Hidden

Book 5: An Alex Verus Novel

by Benedict Jacka

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Paranormal; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

NEVER LOOK BACK

Alex Verus is a diviner who can see probable futures – a talent that's gotten him and his friends out of many a tough scrape. But what happens when someone doesn't want Alex's help?

Alex's friend, the life mage Anne, distanced herself from him when she found out about his past as a Dark apprentice. Now she's in serious trouble, but wants nothing to do with him. Alex has to start wondering if Anne's problem is really with him – or if there's a secret she's trying to hide.

On top of that, rumours are swirling around London that Alex's former master may be back in town. Alex has no idea what his agenda may be, or who it involves . . .

Release date: September 2, 2014

Publisher: Ace

Print pages: 304

Sample

contents

chapter 1

Russell Square is one of the odder areas of London. Squeezed between Euston Road to the north and Holborn to the south, it doesn’t have enough shops to be commercial and it doesn’t have enough houses to be residential. Instead it has a mix of universities and hotels, rich tourists and poor students rubbing shoulders in the busy streets. It’s supposed to be “literary,” associations from the old Bloomsbury group, though given that you’d have to be a millionaire to own property there nowadays I doubt you’ll find many artists living in the place.

What Russell Square does have a lot of is education: English-language schools for the expats, colleges for the students, and the British Museum for everyone. It was one of the colleges I’d come for, a long hulking brown-and-beige cinderblock called the Institute of Education, and as I approached I reflexively scanned ahead, searching for danger. I didn’t find anything and I didn’t expect to, but for some reason I found myself hesitating as I drew level with the front doors. For a moment I thought about turning away, then shook my head in annoyance and headed inside.

My name’s Alex Verus and I’m a probability mage, aka a diviner. I train an apprentice, do contract work for other mages, and run a magic shop in Camden when I’m not otherwise occupied with personal problems or with people trying to hurt me, the second of which happens more often than I’d like. I’m good friends with a handful of mages and one giant spider, and less good friends with the magical government of Britain, otherwise known as the Light Council. The Council don’t like me for two reasons: first, they think I was originally taught by a particularly nasty Dark mage named Richard Drakh and did various unpleasant things while serving as his apprentice, and second, they suspect me of being responsible for the deaths of two Light mages on separate occasions a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it just so happens that both of those suspicions are true.

That wasn’t the reason I was here today, though.

As with most British universities the security at the Institute of Education is nonexistent, and I walked past the reception desk and descended into a big square concrete well with big square concrete pillars and big square ugly paintings. A sign at the bottom said LOGAN HALL, but instead of going straight in I veered left. The entry area narrowed into a corridor with few doors or windows. To my right I could hear a voice echoing, but I kept working my way around the edge of the hall, climbing occasional small flights of steps. Only when I’d circled to the back of the hall did I look through one of the doors.

The hall was a huge auditorium, faded red seats in semicircular rows slanting down to a raised wooden stage. There were hundreds of people seated within, but the one I was interested in was the man on the stage. He was standing on the podium delivering a lecture, and behind him was a projection screen that read European Integration in Historical Perspective. It was his voice I’d heard from outside.

I hadn’t opened the door, but there were wired-glass windows set into the wood that gave a good view inside, and I stood quietly, watching the man. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with a stooped posture and hair that had gone nearly but not quite all the way to silvery white. At a glance the two of us wouldn’t have looked much alike, but there was something in his features of my own, aged and tempered. He hadn’t seen me—the corridor was darker than the brightly lit hall and I knew the lights inside would reflect off the window glass. I could have opened the door to step inside, but I stayed where I was.

I’d been standing there for maybe five minutes when a soft noise caught my attention. Different movements make different sounds—the steady tread of someone walking, the scrape of shifting feet, the patter of someone in a hurry—and with practice you can learn to filter them, picking out the ones that don’t fit in. It’s nothing to do with magic, just simple awareness, a primal skill that anyone can learn but which most people in the modern age have forgotten. But anyone who lives as a predator or as prey learns it fast.

The sound I’d heard was the sound of someone trying to stay quiet and hidden, and I stepped quietly into the cover of the doorway, one hand moving to the hilt of the knife beneath my coat. The doorway blocked line of sight, hiding me from anyone behind or ahead. It blocked my view, too . . . but I don’t need a view to see.

