The Mage Tales Prequels, Books 0-II: (An Urban Fantasy Thriller Collection)

by Ilana Waters

  Arthur took a deep breath. “I’m honestly not sure.”

  “But Arthur, really.” Richard made a face. “Spying on one of our own? Two of our own? Even if something seems off—”

  Arthur held up his hand. “Stop right there. I’ll admit, it’s unusual, but that’s our job. To investigate the unusual. Right? And if there’s nothing to report, then that’s that. Okay?”

  There was a long pause. “Okay, Arthur,” Richard finally sighed. “But only because I trust you. You’ve been at this longer than I. I just don’t want to get in trouble. Not when I’m just starting out.” He frowned. “Though preferably not ever.”

  “Don’t you worry, my boy.” Arthur clapped him on the shoulder again. “It’s sure to be a cakewalk.”

  ***

  As soon as she turned away from Arthur and Richard, the smile fled Eleanor Cunningham’s face. She marched up the stairs and down the hall to her office with fuming determination.

  Nosy little bitch is snooping into my affairs. Suddenly, the warehouse I’m using is burned to the ground, three days before the crucial shipment is due to arrive. And where is Abigail this entire time? Cunningham’s two-inch heels stabbed the thickly padded carpet with each step. Nowhere to be found, that’s where. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Stomach bug, my arse, Cunningham thought. The obnoxious American had all but accused her right in front of her colleagues. Several other PIA members passed Cunningham on their way out. Cunningham gave them a quick smile and nod. As soon as they were behind her, Cunningham resumed frowning. How much does Abigail know about my whole enterprise? she wondered. And, more importantly, did she tell anyone else? Cunningham shook her head. No. These are the wrong questions. Whatever she knows, it isn’t enough to thwart my plans, or bring evidence to someone who would. No doubt Abigail hoped to gather that evidence on tonight’s mission. Which means I still have a chance, Cunningham thought as she approached the door to her office. She took her keys out of her pocket. I still have the upper hand.

  She’d been planning to address the Abigail issue—namely, that she was still alive—when her business trips died down. But now, it seemed prudent to handle things more expediently. I wonder if it’s time to alert the senior members about Abigail’s powers, she mused as she unlocked the door and switched on the desk lamp.

  But she didn’t have time for the paperwork such an inquiry would involve. She was already up to her neck in this new shipment—less than twenty-four hours, now, before it came. The warehouse burning down made things even more complicated. And she’d lost Gregson, one of her most important lieutenants.

  Cunningham sighed as she placed her briefcase squarely in the center of the desk. This couldn’t continue any longer. It was beginning to affect the bottom line. It was bad for business. And it was very bad for the future she had lined up for herself.

  But she’d almost giggled like a schoolgirl when that brilliant solution came to her, sending the obnoxious snoop to Big Ben. Soon, Cunningham thought as she snapped open the briefcase, all my problems will be over.

  One thing still disturbed her, though. There was no way Abigail defeated Gregson and the rest, then destroyed the warehouse on her own. Her magic wasn’t that strong yet. Oh, it was growing, all right. Cunningham could sense that from across the room. Abigail was even more magical than the last time they’d met. Still, to take on a witch of Gregson’s ilk, plus the vampires she had him hire, Abigail must have had help.

  But who? Cunningham wracked her brain, but couldn’t think of anyone. She drummed her nails on the desktop, then shifted the photograph of Margaret Thatcher a quarter of an inch. Abigail hadn’t been in the country long enough to be intimately acquainted with supernaturals here.

  And I’m not the only one who knows what she is. The boy—Richard—he knew. He wasn’t saying anything, of course. Doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers. Not when he’s only just joined the PIA. But the way he looked at Abigail . . . it was the same way Cunningham had looked at supernaturals when she started at the PIA decades ago. When she could tell there was something off about them, but couldn’t put her finger on what. The boy definitely knew.

  Cunningham shook her head. No matter. It’s irrelevant what that woman is, or how many helpers she has. Cunningham had defeated bigger adversaries before. It was part of the reason she’d gotten this far. Perhaps the solution she’d devised would get rid of Abigail’s accomplices as well. Either way, she had phone calls to make. She ran her hand over the rotary dial on her left.

