Modern Magick

‘Nobody thought to mention this before?’ I asked, unable to suppress a trace of bitterness.

‘It was not considered wise to make this ability widely known.’

Waymasters are rare. That is an understatement. One who knows the Ways can make use of all the ancient portals that are spread all over Britain — and indeed, the world. Around here they take the form of henges, for the most part. The big, shiny, popular ones like Stonehenge are never used anymore; too many tourists in the way. But the country is littered with the more humble kind, henges of rock and wood and earth. If you can walk the Ways, you can step from one to another in the blink of an eye. It is an ability that used to be common, but like so much else of magick it has been fading away for generations. Nobody knows why.

I understand that some would find all kinds of interesting, nefarious ways to exploit such an ability as Jay’s. But I wouldn’t. Did they not trust me?

‘Jay was assigned to you because you were the best person to train him,’ said Milady. ‘I wanted you to treat him as an ordinary recruit. I wanted him to learn how we manage day by day, with or without a Waymaster to hand, for he will not always have the ability freely at his disposal. It was not intended that you should be kept in the dark about it forever.’

I did not feel much mollified, but I kept my dissatisfaction to myself. It is unprofessional to put one’s irritations on display. ‘Very well.’

‘What would you like us to do?’ asked Jay.

‘Baron Alban is well-travelled, and frequently visits the more populous and central Enclaves. He is not concerned about the well-being of any of those. There are a few far-flung or mildly reclusive settlements, however, whose fate is more in question. I need you to discover whether they are showing any signs of decay, like South Moors, or any unusual behaviour.’

A mission that proposed to take me all over the country in a trice, and gave me the opportunity to explore several places I had never before visited, could only be welcome to me. ‘Yes ma’am!’ I said with enthusiasm.

‘Thrice the usual budget, Ves,’ added Milady, ‘and take whatever you need from Stores. You have one week.’

Resources: Great. Time: Less so. I swallowed a mixture of mild panic and exhilaration and made my usual obeisance. ‘We’d better get started at once, then.’

‘That would be lovely.’

It is possible that when Milady said take what you need from Stores, she did not mean rob the place of everything that might conceivably come in handy, under any circumstances whatsoever. But if that wasn’t what she meant she ought to have particularised, for Jay and I had a daunting job to do and no time at all to do it.

‘See, when Milady says “a week”,’ I said to Jay as I palmed a handy sustenance charm, ‘she really means about three days.’ I found an unlocking charm — enchanted, unimaginatively, upon a huge bronze key — and pocketed that, too. The Stores at Home are wonderful: half a dozen rooms of varying size, the walls all lined with shelves and cabinets laden with all manner of artefacts, trinkets and Curiosities — and even a few genuine Treasures. Some of them are aged and delicate; you need a special permit to take any of those out. I didn’t touch them. I was more than contented with enchantments more recently Wrought, for they offered everything we could need, and one did not have to live in fear of breaking or losing one of them along the way.

‘Three days,’ murmured Jay. ‘Let’s see that list again?’

I handed over the slip of paper I’d received from Nell: a computer print-out of all known Troll Enclaves still extant in Britain. The list consisted of twenty-six names, more than half of which she had subsequently crossed out in red pen. Baron Alban’s territories, I presumed; we did not need to investigate those. South  Moors and Farringale were also crossed off, which left us with nine places to visit.

Nine towns in three days.

Feasible, I hoped, since one of us was a Waymaster. But damn. It was going to be intense.

I could see when Jay had finished counting up the names, for his face registered the same dismay as I felt. I quickly took back the list. ‘One at a time. That’s all we have to think about.’

‘Right.’ He returned to watching me strip Stores of everything remotely useful, though I felt that his gaze rested more on me than on the surrounding treasures. How did that make sense? New recruits tended to salivate when we brought them in here, and I’d taken Jay straight to the largest of the storerooms. A fabulous late nineteenth-century statue of a mermaid rested on a shelf about three inches from his face, a lovely thing Wrought from jade and something nacreous which visibly rippled with power. A protection charm of some kind was probably embedded therein; it was the kind of thing the wealthy used to like to keep on display in their fabulous houses, to keep thieves and such away.

Jay didn’t even glance at it.

‘What?’ I said after a while.

Jay chewed his lip. ‘I, uh. Think we may have got off on the wrong foot, just a little.’

Well, he was right. I turned away again to hide my blush, for I had messed up. ‘I fear I have been patronising, and I apologise. But really. If they’d just told me that you were—’

‘Relevant?’ Jay offered.

‘Yes. Exactly.’ I took down a sweet little teacup painted with viper’s bugloss, but regretfully put it back again. I wanted it, but the chances of either of us coming down with a fever in the next three days were not high.

‘Apology accepted. But I was speaking more of myself.’

‘Oh?’

‘I think it was the unicorn symbol, and your…’ He trailed off. When I looked back, his gaze was travelling thoughtfully from my wildly-coloured hair, past my madly-coloured dress and all the way down to my whimsically-coloured shoes. He wisely chose not to finish that sentence. ‘Ves,’ he said instead. ‘That’s all anybody ever calls you. But you turn out to be Cordelia Vesper.’

‘Does that name mean something to you?’

He grimaced. ‘I read your thesis. “Modern Magick and—”‘

‘—Magickal Heritage: The Changing Times.  I remember.’

‘Right.’

I waited, but that seemed to be it. ‘Did you…’ I paused to reflect, discarding my instinctive question, because did you like it? sounded appallingly needy. ‘Did you find it… useful?’ I hazarded.

‘It was interesting.’

Interesting. Right.

I took down one last Curiosity — a floral charm bracelet which, if I knew my charms, purported to change the colour of any bloom I chose to so deface — and stuffed it into my pocket. There was no possible way we could find a use for it, but what did that matter? Life is complicated, and happiness is made up of the little things. I’d bring it back when we got home.

