Thaumatology 101

The First Novel in the Thaumatology Series, Second Edition

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2011 Niall Teasdale

Amazon Kindle Edition

Contents

Part One: T-Null

Part Two: Power

Part Three: Sorcery

Part Four: Doomsday

Part Five: All Hallows’ Eve

Part One: T-Null

Kennington, London, August 20th 2010

Lily’s bare feet slapped on the slate-tiled floor of the kitchen as she walked in, quite naked, as usual. Her thick, silky, chestnut hair was tousled from bed at two in the afternoon and she yawned as she walked to the coffee maker to check the pot. Finding it hot enough, she took a mug down from the tree by the sink, poured herself some of the aromatic, dark liquid and turned, resting her perfect behind against the counter and crossing her long legs at the ankle. She sighed as her first taste of coffee of the day ran down her throat, kick-starting neurons and sparking awareness, and that led her to the contemplation of Ceri sitting at the kitchen table.

Lily had unnaturally perfect, pale-yet-beautiful, porcelain-smooth skin, gorgeous breasts which had absolutely no sag to them despite their size, a trim waist, wide hips, and perfect muscle tone. She had just exactly the right amount of flesh over her muscle to look hard with enough feminine softness to take the edge off. In short, she was absolutely stunning; she knew it too and still managed to act as though she did not. She was used to being looked at, stared at in fact. One of the reasons she lived under Ceri’s roof was that the other girl treated her like a human rather than a sex doll. However, under normal circumstances she expected at least a “hello” when she got up. Lily’s gaze followed Ceri’s to the table and the brown envelope lying on it. Suddenly the lack of recognition had a reason.

A shimmering stream of sparkling light flew in through the kitchen door, resolving into a nut-brown, human-shaped creature with bobbed, purple hair about the size of Lily’s hand, her feathery, blue and white wings beating rapidly to keep her in the air. ‘She still hasn’t opened it yet then?’ Twill said, alighting on Lily’s shoulder, heels tapping on her collarbone.

‘How long’s she been sat there?’ Lily asked.

Rolling her tiny body over and pushing Lily’s hair aside, Twill looked up at the clock over the kitchen window. ‘About three hours,’ she said, rolling back. ‘She’s been to the loo once, so not all of the three hours.’

Lily ran the tip of her tongue over one of her fangs. ‘You going to open it then, Ceri?’ she said.

‘Yes!’ Ceri replied, the word coming out as a squeak. She did not move, and her eyes remained fixed on the envelope. In one corner was a digital stamp and the logo of the Metropolitan University. That made it look rather institutional, but the address had been handwritten, in a fairly delicate hand. Miss Ceridwyn Brent, High Towers, St Agnes Pl, Lambeth.

‘You can’t actually read it through the envelope,’ Lily pointed out.

‘I know,’ Ceri squeaked.

‘It took me three weeks to talk you into applying for a job you knew you wanted. The least you could do is open the letter.’

‘I will.’ Still Ceri remained quite still.

Lily shrugged, dislodging Twill. ‘I’m going to go sunbathe on the roof,’ she said, heading out through the door followed by the fairy.

Ceri continued staring at the envelope as though looking away might suddenly make it do something of its own accord.

~~~

Lily’s four-inch heels clicked on the slate floor as she walked in dressed for work; if you could describe it as dressed. It was just after eight pm, the sun would set in about fifteen minutes, and an hour later the more nocturnal members of London’s society would be emerging. It was Friday night, and that meant the norms would be mixing with them, and Lily would be catering for both. She worked at the Jade Dragon, a club in Soho which attracted the rich, the famous, and the exotically dangerous, and those who wished to hang around with them. The “uniform” she wore was a skin-tight silky dress in black with a gold, red, and blue Chinese floral design. Mostly it consisted of holes, however, and the panels at front and back which formed the skirt barely covered her dignity.

Ceri was making toast, still dressed in the same, oversized men’s shirt she had been wearing at two o’clock. Lily paused and sucked on a fang. She checked the table. Sure enough, the envelope was still there, unopened, unmoved. ‘So you got the job then?’ she said.

‘Nope,’ Ceri replied, not looking around.

‘I wish you’d told me you’d become psychic. I might have bought a Lottery ticket.’

‘I flunked the interview,’ Ceri said. ‘I know I did. Tennant didn’t like me knowing as much about quantum thaumatology as she did. I know it.’

‘Well, yes,’ Lily said dryly, ‘because the last thing she would want is a competent research assistant. Open the letter.’

The toaster popped up, causing Ceri to jump. ‘It’s a rejection,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to read a rejection letter. I’m just going to go find another job.’

‘It’s not a rejection,’ Lily said, her voice starting to carry a hint of irritation. ‘You are the brightest thaumatology student anyone’s seen in years. Tennant would be insane to pass you over and the only thing keeping you from knowing that is your own widderwise insecurity!’

‘It’s a rejection letter,’ Ceri mumbled. A tiny red spark flickered in the back of Lily’s black eyes and she was across the floor and grabbing the envelope faster than a woman in high heels had any right to. ‘Hey!’ Ceri yelped, darting forward, but Lily bent over at the hips, fending her friend off with her behind and slitting the envelope open with one, long, red-painted nail. ‘That’s private!’ Ceri added by way of protest. It was no good; she backed off as Lily scanned the letter inside.

Lily straightened up now that she was no longer being attacked, her eyes flicking down the page. She tossed the single sheet of paper and the envelope back onto the table and started for the door. ‘You start on Monday, Rejection Girl.’

Soho

Ceri sat at the bar of the Jade Dragon, a glass of white wine in hand, watching Lily work her tables. The woman was an artist, it had to be admitted. She almost got more in tips than she did in regular pay and Ceri had actually seen people ask to be seated at one of her tables. Of course, she had something of an advantage; Lily was a half-succubus. As she walked toward Ceri with more grace than anyone should be allowed to have, the tiny pin-prick of red in her pupils showed that she was using her aura. One of her auras, to be precise; she had a couple and this one was meant for hunting. The only norm in the room who could not feel the sheer eroticism pouring off her was Ceri, and even the supernaturals reacted to it.

‘Need another drink?’ Lily asked as she reached the bar and waved to Alec, the bartender.

Ceri raised her wine glass, which was still a third full. ‘I know you’re paying, Lil, but I don’t really want to get smashed, okay?’

Lily giggled. ‘Got to celebrate your new job, hun.’ She turned as Alec arrived and smiled. ‘Table six wants two red wines, a double of the Glenmorangie, and a Vee-Bomb.’

Ceri looked over at the table the drinks were for. Three humans, the two women dressed in clinging, sexy mini-dresses, the man in a suit. Between the two women sat the vampire, leaning back to keep his face in shadow. A Vee-Bomb was a vodka and Red Bull with a shot of warmed, synthetic blood. Ceri had always found it mildly ironic that something created by the drinks industry to allow vampires to absorb alcohol had proven so useful in medicine. Not only did “Syn” allow vampires to use some legal drugs like painkillers, it had almost entirely replaced the use of donor blood in operating theatres. The one thing it could not do was replace living blood in a vampire’s diet.

Alec placed four glasses on a tray in front of Lily and she picked it up, giving him one of her smiles before turning and strutting away. Alec watched her behind move as she walked. ‘That is one crazy sexy girl,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said, ‘I guess she is.’ She tried not to take it as an insult, seeing that it was not, all things considered. Ceri was hardly unattractive. She worked out. She was slim. Slightly too masculine of feature to be called “beautiful,” she was still very far from ugly. She was also fairly ordinary; only the tattoos on her inner wrists and the red streaks in her short black hair gave the impression of any lack of conformity. Compared to Lily’s exotic beauty, Ceri was a dog.

‘And you live with her, right?’ Alec added.

‘Technically, she lives with me. My house.’

Alec’s grin was rather more like a leer; Ceri could see his fangs. ‘Bet she keeps you warm in winter,’ he said.

‘She’s got her own room,’ Ceri told him. ‘We’ve never…’

‘Never!’ The barman sounded entirely incredulous. ‘Seriously? You’ve never slept with her?’ Ceri shook her head slowly and Alec raised an eyebrow. ‘You got some kind of mental condition?’

Ceri sighed and turned to look back at Lily as she moved among the tables. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘something like that.’ She realised she was rubbing at her wrists and stopped, picking up her glass again. The slight tingle continued and she looked at one of the intricate patterns marked out in what looked like black ink. Tiny flickers of light moved along the lines.

‘Nice tats,’ Alec commented.

‘Thanks,’ she replied, folding her arms to hide them. She had had them since she could remember. Her parents had placed them there to protect her, they had said, and they worked. Lily’s magic did nothing to her, no spell could touch her; when a demon had escaped onto campus two years earlier, it had taken one look at her and run the other way.

The tingling got worse and she looked up to find Lily standing beside her. Her fists clenched and Lily looked apologetic; she almost never had her aura on in the house. ‘Sorry,’ Lily said.

‘You’re working,’ Ceri replied, shrugging. ‘How’s business?’

‘The guy at table four’s got wandering hands,’ Lily said matter-of-factly, ‘but he’s going to leave me an enormous tip and then his girlfriend’s gonna drop him like a hot penny.’

‘Guess that’s something,’ Ceri said. ‘Not sure how you put up with it.’

The half-succubus shrugged. ‘Gives me a buzz,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should try it. It’s nice to feel appreciated.’

Ceri snorted. ‘My dad wasn’t an incubus and I don’t think they’d appreciate me the way they do you. Alec doesn’t.’

‘Pfft! Alec’s a lick. Total horn-dog.’

Ceri glanced at Alec. Now she knew to look, the signs were there. The fangs should have been a dead giveaway really, wrong for a vampire and half-demons like Lily were rare as hen’s teeth. He had the smooth movement and the muscles rippling under the black, silk shirt. Yeah, he was a were; “lick” was a corruption of lycanthrope and there was no way the club would employ a one of those, but a true were was different. Probably a wolf when he changed. Foxes were more common, but they were universally ginger.

‘Oh,’ Lily said, ‘table three’s looking dry. Time to go to work.’ This time it was Ceri watching Lily’s barely covered arse as it followed a complex procession across the room. She had to admit, aesthetically it was a really nice arse.

Her attention was drawn away from the view as her wrists continued tingling even as Lily moved out of range. Over on table six, the vampire was watching her.

~~~

The long, black coat Lily wore to cover herself outside the club flapped in the slight breeze as the two girls walked toward Charring Cross Road. It was four fifteen and the club was closed, the tables cleared, the only people left behind were the manager and Alec, checking the till and closing up. In a little under two hours the sun would come up and the night air was as cold as it was going to get. Ceri could not feel it.

Overhead the Northern Lights flickered in the sky; blues and greens and purples shimmering in the upper atmosphere. Ceri’s parents had once told her that they had never come as far south as London before the Shattering. Now they were brighter, especially on the waxing moon, energised by the Earth’s magic field. It looked beautiful, but you got fairly used to it.

‘Nice take,’ Lily said. ‘Three hundred in tips. Not my best Friday night, but not bad.’

‘Cool,’ Ceri said. They had a good arrangement; Ceri had inherited the house, but she was a student. Lily’s rent gave her the pocket money she needed to run her life, and paid for food for the three of them. It was still way cheaper than renting a flat in London. The job Ceri was starting on Monday would be the first paying work she had ever had.

‘You have a good evening?’ Lily asked.

Ceri grinned. ‘I’m not really much of a clubber, Lil,’ she said, and then relented as her friend pouted. ‘It was cool. I drank a bit too much, and I really have to get back into a daytime rhythm before Monday, but it was relaxing.’

‘Mostly,’ Lily said, tapping Ceri on the wrist. As if on cue, Ceri’s wrists started to tingle and she stopped walking. Lily frowned. ‘Something wrong? My aura’s off…’ She trailed off as the four figures stepped out of the shadows in front of them.

Lily let out a hiss as the vampire cast his own aura toward them. Ceri thought back to her classes on supernatural biology; a secondary course, but useful. Undead gave off negative thaumitons as part of their natural body function and could direct them to cause fear. Except that this one was trying it on the best protective enchantment two highly skilled practitioners could make, and a half-demon.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ Ceri said. It seemed only fair to warn them.

‘Master wants someone to play with,’ one of the two women said. She had the slightly distant tone in her voice that marked most thralls. Her mind belonged to the vampire. The male had dropped into a crouch; he had ginger hair.

‘Join us,’ the vampire said, his voice a soft wave of sound which caressed the ears. He stepped into the light from a streetlamp and Ceri knew she was supposed to see an attractive man in his mid-thirties with soft, black hair and a trim body. The trouble was that she could see right through the illusion. Beneath the image was the real vamp, grey skin stretched tight over his skull, fangs quite visible due to the thin lips pulled back by age. He was an old one, maybe even pre-Shattering. ‘You don’t really want to deny me, do you?’ the vamp added. The image smiled beautifully; the vampire’s lips turned into a snarl.

‘Yeah, right,’ Lily said, her coat falling back from her shoulders in a single shrug. Ceri felt the wave of heat pass over her as Lily sent her aura out at full power. This was her other aura, her defensive aura. Even the vampire shuddered. The women closed their eyes and started to moan, the werefox’s eyes bulged and he rolled onto the pavement, panting in ecstasy.

The vampire took a breath, his body tensing. ‘Don’t,’ Ceri said. ‘Walk away or you’ll burn.’ It was not a threat, simply a statement. She took a step forward, putting herself between the undead stalker and her friend. Her wrists were starting to sting.

Snarling, the vampire sprang forward. He moved with the same sort of unnatural speed Lily could pull when she wanted, and he was going for Lily, the one who had his thralls entrapped. But vampires, especially old ones, were arrogant creatures; he was going to go through Ceri to get there. His fist struck Ceri’s chest and she fell back into Lily’s waiting arms. The vamp stopped, a look of total shock registering on both of his faces for a fraction of a second. Then a wave of flame flashed down his arm and a second later he was a pile of ash on the paving stones.

Ceri hugged her wrists to her chest until the pain subsided. She looked down at the three ex-thralls as Lily put her back on her feet. All three were now on the floor and clearly enjoying themselves from the amount of writhing. ‘You going to let them go?’ she asked.

‘Already did,’ Lily said. If her wrists had not been throbbing so much, Ceri guessed she would have noticed Lily’s aura subsiding. ‘They’ll stop in a few minutes… maybe an hour… by dawn anyway.’

Ceri found herself giggling. ‘Let’s get home. I don’t want to have to explain to the police… again.’

