Fated

London is an old city. Even visitors can feel it – the sense of history, the weight of thousands of years. To a sensitive it’s even stronger, like a physical presence embedded into the earth and stone. Over the centuries pockets have developed, little enclaves in the jungle of buildings, and the place I was going to is one of them.

The park is about ten minutes’ walk from my shop, tucked down a twisting backstreet that nobody ever uses. It’s overgrown to the point of being nearly invisible behind the fence and trees. There are construction vehicles parked outside – officially the park’s supposed to be closed for redevelopment, but somehow the work never seems to get done. There are buildings all around, but leaves and branches shelter you from watching eyes.

I was sitting on a blanket with my back against a beech tree when I heard the faint rattle of a bicycle on the road outside. A moment later a girl appeared through the trees, ducking under the branches. I waved and she changed direction, walking across the grass towards me.

A glance at Luna would show you a girl in her early twenties, with blue eyes, fair skin and wavy light brown hair worn up in two bunches. She moves very carefully, always looking where she places her hands and feet, and often she seems as though her body’s there while her mind’s somewhere far away. She hardly ever smiles and I’ve never seen her laugh, but apart from that you could talk to her without noticing anything strange … at least to begin with.

Luna’s one of those people who was born into the world of magic without ever really getting a choice. Adepts and even mages can choose to abandon their power if they want to, bury their talents in the sand and walk away, but for Luna it’s different. A few hundred years ago in Sicily, one of Luna’s ancestors made the mistake of upsetting a powerful strega. Back country witches have a reputation for being vicious, but this one was mean even by witch standards. Instead of just killing the man, she put a curse on him that would strike his youngest daughter, and his daughter’s daughter, and her daughter after that, following his children down and down through the generations until his descendants died out or the world ended, whichever came first.

I don’t know how that long-dead witch managed to bind the curse so tightly to the family line, but she did a hell of a thorough job. She’s been dust and bones for centuries but the curse is just as strong as ever, and Luna’s the one in this generation who inherited it. Part of the reason the curse is so nasty is that it’s almost impossible to tell it’s there. Even a mage wouldn’t notice it unless he knew exactly what to look for. If I concentrate I can see it around Luna as a kind of silvery-grey mist, but I only have the vaguest idea how it does what it does.

‘Hey,’ Luna said as she reached me, slinging her backpack off her shoulder. Instead of sitting on the blanket she picked a spot on the grass, a few yards away from me. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Sure. Why?’

‘You look as if something’s bothering you.’

I shook my head in annoyance. I’d thought I’d concealed it better than that, but I always have trouble hiding things from Luna. ‘Unwelcome visitor. How’s things?’

Luna hesitated. ‘Can you …?’

‘Let’s have a look at it.’

Luna had been only waiting for me to ask; she unzipped her backpack and took out something wrapped in a cotton scarf. She leant forward to place it onto the edge of the blanket and unwrapped it, staying as far away as possible. The scarf fell away, Luna scooted back, and I leant forward in interest. Sitting in the folds of the scarf was what looked like a cube of red crystal.

The thing was about three inches square and deep crimson, the colour of red stained glass. As I looked more closely, though, I saw it wasn’t transparent enough to be glass; I should have been able to see through it, but I couldn’t. Instead, if I looked closely, I could see what looked like tiny white sparks held in the cube’s depths. ‘Huh,’ I said, sitting up. ‘Where’d you find it?’

‘It was in the attic of a house in Clapham West. But …’ Luna paused. ‘There’s something strange. I went to the same house three weeks ago and didn’t find anything. But this time it was sitting on a shelf, right out in the open. And when I went to the owner, he couldn’t remember owning it. He let me have it for free.’ Luna frowned. ‘I’ve been wondering if I just missed it, but I don’t see how. You can feel it, can’t you?’

I nodded. The cube radiated the distinct sense of otherness that all magic items do. This one wasn’t flashy, but it was strong; someone sensitive like Luna couldn’t have walked by without noticing. ‘Did you touch it?’

Luna nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘It glowed,’ Luna said. ‘Just for a second, and—’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I put it down, and it stopped. Then I wrapped it up and brought it here.’