Urban Witch (Urban Witch Series - Book 1)

by R. L. Giddings

  “CCTV?”

  “Haven’t heard anything yet, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s not like there aren’t enough cameras. The thing is: if they’ve agreed to meet somewhere as busy as Trafalgar Square why would they then be catching the Tube together? Surely common sense would dictate that they should go their separate ways.”

  “Unless, of course, he’s taking her to see something.”

  Like the Iron of Fortitude?

  “Then why not arrange to meet somewhere more convenient. A café or a restaurant within easy walking distance? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “He was probably just paranoid. Wanted to be sure that Helena wasn’t being followed. And, after what happened, who could blame him?”

  Marcus thought about that for a while, surveying the faces of the people walking past. Mostly tourists.

  I stood up, my knees cracking in protest. “So, where does that leave us?”

  He took my hand, helping me as I came upright.

  “No idea. But I do know that all this detective work has made me quite thirsty.”

  Chapter 15

  We found an old pub down one of the streets leading off Trafalgar Square. While Marcus went to get served I opted to sit outside. There were a few other couples who had decided to brave the cold. Even though we were sitting in bright sunshine no one could be in any doubt that summer was over. Above the crush of the buildings the sky was flawlessly blue. All the other drinkers were well wrapped up, squinting in the light, smoking and enjoying each other’s company and I couldn’t help but envy them their easy banter.

  There had been something sobering about seeing the blood-flecked tiles of the underground station and I couldn’t help feeling that Helena had been very lucky to survive.

  Just then Marcus appeared holding two pints of lager.

  “Are they still serving food?” I asked.

  “The kitchen’s about to close but they took pity on us. Burger and chips alright?”

  “Sounds great.”

  He took a slow sip of his pint, “You’re very quiet.”

  “Sorry. My mind’s elsewhere.”

  He scrunched up his face, “Bit grim down there, wasn’t it?”

  I tried my drink, beautifully cold and sharp, “Just a bit. Your mood lighting helped though.”

  He had a very nice smile, “You liked that, did you. I’ll have to teach you sometime.”

  “That’d be nice,” I said then took another sip to cover my embarrassment.

  If you can withstand his charm offensive for a couple of weeks he’ll get bored and move on. Millie’s words coming back to me.

  A short, dark woman with her hair pinned back appeared with the food. The burgers steamed in the cold air giving off an enticing aroma reminding me that I hadn’t eaten all day. As soon as the woman had gone I picked up some chips and stuffed them in my mouth. They were so hot I nearly burned my tongue.

  The pair of us ate for a while without speaking.

  “Ironic, isn’t it,” Marcus finally said.

  “What’s that?” I said, speaking with my mouth full.

  “Helena pulls you into the office on Friday and now here you are investigating this.”

  “I wouldn’t call it investigating,” I demurred.

  “So, what would you call it?” dabbing ketchup from his chin with a napkin.

  “I don’t know. Mooching around, I suppose. Besides, it wasn’t Helena’s idea. Kinsella made her take me.”

  Marcus used his fork to stab at a chip. “Don’t talk to me about Kinsella.”

  “Did he give you a bit of a bollocking?”

  “Blamed me for everything. Said the only reason he wasn’t suspending me was because we’re so short staffed.”

  He was trying to make light of it but I could see that he was upset, “Don’t worry. He’ll have calmed down by Monday. In a week’s time he’ll have forgotten all about it.”

  “If Helena makes a full recovery.”

  He was right. At least then she’d be able to shed some light on what had really happened.

  I was still confused over the revelation that Brodsky was the actual murder victim. I’d assumed that he’d faked his own death in order to be able to operate more freely but things obviously hadn’t worked out the way he’d planned. The one thing that did seem to link all these factors together was The Iron of Fortitude. Had Brodsky managed to get his hands on it, or at least a copy? Helena must have thought so if she’d agreed to meet up with him in the first place.

  “Look,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m going to have to go.”

  “What about your drink? You haven’t finished it,” he sounded genuinely disappointed.

  “No, that’s very sweet of you,” I hitched my bag over my shoulder. “But I’ve got something else I need to sort out first. How much do I owe you for all this?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry: you’re getting away with nothing. You can pay next time. And next time we’ll have a proper sit down meal with a table-cloth and everything.”

  I decided to take the Tube home rather than queue with the tourists for the bus and so found myself passing the very spot we’d scrutinised earlier. It seemed even gloomier now amongst the crush of bodies and, whilst the police notice–board was still there, the fragment of police tape had gone. Marcus had been right: things move quickly in the big city.

  *

  Approaching the escalators, my mind drifted back to my conversation with Marcus. I was starting to wish that I’d stayed with him back at the pub. Whilst I had no intention of jumping into bed with him, or anything like that, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy his company.

  I found myself wondering, and not for the first time, why Millie had been so dismissive of Marcus. Was it down to jealousy? Perhaps she’d been attracted to him, only to discover that he wasn’t interested. Perhaps they’d even slept together. Millie wouldn’t have taken kindly to being given the cold shoulder.

