Broken by Magic

by Rebecca Danese

  I hadn't even realised that everyone I worked with was an Augur and part of it, which makes me feel foolish all over again.

  Then there was the fire that left Gregorio’s closed for business. Could Edward really have set the fire and stabbed Federico? Does the Duke know that his own son turned on him?

  Yes, he was my creepy next-door neighbour who left me a threatening note when I started dating Ella, and sure, he broke into my house to expose her power. I wanted to break his nose during that particular altercation. But there was something genuine about his pleads for us to stay away from his father.

  I almost started to trust Edward then, before I found out he was going to betray the Society to Avers. I sigh with frustration and rub my hand over my face.

  “What have you gotten to?” Matthew asks, seeing my expression.

  “Edward Clarence.” I underline the name several times on the pad of paper and draw arrows from the word ‘fire’ to it. “Jer says he’s responsible for a lot of the things that happened to us, and he has a terrible relationship with his father. Despite that, he probably knows where the Duke is. It was rumoured that he’d been double-agenting as a member of the Magic Circle whilst also helping his Dad out, but as he was about to meet you and give you all the information on the Society before I got to your office, I don’t know where he stands now.”

  “He won’t have had anything to do with the Facility though,” Matthew points out. “I mean, he would have been only a child at the time and certainly wouldn’t have had access to the funding needed to open something like that.”

  “True. I don’t think he’s connected to the Facility, but I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to question him.”

  Matthew stays silent at this suggestion and changes the subject.

  “Something you might find interesting is that I haven’t yet worked out what ‘the Duke’, as we so fondly refer to him as, is actually a Duke of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you could call him the Duke of Clarence, I suppose. But no Duke of anything bears the name of their Duchy as their actual name. Just like the Duke of Cambridge isn’t called ‘William Cambridge’.”

  “His name is Clarence though, right? Maybe he’s a fake Duke. Self-appointed or whatever,” I say.

  “Perhaps. The Duke’s actual name is Jonathan Clarence, we’ve worked that much out. It’s on his birth certificate and everything.”

  “So where does the ‘W’ come into it? You think it’s the name of his Duchy?” I ask eagerly.

  “I didn’t say that,” Matthew warns, giving me a look that expressly tells me to cool it.

  “I bet he’s the Duke of something that begins with a ‘W’,” I mutter, drumming my pen nervously on the note pad.

  “Even if it did, Curtis, just because it begins with a ‘W’ wouldn’t actually mean much. From what I could find he disappeared for a long time while the Facility was active. For all intents and purposes, it looks like he might have even left the country for a time. Obviously, this is before computers and electronic trails, and someone with a different skill set to my own would need to find out where he was, but he certainly disappeared off the radar after leaving school until about the time that Edward was born. That’s a number of years that are unaccounted for.”

  “Travelling the world? That’s a bit random,” I say, fearing another dead end.

  “Not necessarily. He could have had money overseas, property, a tragedy in the family; anything could have made him stay away for a number of years. I couldn’t find any evidence of him going back and forth to the UK, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t.

  “Unfortunately I haven’t been able to nail down the Duke’s connection to the Royal family or how he managed to get the title, but it wasn’t through birthright. There are no ‘Clarence’s in the Royal line,” Matthew scratches his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully.

  He probably made it up, like everything else he told us, I think to myself.

  “So, if—and I realise this is a big ‘if’—he was responsible for the funding of the Facility, the money must have come from somewhere. Maybe he married into wealth? Where’s Mrs. Duke anyway?”

  “Either deceased or missing. The last record of her existence is the birth certificate of Edward.”

  “This is super weird,” I mutter, making notes on the pad that he gave me.

  “Indeed.” He goes back to studying the papers and I pick up the only shred of evidence that I have that the Duke might be involved. I read through the blacked-out lines again to see if it reveals any more information to me.

  Attn: C. Munday

  I’ve sent you the money. You need to get this done as soon as possible. I’m waiting for your breakthrough, Carlton. Don’t let me down or funding will stop.

  I stare at it for several minutes to no avail. I’m going to assume that it’s the Duke because, well, I don’t believe in coincidences. And if that’s the case, then he wanted something from Munday, desperately. Something that he was funding that he needed so much and was so secret that it got blanked out at some point during the filing of this letter.

  “Hang on, Curtis,” Matthew says suddenly. “Why would this even be here?”

  “Sorry, what?” I say, looking up from the document.

  “I mean, why would the Duke have given you a USB stick with information that could incriminate him, to hand to me, a reporter of all people? It makes no sense.”

  “To be fair, I did have to jump through a number of hoops to get this information, just so you know. He didn’t make it easy for me,” I say, trying to rationalise his actions. I feel like Avers is trying to prove the Duke’s innocence somehow, and I don’t like it.

  “There was the weird computer nerd that we had to visit for starters. The one that had been under surveillance from the Anti-Terror Unit. He said that some Augur from the Society had died getting this information.”

  “Do you have the name of this computer nerd?” Matthew poises his pen over his notepad.

