Night came and night went, time elastic as she caught sleep in snatches. Dreams nibbled at the edge of her mind. Caleb’s rasping breath, her children dead in pools of blood on the floor, her son Darren slumped against the wall. ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she told Steph as the girl stalked by. The rope was around her neck, immovable, heavy, rough. Harry snarled again and again, lifting her over the edge of the boat, threatening to tip her into the water. The woman, Zoe, pleaded with him, grabbed Harry’s arms, helped save her. There was something there, she thought in one of her more lucid moments. She saw a potential ally in that woman if she played things right.
She could feel the scryball against her teeth. If her hands were free, she’d use it now. All she needed was something sharp enough to cut the final notch into the communication wards. She had to let them know she’d arrived, but what would she say? That she was locked in solitary and didn’t know when she was getting out? It hardly mattered: with her hands bound, her only option was patience.
Pacing to keep warm, there was little she could do to keep her mind from tying itself in knots. She’d made it here, but now what? Whatever way she looked at it, Harry was going to be a massive complication and she didn’t know enough to even begin to figure out a way to counteract it.
The sun rose, reawakening her hunger. Eventually, she heard footsteps approaching.
Drummond had returned, two more guards behind him, like the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened.
‘He’s ready for you.’ Drummond beckoned her out.
Swallowing back a reply, Amanda stepped, blinking, into the weak sunlight.
Making no apology, the man led her back to the car and they were away.
‘Getting a feel for how things work around here?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied, short and to the point, nothing for him to strike at.
There was something different about him today. He was more tense, his jaw firmer. He kept rubbing his hands against his thighs. The radio on his chest kept crackling, chatter that Amanda couldn’t make out. Something was going on.
‘The warden is going to want to tell you a few things,’ he said. ‘My advice is that you listen and do as little talking as possible. He asks you how your trip went, your answer is going to be “it was fine”. Anything else is going to land you in trouble. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
She bit her tongue, suspecting that if she told the warden about the boat ride then Drummond himself would be answering some questions.
Where yesterday the White House had been quiet, it now thronged with activity, guards rushing in and out, one holding a pair of dogs with their noses snuffling the dirt.
A jeep sped down towards the village, its windows filled with more mirrored helmets.
They rejoined the road, heading further across the island. It was only minutes before it narrowed and curved where it met the beach. Amanda estimated that it took less than ten minutes from this beach to the pier; the island was not large at all.
The beach was a band of shingle between the forest and the sea, the water crashing and frothing across the rocks. The sky, blue above, was marred by a thick, grey chain a half-mile off-shore, lightning flashing in the distance.
The Warden’s house was another few minutes down the road.
It was all angles, glass and steel, some small cosmopolitan artefact that had been washed onto the rugged shore. A large windowed box of a room, supported on a web of struts and filled with angular sofas and lamps, hung out over the waves to give a view of nothing but the ocean.
‘Jesus,’ said Amanda.
‘Let’s go.’ Taking her by the arm, Drummond led her to the front. There were steps up to the polished, dark wood door.
Drummond knocked and entered without waiting for a response.
The warmth inside make her sigh like she was stepping into a hot bath.
The hallway was just as she imagined, featureless walls and polished floors. The whole house looked like it had been bought straight from a catalogue. Amanda had been in places like this before. This was the house of someone who needed somewhere to sleep and whose ego wouldn’t abide anything that wasn’t a monument to their status. The only signs of habitation would be rumpled bedsheets and the hair in the bathroom sink. This was a place for having, not for living.
Drummond knew the way, striding down the hall past a kitchen and the glass-walled living room that Amanda had seen from the road. There was a door at the end, closed. He knocked again, and this time he waited, taking one last opportunity to glare at her, warning her to keep her mouth shut.
There were a few long moments before a voice called out, ‘Enter.’
The office was more used than the rest of the house. Dark wood on the interior walls. Bookshelves of magical texts, no doubt banned on the mainland, faced spine-out across either side. There was a small, neat fireplace crackling behind her. A large, old map of the island was framed above it, which she took a few long moments to study and memorise. The back wall was entirely glass, looking out onto the stormy ocean and, before it, shadowed against the grey cloud, sat the warden.
He was short, slight, his head shaved, small glasses on his nose. Sitting in a high-back leather chair behind a mahogany desk, Fitzackley wore a buttoned-down shirt that screamed money. His sleeves were rolled up, the better to display his Abra tattoos. To have them visible in a public place without the proper licence was an arrestable offence on the mainland; different rules applied here. Though Amanda had never met any in person, she had always known that the government had their own police-mandated magic users. She guessed that it would be the right call to put an Abra in charge of a prison full of them. She wondered if his credentials had been part of the Coldwater company’s pitch when they’d bid to build the place.
He made no move to stand or greet them.
There were two seats in front of the desk, one of which Amanda was dropped into. Drummond unlocked her cuffs and Amanda couldn’t suppress her moan of relief as she was finally able to curl her fingers again, working life back into them.
‘Thank you, Drummond,’ said Fitzackley. ‘Please send in Sorbon. Any word?’
