Cursed av-2

by Benedict Jacka

  Most mages will think twice about attacking another mage’s home. Not only is it messy, but mages tend to treat fortifying their house as a personal hobby. My shop had been raided five months ago, and since then I’d gone to some effort to set up a few surprises for intruders. I could probably give even Cinder a run for his money if he tried to break in, and for exactly that reason I didn’t expect him to do it-mages who make a habit of launching attacks on prepared targets tend not to live very long. But after last night I wasn’t in any mood to take chances, and I spent a couple of hours exhaustively searching the futures for attacks. I came up blank, which was moderately reassuring. At least nothing was being planned right at the moment.

  The glazier arrived while I was working and replaced the window. Once he was finished the morning light was pouring in again, making the shop much more cheerful. Luna arrived ten minutes later, and to my surprise, Martin was with her.

  I’d included Martin in my invitation more for Luna’s sake than anything else; I hadn’t seriously expected him to show up. But he followed right behind Luna as she let herself in. I raised my eyebrows and he had the grace to look embarrassed. “Martin,” I said.

  “Hey,” Martin said. “Listen, I’m really sorry about Saturday. I was just kind of out of it. Didn’t think about what I was doing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So, uh, how much do I owe you? I meant to pay for it, it was …”

  “Martin, did you listen to a word I said? You didn’t pick it. It picked you.”

  Martin hesitated. “Uh … okay. Sure.”

  “Look,” Luna said. She’d been watching from one side and now she sounded like she was choosing her words carefully. “We did listen. I told Martin why the thing was dangerous. We talked about it and we did some research too. This thing’s really famous.”

  “Eyewitness reports?” I asked. “Or stories?”

  “Just stories. But they matched with what you said.”

  “I’m guessing they didn’t have happy endings.”

  Luna nodded.

  I looked at Martin. “But you decided to keep it any-way.”

  Martin looked confused. “Well, yeah.”

  “And you think this is a good idea because …?”

  “Look, we’re not idiots, okay?” Luna said. “We talked it over.”

  I took a breath. “Okay,” I said once I’d gotten myself under control. “What did you figure out?”

  “The monkey’s paw only takes things,” Luna said. “It was in all the stories. It can’t make anything new but it can take something away and give it to someone else.”

  I stopped. I’d never considered it but now that I thought about it, it made sense. “All right.”

  “And you told me imbued items have a purpose, right?” Luna said.

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “Okay. I see what you’re getting at. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s been bad news for everyone else.”

  “Only if you use it wrong,” Martin broke in. “Look, all the characters in the stories are stupid. They wish for something that’ll kill them. All you have to do is word it right and you can get anything you want! You’d have to be crazy to give it up.”

  Luna and I both looked at him. I looked at Luna. “It worked,” she said defensively.

  A nasty feeling went through me. “What?”

  Luna didn’t answer. “You used it,” I said.

  “Martin did.”

  “For what?” I asked Martin.

  But it was Luna who answered. She rose from where she’d been sitting on the edge of the table and walked to Martin. Four steps brought her next to him, and she placed a hand on his shoulder.

  My jaw dropped. “Wait!” I called, starting to move, then stopped. Looking at Luna with my mage’s sight, I could see the silver mist of her curse being drawn off her in a steady flow. Instead of soaking into Martin, it was streaming into something in the pocket of his jeans … the monkey’s paw. Luna’s curse wasn’t gone, it was just as strong as ever … but instead of hovering around her it was being drawn in.

  “It’s okay,” Martin said with a grin. He slipped an arm around Luna’s waist with an easy familiarity. “Safe, see?”

  I just stared with my mouth open. I knew I looked stupid, and I had the feeling both Martin and Luna were enjoying it, but I was trying to understand what I was seeing. Luna was touching Martin, yet instead of flowing into him, the mist was sliding along the surface of his skin, funnelling into the monkey’s paw. I’d never seen this-wait, yes I had. Just once. It must be the same-

  “It was Martin’s first wish,” Luna said, echoing my thoughts. “Protection from magic. We’ve been testing it and it works. It works. My curse can’t hurt him!”

