked inside, trying to fit through the door while folding a big golf umbrella, water running everywhere. “Sorry I’m so late! Ugh, it’s awful out there.” After three failed tries she managed to get the umbrella folded up, then she pushed the door shut and the shop was quiet again except for the drip of water from her clothes. “The weather was so bad my bike …” Luna finished propping the umbrella in the corner and finally noticed something was wrong. She looked from me to Martin. “Hello?”

Martin and I hadn’t taken our eyes off each other. “Martin, I need to talk to Luna,” I said. “Could you wait here for five minutes, please?”

There was a beat, then Martin nodded. “Sure.”

I turned to Luna, who was still looking between both of us, trying to figure out what was going on. “In the back.”

T
he door at the back of my shop leads into a small, dark hallway. What little space it has is mostly filled with the stairs up to my second-floor flat. There’s one side door leading into a
back room where I store stuff that isn’t important enough to secure properly, and I led Luna inside and shut the door behind her. “You have to get away from Martin.”

“What?” Luna stared at me. “Why?”

“Because he’s done something very stupid and you don’t want to be around to get caught in the results.”

“How—? I don’t understand.”

“You remember the little white and blue lacquered tube I showed you three months ago in the safe room? The one I told you to never ever touch?”

“Yes … Wait. It was that? You gave him that?”