“You don’t have to,” Bailey assured her. “I’ll be okay, Chloe.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “One day,” she said softly, “you’ll have a child of your own. On that day, you’ll understand.” She turned at that and headed up to the attic, and Bailey followed her, wordless.
When this was all over, she told herself, she was going to make whatever time she needed to bond with Chloe. She wouldn’t have her forever, and she knew that if she waited too long it would one day be too late.
“What did Rita give you?” Frances asked.
Bailey looked down at the package and peeled some of the paper away. Something knitted was inside, along with a note, possibly from Anita. It read, “Don’t take it off until you must.”
A little more work, and she pulled the gift out of the package entirely, and blinked at the plain, unbleached wool garment. “It’s... a sweater.”
Chapter 3
In all the rush to get prepared, collect what spell components might come in handy, copying spells that Bailey had yet to memorize, and taking in short lectures from Aria, Frances, and of course Chloe, Bailey very nearly forgot to realize how excited she was about the trip itself.
It only occurred to her after the first hour of the drive into Portland that she’d never actually flown anywhere before; much less out of the country. A tickle of worry wiggled inside her stomach. Already, Aiden and Avery had discussed with her the importance of not so much as turning her attention toward her magic while they were in the air. One stray weft of uncontrolled power, and it was very possible to send the whole thing plummeting to the Earth.
From there, the collection of fears she began to accumulate only grew larger and more concerning, until she was fidgeting in the security line at the airport, doing her best not to imagine all the things that might go wrong. At least she had one distraction.
The moment they left Coven Grove, she understood what it meant for her magic to weaken the further away she was. It was disconcerting—a kind of gradual, growing emptiness inside that used to be full. It was a slow process, and one that she could ignore if she chose to; but she didn’t. If she focused carefully enough, she could feel a kind of stretching inside. It was as if something just behind her navel had a gentle hook lodged in it and the further they went from Coven Grove the more taut the line on the other end of it seemed to get.
So far, the actual utility of her magic didn’t seem to have suffered much. She could still hear the thoughts of the people in the airport if she opened herself to them, and they didn’t seem any quieter than they normally would be. How long did she have to be away before she noticed? Would her gift fade entirely, or just become much quieter? There were so many questions she had, but none of the Coven had been able to answer them in specifics.
Once on board the plane, she settled in for what promised to be a very long journey, and wasn’t disappointed. It took over twenty hours to arrive, and while the three of them had chatted in hushed tones for much of it, by the time they presented their passports and made their way out of the London airport, all voices were silenced. Only Avery had managed to get any rest, and it was fitful and brief. They were, all three of them, very nearly finished with one another and ready for a soft mattress.
Bailey stretched on the sidewalk, reaching for the sky with both hands as she twisted one way and then the other and listened to her spine cracking and popping like an old person’s bones. “Where are we meeting Gideon?” She asked. “Somewhere warm, and soft, please?”
“I have an address,” Aiden assured her. “He’s rented a car, we only need to pick it up.”
“Is that car going to pull up here, by any chance?” Bailey asked hopefully.
Aiden frowned. “I’m afraid not. But you’re both welcome to wait here while I retrieve it.”
Avery relaxed slightly, but only until Bailey spoke. “No,” she said, “we should stick together.”
“I hardly think we’re in any immediate danger,” Aiden said. “Not at the airport. Besides Gideon, no one even knows we’re here. And I’m not sure it would matter if anyone did.”
Bailey didn’t want to admit that she was just nervous being in another part of the world. Already, the difference was clear—Coven Grove really was a small town. London, even just this small part of it, was loud, and there were people everywhere coming and going from the airport, many of whom spared them brief glances. Rita’s warning had put her on edge, and maybe without good reason, but between the stressful flight, the mountain of questions, and the lack of sleep, well; it was hard not to see trouble where there might not have been any.
“We’ll come with you,” she said flatly. “Lead the way.”
Avery sighed, but said nothing as he and Bailey trailed behind Aiden.
They managed to just miss the shuttle bus that would have taken them to the rental site, and so walked instead. It wasn’t a terribly long distance, and in truth walking seemed preferable to sitting any longer. Once they retrieved their car and left, the lack of sleep had started to lose it’s power over Bailey’s thoughts.
Aiden drove, as he had the familiarity with driving in England, but although Bailey trusted him not to wreck them, driving on the wrong side of the road was a stressful experience for the first half hour or so. She kept expecting another car to come careening into their lane, the first person on the road to realize everything was backwards. Avery laughed quietly at her the first few times that she sucked in a breath as they took a left turn against a red light, until she glared at him for it.
It took the better part of two hours, both for the distance—they had to drive to the far side of London to get to the address that Gideon had given Aiden, and the traffic at midday was considerable—but at last they made it. Bailey casually brushed other minds with her own as they drove. It was perhaps moderately more difficult, but she didn’t feel quite as crippled as she’d expected. Though, perhaps there was a time factor at work as well.
When Aiden pulled to the curb, all three of them exchanged dubious looks; even Aiden, and he’d been the one to get the address.
