The kid started and looked down at the blade—he’d obviously forgotten he was holding it—but didn’t lower the weapon. I sighed, suddenly running out of patience. Oh, screw this. I walked to one side. “Get out of here.”
The kid stared at me again. “Beat it,” I said, gesturing. I’d left the kid a clear path back where he came. “If your boss wants to spy on me, tell him to come do it himself.”
The kid looked from me to the empty darkness and began slowly moving away, trying to retreat and watch me at the same time. I took another look into the futures and saw how easy it would be to take him down. Lunge, grab, twist, and he’d be on the ground. The knife would be out of his hand and into mine, and then we could have a nice long chat about exactly who’d sent him here.
I didn’t do it. I would have, once. A spy usually just means someone’s being nosy, but it can also mean they’re thinking about making a move on you, which means that it’s fairly common for mages who realise they’re being spied on to shoot first and ask questions later. On top of that, the kind of people I used to hang out with tended to assume that not reacting to a potential threat with immediate violence was a sign of weakness. It might be nothing, but why take the chance?
But here’s the thing about living like a paranoid hermit: it sucks. It’s impossible to explain just how tired you can get of violence—that weary feeling where you see someone who’s looking for trouble and want to ask, Do we really have to do this? The more time I spent with Luna and Sonder and Variam and Anne, the more I realised that I liked not treating everyone I met as a potential threat. Going after the kid and interrogating him felt like stepping away from that, and I didn’t want to do it. So I stood and watched as he edged around me. Once he had a clear line of retreat he turned and ran into the darkness. The sound of racing footsteps faded and I was alone.
Now that I look back, I wonder what would have happened if I’d done things differently. If I’d spoken or acted another way, could I have avoided the whole ugly mess? Or would it just have made things worse? Maybe someone else could have managed it. I don’t know.
But at the time I had no idea what was coming. I just waited to make sure the kid was gone, then headed back down to my flat to tell Anne and the others the story.
I woke the next morning to the pleasant feeling of light and warmth. From long habit, the first thing I did was scan the future for danger, looking for the telltale flashes of threats and violence. Absolutely nothing came up and I stayed relaxed, turning to get my head out of the light before opening my eyes. The sun was streaming into my bedroom, the rays lighting up my bed and carpet in brilliant colour, and glancing up through the window I could see a bright blue sky. It was going to be a clear summer’s day.
My bedroom’s a comfortable size, with two tall windows that let in the morning sun and give a view out onto the rooftops of Camden. The walls are white and bare except for a couple of pictures I inherited from the previous owner, and there’s a long desk that’s usually cluttered with whatever magic items I’m working on at the moment. A door leads into the living room. From under the door I could smell something tasty coming from the kitchen and I didn’t even need to look to know that Anne was there.
I wasn’t in a hurry so I just lay there in my bed, enjoying the sun and quiet while lazily looking through the futures ahead of me. Once I was completely awake I got up and took a few steps on the carpet in my bare feet, stretching my legs before dressing and opening the door.
The living room was neat and clean except for the corner with Variam’s camp bed, which looked as though it had been converted into a nest for a medium-sized tornado. Variam has a ridiculous amount of energy and only sleeps about six hours a night, which usually means that by the time I’m up he’s already left the house. I washed, shaved, and wandered into the kitchen, where Anne was making breakfast.
Since Anne and Variam had moved in last winter, my home had gone from a fairly lonely place to something more like a shared house. It had been eight months since Anne and Variam had arrived, and between seeing them and taking lessons from me Luna was spending so much time here that she might as well be living here too. We’d all had plenty of time to learn each other’s quirks, and one of the first things we’d found out was everyone else’s cooking styles. My cooking can be best described as functional. I’m one of those people who doesn’t care much about food—I like it enough to appreciate it when it’s done well but not enough to learn to get really good. The end result is edible, but I don’t think there’s much chance anyone’s ever going to get excited about eating it.
Anne’s a superb cook. She told us that she grew up doing the cooking for her house, and it shows—she can make a meal out of literally anything and it’ll taste good. Luna isn’t bad, but she’s accident prone. The bad luck from her curse may not affect her, but it works just fine on everything else, and putting her in an environment filled with lit fires, sharp knives, and potentially poisonous substances is just a really bad idea. Her last attempt at oil frying is the reason I’ve got a CO2 extinguisher mounted on the wall. Variam is terrible. His dishes come in three flavours: scorched, charred, and burnt to a crisp. I have the suspicion that he makes it awful on purpose just so he doesn’t get asked to do it again, but I can’t prove it.
Anne met me with a smile and a plate of delicious fried stuff. “Anne, I love you,” I said as I took it from her.
Anne laughed. “You probably say that to any woman who feeds you.”
“I didn’t say it to the last woman who used this kitchen before you and Luna.” I sat down at the table and started eating. It tasted as good as it smelt.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said between mouthfuls. “Turned out she was working for a guy who wanted to kill us. She helped catch me and Luna so he could have a try at murdering us both. Was one of my more spectacularly dysfunctional breakups.”
Anne paused and looked at me. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“I’ll tell you the story sometime,” I said. “Vari gone out?”
“He went for a run.” Anne took the remainder of the sausages, hash browns, and bacon from the pan and divided them in two. Half went on her plate and the other half in another pan, which she closed carefully.
I nodded at the pan. “For Vari?”
“Mm-hm.” Anne took her plate over and sat opposite me. She had just as much food as I did. Anne may be thin, but she eats a lot.
“It really annoys Luna that you’re always so nice to him.”
“I know,” Anne said with a rueful look. “I keep telling her I don’t mind.”
I laughed. “You never mind being nice to people.”
“Well . . . maybe sometimes,” Anne said with a quick smile. “Vari can be bad-tempered, but he’s not a bully. He never tries to control anyone. And . . . he’s a little nervous at the moment.”
I looked at Anne in surprise. “Why now?”
“He’s worried we’ve been looking for a master for too long,” Anne said. “We’re not really supposed to be in the apprentice program, are we? Vari thinks that the longer this goes on, the more chance someone will start paying attention to us.”
Well, that spoiled the fun a bit. I didn’t answer, but Anne was watching me and I knew she could already tell from my reaction that Vari was right.
One of the reasons I’d invited Anne and Variam to stay with me last winter had been for their protection. They’re not recognised members of magical society, but I am (just about), and the idea had been that I’d try to find them a master. Unfortunately that had proven a lot harder than I’d expected. It turns out that if you add up the number of novice mages in Britain looking for a master, and the number of qualified and respected Light or independent master mages looking for an apprentice, there are way more applicants than places. And Anne and Variam’s record only made things worse—to most Light and independent mages, being associated with a Dark mage, a rakshasa, and a murder investigation is sort of the equivalent of being a illegal immigrant, a terrorist, and a registered sex offender all at once. By this point I’d been at it for more than half a year and it was starting to feel depressingly like job hunting, right down to the we regret to inform you rejection letters and the creeping sense of futility.