The corridor was empty and ordinary, pale walls and faded blue carpet. But to my sight, it was a branching spread of possible futures, lines of light forking and multiplying in the darkness. In each possible future I took a different action, moved a different way, and in every one of them my future self changed to match it: thousands of futures, branching into millions and billions. I picked out two of the delicate strands of light and focused on them, letting them strengthen and grow. In one I stepped out of hiding and turned left; in the other I moved right. My future selves walked away from me and as they did I watched, guiding the possible futures to keep myself walking down the corridor, seeing what my future eyes would see. The right-hand self found nothing. The left-hand self heard a scuffle of movement. The left-hand branches multiplied, dividing, and I guided my future self down the path, where he chased after the sound. More futures branched out, and as they did I recognised a familiar element, a signature. I moved closer to look—

—and suddenly I knew who was following me. The instant that I did, the future wavered and faded into nothingness; now that I knew who it was, I had no reason to walk down there to find out. Physically carrying out all the possible actions I’d just run through would have taken the best part of a minute, but divination works at the speed of thought and the only limit on what you can do is how clearly and quickly you can focus. From beginning to end the whole thing had taken me less than a second.

From down the corridor I heard another stealthy movement. I’d kept quite still as I’d used my magic, and my pursuer had no way to know that I was there. Cautious footsteps advanced up the corridor. I waited, letting them approach, then stepped out into view, the fingers of my right hand flicking forward.

The girl who’d been following me jumped back. She was wearing jeans and a light green top and as soon as she saw me she started moving, but the metal disc I’d thrown bounced off her stomach before she could get out of the way. She began to drop into a stance, her right hand going to the small of her back.

“No use going for a weapon,” I told her. “You’re dead.”

With a sigh Luna dropped her arm and straightened. “How long did you know I was there?”

Luna is half English and half Italian, with fair skin, wavy light brown hair, and a lot more confidence than she used to have. She’s an adept rather than a mage, the bearer of an ancient family curse which protects her at the expense of killing anyone who gets too close, and she’s been my apprentice for around two years. Nowadays her control’s developed to the point where being around her is almost safe, as long as you don’t touch her. “If you’re going to make a habit of shadowing mages,” I said, “you’ll have to get better at dodging.”

“Yes, oh master,” Luna said resignedly, bending to pick up the thing I’d thrown at her. It had been a one-pound coin, and as her fingers touched it I saw the silver-grey mist of her curse engulf it. As she did, she shot a quick glance at the door behind me, trying to see what was inside.

I rolled my eyes inwardly. “Come on, upstairs,” I said, starting back towards the stairwell. The voice of the lecturer continued from behind me, but I didn’t look back.

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“I thought I told you to mind the shop,” I told Luna.

The inner courtyard of the Institute of Education was stone with scattered trees. A faculty building that looked like a giant concrete staircase loomed over us, and high in the sky above, the thin grey cylinder of the BT tower loomed over the faculty building. The sky beyond the tower was grey; it was an overcast day. Students walked and cycled past in ones and twos, and a cool wind gusted across the stone.

“It’s not like the world’s going to end if it’s not open for a few hours,” Luna said. “You close it up all the time.”

“I close it up. Operative word: I.”

“I’m supposed to be your apprentice,” Luna complained. “It’s not like you’re paying me to be shop assistant.”

Luna used to work for me part-time finding and buying magic items, but when I took her on as an apprentice I started paying her a stipend; mage training takes as much time as a full-time job and I wanted her focused on her lessons. “Actually, your apprentice duties are whatever I say they are,” I said. “So in fact, right now, shop assistant is exactly what I’m paying you to be. Besides, you need the practice.”

“Shadowing you seems like practice.”

I gave Luna a look.

Luna put her hands up. “Okay, okay. Look, I’m bored. Nothing’s happening at class, there aren’t any tournaments so no one wants to practice, and I hardly ever see Anne and Vari these days. Even Sonder’s stopped showing up. And you haven’t exactly been Mr. Sociable.”

I didn’t answer. I don’t know what my expression was like, but Luna drew back slightly. “Well, you haven’t,” she said defensively.

We walked a little way in silence. A pair of girls came towards us, talking, and we split to let them pass between us. “What were you doing there?” Luna asked.

“Looking for someone.”

“Is it something to do with Richard?”

“No.”

“I was just wondering—”

“It’s nothing to do with Richard.”

“Okay.”

“I was thinking of talking to the guy giving that lecture.”

“Okay.”

