London Academy 2

by Klarissa King

  Piper tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “They wouldn’t come back,” she said. “Not after what happened here yesterday.”

  “What happened yesterday?” It was Kieron who spoke, sifting through a drawer against the wall.

  Kieron didn’t learn the answer to his question. Ash had shouted from Chen’s untidy bedroom. “In here—come look at this!”

  Piper joined him beside the bed—whose stained sheets were ruffled and printed with space rockets. Ash knelt at the bedside and dug through the pockets of a discarded pair of jeans. The knees had faded green stains, observed Piper.

  “What’d you find?” asked Desmond. He was at the chest of drawers behind them, his fingers picking through a glass bowl of miscellaneous items, from rusted keys and a pair of tweezers to old pieces of boiled sweets and pencils worn down to the ends.

  Ash patted a folded photograph on the pillow. Then, he continued looking through the pockets of worn clothes. Kieron picked up the photograph. His eyes creased—with worry or confusion, Piper didn’t know—and lifted his gaze to hers.

  “It’s you.” He handed her the picture.

  Sure enough, as she gazed down at the crinkled polaroid, she saw herself. The image showed her frequented VIP booth at Club Soho. April, in all her usual night spirit, stood at a bend on the table—dancing, presumed Piper—and herself downing drinks near the red rope.

  Desmond neared and looked over her shoulder. “Chen must’ve been watching you before he tried to infiltrate your life.”

  “Yeah,” said Piper, her voice coming out breathy. “And he used April to do it.”

  Desmond plucked the photograph from her fingers. She glanced back at him, seeing his burning grey eyes pierce into April’s image. He pocketed it, not looking at her, and said, “That’s evidence.”

  A sigh came from her lips as she strode over to the laundry basket. Although, said basket was more of a pile of clothes stacked on a chair in the corner of the room.

  “This stuff wasn’t here yesterday,” said Piper, eyeing the pile. “At least, there weren’t as many clothes lying around.”

  “My guess,” said Ash, rising to his feet, “is that he came back here to get his mum and some fresh clothes after he escaped the Academy.”

  Piper reached for the top item on the pile—a denim jacket—and made to finger through the pockets. But something fell to the floor, landing on her grey plimsole, before she could.

  “Where do you think he went to?” asked Kieron. “After he came back here, I mean.”

  Piper crouched down and picked up the item that had fallen onto her shoe. It was a business card, she noticed with a pang of bitterness—it pulled the memory of Colt’s business card to the front of her mind.

  As she turned it over in her hands, Ash said, “He’ll likely have another hideout in London. That,” he added, “or he’s gone to a fellow Tracer’s.”

  “Maybe even back to Colt himself,” suggested Desmond.

  “Wherever that is.” The bitterness in Kieron’s voice reached across the room to Piper. But she barely paid it a thought as she read the business card pinched between her fingers.

  “I think I know where Chen is,” she said.

  The sound of rummaging stopped the second she spoke. Replacing the noise were hurried footsteps as the other three approached her. Piper stood and showed them the card: ‘CRYSTAL’S CAULDRON’, it read, ‘WICCAN SERVICES AND TAROT READINGS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.’

  Ash took the card from her. “Another Tracer,” he said, rolling it over to scan the address on the back. “Baker Street.”

  “Could be a fraud,” said Kieron. Though, the uncertainty in his voice gave him away.

  “With the connection to Chen Wu,” said Desmond, “I doubt it.”

  Piper took the card back and slipped it into her pocket. “It’s worth checking out, isn’t it? It’s not like we have any other leads.”

  An impressed glint sparked in Ash’s silver eyes. It matched the small smile that wavered his lips. With a curt nod, he agreed that Crystal’s Cauldron would be their next stop.

  CHAPTER 19

  Piper thanked whatever urban deity ruled London’s Underground.

  Peak hours had been and gone; the tube wasn’t as crowded as it had been on the way to China Town. All four of them had managed to find a quiet carriage at the back of the train where they could sit together.

  Ash and Kieron sat opposite Piper and the ever-stoic Desmond.

  Kieron watched the tunnels whirl by them at a manic speed, while Desmond texted whatever mysterious person he normally texted; and Ash checked himself out in his reflection, looking just above Piper’s shoulder.

  “I suppose you’ve made your mind up.” Desmond’s low, distracted voice snapped through her thoughts.

  Piper looked at him, still texting rapidly, too focused on his mysterious receiver.

  “I don’t know what I’ve chosen,” she said, side-eyeing him. A curious glint sharpened her gaze.

  Desmond locked his phone, then traded it for a small blue box from the pocket of his combat-trousers. “If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t have left this behind, on the stairs.”

  She took the blue box. A sour pinch wrinkled her face as she unwrapped the packaging.

  Desmond watched her fingers unravel the box. A Tiffany’s white-gold locket was inside and, as Piper flicked the locket open, both sides of the lockets wore small photos. Both were of her mother.