  “Er, Marvin. No last name. He…” The conversation comes flooding back to me. “He split the data across two USB sticks. The one he gave Ella was never supposed to go back to the Duke.” The thought dawns on me that perhaps Marvin left that one document there for us to find, like a breadcrumb. He knew that someone was going to be giving the information to the newspapers, and he had been responsible for digging all the info up in the first place.

  “Well?” Matthew prompts me, as I’ve obviously been quiet for a while.

  “The Duke sent me to Marvin, Marvin decrypted the information and gave it to me to give to you. Do you think Marvin left that one document there like a little easter egg? Something to help you expose the Duke?”

  “It’s entirely possible, assuming that the Duke was the one wrote the letter, of course,” Matthew says, quickly covering any indication that he thinks the Duke might be guilty. “Anyway, that’s all very promising. I thought we might be able to trace something back to your source, and here we are, finding leads. You’d make a good investigative reporter in another life.” Matthew smiles, pulling out his laptop and typing up a few notes.

  “The question is, what’s on the other USB stick?” I wonder to myself, more than to him.

  “Where did it end up?” he asks, still typing. Ella had it, but I don’t want to mention that to him if I can help it. She’s clever enough that there’s no way it would have ended up with the Duke if she was told not to give it to him.

  “I’m not sure,” I lie.

  “Well, I think I have an idea of where we need to go next. I realise you might not want to, but no doubt you’ll need to come back to London before long, Curtis. Maybe we could pay Marvin a visit and see if he’ll give us anything else useful. He might even be able to replicate what was on the other drive?” Matthew says hopefully. My heart sinks at the thought of going back home, but I nod in agreement anyway.

  “You could go, if I give you the address maybe?” I scrawl what I remember of it on one of his not
e sheets.

  “I’d really rather you come with me. If he’s anything like my colleagues in IT, he’ll be more than paranoid about speaking to me, and a familiar face might help him to open up.

  “Yeah. I’m not sure if it’s safe for us to go back right now, to be honest. But as soon as I can get myself together, I’ll make plans,” I say, trying to sound convincing. Deep down there’s a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, though. Ella will jump at the chance to go back, and I’ve been enjoying having her almost all to myself these past weeks, even if half of it consisted of me lying in bed with a broken back. Going home means facing my parents and finding work, not to mention the fact that the ATU will be keen to grab us at the first available opportunity.

  The barmaid brings over our sandwiches, but I struggle through mine, as somehow I’ve lost my appetite.

  “I do have one other idea that might help,” he says between mouthfuls.

  “Oh yeah?” I reply, not totally listening.

  “I realise this might not be what you want to hear, but the Augur situation really is just down to bad PR and propaganda,” he whispers, as if revealing some big secret.

  “I figured that much out myself. So?”

  “So, what if we were to give the people a story they could get behind?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me.

  “Well, statistically speaking, people are most interested in reading stories about other people. Romances, break ups, the struggle of their fellow man,” Mathew says.

  Murder, mayhem, and scandal, I mentally add to the list.

  “What if we showed them that Augurs can be loved. That there are brave and beautiful Augurs out there being loved right now by Normals,” he continues. The realisation of what he means dawns on me.

  “You want to do a story about me and Ella?”

  “Now that you mention it, that would be a great place to start,” he says, as if he hasn’t been hinting at it all along.

  “I don’t know, Matthew. I can’t actually stand newspapers and reporters really, present company excepted,” I hastily add when he frowns.

  “No, I see that perhaps you haven’t had the best experience with the media, but believe me, the two of you and your love for each other, if presented correctly, could turn the tide on Augur hatred. It would humanise them, and God knows they need it right now.”

  He makes a convincing argument. I wonder how Ella would feel if we tried to make a story about us. But I already know the answer. She’s spent her whole life hiding and isn’t about to appear in any papers. I shake my head. It’s not exactly what I’d want for us either.

  “I can see you’ve got a lot to think about,” Matthew says, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin, his sandwich demolished.

  “Huh, yeah,” I poke a piece of lettuce on my plate without eating it. “Look, I really appreciate you meeting me and caring,” I say, not looking up.

  “That’s okay, Curtis. It’s my job, really. I’m an investigative reporter, and I want to untangle the mess as much as you do.”

  I smirk. The idea of speaking to a reporter of any kind used to make my blood boil, but Avers has shown more compassion than I thought was possible from someone who technically gets paid to write about people so that it will sell newspapers.

  “Well, thanks anyway. I’m going to need a bit of time, but as soon as we’re back, I’ll let you know.”

  “If you ever, ever want to go on the record, you know how to find me.” He flashes me a smile and takes it as his cue to leave me alone, packing up his things, including all of my notes that I made on his notepad.

  “I’m staying here for another day, up above the pub, so if you think of anything else or need to talk, you know how to find me.” He pats me on the shoulder before taking off through a door at the back of the bar, which I assume leads upstairs.

  I pocket the knife again and let my hand rest around its hilt, which I’ve taken to doing as some strange form of reassurance. It’s almost a reminder that I have a job to do, a mystery to unravel. Before I can help it, I find myself letting another sigh escape.

  “You want anything else, love?” The young barmaid eyes my half-eaten sandwich suspiciously.