  I kept staring, trying to make sense of it. I’d seen it once before. Arachne had woven a ribbon to counter Luna’s curse, drawing it in and nullifying it. But it had lasted only a few hours before crumbling to dust and Arachne had admitted to me afterwards that it had taxed her to her limits. If what Luna was telling me was true, this thing could nullify all magic, not just Luna’s, and do it indefinitely. There wasn’t a mage alive who could match that.

  I suddenly realised that both Martin and Luna were looking at me, Martin cocky, Luna expectant. “Taking,” I said. “What the monkey’s paw does.”

  Luna nodded eagerly. “That was what I thought. It’s what it’s made to do!”

  In other words, Martin had just done in one evening what I’d failed to do in five months. “I guess that’s good,” I said after an awkward pause.

  “Of course it’s good! Aren’t you happy?”

  Luna was looking at me, her eyes bright. Martin still had his arm around her, but she seemed to have forgotten. I shifted uncomfortably. I knew how Luna wanted me to react and it wasn’t what I was feeling. “I hope it works,” I said at last.

  “It does work! And if it can do this, think about what else it can do! Maybe it could take my curse away completely!”

  Alarm bells went off in my head at that. But Martin shifted. “Come on, Lun.” He pronounced it loon. “We said we weren’t going to try that.”

  Luna flinched away from Martin, seeming to remember he was there, before stopping herself. “Listen, we were hoping you could help us,” Martin said. “With figuring out how to use it. I mean, you know as much about this thing as anyone, right?”

  “Maybe,” I said slowly.

  “Okay, so how many wishes do you get? Three?”

  “The man I got it from said five,” I said. I could see Luna listening attentively. “I know one man who used it four times. He disappeared right after.”

  “So five,” Martin said.

  “What happened to him?” Luna asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. The last conversation we had, he was asking how to make the thing do what he wanted.”

  “So it was doing what he told it to, right?” Martin said. “He just wasn’t wishing for the right things.”

  “Maybe,” I said reluctantly.

  “What about after all five?” Luna asked. “Once you’ve finished? Someone else can use it, right?”

  “Yes-no! Luna, don’t even think about it!”

  Luna’s expression didn’t change; she’d obviously expected my reaction. “Those stories are just to stop people trying it, aren’t they?” Martin said confidently. “They don’t want anyone else getting something this good.”

  I looked at Martin in disbelief.

  “I want to try it,” Luna said quietly. “If there’s any chance.”

  I took a deep breath. “I want to ask you something,” I said once my voice was steady. “You’re hoping if you use it in the right way, the monkey’s paw will give you what you want, right?”

  “Yeah,” Martin said. Luna nodded.

  “What does it get out of it?”

  Both of them stared at me. “What do you mean?” Martin asked.

  “It’s what it’s made to do, isn’t it?” Luna said.

  �
��If it were that easy, everybody would be using these things.”

  “Unless they didn’t know how to use it right,” Martin pointed out. “People are smarter now.”

  I restrained the urge to hit Martin over the head. “Look,” I said. “You don’t need my help to use the monkey’s paw. It wants to be used. Not using it is what’s hard.”

  Luna and Martin looked back at me, and I knew I hadn’t convinced them. “I know it’s dangerous,” Luna said at last. “But it’s the best chance I’ve got.”

  And that was that. There was some desultory conversation between me and Luna, but Martin’s presence put a damper on it. “I’ve got some new work,” I told Luna. “We’re going to do some investigating. Want to come?”

  “When?”

  “About an hour. Same place as Friday. I could use some help.”

  Luna hesitated. “…I can’t.”

  “You can’t?”

  “Martin and I were going to do some more research.” Luna looked awkward. “Sorry.”

  I looked at Luna. She shifted uncomfortably. “You’ve been asking to come on these jobs for months.”