The neighborhood was pretty enough, but compared to the places they’d driven through it was clear that this area was... lower income. Here and there the streets were dirtier, and there were a few groups of thuggish looking young people gathered on stoops. A few of them eyed the car with interest.
“Are you... sure this is right?” Bailey asked.
Aiden nodded. “I am. Perhaps Gideon has reason to lay low for the moment...” He sighed. “I suspect we shall find out soon.”
No one was excited to get out of the car, but they did. For the moment, they left their luggage inside. Aiden muttered something, and for a split second his wand was in his hand. A tingle of magic charged the air and then was gone, along with Aiden’s wand.
“We shouldn’t have any problems with theft,” Aiden said quietly, and then looked up at the rough brick building they were meant to find Gideon in. “At least, not as far as the car is concerned...”
They sidled up to the heavy metal door to the building and found it predictably locked. That didn’t pose much of an obstacle. The inside of the building looked like it had been abandoned some decades ago, and left to its own devices. Bailey began to wonder just who Gideon Tull actually was. He’d been a professor at Cambridge, hadn’t he?
“Appearances could be deceiving,” Aiden said. “We’re looking for a flat on the third floor. Come on...”
They ascended the stairs at the end of the narrow hallway, and found each successive floor, including the third, to be in progressively worse states of repair. Nothing was quite falling apart—people did live in the building—but everything was dingy and covered in a fine patina of dust, peeling paint, and age.
Aiden located the door they wanted, and knocked hesitantly.
A few moments later, there was movement on the other side, a tiny metallic sound around the level of the peep hole, and then a stir of movement at the bottom of the door.
Bailey knelt, and picked up a small card that had been passed under it. It was blank.
“Let me see,” Aiden urged, and accepted it from her when she handed it over. He peered at it, and then at the peep hole. “Professor Tull?”
There was another quiet click, and then a sound of footsteps leaving the door.
Bailey opened her mind and pressed it out, into the apartment to get some idea of who was on the other side. She never got past the door itself, though; she could feel a wall, some kind of barrier, keeping her out.
“The place is shielded,” she whispered. “I can’t see inside.”
Aiden turned the card over a few times, and then glanced down the hallway in both directions before he produced his wand and muttered over the card. Magic buzzed in the air around his hand for a moment. When the card evidenced no change, he sighed. “I didn’t expect Gideon to require these sorts of games,” he said, grimacing.
“What reason does he have to be so cautious?” Avery asked. He took the card from Aiden and turned it over a few times himself.
“I haven’t a clue,” Aiden said.
“Doesn’t he trust you?” Bailey asked, watching as Avery eyed the card from different angles looking for something.
Aiden winced. “Well... yes, in theory.”
“In theory?” Bailey began to panic a little. They’d come all the way to the other side of the world for ‘in theory’?
Avery snorted, and then smiled. Bailey and Aiden both raised eyebrows at him, and with a smug sort of grin Avery produced his wand and held up the card. “Watch,” he said, and then began murmuring a spell as he flicked he wand over his palm.
“Winchester’s dimensional distortion,” Aiden said as Bailey frowned with the effort of figuring out what Avery was attempting. “Ah. Naturally.”
In Avery’s palm, the card changed. It grew thicker along the edges, while the original sides grew thinner and thinner, until it seemed as though the card had been flattened out from edge to edge, but stretched along the edges. The first transformation yielded nothing, so Avery did the same spell again, so that the new set of edges become the flat sides.
Once it had shifted again, Avery smiled and held up a card with gold letters printed on it. “And, voila.”
Bailey stared at the letters. “So, what, he hid the text in the edges of the card?”
“Sort of,” Avery said. He vanished his wand and handed the card to her. “It felt funny when I was holding it; like I could feel an edge on my hand where there should have been a flat side. The card itself actually wasn’t changed—just its presence in space. It was distorted.”
Bailey looked at the address, and then handed the card to Aiden. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can find it,” Aiden said, nodding. He sighed. “We’d better get going. It’s some distance outside of London.”
“You could have told Gideon we’d be too exhausted for this,” Bailey groaned as they headed down the stairs again.
“I am confident that whatever Gideon’s reasons are, they are not trivial,” Aiden told her.
Outside, Aiden dispelled whatever security he'd put on the car, and they climbed back in for another long drive.
The card trick was not the last puzzle Gideon put in front of them. The address that the card took them to was an empty lot overgrown with grass, weeds, and wildflowers.
Bailey took a long, calming breath, and glowered at Aiden.
“I’m sure it’s just... a necessary precaution,” Aiden suggested. It seemed, though, that he was beginning to feel his own patience taxed.
“Let’s check it out,” Avery said, and hopped out of the car.
“He's enjoying this too much,” Bailey sighed.
Aiden laughed. “At least he has enthusiasm to spare.”
“Yeah,” Bailey breathed, “because he got a nap on the plane.”
They left the car together and followed Avery to the edge of the empty lot. The area was very pretty, well manicured, each of the quaint little cottages best with flowers and herbs. There were a few people milling about their yards, but once Bailey and the two wizards walked onto the empty lot the onlookers lost interest in them.