  It was time to finish off Abigail Silver, once and for good.

  Chapter 11

  Where the hell is that woman?

  Titus tapped his foot impatiently on the pavement at the base of the clock tower. A few drunken tourists passed by, laughing and snapping Polaroids. They fanned the pictures back and forth, eager for the film to develop into the Palace of Westminster, the city lights, the Thames. They smiled at each other, and at Titus. But his murderous glare wiped the grins from their faces. The tourists quickly put the still-fuzzy photographs in their pockets and stumbled on.

  Titus glanced up at the clock. Eleven fifty. I did say I wouldn’t wait for her. Really, Abigail Silver had been nothing but a nuisance from the beginning. Involving him in all sorts of schemes he wanted no part of. And now he owed a blasted faerie a favor.

  As for that tender moment by the fire with Abigail the previous evening, well, that had just been an aberration. A moment of weakness, that was all. He wouldn’t let it happen again. You’d be wise to heed the PIA’s motto yourself, Titus, he thought. Closeness with mortals always results in disaster.

  Still, he couldn’t help but remember the feeling of her body beneath his, just after the pub exploded, when he landed on top of her. It hadn’t been altogether unpleasant. A strange sense of déjà vu came over him as Abigail nearly collided with him now.

  “Sorry I’m late!” she said breathlessly.

  “Watch where you’re going!” He smoothed his lapels. “Some of us would like to make it through this evening in one piece.” He took in the long suede vest that skimmed her body, then forced himself to turn away. Looks even more ridiculous than her warehouse-night hat.

  Abigail held up her hands. “Hey, it’s not like we all have super night vision.”

  “Do we at least own a watch?”

  “I only kept you five minutes! Sheesh. For a guy who has forever, you sure are worried about the time.” She patted a tote bag with a peace symbol on it. “Had to gather some supplies.”

  “What supplies?”

  “I’ll explain later. With any luck, we won’t have to use them. And there’s something else you should know.” Abigail explained the conversation she’d had with Cunningham, Arthur, and Richard earlier.

  “Cunningham knows it was me, Titus.” Abigail pushed her fist into her hand. “I know she knows. So why isn’t she letting on that she knows?”

  “I hate to say it, my dear,” Titus folded his arms, “but I suspect it’s because she’s plotting something against you. Or us. The trick is to find out what before she carries it out. And to answer the question of how much, if anything, she knows about me.”

  Abigail shrugged. “That, I couldn’t say. It’s possible she doesn’t know anything. But of course her sending me here is a trap. I don’t know just how yet.”

  “Would you expect anything less of this woman?”

  Abigail glanced at the clock tower. It was five minutes to midnight. She looked up and down the street.

  “What if Cunningham’s not here?” She bit her nail. “What if she sends one of her lackeys to arrange a new drop-off point?”

  “No,” Titus said firmly. “She’ll be here. I’ll wager she wants to see to this personally, rather than risk another debacle like at the warehouse.” He rubbed his temples. “You do realize if I’d known the PIA was aware of Big Ben, I could’ve saved myself owing a faerie?”

  Abigail rocked back and forth on her feet and let
out a long whistle. “Sucks to be you.”

  Titus closed his eyes. “Mortals,” he sighed.

  “We should probably start going upstairs, maybe find a good place to hide and observe.” Abigail walked up to a large door and flashed the card Cunningham had given her at the guard. He nodded gravely and let her in. He caught sight of Titus and opened his mouth to speak.

  “He’s with me,” Abigail said quickly and firmly. After a moment’s hesitation, the guard glanced at Abigail’s card again, and let them both pass. “Wow,” she whispered to Titus. “That woman really does know how to open doors. Literally.” They began climbing the 334 limestone steps that led to the top of the tower. “Cunningham actually told me to be here a little after midnight, but I don’t know why.”

  “Glad you decided not to take her advice. Very likely part of her trap. I’m surprised you came at all. Not very interested in self-preservation, are we?”