‘Shall we go?’ I proposed.

‘At once, and immediately. Faster than the speed of light. We’ll arrive yesterday.’

I blinked. ‘Really?’

‘Wha— no. No! It was a joke.’

‘Oh.’ Anything Jay did could only seem sadly mundane after hype like that, but perhaps that was well enough. Who knew what could be going on behind that impassive visage? Maybe Jay suffered from performance anxiety.

And lo, it was my turn to be ignorant.

Jay led us down into the cellar. This is not a part of the House I have ever had much cause to visit, before. It is mostly used for storage — the boring kind, not relics and artefacts and such — and one or two minor departments I never go to. Our destination therein proved to be a small chamber tucked into one corner, which we reached by way of a lengthy staircase and three winding corridors.

The heavy oak door creaked horribly as Jay coaxed it open.

‘Here we are,’ said Jay, ushering me inside and closing the door behind me. ‘The Waypoint at Home.’

I looked around, unimpressed. The room was barely furnished; naught but a single couch rested against one wall, looking inviting enough with its plump upholstery and overstuffed appearance, but it was not at all elegant. The walls could have used a new coat of paint, or perhaps just a thorough scrubbing; what had probably once been white had dulled to a drab cream. The floor was well enough, but its bare oak boards had not been swept in about a decade either, if I was any judge.

There was nothing else in there, save only for one thing: a ring of nubs of wood, set into the floor. The remains, I judged, of an ancient henge, over the top of which the House had been built.

Clever.

Jay puttered about doing nothing that I could make any sense of, and I waited. I was already beginning to regret my excess of enthusiasm in Stores; the shoulder bag I carried seemed to be growing heavier by the moment. I occupied myself in transferring some of the smaller of its contents into the pockets of my long purple coat, pleased to find that the redistribution helped. A little.

Curse my magpie tendencies.

‘So,’ I said after a while, when Jay still did not appear to be doing anything productive. ‘What happens now?’

‘Seriously?’

‘Uh… yes?

‘How can you have no idea how a Waymaster works?’ Jay was incredulous, which was unfair of him.

‘Jay. Nobody knows how a Waymaster works. Our last one left eight and a half years ago to take up a tempting employment offer in Jaipur, and that was the last I saw of her. And she never took me travelling with her anyway.’

‘Really?’ Jay was silent for a moment. ‘What kind of employment opportunity?’

‘Jay. Focus.’

‘Just how tempting was it?’

‘Jay!’

He rolled his eyes, and… a lot happened all at once. He was standing in the middle of the room, and when he raised his arms the air swooped and whirled and gathered itself into a vortex of stars. That is the nicer way I can think of to describe it. If I said it also resembled a twinkly tornado, however, perhaps that better conveys its more alarming qualities.

‘Why do people call you Vesper?’ he yelled. I still couldn’t figure out what he was doing, but it involved some effort, for sweat was forming on his brow. ‘Why not Cordelia?’

‘I hate my name!’

‘It’s… it’s pretty.’

‘Cordelia? Yes! It’s a doll name, for pretty, well-behaved girls who take a lot of ballet classes and wear their hair in buns.’

I thought he actually laughed, though that might have been a trick of the light — which was turning awfully peculiar. ‘Why not shorten it?’

‘To what? Cord? That’s a type of string. Dell? That’s a magickal reservoir. Or a computer.’

‘Ves is unique.’

‘Exactly. It—’

I did not make it to the end of this sentence, for with a roar and a swoop and a nauseating sensation of the world tilting upside down, we were gone from the Waypoint in the cellar and deposited in an untidy, aching heap somewhere altogether else.

Turn page ->

I think it was the word famous which rattled Jay, for he transferred his attention from the gorgeously arrayed consultant and blinked incredulously at me. ‘Are you?’

‘No,’ I said crisply, and then amended that to, ‘Not really. Baron Alban flatters me.’

‘Only a little,’ said the baron, and that twinkle deepened. He fingered his cravat and added, ‘How did you guess my name?’

‘Your reputation precedes you.’ Oh, I’d heard about the baron all right. The Troll Court’s ambassador to the Hidden Ministry (the magickal government of England), and a prime favourite everywhere he goes. His reputation for flamboyance far exceeds my own — or shall we say, his notoriety? He is also known for his wit, his cleverness and his knowledge of magickal creatures, history and communities, but people don’t talk about any of that so much as they talk of his hats, his coats and (by rumour at least) his ladies. I’d wanted to meet him for years.

I was still surprised, though, to find him at the House. When Milady had spoken of a “consultant”, I had at least half expected a troll, but I had pictured… what? A scholar like myself, perhaps; someone who was several years into an exhaustive study of troll customs, habits and history, to be published in about fifteen years’ time. An anthropologist, a psychologist, a folklorist… anybody but Baron Alban.

Since he had made no move to get up and did not appear to wish to stand on ceremony, I took a chair and a cup of chocolate. ‘What can we do for you?’ I said.

Jay followed my example, but he was wary. I could see that in the rigidity of his posture as he sat across from me, looking ready to run at a moment’s notice.

This amused the baron all the more, and he grinned. ‘I understand there is a problem at South Moors.’

‘Milady spoke of a consultant.’ I laid a slight emphasis on the last word, hoping my tone would convey a polite question rather than incredulity.

‘So I am. I was not born into a barony, you know, and I certainly was not appointed to the post of ambassador at birth. I spent many years of my youth as a rootless vagabond with a tendency to get myself thrown out of every town I lived in, which had its drawbacks. But since I developed an unusually broad knowledge of troll life across most of its strata, it has, on occasion, made me a useful person to consult.’

He spoke with the smoothness, the confidence and the vocabulary of a highly educated man, so I guessed that these rootless, drifting years had been followed by several more of focused study. I wondered what Alban had done to net himself a barony — other than smile gorgeously, which he was doing in my general direction at that very moment.

All right, then.