Lily picked up her coat, slipping it on. ‘Vamps like that deserve what they get,’ she said. ‘Give us supernaturals a bad name.’ She linked her arm through Ceri’s and they stepped over the gently quivering body of one of the women as they carried on the way they had been going.

Kennington, August 29th

The roof of High Towers was a perfect place for sunbathing. Large and flat, and high enough up that you were not visible from ground level unless you went to the railing around the edge, Lily could bask in the late-summer sun without attracting attention; useful when you refused to wear a swimsuit of any kind. It was not that she tanned; her skin neither tanned nor burned, even under the hottest sun. The heat, however, felt wonderful.

The roof hatch opened and Ceri climbed through it in a two-piece, carrying a notebook and a plastic bottle. She looked across the roof at Lily through a pair of large sunglasses and shook her head. ‘Don’t you ever wear clothes around the house?’ she asked. Of course, she knew the answer perfectly well.

‘We don’t have company,’ Lily replied.

Ceri finished climbing out through the hatch and walked over to set her notebook down on another lounger. Opening her bottle of sun oil, she poured some into her hand and started coating her arms. She did not tan either, but that was down to skin which resolutely refused to brown. If she was lucky, the freckles across her shoulders got a bit bigger. She did, however, burn. Finishing her arms, she coated her chest, shoulders, and stomach. She looked up when she had finished her legs to find Lily watching her. The half-succubus smiled slightly, and closed her eyes, lying back. Picking up her notebook, Ceri lay back in the sun and started reading.

‘You’re not still working are you?’ Lily asked.

Ceri glanced over. Her friend was still laid back with her eyes closed. ‘Yes, so?’

‘It’s Sunday,’ Lily said, ‘you’re supposed to have the weekend off. You’ve had your nose in that book all weekend.’

‘I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong with Tennant’s containment system,’ Ceri replied as if this was justification enough. ‘There’s an error in the synchronisation algorithms for the particle accelerators.

‘Error in the syncopation, huh?’ Ceri giggled; Lily was not that dumb. ‘I thought you were doing quantum thaumatology, not music theory.’

‘Can’t find no T-Null if you don’t got that beat,’ Ceri said.

Lily opened one eye, regarding Ceri with a raised eyebrow. ‘Seriously, hun, you’re too geeky to be “down with the hood.”’

Ceri pouted. ‘It’s just a tiny modification to the frequency distribution,’ she said seriously, ‘I’m amazed they haven’t noticed it before.’

‘Maybe her other assistant worked on that part,’ Lily suggested. ‘You said yourself his work was sloppy.’

It was true; Doctor Tennant’s other assistant was a postgrad named Shane Walters and he had the same instinctive grasp of thaumatology theorem that a fish had for paragliding. Walters hated her. He had had Tennant’s undivided attention for two years and now there was a smarter rival, who had understood the entire system in four days, to contend with. His animosity was almost palpable. ‘I kind of hope it wasn’t him,’ she said, though she did not think Tennant would have made the mistake.

‘Shane the Pain still bugging you?’

Ceri grunted in response and finished annotating the equations in her notebook. Lily was right, she should forget about it and relax. She put the book down and turned onto her front. ‘Would you put some oil on my back?’ she asked.

There was a soft creak from the wooden-framed lounger. ‘Sure,’ Lily said settling herself beside Ceri’s hips. Delicate fingers untied the strings around Ceri’s neck, then her back, laying the ties aside. The same fingers, slim, but strong, began to massage oil into Ceri’s shoulders. She let out a sigh and relaxed onto the lounger. Lily’s skin was smooth against hers; slick with the oil, the fingers slid over her shoulders and back, working down to her hips in slow, looping strokes. The hands stopped at the waistband of her briefs and Lily shifted down the lounger a bit.

Having oil put on the soles of her feet tickled a bit and Ceri giggled before Lily moved up to her ankles and started working up her calves, strong fingers pressing the muscles. As the hands reached Ceri’s knees her legs parted slightly, more or less automatically, allowing Lily’s long fingers to slide over the skin of her inner thighs, up to smooth oil into her buttocks and then, slowly, to slide back down…

Ceri’s body went suddenly rigid as she felt the tingle start in her wrists. There was a sudden gasp so feint that she was unsure she had really heard it and then the creak of the other lounger taking weight. The tingling faded again and Ceri tried to relax once more, feeling foolish and irritated. ‘Sorry,’ she said, turning her head to look over at her friend.

‘I… should have more self-control,’ Lily replied, waving the apology away.

That was the problem, right there, the one source of tension in the house, except when someone spilled something on the carpet and Twill had a hissy fit. Ceri was quite secure in her belief that she liked guys, but gay men had made passes at Lily. The girl was sex on legs and anyone who was not physically frigid was attracted to her. In turn, Lily liked Ceri as a friend and her succubus side tended to think that any friend was a sex partner. But sex with a succubus was more than physical pleasure, and Ceri’s sigils perceived the effect as a threat. Ceri was not really sure what would happen to Lily if they ever slipped, but as it was they had to keep their hands to themselves, and sometimes they forgot.

There was a slightly uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. Ceri had found the best way to deal with the situation was to stay quiet and let Lily’s hormones calm down. It was not just that Lily occasionally lacked self-control. They had made a deal; Ceri would not let herself get into a position where Lily’s baser instincts kicked in, Lily would try to keep herself from straying. When they slipped, they both felt guilty.

‘So,’ Lily said to break the silence, ‘you really think you’ll crack it? The thaumiton thing?’

‘Not sure,’ Ceri replied.

‘But it’s a really big deal, right?’ Lily pressed. ‘People have been looking to prove this T-Null stuff for years?’

‘Since nineteen-ninety-seven,’ Ceri mumbled into her arms. That had been when the Quantum Thaumatology Department at Cambridge had published their paper on Quantum Magic and Gravity, proposing the existence of a gauge boson similar to a graviton referred to as a “Null Thaumiton” or a T-Null. The existence of positive and negative thaumitons, T-Plus and T-Minus, had been known for years, but no one had ever managed to explain where they came from, or why they had increased in abundance following the Shattering. The Cambridge team had, at least, proposed a solution for the origin question, but there was no experimental evidence to prove it.

‘Tennant’s rep will go through the roof if she beats Cambridge to it, right?’ Lily said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Ceri said, ‘she’ll basically be able to write her own research cheques.’

‘And the assistant who helps her crack her synchronisation problem?’

‘Well, I’ll get my name on the paper when it’s published,’ Ceri replied, blandly.

‘Oh come on!’ Lily said. ‘It’s the biggest prize in thaumatology! Show some enthusiasm.’

Ceri’s head lifted from her arms and she grinned across at Lily. ‘I’m enthusiastic,’ she said, ‘I just don’t feel the need to bounce up and down like a demented Jack-in-the-Box to do it.’

Lily did not even open her eyes. ‘I don’t bounce,’ she said. ‘I’m far too firm for bouncing.’

Holloway, August 30th

The High-energy Thaumatology Building was a grand title for a small, reinforced concrete annexe on the Metropolitan University’s north campus. It was not really that what they did there was dangerous, it was more that people thought that they might do something dangerous.

The person who ran the place was Doctor Cheryl Tennant, tall, thin, and attractive in a slightly waspish MILF sort of way. She almost never smiled and was noted for treating anyone less smart than herself, which was almost everyone, like an idiot. Her red hair matched her almost legendary temper. Ceri almost felt sorry for her co-assistant researcher.

‘Quite how this went unnoticed in your work for so long when Miss Brent spotted it within a week is beyond me!’ Tennant was saying while Shane Walters contemplated his desk rather closely. ‘I believe with these changes we should be on the road to a functional system.’ Her glare moved away from him, and Shane fixed Ceri with a glare of his own. Okay, so she did not feel very sorry for him. ‘Miss Brent, please change the synchronisation algorithms,’ Tennant continued as she stalked out of the small office the two assistants shared. ‘Mister Walters, prepare the circle.’

Shane stood up and circled around his desk toward Ceri’s. He glanced up to check that the Doctor was gone before speaking in a low growl. ‘You’re her favourite now, newt, but you’ll screw up eventually. Watch your back.’ He slumped out to work on the lab’s containment circle.

Ceri decided that she did not actually feel sorry for Shane at all. He was a big man with a slightly bulbous nose. He looked like he had learned to stoop to make himself look smaller and could not stop. He was not particularly good looking, but not particularly ugly. His hair was a sandy blond and cropped short, and he usually carried what he maybe thought was designer stubble. He was not especially bright, and the only reason he was there, really, was that he had some talent at wizardry. That was why he was handling the circle preparation, though Ceri was fairly sure she could have done a better job at that too. It was also why he felt he could call her a “newt,” it was a derogatory term for normal people who could not work magic.

Standing up, she headed out into the laboratory, bracing herself against the slight sting in her wrists. They had been trying to crack the T-Null problem for two years now and the lab radiated thaumitons like an old-style nuclear reactor gave off gamma rays.

Tennant was in the cage containing the banks of recording computers scavenged from every old project she could acquire them from. Around the walls of the room were further banks of equipment; huge capacitors designed to pump out big surges of power into the four thaumic accelerators, along with an array of control systems designed to synchronise the pulses and control the circle resonance oscillators.

Carved into a granite slab in the middle of the room was the circle itself. Ceri knew the basic design well; her father had cut a similar one into a similar slab in one of the basement rooms of High Towers, though the one there was more complex and had different symbology. It was a double ring around a north-facing pentagram; a containment circle with barrier runes cut between the inner and outer ring. Traditional demon summoning circles used a south-facing pentagram, but this one was designed simply to stop anything passing from one side of the circle to the other. Around it, on the floor, were a series of coils made of copper around a silver-iron alloy core. These would induce resonance effects in the circle’s barrier field, synchronised with the particle accelerators. Right in the centre of the circle stood a sensor array connected through to the external data connectors via an infra-red laser transmitter. Cables would have disrupted the circle, but light was fine.

Moving to one of the computer screens around the wall, Ceri began altering the coding for the frequency distributions of the accelerators while Shane busied himself pouring carefully measured quantities of sea salt into the inscribed pentagram, then the inner circle, then the runes.

He waited, his foot tapping impatiently. The final circle would not be prepared until they were ready, and that meant waiting for Ceri to finish her part. She blanked him out, concentrating on the complex sequence of modulations required and working methodically through the code until she was happy that she had corrected Shane’s numerous mistakes. It occurred to her that some of them were so stupid that it almost appeared he had made them on purpose. Shrugging, she closed the file, compiled the software, checked the results, and then hit the button to distribute the new executable to the four driver processors. Micro-channel enchantment processors were partially magical in nature and programming them, while nothing to do with magic as such, required a degree of intuition which Shane appeared to lack.

‘Ready, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here and monitor the accelerator outputs.’

‘Excellent!’ Tennant beamed. ‘I have a good feeling about this. Mister Walters, let’s get started.’ She began to start up the recording equipment in preparation. Small, red lights on cameras around the room switched on. Other, more esoteric, devices began to hum.

Shane moved to the northern point of the pentagram and began to lay a line of salt along the outer carved circle. Once that was done, he would invoke it creating a column of magical energy from which nothing much larger than an oxygen molecule could escape, and the only thing larger than that which could enter was Shane. If he crossed the line, however, the circle would be broken. That would be a bad thing if the experiment worked. If it worked, the circle was going to contain huge amounts of magical energy.

There was no way a minor practitioner like Shane could normally close a circle as big as this one. Ceri’s father could have done it, she thought rather proudly, but Shane needed some help. At a nod from Tennant, the big man took up a metal rod from a nearby table and pointed it at the circle. His eyes closed as he concentrated on projecting the stored energy in the wand and Ceri clenched her fists, turning to her computer screen, as her wrists reacted to the surge of energy.

‘Initiating resonance inducers,’ Tennant called out from the cage. The coils began to hum and the tingling in Ceri’s wrists increased in intensity. Something felt off and she glanced over her shoulder.

Normally the circle would be invisible to the naked eye. Those with the Sight could see it she had been told, but not norms. Now, under the effects of the resonance coils, it was a shimmering cascade of light, spinning ever faster until it became a solid, white, glowing cylinder extending from the ceiling down to just beneath the granite floor. Nothing seemed out of place.

‘Initiating pulse generators,’ Tennant said, and Ceri turned back to her screen. She could hear the excitement in the doctor’s voice. It was infectious.

Readouts flowed across her screen as the capacitors began to unload into the generators. She felt them fire at the same time as the readouts indicated they had. Her eyes watched the displays, looking for any tell-tale signs of error. ‘Looks good!’ She yelled over the now very loud hum of machinery.

‘Yes!’ She heard Tennant’s cry of triumph over the noise. ‘I think we’ve even got recombination! It’s…’

Ceri’s wrists burned hot. Something was definitely not right. She turned, glancing first at the cage where Tennant was looking suddenly horrified, and then at the circle. An arc of white light, like a solar flare, was pushing out from the surface toward her. She started to move, but it was like the world had suddenly gone into slow motion as the brilliant jet of thaumic particles streamed slowly out and hit her.

She heard someone screaming and suspected it was her, but the pain in her wrists was so extreme that that was all she could think about. She saw bright flashes of light amid cascading waves of colour. Behind her the computer exploded, throwing her forward to slam into the white wall of the circle. Her arms had gone numb and she could smell something like burning fabric as her shirt melted. It felt like someone had plugged her into the mains and it came as a blessed relief when everything finally went black.

Denmark Hill, September 2nd

There was a fairly universal sense of grey. Ceri blinked, trying to resolve the room into something with some degree of detail, and managed only to work out that there was little detail to resolve. Her left hand ached slightly and the backs of both her hands felt tight, like there was something taped on, pulling the skin. She glanced down. Sure enough, there was a needle stuck in her left hand, attached via a tube and drip feed to a saline bag hung beside the bed. On her right hand she could see a lump of some kind, the detail of it indistinct in the dim light, but it was glowing slightly. The dull green was something of a relief; her mother had used an amulet just like that to keep an eye on her when she was a baby.

Looking around, she spotted Lily sitting across the room, reading a magazine by the light from a small lamp. It looked like a magic-powered model and Ceri’s slightly foggy brain began making sense of things. She was in a magical isolation room, probably in King’s; they had the best treatment facilities in southern England. She opened her mouth to say something, and managed a cough. At least it had the desired effect; Lily was on her feet beside the bed before her magazine flopped onto the tiles.

‘You’re awake then,’ the half-succubus said, taking a glass of water from the small cabinet beside the bed and helping Ceri drink from it. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Um…’ Ceri took mental stock of herself. Her forearms were wrapped in thick bandages and there was the needle in her hand, but basically she felt fine. ‘Actually, I feel pretty good.’

‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ Lily said dryly, ‘and still the right shape.’

‘What happened to my arms?’ Ceri asked.

Lily grimaced. ‘Second degree burns,’ she said. ‘Your tats. Stopped the blasts from turning you into a fish, but it looks like it hurt like hell. You’ve been in here three days, it’s Thursday. Oh, and I’m sorry about this, but…’ Reaching down, she grabbed the amulet on Ceri’s hand and yanked it off. Immediately the light went out; somewhere, probably at the nurses’ station, a similar amulet had gone dark.

‘Ouch,’ Ceri whined.

‘Baby,’ Lily replied, grinning. The relief on her face and in her body language was obvious. ‘When you were brought in here you were frying anything electronic they brought near you. They told me to pull the charm off you when you woke, and the nurse would be in to…’

The door of the room opened, the nurse’s hand going to the main room lights and then stopping as she saw Lily standing by the bed and Ceri half sat up in it. ‘Back with us then?’ the nurse said, her voice carrying a slight Scottish accent. ‘I’ll page Doctor Looper.’ She backed out, closing the door, and Ceri noticed the grill over the window. It was likely made of silver-iron alloy and designed to screen the ward beyond from whatever was within.

‘How hot was I?’ Ceri croaked.

‘They didn’t tell me the figures,’ Lily said, forcing Ceri to have another sip of water, ‘but it was a real rush being in here with you, and I even had to lie a bit to get them to let me stay.’

‘Huh?’

‘I said we were, y’know, partners,’ Lily replied.

‘Why?’ Ceri looked blankly at her.

‘I was worried about you, ‘kay? Only way they’d let me stay was if I said I was your next of kin.’ The half-demon actually looked embarrassed.

‘And because the thaumic radiation just made her rather happy,’ said a voice from behind them. ‘Did you fib about your relationship with Miss Brent, Miss Carpenter?’ The door closed behind a pleasant-looking man in his sixties wearing a white coat and half-spectacles, and clutching a wooden box. ‘Shame on you.’

‘Actually,’ Ceri said, ‘she is listed as my next of kin.’

‘I am?!’ Lily blinked.

‘The closest blood relative I have is Great-aunt Branwen,’ Ceri said, ‘and she’s ninety, and living in Wales, and mad. The university prefers having an emergency contact who knows my parents are dead, and that I’m female… and not a sheep.’

Looper chuckled and put his wooden box on the bed beside Ceri. ‘Go on,’ he said, shooing Lily away. ‘You know the drill by now. Go get Miss Brent a coffee or something.’ Lily giggled and headed for the door, Looper waiting for her to leave and close the door before he opened the box.

‘Oh!’ Ceri enthused, looking inside. ‘I haven’t seen one like that in ages.’

Within the box were two copper needles mounted against sprung counterbalances. Set to start in the middle of the box and swing outward, the needles twitched off their mounts as Looper removed the lid, and settled to a balanced position about a tenth of the way along their tracks. From this angle Ceri could not read the scales, which were just numerals etched into the copper gauges. ‘I’ve had this a long time,’ Looper said. ‘It comes in useful now and again. You fused two very expensive digital thaumometers before I got this out of my office.’

Ceri looked at him, not quite believing what she was hearing. ‘Doctor… what was my field strength?’

‘Your Doctor Tennant acted very promptly,’ the old man said, avoiding the question. ‘She called in an emergency team and evacuated the room once she’d made it safe. They had to work in two teams to get you into an isolation suit to bring you here and…’

‘Doctor?’ Ceri said calmly, though she could feel her stomach starting to twist.

‘We had to use the Life Mirror amulet to monitor you because the normal electronic systems were just burning out,’ he rambled, closing up his thaumometer box.

‘Doctor,’ Ceri said, ‘I grew up with magic. I can’t do it, but I understand magical theory and thaumatology as well as my parents did. I want to know what I was reading. Please?’

‘We’re not exactly sure,’ he admitted. ‘My meter caps out at twenty thaums and it hit the stops. The techs say the heavy duty meter they tried took at least fifty thaums before it blew.’ He smiled weakly. ‘You’re down at about two now. It dropped off fast, but the decay rate has been tailing off. We’re not absolutely sure when you’ll be down to a background level.’

Ceri’s mouth was dry again; she was glad when Lily returned with a mug of coffee. ‘Got this from the nurses’ ready room,’ she said. ‘The stuff from the machine would make you sicker.’ Ceri gulped down a mouthful.

‘Miss Carpenter mentioned your protective enchantment,’ Looper said. ‘It seems you have that to thank for your survival.’

‘My parents were very good enchanters,’ Ceri said, feeling sick. Over fifty thaums? That was insane! No one could survive that, well, except a demon.

‘David and Marion Brent, yes?’ the Doctor asked. Ceri nodded. ‘I remember hearing about the accident. I’m sorry. It was a considerable loss to the magical community. I have to say I was surprised to hear that you were… not a magician.’

‘Most people are,’ Ceri replied. ‘I’m, uh, kind of tired. I’d like to rest.’

Looper nodded. ‘I’ll come back later to check you over,’ he said. ‘I think I’d like to keep you in overnight, but assuming no complications develop, you’re safe enough to allow home tomorrow, I think.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Ceri said as he turned and ambled toward the door.

Over fifty thaums? “Safe to let out” was right; at that level she had been an environmental hazard.

~~~

The door to the room opened and a head poked in. ‘May I enter?’ The voice was immediately recognisable to Ceri and she propped herself up to look at Doctor Tennant.

‘It’s okay, Doc,’ Lily said from her chair, which had been moved closer to the bed. ‘She’s barely glowing now.’

Tennant stepped through and approached the bed. Her stride was a little less confident than Ceri was used to. ‘Miss Carpenter,’ she said, nodding to Lily. ‘Miss Brent, good afternoon. How are you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ Ceri said. She did. Aside from the mild shock anyway. ‘Did it work?’

Lily giggled and Tennant’s look of mild worry cracked into a smile. ‘Despite the containment failure, which we are looking into, we got good readings. We have a lot of data to analyse, but I think we have evidence of T-Null bosons within the circle.’

‘Yes!’ Ceri exulted.

‘At least you didn’t get fried for nothing,’ Lily said, still grinning.

‘Hmm, yes,’ Tennant mused. ‘I should very much like to examine those tattoos of yours when your burns have healed. Truly amazing enchantment to have protected you like that.’

Ceri lifted her bandaged forearms, looking at them. ‘One of the hospital witches coated them in gunk while I was out,’ she said. ‘I’m to keep the bandages on for another week.’

‘Did they always release so much heat when working?’ Tennant asked. Lily supressed another giggle as she watched the two thaumatologists fall into a pattern of enquiry about second degree burns.

Ceri ignored her, or did not notice. ‘Nothing like this,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never been hit with anything like that before. When Lily uses her aura, or there’s magic near, they tingle. They sting a bit if it’s more of an attack. The lab makes them itch.’ She flexed her fingers. ‘Considering I’m still a bit hot, I’m surprised they aren’t burning now.’

‘The nurse said there was a pain relief mixture in the paste they put on,’ Lily said. ‘A numbing agent, she said. Otherwise you’d be feeling the burns.’

Ceri shrugged. ‘I guess that explains it,’ she said. ‘Shame it doesn’t reach my hand.’ The nurse had removed her drip earlier when Looper had given her a physical check-up. She had passed with flying colours, but the back of her hand was still sore from the large-bore needle being stuck in it for days. She looked up at Tennant. ‘They’re letting me out tomorrow,’ she said. ‘When can I get back to work?’

The researcher laughed and Lily swatted at Ceri’s leg under the covers. ‘I think they’ll want you to rest for a while longer,’ Tennant said. ‘Don’t worry, there’s lots of data, we’ll be working on it for weeks yet.’ Her hand hesitated slightly before patting at Ceri’s thigh, a rather familiar gesture she was obviously not sure about making. ‘You did well, dear,’ she said. ‘You cracked our problem and gave us a chance when I was starting to think we were getting nowhere. You sit back on your laurels and get well.’

Kennington, September 3rd

‘You live here?’ the driver said as he pulled the ambulance car up outside High Towers. ‘This is like… the Addams Family’s house!’

Ceri giggled. ‘It’s mostly just illusion,’ she said. ‘My mother was a witch and she liked the idea of living in a haunted house. The inside looks like any other home.’ Which was something of a lie; most houses did not have a second kitchen for brewing potions, a huge library, and a lab and two summoning rooms in the cellar.

‘Right,’ the driver said. ‘Well, good luck with your recovery.’

‘Thanks,’ Ceri said, climbing out and closing the door behind her.

As the car drove off she looked up at her home. From the outside it did look like a haunted house. The broken, dirty window panes and cobwebs were pure illusion, enchanted in by carefully placed runes. The architecture, three floors, with a tower climbing up over a large portico, was strictly out of a horror movie. The railings around the flat roof even had bats in the design.

The house stood in a fairly large plot of land near to Kennington Park. Her parents had been well off, very well off, their money coming from providing services as enchanters to various corporations and celebrities. They had bought the land and had the entire house constructed to their specification not long after Ceri had been born. She had grown up in the place. Her birthday parties had always been the best; having your birthday on All Hallows’ Eve and living in a haunted house was considered pretty cool.

She pushed open the gate and walked into the front garden. Almost immediately one of the two big front doors opened and Lily came running down the gravel path toward her. It was incredibly early for the half-succubus to be up, but Ceri was really happy to see her. She guessed Twill had sensed her entering the property. While it was not technically the fairy’s land, she had sort of adopted it and could always tell when someone entered her territory.

‘Come on’ Lily said, lifting Ceri off the ground in a hug. ‘You are to sit in one of the big chairs in the lounge and not move a muscle. Twill’s been worried sick about you. She’s been cleaning all the time you were in hospital.’

‘All the time?’

‘I think she’s polished the dust,’ Lily said, giggling.

Twill came barrelling down the stairs as soon as Ceri was through the inner doors, a ball of light which resolved into a beaming, nut-brown fairy talking too fast to make any sense of. Ceri had rarely seen her so excited in the three years since she had arrived in the house, uninvited and initially hidden in the attic.

As the manic buzzing slowed, Ceri began to make out a few words. ‘…lounge is clean and tidy… bathroom… fire set if you’re cold… really must rest as much… very worried…’

‘Okay, Twill, okay!’ Ceri half-yelled, half-giggled. ‘I get it, you were worried and you’re glad I’m back. Okay. Slow down. You know you’re hard to understand when you get excited.’

Lily’s hand pushed slightly, steering Ceri up the stairs and to the left. The ground floor was where they spent a lot of their time in the house; it had both kitchens and the utility room, and, aside from the hall which featured a lot of dark wood panelling, the rooms were bright and friendly. However, the main living rooms of the house were actually on the upper floors. The lounge occupied the south-facing side of the house, so that it got more sun. It needed it; the entire middle floor had more of the dark wood which sometimes seemed to absorb the light. It had a large fireplace which Twill had set up with logs to burn if Ceri wanted, and two big leather chairs which faced it. It was, actually, not a room Ceri really liked, but as she was directed into a chair and a blanket tucked in around her, and a bundle of daily papers was handed over as well as The Wednesday Witch and the new copy of Thaumatology Monthly, she was pretty much forced to sit still and be mothered there.

It took a little less than two hours of Lily and Twill constantly asking if she wanted anything, whether she was warm enough, was she sure she did not want a nap, before Ceri exploded and shooed them out of the room so she could read in peace.

The accident had made the newspaper, if only on page five. The report said that there had been a “release of magical energy during an experiment to detect fundamental magical particles.” It mentioned her and Doctor Tennant by name, but Shane was “another research assistant.” Ceri giggled slightly at that; Shane would be hating it. Tennant was fairly well known as a theoretical thaumatologist in contention with the team at Cambridge. The press liked an underdog and it was well known that she was working with less resources and doing fairly well.

The article mentioned that Ceri was the daughter of David and Marion Brent, noted practitioners who had provided enchantments and other services to various celebrities. Whenever they came up in the news, the story mentioned their deaths in a car accident six years earlier. Ceri’s mood darkened and suddenly the lounge with its memories was not such a great place to be. Picking up one of the magazines she kicked the blanket off her legs and headed upstairs. She wanted to be in the sun.

There were, in fact, three loungers on the roof. They had put a third one up there for the rare occasions that Twill went up to enjoy the sunshine. Today was one of those days, which meant that Ceri had two girls scolding her for emerging from the lounge. ‘I didn’t want to stay in there,’ she said, closing the hatch and walking over to the remaining lounger. ‘Besides, the sun will do me good. I’m just going to lie here and relax, okay?’

Twill fumed in the middle of the human-sized lounger. It was a funny sight, in a way. ‘You better rest! And you’ll be taking a nap later. We changed your sheets and everything.’ Ceri tried very hard not to smirk; the fairy could get a little vindictive if she was not taken seriously.

‘She’ll rest, Twill,’ Lily said, lying back and stretching. It was still fairly hot for so late in the summer and Lily was exposing all her skin to the sun, as usual. Ceri watched the languid stretch, swallowed, and opened her magazine.

She had brought The Wednesday Witch, a weekly trade magazine which her mother had subscribed to and she had never got around to cancelling. Her mother had taken it for the adverts, mainly. The back half of the thing was full of large and small panels for reagent shops, herbs, witches offering charms and potions, and a few enchanters and wizards for hire. At the front were the articles, usually about the best moon phases to plant and pick your herbs, or in-depth coverage of the latest recipes for love potions. There was a gossip column covering celebrity witches and who they were currently dating, which always made Ceri giggle, and each issue had a free potion recipe or instructions for a charm, talisman, or amulet. Aunt Agatha’s advice column was terribly popular, topped with a picture of an aged witch smiling sweetly. Ceri had met the real Agatha once. She had turned out to be a twenty-something woman with a sour expression and a degree in psychology.

‘Dorian Watts is dating Philipa Claremont,’ Ceri commented into the silence which had descended. She put the magazine down and pulled her T-shirt off. It was hotter than she had thought it was.

‘That won’t last,’ Lily said without opening her eyes, ‘he’s gayer than… um… something really gay. Help me here?’

Ceri giggled. ‘Huh, Suzie Shore was seen at a midnight orgy last full moon.’

‘Isn’t she a parson’s daughter?’ Lily looked around at Ceri and blinked. ‘You’re topless.’

‘Huh? I was hot. When did you get prudish?’ Ceri continued reading about the bacchanal the young witch had apparently taken part in. Even though the events had been kind of sensationalised, she got the impression that the party had been less an orgy and more a “bit of riotous behaviour and few people having sex in the spare room.”

‘Ceri,’ Lily said, ‘I’ve never seen you topless!’

‘Of course you have,’ Ceri said, laughing.

‘Outdoors?’

Her wings shimmering, Twill floated over to hover beside Ceri. ‘She’s right,’ the fairy said, ‘you’re usually more… shy.’

Ceri looked between the half-demon, naked on the longer, and the fairy, who only dressed when they had company. She felt her cheeks redden. ‘I…’ she said, faltering, ‘I was hot. First time for everything?’

Twill floated forward and rested a tiny hand on Ceri’s forehead. Ceri went cross-eyed trying to focus on her. ‘You are hot,’ Twill said, ‘and I don’t mean that in the colloquial or thermal senses.’ She backed away again, looking stern, and hovered with her arms crossed.

Lily’s voice had a concerned tone. ‘You should be careful, hun. I don’t think anyone’s ever survived what you have before. We don’t know how it’ll affect you.’

‘Look, both of you,’ Ceri said keeping her voice level despite the irritation she was feeling, ‘I feel fine. I feel better than fine. I feel like… like someone opened a window and let the air in.’

‘You don’t think that’s a little odd?’ Lily asked. ‘Y’know, considering you should probably be dead, or a frog?’

‘No,’ Ceri replied emphatically. ‘Maybe it’s just that I feel lucky I am alive… and not a frog. Besides, undirected thaumic energy has a miniscule chance of invoking a frog transformation.’ She giggled. ‘Orang-utans or chimps are far more likely.’

Lily laughed and even Twill made a sound like wind-chimes, which was her way of laughing, before buzzing back to her lounger and settling back down. ‘All right,’ Lily said, closing her eyes once more, ‘but do me a favour and get your dad’s old thaumometer out when we go down. Just to set our minds at ease, yes?’

Ceri picked her magazine up again. ‘Okay, sure, if it makes you feel better.’

There was a few seconds of silence before Lily added, ‘And you’re wrong, Twill.’

‘I am? What about?’

‘She is hot in the colloquial sense.’

Ceri covered her embarrassment by burying her nose in her magazine as the sound of wind chimes filled the air.

