“Go on, ducky,” said Reg, from the shadows. “Get that silly woman out of here. I’m going back to help Gerald.”
Of course she was.
“You’re quite sure we can come back in the morning?” said Eudora Telford, settled in the back seat.
“Yes,” said Melissande, stepping forward. “Of course. Because helping friends is always important. Come along, Miss Telford. I can’t wait to tell you all about New Ottosland.”
Reaching the far end of the street at last, Gerald ducked into the final darkened doorway and pulled the tracer crystal from his pocket. Good. The activation was still holding. He’d attached the other half of the tracer to Errol’s black cashmere overcoat, while Errol was in his lab killing time by working on the new Ambrose Mark VI prototype.
Please, Errol, whatever you do, don’t take it off.
The crystal pulsed a medium bright green, which meant Errol was about three hundred yards ahead, still moving. He’d have to be careful not to get too close. He’d had to keep his etheretic shield deactivated, and Errol would almost certainly notice something amiss in the ether now.
He slipped out of the doorway and started walking again, throwing a glance down the street behind him. Thankfully there was neither sight nor sound of Melissande or that dratted Eudora Telford, best friend of Ambrose’s sister Permelia. Who was, apparently, upset about something going on in the company. Something a bit more disturbing than petty biscuit pilfering.
There’s definitely a connection here. I don’t know what, but there is one. Another problem I need to sort out…
A familiar rustling sound… a stirring in the air…
“Right,” said Reg, landing hard on his shoulder. “Care to tell me what’s really going on?”
He’d been expecting her, of course. “I already did,” he said, resigned… but not displeased. “Errol’s leading me to Haf Rottlezinder.”
“And you’re convinced, are you, that Errol’s a villain?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “What I heard was… incriminating.”
He’d left the poor residential neighbourhood behind. Now the surrounding buildings looked like warehouses. Abandoned. Dilapidated. Old businesses gone to rack and ruin. The industrial smoke was thicker here, gritty and tainted with a thaumic tang. Under that was the stench of sour water, spoiled with the effluvium from some factory or other. The darkness was oppressive, the silence a shroud. It even felt like he was breathing too loudly.
Reg cleared her throat. “So how did you get here from Wycliffe’s?”
“The scooter.”
“Then why are we walking? It can’t be too safe walking around here.”
“I’m just following Errol’s lead,” he said. “He drove from Wycliffe’s to the other end of that laneway back there and parked. If he’s walking now it’s because Haf Rottlezinder told him to.”
“And where is our pretty plonker?”
“Up ahead somewhere.” He checked the tracer crystal. As he watched, the green pulse slowed… slowed… stopped. “All right. Either he’s lost or he’s reached his destination.”
“The Errol Haythwaites of this world don’t get lost, sunshine,” said Reg. “Right. Stay here. I’ll see what’s what and come right back.”
“No-Reg-”
But she was gone, her wings whispering through the menacing night.
Shivering, he hunched a little deeper into his own cheap coat and shoved the tracer in one pocket. Shrugged his left shoulder up and down against the slowly building ache. He was starting to regret bringing his First Grade staff with him. It had seemed like a good idea when he left Wycliffe’s, but now it was getting heavier with every step. At times like this he missed his lowly Third Grade cherrywood staff, which had fitted so neatly inside his coat.
Maybe I can get Monk to-to fiddle a First Grader down to Third Grade size somehow. A sort of stealth staff. That might come in handy.
He was standing opposite a narrow, vacant lot that sat between two run-down buildings. It looked a bit like a missing tooth in a rotten smile. In the faint illumination from the gas lamps on the buildings behind it he saw that the lot was overrun with weeds. A rustle. A snarling hiss. A panicked squeak, silenced. Two large yellow eyes gleamed briefly then disappeared.
He shivered again. That’s me. Slinking through the weeds in the dark, hunting. My father was a tailor. How did I get to be this?
The world around him looked slightly… flattened. With only one good eye he’d lost his depth perception. He hardly ever noticed the difference any more. Only at times like this, with so little light around, and so much danger. That was when he remembered that while he’d gained a lot, he’d lost something too.
He frowned into the distance, trying to see Reg. Oh, lord, Reg. How was he going to explain her to Sir Alec? Her and the girls. Because he couldn’t not include them in his final report. Lying to Sir Alec was out of the question. If his intimidating superior didn’t understand about their serendipitous involvement-about how hard it was to stop Reg sticking her beak in to save him at every opportunity…
Exactly how influential was Sir Alec? Could he take reprisals against Witches Inc.? Have Melissande recalled to New Ottosland? See Bibbie stripped of her thaumaturgical licence? Make Monk pay for his irrepressible sister? And what about Reg? All right, probably he couldn’t do anything to her. If nothing else, she could outfly him. But what if he made things so difficult she had to leave Ottosland? Where would she go? Back to New Ottosland, probably, with Melissande…
But I don’t want her to! Why does everything have to be so bloody difficult?
“Right,” said Reg, gliding out of the gloom. “I’ve got him spotted.” She landed on his shoulder again. “He’s outside an old boot factory, five hundred yards down on the left. Looks like that Rottlezinder’s up on the top floor. You can just see a crack of light shining between the closed shutters. We’d better get hopping, sunshine, we don’t want to miss what’s going on.”
Letting his staff drop, Gerald plucked her off his shoulder and kissed her beak. “There’s no we, Reg. Not this time. You’ve been marvellous but now you have to go.”
“Gerald-”
“ No. You can’t be here, Reg. Please.”
She rattled her tail feathers. “If there was time I’d argue with you, but there’s not. Gerald, that place is hexed into the middle of next week. It was like flying into a brick wall, just about knocked me eyeballs over toenails. I’d say that’s why Errol’s waiting on the footpath-so his nasty little friend can let him in. You’d better not try taking that fancy staff of yours anywhere near it-you’ll probably start fireworks.”
He kissed her again. “I won’t. Goodbye!”
As she flapped away he slid his gold-filigreed staff into the undergrowth on the vacant lot and obscured it with a hex. Then, because Errol was so close, he reactivated his shield-incant and broke into a soft-footed jog down the empty street towards Errol, and Haf Rottlezinder.
The warding hexes Rottlezinder had put on the boot factory struck him while he was still some fifty feet from its partially boarded-up entrance. The criminal wizard’s thaumic signature stank of power, and malice. Dropping back to a stealthy walk he slunk from shadow to shadow, inching his way closer… and closer…
Yes, there was Errol, still standing on the footpath, impatiently waiting. A single working lamppost a little further down the street washed him with a faint light. He looked ill. Angry. Uncertain.
Then Gerald felt the ether shiver. Saw a ripple in the air, gentle at first and then more forceful. Errol’s hair ruffled, as though blown by a breeze, and detritus in the shallow gutter-some old leaves, a few sheets of torn, tattered newspaper-picked itself up and danced, coquettish. Hazing smoke from the looming factories eddied, sharpening the ambient stink.
Rottlezinder was opening the front door.
Gerald bit his lip. He needed access to his full range of potentia now. Trying to spy on Errol and Rottlezinder muffled by his shield would be a waste of time… and dangerous. So he held his breath, and at the height of the warding hexes’ deactivation switched his shield off. Trusting, hoping, that any disturbance it caused would be lost in the already agitated ether, he stood still and mute in the deepest shadow he could find, and waited.
It worked.
