by Alix Hadden
They set off clockwise. The advantage of the site being on a street corner was that at least two of the sides would be easy to access.
"You getting anything?" Kir asked, halfway along the second side.
"Hang on," Ali said. "Look, there's one of those little peepholes. Whatever the hell they're supposed to be for."
"Small children who like diggers?" Kir suggested. "Adults who like diggers? Nosy people? Mages seeking answers to weird shit?"
Ali was peering through the peephole. "Pretty much just looks like a big hole in the ground. With diggers."
Kir took a turn. Ali was entirely correct. It was a big hole in the ground, with diggers.
"I'm getting a slight feeling of, I don't know, suckage," Ali said, while he was looking. "Like, that there's some kind of drainage, here, of magical energy."
"There's no greenery," Kir said. The place was a sea of churned-up mud, more even than the average building site, and there weren't even many street trees on this road. "That might have that effect, by itself, with nothing else going on at all."
"Yeah," Ali said. "And it's not a big effect anyway. Can you even feel it?"
Why Kir concentrated, he could feel something a bit like a very gentle breeze blowing past him, coiling into the centre of his mage-power. "Yes. It's hardly anything, though, you're right."
Ali scowled. "Not really much to go on, is it? Come on, let's see how much further round we can get."
They turned the next corner, and found a series of information boards, with flyers for the number to call if you were inconvenienced by the works, proud boasts about how long they'd gone without an accident, and a brief history of the site, with more artist's impressions alongside a couple of blurry black-and-white photographs.
"So whatever they knocked down to build this has been there for a while," Kir said, looking over the notes on the pub and old terraced houses that had been on the site. "Look, that's from 1920."
"But this was built up sometime in the late Victorian era," Ali said. "It was market gardens and things before then. Which means if there was something that's been here since then, well, it's been undisturbed for a while."
"Matt was saying something about the Victorians using a sort of ground-energy," Kir said, chewing at a fingernail. "But he didn't know anything concrete about it -- said it was all just tangential references. He seemed a bit frustrated by it."
"Historians there," Ali said fondly.
Kir looked round, and let out a tremendously undignified squeak. Ali startled, looked up, and relaxed. Zach was walking towards them.
He spotted them almost as soon as Kir spotted him, hesitated very fractionally, then raised his chin and kept walking.
"Ali," he said, with a smile, when they got closer. "And Kir."
His voice was much colder on Kir's name, and Kir tried not to wince. Zach turned his attention straight back to Ali.
"Are you okay?" Zach asked Ali. "I mean, I can see the crutch, obviously, but is it on the mend?"
"Just a sprain," Ali said, cheerfully. "A nasty one, for sure, but yeah, I won't be using this thing for all that long. She waved her bandaged arm at him. "And they've stitched this up, too, though I have a feeling it's going to scar."
Kir winced again.
"Don't be daft, Kir," Ali said. "I'll have an excitingly heroic scar to make up stories about, right? No harm, no foul."
"Right," Kir managed.
He wanted to say something to Zach. Something clever, or something cheerful, maybe, something about being friends still, but he couldn't quite put the words together. None of the ways he could think of to say anything sounded quite right, somehow.
He had been right, to say he didn't want to see Zach any more. That was definitely the right decision, and safest for everyone. Why, then, did he feel like he'd let Zach down?
Also, why did he still want to kiss him? THe swallowed. Zach glanced over at him, then immediately away again.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" Ali asked Zach, obviously giving up on Kir.
"I work round here," Zach said. "I'm just on the coffee run right now."
Kir twitched again at this reminder of two nights ago. Zach looked over at him again and seemed about to say something, then his lips tightened and he looked back at Ali.
"Are you two looking -- is this something about, you know, the thing. Because it kind of looks like you should be resting somewhere," he nodded down at Ali's leg, "so I'm guessing it's important."
"Yeah," Ali started, but Kir cut in.