  That’s what was on my mind when I arrived at the top of the escalator and realised I was being followed.

  I’d seen him earlier in the day when we’d been standing in the entrance way. I’d dismissed him as a busker but now I wasn’t so sure.

  I remembered that he’d stood further along the corridor reading the operating instructions on one of the phones which had struck me as odd at the time because he’d shown no interest in using them. And then I’d caught him looking at me. Just the once, but it was enough.

  I saw him again in the fish eye mirror at the bottom of the escalator turning left onto the Northern Line.

  I knew the route well and had travelled along it on numerous occasions. The walkway echoed with the sound of footsteps, the squeal of brakes and amplified guitar music coming from one of the elevated walkways. The fish-eye mirror is there to let you see who’s coming around the corner. It’s a way of discouraging pick-pockets.

  There was virtually no chance that the man was following me by coincidence if it was indeed the same man, and I was pretty sure that it was. But who was he and why was he targeting me? He could be working for Kinsella, of course. It would make sense to have me followed if he suspected that I might have been involved in the attack on Helena. But what if this man wasn’t attached to the Ministry? What if someone else had sent him? One of Silas’ associates?

  And then there was the other, more worrying possibility. What if this was the same man who had stabbed Helena? He wouldn’t be the first murderer drawn back to the scene of a crime. He would have seen the pair of us examining the site and then it would have only taken a little patience to follow us up into the sunshine. I bet he couldn’t believe his luck when he had seen me heading back towards the Underground.

  I quickly examined my options as we came to the top of the second escalator. I could simply turn around and head back up to ground level, but that would signal that I knew that I was being followed and he’d just slip away into the crowd. My mobile wouldn’t be able to pick up a signal this far down
so there was no chance of me calling Marcus for help.

  I didn’t feel particularly scared, probably because I was reassured by the mass of bodies around me. But then, no doubt, Helena had felt similarly re-assured. The big difference of course was that I was actually aware that I was being followed and, protection wise, I still had Helena’s gun.

  As we stepped off the escalator I allowed myself to be funnelled over towards the wall, the back of my hand brushing against the tiles as I walked. I instantly felt a charge of energy resonate through me. It’s hardly surprising that such a maze of tunnels contains such raw, compressed energy but I was a little surprised by how quickly the build-up of power started to infuse my system.

  I knew that I’d reached a decent charge when my eyelashes started to dance with a faint, bluish glow. The ability to perform magic is so often down to your ability to be creative, to interact with the environment around you. But knowing that and developing that as a skill can take years.

  I kept walking.

  Approaching the entrance to the platform proper, I started to feel intimidated by the vastness of the concourse. My powers would be intensified down there and much more difficult to control. I didn’t want to make a mistake and, with so much electricity coursing through the live rail, I had the distinct feeling that that could happen if I wasn’t extremely careful. I would need to be totally certain before I cast.

  Third rule of magic, according to my favourite old hedge witch: don’t curse yourself. A lot of my early magic had fallen into this category: more likely to do damage to me rather than anyone else. I flexed my fingers and let the press of bodies carry me out onto the platform.

  I was getting over excited. I had to make a conscious effort not to send out a tentative ‘pulse’ of energy which would help calm me down but which would also be detected by any magic users in the vicinity. It wouldn’t do to let him know that I was onto him. Not yet anyway.

  This was one of the longer platforms on the network so I kept on walking towards the middle. Firstly, I wanted to give myself enough room to operate but also to hopefully draw my pursuer out into the open. Overhead, the screen announced that the next train would be arriving in two minutes.

  I eventually stopped about half way down the platform and allowed myself a glance back down the way I’d come. Nobody returned my gaze. Most were just standing impassively by, waiting for their train to arrive.

  But I was pretty sure who my pursuer was. In fact, it would have been difficult to miss him. A short, florid faced man with a goatee beard and a squint. He wore a tatty dinner jacket over a paisley waist-coat. Late forties, early fifties - it was difficult to tell, his long, greying hair had been worked into dreadlocks.

  It was hot on the platform and I felt the collar of my blouse sticking to my neck. Even the slight breeze through the tunnels brought little relief, bringing with it the smell of burning engine oil.

  If I’d been braver I might have chosen to stride back down the platform in the hope of eliciting a reaction but I was getting less brave by the second. I didn’t want to get involved in a direct confrontation but knew better than to simply ignore it. This wasn’t likely to go away all by itself.

  I could always just wait for the train to arrive and then try and lose myself in the crowd of new arrivals as they headed up to street level. It was also counterproductive: I’d end up on the surface safer but none the wiser about who had been following me.

  The train arrived with a heady squeal of brakes, taking forever to come to a complete standstill. The crowd on the platform pushed forward, effectively blocking the carriage doors when they eventually opened. I didn’t move off with the departing passengers though.

  I was going to stay exactly where I was. I wanted to see who was going to remain behind on the platform. There wasn’t another train due for another ten minutes. It was going to be very interesting.

  When the doors closed with a pneumatic hiss there were only about a dozen of us remaining. Much better odds. If things were going to escalate then the fewer people who were around to witness it the better. That might seem rather callous bearing in mind the danger I’d suddenly exposed everyone to but there was precious little else I could do.