~~~

Her father had, in fact, six thaumometers, all in beautiful, inlaid boxes made of rosewood, and all kept in a special cabinet in the basement which insulated them from magic fields to help keep them accurate. The largest could read field strengths up to a hundred thaums and her father had almost never used it. Ceri took out a box with red dragons inlaid into the lid, closed the cabinet, and took it over to a small table at one side of the room.

Lily and Twill watched from a distance as she undid the catches and lifted off the lid. The needles twitched and then jumped up to a little less than half-way along the scales. Lily gasped. ‘The Doctor said you were getting cooler!’ she exclaimed.

Ceri giggled. ‘I am. This is way more sensitive than the one he was using. It caps out at a thaum. I’m reading… point oh-four-three.’ The other girls let out a sigh of relief.

‘Okay,’ Lily said. ‘Y’see? I told you it’d make us feel better.’

Ceri put the lid back and took the box to the cabinet. ‘And me, if I’m honest,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here. This room always makes my skin crawl.’

It had been her father’s summoning room. In the centre of it was a ten foot wide slab of granite, two feet thick and sunk eighteen inches into the floor of the room. Carved into the black stone, the colour chosen so that salt would show well on it, was a perfect demonic summoning circle. Magic could pass into a summoning circle, but it was impossible for anything much to get out. Lily had told her once that she did not like even treading on the granite; it was like she could feel the demons that had been summoned there.

Not that there had been that many, Ceri thought to herself as she headed out to the stairs up. Both of her parents had majored in enchanting, her father’s wizardry and her mother’s witchcraft had been more like hobbies. Still, as with everything her family did, from magic to madness, they had done well at their hobbies. Her father’s demonology had been used, primarily, for information; demons had been working with magic for millennia longer than humans had and some of their most potent enchantments had been learned from demonic sources.

It was late in the afternoon and Twill had left the roof an hour earlier to cook. Ceri and Lily had come down as the sun began to fall. Now they followed the sounds of industrious food production to the kitchen which was continuing even though the fairy had been in the cellar for ten minutes.

Twill doing the cooking was always something of a disconcerting sight, even after over two years. She was obviously too small to actually handle the pots, pans, and utensils, many of which were larger than she was. Instead, her magic picked things up, stirred the stew, and sprinkled herbs. She would hover nearby wearing one of her few items of clothing, a tiny, white apron with “kiss the cook” printed on it. Fae were inherently magical, like demons, and Twill seemed capable of doing things that Ceri could not fathom the method of.

‘It’ll be ready soon,’ Twill said, checking over her pots as her two housemates caught up with her.

‘Good,’ Lily said. ‘I’m starved and I need to get changed for work soon.’ She worked four nights a week, Wednesday through Saturday, though she had missed the Wednesday that week to stay with Ceri.

‘You mean “get dressed,”’ Ceri pointed out as she sat down on one of the wooden chairs.

‘Pedant,’ Lily retorted.

‘Naturist,’ Ceri replied, grinning.

‘Prude,’ came the reply.

‘I am not a prude!’ Ceri said, outraged.

‘Oo, touchy.’

‘You just wish.’ Ceri smirked, even though little alarm bells were ringing at the exchange.

‘Of course I do,’ Lily said, ‘I’m half succubus.’ There was not even a flicker of red in her eyes. The alarm bells tried a final, valiant tinkle and gave up; clearly Lily was treating this with the seriousness it deserved.

‘Ladies,’ Twill said, ‘kindly keep the innuendo to the bedroom.’ Ceri’s cheeks went scarlet.

‘Ha!’ Lily exclaimed, pointing at Ceri. ‘See? Prude.’

Ceri pouted. ‘You’re only not blushing cos you can’t,’ she said.

‘No, it’s because I’m utterly shameless.’

‘That too.’ Ceri put her hands to her flaming cheeks and felt the edges of the bandages rough against them. Lowering her arms, she looked at them. She really wanted to take the stupid wrappings off and see what was underneath, but…

‘Next week,’ Lily said as if reading her mind; which she was, in a way. ‘You know how those poultices work better than I do. Always let them work for as long as they say to.’

‘I know,’ Ceri sighed, ‘but it’s annoying. How am I supposed to wash? A shower’s right out and I can’t even bath properly.’

‘Actually,’ Twill said, ‘Lily thought of that.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Lily said and bolted out through the kitchen door, giggling.

Somehow Ceri was not sure she liked the sound of that. ‘Where’s she gone?’ There was the sound of her feet running up the stairs. Lily never “thumped” when she ran, but she was still quite audible.

‘It’s really quite inventive of her,’ Twill replied, obviously not willing to spoil the surprise. ‘She’s really quite a bright girl; it’s a shame she never finished school.’

Lily reappeared in the doorway holding two long, black, latex gloves. Ceri blinked. ‘One of the girls at the Dragon knows this guy that does custom fetish-wear,’ Lily said, grinning. ‘So, when I saw the bandages, I thought “can’t have them getting wet” and I got him to make you these.’ She handed them over and Ceri sat there, looking at them as though they might bite. ‘Roll them up, put a little baby powder on your hands, pull them on, and then roll the sleeves up. I made sure they’d be quite tight, so they should be pretty waterproof.’

A slow grin spread over Ceri’s face. ‘That’s really awesome,’ she said. ‘Thank you. It’s really thoughtful.’

‘Told you,’ Twill said. ‘She’s a real smart one is our Lil.’