  “It’s not that,” Luna said. “It’s just …” She looked at Martin.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Martin glanced at his watch. “We better go.”

  I looked between Luna and Martin. Luna avoided my eyes. “Okay, then,” I said at last.

  “So yeah, great talking,” Martin said cheerfully, getting up. “Sorry again about the whole Saturday thing. Really appreciate you being so big about it.”

  I didn’t answer, looking at Luna. “See you later,” she said at last, and walked to the door. Martin held it open. As the door swung closed I saw him put his arm around her again. And then they were gone.

  I sat there for a long time, staring out the window. There was an odd feeling inside me. It had been a long time since I’d felt it, and it took me a while to remember what it was. It was the feeling you get when a relationship that’s been fraying finally breaks.

  What do you call an apprentice who doesn’t train and doesn’t join their master on jobs?

  You don’t call them an apprentice at all.

  I started to get angry. I’d known Luna for more than a year. In all that time I’d helped her whenever I could and hadn’t asked for much in return. And now she was disappearing. I got up and started pacing up and down.

  I might have kept doing that a long time, getting more and more pissed off, but a knock snapped me out of it. The help I’d been waiting for had arrived. I took a deep breath, cleared my head, and opened the door.

  The boy standing on the doorstep was about average height, with glasses, untidy black hair, and scruffy clothes. He looked like a research assistant and the hand he stuck out was ink-stained. “Hey, Alex,” he said with a grin. “Need some help?”

  I found myself smiling back. “Hey Sonder.” I stepped out into the street. “I’ll tell you the story on the way.”

  chapter 6

  We took the Tube to South London, changing at Bank. I’ve had an aversion to taxis ever since an incident with a fire mage five months back-it’s a lot harder to ambush someone underground. The noise of the train is also handy when you don’t want to be overheard.

  I first met Sonder during the business with the fateweaver (the same day Cinder blew that taxi out from underneath me, in fact). Back then he was on probation, having just completed his journeyman tests. Although he was working for the Council, I found myself liking him, and to my surprise the feeling turned out to be mutual. After everything settled down he started dropping by, and kept dropping by even after my brief flurry of publicity faded. He’d helped me out several times since, usually without asking for any particular reward.

  For that reason, I made sure he knew about the possible dangers on this one. “So it’s Cinder and Deleo?” Sonder asked.

  “Cinder definitely,” I said. “Deleo almost definitely. I haven’t seen her but it’s a safe bet she’s around.”

  “Any others?”

  “Maybe. I’m hoping you can narrow it down.”

  Sonder nodded. “I was wondering what those two were up to.”

  It was a pretty calm reaction, but as I’ve learnt, there’s more to Sonder than meets the eye. He looks like a history geek (which, to be fair, he is) but he’s smart and surprisingly cool under pressure. The biggest reason I like him, though, is that he’s honest. If you ask Sonder a question, his first reaction is to tell you the truth. That’s pretty rare among mages.

  “So is Luna coming?” Sonder asked.

  Of course, his social skills could use some work. “No.”

  “Is she meeting us there?”

  “She’s not coming.”

  “Why not?”

  I resisted the urge to tell Sonder to stop asking. It wasn’t fair to take it out on him and he was Luna’s friend too. “She’s gotten involved with some idiot who’s taken up the monkey’s paw.” I sketched out the story in a few short sentences.

  “That’s … really bad,” Sonder said. His eyebrows had climbed up beneath his hair.

  “Yeah.”

  “But she knows the thing’s dangerous, right? You’ve told her?”

  “Yes, Sonder, I told her.”

  Sonder fell silent. I could tell from his expression that he was worried. “Don’t focus on it for now,” I said. “I don’t think there’ll be anything dangerous waiting for us, but let’s not get distracted.”

  Unfortunately, now that Sonder had made me start thinking about it again, I couldn’t stop. The worst part was that even though I hated it, I could kind of see Luna’s point. This was what she’d always wanted: a way to deal with her curse. My training was slow, hard, and boring. The monkey’s paw was fast, simple, and easy. It wasn’t hard to see why she’d want it.