  A woman in front of me was holding a cleverly designed card board box marked Harrods Pet Store and, by angling my head from side to side I was able to make out, through the slats in the packaging, the delicate form of a canary. The woman was in her forties and I wondered whether she was a mother taking a present home for her children or a single woman who had just invested in a new companion.

  If things got out of hand then I would be putting this woman’s life in danger. I had to make a decision. If I was going to act I’d have to do it sooner rather than later.

  I had two spells at my immediate disposal. I’d been quietly mumbling these incantations under my breath for the last few minutes now. It would only need me to complete the final part of the incantation to bring one of them into being, to tease it into life. Now I had to choose which one.

  The first one was the bluntest weapon and perhaps my best chance of getting out of the Underground alive if it all went crazy. A doppelganger spell. It recaptures an exact image of you from a few minutes earlier and replays it on a loop. The only problem is that the doppelganger sticks to its original path, even if that means walking through people. It’s much more effective out of doors.

  The second option was by far the riskiest proposition. It would require perfect timing and would leave me horribly exposed. On the plus side, it might just catch him unawares.

  So that was the one I went with. I only had to utter the final sentence to bring the spell to life with an amalgamation of intonation and intention.

  There are a lot of explosive fricatives involved. Anyone standing near-by would think that I was swearing in Latin.

  As soon as I’d uttered the words there was an immediate change in the surrounding air pressure, not dissimilar to what you might experience once a commercial jet begins its descent. As my ears popped, it took me a few seconds to be absolutely sure that the spell had worked.

  Nobody moved. But then that was sort of the point.

  A father holding his son’s hand. A girl, dressed for the office, pulling at her skirt. Two black teenagers with snap brimmed caps carrying holdalls. An older man in a gabardine rain-coat reading his Kindle.

  A perfect snap-shot of life on the Underground. The very antithesis of Madame Tussauds frozen celebrities.

  Over their heads, picked out in bright orange pin-pricks on the arrivals board, I saw that the next train would be with us in five minutes, reminding me that the rest of the world still thundered on. Just enough time - if I was quick. The platform was deathly quiet. A muted roar sounded from further down the tunnel but little else disturbed our perfect world.

  You wouldn’t think that the creak of shoe leather could be so loud but down there, at that moment, it came to me with perfect clarity. That’s when I began mouthing my back-up spell.

  “I’m a little disappointed,” the man said, peeking out from behind a couple of foreign students. “I thought you’d come up with something more … I don’t know…impressive.”

  “You’ve been following me,” I said accusingly.

  “Nothing personal, of course,” his hands began to ascribe tight circles, the air around his fingers coalescing into little swirls and eddies. “But you have managed to upset quite a few people in the last couple of days.”

  I took an involuntary step backwards, “And you’re here to warn me off?”

  “Sort of,” he nodded towards the frozen travellers. “Didn’t think I’d be carrying protection, did you? Pockets full of charms. I thought you’d have made more of a show of it.”

  “Perhaps I did,” this caused him to look up from his ministerings. He surveyed me with a new found interest.

  Raised an accusatory finger.

  My bag shifted on my shoulder. I tried to ignore it.

  It shifted again.

&nbs
p; It was getting heavier.

  I glanced down and gasped at what I saw.

  The thick head of a pale anaconda bulged out of my bag. It eyed me malevolently as it started to uncoil, a length of muscled flesh spooling over the side.

  Either the bag was getting smaller or the snake was getting bigger.

  I threw the bag on the floor and locked eyes with Mr. Goatee. He’d succeeded in unsettling me but now I had a chance to respond.

  My second spell was a derivative of the first. The first caused all humans within earshot to pause, drawing in an elongated breath. So no one was going to be asphyxiated. As a spell though it was far too weak to seriously challenge any half decent magic user. Which was why the second spell had to be that much more aggressive. It caused the victim’s heart to slow right down, constricting its natural action, allowing only a trickle of blood to be pumped through the arteries rather than the usual flood.

  The little man froze.

  He had the look of someone in a pub quiz who’d just realised that he’d given the wrong answer to a deceptively simple question.

  It was a tricky proposition for me because you have to be very accurate with a spell like that. Taking everyone else out of the equation might have used up some of my power but it ensured that they were effectively immune to my second.

  Which was just as well

  It was the first time that I’d ever used it on anyone - magical or otherwise. I’d administered it to a number of animals. The last time had been on a two hundred pound roe deer. The deer hadn’t survived the experience. I still felt bad about that.

  I had to act fast if I didn’t want to risk inflicting any long term damage. I pushed my bag closer to the wall only to see it flop over and spill the snake across the platform.

  It took a matter of moments to sprint across to the man with the goatee. Up-close his skin was badly pock-marked. Magical mishap or acne? It wasn’t clear but perhaps that was the real reason for the beard.

  “I’m going to talk very slowly,” I said trying to keep any sign of nervousness out of my voice. “In a moment I’m going to let you speak. All I want you to do is to tell me your name as clearly as possible.”