Lily did not blush, because her biology prevented it, but the look of almost childlike pride said just as much as a blush could have.

~~~

Twill had put scented candles around the bath. Ceri lay back in the gently steaming water amid the scent of lavender. The room light was off and the candles made flickering shadows on the ceiling, and Ceri lay there feeling slightly kinky with black, latex gloves up past her elbows. She giggled softly and settled herself in the water to relax. If only she wasn’t propping her arms up on the sides in case the gloves were not entirely waterproof. Oh well.

She closed her eyes.

The smell of lavender was strong in her nostrils, carried on a wind which swept from the fields behind her out over the cliff-edge. There was a road running along the cliff; more of a track, really, the tarmac old and no wider than a single car. The fence on this side was broken, mown down, and she turned with a gathering sense of dread to look down.

Beneath her on the rocky beach a car was burning. She knew the car, had ridden in it many times, but not for six years. The wind felt suddenly colder. She was standing on a cliff-top, naked aside from a pair of rubber gloves, looking down at the wreck of her parents’ car.

She had never seen it in reality, but she had dreamed of it, every night for over a year. Every night from the night she had heard about the accident until Lily had come to live at High Towers.

‘She has been a great friend, dear.’ Ceri did not turn at the sound of the voice, dreading what she might see. The voice came from just behind her left shoulder and it belonged to her mother. ‘We were so happy when she came and you stopped letting this get to you.’

‘You died, Mum,’ Ceri said. ‘How could I not let that get to me?’

‘She does have a point,’ her father said from over her other shoulder. ‘She always was quite insightful.’

‘Why now?’ Ceri’s voice was trembling. ‘Why am I dreaming of you again now? And why like this? I never had you talk to me before. Something’s changed… the accident at the lab.’

‘You’re right,’ her mother said, ‘insightful. Now, can you figure out what has changed, dear?’

Below them the fire reached the car’s petrol tank and it exploded.

Ceri sat up sharply in the bath. Water hissed as it put out several of the candles. The water was starting to get cold, but she sat there feeling dizzy and a little sick. A second later Twill flew in at high speed and buzzed around her head.

‘Are you all right, Ceri? I heard the water splash. What happened?’

Ceri batted the fairy away. ‘I’m okay. I must’ve nodded off. Stupid. I’m going to go to bed, okay?’

‘Of course,’ Twill said, wafting a towel off the rail as Ceri stood and climbed slowly out of the bath. ‘You need your rest.’

September 4th

Lily yawned loudly as she walked into the kitchen hunting coffee. Ceri, sat at the table with her own coffee and the latest issue of Thaumatology Monthly, glanced up and grinned. ‘Hard night?’ she asked.

‘Huh, yeah.’ Lily took a pull on her drink and let out a sigh. ‘A couple of weres got over-excited. Carter had me amp my aura up to max so they could deal with them and after that the place was… tiring.’ She grinned. ‘Twill said you fell asleep in the bath.’

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said. ‘Yeah, I did.’

‘Don’t want to do that. My mother’s grandmother’s aunt fell asleep in the bath once and she woke up a mermaid.’

‘There’s no such thing as mermaids,’ Ceri told her.

‘Are you calling my mother’s grandmother’s aunt a liar?’ Lily replied, trying hard not to smirk.

Ceri grinned. ‘I’m suggesting that perhaps the story might have got embroidered a bit in the telling,’ she said.

‘Really? I always thought it was a load of bull.’ The smirk turned into a full-on smile. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘that was back around the Shattering and there was a load of weird shit going on then.’

Ceri shrugged slightly. It was true that there had been a massive surge in magical energy back then. At the end of World War Two, in an attempt to go down fighting, Hitler had activated four bombs in Berlin, Dresden, Munich and Hamburg. The exact nature of the weapons was unknown, or had never been released to the public if it was, but theorists suggested they were some sort of nuclear device, triggered by enchantment to create the implosion. A huge, metaphysical crack in the world had divided Germany in two, and out of the crack on the eastern side had poured demons. Then the Americans had tested a nuclear bomb in New Mexico. The energy release, while having no magical component, was enough to punch another hole in the weakened reality around it. America began to drown in monsters out of nightmare and legend. Desperate to end the war so they could concentrate on matters at home, the USA had nuked Hiroshima. It had been like hitting glass with a hammer; a huge crack in reality opened along the Ring of Fire, circling the Pacific.

Five years later, the world calmed down and the events after the war became known as the Shattering, a period of chaos when magic really had ruled the world. Not the controlled, tamed magic studied and categorised by thaumatologists, but wild magic. The world really had been full of “weird shit.”

‘There’s still no such thing as mermaids,’ Ceri said. ‘Sirens exist. They’re a fae species, distantly related to Banshees, but no mermaids.’

Lily sipped her coffee. ‘Well, she could sing quite well, from what I heard.’ She glanced at the wall clock. ‘Oh, shit! Carter’s coming ‘round in about twenty minutes.’

Ceri blinked. ‘Carter Fleming? Your boss Carter?’

‘Uh-huh. He read about the accident and he wanted to come over and see how you were?’ Lily said, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

‘What on Earth is Carter Fleming doing caring about me?’

‘Carter’s a nice guy, Ceri,’ Lily said and then looked a little sheepish, ‘and I was a bit jittery last night and he noticed and asked about you. I gotta go put some clothes on.’ She bolted for the door leaving Ceri sitting in the kitchen.

Carter Fleming owned the Jade Dragon and about a dozen other clubs around London and the rest of England. The Dragon had been his first, however, and that was the one he personally managed. He was, according to the gossip columns, loaded. He dated film stars, porn stars, and pop singers, generally not for extended periods, sometimes more than one at a time. He was known to practice wizardry, and rumour had it that his first million and his good looks had come from a demonic pact. If you just went by what you read in the papers, he was a dangerous, misogynist bastard.

Except that Lily thought he was great. She had met him while working as an escort. Twenty years old, her life had been a sordid mess until Carter had offered her a job at the Dragon on the condition that she quit the prostitution and the illegal porn movies she had been using to pay the rent. He had supported and encouraged her and, aside from that first night, he had never once asked her to go to bed with him. If Ceri were honest, she did not understand the man; his public image seemed so out of place with what Lily said about him that it was hard to imagine how both could be true.

Glancing at the clock, Ceri considered her own ensemble. No, perhaps greeting a man with enough money to buy her university in a large shirt was not a great idea. She stood and headed for her room, giggling. Well, if he was actually like his public image it would be a good idea, but she had a feeling it would disappoint Lily. She would get properly dressed.

Opening up the big wardrobe in her bedroom, Ceri considered her options. Despite the consideration, she already knew one thing she was wearing, she just needed to work out the rest. She had discovered one-piece teddies when she was fifteen and had fallen in love with them. They made her feel sexy and there was really not that much which made Ceri feel sexy. If she wanted to lift her spirits, or she was going out somewhere special, or because she felt like it, she would pick one out and wear it. Meeting London’s best known playboy club owner for the first time seemed like an excellent time to feel sexy.

Pulling out something in black and gold, she undressed and climbed into the clinging costume piece. It was not too sexy, but it was a bit flirty; backless, but no mesh or translucent panels. She checked herself in her mirror and nodded before pulling out one of her nicer pairs of jeans, black with an embroidered detail in red at the hips, and sitting on the bed to pull them on. She decided on trainers rather than heels; she was supposed to be convalescing.

Another look in the mirror and she nodded, and then lost her nerve and put a lightweight shirt over the top. As she headed out onto the top floor landing and saw Lily emerging from her room in a gorgeous summer dress which she, of course, looked gorgeous in, Ceri forced herself to not do the shirt buttons up.

Lily stopped and looked at her friend appraisingly. Then she nodded and Ceri let out the breath she had not realised she was holding. ‘You look lovely,’ Lily said, smiling, ‘sexy, but not slutty.’ Her face became quite serious suddenly. ‘Would you mind doing the formal thing when he arrives?’

Ceri frowned as she started down the stairs; if he was on time he would arrive in a couple of minutes. ‘The thing Dad used to do when welcoming another wizard into the house for the first time?’ she asked.

‘That’s it,’ Lily said, sounding a little pleading. ‘He said, “If she feels that it would be inappropriate, since she’s not a wizard, or it would make her uncomfortable, I quite understand, but if she could see it in her heart to welcome me properly into the home of such illustrious magicians, I would be most grateful.” So will you?’

Ceri blinked. ‘Wow, how could I decline? Um…’ She went over the little ritual in her head. She had seen her father do it a number of times, but had never actually done it herself. Yes, she thought she could do it without making a fool of herself or insulting her guest. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I can do that for him. Well, for you really.’

Twill zipped past them, heading down from the attic where she lived. ‘There’s a wizard on the grounds,’ she said in passing.

‘That’s him!’ Lily squeaked and hurried down the stairs. Exactly how she did this in heels was a matter physicists would likely have given their eye teeth to study, but she beat Ceri to the front door by several seconds, going through the inner doors to the outer ones. Ceri could hear people speaking but not quite what was being said.

‘She might have said we were having a guest,’ Twill said. ‘He’s got a huge car and he looks like he tries hard to be handsome. Be careful of him, he smells of demons.’ Then she swished upward toward her attic.

Ceri opened the two inner doors wide and stood on the inside of them. Lily was standing in the single open outer door, blocking the view of whoever was on the other side. The half-succubus looked around grinning in an almost child-like manner, and Ceri took a deep breath and said, ‘Open the doors, Lily, and then come stand behind me.’

Opening the second door wide, Lily tried hard to school her expression into one of seriousness. As she walked back into the house past Ceri, the man waiting on the portico was revealed. Ceri could almost believe the stories about pacts with demons; Carter Fleming did not look like a man in his fifties. He had a narrowish face and a narrow, slightly Roman nose, high cheekbones, and shallow cheeks. His hair was a perfectly coifed ash blond and the suit he was wearing looked like it had been very carefully tailored. His hand rested on a black cane, though he did not seem like he needed help walking. He was smiling at Ceri, waiting for her to begin.

‘Who comes seeking passage over this threshold?’ Ceri said, trying to sound confident.

‘Carter James Fleming,’ he replied. He had a soft voice, pleasant, but there was an underlying confidence to it. ‘I seek entry to this home, bringing nothing but myself.’ It was not quite true, there was a box on the ground by his feet, but it was the thought that counted.

‘Enter with no ill will,’ Ceri said. ‘No harm will befall a true guest of this house. I am Ceridwyn Brent and I welcome you, Carter James Fleming, into my home.’ Between them, in the unmarked stone of the hallway, there was a brief flare of light in the shape of a complex rune. Ceri bowed across the flaring sigil, and Carter returned the gesture.

As the light died Lily let out a breath. ‘Ceri… you did magic,’ she said, her voice sounding both awed and worried.

Ceri giggled and Carter let out a soft chuckle as he stepped into the entrance hall, closing the doors behind him. ‘No, my dear Lily,’ Carter said, ‘her parents did that magic years ago.’

‘Huh?’ Lily responded.

‘It’s one of the house enchantments,’ Ceri said, smiling and taking Carter’s offered hand. He had a firm grip and smooth skin. ‘My father’s, actually. It works for the master, or mistress, of the house, whether they’re magical or not.’

Carter nodded. ‘I understood you were a good theoretician, Miss Brent, but I see that you understand the practicalities as well.’

Ceri smiled at the compliment and shrugged slightly. ‘I was always fascinated by magic. Mum and Dad always let me watch when they were working, so long as it wasn’t anything too dangerous.’ He was still holding her hand and she was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. She looked at him and smiled a little nervously. He had the most gorgeous green eyes.

‘Good afternoon, Mister Fleming.’ Twill’s voice came from the area of the stairs. Carter’s hand released and Ceri turned, hiding the slight flush on her cheeks. ‘Would you care for a drink?’ Twill added.

‘This is Twill,’ Lily said.

Carter stepped forward and bowed rather formally to the hovering fairy. Twill had put on her little Greek-style, single-shoulder tunic. It was short and white, but it did at least hide her tiny body. ‘Good afternoon, Lady Twill,’ Carter said. ‘I trust that I have not intruded upon your territory and I would greatly appreciate… Is tea available?’

Twill looked slightly taken aback at his deference. ‘Any friend of Lily’s is welcome,’ she said. ‘Would Camomile be good?’ Ceri bit her lip. Twill had never managed to persuade either of her housemates that her tea was drinkable.

‘That would be perfect,’ he said. As far as Ceri could tell, he was actually being genuine. Twill nodded meekly and vanished toward the kitchen, a blaze of golden light.

‘You made her happy,’ Ceri commented. ‘Come on, we’ll go up to the lounge. It’s a bit more formal than it sounds, but it is comfy.’ She turned, leading the way up the stairs.

With Carter in one of the big armchairs, Ceri in the other, and Lily perched on a footstool beside her, the half-demon looked suspiciously like she was playing at being Ceri’s pet. Ceri gave her one quick glance, but there seemed to be no real reason for the submissive posture and Ceri decided she was imagining it.

‘I wanted to add my best wishes for your quick recovery, Miss Brent,’ Carter said.

Twill floated in, followed by a tray with a tea cup and two coffee mugs on it. As the tray arrived near Carter, he took his cup and nodded politely to the fairy.

‘Ceri,’ she said, ‘and thank you. I was a little surprised when Lily said you were coming.’

Carter smiled. ‘Ceri then. In which case, you’ll call me Carter. As for the visit, call it “protecting my investment.”’

‘I’m sorry?’

He smiled. He had perfect, white teeth. ‘I got rather irritated with my old Alma Marta’s attitude regarding the hunt for the T-Null boson so I made an endowment to the Metropolitan. That’s what allowed you to be employed. Not that I knew Cheryl would employ you, but it was a happy coincidence.’

Ceri vaguely recalled that Doctor Tennant’s first name was Cheryl; she preferred to be called by her title. ‘You went to Cambridge?’ she said. ‘My parents’ studied there?’

Carter took a sip of his tea and let out a soft, contented sigh before nodding again to Twill. The fairy beamed. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that’s where I met them.’

‘I didn’t know you knew Ceri’s folks!’ Lily piped up.

‘It was before I met you, dear Lil,’ he replied. ‘Your father, Ceri, shared some of my classes. You know he did some wizardry at Cambridge?’ Ceri nodded. ‘I did Pure and Applied Wizardry, he was my practical partner. His circles were always better than mine.’

‘You should see the one downstairs,’ Lily said enthusiastically.

‘I’d not even request to,’ Carter said, ‘though I’m sure it’s perfect. Anyway, we… lost touch after university, but when I heard they had gone into freelance enchanting work, I had them do the security enchantments for the Dragon. They did the enchantments on the first seven of my clubs.’

‘You came to the funeral,’ Ceri said quietly, looking intently at Carter.

He nodded, his face falling a little. ‘I did. I’m surprised you remember. You were… rightly distraught.’

Ceri took a long drink of coffee. The funeral had been hell and she remembered little of it, but all sorts of celebrities and businessmen had come to say goodbye to the Brents. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. She took in a deep breath and let it out. ‘Well, from what Doctor Tennant said, your “investment” is safe. I may have got burned, but we got good data.’

‘Good news,’ Carter said, straightening his back. ‘You were actually burned, I hear?’

Ceri raised an arm, unbuttoning the cuff and pulling the sleeve back. ‘Second degree,’ she said, ‘but it’s better than my entire body.’

‘Or turning into a chimp,’ Lily added, giggling.

Carter laughed. ‘One of the professors at Cambridge was caught in a thaumic flare during an experiment while I was there. He turned into a six foot crocodile. They eventually managed to turn him back, but he never got over the urge to lie in the Cam waiting for unsuspecting students to come by on boats.’ Ceri joined the laughing. ‘It was your enchantments that saved you?’ Carter asked.

‘Must be. People keep telling me I couldn’t have survived otherwise,’ she said. ‘And considering the hit I took… Yeah, Mum and Dad knew their enchantments.’

‘Indeed. You haven’t looked under the bandages since?’

Ceri shook her head, buttoning her cuff back up. ‘Not allowed to take the bandages off. There’s some…’

‘Gunk,’ Lily said. ‘Her forearms are covered in gunk. Witchy gunk. Oh! I hope the colour doesn’t leech into your skin, you’ll look like you’ve been wearing bad copper jewellery.’

‘This is what I love about my lovely Lily,’ Carter said, ‘such a grasp of the important things in life.’

Ceri giggled while Lily sulked. ‘You’re not at all what I expected,’ Ceri said to Carter.

‘She loves the gossip columns in the Wednesday Witch,’ Lily said, getting her own back.

‘My public image is… my public image,’ Carter replied, ‘and I won’t say it’s entirely fake.’ He smirked. ‘I’m fifty-four and last night I went to bed with two twenty year old porn actresses. It’s not so much a boast as an illustration that I have a rather pleasant life.’

‘You don’t look a day over twenty-five,’ Ceri said.

Carter’s smirk became quite cheeky. ‘Why thank you. However, my public image is not the whole me.’

‘Which is what I keep telling her,’ Lily put in. She leaned over, casually resting her forearms on the arm of Ceri’s chair, and then her chin on her arms.

Carter smiled indulgently at the half-succubus. ‘My greatest defender and my best asset,’ he said.

‘Another investment?’ Ceri asked.

‘In more ways than one. Lily is a competent waitress and a draw to the club. Her customers buy more drinks, just to have her come to the table. They always go away happy, and she no longer has to do quite such distasteful things for her money.’ He looked down at the box he had brought with him and slid it toward Ceri with a foot. ‘Which reminds me, a “get well soon” present, if you will.’

Frowning, Ceri picked up the box and opened it. She blinked. ‘It’s a tablet PC,’ she said. ‘Quad core with MagiTech coprocessors… I can’t…’

‘As Lily would tell you if she were being honest,’ Carter interrupted, ‘I am not a generous man and I don’t hand out expensive gifts often or to many. How many gifts have I actually given you, Lil?’

Lily considered the question, still resting on the arm of Ceri’s chair. ‘You usually get me a little something for my birthday,’ she said. ‘Nothing huge.’

Carter nodded. ‘This will help you with your work, Ceri, and it’s a belated way of saying thanks for helping Lily out of her bad ways. I’m not sure she could have done it without you.’

Ceri could tell she was not going to get out of accepting the computer. ‘Lily helped me,’ she said. ‘I was just about a recluse after Mum and Dad died.’

Something flickered across his face; something like recognition. It was gone before Ceri could really be sure it was there, replaced by a smile which did not quite reach his eyes. ‘Lily helps people just by being herself,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is that why you did not go to Cambridge like your parents?’

Ceri nodded. ‘I don’t like travelling,’ she said. ‘I get panic attacks. And there was the house here to look after…’

‘Cambridge’s loss,’ he said, and now the smile did reach his eyes. ‘I should leave you in peace. Don’t get up, I can see myself out. Lily, I’ll see you later. Ceri, it’s been a great pleasure to make your acquaintance.’ He stood and swept out of the room, and Twill, who had been watching silently from the mantelpiece, flew after him, probably to make sure he left. Twill was not really fond of wizards.

Ceri turned slightly and tapped Lily on the nose. ‘What’s this?’ she said.

‘Huh?’ the half-demon said, looking up without raising her head. ‘What’s what?’

‘This. You’re behaving like you’re my house pet.’

Lily frowned and then sat up straight. She looked as though she would have blushed if she could. ‘I… don’t know,’ she said. ‘It kind of felt right… I…’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Twill said, zipping back into the room. Ceri and Lily looked up at her quizzically. The sound of wind chimes filled the room. ‘You’re part demon, silly girl.’

‘So?’ Ceri said.

‘Well this is the first time you’ve ever put on a show of being Mistress of the house, Ceri,’ Twill explained in a rather patronising tone. ‘You spoke the words and the house responded. Lily’s nature makes her subservient to you.’ The little, brown fae whisked across to hover in front of Lily’s nose. ‘You’re lucky you have your human side to keep it in check or you’d be Ceri’s slave. You know what “succubus” means, don’t you?’

‘From the Latin succubare,’ Ceri said, ‘which means “to lie under.”’

Twill nodded. ‘There you go,’ she said.

Neither Ceri nor Lily looked particularly pleased with the explanation.

September 5th

Ceri walked into the laboratory, tensing herself against the sting from her wrists. It did not come and she blinked, faltering in the doorway. There were bandages on her forearms. Well, that explained it, the analgesic in the poultice was supressing the normal pain. But if the accident had happened, why was the lab in full operation, Tennant in her cage and Shane setting the circle?

She walked over to her console to see the familiar readouts scrolling across it. All the readings suggested that the system was fully synchronised and ready to fire. She looked around at Shane. The minor wizard looked back at her, his features twisted into some sort of demonic expression of malevolence. ‘No escaping this time newt,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll fry for sure this time.’ And then he was back to normal, a sour man waiting to close the circle.

Ceri looked away. She was dreaming again. That was the only explanation; another widderwise dream, though at least this one was about her own accident.

‘Initiating resonance transducers.’ Tennant’s voice sounded oddly distant as she said the familiar words. Ceri wondered when Shane had closed the circle, but then she was dreaming and dreams tended to skip… ‘Initiating pulse generators.’ Yeah, skip bits just like that.

Ceri turned, not waiting for the feeling she knew would come that something was wrong. This time she saw the beginning of the flare as time slowed to a crawl around her. She watched the first swelling flicker down at floor level, saw it rise upward. Beneath it, the salt of the outer circle glowed slightly red. That was it, the fault which had caused the containment breach. But what could cause the salt to glow red like that?

Looking up, she saw Doctor Tennant starting to cry out in alarm. Then her gaze met Shane’s. He was watching her. He had been looking in her direction when the eruption had started and he had said nothing. No… He had known! Shane Walters had known it was going to happen. She looked back down at the circle again, seeing a shape glowing through the salt. A rune of some sort?

She looked up again as the streamer of energy arcing from the circle hit her chest. Her body stiffened, the energy, the sheer power of the thaumic release was incredible. It roared through her, burning her skin and charring her flesh. Pain racked her body, tore through her mind, and became everything she was. All she saw was the brilliant white of the energy pouring from the circle and all she could think was, ‘Please let me black out now.’

‘Ceri!’ The voice seemed to come from a long way away and she did not recognise it at first. ‘Ceri, you’re having a nightmare. Wake up, hun.’ The energy clawed at her, enfolding her, tearing at her skin, and she tried to fight back, pushing it away. ‘Stop fighting me, dammit! Ceri!’ The searing energy seemed to soften somehow. It felt warm and comfortable, and soft like…

Like a pair of soft breasts crushed against hers, and a pair of strong arms wrapped around her chest. She stopped fighting and sagged. ‘That’s it, hun,’ Lily said. ‘You’re safe now. Just a bad dream.’ Ceri’s ragged breathing slowed and she relaxed more against Lily’s chest. ‘You okay now, Ceri?’ Lily said softly.

She was covered in sweat and her limbs felt slightly numb, but lying there in Lily’s arms felt really kind of good. Her arms curled around Lily’s body and she felt wet skin slide over skin. ‘Um ‘kay,’ she said. Her brain felt fluffy still, half-mired in sleep.

‘You have a nightmare, hun?’ Lily said. Her voice was soft in Ceri’s ear. ‘I got home about twenty minutes ago. I’d just finished getting ready for bed when I heard you screaming.’ Ceri’s brain tried to crawl out of the fug of sleep and nightmare-pain, but the sound of Lily’s voice was so soothing. ‘So I ran across from my room and you were lying there straining like, um, well if you hadn’t been screaming I’d have thought I was interrupting.’ Ceri giggled slightly at the inference. Lily’s skin felt so smooth against hers. The half-succubus smelled really nice too. ‘Can you remember what you were dreaming about?’

Ceri frowned, trying to remember and the concentration began to cut through the mists of sleep. ‘I was in the lab,’ she said, trying to pull the memories of the dream back together. ‘The accident happened all over again, but there was nothing to protect me…’ Lily let out a little, sympathetic gasp and hugged her tighter. Not that Ceri was complaining. ‘It hurt, but…’ Something was intruding on her attempts to remember, but her attempts to remember were confusing her ability to work out what the intrusion was. ‘Um, there was something odd about the circle…’ She realised what the intrusion was; there were two of them and they were pressing into her boobs. ‘Uh, Lil… I’m okay, you can let go now.’

Lily giggled. ‘You were the one hugging me,’ she said, releasing her arms from around Ceri’s ribs. Ceri lay back onto her pillows and immediately regretted it. ‘We’ll need to change the sheets again,’ Lily said, nodding. ‘C’mon, you can sleep in my bed tonight. You can’t sleep on wet sheets.’ She stood, padding toward the door.

‘I’ll, uh, rinse myself off first,’ Ceri said.

‘Sure,’ Lily said. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

The bathroom was a spacious one, set between the two bedrooms, and it had a walk-in shower as well as a bath. Ceri showered quickly in lukewarm water, dried herself off, and then walked out and across to Lily’s room. She stopped in the doorway and looked across the double bed to where Lily was lying propped on an elbow, covered to her waist in a sheet. She patted the bed with a grin, but Ceri hesitated. Lily’s face fell. ‘Don’t you trust me?’ she said.

‘It’s not that,’ Ceri replied. In truth, it partially was that she was unsure Lily could keep her hands to herself, but it was mostly because Lily slept in her parents’ room. She had not slept in there since she was ten and afraid of a thunderstorm which had made her wrists tingle. Pushing herself forward with an act of will, Ceri let her towel slip and hung it over the rail at the foot of the bed. Then she climbed in beside Lily.

The half-succubus grinned. ‘Turn on your side,’ she said. Ceri did as asked and Lily curled up behind her. Ceri could almost feel the child-like smile on her friend’s face. She could certainly feel the firm breasts pressed against her back. At least the “intrusions” were not there. Lily’s arm curled around Ceri’s waist. ‘Now just relax,’ Lily said. ‘I’m tired. I need rest, not sex, okay?’

Ceri was about to answer when she heard the singing. Lily was singing a soft lullaby, her voice almost a whisper. Ceri did not recognise the language, but the words crept over her like a blanket and, slowly, she began to smile as she drifted off to sleep.