‘Nothing, sir, we’re doing everything we can—’
‘No excuses.’ His tone was cold, clinical. ‘Get it done. I expect results after I’ve finished here.’
Drummond left without a word, leaving Amanda shivering in her chair, willing her body to drink in the warmth from the fire behind her.
Though she didn’t look up, she could feel Fitzackley’s eyes on her, leaning across the desk, hands clasped in front of him – appraising, assessing.
The room was soundproofed, the only sounds the creak of his chair, the hiss of the fire.
Someone came in. Amanda gave them no notice, though, her eyes fixing instead on the steaming bowl of porridge that had been laid before her, a golden drop of honey at its centre. A mug of tea was set beside it.
She looked to Fitzackley, who nodded his consent, and she leapt for it, burning her mouth, but too cold and hungry to care.
Not a word was spoken as the door was closed behind them. Fitzackley only watched as she ate, scraping every last morsel from the bottom of the bowl.
Somewhere, a phone was vibrating, though she couldn’t see one on his desk. Fitzackley made no move to answer it, ignoring the noise until it stopped.
‘I would say you needed that,’ he said as she set the bowl down on the desk.
‘It’s been a long time coming,’ she replied, sitting back, the warmth and the food starting to help her feel more herself.
The man nodded, not a flicker of sympathy showing as he pulled a file close and began to flip through it. ‘So, you believe magic should be legalised.’
Not knowing what answer she was supposed to give, she kept her silence.
The file was thick. Suspiciously thick. Amanda felt her mouth dry at the sight of it, tried to reassure herself that it was there to intimidate. If he really knew who she was, then she w
ould definitely have been hanged.
‘Says here that you were taken in for bank robbery. A rather poorly executed one by the looks of things.’
‘I needed the money,’ she explained. ‘Fell in with the wrong people.’
‘Yes, that was your defence, I see. And though I have no doubt of the first part, and I’m sure that the second part was undeniably true at some point, it seems to me that there are, let’s call them, discrepancies. And while the government neglected to investigate, our little enterprise looked somewhat deeper.’ He bared his teeth in what might have been an attempt at a smile. ‘On paper, your accomplices fit the profiles of petty opportunists. Small men with long records for minor crimes. But here they are, serving longer sentences than any of them had ever accrued before for trying to pull a heist that, frankly, seems to be beyond their capability to even conceive. And then we look at your history and…’ he flicked through the file, showing her blank page after blank page. ‘Now, when I saw that viral video of yours online and realised that I had no option but to take you in, I devised a use for you. But last night, after you arrived, I started to think a bit harder. Criminals hide their identities all the time. I would have overlooked that, but the timing…’ he grimaced. ‘Amanda Ellis, a woman with no history, becomes a minor celebrity overnight, so I have no choice but to take her in, just when I was looking for a new inmate to perform certain tasks for me…’
Amanda had put on her best poker face, trying to reveal nothing of the feeling that a trapdoor had opened beneath her. Dramatic monologue aside, the man was working up to something and if you wanted someone to show their hand, you kept quiet and let the vacuum pull it out of them.
The sound of the vibrating phone started again, but the man didn’t seem to hear it. Somewhere in the house, another phone started to squawk.
‘This woman on the other hand…’ he pulled a separate file towards him. ‘Amanda Coleman. It says here that she’s missing, suspected killed by a demon. The same demon to have killed all those people in London. From there, I see your father and from there…’ he closed the file again with a slap, letting his displeasure show. ‘Harry Church. How do you explain that?’
Shit.
‘I guess I don’t. I don’t know who either of those people are.’
‘Very well. I don’t have time for games today.’ Reaching down into a drawer, he picked up the phone. ‘You will be sent back to the mainland, processed and hanged. I’m sure it’ll be quite the spectacle for the cameras. You’re welcome for the meal.’
‘Wait.’ Amanda held out her hands, the threat acting like a jolt of electricity. ‘You’re right. That’s me.’
Triumph flared behind his rimless glasses as he set the phone back down. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I lost my temper. Used magic when I shouldn’t have.’
Fitzackley lifted his file to slap it back down on the table. ‘I’ve already asked you not to waste my time,’ he snapped. ‘You are a known magic hater and a suspected criminal professional of the highest calibre. Now you expect me to believe that not only have you changed into a frothing pro-legal Abra, but, by coincidence, your one use of magic is caught on camera and sent to every pro-magic newspaper in the world. Your act was a deliberate attempt to be sent here, the papers ensuring that you wouldn’t be hanged because Westminster didn’t want the headache. You will tell me why or I can undo your little scheme with a single call. You’ll be sent back with a report that you tried to escape.’ He lifted the phone again.
Amanda shut her eyes, tried to think, her breath coming hard. She couldn’t tell him the truth. Fuck, she’d known this plan wouldn’t work. This was just like the bank robbery, just like every job she’d pulled since Russia, throwing herself into more and more dangerous situations, near begging to be caught. Now, just when she needed to be at the top of her game, she’d done it again.
Fitzackley pressed a button on his phone. ‘Get me the pier.’