  “Are you kidding? This is the only way to find out the truth about what Cunningham is up to. We’ve come this far. We can’t back down now.”

  “Again with this ‘we’ business,” Titus said. “And you’re sure the meeting is happening in the room with the clock faces?”

  “That’s what Richard said, and he’s reliable as they come.”

  “Well, if I wanted to hold a clandestine meeting, I admit it would do nicely.”

  Abigail huffed and puffed up the narrow spiral staircase. “Crap,” she wheezed, sitting down on one of the benches that served as a resting place for visitors. “It must be nearly midnight. This is going to take forever.”

  Titus smiled. “Allow me.” He plucked Abigail from the seat and took her in his arms. In a matter of seconds, they were at the top of the tower.

  “Jesus Christ!” she gasped as he put her down. “You could at least warn me when you do that!”

  “And lose the element of surprise?” he asked. “Never.”

  Why did I do it? Titus asked himself. He could have waited till she was ready to start climbing the steps again. Had he wanted another excuse to be close to her, to hold her? No. He shook his head free of the notion. It was because he was a busy man. He didn’t have time to wait for air to return to some silly mortal’s lungs, no matter what the Silver woman said about him having “forever.”

  They stood inside the great clock, in the center of time itself. Most of the space was obscured by a large square which housed the clock mechanism. It turned the rest of the room into four long halls, each with an enormous clock face on one side. The halls were also quite narrow; there was room for no more than two slim people standing shoulder to shoulder.

  But it was still an imposing sight. Each clock face was roughly four times as tall as a mortal; the patterns at the center looked like some great flower petal unfolding. Titus and Abigail were close enough to touch them with their fingers. The second hand was at least twice Titus’s height, and ticking away, beat by beat. With the city below them, the strongest light came from the clock tower. As if they were standing in the middle of the sun, and London was the great, vast universe. He set Abigail down.

  “Jerk-off,” she muttered, continuing looking around in awe. She glanced behind her and stepped back. Inside the mechanism room were the clock’s gears: enormous metal wheels that rolled over themselves in a heavy, tireless motion. They were about as tall as Abigail, and twice as long. “Next time, be more careful,” she said. “A few extra feet, and you’d have thrown me into that thing and made girl sausage.” She nodded at the gears.

  Titus smirked and shook his head. “Look closer: the gears don’t turn.”

  Abigail squinted. “Why aren’t they moving? Is the clock broken?”

  “No. It’s wound up manually several times a week, I believe. Of course, if you’d like a demonstration—” He pointed at the gears, which creaked to life, the wheels giving loud, metallic groans.

  “Stop that!” Abigail whacked him in the arm. “Do you want to break one of England’s greatest—”

  Titus’s head snapped in the direction of the door. He clamped one hand over Abigail’s mouth. “Hush!” he whispered. “I hear someone coming.” They pressed their backs against the stone wall between the door and the clock face. Titus turned them both invisible, except to each other.

  The clock struck midnight, and the sound of Big Ben being rung resounded in their bones. Gong, gong, gong. Over and over, twelve times. Abigail covered her ears with her hands. Titus grimaced.

  “Sodding hell,” said another vampire coming into the room. He was young—clearly turned in his early twenties. He had on a black leather jacket and boots over a white T-shirt and torn jeans. His gelled black hair rose in stiff peaks. A spiked dog collar and matching wristbands completed the look.

  He was an inch away from Abigail. Her panicked eyes turned to Titus. He put a finger to his lips. The other vampire narrowed his eyes in their direction. Then, he shook his head rapidly, and ran his fingers through his hair. “Might want to tell a bloke to bring a pair of earplugs for these meetings. Some of us have keener hearing, you know.”

  “And if you wish to keep it, along with your other senses, you won’t make such meetings necessary by mucking up previous ones.” It was a female voice that answered. Titus saw another figure step inside.

  Cunningham.