~~~

Birdsong woke her, that and the sunlight streaming in through the window. Lily’s slender arm was still around her waist. She could feel full, firm breasts pressing against her back, hips pressed into her bottom, and thighs resting lightly against her own. Not really sure what time it was, Ceri lay there, feeling warm and comfortable. She would have to move soon, but for now she was content to lie there in her friend’s embrace.

The dream of the night before was little more than flashes of remembered pain and images now. Ceri lay there, trying to pick out the images from the pain. Luckily, pain was hard to remember. You could remember having been in pain, but the actual pain tended to fade. All she was really left with was the red shape glowing through the salt which formed the outer circle. She felt she had seen it before, but could not remember where, and the image was fading.

A little reluctantly, Ceri lifted Lily’s arm and slipped out from under it. Lily stirred, making discontented noises before curling up more and settling back into deep sleep. Ceri looked back at her with a smile on her face. She looked absolutely gorgeous; both incredibly sexy and terribly innocent at the same time. Ceri took a half-step back toward the bed and then shook her head. She slipped quietly out through the door and across the landing to her own room.

‘One night in bed with a succubus,’ she muttered, ‘and you’re contemplating being an idiot.’ She found one of the shirts she wore around the house and slipped it on. ‘She didn’t even try anything,’ she added, and headed for the door. ‘And now you’re talking to yourself!’

‘First sign of madness,’ Twill said as she buzzed past.

‘Yeah, thanks,’ Ceri said wryly.

‘Bad dreams again?’ the fairy asked, hovering over the next landing as Ceri walked down. Ceri nodded, reaching the floor and turning toward the lounge. Twill landed on her shoulder, little hands gripping the cloth. ‘I saw the sheets. Well, one good thing came of it.’

‘You think?’

‘I know. You trusted Lily and yourself enough to sleep in the same bed as her. That’s progress.’ She flicked her wings. ‘What’re you up to?’

Ceri knelt beside the box which still rested beside the seat and started to unpack the contents. ‘There was an image I saw in the dream,’ she said. ‘I want to draw it out before I forget it.’

‘And this… device is going to draw it for you?’ Twill was not really at home with technology.

Ceri giggled. ‘No, but I should be able to use it to draw on.’ She lifted the tablet out and pressed the power button. A green light shone in one corner of the eight by ten inch computer, and the screen flickered once and began to stream boot-up text; apparently, Carter had made sure it was charged and ready for use. The text vanished and a background image appeared. It was an upward-pointing containment circle with “Get Well Soon” printed across it in large, white letters. Ceri grinned; yes, Carter had set the machine up for her. ‘Wow,’ she said, glancing at a corner of the screen, ‘MagiTech Thaumium Six OS. Latest thing. This has the Etherstream networking system, optimised multi-threading, the works.’

‘Does it cook breakfast?’ Twill asked. She sounded unimpressed.

‘No,’ Ceri said, ‘that it doesn’t do.’

‘Then I’ll go do that while you go all gooey over your new love.’ She lifted off Ceri’s shoulder and buzzed out through the lounge door.

Ceri looked at her tablet. She had never used the newest of MagiTech’s operating systems, the university was still on the previous version with no sign of upgrading. However, the new features were supposed to be pretty intuitive, so… She tapped the “Programs” icon in the corner of the screen and, sure enough, a window opened displaying a matrix of software icons. She located a package called “Doodle” and was rewarded with a simple white screen with icons at the top for line width and colour.

Five minutes later, Ceri walked into the kitchen holding the computer, now bearing a rough image of the glyph she had seen in her dream. She sat down at the kitchen table, placed the tablet in front of her, and stared at it. It looked like an enchantment rune, but it was nothing she had seen in class. She was sure she had seen it before, but still could not really think where.

Twill floated over from the cooker while her spatula continued to make sure the bacon did not burn in the frying pan. She looked down. ‘That,’ she said, ‘looks like one of the demonic scripts.’

Ceri looked up. ‘Demonic? I didn’t know you knew any demon languages.’

‘There are lots of things you don’t know about me, Ceri,’ Twill pointed out. ‘However, you’re right, I don’t. On the other hand, however, I do know what their glyphs look like because I like to know what to avoid, and that just screams “walk away.” Try your father’s books.’ Ceri started to get up and Twill fixed her with a look. ‘After breakfast,’ she said.

‘Yes, Mother,’ Ceri responded, sitting back down and flicking the tablet into sleep mode. Twill had told them she was eighteen, but what that meant to a fairy neither Ceri nor Lily really knew. The tiny fae certainly mothered the pair of them terribly, acting much more like a thirty year old.

‘Any more lip from you and I’ll starch your sheets,’ Twill said. She floated back to the cooker, examining the bacon. Two slices of bread floated out of the bread bin to be buttered by a knife with a mind of its own. ‘Offer some advice to some people and all you get is widderbegotten snark,’ she muttered quite loud enough to be heard. ‘No gratitude from some folks.’

‘Thank you for your suggestion, Twill,’ Ceri said contritely.

‘I should think so too!’ The bacon raised itself from the pan and arranged itself on the bread, and a second or two later Ceri had a plate with a bacon sandwich on it in front of her.

Ceri took a bite from her breakfast. Twill knew how to make bacon sandwiches. ‘And thank you for this lovely breakfast,’ she said once she had swallowed. The swallowing was important. There would have been comments about speaking with her mouth full otherwise.

Twill nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘Help yourself to coffee. I made it fresh.’

~~~

Lily padded into the study and settled herself down on the chaise longe. ‘Twill said you were in here,’ she said, ‘and I wanted to see it for myself before I believed it.’

The study was the other room on the middle floor and Ceri liked it slightly less than the lounge. It was where her parents had done their less practical work and she had spent long hours there watching them do just that. Twill entered it once a month to dust, but other than that it remained unused.

‘I needed to look something up,’ Ceri said.

‘Yeah,’ Lily replied, ‘I can kind of tell.’

Ceri was sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by books, most of them thick and bound in heavy leather. A couple had locks on them. She waved her tablet at Lily, still displaying the rune she had drawn. ‘I saw this in my nightmare. Twill says it’s demonic.’

Lily yawned. ‘It’s not Devotik,’ she said. Ceri looked up from the text she was reading and raised an eyebrow. ‘What? I’m not allowed to know something? Dad taught me a few words once, and how to read the glyphs. That’s not one of them, far too complex.’

‘I didn’t know you spoke any demonic language,’ Ceri said.

Lily grinned a little sheepishly. ‘Yeah well, it was my father. He taught me the numbers up to ten, “hello” and “goodbye,” “yes” and “no,” three totally vile swear words, some… anatomy, and the names of thirteen sexual positions. If you’d like to know what goes in where and what to call the combination when you’ve done it, I’m good, but I can’t even order a beer.’

‘Well,’ Ceri said as she pushed one pile of books away from her, ‘your dad is an incubus.’ Ceri had never met him; Lily had told her he would not come near High Towers, for which she was fairly thankful. She flicked a glance at Lily just as the half-demon yawned and stretched, her arms up over her head, her back arched off the little sofa forming a perfect bridge, before she relaxed back down. Ceri looked away before Lily could see her watching, pulling another book forward and examining it closely.

‘Sorry,’ Lily said, ‘I haven’t really woken up yet. Twill said she’d…’ She stopped as the fairy whisked into the room, a ball of white fairy-light followed by a tray with two mugs on it. ‘Twill, you absolute glory, you’re a life-saver.’ She plucked her mug of coffee from the tray as it approached her and took a satisfied sip.

The tray moved on to settle beside Ceri. ‘Now that’s the kind of appreciation I should be getting,’ Twill said. ‘Have you found it yet?’

‘No, but…’ Ceri began, looking up at Twill. She faltered. Lily was lying half on her side, in a relaxed posture with one leg propped up. Her arms were arranged to give a full view of her body; a body which was naked and rather exposed… Ceri snapped out of it and looked back down at her books. ‘There are, like, a dozen distinct demonic languages and some of them have several hundred glyphs…’

‘You need to be more… artistic about it,’ Twill said. ‘Each of the pictographic systems has a style to it. You should be able to narrow the search by determining which group it belongs to.’ She flitted across to hover over a book. ‘Look, it’s clearly not this one because there’s no repetition enumerator at the top.’

Ceri blinked. The tiny fae was right, of course. She pushed that book away, and then a couple more on the same class of ideograms. ‘Okay then,’ she said, ‘it’s probably not either of these. They both use ideogram pairs to form any word and the symbol is probably supposed to mean something on its own.’

Twill lifted from the books, smiling in the same kind of way Doctor Tennant did when she was pleased with someone’s progress. Flitting across the room she quite calmly landed on the side of one of Lily’s breasts and folded herself into a lotus position. Lily gave her a slightly sour expression and then went back to drinking her coffee. Ceri, now thoroughly concentrating on the weeding out process, did not notice the exchange.

Ten minutes later, Ceri looked up and blinked at the sight of Twill, still sat on Lily’s breast, now with her elbows resting on her knees in boredom. ‘Uh…’ Ceri said.

‘You’ve found it now?’ Twill asked.

‘No, but I think I’ve found the language. It’s… uh… I’m not sure I’m pronouncing this right, Ctholnaraeic?’ Her finger moved down the page, following the text. ‘Sorry, I’m translating from Latin… it’s probably the oldest of all demonic languages… hardly ever spoken… used in some of the most powerful of enchantments…’

‘It’s the language the oldest, nastiest demons use amongst themselves,’ Twill said. ‘They say you can still hear it in the Unseelie Court sometimes. Mostly it’s a dead language, seen only in written form, and then rarely as whole sentences.’

‘You trying to scare the crap out of us, fairy,’ Lily said, ‘cos you’re doing a good job on me.’

Ceri turned a page in her book, grinned, double-checked her drawing against it, and started to read. Then she went white. ‘Want something to add to the scare? It’s called Blotherian. It’s the rune of “betrayal, assassination, and the opening of hidden ways.”’

‘Not freaky at all,’ Lily said, ‘but it was a dream, right? I mean… Hang on, you said you were in the lab.’ Her body shifted slightly as though she was going to sit up, but she was stopped by the fairy sitting on her chest.

Ceri nodded. ‘I saw that symbol glowing through the salt in the outer circle. It says here that it can be used to find secret doors and open locks.’

‘But if there was actually one of these runes under the salt of the circle,’ Lily said, ‘Shane the Pain would have noticed.’ She paused and her face darkened. ‘Unless he put it there, of course.’

Ceri remembered her thoughts on the day of the accident. Some of the mistakes she had found in the code for the pulse generators had seemed almost deliberate. She shook her head. ‘I can’t go accuse him of sabotaging the experiment without proof,’ she said.

‘Then we need to get some,’ Lily replied.

