the stench of blood magic he’d blindly followed the dried smears as they led him streets and streets away from the Canal and the centre of Grande Splotze, out to the ragged edge of the city’s slummy district. The dwellings here were even more depressing and dilapidated than those in Voblinz Lane. If not for the occasional suspicious twitching of a curtain as he passed, he’d have thought them deserted.
“Dammit, Bestwick,” he said, rubbing his belly. “Where are you?”
Balled in his pocket was one of the agent’s dirty socks. Monk said you couldn’t improve on a good, smelly sock when it came to a seeking. But even with that, and with the strongest locator hex he knew, Abel Bestwick remained stubbornly elusive. Sir Alec had warned him that field agents dosed themselves regularly with an obscurata incant but he’d not lost any sleep over that. He was Gerald Dunwoody, rogue wizard. Abel Bestwick had no hope of hiding from him! But it turned out his rogue status hadn’t made any difference. Bestwick was gone, vanished like mist in sunlight.
Bloody hell. If I don’t find him, Sir Alec really will go more than spare.
Throat tight with frustration, Gerald dropped to one knee in the filthy lane and touched his fingertips to Bestwick’s dried blood. Then he held out his hand and waited for the answering tingle from the next splash, somewhere ahead.
Nothing.
“What?” he muttered, and tried again. Come on, come on, come on. But though he strained his senses to the point of fresh nausea, still he felt nothing. The trail had gone cold.
“Dammit!” he said, shoving to his feet. “Bloody, bloody, bloody-”
The sound of a front door opening behind him made him turn. A skinny woman wrapped in an old, faded apron stood on the front step of her shambling, paint-peeling cottage, scrawny arms folded, thin face pinched with suspicion.
“You there,” she said, accusing in rough Splotzin. “What’s that you’re up to? This idn’t no place for strangers. Be off.”
Praise the pigs. A sign of life. Wiping his hands down the front of his tweed coat, Gerald hastily rearranged his face into its gormless butterfly prince expression.
“Oh! Good day, madam! I’m sorry to bother you!” he said, switching languages, and crossed the lane towards her. “Only I’m looking for a friend of mine, and-”
The woman stepped back inside her cottage and slammed the door in his face.
“And I guess that means you can’t help me,” he finished. “Damn.”
Uncertain, frustrated, he stared along the lane, willing Bestwick to magically appear. He didn’t, the miserable bugger.
Just you wait, Bestwick. When I finally catch up with you, we’re going to have words.
He blew out a harsh breath and looked at the sky, where the sun was slipping swiftly towards the unseen horizon. Damn. If he didn’t get back to the palace soon the girls would likely send out a search party. But he couldn’t go back empty handed. How was he meant to explain that to Sir Alec?
The grimoire magic that had healed his bruises, healed his ruined eye, seethed with quiet power under his skin. Waited for him to call on it, like a dragon tamed to his fist. Heart thudding, he pulled Bestwick’s manky old sock from his pocket, closed his fingers around it, and let his eyelids drift shut.
Come on, Abel. We’ve got work to do. Come out, come out, wherever you are…
The grimoire magic lashed through him, dropping him to his knees. He scarcely felt the pain of skin and bone striking cobbles. Astonished, appalled, he wrestled it into submission. Channelled it into one last effort to find Sir Alec’s missing man.
Fireworks exploded behind his eyes-and then, like Abel Bestwick, the world disappeared.
“All right,” said Bibbie, pacing the guest bedchamber’s plush carpet. “That’s it. I’m going to look for him.”
Freshly bathed, smelling of roses and wrapped in a quilted silk dressing gown, Melissande leapt to bar her way. “No, Bibbie. You can’t.”
“Melissande, I have to!” Eyes bright with tears, Bibbie fought back a sob. “I can’t just sit here, not knowing what’s happened! He could be bleeding in a gutter, or lying in a hospital, or-”
“Or on his way back right now without so much as a scratch,” she said, and put a restraining hand on Bibbie’s arm. “Bibs, if you kick up a fuss you could put him at risk. Is that what you want?”
“Don’t be a gudgeon!” said Bibbie, wrenching free. “What I want is-”
They both startled at the loud knocking on the guest suite’s front door.
“Gerald, for pity’s sake, where have you been?” Bibbie demanded, as he pushed past her into the antechamber. “Mel and I are-”
“Shut the door, shut the door,” said Gerald, glaring. “D’you want some passing housemaid to hear us?”
As Bibbie pushed the door closed, biting her lip, Melissande shook her head at him. “Gerald, I’m glad you’re all right, but really, you can’t be in here. What if-”
“I need your small green dressing case, Mel,” he said, riding roughshod. His Algernon hair was all over the place, and there was dirt on his sleeves and hands and the knees of his tweed trousers. “Where is it?”
She stared. “My small green-Gerald Dunwoody, what is going on?”
“Dammit, Melissande!” he said, turning on her. “Just give me the bloody case!”
“It’s in the bedchamber,” Bibbie said, eyeing him warily. “I’ll fetch it.”
“Hurry,” said Gerald.
Melissande folded her arms. “Whatever’s happened, Gerald, snapping and snarling at us isn’t going to help.”
A fraught moment, and then his shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“So, what have you hidden in my dressing case? I hope it’s not that scaled-down First Grade staff Monk arranged for you. I haven’t forgotten what it did to your ties.”
He started to pace. “No. I was going to bring it but I changed my mind. Bibbie! Come on, I have to-”
“All right, all right,” said Bibbie, hurrying back. “Honestly, Gerald, you’re starting to sound like-”
Ignoring her, he snatched the dressing case from her grasp, undid its clasps and upended its contents onto the floor. A small, unfamiliar crystal ball rolled out of the embarrassing tumble of sensible camisoles.
Gerald snatched it up then turned. “Sorry, Mel, but I couldn’t risk carrying it with me. There’s always a chance of someone searching my things.”
“It’s all right,” she said, completely unnerved by the look in Gerald’s hexed eyes. “It’s a direct link to Sir Alec, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said curtly, putting the ball on the antechamber’s occasional table. “Now, if I thought there was any point trying to keep you two out of this I would, but since there’s not, just stay still and quiet. What Sir Alec doesn’t know won’t hurt him or us.”
A shared look with Bibbie, then Melissande nodded. “Fine.”
“We’ll be church mice, Gerald,” Bibbie added, coming to stand with her. “Cross our hearts.”
“You’d better,” said Gerald, then activated the crystal ball. It fogged, then swirled a muddy, unpromising brown. He cursed. “Bloody Splotzeish etheretics. Come on, come on…”
Melissande chewed her thumb. “What’s the matter?”
“The vibration won’t settle.”
“Can’t you fix it?” said Bibbie.
“No,” Gerald snapped. “Not even I’m strong enough to realign the etheretics of half a bloody continent. And what part of be quiet didn’t you two understand?”
Oh, dear.
A few more moments and the etheretics settled enough, barely, for the crystal ball to establish a tenuous connection with Sir Alec.
“Mister Dunwoody. Report.”
“Sir Alec,” said Gerald, his voice tight and oddly formal. “Bestwick’s not in his lodging, and he didn’t leave anything helpful behind. But I’m afraid that whoever attacked him did. When they left 45b, they were tracking him. With blood magic.”
Bibbie stiffened, swallowing a gasp.
In the small crystal ball, Sir Alec’s face blurred and wavered.