I gave Luna a sharp look. She had a carefully neutral look, which made me suspicious. “So who was he?” Luna asked after a pause.

“Who was who?”

“The lecture guy.”

I very nearly told Luna to get lost. It wasn’t a nice way to treat her, but I’ve got a knee-jerk reaction to talking about anything really personal. My instinct with anything like this is to keep it to myself.

Up until last summer, my life had been going pretty well. I’d taken in a pair of young mages named Anne and Variam, and between them, Luna, and a Light mage named Sonder, I’d had something close to a real social life for the first time in ten years. I’d started to believe that I might have finally gotten away from my past.

I was wrong. In August, a group of adepts calling themselves the Nightstalkers showed up, looking for revenge for one of the uglier things I’d done while I’d been Richard’s apprentice. They couldn’t find Richard, but they found me all right and would have killed me if my friends hadn’t come to help. In the aftermath I’d told Luna, Sonder, Anne, and Variam why the Nightstalkers were after me and what I’d done for them to hate me so much.

Luna had taken it surprisingly well. She’d read between the lines and figured out most of the story before I’d even told it to her, and had decided that her loyalties lay with me. Variam, prickly but fiercely honourable, had chosen the same way. But Anne and Sonder had been less sure, and while they were still making up their minds I’d led the Nightstalkers, young and inexperienced and painfully idealistic, into a trap in which nearly all of them had been killed. I hadn’t had much choice, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it.

Both Anne and Sonder cut off contact with me when they found out. I’d had a short and painful conversation with Anne in which she’d made it clear that she thought what I’d done was unforgivable, and from the brief attempts I’d made since then to talk to Sonder I was pretty sure he felt the same way. A part of me agreed with them.

Keeping my past a secret hadn’t done me any favours that time. In fact, it had probably made things worse.

“He’s my father,” I told Luna.

“Really?”

“What’s with that tone of voice? I do have parents.”

“Uh . . . you never talk about them.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that. After they split up I didn’t see my dad for a long time, and when I did it was after my time with Richard.” I hadn’t been in good shape back then. I’d spent most of the previous year as a prisoner in Richard’s mansion, getting periodic visits from one of Richard’s other apprentices. “I told him bits of the story, skipped over the magic parts, but I did tell him what I did to Tobruk.” Namely, that I’d killed the evil little bastard.

“Okay.”

“My dad’s a pacifist,” I said. “He doesn’t believe in violence.”

“Seriously?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Well, you’re, um . . .”

I gave Luna a narrow look. “What?”

“. . . I’m not finishing that sentence. So the conversation didn’t go well?”

“My dad’s a political science professor who thinks violence is a sign of barbarism. I told him to his face that I’d committed premeditated murder and didn’t regret it.” With hindsight that had been a spectacularly bad idea, but I hadn’t been in much of a condition to think it through. “How do you think the conversation went?”

“Badly?”

We’d made our way off the university campus and back out onto the London streets, heading north towards Euston Road. “Do you talk to him much?” Luna asked.

“Last time was a couple of years ago.”

“Does he know that you’re . . . ?”

“A mage? No. He thinks I got involved with criminals and that Richard was some sort of mob boss. I suppose if I worked at it I might be able to convince him that Richard was a Dark mage, but I don’t think that’d be much of an improvement.” And if I told him what I’d done to those adepts last year . . .

“How about if I went and talked to him?” Luna suggested.

“No.”

“I could—”

“No. This is one area I do not want you messing around in.” I looked at her. “Clear?”

I saw Luna’s eyebrows go up and she shot me a quick glance. “Clear,” she said after a moment.

We walked in silence for a few minutes. I waited to see if Luna would push her luck, but she stayed quiet. We worked our way through the London back streets, the traffic a steady noise in the background. “So,” I said at last. “How about you tell me why you’re really here?”

“What?”

“You’re working up to asking me for something.”

Luna made a face. “Yes, it’s that obvious,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

“If it’s a bad time—”

“Luna . . .”

“Okay, okay,” Luna said. “Have you heard anything from Anne? As in lately.”

I looked at her curiously. “No.”

“You sent her that message.”

“And I got a very polite nonanswer.” It had been my third try. Give Anne credit, she does at least answer her mail. “Would have thought you’d be in closer touch than me.”

Luna sounded like she was choosing her words carefully. “Do you think you could invite her to move back in?”

I looked at Luna in surprise, about to ask if she was serious. The look on her face told me she was. “I know things didn’t end all that well,” Luna continued hurriedly, “but it was nine months ago. She might have cooled off, right?”

