A Green Magic

by Alix Hadden

  "Sure?" Marcelo asked.

  "Go on, I'll finish up here." She made shooing gestures.

  Marcelo grabbed his bag and was halfway out of the door almost before Ali was done speaking.

  "When's Jean due?" Kir asked.

  "Twenty minutes," Ali said. "I didn't know if Patience would be in today and I didn't want to risk an overlap if I had to go out and come back in again." She finished wiping the counter and came to flop down on the armchair opposite Kir's. "God, Jean's creepy to talk to sometimes, though."

  "Death magic," Kir said gloomily.

  "It's not like that's all she does, though," Ali countered. "She's a perfectly normal mage most of the time."

  "A perfectly normal mage with a speciality in death magic," Kir said.

  Ali shrugged. "Stop being such a wuss. The dead can't hurt you."

  Kir shuddered. "Maybe not, but it still freaks me out. Anyway. Did she have anything to say about the, uh, the problem in general?"

  Ali shook her head. "Hadn't heard of anything similar. Actually, she said that she hadn't heard of anything like that coming from a burial magic problem either, but it's within the bounds of possibility so she's happy to come and have a look. Anyway. We can talk about that once she gets here. By far the more important question is -- how're things with Zach?" She leant forwards and gave Kir a hopeful grin.

  "Why aren't we talking about your love life?" Kir complained.

  "Because I don't have one," Ali said crisply.

  Well maybe you should concentrate on getting one rather than on harassing me about mine, Kir considered saying, then took another look at Ali and reconsidered. She didn't look like she needed teasing on that front. In fact -- he frowned briefly -- was that why she'd been looking a bit off sometimes lately? Had he missed something? Now probably wasn't the time, but he really ought to ask her about it sometime soon. Subtly. Ha.

  "He was round last night," he said, a little reluctantly.

  "Ooh," Ali said. "And?"

  "Shut up, you're not getting the gory details," Kir said, leaning across the table to poke her knee.

  "So there are gory details, then? Excellent." Kir poked her again. "Fine, fine, I won't interrogate you. I don't need to live that vicariously. But, you know -- is this a thing, then?"

  "I dunno," Kir said. "Is twice a thing?"

  "Twice plus I've seen you having, like, conversations and stuff."

  "Talking plus sex is a thing, then?"

  "Well, it can be," Ali said, sounding slightly beleaguered. "That's exactly why I'm asking."

  Kir sighed. "I dunno. I mean, he's good fun, and, you know, we have fun, and that. But -- he's still not a mage, right?"

  "But he knows already," Ali said. "For goodness' sake, Kir, what are you fussing about? You won't need to keep any secrets, and isn't that the big problem?"

  "But I can't -- there's a limit to what he can understand, right? Isn't there?"

  "I don't know," Ali said. "You're the one who's talking to him."

  Kir shrugged a shoulder. "I haven't really talked to him much about that specifically."

  "Well, then I suppose you don't know either," Ali said. "Look. I've said this before, but: if you're limiting your dating pool to other mages, you're kind of making life a bit hard for yourself."

  Kir bit his lip. True enough, but...

  Someone knocked on the door.

  "Jean," Ali said, jumping up. "We'll continue this later, then, hey?"

  Or not at all. Not at all would probably be preferable.

  Jean was somewhere in her fifties or sixties, a short, plumpish white woman who dressed in eye-wateringly bright colours. Kir had seen her a few times before, on the occasions, around twice a year, when the London mages met up, but they'd never talked much, what with Kir having been an idiot that time and Jean holding it against him. Which, Ali was right, was probably quite reasonable of her. Today she was wearing a bright orange cardigan, turquoise trousers, and a pink T-shirt. She had multicoloured ribbons pinned all the way down one arm of her cardigan, their ends dangling off at the back of her arm and tangling with one another. Her long hair was braided back, and she'd dyed it in multi-colour stripes.

  "Nice hair," Ali was saying, admiringly.

  "The advantage of going grey is not having to bleach it first," Jean said cheerfully, then turned and nodded to Kir, slightly frostily.