  And there was the nagging worry underneath it all. What if I was wrong? What if the monkey’s paw really was Luna’s best chance of a normal life? I didn’t like Martin, and when it came to magic he had the common sense of a gerbil, but the uncomfortable truth was that so far it was working. Maybe by luck or cleverness, he really could manage to get the monkey’s paw to do what he wanted. It didn’t make any sense that the monkey’s paw should be a meal ticket … but life doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes stuff happens that you couldn’t have expected and you just have to deal with it.

  And following up on that was an even nastier thought. Luna had come to me in the first place because she needed help with her curse. If Martin and the monkey’s paw could cure that … then maybe she didn’t have any reason to stay.

  The factory didn’t look any better by day. The sunlight did a little to reduce the general aura of creepiness but it also enhanced the view of the rubbish scattered around the yard and the rust on the barbed wire. The street outside was emptier than any healthy neighbourhood should be, and the couple of people I could see seemed to be trying to avoid being noticed. “There’s nobody inside, right?” Sonder asked.

  I did a scan, taking my time to do it thoroughly. In the futures before me, Sonder and I explored every room of the factory, branching at every turn. All that greeted us was empty darkness. “We’re clear.”

  The Council search team hadn’t bothered to lock the place behind them, which made it much simpler to get in this time. The midday sunlight faded into gloom before we’d gone five steps and the sounds from outside died almost as quickly. The walls seemed soundproof. “This place is really creepy,” Sonder said under his breath, clicking on a torch.

  I nodded. There really is such a thing as a good or bad aura when it comes to places, and the factory had a bad one-dark, rotting, and cold. It wouldn’t do any harm on a visit but you wouldn’t want to live here.

  The journey into the factory was uneventful, beyond Sonder tripping a few times. “This is it,” I told Sonder as the corridor opened out into the factory floor. There was still a space where the barghest’s body had been, but not much else.

  Sonder nodded. His eyes had
that abstracted look that I knew meant he was concentrating. He pushed his glasses up as he looked around. “What am I looking for?”

  “The battle,” I said. “It-”

  “Found it. Eighty-four hours ago … no, eighty-five. Thursday midnight.”

  Sonder’s a time mage. It’s one of the most difficult of all types of magic to learn; while elemental mages learn their craft in months or years, mastering time magic takes decades. Sonder doesn’t know many tricks yet, but what he does, he does very well. “I need to know what happened here,” I said. “Details of the battle, lead-up, conversations-anything you can find.”

  Sonder nodded. He still had that absent look and I knew he was seeing the past, not the present. He took a notebook from his pocket and began circling the room, pencil in hand, while I watched out of curiosity. I always find it interesting to see the way Sonder does things; the types of magic we use are so similar and yet so different. Then I shook it off and got back to work. Sonder was pretty much oblivious while he was doing this, which meant it was my job to watch out for him. Scanning ahead, I saw that nothing much was going to happen while we were in the room. Sonder would finish, we’d head out, and-

  Fire, pain, darkness. My reflexes took over and I forced the vision away and I was back in the present again, staring at the blackened walls. What the hell? We’d been walking down the corridor by which we’d come in, then …

  I looked again and understood. A bomb. Someone had booby-trapped our way out. In fact, they were doing it right now. There was another assassin, here in the factory, fewer than eighty feet away, and he was trying to kill us.

  I snapped.

  “Hey, Sonder,” I said, not taking my eyes off the corridor. “Need to take care of something. Back in five.”

  Sonder didn’t answer. I snapped off my torch and walked into the darkness.

  The man was dressed in dark clothes and he was crouched halfway up the corridor. He’d placed his torch on a nearby box where it illuminated a splash of the hallway. In the white light, I could see a backpack leaning against the wall and a gun resting on the floor where it could be quickly snatched up. He wore a knitted cap.