“Why are you asking about this now?”

“Well, it’d be safer, wouldn’t it? I mean, that was why you invited them to stay.”

Back when I’d first met Anne and Variam, they’d been staying with a rakshasa named Jagadev. Rakshasas are powerful tigerlike shapeshifters from the Indian subcontinent—mages don’t trust them and vice versa, both with good reason. Jagadev had kicked them out shortly afterwards, leaving them as apprentices without a master, which in magical society is a lot like skinny-dipping in a shark tank. Anne and Variam’s only real protection had been their membership in the Light apprentice program, a kind of magical university. Trouble is, you’re not allowed into the program unless you’re a Light or independent apprentice in good standing, which Anne and Vari weren’t. To fix that I’d invited them to move in with me, effectively taking Jagadev’s place as their sponsor, up until last summer when they’d both moved out. In Vari’s case he’d become a Light apprentice for real, signing up with a Light Keeper. Anne hadn’t.

“Back then they didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said. “It’s different now. Vari’s got a master, and Anne’s got that place down in Honor Oak.”

“But she doesn’t have anyone sponsoring her.”

“Yeah.” We crossed the street, heading north. “But at least she’s still in the apprentice program.”

Luna hesitated.

I looked at Luna. “What?”

“So, about that . . .”

“Please don’t tell me she left.”

“Uh . . . technically, no,” Luna said. “It was more like ‘got expelled.’”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. When?”

“The announcement was yesterday.”

“Why now?” I said. “She and Vari joined up what, two years ago? Did some teacher get vindictive or something?”

“No,” Luna said. “They’re saying she attacked another student.”

I stared at Luna. “Anne attacked another student?”

“Yeah,” Luna said. “You remember Natasha?”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay . . .” Natasha was a Light apprentice I’d met the year before last. She’d thrown a tantrum over Luna knocking her out of a tournament, to the point of shooting her in the back with a spell which might have killed Luna if Anne hadn’t been there to heal her. I hadn’t been able to do anything to Natasha officially—her master was too well connected and she’d gotten away with only a slap on the wrist—but I’d met Natasha’s master afterwards and explained very clearly what would happen to her apprentice if she did anything like that again. Apparently the lesson had stuck because Natasha’s master had kept her away from Luna ever since. If Anne had gone after Natasha, odds were Natasha had done something to deserve it.

But still . . . “Are you sure it was Anne who started it?” I asked. “Natasha didn’t attack her first?”

“I don’t think she got the chance. She went straight down and started screaming. They had to sedate her to shut her up and she hasn’t been back since.”

I gave Luna a slightly disbelieving look, but she didn’t look like she was exaggerating. She didn’t look particularly upset, either, but there was a tinge of worry there as well—no matter how good her reasons for disliking Natasha, she knew this was serious.

“Has the expulsion gone through, or is it hanging?”

“They fast-tracked it. Natasha’s master isn’t pushing her own charges yet, though.”

“She couldn’t, not easily. Would bring up too many awkward questions about why her apprentice wasn’t expelled for doing the same thing to you in Fountain Reach.” I thought for a second, then shook my head. “Won’t help with the expulsion, though. That’ll be from the program directors.”

“So?” Luna said. “What do you think?”

“Having Anne move back in? It won’t fly. Might have helped if we’d done it a month ago, but it won’t be enough to get her reinstated.”

“Oh, screw getting reinstated, most of those classes are a waste of time anyway. I’m worried about her. Being on your own as an apprentice is a really bad idea, right? Isn’t that what you keep telling me?”

“Preaching to the choir.”

“She could end up as a slave to a Dark mage or worse. Right?”

Which was exactly what had happened to Anne a few years ago. It was something we had in common. “It’s possible, yes.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?” I looked at Luna. “Yes, you’re right. Being a mage or an adept on your own at Anne’s age is a really bad idea, especially when the apprentice grapevine makes sure everyone knows about it. So why are you telling all this to me? You should be talking to her.”

“I did.”

“And?”

Luna didn’t look happy. “Let me guess,” I said. “She said no, so now you’re coming to me?”

“Well . . . yeah. Could you ask her?”

The flip side of Luna’s new self-confidence is that it’s made her a lot less shy about asking for what she wants. “She’s made it pretty clear that she doesn’t want to talk to me, and even if she did I don’t think moving back is high on her to-do list.”