  Abigail nodded at him. Titus appraised the older woman. She was conservatively dressed and coiffed. About what he expected. He could tell she had once been a delicate beauty. But something in her had hardened, calcified. Over time, she had turned to stone. He tried to read everyone’s thoughts, but all except Abigail’s were blocked. He caught her eye, tapped his temple with two fingers, and shook his head. She nodded grimly.

  Yeah, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t get through their heads with a jackhammer, he heard her say in his mind.

  They’re no fools. He narrowed his eyes at Cunningham. Especially not that one, I wager.

  Another vampire ducked in through the door frame. She looked about the same age as her companion. She wore a black leather jacket and a bustier, under which a large crucifix dangled. Titus could see long, taut legs through her shredded leather miniskirt; it matched the holes in her black stockings, right down to her spiked heels. She was topped with fried hair that had once been blond, now dyed pink, except for a single white streak in front.

  “Oy, it weren’t Carver’s fault that warehouse got itself set on fire, then rained on all crazy-like,” she said. “Or that Gregson and the rest got themselves snuffed. We still don’t even know how it happened.”

  “I’ve a feeling I do,” Cunningham said darkly. “Rumor has it that a very nosy mortal—who’s quickly turning into a witch—had a hand in it.”

  Uh-oh, thought Abigail. Seems you were right, Titus. She does know about my powers.

  Titus gritted his teeth. Indeed.

  “What, one of Gregson’s?” It was another witch who spoke. She entered the room, finger pressed to her ear against the fading sound of the bell. Like the vampires’, her thoughts were impossible to discern.

  But she looked a little older than them—maybe late thirties, though with witches, it was hard to tell. Fine red hair flowed over her shoulders in tousled waves against her tall, willowy frame. Green eyes were dashed against a canvas of milky skin. Her lips were thin, her mouth serious. Her pale blue, diaphanous dress swept along the stone floor. Better suited to a faerie than a witch, Titus thought. Then again, what did he know of women’s fashions? Around her neck was a blue stone amulet to concentrate her power. It was encased in some kind of magnet—not an uncommon magical tool for witches.

  “No, Sybil,” Cunningham said to her. “Someone new. But she’s not powerful enough yet to have done it alone. She must have had help.” Titus felt his jaw tense.

  “She?” echoed Carver. “You know this bird?”

  “Not intimately.” There was a sour note to Cunningham’s reply.

  The second vampire deftly teased her bangs. “Why
did this new witch want to burn down the warehouse and everyone in it, anyhow?” she asked. “She trying to horn in on our business?”

  “Dammit, Brandy, I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Cunningham folded her arms. “All I know is she needs to be gone. The final shipment arrives tomorrow night, and now, we’re completely unprepared. It wasn’t easy, but I’ve made arrangements to have it delivered to a different dock.” She handed Sybil a folded slip of paper. “Here’s the address. You’ll all have to cobble together some emergency supplies, now that we lost the last batch in the fire-flood. And for God’s sake, keep me out of it. There was almost enough evidence at the scene to indict me.” The vampires glared at Cunningham, then peered at the paper in Sybil’s hand.

  Carver spat on the ground next to him. “What’re you going on about, anyway?” he asked. “Everything in the warehouse were destroyed.”

  “Not all the crates,” said Cunningham. “The police found some fragments. I told you to label them PLA, not PIA. Port of London Authority Police. In the off chance that someone caught wind of this, I wanted them to think the crates were related to police business.”

  Brandy stopped fixing her hair. “Why you want the coppers sniffing around your goodies?”

  “I don’t.” Cunningham threw out her hands. “But even if someone did find the crates and alerted the police, they wouldn’t be able to make sense of the contents. Trust me, I’ve worked with many a bureaucrat. While they were confused about why rare artifacts were mixed in with tins of food, the whole mess would be sent to some facility to be processed when there was time. And the government never has time. It was as close as I could get to having them guard my secret for me.” A chuckle escaped her lips. “Pretty clever, don’t you think?”

  “You can pat yourself on the back for your cleverness on your own time.” Sybil’s finger worked a mindless circle around her amulet. “Meanwhile, when are we going to finish this?” She waved the scrap of paper with the address in the air. Titus could see it plainly, along with the number of the dock: “D28.”