"Not really your business, is it?" he said, going for 'friendly brushoff' but, he realised as he said it, missing by a long way. He didn't sound friendly. He sounded like a dickhead. "Sorry. I mean..."
"No, that's fine," Zach said, his shoulders stiff and his head held up very tall. "I entirely understand. You don't want just anyone," the words had a nasty spin, "getting involved in this sort of thing, do you?:
"Kir's being an idiot," Ali said briskly. "Yes, of course you're right, we -- well, it's a long story, my flatmate..."
This time it was Ali that Zach cut off. "No, it's fine, Ali." He smiled at her, apparently genuinely. "It's not really my problem, right? I should get on and get that coffee, the crossing's just gone green. Good luck with -- whatever it is you're doing."
He strode onwards, towards the street corner, and the street crossing, making it to the road just before the pedestrian light went red. Kir watched him go, and thought tremendously inappropriate thoughts about his arse. Not that it mattered if he thought inappropriate thoughts; at this point he absolutely wasn't going to get a chance to do anything about them.
Ali reached over with her good hand and thwacked his head.
"Ow! What was that for?" Kir protected.
"That was for being rude, and also a fucking idiot," Ali hissed. She looked genuinely cross. "Zach has helped. Me, once, you, twice, if you recall. And now you stand here being all up your own arse and telling him it's all a secret. Bullshit."
Kir hunched into his shoulders. She was right. He knew she was right. "Sorry," he muttered.
"Yes, well, it's not me you should be apologising to."
"He doesn't want to talk to me. It's too late for apologising."
Ali looked as if she were about to say something, then closed her mouth again, with a visible effort, and rolled her eyes. "Fine. Whatever. Let's just get on with this, shall we?"
Kir accepted the change of subject with relief. "Right. So. I guess we're going to want to get in there, aren't we?"
"Keep walking," Ali said. "I don't fancy trying to scale a seven-foot hoarding, even after dark, but maybe there's a weak point somewhere."
At the end of the side they were on were the gates. Metal rather than boarded, but with barbed wire along the top, and some really impressive padlocks which would evidently be applied once it was closed.
"Ouch," Ali said, and stopped next to the gate to bend over and poke at her bandaged foot.
"What?" Kir asked. "Are you okay? Is your foot hurting?"
"Look through the gate," Ali said quietly. "Subtly, if you can possibly manage it. Look at the side around from this one."
Kir moved round a bit, trying to look like he was fussing over Ali's injuries, and looked. On that side of the building site, it gave directly onto another office building. And at the far end of that building was a small and slightly pathetic looking courtyard, with a few mostly-dried-out planters and what looked like a pile of cigarette ends. On two sides of it were walls of the building itself, and on one side the wall of the next building along. But where it gave onto the building site, there was only a half-height fence, rather than the full-height boarding they had onto the roads.
"Weak point," Kir said.
"Absolutely," Ali agreed. "Get in there and you're over, no problem. I guess they didn't bother doing it properly because that courtyard is only accessible from the building, so it's not public exactly."
"So we need to get in there," Kir said. "If we can."
Al
i nodded. "That's what I reckon. I guess we have to come back later today and see what we can see?"
Kir stood up, and gestured for Ali to keep walking. "So -- you think it's worth investigating further, then? Because if we're not feeling anything from out here..."
Ali sighed. "I don't know. I'm not at all certain in any direction, to be honest, but what have we done so far? Stood a few metres away from the centre -- and you remember, those lines went through the centre of the plot, so it's right in the middle of that hole, basically -- saying oh, can't feel much. That doesn't really count as a decent go at investigating it, in my book."
"I'm a bit dubious about treating some random Heather knows as a cast-iron authority, you know," Kir said.
"It's not like we have any other leads," Ali said, tetchily. "We ought to look at this one properly."
Kir pinched the bridge of his nose. "So we're going to break into a building."
"We might not have to break in, exactly," Ali said. "We can investigate, though. It might wind up easier than getting over an eight foot piece of plywood in a magic dead-zone, which I have to say I'm not particularly enthusiastic about."