  "For death magic, shouldn't you be more with the black and stuff?" Ali went on.

  A question Kir had wondered about before, but never had -- and never would have -- the social nerve to ask. Ali was always more likely to say what was on her mind out loud.

  "That's human superstition," Jean said. "The dead don't care."

  "You talk to them?" Kir asked, horrified.

  "Of course not," Jean said, frowning at him. "They're not there any more. Due to being dead. Hence the not caring. I find bright colours cheering, and they do seem to improve my Sight, which is interesting."

  "So if the dead aren't actually there, how does death-magic work?"

  "It's just life-force," Jean said. "Same as with the plants. But it -- well, it leaches into the soil, I suppose you could say, and that innervates the soil."

  "So that would fit with our mud-things," Ali said.

  Jean tipped her head from side to side, consideringly. "Well. I see what you mean, from your description. But I have to say, I've not heard of anything quite like that happening before. Generally someone has to use the magic, you know? It doesn't just rise up of its own accord."

  "Would using magic, our own magic, near it, work to wake it up, though?"

  "Goodness no. Look, we live in a city with two thousand years of history. That's a lot of deaths. Death is soaked into the ground all around us, everywhere. Mostly, there's not much force to it -- it seeps in and then it seeps away. There's only some deaths will still be -- " she waved a hand " -- there to be felt, even six months later. Mage deaths last longer. Deaths with certain sorts of violence or intent. But even allowing for that -- if just using magic around death-force was going to wake it up, then we'd be dealing with it every time we pulled power. No. You have to do something specific."

  "So there would have to be someone nearby," Kir said.

  "Which there wasn't," Ali added.

  "Well. Not that we know of," Kir said.

  "Which is why, from your description, I'm a bit dubious," Jean said. "And I'm the only death-mage, even part-time death-mage, that I know of in London. It's not terribly popular, for some reason." She paused. "Which I suppose means I might have done it, except I didn't."

  Kir ought to have thought of that himself. But then -- he honestly couldn't believe that Jean would have had anything to do with it. It didn't seem like her style.

  "Anyway, it's easy enough to check. You said one of the incidents was here?"

  "Yes," Ali said. "Down in the basement, in the storage room, a couple of days ago."

  "Well, basements are good for death magic, there is that," Jean said. "Surrounded by soil. Come on then, show me this basement of yours."

  Ali led them down the steps into the basement, Jean following her and Kir bringing up the rear. The single plain bulb lit the room as well as it usually did, but Kir could have sworn there were more shadows than usual. He was imagining it, of course, but telling himself that didn't stop him from seeing them. That comment of Jean's about being surrounded by earth hadn't exactly helped.

  Jean stood in the middle of the room and looked around. "Right. You two, go stand on the stairs, please. This is easiest if I'm the only one in contact with the ground. And no talking, thank you."

  Ali climbed up a couple of steps to where Kir had already stopped, and sat down. She was chewing at a fingernail -- maybe he wasn't the only one who was feeling a bit weirded-out by this. She leant her head back against his shin, and bumped it gently a couple of times, and he relaxed just a little.

  Jean had taken some of the ribbons off her cardigan, and was running them through her fingers, talkin
g under her breath, almost as if she were talking to the ribbons themselves. One at a time, she laid them out on the ground, in a circle around her, ends just touching. Then she foraged around in her bag, and brought out some tea lights, which she put over each ribbon join, and a little metal box which she opened to reveal a flint and steel.

  "Matches in theory will do the trick -- even a lighter is a flint and steel in a sense," Jean said, conversational, "but I do like the old-fashioned way."

  She struck the steel against the flint, and caught the sparks on a little mess of fluff and lint in the lid of the metal tin. They flared up, and Jean lit a wooden taper from it then carefully lit each tea-light.

  "If you could turn the light off, please, Ali," she instructed.

  The shadows were bigger now. Kir swallowed, and found himself looking round anxiously for signs of the mud-thing returning. Or coffee-thing, perhaps, here.