‘What would be your summary of the problem?’ Alban asked.

Jay did not seem inclined to lead the way at communicating, which suited me just fine. ‘If I had met any of the inhabitants of South Moors individually, I would have said they were… depressed,’ I said. ‘There is an air of apathy, a greyness, a blankness — though even to call it depression is to state the case too mildly, for they scarcely seemed to hear me when I spoke, and no one vouchsafed any reply. What could possibly afflict a whole village with such symptoms is beyond me to imagine, and I have never heard or read of such a case occurring in history.’

‘And the alikats,’ Jay put in. ‘It is not usual for them to make a meal of such beasts, is it?’

‘Not now,’ said Alban. ‘Many of us will eat just about anything, of course,’ — he gave a feral grin as he said this — ‘but the Accords have been in place for long enough to deter even a backwater like South Moors from snacking on endangered species.’ He winced. ‘How many alis were lost?’

‘We rescued two,’ I said. ‘We saw no sign of any others, but who knows what they were eating before word reached us.’

Baron Alban raised his cup to his lips and delicately sipped, silent in thought. The cup ought to have looked tiny and fragile in his huge hands, but it, like the baron’s chair, had fitted itself to his proportions. ‘Milady was right to summon me,’ he finally decided. ‘The matter requires the immediate attention of the Court.’

That took the problem neatly out of my hands and Jay’s, which was well enough. But I was a little sorry that our meeting with Baron Alban would soon be over, and we would probably never cross paths with him again. I studied him closely, committing points of detail to memory: the exquisite cut of his coat, the sharp points of his superb lapels, that expertly knotted cravat. His sculpted jaw, prominent cheekbones and wickedly twinkling eyes…

He caught me at this scrutiny and gave me a wink, which, for the sake of my dignity, I pretended not to have observed. Setting down his empty cup, he said: ‘I’d like to hear the whole story, please. Everything that happened, and everything that you saw.’

This we gave, in as much detail as Jay and I could remember between us. We did a fair job, I think. We are both graduates of the University; we’ve been taught to observe, and to question. Baron Alban heard us out without interruption, save once or twice to clarify a point of detail. His troubled look deepened as we spoke, and when we were finished he gave a great sigh and rose from his chair. My goodness, but he was tall. ‘Her Majesty will need to know at once,’ he said, gazing down at me with a smile that looked — was it wishful thinking? — a little regretful.

He bowed to us, already taking out his phone, and was gone before I had time to realise that he had given us no insight, no advice, no information at all. But then, he was not there to consult for our benefit; he was there to consult for Milady’s.

Jay helped himself to more chocolate — he was swiftly growing to like it, that’s for sure — and sat back with a sigh. He had that wide-eyed, flabbergasted look again. ‘Strangest day of my life,’ he said. ‘No contest.’

Poor boy. Little did he know. ‘It gets worse.’

‘How… how much worse?’

‘Or better,’ I amended. ‘Depends how you look at it.’

Maybe I needed to work on my strategy, for Jay did not look encouraged.

We were back in Milady’s tower by nine o’clock upon the following morning. Jay kept his dissatisfaction with the climb to himself this time, which I appreciated, for the morning dawned bright, sunny and beautiful and I wanted to enjoy it. ‘Glorious sun,’ I observed unnecessarily as we toiled up the stairs.

Jay treated this offering with all the interest it deserved, and said nothing.

This time, when we presented ourselves before Milady, Jay bowed without my encouragement. He really did like that chocolate.

‘Vesper. Jay. Good morning,’ said Milady’s voice, the air twinkling brightly with every syllable she uttered. ‘I hope you are in the mood to travel.’

I perked up at that, for when I am not in the mood to explore? ‘Always!’ I declared.

Jay’s enthusiasm did not quite equal my own. ‘Probably,’ he allowed.

‘You will be familiar with the Farringale Enclave, of course?’

Of course I was. Farringale was legend. The site of the Troll Court back in the middle ages, it was renowned for everything — art, scholarship, philosophy, ideas. It was a magickal hub, overflowing with magickal energy; some of the most powerful and most visionary feats of magick ever heard of were developed there, performed there.

Its decline is a sad tale, though not an uncommon one. Time passed, and gradually left Farringale behind. Other schools of magick and ideas supplanted it; other libraries and universities came to be pre-eminent. The Troll Court moved southwards in the early eighteenth century, and Farringale became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world — so much so that there is now considerable debate as to where it is actually situated. Far in the north of England; that is about as much as we can all agree upon. ‘Are we going there?’ I blurted. What a dream! A place steeped in such history, such mystery, such intrigue… what if its legendary libraries were still intact?

‘No,’ said Milady, and my hopes died. ‘You may not be aware that there is suspected to be some key to its decline that is not widely known about, though its precise nature has never been confirmed.’

‘Some catastrophe, you mean?’

‘Perhaps. Scholars at the Court have traced its deterioration to a mere handful of years, beginning around 1657. In March of that year, the Enclave was thriving. By December, it had shrunk to half its former size. Whether its inhabitants fled or died we do not know, but that there was something gravely amiss is not in doubt.’

‘Does Alban suspect a connection with that and the fate of South Moors?’ It seemed far-fetched to me, but apparently the baron had access to information I lacked. I felt the familiar envy grow in my breast: a kind of lust for knowledge denied.

Someday I would need to cultivate a connection at the Troll Court, no doubt about that. What other secrets were they hiding in those libraries of theirs?

‘It is not an isolated occurrence,’ said Milady. ‘In 1928, the Garragore Enclave went fully Reclusive. It closed its doors to all outsiders, which is not in itself unusual; but nothing has ever been heard from it again, which is rather more so. It is thought that the settlement faded altogether, and is now barren. But its doors remain sealed, even to the Court. No explanation for its demise has ever been uncovered.’