~~~

Etherstream was a quantum leap in wide-area, high-bandwidth networking. That’s what it said on the help page Ceri found while checking the settings. Etherstream devices connected to other Etherstream devices via a medium range broadcast over sub-membrane field space, rebroadcasting to other devices until the data was delivered to a base-station connected to the terrestrial Internet. It was all encrypted so that no one could eavesdrop on your traffic and perfectly safe. Or so the documentation said.

Still, getting through to the Metropolitan’s public gateway proved easy enough. From there, her login credentials let her onto the staff system. Sheer curiosity made her go look at the data files from the day of the accident. Just over a terabyte of collected raw data sat there waiting to be analysed. Ceri grinned. There had to be enough there to find the evidence they needed. And it could not do any harm to take a look…

Up in the study, she had plugged in one of the other devices she had found in Carter’s box. It was a fifteen terabyte network storage box with a little yellow note attached saying “I put a few books and programs on here you may find useful.” Well, she had not checked those yet, but the first use she had for the box was storing the data files from the experiment. Setting the download going, she set about the real reason she was in the system.

Of course, she had no access to most of Shane’s records, but she went poking around to find out what she could. After twenty minutes of mild frustration and piecing together bits and pieces of files, she had a vague picture of her suspect, and the data download was eighty per cent complete.

‘He did a vocational wizardry course at the Metropolitan,’ she said.

Lily had been watching her the entire time, leaning against the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee. She seemed determined to be somewhere in Ceri’s view at all times today. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that’d be enough to get him a position as a research assistant,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t. He worked as a jobbing wizard for two years and did an online course in Thaumatology. He got his degree a year early.’

‘Wow,’ Lily said though her voice suggested she was not impressed, ‘that work experience really must’ve helped.’

Ceri suppressed a smirk. ‘According to this he got a two-one, but if he did, he’s forgotten a lot.’ She tapped the screen. ‘I found his thesis here.’

Lily pushed off from the counter and walked over to stand beside Ceri’s chair, bending over to look at the screen. Her perfect breasts were right beside Ceri’s face. ‘Well,’ Lily said, ‘it’s over my head, but I’m kind of short, metaphorically speaking.’

‘Well…’ Ceri considered how best to put her summary of her co-worker’s masterwork. ‘I could’ve written this when I was fifteen,’ she said.

‘You’re a genius, hun,’ Lily said. ‘Try thinking down to normal peoples’ level.’

‘The course was run out of Cambridge,’ Ceri said. ‘They usually have very high standards. Unless he made up big marks elsewhere, this is barely worth a third.’

‘Cambridge?’ Lily said. ‘Cambridge, your main rival in the search for the T-Null? That Cambridge?’

‘Uh, yeah.’

‘So, Shane the Barely Capable, who happens to be a wizard and therefore useful to Tennant’s work, miraculously gets a good degree he doesn’t appear to merit from Tennant’s main rival, just in time to apply for the job as her research assistant.’ Lily paused dramatically and then added, ‘That about sum it up?’

Ceri started to turn her head to look at her friend, found her view full of breast, and turned away, her cheeks colouring. ‘Uh… when you put it like that.’ She chewed on her lip for a second. ‘It could be coincidence,’ she said, not sounding convinced.

‘That’s one huge pile of… coincidences. Any idea who runs the course he did?’

Ceri’s fingers flicked nimbly across the touchscreen. A few seconds later she was reading the Cambridge University website’s online courses section. She grimaced. ‘The course was designed and is operated by Matthew Barnes,’ she said.

Even Lily had heard of Barnes, she had even met him once when he had spent an evening at the Dragon. Her lips drew back, showing her fangs. ‘Protégé magician,’ she said, ‘wizard, necromancer, and enchanter. He’s like Carter without the morals. Seriously, you look in his eyes and there’s nothing there. I’m sure he’s pacted.’

‘I know he’s a bit wild,’ Ceri said. ‘He’s got a rep for partying, dated a couple of pop stars. I don’t think Cambridge would put up with him if…’

‘Oh come on, Ceri!’ Lily snapped, straightening up and walking back to the counter. Ceri let out a slight sigh she hoped Lily did not hear. ‘His father’s Alfred Barnes. That family owns MagiTech, and MagiTech is one of Cambridge’s main benefactors.’ Whatever the truth was, things had fallen into place for Lily. ‘When Matthew came to the Dragon he had two bodyguards with him,’ she said. ‘Vampires. Both girls and fairly young.’

‘Daddy probably pays them to keep him out of trouble,’ Ceri suggested.

Lily shook her head. ‘He’d got them bound,’ she said. ‘You know the way the human thralls of a vampire look? That was the feeling I got off these two.’ Her lips twitched into a snarl again. ‘He had real trouble with the idea that “no” means “keep your grubby hands to yourself” too.’

Ceri chewed on her lip. ‘Okay, let’s say Mat Barnes set Shane up to mess up Doctor Tennant’s experiments from the inside.’

‘Which he did,’ Lily said emphatically.

‘Assuming that he did,’ Ceri said, indicating that she was still not entirely convinced, ‘we would need proof so solid it could actually stop a Null Thaumiton before we accused him.’

Lily opened her mouth, pulling in a deep lungful of air to argue, and then sagged, her head hanging. ‘Damn,’ she said. Slowly she looked up at her friend. ‘They hurt you, Ceri. We can’t let them get away with this.’

September 6th

‘We have a visitor,’ Twill said, flitting into the kitchen.

Ceri and Lily looked at the fairy, and then at each other. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone,’ they said in unison. Lily giggled.

‘A woman,’ Twill said. ‘She reeks of magic, but she’s not a practitioner.’

‘Doctor Tennant?’ Ceri guessed. ‘Crap!’

‘I better get dressed,’ Lily said, bolting for the door.

‘What about me?! Ceri wailed. She was dressed in her usual over-size shirt.

‘Too late for that,’ Twill said, sounding amused, ‘she’s at the door.’

Sure enough, there was a distant sound of knocking. Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. Ceri padded to the front doors on bare feet, opening an inner one, and then going on to the outer ones. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

Tennant did not look like a woman on the verge of a momentous discovery. Her eyes were sunken from lack of sleep and she looked as though she had just pulled herself together from crying. Ceri frowned. ‘Doctor Tennant, hi. I’m, uh, sorry for the informal…’

‘You’re convalescing, dear.’ She sounded tired, too. ‘Would it be a terrible inconvenience if I came in?’

‘No, of course not.’ Ceri stepped back and waved her employer through into the hall. She closed the door and followed after.

Twill was hovering at the foot of the stairs, dressed in her toga-like dress. She regarded the doctor calmly and said, ‘You look like you could use a coffee.’

Tennant did a slow blink. ‘That… would be very welcome,’ she said. Nodding, Twill turned and, vanishing into fairy-light, streamed off toward the kitchen. Tennant turned to look at the slightly sheepish Ceri. ‘You live with a half-demon and a fairy?’ she asked incredulously.

Ceri shrugged. ‘Yeah, we kind of adopted each other. That was Twill. She’s the reason the house is clean. Um, up the stairs and to the left. We’ll go sit in the lounge.’

Lily was standing meekly in front of the fireplace when they walked in. Dressed demurely, for her, in a short, grey, jersey-dress and heels, she stood there with her hands behind her back looking like a slightly-too-short catwalk model awaiting her cue. Ceri briefly wondered how the girl had got dressed so fast before realising that pulling on a stretchy dress probably did not take too long and Lily was almost certainly not wearing anything under it. ‘Good afternoon, Doctor Tennant,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to see you again.’ A slight frown broke her cutely submissive expression. ‘You look terrible, Doc. Sit down.’

Tennant took the seat Carter had occupied two days earlier. She really did not look too good. The “accident” had seemed to sap some of her confidence, like almost losing an assistant had shaken her. Now something else had happened which had been worse.

‘What’s wrong, Doctor?’ Ceri asked. Twill chose that moment to fly in with the coffee tray in tow. Ceri took her drink and sat down in the other chair while Lily once again perched on the foot stool beside her, though this time she seemed to be more conscious of doing it. That just made Ceri more conscious that she was doing it.

The doctor took a sip of coffee and composed herself. ‘I have some bad news,’ she said. ‘There was a fire at the lab last night. Some equipment was damaged, but C… one of our backers has already agreed to fund the replacements.’ Ceri and Lily exchanged a glance; the backer had to be Carter. ‘The real problem is that the fire started in the storage unit where the experimental data was. It’s gone! It’s stupid of me, but I hadn’t backed it up yet, and now it’s gone! All that work, you getting… hurt… and now it’s…’ Her voice, which had moved from something close to her normal speech patterns to rambling, broke down entirely as she started to sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered out.

Ceri and Lily exchanged another glance. There was the tiniest flicker of red in the half-demon’s eyes. ‘Just happy,’ Ceri said under her breath.

Lily slid from her stool and moved across to the big, wing-back chair where Tennant was sitting. Her long, delicate fingers covered the doctor’s hands. ‘It’s all right, Cheryl,’ Lily said. ‘You don’t have to be sorry. You’ve had a nasty shock. It’s okay.’ The soothing words were accompanied by a soft succubus aura, barely a tickle, but enough to make the older woman relax slowly into her seat, a smile starting to play across her lips as the tears dried.

Ceri frowned. Normally she would have felt the aura as a tingle in her wrists. Whenever Lily had done this trick before it had felt as though someone was lightly running a feather over her tattoos; not unpleasant, actually. She still had her bandages on and was not really surprised to not feel anything there, but there was an odd feeling at the back of her skull, like the skin was tightening. She had never felt anything like it before, but she ignored it; she had other things to worry about.

‘Was anyone hurt, Doctor? Do you know why the fire started?’ Ceri kept her voice light. The aura Lily was using was a very weak one and pulling Tennant back to reality too sharply would break it. Then they would just have a sobbing woman on their hands again.

‘No, no one,’ Tennant replied, sounding a little dreamy. ‘We were kind of lucky, actually. It was an electrical fire. There was this fireman and he was telling me…’ She trailed off softly, her smile broadening. ‘He was really nice. Big broad shoulders, and he looked so strong, and I think he kind of fancied me because I could see this huge bulge…’

‘Little too happy, Lil,’ Ceri muttered. ‘You were saying we were lucky, Doctor?’ she added more loudly.

‘Oh, um, yes, well…’ The prim doctor was looking a little flustered now and there was a flush on her cheeks. Lily had definitely overdone the aura. ‘Yes, Shane was in the lab late last night. If he’d been there when the fire started…’

Lily looked around at Ceri, her eyes still glowing red from the pupils. Ceri was thinking the same thing; Shane had gone to the lab, and then the data to prove the existence of the particle they were looking for had gone. ‘What was Shane doing there?’ Ceri asked.

‘Oh, he would work weekends sometimes.’ Tennant actually giggled. ‘Between you and me, he wasn’t that good. If he hadn’t put in extra hours I’d have sacked him when you came along, Ceri. It’s okay if I call you Ceri isn’t it?’ She looked at Lily suddenly. ‘How did you know my name was Cheryl? It’s all right that you know. You can call me Cheryl if you want. You have lovely eyes…’

‘Carter mentioned it,’ Lily said.

‘Oh! You know Carter? He’s gorgeous. Such a gentleman when he should be, and then…’

‘I work at the Jade Dragon,’ Lily told her.

‘I’ve never been there. Is it nice? I went to the Green Rooms to meet him when he was thinking of making the endowment. We had drinks in one of the private rooms and then he asked if I’d like to stay after the Dean left.’ She let out a soft, contented sigh. She did not actually say anything, but it was still way too much information. Lily looked back at Ceri and smirked.

‘I think,’ Ceri said, ‘you should take a nap, Doctor.’

‘Call me Cheryl, dear,’ Tennant responded, her eyelids fluttering toward closed. ‘Please, no need for…’ She yawned and sank back into the leather chair. ‘Sorry, where was I?’

‘Just close your eyes and rest,’ Ceri said. ‘Relax.’

‘I have been up,’ another yawn, ‘half the night. A nap would be…’ Her head fell to one side and she was out.

Lily climbed to her feet. ‘I didn’t do that,’ she said, waving at Tennant’s sleeping form.

Ceri shrugged. ‘Yeah, you kind of did. You made her very happy and a bit suggestible, and I suggested she went to sleep. She probably didn’t get much sleep last night so…’ She giggled softly to avoid waking the doctor and waved for Lily to follow her out of the room. ‘It was like she was on Sodium Pentothal,’ she said. ‘I hope she doesn’t remember too much of that or she’ll be as embarrassed as hell.’

Closing the lounge door behind her, Lily let out a far from innocent chuckle. ‘She’s kind of sexy for an older woman. I could get her over her embarrassment.’

‘Lily…’ Ceri whined. ‘It’s bad enough knowing she bumped hips with Carter without thinking about her doing it with you!’