  Jean was talking again now, softly enough that Kir couldn't hear what she was saying, but the cadence wasn't that of English. She knelt down, and passed her finger through the flame of each candle in turn, then unhooked another of the ribbons from her cardigan sleeve, and shoved the safety-pin into her finger. Kir winced -- blood magic? But then, if it was just her own blood -- you couldn't do it often, for sure, but Jean certainly looked like she knew what she was doing. Ali knocked her elbow against his leg again, obviously knowing what he was thinking and reminding him to shut up.

  Jean had squeezed a single drop of blood onto the floor in the middle of the circle, just in front of her own knees. The she took what Kir could tell from here was a very recently picked branch of a tree -- he was rubbish with trees, but he'd have said yew, if he'd had to guess, though that was based solely upon its reputation -- and swept it through the blood then around her circle, on the inside.

  She spoke again, more loudly this time. Definitely not English. Then closed her eyes, sat back on her heels, and balanced the yew branch across her outstretched wrists, her palms facing downwards, towards the ground.

  There was utter silence in the room. The shadows cast by the tea-lights were still dancing, and Jean's face, her chin held upwards and her eyes closed, was lit from beneath. Kir tried not to think words like 'demonic'. It was absurd; Jean was perfectly safe, she knew what she was doing, and yet, if the mud-thing had been summoned by magic, surely this was a risk.

  Jean opened her eyes, and swept the yew branch through the ribbons, breaking the circle.

  "Well, that's that, then. Nothing here."

  Kir blinked, shocked.

  "If you turn the light back on, Ali, I'll blow these candles out. I didn't want to just leave the two of you in the dark." She was looking at Kir, her expression a little knowing, and Kir did his best to control his own expression. He wasn't afraid of the dark. He was quite reasonably afraid of the things that had attacked him over the last week. And perhaps just a little of the notion of deliberately looking for dead people. Or dead life-force. Or whatever it actually was that Jean was looking for.

  "Nothing at all?" Ali said, jumping up to turn the light on.

  Kir relaxed, very slightly.

  Jean shook her head, and pinched the candles out one by one. "Not a thing. I don't know what your weird mud-thing was, but whatever it was, it wasn't drawing anything from a burial here."

  "Dammit," Ali said, biting her lip. "You're sure?" She seemed more bothered than Kir had expected.

  "Could it have been all used up?" Kir asked. "By the attack, I mean?"

  Jean pursed her lips. "Not if it was less than a week ago. I'd still feel the traces, even of something quite powerful. More so of something powerful, in fact, thinking about it -- it would use up more of the energy, but it would leave more trace behind as well."

  "Hang on," Ali said, sounding suddenly worried. "Your magic -- it's attracted to magery, right, that's what we reckon? So is it going to be attracted by this? Whatever it is, I mean, even if it's not a burial thing, could this attract it? I mean, I guess you'd have thought of that already, but..."

  Jean was shaking her head. "It's not exactly what you'd call traditional magery, this. It's more about -- resonances."

  "Isn't that part of how the traditional stuff works?" Kir objected. "That's why blood magic is dangerous, right, the similarity is too close between your own power, or ability or whatever, and the power you're drawing from an external source?"

  "Yes, but this is all about your own power," Jean said. "My own power, anyway. It's more like, I don't know, prophecy or prediction than it is the customary sort of power. The yew is just a focus, I didn't take anything from it. It's more like ringing a bell and listening for an echo than it is pulling life-force out of anything."

  "Okay," Ali said, sounding a little reluctant. "Although I suppose -- if you were wrong, it would have shown up already, right? We've been stood here discussing it for five minutes, and that was more than enough the last three times."

  "I'm glad you feel able to listen to my expertise," Jean said tartly.

  She tipped the melted wax off the top of each candle into a metal tin, then packed the candles back into her bag.

  "Sorry," Ali mumbled.

  Jean rolled her eyes. "Well then. Although if it's not burial-related here, it's unlikely to be anywhere else, while I'm here I might as well check. Come on, tell me where your other locations are."

