And against someone who can read your thoughts, an instant’s too long.
Pain exploded inside my head and my vision greyed out. It felt like being hit with a horrendous headache, distilled and concentrated into a couple of seconds. Nausea and dizziness flooded over me and I stumbled.
As my eyesight came back, I found myself looking back at the portal. Crystal had stepped through and was just turning to look back into the shadow realm. She was coming around to focus on Anne, and at some distant level I knew that she was going to hit Anne before Anne could follow her through. Crystal couldn’t beat Anne in a fair fight, but she didn’t need to; she just had to break Anne’s concentration on the spell. I fumbled for a weapon, but I was still dazed and my reactions weren’t fast enough.
There was a flicker of space magic and a red-brown shape latched onto Crystal’s arm. Crystal screamed, jerked away. The blink fox hung on, eyes glinting, teeth sunk into Crystal’s forearm as she frantically tried to shake it off before sending another mindblast into the fox from two feet away.
The fox dropped, hitting the grass with a thud. Crystal looked up angrily, blood on her arm . . .
. . . and found herself facing Anne.
In the couple of seconds Crystal had been distracted, Anne had made it through. The gate flickered and faded behind her as she dropped concentration on the spell, letting the gate stone and focus fall to the grass.
Anne looked at Crystal and slightly flexed the fingers of one hand.
Crystal turned and ran. She bolted through the leaves and under the low-hanging branches and was gone, racing footsteps fading into the distance. Anne watched her go, then turned to me. “I’m all right,” I said, pulling myself up and stumbling a little.
“I know,” Anne said, reaching out to place a hand wreathed in green light against my chest. Energy flowed through me and my head cleared, the pain vanishing. “Are we safe?”
I looked into the future and saw . . . nothing. No combat, no danger. Crystal wasn’t coming back. “We’re safe.”
“It’s finished?”
“It’s finished.”
Anne nodded, then her legs seemed to give way and she slumped to the ground, kneeling on the grass, head down. I started to reach out, then stopped myself and pulled out my phone, speed-dialling a number. It rang twice before picking up. “Caldera,” a suspicious voice said in my ear. “Who is this?”
“It’s Verus,” I said. “I’m at the park we use for gating in Camden and so’s Crystal. I last saw her sixty seconds ago heading north.”
“Crystal? Are you sure?”
“Just pass it on to whoever’s job this is,” I said wearily. The adrenaline rush was wearing off and I felt utterly exhausted. “I’m going home.”
“Wait! How did—?”
I hung up and switched my phone off. To one side, the blink fox had pulled itself upright and was looking at me. “Thanks,” I told it simply.
The fox blinked at me, then tilted its head up and sniffed the air, nostrils flaring to catch the spring breeze and the scents of grass and flowers. It came to its feet in a flowing motion and trotted away without a backward glance.
I watched the fox disappear into the undergrowth, then shook my head and held my hand down to Anne. “Let’s go.”
Anne looked up at me and for an instant I could have sworn she looked surprised. Then she put a hand into mine and let me pull her up. She looked around and took a deep breath, then started walking. I fell into step beside her and we headed home.
Chapter 13
And that was that. Mostly.
The Keepers didn’t catch Crystal, which wasn’t exactly a surprise given that she’d probably been out of the country again before I’d finished that phone call. They settled for interrogating us instead. I gave them an edited version of the story which I don’t think made them very happy, especially the “working with Crystal to escape” part. I claimed that it had been under duress and I’d had no other choice, and given that Sagash wasn’t exactly going to come down to the station to give a statement contradicting me, there wasn’t much the Keepers could do to prove otherwise. All the same, I got the definite impression from most of the Keepers I spoke to that they didn’t think saving Anne in exchange for Crystal had been a good trade. I disagreed, but since no one seemed to care very much what I thought, I kept my opinions to myself.
The Keepers had a try at interrogating Sagash too. I didn’t get to watch, which was a shame since by all accounts it was fairly entertaining. After a brief but eventful exchange of views, Sagash sealed off his shadow realm, leaving the Keepers twiddling their thumbs outside. A full assault on the shadow realm might have been possible, but without Crystal there no one on the Council had the motivation to push it through. Instead the Keepers ended up trying to enforce some weird kind of interdimensional siege, which isn’t really very effective when the residents of the place you’re sieging can gate to any place on earth. On the positive side, it did give Sagash a reason not to come to London after me, which from my point of view was just as well.
Ironically enough, the one who came out of the whole thing looking the best was Sonder. He’d been the one in charge (on paper at least), and right from the start he’d gone on record insisting that Crystal had been behind Anne’s disappearance, even when no one else believed him. Caldera probably could have poked some holes in that story, but she kept quiet and Sonder got the credit.
For my part, I had to put up with a certain degree of grilling, but it was nothing I hadn’t done before. It also helped that with Caldera and Variam, I had a couple of Keepers on my side for a change. Compared to the shadow realm, it was actually kind of relaxing.
I got out of the Keeper station in Westminster the day after getting back to London. It was late afternoon and the street was filled with noise, the road busy with cars and buses. Someone was waiting for me on the street, and as I started down the steps I shook my head. “Why does it not surprise me that you knew where I was?”
“You did send a message,” Talisid pointed out. He looked the same as ever, blending neatly into the Westminster crowds. I started walking north and Talisid fell into step beside me. “I’m glad to see you’re in good shape.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you got the story from the Keepers.”
“The story you and Anne told them, yes.”
“Yeah, well, I told them the truth, just not all the details.” I paused, not looking at him. “We met Richard.”
Talisid didn’t break stride. We kept walking along the pavement, adjusting our course to avoid the pedestrians coming the other way. “I see,” Talisid said.
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I had my suspicions.”
“Yeah, I know. You were right.”
“I appreciate the information,” Talisid said. “Does this mean you’ve come to a decision on my offer?”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” I said. I’d had a lot of time to think in between the rounds of interviews by the Keepers. “You know, the more I thought about what you were offering, the more it seemed a little weird. Don’t get me wrong, I could do the job. But so could a lot of other people.”
“Fewer than you might think.”
I shrugged. “Either way, I couldn’t shake the feeling that you were putting in just a little more effort than I was worth. So I started thinking about what might be so special about me. And the biggest thing that stood out? My link to Richard.”
Talisid didn’t answer. “You said you wanted me to work as an investigator,” I said. “You didn’t say what I’d be investigating.” I stopped, looking at Talisid, forcing him to turn and face me. “Richard found us in the shadow realm. He offered me my old job back. I think you’ve known for a while that this might happen. You didn’t want an investigator. You wanted a double agent. Someone close to Richard and reporting back to you. You wanted to recruit me before Richard did.”