My foot crunched against something lying on the floor so I scuffed it gently with my toe and risked a quick glance down. It was a small metal spherical object. I bent down to pick it up and realised that it was iron. Well, that ruled out any Fae then. I looked back at Mrs Alcoon.
“What have you been doing?” I asked her quietly.
She didn’t answer, just stared fixed at a point above my shoulder, unblinking. I followed her line of sight, turning around to see what was there. Behind me was the plain, unadorned office wall. When she went into this trance state she must have been looking at something though. Or, judging by the height of her gaze, at someone. But who? The owner of the little sphere? I held up the piece of iron and stared at it, hard. I’d not seen anything like this before but then I didn’t know much about magical objects, if that’s what this was. Suddenly, a flicker of black flashed across its dull surface and it started to grow cold, very cold. The tips of my fingers felt as if they were burning and I tried to keep hold of it but the pain became too much and I dropped it. Before it hit the floor, however, it vanished. Just winked right out of existence as if it had never been there in the first place. Rubbing my fingers against each other to rid myself of the numbing pain I stared at the spot where it had disappeared. Well fuckity fuck fuck.
I might have been acting paranoid and jumpy recently with the drunk on the bus but I was pretty damn sure that now I wasn’t imagining things. Something magic was going on inside the little office of Clava Books and it wasn’t magic of the fuzzy David Blaine kind. Neither was it the weak kind of clairvoyant magic that Mrs Alcoon – and Maggie on her behalf – had professed to having. I backed out of the little room, taking care to avoid touching the door with my still pained back this time. I turned the doorknob and made sure it was firmly closed. Little flickers of flame shot up through my insides. There wasn’t any immediate danger – the shop was empty, I was sure of that – but this whole situation reeked of wrongness. I didn’t know if the old lady had tried casting some spell and something had gone awry but I couldn’t just leave her in this situation.
I picked up the bunch of shop keys that was lying underneath the till and re-locked the glass fronted door. Not that I expected any last minute customers but it was better to be safe than sorry. And if Maggie decided to return and thought that it had been me who’d put Mrs Alcoon into this state – well, it was probably better to avoid that situation if possible. I sat down on the floor cross-legged, facing the closed office door. Rubbing the spot on my back where the doorknob had attacked me, I settled in to wait.
Four and a half hours later, nothing had changed. The door remained shut and the shop remained silent. It was just a whole lot darker outside, that was all. This was a long time for anyone to remain in meditative stasis. Risking a quick glance, I stood up and opened the door just a crack to peer inside. Mrs Alcoon hadn’t moved. I cursed. She might have brought this entirely on herself by dabbling in things she should have left well alone but that didn’t mean she might not be in any danger. One or two of the pack members back in Cornwall had used meditation from time to time to calm themselves after a fight with some big bad otherworld nasties – and I’d never known any of them to spend more than an hour in an unchanging state. I’d never tried it myself – I’d always figured meditation for some kind of new age mumbo-jumbo, even if it did induce some kind of magical sensations – but even I knew that too long in a deep trance was not good for anyone. I sighed heavily and looked over at the phone that hung on the wall behind the till. This was such a bad idea but I couldn’t just leave her permanently stuck in whatever state she’d gotten herself into to.
Dragging my feet, I stumbled over to the phone and picked up. The dial tone hummed loudly and I stared down at it for a further second before completely making up my mind. Then I jabbed the number I’d memorised months before out on the keypad, knowing that I was probably going to regret this.
The phone rung several times. I started counting: six, seven, eight…if it reached ten then I’d hang up. The number was probably out of use by now. It would be a sign that I should work out a way to deal with this on my own. Nine, ten. Okay, then. My thumb moved to the disconnect button when suddenly a voice filled the line.
“G’day.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. The pressure of the silence hung heavily for a heartbeat and I could hear his voice suspiciously saying, “Hello?”
Then I replied. “Hi, Alex. It’s, um, good to hear your voice.” And it was, it really was.
“Don’t tell me that’s…Mack Attack? Sheeeeit! Dude! How are you? Where have you BEEN? Oh my God, do you have any idea how crazy the pack have been trying to find you? I’ve had Lord Dark and Scary himself turning up at my door and demanding to know where you were. He wanted me to scry for you but the Ministry refused - you should have seen the look on his face. I swear there was a vein on his head that almost popped out and then, well, never mind. Why didn’t you call me? Why did you leave Cornwall? I thought you wanted to stay there forever. Shit, Mack.”