What could she say? What did he want? There was an answer in there somewhere. There had to be something. If she could just think…
‘It’s Fitzackley,’ the warden said into the phone. ‘Stop the last boat. I have a final…’
‘It was Church,’ she said.
Fitzackley paused.
‘Church set it up.’
‘Never mind,’ Fitzackley said into the phone and hung up. ‘Go on.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Church and my father were friends. Knew each other for years. He heard where I was and got in touch. Said if I could be sent here, he’d have a job for me.’
Now it was Fitzackley’s turn to close his eyes, snatching the glasses from his face and whipping a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. ‘How did he get in touch?’
Amanda winced, trying to think fast, wondering what she could keep back.
‘Fine.’ He reached for the phone again.
‘There’s a woman at Blue Meadow. She has a magic connect out of the prison. I don’t know any more than that. She keeps it all close. Doesn’t want competition.’
Fitzackley nodded at that. He didn’t write it down, which Amanda hoped was a good sign for Marnie.
‘And what was this job?’ he asked.
‘He didn’t say. Never had the opportunity. Just said he had a good thing set up and he wanted me on his team.’
She could see Fitzackley’s frustration growing, his lips twisting and his brow furrowing.
‘And he thought he could just sneak you onto this island and I wouldn’t notice? Well, too bad for him, isn’t it? Because here you are.’
‘I don’t want to be sent back,’ said Amanda.
The phone started to vibrate again. The phone in the other room began to cry, the pair working in sync, each trying to outdo the other.
‘I imagine you don’t.’ He let the silence between them draw out. ‘He didn’t tell you his plans.’
‘No. Church asked for me, said things were better here. I came. That’s it.’
‘And you’d rather not hang.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then it sounds like you very much need to be in my good graces, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose it does.’ She pretended to look disgruntled at this new development. ‘Any idea how I do that?’
Fitzackley smiled – the victor. ‘Well, it just so happens I have an idea. And you’ll find that whatever he has promised you is nothing to what I can offer. You’ll see I have granted Harry and his cohorts a great deal of leniency in how they are treated here. The guards turn a blind eye to some of their activities, they have their own rooms and some small luxuries from the mainland. Until recently, I had thought that a very generous return on the services they perform for me. It is certainly better than rotting in the prisons I found them in. But it seems that Church is less than content. Before I dissolve our partnership completely, I want to know what he is planning and to whom he has been speaking. You’ll do as he asks and report everything back to me.’
‘Fine.’
‘Good. Don’t give me reason to change my mind. Start by finding out what happened last night. Sorbon!’ This last he shouted towards the door.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘One of your new friends overstepped the mark and now a prisoner is missing. I don’t want to close this island down, but should word get back to the mainland, that is what I’ll be forced to do. We can ill afford the scrutiny that this will inevitably bring us from the shareholders if it persists. I want to know what happened, who is responsible, and I want the prisoner found.’
‘I’ll get right on it,’ Amanda swallowed, a bubble of foreboding rising in her gut. ‘Who’s missing?’
Fitzackley scowled. ‘One of our celebrity guests. Karina Khurana.’
* * *
Drummond was waiting for her outside, leaning against the jeep they had arrived in. The guards were gone.
‘You ready?’ he gestured that she get into the passenger seat, planting himself behind the wheel.
>
A quick U-turn and they were heading back down alongside the beach.
‘And?’ he demanded.
Unsure of what to tell him, she only repeated what he knew already. The warden wanted her to spy on Harry and she’d agreed.
‘Whatever weird operation you’ve got going on here,’ she said, feeling bolder now she knew her value to the warden, ‘it’s clearly shady. Otherwise he’d just send Harry back to the mainland to hang. You going to tell me what it is they’re doing?’
‘The warden tell you anything else?’ asked Drummond, ignoring her question.
‘He said a woman is missing. That one of Harry’s people had something to do with it.’
Drummond nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself.
‘Know anything about that?’ she prompted.
He gave her a sideways look. ‘Talk to Harry. That’s my advice. If you do nothing else, talk to Harry.’
Amanda left it at that. She hadn’t quite figured this man out yet, which side of the divide he fell on, and she didn’t want to push him into thinking they were enemies.
What had she walked into? What was Harry up to that the warden was having prisoners inform on one another in his own prison? What kind of hold did Harry have on this place to be given such blatant freedom?
Money was the most likely answer, she realised. And pride. Just one look at Fitzackley and it was clear. She’d known plenty like him. The warden had taken a cushy job, one that was likely going to be dissolved a year, or five, from now with a generous severance package, but it hadn’t been enough for him. He’d set up his own lucrative little illegal side business with Harry. There was a deal, Harry was trying to find his way out of it and the warden wanted to stop him, give him no other option but to know his place. But what could a prisoner do that would be worth so much? Stuck away on an island in the middle of nowhere? It couldn’t be contacts; any Harry might have had would have moved on years ago. Whatever it was, it had gained Harry plenty of influence here. But the old gangster didn’t like having someone telling him what to do. Put him with someone like the warden, someone exactly like him, and she imagined an arrangement between the pair would only last so long before one tried to take more than their agreed share. Fuck, but what had she walked into?
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