"Fine," Kir said, slumping back against one of the plywood hoardings. "Fine. You win. We'll come back later."
Ali beamed happily at him. "Excellent. Well then. I'm going home, for now. My leg is knackered. Come round this evening, yeah?"
She stomped off, slamming the crutch down onto the pavement every other step like it was an offensive weapon, and Kir stared after her.
In the distance, he spotted Zach's red hair, presumably on the way back with coffee. Now would be a very good time to leave, then.
CHAPTER TEN
Kir picked Ali up that evening, walking the forty-five minutes to her place rather than getting the bus just because he was in the mood to. He was feeling more on edge than normal. It wasn't just the job itself; sure, barging into potentially high-risk locations wasn't something he exactly got used to, but then, he wasn't keen to get any more used to being attacked by weird mud-things, and this at least was a chance of fixing that particular problem. Though he wasn't sure if this really was going to fix it, of course. There was at least as much a chance that it wasn't about that at all, that this was a total dead end. Leylines, after all. Absurd idea.
But it wasn't that, and he knew it wasn't that. It was Zach. He'd spent the afternoon growing more and more dismally certain that he had completely screwed up. Ali was right. Zach had taken a whole new set of experiences in stride. Zach had kept his head when faced with the totally unexpected. Zach had helped. And Kir had been entirely out of order in what he'd said.
And he missed Zach, already. Which was absurd; they'd only just started to get to know each other. But he felt it sucking at his insides, the idea that now he wouldn't get to know Zach any better.
When Ali opened her front door, she already had her bag already strapped across her back, ready to go.
"I'm a fucking liability tonight," she said, scowling down at her foot.
She started crutching herself towards the pavement to the waiting cab.
"You can do sodding magic," Kir said through gritted teeth.
"But I can't run. Oh well. Here we go, anyway."
Kir helped her into the back of the cab -- black cab, more expensive but a damn sight easier to sit in with a damaged ankle -- climbed in beside her, and told the driver where they were going. He nodded, and turned the little red light on, which at least meant they had some theoretical privacy. In his experience you could totally get away with discussing magery in front of a cab driver, because they either thought you were nuts or that you were doing some kind of live-action role play or whatever, and also they didn't give a shit as long as you had good folding money and didn't throw up on their back seat.
When they got there, Kir experimentally tried the doors of the building they were interested in. They didn't open -- of course they didn't. It was ten o'clock at night; everyone had long ago gone home. That did, at least, include the receptionist -- the desk was empty, and no one was sitting on the grey sofas just inside the windows.
"Cheapskates," Ali said, peering into the window. "I'm pretty sure there's only one camera in the lobby. Shall I take care of it?"
"Go for it," Kir said, looking at the locks. Too complicated for the trick with the grass, annoyingly.
He felt the slight sucking in his sense of magic as Ali pulled power in, and then the fizz at the back of his neck which meant she was using it. In the lobby, the camera slowly shifted its angle, until it was pointing over at one of the walls, away from the door and from the corridor through to the rest of the building.
"How're you doing with the lock?" Ali asked, leaning against the window.
Kir just grunted at her. There had to be something he could do.
"Oh. Crap," Ali said. "There's someone coming through."
Kir took a hasty step away from the door, trying to look like he just happened to be hanging out by the doorway rather than actively trying to break in. As he did so, he cast a glance in through the plate-glass windows.
"Fuck."
Zach was looking back at him.
"Oh," Ali said with relief. "It's Zach. I guess when he said he worked nearby, he meant really nearby."
Kir had no idea what to do. Should they leg it? Except Ali was already waving through the glass, and now Zach was coming over and opening the door. His brain seemed to have short-circuited.
"Hey," Zach said. "What are you two doing here, then?"
"Well, it's a long story," Ali said, with a bright grin, "which I am very happy to share, but perhaps you could let us in first?"