I’d heard of Garragore as well, though it was nowhere near in the same league as Farringale. Its name appeared in documents from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from time to time — mentions in private journals, newspapers, advertisements, that kind of thing. It had not occurred to me to notice that its name had stopped showing up after 1928. I’d had no reason to pay attention to it.

‘Are there more such stories?’ I asked, feeling slightly sick. Here was a most unpromising pattern.

‘There are. Baron Alban is greatly concerned that South Moors may go the way of Farringale and Garragore and the others, if help is not given. But how to help is a question no one can yet answer. The baron has requested our assistance.’

‘Why?’ said Jay. ‘Cannot the Troll Court muster the manpower to do it themselves?’

‘They are employing their own resources as they see fit. When it comes to the kind of investigation he has in mind, however: we can do it faster.’

‘Can we?’ I asked. ‘How?’

‘Because we have Jay.’

That took me aback. Jay? What about him? Alas, my thoughts must have shown on my face, for Jay rolled his eyes at me, his lips twisting in irritation. ‘I am more than a chauffeur,’ he said.

‘Oh? What are you?’

Jay’s face set into a disgusted expression and he said nothing, so it fell to Milady to explain. ‘I recruited Jay the moment he was free to join us, for one particular reason. He is a Waymaster.’

Oh.

Turn page ->

Nothing ever worries Milady. I could tell her an army of hostile magicians was advancing upon the House with a legion of direbeasts in tow, and she would merely say, ‘Unfortunate. Very well,’ dispense a simple, efficient plan for containing the problem which would work perfectly, and then invite us all for tea afterwards.

She heard our account of the South Moors Troll Enclave in thoughtful silence, a silence she maintained for some ten or fifteen seconds after I had finished speaking. That, it seems, was as much time as she required to consider our information, place it in context, and devise her response.

‘You did well to retrieve the alikats,’ she said. ‘There are but twelve breeding pairs left in England, at least that are known. We could not easily bear to lose one of them. They are in Miranda’s care?’

‘Yes, Milady.’

‘Then they will be well tended to. Regarding the trolls, their behaviour is cause for concern. I will arrange for a consultant to meet with you. He will be here this afternoon.’

This was vague, but I knew by then that Milady’s plans always became clear soon enough, so I curtseyed again and murmured something agreeing. Jay gave me the side-eye, and said nothing.

‘Return to me once you have met with my consultant, for I shall have a new assignment for you this evening. Jay Patel.’

The name was spoken in a tone so indistinguishable from the rest, it took Jay a moment to realise he was being addressed. ‘Yes?’ he said hesitantly.

‘This was your first assignment with Vesper. Are you contented with her?’

Privately I thought that Milady might have done better to ask this question of Jay when I was not standing right next to him, but he took it in stride. ‘We work well enough together, Milady,’ he replied.

‘Very well. Vesper?’

I thought of the hesitancy he had shown when faced with even the apathetic trolls of South Moors. I had wondered a little about his courage, but that was probably unfair of me. He was new. If he had met any trolls at the Hidden University, it might well have been limited to old Maj, professor of anthropology, and she was ancient, wizened, soft-spoken and totally unintimidating. He had faltered, but he’d held. He would get used to it. ‘I am happy to continue our partnership,’ I said. ‘We made it through the mission without getting even a little bit lost, and I can’t remember the last time that has happened to me.’

‘He is more than your chauffeur, Vesper.’

‘I know that,’ said I hastily. Did I though? It occurred to me that I knew little about Jay’s specific abilities, and the only reason Milady had given for assigning him to accompany me was my deplorable tendency to lose my way — besides his obvious need for basic induction to the Society, of course, which anybody might have provided him with. It did not much surprise me to learn that there was more to Milady’s thinking than that, but as to what it was, I was in the dark.

No matter. This, too, would become clear in time.

‘You will find chocolate in the pot,’ said Milady, which befuddled Jay but I knew it for one of her characteristic, mild dismissals. I made a final curtsey, motioned Jay into a parting bow, and hustled both of us out of the tower room.

Jay was silent all the way down four staircases. Then he said: ‘What?’

‘To what are you referring?’

‘All of it.’

‘More specifically?’

‘Let’s begin with: who exactly is Milady?’

‘No idea,’ I said brightly.

Jay stopped, and stared at me.

‘Nobody does,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Some say she’s the latest scion of the aristocratic family who built this House, which makes sense. Some say she is the same woman who built this House, which is less likely, as she’d have to be centuries old. But who knows? She could be either of those things, or neither. We know her as the founder and benefactor of the Society, She Who Pulls Our Strings, the Bosslady, and that’s enough for most of us.’

‘Why is she a disembodied voice?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did you keep curtseying to a disembodied voice?’

‘Oh, I’m sure she can see us. That window, I think, though I’m not sure how.’

‘You don’t think that curtseying is a little old-fashioned?’

‘So’s Milady.’

Jay sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. ‘You know, when I got this job offer, they told me. At the University. They told me it was strange up here.’

‘They weren’t wrong.’ We’d made it back to the first floor by then; I steered Jay back to the common room, where, as promised, we found a welcome addition to its equipment. An oversized, eighteenth-century silver chocolate-pot stood upon one of the tables, wisps of steam curling invitingly from its spout. A pair of chocolate-drinking cups had been set beside; these, of course, were the delicate, porcelain kind, with gilding around the rims.

‘You are kidding me,’ said Jay in blank disbelief.

I took a seat and poured out chocolate for both of us. It was sweet and spiced, dark and rich, pure luxury: exactly the way we don’t drink it anymore. ‘Have a bit,’ I encouraged Jay. ‘One tends to feel better afterwards.’ And I did, already, even after only a few sips. I was less tired, less hungry, and the scratches striping my arms were already stinging less.

Jay did not believe me, clearly — not until he had drunk half of his share of the chocolate.

‘Strange but good?’ I invited him to allow.

He drained his cup and poured out another. ‘Strange,’ he said with emphasis.