I swallowed. That was a lot to take in at one time. “Alex, I’ll explain everything later but right now I need your help.”
“Dude, whatever you need. WhatEVER.” He paused. “Hold on, you don’t need me to fight, do you?”
I laughed shakily. “No, I wouldn’t make you do that. I just need a bit of…advice, that’s all.”
“Mack Attack, advice I can do. You should come to London, tell Lord Shifty the truth and then everything’ll work itself out. The human thing isn’t an issue anymore because you’re not freaking human! In fact - ”
I interrupted him. “It’s not about that, Alex, it’s something else.” Before he could continue to regale me with grandiose plans for how I could risk the lives of the entire Cornish pack by exposing myself, I quickly filled him in with the details of Mrs Alcoon – how she had initially seemed slightly clairvoyant and the nameless suspicions I’d had about her that had since been confirmed, up till I found her in her weird semi-permanent stasis. I even included that she knew what I really was although I left out the part about my newly discovered fire power, because it didn’t seem entirely relevant and I wasn’t too sure that I wanted anyone else to know what I was suddenly now capable of just yet.
Alex was quiet for a few moments. When he finally spoke, his voice was solemn. “Describe the object to me again.”
“It was small, about two inches long and shape of a sphere. And made out of iron so it couldn’t have been anything to do with anyone from Faery. And I held it for a good few moments before it started to chill and freeze and then…”
“Mackenzie, you need to get out of there.”
I was momentarily befuddled. “Uh, what?”
“Get out. Now. Lock the door behind you and leave. And don’t go back.”
“I’m not leaving. She helped me out when no-one else would. So she’s meddled in a bit of bad magic and then messed up. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try and get her out of it.” I paused. “Is this because she knows what I am now? That I’m…not human? Is she contacting someone like Iabartu?”
“No.”
“So what the fuck is it, Alex? Tell me! I just need to know what to do. Alex, you know what this is, don’t you?”
This had to be connected in some way to the fact that she’d discovered my true nature, despite what Alex said to the contrary. Either her knowing what I was had put her in danger or she’d put herself into danger by trying to tell someone else.
“She didn’t do it to herself, Mack, that would be impossible. Your Mrs Alcoon is in enforced inhibitory gnosis. You can’t achieve that state on your own – someone has to put you in it. Someone from the Ministry has done this.”
“The Ministry? You mean the mages? You mean, you?”
“No, not me. Well, yes me. My group, at least. That’s what we do when there’s report of trouble.”
I had a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Trouble?”
“When someone reports that there is some bad magic around, the Ministry steps in to put a stop to it. The object you’ve described is a moot – it nullifies any magic user in the vicinity who might be a threat until a representative can arrive and deal with it.”
“I have a horrible feeling that dealing with it means acting first and asking questions later.”
“That is often the case, yes. Mack Attack, if whoever arrives to sort out your little old lady shows up and finds you there, you’ll be taken into custody. They’ll try to find out who you are. Which will take them all of two minutes given how hard the Lord Alpha has been trying to find you. If this happened hours ago then even with you in the wilds of Scotland, they’ll be there soon. Leave.”
“But she’s not a threat, Alex. She’s barely got any power.”
“She worked out what you are, didn’t she?”
“Only because…” my voice trailed off as the dawning realisation hit me.
Maggie. Maggie had called in the threat. And it wasn’t Mrs Alcoon who was being targeted, it was me. It should be me in that strange trance-like state, not her. Yet again I’d fucked up and yet again I was dragging others down with me.
“They’ll hurt her.” It was a statement this time, not a question.
“Mack, they’ll just do what needs to be done. You have to realise how dangerous rogue mages can be. There’s a reason the Ministry exists.”
Out-fucking-standing. First I was labeled a rogue shifter and now I was apparently being advertised as a rogue mage too. I wondered if Maggie fully realised just what she’d done. That stupid woman. My blood was already boiling when I heard the snap of the telephone’s outer plastic casing cracking under the weight of the pressure of my grip. I took a deep breath. Time to stay calm, Mack, I told myself.