A thought hit Kir with freight-train force. Zach worked here. Right next door to what might be the source of the attacks. Zach had been there in his flat, and in the cafe when Ali got hurt. Could Zach...
Then, as quickly as the idea had occurred to him, he realised how absurd he was being. This was magery, and there was no way that he could have missed it if Zach were a mage. And besides -- he trusted Zach, and he was still wholly confident that his trust was warranted. He was just trying to find a reason to avoid facing Zach, and that was an uncomfortable thought in itself. He swallowed, and let himself realise just how badly he'd fucked up. Again.
"Why should I let you in?" Zach countered. He wasn't looking at Kir.
"Because once you do we'll tell you all about it," Ali said. "But I'm sure you can understand why we might not want to discuss it on the street, you know? Given the other stuff you might recall happening recently?" She tapped her crutch on the ground significantly.
Zach hesitated for a moment more, then stepped back, holding the door open, and beckoned them in. As Kir went in, their eyes met for a fraction of a second, and Kir's stomach lurched.
"So!" Ali said, once the door was shut behind them. "We think the mud-things might be originating in that big hole they've dug in the ground next door, we want to have a proper look, this building looks like the easiest way into it, and as it happens I really need a wee right now so I'm going to find a loo, back in a sec!"
She was off down the corridor, going at a surprising pace for someone on crutches, before either Kir or Zach could react.
"Well," Zach said, after a moment. "That wasn't all that long a story after all, was it?"
"That's the abbreviated version," Kir said, with a half-grin.
He looked over at Zach, and their eyes met again; but this time, neither of them looked away. Kir swallowed. All he could think about was wanting to touch his pale skin, to run his thumb over the corner of Zach's mouth.
He had to say something. Ali was right. He'd messed up, badly, and if he didn't at least try to fix things with Zach, he was most certainly going to regret it deeply. He took a long breath, made himself speak.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I was being a dick."
Zach looked taken aback for a moment, then glared at him. "When specifically are you apologising for? The other night? This afternoon?"
&nbs
p; Kir hunched his shoulders a bit. "I don't -- both, I guess."
"Well," Zach said. "Thank you. I suppose." He looked away.
There was a pit in Kir's stomach. Obviously just apologising wasn't going to be enough to fix this, which was hardly surprising in the circumstances. He had to say something else. He just had no idea what.
"Ali said I was being a prat," he offered.
"Ali has a point," Zach said, without looking over at him, then suddenly turned towards Kir. "Ali. She is going to be okay, right? She wasn't just -- I dunno, being all stoic or something, earlier?"
"Should be," Kir said. "Her ankle's the easy bit, to be honest. The wound on her arm was pretty nasty." He winced.
Zach was squinting at him. "You know it wasn't your fault, right?" he said, after a moment.
Kir felt his whole body tense.
"Well," he said. "If I'd stopped it in time..."
"You can't always do that, though," Zach said. "It was -- well, it wasn't an accident exactly, I guess, but it wasn't like it was your fault, either. If you hadn't done what you did do, she'd have been far worse off."
Kir looked over at him. "If you hadn't done what you did, as well. I should have said that."
"What, when you were being an arse?" Zach said. Kir saw what might be the very faint shadow of a smile.
"Yeah," Kir said. He had to be honest now, didn't he? "Pretty much. I was -- I don't like failing people. I failed Ali, and I got you into trouble that you wouldn't have been in without me."
"I think both Ali and I are grown-ups able to take responsibility for the situations we find ourselves in," Zach said, gravely.
"Yeah," Kir said. "That's roughly what Ali said."
They stood for a moment in silence.
"Well," Zach said. "Thanks for apologising, anyway."
It had the sound of finality. But -- shit. That wasn't all Kir wanted, was it? He didn't just want to apologise, to end things on better terms. He wanted not to have ended things at all.
He had to say it. If he wanted to change anything, he had to say it.
"So," he blurted, his toes curling inside his trainers. "I said, we shouldn't do this any more. I think -- I think I might have been wrong."