I raised a brow, and waited. Sure enough, a reluctant smile crossed his face and he sank back into his chair with a sigh, visibly more relaxed than he had been half an hour earlier. ‘Strange but good,’ he conceded.

We were at leisure to amuse ourselves for the next two or three hours. I spent the time changing my ruined blue dress for a printed cotton one in spring-like rose, worn with a light shawl. It clashed with my cerulean hair, so I employed my wonderful Curiosity — a ring, this one, with a charm embedded — and adjusted the latter to a more complementary blue-lavender hue.

I don’t know what Jay did. We separated after we had finished with Milady’s chocolate, and did not reconvene until we were called to meet the consultant. I made my way back down to the soaring, marble-floored entrance hall to find Jay already waiting, jacket discarded. He wore jeans, and a simple pale blue cotton shirt which contrived to look simultaneously neat and lightweight and casual. I approved.

My admiration was not mutual, for Jay looked me over and said: ‘You look like a bouquet of flowers.’ The words sounded complimentary enough, but he spoke them so tonelessly, his face so expressionless, that I could not help concluding that some unspoken criticism lay behind them.

So I ignored this.

‘Where—’ I began, for the hall was empty other than the two of us; no sign of our promised consultant could I discern. But as I spoke, Nell — Nell Delaney, of media and tech and suchlike — stuck her exquisitely greying head around one of the doors and said: ‘Ves? Convention Chamber. He’s waiting.’

That made me raise my brows, for that particular room is arguably the finest at Home. It’s usually used for large gatherings of the significant kind. We only put individuals in there if they’re important, and we want to impress them. Not, of course, if they’re the important kind of people we’re hoping will agree to fund us. Such a show of magnificence would be quite misplaced there. So who had Milady found to meet us?

I adjusted my hair, checked that my attire was immaculate, and adopted my most confident stride. It wouldn’t do to appear unsure.

‘I don’t suppose…?’ said Jay, trailing after me.

‘Nope,’ I said, without waiting for the rest of his sentence. It didn’t matter what he intended to ask about this afternoon’s adventure; I had no more idea than he did.

The grand double doors of the Convention Chamber had been invitingly flung open, and we were able to walk straight in — stopped only briefly by Robert Foster, who had obviously been given Brawn Duty outside the doors. He’s a big man, Robert, and commensurately impressive at all the arts one might wish to employ if any conceivable variety of threat might chance to be mounted in one’s vicinity. Or in other words, he’s Scary Rob.

‘Ves,’ he said to me with a nod. He doesn’t exactly cultivate the air of a man of force. He favours the neat, plain attire one might adopt to work as, say, a school teacher, or a general practitioner (the latter of which is not misplaced, since he… is). His tightly-curled black hair is always in need of a trim, and I’ve never seen him with less than three or four days’ worth of stubble. But I suppose he has no need to dress the part. You can feel the danger in Robert; not by any overt signs of menace, for he is a careful and essentially gentle man. But he is so chock-full of magickal energy — the strong kind — that it’s hard to miss.

He cast a vaguely suspicious eye over Jay, who stared back.

Silence.

They could be sizing each other up for half the afternoon, and we had no time for that. ‘Jay Patel,’ I said quickly. ‘My new sidekick. He’s with me.’

‘Wha — I’m not with — sidekick?!’

I ignored these incoherent protestations, took Jay’s arm, and at Rob’s nod — faintly amused, judging from the involuntary curve of his lips — steered Jay into the Convention Chamber.

The room takes my breath away every time I see it, which is not often. If the entrance hall is impressive, the Chamber is staggering. It has the kind of high ceiling which seems to soar on for half of forever, held up by buttresses of the flying type. Everything is marble and exotic wood and crystal and gilding. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the House too well, so it’s my belief that it is a later addition. As to when, how or why it came into being, however… who knows. I have been trying to get my hands on a history of the House for years, but if such a book exists, it’s very hard to find.

Our contact sat at one of the graceful crystalline side tables, one of Milady’s chocolate pots set before him. He had been served with the best our kitchens could offer, which made me mildly envious, for those pastries are to die for. I wondered vaguely if he might be disposed to share.

I could see little of the man himself, for he sat partially concealed behind an enormous folio. So absorbed in his book was he, he seemed unaware of our entrance. I had time to note that he was a man of some height and, apparently, strength; the mere weak and feeble amongst us (like me) would have spread that heavy book open upon the table, but he held it up before him with no sign of strain whatsoever.

Good, then. Milady had found us a representative of the troll communities. An important one.

I cleared my throat. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

The book was instantly closed, and set aside. I received an unimpeded view of by far the most gorgeous troll I have ever beheld, and I mean gorgeous in the sense of spectacularly well-presented as well as… well, rather handsome. All height and muscle and perfect posture was he, his bulky shoulders encased in a dark blue velvet coat over a silk shirt. He wore a kind of cravat, and an actual top hat lay on the table beside him. A top hat. No wonder he and Milady were acquainted. His skin was a pleasing jadeish hue, his features perfect. All this splendour and privilege might lead one to suppose he’d have an attitude problem, but his vivid green eyes twinkled with good humour as he looked the two of us over. His gaze lingered upon the vibrant mass of my hair.

‘The famous Vesper,’ he said in a low, rich voice. ‘I hear much of you.’

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Jay stared at the staircase in consternation.

‘Thanks,’ he said faintly.

I made a flourishing gesture of invitation, indicating the proffered stairs with a sweep of my free arm. ‘After you.’

‘Uh. Why don’t you go first?’

‘Don’t worry, the House won’t hurt you.’

Jay gave me the are-you-crazy stare. ‘I’ve narrowly missed having my car crushed by a ball of earth the size of four of my heads, almost been flattened by a flying set of stairs, and all of this has happened in the last ten minutes of my life.’

