Fated

‘It’s not your neighbours you should be worried about! These people are dangerous!’

Luna nodded. ‘I know.’

I put a hand to my head and sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I should never have gotten you into this. If I’d known you’d turn up something that would get you involved in this stuff—’

‘No. This is what I want.’

I stared. ‘Luna,’ I said carefully. ‘If those three catch you, they’ll quite likely kill you. You understand that, right?’

Luna looked back at me steadily, her clear eyes looking into mine, then she dropped her gaze and traced her finger around the rim of her mug. ‘When you called me this morning, you were afraid I wasn’t going to come, weren’t you?’

‘I—’ I checked myself. ‘How did you know that?’

‘You always tell me how dangerous your world is,’ Luna said. ‘It’s like you think you need to warn me off.’ She dipped the tip of her finger into the tea and looked at it. ‘It doesn’t bother me, you know.’

‘Luna—’

Luna looked up to meet my gaze. ‘If those three are going to be chasing someone, it’s better that it should be me, isn’t it? I mean, if I was a normal girl, they’d have caught me back there.’

I stared at her.

‘So,’ Luna said at last. ‘You said you needed me to run a test? I mean, before we got distracted.’

‘I—’ I let out a breath. ‘All right.’ The cube was sitting on the coffee table in between us, looking ordinary and dull in the morning light. ‘Try picking that up.’

Luna nodded and obeyed. The cube swung between her fingers as she looked at it, then gave me a glance.

I grabbed a pencil and paper and scribbled a word, then pushed it across the coffee table, taking care to keep my distance. ‘This is a general-purpose command word. Hold up the cube and say it.’

Luna waited for me to sit back, then reached forward and picked up the paper. To my eyes the silvery mist of her curse engulfed the paper as she studied it, frowning slightly. The cube hung silent in her other hand, the silver mist sliding off it without sinking in. Imbued items have a will of their own. Until they decide to use their power, they’re nothing but blunt objects. One way to get an imbued item to obey you is to find the item’s special purpose and bring it to bear somehow. If you don’t know the item’s purpose, you’re out of luck; the item won’t obey anyone except its master.

But if you can guess who its master might be …

‘Annath,’ Luna said.

Light flowed from the cube and in an instant the gloomy room was lit up in red and white. The crystal surrounding the core glowed with energy and thin lines of light sprang outwards, playing over the sofa, the table, the walls. For one instant, Luna was backlit in the glow, holding the cube aloft, her eyes lifted up in wonder.

Then the light snapped out, and the room was back to normal. Luna dropped the cube and it bounced, came to rest on the sofa cushions, and sat quietly. Luna twisted around and stared down at it. There was a moment of silence.

I let out a breath. ‘Okay then.’

‘What was that?’

I got to my feet. ‘Luna, it’s going to be better if you’re somewhere very hard to find for a while. I’ll explain along the way.’

5

I explained along the way, and carried on explaining. Luna kept asking questions and didn’t stop, long after I expected her to go quiet. It was as though now she’d finally gotten me to open up, she wanted to learn everything she possibly could.

Learning about magic’s dark side is a major tipping point for newcomers, and the way they react tells you a lot about who they are. Some freak out completely – once they realise that messing with this stuff can get them killed, they run and never come back. Others just get a bad case of the shakes and adjust bit by bit. I’ve seen the whole range – or at least I thought I had. But Luna had been near-missed by Dark mages twice in as many days, she’d just learned that they weren’t going to stop until they found her, yet she hadn’t turned a hair. Why was she so calm?

I think it was at that point I first realised just how little I really knew about Luna. I’d always focused on her curse – how it worked, whether I could do anything to fix it. I’d never learnt what really made her tick.

‘So there are lots of those spells?’ Luna was asking. ‘Could they find me another way?’

‘Easily,’ I said. We were walking up a grassy hill, avoiding the path to keep clear of people. A pair of students were throwing a frisbee off to our left, and dogs ran across the meadow. ‘But most of the powerful ways to track someone take time. If they’re smart they’ll stake out your flat while they put something together.’

‘Will my curse help?’

‘Chance magic needs some randomness to work with. If they get something that can find you reliably enough, there’s not much it can do.’

Up ahead, a family was laughing and tramping downhill on the path. We fell silent briefly as we waited for them to go by, letting Luna give them a wide berth. ‘I still don’t see why this thing with the cube makes a difference, though,’ Luna said once they were gone. We crossed over and headed for the woods on the other side. ‘Why does it matter whether I can use it?’

‘It’s more than that. I spent three hours last night playing with that thing and didn’t even get a flicker. You