  Heart rinsing inside of her, Piper closed the locket then put it on. She tucked the pendant into her top, careful not to smudge it, and left the box remains on the seat.

  Desmond’s smirk was palpable.

  They got off the train at Baker Street, and the moment they climbed up the underground stairs to stuffy London, the air punched them like heat from a steam-room. Piper felt robbed of breath instantly.

  Her clothes started to stick to her body as they weaved through the midday crowd for the wiccan shop up the way. But the shop was closed and, as they stood out front in the sweltering heat, Piper’s cheeks started to swell and her upper lip felt slick.

  She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “It’s closed on a Monday in the middle of the day?”

  Kieron ran his fingers through his sweaty mop of hair as he read the sign stuck to the glass door. “Says appointments only, Mondays and Tuesdays.”

  But Desmond and Ash were already scoping the place. Desmond had disappeared down a narrow, shadowy lane, down the shop’s side, and Ash was looking through the window with a pair of flimsy binoculars.

  “No heat signatures,” he said, then pocketed the binoculars. Piper wondered just how much they could fit in their cargo pants. They were like law-enforcing clowns with never-ending pockets.

  A whistle split the air, coming from the lane. Ash gestured for them to follow as he took off after Desmond.

  The dark-haired enforcer stood on top of a car’s hood, a jump away from the fire escape latched onto the brick wall. And he jumped.

  Piper decided the heat wasn’t affecting him, because his hands caught onto the fire escape ladder without any slips from sweat, and he brought it down to the slimy stone ground.

  “There’s a window on the second floor,” he said as he led the way up the ladder. “Leads to a downward staircase. We’ll take that into the shop.”

  Ash swung himself up after Desmond. By the time they were all tucked onto the wobbly fire escape, Desmond had jimmied open the window and slipped inside. For someone so broad-shouldered and muscular, he moved like a cat. A tiger, maybe. With surprising stealth and agility.

  The stairway was narrow, but at least it was cooler inside, Piper thought. She fanned her clammy skin as she followed the boys down to the flimsy door at the bottom of the stairs.

  Desmond wasted no time before he stabbed a small blade into the lock and jimmied it once, twice, and the door popped open. Definitely broken, but open.

  The shop was shrouded in a dusty darkness. It looked like it hadn’t be
en open for a while now. Layers of grey dust collected over the shelves and boxes of tarot cards for sale.

  The only corner of the shop that wasn’t covered in neglect was the counter, where the surface was wiped clean, glistening, and there was a coffee mug left half-empty on the till’s edge.

  Ash clasped his hand around the coffee mug. “Still warm,” he said. He turned it around until a mark of lipstick on the rim was caught in the faint sunlight peeking in through the shop’s window. “Someone left in a hurry,” he added, “or they’re still here.”

  Piper ducked behind the counter and rummaged underneath it. Sometimes, when she helped Nigel at his family bookstore in Soho, the staff tucked their bags under the counter instead of keeping them out back.

  Her guess was right. A pleather handbag winked at her. She snatched it and dropped it onto the counter. Without hesitation, she dug through it for the wallet. It matched the horrid material as the bag.

  “Lilian McGinley.” She read the driver’s licence card aloud. “Crystal must be her stage name.”

  “Let’s see.” Ash took the wallet and held it up at the whispering light from outside. For such a bright, hot day, something about this shop wanted to stay shadowy. “Des, isn’t that one of the groupies?”

  Piper’s brows hiked up to her hairline. “Excuse me?”

  Kieron’s head lifted up behind Ash’s shoulder as he got a good, long look at the ID. “Doesn’t look like a groupie.”

  Desmond nodded as he glanced at the small square picture on the driver’s licence. “A groupie,” he said, “is a tracer who hangs around at our bars, around dour people, without really knowing what we are.”

  “They’re drawn to our power.” Ash flipped the wallet shut. “Most of your clairvoyants are tracers. The legitimate ones, at least. And this one is still around here, somewhere.”

  Piper hummed, then walked off to find a door other than the one they came in through. It’d been locked, so wherever Crystal—or Lilian—had gone off to was still close by if her bag was still here.

  Kieron hollored from the far corner of the shop. “Over here.” His waving arm barely flickered through the shadows. Piper made a beeline for him, Ash at her heels.

  Desmond got their first, his small lock-picking blade at the ready. It was a small trap door that led to the basement, probably storage she thought.

  Desmond tried the handle. It creaked open and, with thrown-back glance at Ash, pocketed the blade. Piper thought that might be a bad idea before both Ash and Desmond drew out guns in place of the pocket-knife.

  “Stay alert.” Desmond heaved open the trapdoor with one arm, then set it gently to rest against the wall. They looked down at the brightly light room. A ladder gave them a way down. At the bottom, they found themselves in a tightly crammed space with two doors to choose from.

  Ash swung a door open, and it led to a narrow stone corridor, out of place amongst the shop.

  Kieron pulled open the other.

  As Piper peered over his shoulder, horror was quick to slacken her face and a wretched scream tore through her.

  Corpses were piled up higher than she stood.

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