‘All right. I’ll go first.’ I picked up my discarded creature carrier and set off up the steps. After a few moments’ hesitation, I heard Jay’s footsteps ringing behind me.

There was no door at the top, but there was a long window set with many small panes of glass. When I reached the top, about fifty of those panes flickered and vanished, creating an entryway just large enough to admit Jay and myself.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘How convenient.’ For beyond the makeshift doorway I could see one of the larger, oak-panelled drawing-rooms of the first floor, or what had been a drawing-room once. It was now used as a kind of common room, and one of its occupants was Miranda Evans, our vet and specialist in magickal beasts of all kinds.

‘Hi,’ I said as I wandered through the window, and set the creature carrier down at her feet.

She was lounging in the kind of shabby, velvet-clad wing-back chair in which Home abounds, her red robes partially open to reveal a chunky hand-knitted jumper worn underneath. Her blonde hair was half out of its bindings, as usual; she took one look at me and Jay and the present we’d brought for her, and immediately scraped it back into a more business-like ponytail. ‘More work,’ she said with her quirk of a smile. ‘Lovely.’

‘Alikats, breeding pair. Extracted from South Moors.’

Her brows went up at that, and she hastily swallowed the dregs of her cup of tea. ‘Injuries?’

‘None visible. I think they’re unharmed, they just need a check-up and then resettling.’

By the time I had finished this sentence, Miranda was already on her knees, peeking through the bars at my slumbering alikat. ‘Gorgeous,’ she commented.

I’d lost her attention altogether, but that was all right. Jay and I watched as she gathered up our beleaguered pair; with a nod to us both, she left the common room at a smartish pace.

Jay glanced behind himself. The door we’d used had sealed itself up again, turning back into a window. ‘Is it a coincidence that we found Miranda right here?’

‘No,’ I said, making a beeline for the kettle and the tea cupboard. ‘That was the House helping us out. It does that.’

‘When it isn’t trying to kill us.’

‘It wasn’t trying to kill us.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘It was trying to kill you. I was fine.’

This was a joke, of course, but I regretted it when Jay developed an expression of mingled anxiety and affront. I put a cup of tea into his hands to pacify him, or at least to distract him, neither of which worked. ‘Haven’t you seen the House do that before?’

‘Nope.’

‘It’s because you’re new,’ I decided. ‘It hasn’t figured you out yet. It will soon.’

‘Then it will stop trying to kill me?’ Jay looked profoundly sceptical.

‘No. Then you’ll stop being careless enough to get in the way of House’s helpful gestures. Or Zareen’s pranks, for that matter.’

Jay took a long gulp of tea, like a man chugging something strong and alcoholic. ‘Survive a few more weeks for optimum results. Got it.’

I chugged mine, too, for we did not have time to linger. Somewhat to my regret, for the first-floor common room is one of my favourite places at Home. It’s something to do with the quality of the light, I think; those long windows somehow admit the perfect degree of it, in the perfect quantity, keeping the room bathed in a peaceful glow that perfectly brings out the mellow tones of the wooden walls and flooring. Those chairs are remarkable, too. We might not have had time, but I sank into one of them anyway, the crimson one. Its proportions immediately adjusted around me, creating of itself a seat of perfect size and dimensions to accommodate my frame. The cushions softened, too, since I prefer a pillowy structure, and the back shortened a little to suit my height — its previous occupant was apparently rather taller than me, which isn’t unusual.

‘Lovely,’ I said, wearing my smile of serene contentment.

‘Out you get,’ said Jay unsympathetically. ‘We’ve a report to make.’

I sighed, deeply, but he was right. Something was very much amiss at South Moors, and the Powers needed to know about it right away. ‘Fine, fine,’ I said with decided ill grace. I threw a cushion at him as I rose; unlike the loose earth from Zareen’s inverted trees, this he dodged with easy grace, and raised a single brow at me.

‘Have you no mischievous side?’ I asked him in exasperation.

‘None whatsoever.’ He said it with such a straight face, I had to believe him.

‘You and Zareen should get on like—’

‘Cats and dogs,’ he interrupted. ‘We do.’

I tossed the tangles from my hair, adjusted my poor ruined dress, and made for the door. ‘They should have given you someone much more serious to work with.’

‘But you’re the one who needed me.’ Jay somehow beat me to the door, opened it, and held it for me with an ironical little bow.

Considering the most prominent of the reasons why I needed him, that reflection was mildly embarrassing, so I responded only with a haughty look of disdain and strode forth.

Jay was kind enough to fall in behind me without further comment, and I was able to pretend that I didn’t hear the low chuckle that was almost masked by the sound of the door closing behind us.

The process for seeking an audience with Milady is rather particular.

First, one is expected to present oneself in her preferred location, that being at the very top of the very tallest tower of the House. And why not? There is something agreeably fairy tale about it, even if the physical exertion required is not always well received by her supplicants.

Jay managed the ascent of three narrow, winding stone staircases in increasingly strained silence. They are the kind with uneven steps (charmingly worn by time, and the passage of a million footsteps); spiralling construction (tightly wound, so as to make of them the greatest possible obstacle); and occasional landings, randomly dispersed (the kind with dark, shadowy corners, wherein one half expects to find all manner of disagreeable creatures residing). And of course, none of them has fewer than thirty or so steps. All things considered, I was impressed that he made it halfway up the fourth staircase before the complaints began.

‘Isn’t there a lift?’ He sounded faintly breathless but not excessively so, which wasn’t bad. Jay obviously kept himself decently fit.

‘Of course not,’ I said, in the ringing tones of a supremely fit woman (a boast, but what can I say? I’ve been climbing these staircases every day for more than a decade. That alone will give a woman lungs of steel, and the hind quarters of a racehorse).

‘What do you mean, of course not? Lifts are wonderful.’

I cast him a withering look over my shoulder. ‘This is a seventeenth-century mansion. Where do you suggest we put an elevator? Which priceless and irreplaceable features shall we rip out in order to make room for it?’

