and joined him at the large reading table for a fragrant slice of Cook’s best venison pie.
Grinning, Monk lifted his glass of wine in a toast. “Here’s mud in your eye, Dodsworth.”
“Indeed, sir,” said the butler. “You are too kind.”
Savouring his first gravy-rich mouthful of flaky pastry and meat, Monk was struck by a thought. Can I? Should I? Sir Alec did make it clear it was results he cared about, not methods. And he doesn’t strike me as being a snob… Besides, from the outside, life as the Markham family’s butler looked awfully dull. He’d be doing their old family retainer a favour if he enlisted his help. Surely, after a lifetime of good care, he owed Dodsworth a little adventure in his old age.
And with Aylesbury so bloody unhelpful, I’m not sure I can do what Sir Alec wants without him.
“I say, Dodsworth,” he said slowly. “You’re a butler.”
Dodsworth considered him gravely. “Indeed, sir. I am.”
“And you know a lot of other butlers, don’t you?”
“That I do, sir. Yes. Were you perhaps thinking of engaging a man for Chatterly Crescent, sir? If so I would be pleased to-”
“What? No!” he said, recoiling. His own butler? How ghastly. Bad enough he had to answer to Bibbie for his scattered socks. “No, this is something else. Look. All these butlers you know. I don’t suppose any of them buttle at Ott’s foreign embassies, do they, by any chance?”
Dodsworth gave him an old-fashioned look. “Ah-Mister Monk…”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, grinning. “Right. Good. So, listen carefully Doddsy, my old chum. There’s something important I need you to do.”
Trying not to breathe too deeply, Gerald blinked the ceaseless sweat out of his stinging eyes. How much time had passed since he’d tripped this stinking entrapment hex? It felt like years… but he guessed it wasn’t more than a couple of hours.
Oh, lord. The girls will be going spare.
He was going a bit spare himself, to be honest. The hex holding him was the most powerful of its kind he’d ever encountered. Every time he caught hold of one strand, started teasing it undone, the other strands tightened to strangling point. All this time fighting it, and he was exhausted. Defeated. Covered in wire-thin bruises. He could feel them, and see some of them, snaking round his wrists and between his fingers.
So much for being a rogue wizard. I’m an idiot, that’s what I am. If only I’d listened to Sir Alec and left that grimoire magic where it was…
Because with his luck, the other Gerald had given him the perfect key to unlock this thaumaturgical door. But he’d never know now, would he? All he knew for certain was that no key lurked in the grimoire magic’s remaining dregs. He’d looked. So he was trapped here, with every chance that the men responsible for his capture, for Abel Bestwick, were on their way back right now, eager to see what insect wriggled in their clever web. And when they found him, they’d kill him. Or worse.
Come on, Dunnywood, come on. Think what Errol Haythwaite would say if he could see you now. Think what Reg would say, or Monk, or Sir Alec. Think!
A tickle in the back of his empty, aching mind. Words, a memory, drifting dreamlike to the surface.
I know more than I did. I just don’t know what I know. Y’know?
He’d said that to Monk, in the kitchen at Chatterly Crescent. A lifetime ago, or so it seemed.
I know more than I did. I just don’t know what I know. Y’know?
Yes, all right, he’d said it. But what did it mean?
He knew what he was afraid it meant. He was afraid it meant that he did have the power to break free from this hex… but only if he crossed a terrible line. Because there was using the grimoire magic and there was becoming the grimoire magic. And lacking a specific hex, to escape his entrapment he’d have no choice but to embrace it so completely that he became it.
The thought terrified him.
But did he have a right to that fear? With so much at stake-a brave man missing, hurt, possibly murdered, two nations in peril, the threat of bloodshed spreading further as treaties and alliances dragged more nations into war-wasn’t his fear a bloated self-indulgence that would cost more innocent lives?
He could hear Sir Alec, curt and impatient.
Yes, Mister Dunwoody. So what are you waiting for?
Help. Rescue. A last-minute miracle. Only this time they weren’t coming. No Reg. No Monk. No Melissande. No miracle. He was on his own. This time he’d have to rescue himself… or not.
And if it’s not, if I choose to give in to fear…
Then chances were he’d destroy the world anyway. Or at least, this corner of it. Not directly, perhaps, but his inaction would make him responsible. And didn’t he already have enough innocent blood on his hands? Hadn’t he sworn an oath to himself?
Never again.
Fear to the left of him, terror to the right.
Pick your poison, Dunwoody. Pick your poison and drink.
With a stifled groan, Gerald sank into his rogue potentia. Glittering. Powerful. Welcoming. Changed. Still healing in so many places where Mister Jennings’s extraction procedure had torn it apart. He brushed lightly against those tender scars and moved on, moved deeper, towards those new, dark places he’d tried so hard to deny. He could feel them. Taste them. Hear them singing in his blood.
There.
Eyes closed, his throat coated with fear, he fought the urge to turn tail and run. Fought it sweating. Fought it panting. The entrapment hex howled, constricting him so tightly he thought he’d be sliced to bloody pieces. A long way distant he heard someone whimpering. Swiftly realised it was himself. Ignored the pathetic sound.
The lingering grimoire magic was a black pool in his soul. With a silent, despairing cry he half-leapt, half-fell. Cried out again, in pain and wonder, as it closed over his head. Flooded him, burned him, and turned him to ice. He felt his rogue potentia flare. Felt every wounded place in it mend. Felt its melding and remaking as the remaining grimoire magics changed his potentia again, changing him into something new. Something more than a mere rogue wizard.
Oh, lord. What have I done?
Gerald opened his eyes… and was shocked to find that Abel Bestwick’s small, wrecked coldwater kitchen looked exactly the same. The only thing different in it was him.
“Right,” he said, and was surprised to hear he still sounded like Algernon Rowbotham. “To hell with this.”
He took a deep breath and tensed every muscle in his body. Saw with his mind’s eye the entrapment hex’s binding filaments fly apart. A ripple, like a shadow crossing the sun. A sting of heat. A shiver of protest. The hex resisted, then gave way.
He was free.
Breathing slowly, though his heart raced, he waited for his roiled potentia to calm. When he was himself again-his new self-he lifted his hands. They were unblemished, the wire-thin bruises healed. The pain was gone, too. He felt stupendously alive. And he could see-he could see Bloody hell. I can see.
With both eyes, he could see. His blinded eye had been made whole again. The permanent reminder of that deadly battle with Lional and his dragon, of the little lizard life he’d taken, was vanished. Undone. As though it had never been.
But even as he started to laugh, an echo of dark thaumic energy struck him like an angry hand.
Elation vanished. He looked down at the floor, at the pieces of smashed crystal ball on the scarred timber before him. Not Abel Bestwick’s doing, this destruction. The fingerprints here belonged to the wizard who’d crafted the entrapment hex. So. For whatever reason, Bestwick had left his crystal behind and his attacker-or maybe attackers, in his desperate message he’d said they — had smashed it out of spite.
But what if they’d managed to extract information from it first? What if they now knew that Bestwick had called someone. What if they knew who? What if He leapt to his feet. Knowing it was reckless, and not caring, he unleashed his full potentia and sought for enemies unseen.
Nothing. No-one. He was still safely alone.
Then he caught a hint of something else. Something new, yet somehow darkly familiar. Following instinct, he