Avery paced the edge of the lot, then crossed it, and finally came to stand near Aiden and Bailey again.
“So?” Bailey asked.
Avery shrugged. “I have no idea. Seems like an empty lot.”
Bailey grunted. “Right. This is some wizard business that I don’t have patience for. I’m gonna wait in the car while you two figure this out.”
“Come now,” Aiden said, and put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s just a bit of a mystery. The last one was solved quickly enough. Help us think.”
She leaned on Aiden, and desperately wanted to go to sleep right there, standing up. But she stared at the empty lot instead and set her mind to thinking of the possibilities. “Could it be under the lot?”
“Possibly,” Aiden admitted, but a moment of spell work revealed no structure under the ground.
“Out of phase?” Avery wondered, but further investigation suggested that this was not the case.
“Something to do with the flowers?” Aiden mused.
Bailey laughed. But as she surveyed the empty lot, she realized that the layout of the flowers didn’t look entirely natural... they seemed to be arranged in groups. “Actually...”
She waded into the grass and weeds, from patch to patch. There were red little flowers she didn’t recognize, and violets, and yellow dandelions, and orange pansies, and two other varieties she didn’t know. There was something about the way they were arranged that seemed almost angular.
As Aiden watched her he frowned, and then began to nod. “Ah... I see. I think I do, at any rate.”
“See what?” Bailey asked as she returned to them. “Does it means something to you?”
“Possibly.” He produced the card again, and quickly worked the same spell Avery had, reshaping the card to its original state. Then, peeking at the patches of flowers, he worked another spell.
As Avery watched, he raised an eyebrow, and glanced at the field again. “Oh... I see. Clever.”
“What’s clever?” Bailey asked.
“It’s a form of shorthand,” Avery explained and turned to point at the patches of flowers in turn. “Some spells can’t be expressed in two dimensions. It’s hard to draw them. So, instead, there’s a system meant to represent different forms. If you think of the plot itself like a spell plaque—a square with a series of shapes drawn inside it—then the plots of flowers start to make sense. Those there are roughly in a circle; this patch looks like a hexagon; that one is almost like a triangle, even though one edge is a little rough.”
In fact, each patch of flowers had a rough shape to it, some typical, others less easily identified, but as Aiden worked the spell he referenced them each in turn.
In the end, Bailey expected another address to show on the card.
Instead, it burst into flames.
Aiden hissed and jerked his hand back as the card quickly blackened to ash and drifted through the air to the ground.
When it had burned to nothing, a bit of wind blew over it, brushing away all but some of the ash. What was left, however, was an arrow, and the number ten.
The three of them stared at the clear direction until the wind blew again, and carried the rest of the ash away.
“I already dislike your teacher,” Bailey said, and turned to go back to the car.
Once they were all inside, Aiden cleared his throat. “As I said—”
“I don’t even care,” Bailey complained, “I just want to take a nap. Do you know what it meant?”
“I believe it meant to drive in that direction for ten kilometers. Or, ten minutes. Either way, I believe we’ll know.” He bit his lip as he started the car, though.
It turned out to be ten minutes. They left the edge of the little hamlet and were driving through rolling green hills when, in ten minutes almost to the second, the car died.
Bailey decided it would be best if she said nothing. They were in the middle of nowhere.
Aiden left the car to check the engine, but Avery was already looking around at the countryside for some sign of what they were supposed to do next. Bailey brooded in the passenger seat of the car, thinking up the things she planned to say to this Gideon person when they finally met him—if they ever did.
It took only a few minutes for Aiden to give up on looking at the engine. Just as he closed the hood, a car came down the road toward them. It slowed as it approached, and then pulled to the side of the road.
The man that got out of it was tall, and dressed in a suit. He had a shock of red hair, and remarkably green eyes. When Aiden looked at him, he slumped a little, and shook his head, then said something Bailey couldn’t hear but she got the gist of it.
It was him. This was Gideon Tull.
Bailey got out of the car and stormed toward him. “Care to tell us why we went on a wild goose chase?”
“Ah,” Gideon said, eyebrows raised, “and you must be Miss Robinson. I’ve heard such wonderful things.”He had a slight accent, maybe something Irish, which threw Bailey just a bit. Somehow, she’d expected someone British.
Bailey smoldered a few feet from him, and waved toward the car. “Why all of this running around? Do you have any idea how exhausted we all are? What could possibly cause you to put us through this?”
Gideon gave a small bow. “Ah, my deepest apologies. But, you see, I didn’t contact Aiden. He contacted me. And it was entirely possible that he was being impersonated. The first contact confirmed that he appeared to be who he claimed; the second test was to confirm that he was, in fact, my student.”
“The spell plaque,” Aiden said softly. “It was a specific style. Not all wizards use the same identifiers. No one who wasn’t a student of Gideon's would have been able to decode it.”
“Not without the sort of brilliance that would lead me to want to meet such a person regardless,” Gideon agreed. “I do enjoy clever people.” He smiled.
“Why would someone want to impersonate Aiden and go to all this trouble?” Bailey asked, wary now. Getting involved in some wizardly espionage wasn’t what she’d signed up for.
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