‘Fair point. What about the house itself, then? If it can present you with a staircase straight up to the common room, it can whisk us up to the top tower in a jiffy.’

‘Are you in a wheelchair, Jay?’

‘Uh… no.’

‘Valerie Greene — have you met her yet? Library? — is wheelchair-bound. Dear House takes the very best care of her. Any door she approaches opens upon just the place she wants to go.’

‘That’s good of it.’

‘Isn’t it? And quite ingenious.’

‘So we’re left to haul ourselves up all these stairs because…?’

‘Because we are able-bodied, fit young people, Jay, and I don’t think House approves of laziness.’

I fancy it was the word laziness that silenced him, or perhaps he simply ran out of breath. Either way, he had not another word to advance until we arrived at the top of the sixth set of stairs and stood, briefly winded (or he was, at any rate; I deny all such charges), and taking great gulps of air. We were in a cramped, rounded tower; before us was one of those narrow, arrow-slit type windows filled in with glass, through which we were afforded a fine view of the green, sun-dappled hills beyond the gates.

‘Lovely,’ I commented.

Jay said nothing, so I turned to the one other feature of that stark little tower: a heavy oak door, closed and barred.

I knocked.

‘What now?’ whispered Jay, when nothing happened.

‘House is consulting with Milady as to whether she wants to admit us.’

‘Does she ever decline?’

‘Me, no. You, however… who knows.’

Jay allowed that to pass in silence. ‘Does she really live up here?’ he said after a while — just as the door unbarred itself with a clang and swung slowly inwards.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Jay made no move, so I entered the room first.

Milady’s room is only about six metres across, its walls curved most of the way around. Those walls were fitted with panelling at some point in history, though not with the smooth, warm-hued oak that’s prevalent across most of the House. The tower’s walls are sheathed in iridescent crystal. There’s one window, but it doesn’t look over the countryside like the one in the antechamber. Through it one can see only swirling white mist.

I stepped into the centre of the room, and positioned myself in the middle of the thick, royal-blue rug that covers the floor.

‘Afternoon, Milady,’ I said cordially, and curtseyed.

‘Uh.’ Jay came up next to me and turned a full circle on the spot, neck craning, as though Milady might be hidden somewhere in a room with no furniture and no corners. ‘Where is she?’ he whispered to me.

I elbowed him. ‘Say hello,’ I hissed.

‘Hello, Milady.’

That was it. I elbowed him again, a bit harder this time, and by way of judicious application of pressure to his upper back I contrived to force him into a semblance of a polite bow.

The air sparkled. ‘Cordelia Vesper,’ said a low, cultured female voice. ‘Jay Patel. What have you to tell me today?’

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Damnit.

I threw caution and dignity to the winds and made a leap for the alikat. We fell in a blur of flying hair and fur and deeply unhappy beast, and I’m pretty sure that cleaver missed my shoulders by a mere two inches but it was worth it, because I came up with an armful of kat. The creature was hissing and writhing like a mad thing but she was, blessedly, still alive.

‘Right,’ I snapped, eyeing the hunchback with all the justifiable anger of a woman who has only narrowly escaped death by cleaver. He stared back at me with the same dull lack of interest as the rest of his kin, which took the proverbial wind out of my sails just a little. ‘Society,’ I said firmly, and my identifying symbol (a purple unicorn against the Society’s backdrop of three crossed wands) flashed briefly in the air before me. I fear the dignity of the moment was somewhat impaired by the antics of my rescuee, which continued to thrash and claw at me as though I was its tormentor. Honestly, did the absurd creature not realise I had saved its skin? I tightened my grip upon it, trying to ignore the way its black claws sank deeper into my poor flesh, and lifted my chin haughtily. ‘The Rules for possession, care and treatment of Magickal Creatures are well known to you, are they not? And upon this point, they are very clear. No endangered species may be owned without a valid permit, and they are never to be put on the menu!’

I expected some manner of objection to be raised to this, if to nothing else that I had done. But the hunchback only stared at me for several long seconds, mouth slightly agape. Then, finally, he shrugged, letting his dirty cleaver drop heedlessly onto the cobbled stone square at his feet. The sharp clatter of its fall split the heavily silent air with a crack, and I jumped.

The hunchback made no attempt either to defend his conduct, or to reassert his ownership of the alikat. Instead, he turned away and shambled off, his candy-striped companion shuffling after. One by one, the other half-dozen trolls scattered, leaving me alone in the square. I watched them go, stunned.

There was definitely something odd going on. Why were the trolls so apathetic? What had prompted them to try to make a dinner of an alikat? They did know the Rules. These policies had been in place for many years.

The quiet at least gave me an opportunity to pacify my poor alikat. I gentled it with a little charm I learned from my mother — handy when I was a child, she once said, which does not speak well of my temperament at that age, but never mind. The kat relaxed in my arms, affording me with the leisure to observe the toll its understandable distress had taken upon me. My arms were striped with stinging wounds that oozed trickles of blood into the shredded sleeves of my lovely silk dress, and I could not hold back a sigh. This line of work is, all too often, fatal to skin and clothes alike.

Jay reappeared. To my vast relief, he was carrying the other alikat. Definitely a male, this one: it was half again the size of the little female that now lay so quiescent in my arms, its fur dappled in deeper shades of indigo and black. To my mingled admiration and disgust, the second alikat embraced Jay as though the two had been best friends since their earliest youth. It lay twined around Jay’s neck and half down one of his arms, its whiskers vibrating with the force of its purr. I detected no signs of injury in Jay, though the thick leather of his jacket might have had something to do with that.

He took stock of my bloodied state and the alikat lying in my arms, and gave a tiny, satisfied nod. I tried not to feel offended by his visible lack of concern for the fate of my poor arms. ‘Vaporised the lot?’ he guessed, glancing around at the empty square.

‘Nothing but dust and ash.’