  They walked to the alley behind the post office, where Kir spent the five minutes of the ritual really hoping that no one was going to come past and peer in and in particular that there weren't any cops on patrol in this area; and again, Jean assured them that there was nothing there. After which it almost felt like it wasn't worth going back to his flat, but when he said that, Jean said again that she might as well, while she was here, and Ali rolled her eyes and pulled faces at him until he gave in.

  "First floor?" Jean said, when they got to the entrance hall and Kir started up the steps. "Absolutely no chance then. Death magic, burial magic, only works in contact with the group."

  "It came up the pipes," Kir said. "Are they in contact with the ground?"

  Jean squinted at something she was clearly visualising inside her head. "Interesting point. Possibly. Fine, I'll try it."

  She put her candles in the sink, this time, after running a very little water into it, but was shaking her head almost as soon as she had the yew branch level. "Like I thought," she said, pinching the candles out. "Nothing."

  Kir made them all a cup of tea, out of politeness. Jean wandered around the living room as he did, looking at his plants.

  "Healthy," she said, sounding approving. "You've a nice little garden here. I wouldn't have thought you could manage as well as this, up above the ground."

  "Ali's only got a room in her flat, and she does pretty well too," Kir said, adding milk to all three mugs.

  "I wouldn't like to be without my garden," Jean said. "That branch is from a tree in my garden. Works better the more resonance you have with it, you see? Ideally I'd make my own candles, come to that, but I save that for the bigger rituals."

  Kir took her over her tea, and braced himself. Ali was right. He really did have to apologise.

  "Look," he said, and took a breath. "I'm -- I'm sorry about that time, in the meeting that time, years back, when I said, um, about death magic. I -- I shouldn't have. It was rude. I'm sorry. And I should have said that before now."

  Jean looked very sharply at him for a moment, then nodded.

  "Apology accepted."

  "He was young and annoying," Ali said from the sofa.

  "Trust me, you're both still young now," Jean said, rolling her eyes. "Annoying I won't speak to." She grinned at Kir, and Kir, somewhat to his surprise, found himself grinning back.

  Jean took her tea over to the sofa, and sat down at the other end from Ali. Kir chucked a cushion onto the floor, and sat on that, reminding himself that he ought to get another chair one of these days. Not that he had more than one other person round all that often.

  "O
h, I was meaning to ask," Jean said. "Did either of you get a message from Matt?"

  "From Matt?" Ali asked, frowning. "No?"

  "I saw him the other day," Kir said. "What sort of message do you mean?"

  Jean shook her head. "A note, this morning, through the post. I don't have email or text or any of that, you know. Can't be doing with it. Anyway. He was talking about Priya, claiming that she was overstepping boundaries, and trying to gather power for herself, and would I support him in challenging her on it. Didn't really have any detail, though, so I wasn't entirely sure what to think. I don't know Priya all that well, but we've always got on well enough when we've met up. She's a strong mage, I know that."

  Ali and Kir looked at each other.

  "Well, that's weird," Ali said.

  "He was mouthing off a bit when I saw him," Kir said slowly, "but I thought it was just talk, you know? He didn't say anything about actually challenging her. And surely he'd have to contact all of us, call everyone in, if he has a real problem?"

  "He seemed to be looking for support, more than anything else," Jean said.

  "He might already think he has your support, Kir," Ali said. "But, okay, so, Jean, I spoke to Priya a couple of days ago, and what she said was that Matt got himself into trouble,"

  "Created a sinkhole in Shoreditch Park," Kir put in.

  Jean's eyebrows went up.

  "Right, and he called Priya in a panic, and she went over and sorted it out, but she did say she might have been a bit sharp with him. What with it being the middle of the night and all."

  "Yes, well, I imagine I'd have been a bit sharp with him, too," Jean said. "And now he's throwing fits about it? Stupid boy. Well. I was dubious anyway, but it sounds like I certainly wouldn't be supporting him in a challenge, then." She sipped her tea, face thoughtful. "Though if there is a problem, they would likely be best sorting it out publicly, rather than have him nursing a private grudge. I'll think about it."

  She drained her tea, and stood up. "Well. I'd best be off, then."

  "We're getting takeout, if you want to stay?" Kir offered.