Taken

I tried to explain that to Anne in my halting way but didn’t do a good job. “They wouldn’t have blamed you, though, would they?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “It’d be less effort than sending those gunmen.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”

I looked at Anne, watching me seriously out of those odd reddish eyes, and couldn’t help but laugh. But it gave me an idea. “Have you called anyone yet to tell them you’re okay?”

A shadow passed over Anne’s face. “No.”

Now why not? I thought curiously. You obviously thought about it. But you didn’t call Variam and you didn’t call this Lord Jagadev, whoever he is.

What was the story with Anne? There was no way she should still be an apprentice with the amount of power she’d displayed last night. And her lack of fear or panic was telling. She was used to danger, even if she didn’t look it. She was a weird mixture altogether—grave and wary and oddly naive underneath it all.

I wanted to keep asking questions but held back. Some instinct told me that pressing Anne for information now would make her shy away. So instead I helped her with the dishes and wondered if there was anything edible left in the house. As it turned out, there was.

*  *  *

The building was an old farmhouse at the very end of a Welsh valley. I’d rented it a few months back during one of my more paranoid moments, as a getaway in case someone attacked my London home. As a place to live it’s a joke—it’s fifteen miles from the nearest village, there aren’t any phone lines, and it floods every spring. But if all you want is somewhere to hide, it’s a good deal.

On Anne’s advice I rested for several hours before trying to travel, and I spent the time talking to her. I sensed she was uncomfortable with talking about herself and her powers, so I didn’t ask. Instead I settled for getting the details of how she’d been attacked last night.

It had been done very simply. While on her way to Archway Anne had received a text message, supposedly from Jagadev, directing her to go to a different address and send the car away once she arrived. Anne had obeyed. She’d noticed the men but hadn’t spotted the guns, and as she pressed the button to call the lift they’d shot her in the back.

Anne hadn’t recognised any of the men, and neither had I. They hadn’t been carrying magic, which along with the guns suggested they were normals. But they hadn’t been fazed by my mist effect either, and from the few words they’d exchanged over Anne’s body they’d known getting too close to her could be dangerous, and that made me think they were at least clued in to the magical world. Maybe ex–Council security, or some Dark mage’s private army. Either way, I’d know more once Sonder had had a chance to investigate.

It was two o’clock when we left the house. I locked it behind us, then slid the key under the door—I didn’t need it to get back in. “Are you sure you don’t want to catch a train or something?” Anne asked.

“There are some things I need to get done,” I said, and gave Anne a glance. “Besides, I think you might attract a bit of attention.”

Anne looked embarrassed. She’d gotten the blood off her skin and out of her hair and had even had a try at washing her clothes, but they still looked exactly as you’d expect clothes to look if their wearer had been shot repeatedly in the chest. “I couldn’t find anything else to wear.”

“Yeah, I didn’t stock the place very well.” I started walking towards the river, picking my way through patches of grass. “Let’s get going.”

The end of the valley was cold and had a desolate look. Thistles sprouted between the rocks and grass, patches of nettles grew around the outbuildings, and there were bramble thickets under the bare trees. But the air was clear and the hills rose green around us and the place had its own kind of quiet beauty, even if few would come to see it.

The gate stone I’d used to bring us here had been made out of a rock from the bank of the river I was standing beside now. Gate stones have a lot of drawbacks, but the biggest is that they’re always one-way. They can only take you to a single location, set when you create the stone. So if you want to travel around using gate stones you have to take a selection with you—which means you risk losing them if anything goes wrong.

The gate stone I’d used was keyed to the kitchen of the farmhouse behind us. I’ve also got gate stones for the ravine outside Arachne’s lair, the Great Court of the British Museum, a mountaintop in Scotland, and a fairly random selection of other places, none of which I’d brought with me today. I’d brought the gate stone to my shop, though, and it was this one I took out now. “Ready?” I asked Anne.