  “No thanks, I wasn’t really hungry,” I explain. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Oh, it’s all taken care of by Mr. Avers.” She gives me a brief smile as she takes the plate away. “He gets us to put it on his tab for everyone he interviews here,” she says as she wipes the table down with a dishcloth.

  I pause. How many people has he seen here, I wonder?

  “Been here long then?” I ask as casually as I can manage.

  “About a week, I reckon. A busy reporter from the city, so I hear,”

  Busier than I thought. She seems to be happy to chat to someone who isn’t one of the two blokes at the bar, so I take a risk.

  “I think he said I must be the tenth person he’s questioned. I thought that was a bit much though. What do you reckon?”

  “Ooh, I’d say there’s been at least fifteen. But that’s counting the people he brings in himself in the evening. And to think that our little village could be in a proper newspaper because of The Magic Circle!” She whispers the last few words and looks over her shoulder at the regulars, who are four pints in and oblivious to us now.

  “Terrible business,” I say vaguely, although I clench my fists under the table.

  “I dunno about that. Mr. Avers seems to think that under their new management they might actually be able to help Augurs. That’s the gist of what one of the chaps he was with was saying, anyway.”

  “You heard him talking about the Magic Circle?”

  “Oh, better than that. From what I gathered, he was speaking to the new man in charge. A young chap who was very passionate about the cause,” she says, enjoying the gossip. “We’ve got a few here, you know. Augurs, that is.”

  If my ears could prick up any further, they would. Does she know that there are seven Augurs only a few miles from the village, my friends and, more importantly, my girlfriend?

  “You don’t say?”

  “Oh yeah. There’s the Magic Circle ones that have been coming in and out of the village every day, who are apparently looking for some other Augurs, but I heard that those ones are under some sort of witness protection.” I frown at her, trying not to lose track of what she’s saying.

  “Anyway, I really shouldn’t be saying all this.” She has the decency to blush as she wanders back to the bar with my plate. My heart is thudding in my chest now at the realisation that someone has been spying on us. Matthew knew we were nearby, but that was it. I never gave him the address to the manor, and I certainly didn’t tell him who I was with.

  “And you got all this from the people that were seeing Mr. Avers?” I get up and walk over to her.

  “Well, just one really. I probably wasn’t supposed to hear, but he was talking so loudly. The same chap who said he was reinventing the image of the Magic Circle,” she admits.

  Who could that be?

  At that moment the pub, which until now was deathly quiet, begins to rumble. The glasses and bottles on the shelf rattle in their casings, and I wonder if maybe we’re having an earthquake, which is unlikely in the south of England. I hold onto the bar, and the barmaid gives a little shriek as a bottle of something falls off a shelf and smashes on the floor.

  Suddenly, the door bursts inwards with the force of something hard. Not an object, I realise, but the force of Augur magic, like the type that Lou is capable of producing.

  Three figures march in, hands glowing, and at the front is an unfriendly but familiar face.

  “Hello, Curtis,” Edward Clarence says, sneering. “Did you miss me?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Edward Clarence has changed a little since I last saw him. Still the same pale complexion and hollow eyes, but his hair is longer, and there’s a nasty gash across his left eye which is new. He obviously hasn’t had access to a heale
r. Either that or he’s wearing it as some kind of war trophy.

  “Hey, Ed. Nice scar,” I say, trying not to let the fear show in my voice. The comment makes him grin mirthlessly, showing his perfectly straight but nicotine-stained teeth.

  “Yeah, a friend of yours gave me that,” he says, and I wonder who he can mean. He clicks his fingers at his two companions standing next to him, and they walk towards me like trained puppies. On the right is a medium-built Chinese man with tattoos running all the way up his neck who seems to be responsible for the tremors; every step he takes only makes them worse, and I can imagine there will be a hefty damages bill if he carries on. The woman is slight, with red hair to her waist and bright green eyes. Pretty but lethal-looking. She removes a glove theatrically as she comes within a foot of me, and I try to shrink back, but the earthquake guy blocks my movement.

  “I have some unfinished business to settle with you, Curtis,” Ed says as the woman places her hand firmly on my arm. I open my mouth to protest, but as her fingers tighten, I feel a coldness run through my body, and my mind goes blank. “There we go,” she whispers in my ear. “Come with us without a fight, now.”

  I’d like to call out, to hit her in her pretty face and break the spell, but my legs seem to betray me, and I find myself walking towards the exit with them, leaving the stunned barmaid and the two drunken patrons staring after us.

  Outside, a large car runs its engine, billowing exhaust into the winter air, and Mr. Tattoos holds the door open for me. The redhead doesn’t break contact with me as she shoves me into the back seat, and Tattoos gets behind the wheel. Edward sits in the front passenger seat and turns around to gloat. Close up I can see his dilated pupils and red veins in the whites of his eyes. Combined with the smirk that seems permanently fixed to his face he looks unnervingly like someone very close to the edge. The edge of what, I’m not sure, but he doesn’t look healthy at all.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come out of your little hiding place. It was only a matter of time before you finally came to see Avers on your quest to save all the Augurs,” he says mockingly.