“It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

“Is that your new motto for dealing with mages, or something?”

Luna came to a halt in the middle of the pavement, forcing me to stop and turn to her. “Look, I’m worried. She’s my best friend, even if I hardly see her nowadays. I know you two don’t get on anymore and I haven’t said anything, but . . . can’t you give it a try? It’s not as though you lose anything if she says no, right?”

Traffic went by in the street, and pedestrians changed their course to avoid us. Luna gave me a pleading look, and all of a sudden my objections felt a lot weaker. I still didn’t want to do it, but it wasn’t as though Luna were really asking for much . . . and she wasn’t wrong about the danger Anne might be in. “All right,” I said.

“Tonight?”

“Fine. Tonight.”

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I parted company from Luna and headed south. With her out of sight it only took a couple of minutes for my thoughts to skip away from her and Anne and go back to circling the uncomfortable subject of my father.

It was probably just as well that Luna had shown up. Without her to give me a push, I might have ended up skulking outside that hall for hours. I’d been telling Luna the truth—my father had been utterly horrified at what I’d done to Tobruk (and to several others, for that matter). The bit I hadn’t told her was that even though I couldn’t see any remotely realistic way in which I could ever change my father’s mind, I’d kept on trying anyway. I’d seen my father maybe a dozen times over the past ten years, and every time the meeting had ended up devolving into the same bitter argument. He couldn’t see how violence was ever the right choice, and I couldn’t see how that attitude could ever make sense—we always said the same things and reacted the same way, as though we were acting out the script for a play we both knew by heart, with tiny variations that ultimately didn’t make any difference. Even now, as I walked through the London streets, I found myself running through the arguments with my father for the thousandth time, debating the points and imagining the counterarguments he’d make so that I could respond to them.

On a rational level I knew it didn’t make sense. The fights with my father never achieved anything—all they did was make me strung out and depressed—yet somehow I kept having them. It was as though I needed to prove something to him, make him admit that I was right and he was wrong. It’d never happen, and I knew it would never happen, but still I carried on doing it. About the only thing that could pull my mind away from it was work.

Luckily, I had a meeting scheduled for exactly that.

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I met Talisid in the Holborn restaurant we usually use for our discussions, an Italian place close enough to the station to be convenient and spacious enough to be private. Talisid greeted me, courteous as always, a middle-aged man an inch or two under average height, with a balding head and greying hair. At first glance he looks so bland that he could be part of the furniture, but a closer look might suggest a little more. I’ve known him for two years and I trust him more than anyone else on the Council, which isn’t saying much. We ordered and got down to business.

“We’ve heard back from the Americans,” Talisid said once we’d finished with chitchat. “They’re offering to drop the issue in exchange for more information on Richard.”

“I already told them I don’t have any more information on Richard. Am I going to have to have this conversation with every country’s Keepers?”

“Just the two, so far,” Talisid murmured.

The leader of the pack of adepts who’d come after me last year had been an American citizen named Will. After what had happened to him the American Council had started making noises, and since Talisid owed me a couple of favours I’d asked him for help. For the last few months Talisid had been acting as my go-between, as well as advisor on the kind of points of law you really don’t want to ask about in public. The really screwed-up part is that under mage law, what I’d done to Will and the Nightstalkers had been perfectly legal. There’s a reason adepts don’t like the Council much.

I twirled my butter knife absently. “How bad an idea would it be to tell them to get lost?”

“They’re not going to try to extradite you, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Talisid said. “But if you’re ever planning to set foot in North America, it might be a better idea to clean this up now rather than later.”

“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Tell them—again—that I’ve no idea where Richard is or what he’s been up to, but I could fill in their files about the rest of those adepts. Maybe they’ll trade for that.”

“It’s possible. There might be a more direct approach.”

I eyed Talisid. “Such as?”

“The American Council are as interested in the reports concerning Richard as we are,” Talisid said. “If you could confirm or deny them . . .”

I sighed. “Not this again.”

“You are uniquely qualified to investigate the issue.”

“Investigate what? A bunch of rumours?”

“Those same rumours have persisted for almost a year,” Talisid said. “In my experience that tends to indicate an active source. Besides—”

“Is there any actual proof?”

“No,” Talisid said after a very slight pause.

“I’m not keen on poking around asking questions on the Dark side of the fence just so the Council can feel better about themselves. I’m not exactly popular there, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I would have thought it concerns you ra