He grinned. ‘What did you really do with them?’

‘Nothing. They submitted to my withdrawal of the alikat without a murmur, and left.’

Jay’s brows went up. ‘Odd.’

‘Very. Shall we take these poor little soldiers home?’

‘Lead on.’

‘Uh, no. You lead on.’

Jay gave me a tiny salute. ‘You are the boss.’

‘Fine.’ I cast a quick look around to get my bearings, and set off.

‘That’s the wrong way,’ Jay helpfully observed.

I stopped. ‘Remember why they assigned you to me?’

‘I just… didn’t think you could really be that bad.’ Jay picked a direction almost the opposite of the one I had been wandering in, and marched off.

‘I’d love to take offence,’ I said as I fell in behind him. ‘But the truth is, I couldn’t find my way out of a bucket.’

‘Noted.’ Jay sounded perfectly composed. Not a quiver of mirth could I detect.

‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘Never.’

‘You are.’

His shoulders began to shake, which prompted a dissatisfied mrow from his alikat. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

I caught up with Jay, and expressed my disapproval with a disdainful toss of my cerulean curls. ‘I have other talents.’

‘I am sure you do.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask what they are?’

‘I’ve been told what they are. Vast knowledge of magickal history. Specialised knowledge of ancient spells, beasts and artefacts. No insignificant skill with charms.’

‘Great hair.’

‘Great hair.’

I smiled, mollified. ‘What are your talents?’

‘I,’ said Jay, ‘can find my way out of a bucket.’

‘I am speechless with admiration.’

‘And the South Moors Troll Enclave. There’s the door.’

Burdened as we’d hoped to be by a pair of frightened (and possibly injured) animals, we had judged it best to eschew flight this time and travel by car. At least, this was the official motive. I prefer cars anyway, for two reasons. One: it is unnecessary to manage the thorny problem of finding one’s way to somewhere while maintaining an invisibility or deflection glamour, all without falling off one’s choice of steed (chairs are popular). And two: call it vanity, but I hate what the high winds do to my hair. Cars, of course, have heating and sat nav and roofs overhead, which is delightful of them. They also have traffic jams, but I consider that a price worth paying for comfort.

Since Jay would be driving, he had insisted we use his car. I’d half expected it to be some kind of zippy, sporty thing with too few seats and overly glossy paintwork, but instead he drove a shabby-looking Ford Something in a respectable shade of dark red. It displayed the kinds of scratches and minor dents suggestive of a car that is well-used but not quite so well-loved. We carefully loaded our (thankfully uninjured) alis into a pair of cat carriers, settled them in the back, and headed for Home.

When I say “Home”, I mean headquarters. The Society for Magickal Heritage is officially called The Society for the Preservation and Protection of Magickal Heritage, or SPPMH for short. But while lengthy and convoluted acronyms might work beautifully for, say, the RSPCA, we summarily rejected the garbling and spitting involved and opted for the serene simplicity of merely: The Society. And the Society is housed in a gorgeous country mansion which is, considering its size, surprisingly hard to find.

We like it that way. The house has no official name; that’s why we just call it “Home”. Like the Hidden University, it isn’t marked on any map. It has no website, and no sat nav will direct you to it. This, as you may imagine, has frequently caused me no little difficulty. I was two days late for my first day of work.

The house dates from the mid seventeenth century. It was once owned by one of the more prominent magickal families among the nobility of England and Ireland, so they say, though reports vary as to which family it was. Officially, it was knocked down after the Second World War, like so many of our country houses; this piece of misdirection, combined with a liberal application of deterrent charms, keeps us largely secure from the outside world. It drowses, quietly hidden, somewhere near the border of South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, ringed by peaceful hills, and as wholly unspoilt as a building that’s Home to two hundred people can possibly be.

Not being directionally impaired, Jay got us there within a couple of hours. I felt so many things upon approaching that beautiful house, as I always do. Admiration for its rambling stonework, its fanciful little towers, its long windows, parapets and soaring archways. Fondness, for the place I’ve called home for more than a decade. Pride, for the work we do; we’ve saved and restored countless books and artefacts; rescued many species of magickal creatures from the disaster of extinction; tracked down and extracted magickal Treasures and Curiosities without number, sometimes from situations of considerable danger. What kind of work could be more important than that?

This array of warm feelings suffered an early check. As we drove slowly up the spacious driveway, I noticed that Zareen had turned the flanking rows of stately, centuries-old oak trees upside down. Again.

‘Is it too soon to revoke her Curiosity privileges?’ I sighed, wincing at the exposed roots sagging helplessly in the air.

‘It appears to be too late,’ said Jay.

‘It’s never too late.’

‘You’ll have to talk to Milady. She—’

A great, groaning creaking sound interrupted whatever Jay was about to add, as the tree nearest to us flipped right-side-up again. Dislodged earth rained down upon the car like a shower of hail, and I was thankful anew that we had not come swooping in upon a pair of inconveniently open-topped chairs.

‘Definitely talk to Milady,’ growled Jay, narrowly avoiding a falling clot of earth of alarming size with a neat swerve of the wheels.

It was good to be Home.

Jay was only recruited by the Society a couple of weeks ago, and it shows.

We parked, retrieved our alikats and made for the house. I was aiming for a side door that would take us straight into the Magickal Creatures wing, but as we approached, the little green-painted portal faded into the stonework and disappeared.

I stepped back.

‘Uh,’ said Jay, blinking and pointing at where the door had been. ‘Is… it supposed to do that?’

‘No, but all attempts to dissuade it have failed. I think Milady’s given up. Take a step back, Jay.’

‘What?’

I don’t know whether it was the vanishing door that did it or the inverted trees beforehand, but Jay definitely wasn’t at his sharpest. I grabbed him and pulled, just as an elegant spiral staircase made from solid wrought iron descended from above, slamming into the ground a little too close to where Jay had been standing moments before.

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