Taken

“Ah . . . no. Thank you.” Anne hesitated. “I’m here to give you an invitation.”

I blinked. “To what?”

“Tiger’s Palace,” Anne said. “There’s a gathering tomorrow evening at eight o’clock.”

I’d never heard of Tiger’s Palace. “Who’s inviting me?”

“Lord Jagadev,” Anne said. “He owns the club.”

“Okay,” I was still a little puzzled. “What sort of gathering?”

“Other mages are going to be there,” Anne said. “I don’t think it’s for a special occasion.”

Neither the place nor the name rang any bells, but that wasn’t surprising. I’m pretty much an outsider to mage society, and I don’t get invited to many parties. Which raised an obvious question. “Look,” I said. “I don’t mean to be rude. But why is this ‘Lord Jagadev’ inviting me?”

“I don’t actually know,” Anne said. She sounded honest. “He gave me a list of people to invite but he didn’t tell me why.”

“Do you always do what he tells you?”

Something flickered across Anne’s face and she seemed to draw back a little. “What answer should I give him?”

I looked at Anne for a long moment. I couldn’t sense any deception from her but my instincts were telling me something strange was going on. Mage parties are dangerous at the best of times. If I showed up, there was no telling what I’d be getting into.

On the other hand mage parties are also a mine of information and I hate missing opportunities to find things out. Besides, one of the things I’ve learnt over the past year is that if trouble’s on its way it’s a lot better to go do something about it than to sit around and wait. “Tell him I’ll be there,” I said.

“I will.”

We stood in silence for a moment. “Do you want to come inside?” I said suddenly. As soon as the words were out I wanted to kick myself. It was a really inappropriate question to ask another mage’s apprentice, especially a girl three-quarters my age.

“I’m sorry,” Anne said. “There’s another invitation I have to deliver in Archway.”

“Okay,” I said. “Uh, have a safe trip.”

“See you tomorrow.” Anne gave a small smile and walked back to the car. As she did I caught a flash of movement from the front seat; the man inside was putting away something that looked like a phone. Anne climbed in, the door snicked shut, and the engine started up with a growl that made me think of a big animal. I watched the car roll smoothly down the street, signal at the T junction, and pull away out of sight.

I closed and locked the door. Thoughtfully I took the dagger from where I’d been holding it behind the door and returned it to its sheath before going back up to my study.

Inviting Anne in had been a weird thing to do and as I climbed the stairs I wondered why I’d done it. I remembered the last image, Anne climbing into the dark car while that hunched shape waited behind the wheel, and felt a stir of disquiet.

My street was dark and still again, and the shop was empty. The distant thump, thump, thump of club music drifted over the rooftops, but there was no movement outside. I stood flipping the sheathed dagger absentmindedly between my fingers, frowning at nothing. Outside my window, lights shone from the blocks of flats across the canal.

I felt uneasy. I live alone and I should be used to the quiet of my part of Camden after sunset. But tonight something about the silence had me on edge.

It wasn’t as if anything that had just happened was all that extraordinary. I do get invited to mage social events sometimes. Not often, but it happens. And sending an apprentice out to deliver invitations in person wasn’t unusual . . . okay, it was unusual, but it wasn’t unheard of. It must have just felt strange to me because I’d been off the social circuit so long.

I told myself that, but the uneasy feeling didn’t go away.

I don’t get these feelings often and when I do I’ve learnt to pay attention to them. I did a scan of the immediate futures, looking for danger, and found nothing. I spread my search further, looking for anything that might threaten or attack me.

Still nothing.

I tried half a dozen more ways of looking for danger and came up blank every time. Finally I tried something different. I looked into the future to see what would happen if I sat in my bedroom and did absolutely nothing.

One uneventful hour, two uneventful hours, four uneventful hours—then activity. In the early hours of the morning people were going to come to my door. Not ordinary people—mages. They’d want to talk to me, and they were . . .

I frowned. They were Council Keepers.

That was strange.