Lily flicked her glossy, chestnut hair and started down the stairs to the kitchen. ‘I’m a half-succubus,’ she said. ‘I like sex, so sue me.’

~~~

It was almost sunset when Cheryl appeared in the kitchen doorway looking a little sheepish. ‘I, uh, nodded off,’ she said.

Lily rose from the chair she was perched on. ‘Sit down,’ she said, smiling.

Cheryl’s cheeks coloured. ‘Uh, thank you… Lily?’

‘That’s right, Cheryl,’ Lily replied, moving to her favourite position, leaning against the counter. She folded her arms and crossed her legs at the ankle, and stood there watching as Cheryl took her seat.

‘There’s something you should know,’ Ceri said.

Cheryl pulled her gaze away from Lily. ‘Uh… there is?’

‘I logged into the university’s network yesterday,’ Ceri said, trying hard not to grin at her superior’s discomfort. ‘I saw all that data on the system and I thought I might look through it, y’know, while I was resting.’ There was a muffled snort from Lily and Ceri glared at her, receiving only a mischievous smirk in reply. ‘So I downloaded it.’

Cheryl’s jaw dropped. ‘You have the data?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘All of the data.’

Ceri nodded. ‘Carter gifted me this tablet.’ She indicated the inactive computer on the table. ‘There was a networked disc thing that went with it. Loads and loads of space on it, so I dumped the data onto that. It’s in the study. I was looking at it earlier. The micro-channel plate detector data looked very… Are you okay?’

Cheryl looked like she was about to start crying again. Her lower lip was quivering and her eyes were wet. ‘You’ve saved me, dear girl,’ she said. ‘Even with Carter’s money it would have taken months to get everything set up and recalibrated. Barnes would have cracked it by then, I’m sure of it.’ She took in a deep breath, let it out, and sat up straighter. ‘Very well, if you’re going to insist on working when you should be recuperating, you keep the data here and start on the analysis. I’ll begin reconstructing the lab with Shane.’

Looking infinitely better than she had when she walked in that afternoon, Cheryl climbed to her feet. ‘I’ll head back to my flat and celebrate the salvation of my career, I think,’ she said.

Lily pushed off from the counter. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you home.’ Ceri looked at her, quirking an eyebrow. Lily’s lips twitched.

‘That’s all right, dear,’ Cheryl said. ‘I can manage to…’

‘I insist,’ Lily interrupted. ‘You’ve had a lot of shocks today, even if some of them were good, and I know you academic types. You’ll be drifting along planning when you should be paying attention to your surroundings.’

‘Well, if you insist,’ Cheryl said, and there was a slightly breathy quality to her voice. Ceri felt the same slight pressure at the back of her skull she had noticed earlier. The Doctor turned and wandered out through the kitchen door. ‘Goodnight, Ceri,’ she called over her shoulder.

Lily moved to follow, grinning at Ceri as she went. ‘Don’t wait up for me,’ she said.

Ceri blinked at her retreating back. ‘Have fun,’ she murmured, picking up her tablet and flicking the power button.

September 8th

‘You know,’ Lily said, ‘I’m not sure what the point is of sitting in the sun when you’re constantly trying to avoid it.’

‘I can’t see the screen properly if there’s glare on it,’ Ceri replied. Sat on a lounger with her back to the sun and the tablet in her lap, she could work just fine, and not get scolded by Twill for being indoors on such a beautiful day. Frankly, she felt a little weird sitting on the roof in her two-piece, covered in sun oil, with bandages around her forearms, but it was better that than an irritated fairy.

‘How’s the analysis coming?’ Lily said. She was, as usual, stretched out in the buff, enjoying the heat.

‘Much better now,’ Ceri replied. Her fingers slid across the touchscreen, manipulating a 3D schematic model of the circle showing projected particle paths. Red curves showed the positive thaumitons, blue showed the negative ones.

‘So I had a good idea?’ Lily pressed.

Ceri looked across at her lithe friend and grinned, though Lily could not see it through closed eyelids. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you had a good idea.’

When Lily had arrived back at High Towers the previous morning wearing a distinctly satisfied expression, she had found a distinctly less satisfied Ceri glaring at her brand new tablet with murderous intent. The machine was powerful, had amazing graphics, and superb networking, but it had never been designed to do the kind of intensive mathematical processing she was asking of it.

Lily had listened to half an hour of Ceri griping about performance, and then she had called Carter. An hour later an IT technician had arrived at the door, and an hour after that there was a new box sitting beside the network storage unit in the study. Slaved to the tablet, it did all the hard work for the tablet to display. And it was fast! Ceri had almost drooled.

‘I have them sometimes,’ Lily said. Ceri could almost feel the smug satisfaction. ‘Though it does help when I’ve had brain food.’

‘You mean brainy food, don’t you?’

Lily’s head turned and she opened one eye. Her lips twitched. ‘If that were the case, you could make me an absolute genius.’

Ceri looked down at her tablet again, hiding her glowing cheeks. ‘Or a pile of ash,’ she said.

Lily let out a rather exaggerated sigh. ‘The risk could be worth it,’ she said.

Fingers flicked across the tablet in silence as Ceri identified a cluster of origin points, zoomed in, and sent a request for that area to be run through the detailed analysis routines she had written.

‘Sorry,’ Lily said. ‘Not sure what’s up with me at the moment.’

There was another second or two of silence and then Ceri said, ‘I don’t know either, but I feel kind of… weird too.’

‘Weird?’ There was a creak from the lounger; Lily had sat up, properly paying attention.

Ceri shrugged. ‘Little things. Monday, when you used your aura on Doctor Tennant, I felt nothing from my tats, but it felt strange in my head. Like… like the skin on the back of my neck was tight. And, um… I keep thinking maybe it’s worth the risk too.’

She had half expected Lily to laugh, or suggest they go straight to bed. She had a quick flash of fantasy of being taken there on the lounger. Lily just sat there, considering the statement. ‘That is kind of odd,’ she finally said. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve wanted you for five years, give or take. It’s just that…’

‘The fact that I suddenly feel like taking you up on the offer is kind of scary?’ Ceri suggested.

‘Yeah, but you realise it’s not the first odd thing? You had that whole thing about the air being let in when you got out of hospital.’ Lily’s head tilted slightly to one side. ‘Something about the lab accident changed you.’ She was looking at Ceri intently. ‘You’re… less cautious. Twill said you used to be more shy, right? Not so much letting the air in as letting you out of a box.’ The intent stare was beginning to get uncomfortable.

The tablet chimed and Ceri looked down automatically. ‘Oh shit!’ she exclaimed.

Lily bounced off the lounger, closing the distance between them. ‘What?!’ The odd tight feeling at the back of Ceri’s head, that she had not even noticed was there, vanished so quickly she thought she had imagined it.

‘That’s… that’s it,’ Ceri explained. ‘The only possible explanation for these emission patterns is T-Null particles decaying against the containment circle. It fits the theory perfectly.’ She looked up at Lily, her expression one of shocked excitement. ‘We’ve done it, Lil. We’ve found the proof.’

~~~

For some reason, opening the door to Doctor Tennant in swimwear did not bother Ceri as much as the shirt had. Besides, this time her boss was grinning with the same kind of excitement that had had Ceri stalking around the house for the last hour while the processor box quadruple checked her calculations, in three times the detail.

‘You’re sure?’ Cheryl said without preamble. ‘You’re absolutely positive?’

Ceri nodded, grinning. ‘You’ll need to verify the algorithms, check the data used, the usual, but…’

‘But I’m not going to find any errors,’ Cheryl interrupted as she walked past and into the hall.

Ceri giggled. ‘Go up to the lounge,’ she said. ‘You can at least look at the results and go “yes, that all looks good” before we celebrate.’

Cheryl stopped not far into the lounge. Ceri slipped past her, hiding a grin and carried on to pick up her tablet from the round table in the middle of the room. ‘Don’t mind Lily,’ she said. ‘She usually doesn’t wear anything around the house unless we have guests she hasn’t slept with.’ She looked back at Cheryl, who was looking suitably embarrassed, and waved the tablet. ‘This is the data.’

Lily was actually wearing something, a pair of high-heels. It just made her look sexier as she stood calmly by the fireplace, one leg slightly before the other, hands behind her back. Ceri could tell it took an act of will for Cheryl to make herself move and take the tablet. Succubi were addictive, a single day would not be enough to get over a night with even a half-succubus like Lily. Lily smiled. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Cheryl,’ she said.

The self-confident doctor smiled back, a little timidly. ‘It’s nice to, uh, see you again too, Lily,’ she said, eyes fixed on the perfect body. Ceri took pity on her and steered her over to a chair. Once Cheryl was faced with the data analysis her scientific instincts kicked in and Lily was pushed out of her mind. Or at least to the back of it.

Ceri sat in the opposite chair and waited. Lily remained quite still, knowing that if she moved Cheryl’s eyes would be drawn from the tablet. The Doctor’s fingers moved over the touchscreen, examining the numbers and diagrams Ceri had collected together. It seemed like hours before Cheryl lifted her head. ‘My God, we couldn’t have asked for more perfect results,’ she said. ‘You realise the area of the circle this cluster came from…’

‘Is the part which breached,’ Ceri said. ‘Yes, I noticed that. The computer is working over three smaller emission groups from other parts of the circle, and two areas which look like recombination sites. I’m pretty sure we’ll get good results from those too, but this group was so large it was easy to get good statistics.’

‘So,’ Lily said, ‘what you’re saying is that if Shane sabotaged the circle, he actually made it easier for you to find the results you were looking for?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Cheryl said. ‘You think Shane was responsible for the breach?’

‘Yes,’ Lily said flatly. She stepped forward, settling onto her perch on the footstool beside Ceri and leaning over on the chair’s arm.

‘Lily’s sure,’ Ceri said, ‘but the evidence is circumstantial. There’s no way I could prove anything.’ She shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. We write up a paper based on this analysis, send it out for peer review… Journal of Thaumatology, you think?’

Cheryl nodded. ‘The university will want to put something in Thaumatology Monthly too,’ she said. ‘A preliminary announcement, of course, but it puts a marker down. They’ll want to interview both of us.’

Ceri grimaced. ‘You’re the lead researcher…’

Cheryl laughed. ‘Monthly likes to put some human interest behind their science pieces, dear. Even assuming we leave out living in a “haunted” house with a half-succubus and a fairy, you’re a bright, attractive young woman, and your parents were famous. You’ll make very good copy.’

‘We can get one of Carter’s PR people to help if you’re worried, Ceri,’ Lily said.

‘I’m not sure I want to have myself painted as some kind of playgirl postgrad super-scientist,’ Ceri replied.

Lily giggled. ‘That’s more Carter’s public image. I’m sure they can have you looking like a nun if that’s what you really want.’ She turned slightly, resting her chin on her forearms on the chair and grinning up at Ceri. She was giving off that same “submissive little pet” vibe she had done in front of Carter. Ceri looked down at her; damn it if it was not starting to work.

Ceri blinked. The tight feeling was there again in the back of her head. Lily’s eyes had a dull red glow in the pupils. She was probably not even consciously doing it. Ceri glanced at Cheryl to see the older woman relaxing back into her seat, the tablet forgotten in her lap. Ceri felt her nipples tighten along with the skin on her skull. ‘Stop that,’ she said.

‘Stop what?’ Lily asked innocently, and then blinked. ‘Sorry. Didn’t realise…’ She had dropped her eyes away from Ceri, but they stopped at chest height. ‘Ceri, um, are you cold?’

Cheryl let out a whimper of loss as the light in Lily’s eyes went out. Ceri folded her arm across her breasts. ‘No,’ she said sharply, ‘I’m not cold. You were…’ She stopped, looking down at Lily. The half-succubus looked back at her, worry showing in her eyes. ‘I’ve never felt it before,’ Ceri whispered.

‘I’ll get some scissors,’ Lily replied and she was on her feet and sprinting through the door.

Cheryl managed to crawl her way back into having a functional brain. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, confused that both Ceri and Lily seemed very worried about something she could not identify.

‘You wanted to see my protective sigils, Doctor?’ Ceri replied.

‘Really, dear, I may have been off my head on succubus magic yesterday, but I did mean it when I said you could call me Cheryl.’ She smiled. Her pupils were dilated. ‘And, yes. I’d very much like to see them.’

Lily reappeared with a green first aid box. Opening it up, she searched through it and located a pair of snub-nosed scissors, holding them out to Ceri. Ceri looked at her. ‘Could you?’ she said. ‘It’ll be easier.’ Lily nodded and, taking Ceri’s left arm in her hand, slipped the scissors into the bandages and began to cut.

‘Ceri,’ Cheryl said, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘My parents put the enchantment on me when I was three,’ Ceri said. ‘I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there, keeping me safe. I used to cry sometimes when Dad was doing something really big in the summoning room, because it made my wrists hurt.’ Lily pulled a section of the bandage away from where it was stuck down by the paste beneath. The skin looked healthy. ‘No magic could affect me. No magical being could touch me in malice. Vampires couldn’t enthral me, and Lily’s auras just made my wrists itch.’

The scissors reached the end of the bandage and Lily peeled it off. There was healthy skin and a lot of grey-green paste beneath. Lily took cotton wool and a little bottle of alcohol from the first aid kit. ‘Just now though,’ the half-demon said as she began to clean the gunk off Ceri’s wrists, ‘I used my aura without really thinking about it. You felt it…’

Cheryl let out a sigh. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Ceri responded as well,’ Lily said. She finished swabbing Ceri’s skin and lifted the cotton wool ball. She gasped and Ceri looked down.

‘They must’ve… burned out,’ Ceri said, her voice a little distant. ‘All the power from the circle running through me. They must’ve burned out keeping me in one piece.’ She raised her clean, unmarked, left wrist so that Cheryl could see. ‘They’re gone,’ she said.

~~~

‘I told you,’ Lily said as she pulled on her coat, ‘you’re coming out to the Dragon. Both of you are.’

‘I’m hardly dressed for a nightclub,’ Cheryl replied.

‘And I… don’t feel like going out,’ Ceri said.

Lily looked at them. She pointed a finger at Cheryl. ‘Undo the top two buttons on your blouse, you’ll be fine.’ Her gaze turned to Ceri, who she had persuaded to get into a lace teddy and a short skirt. ‘And you need to get over this pronto, or you’ll be afraid of leaving the house like before.’

Ceri sagged slightly. Lily was right, of course. The rest of the world managed to get by without enchanted protection. She nodded and glanced at Cheryl, who was unbuttoning her blouse. Lily nodded back and turned to the door.

A ball of speeding red light dropped into the space between Lily and the big, double doors. ‘There’s something out there!’ Twill’s voice was high and excited, and not a little worried. ‘Something bad is out there, coming closer.’

‘Twill?’ Ceri said, frowning. ‘What…’

The doors creaked suddenly, then the outer ones slammed against the walls, followed by the inner doors bursting open. Wind howled around the hallway, throwing Twill back to the staircase over their heads.

‘I thought the house enchantments stopped this kind of thing?’ Lily yelled.

Ceri’s head was buzzing. In front of her, she could see the air currents swirling with lines of force. ‘It’s very powerful,’ she yelled back, ‘and no one’s maintained the enchantments in five years.’ There was something else, beyond the swirling energy of the magical wind. A figure stood out in the garden, on the path, surrounded by a twisting column of raw magic. There was only darkness out there, night had fallen and the new moon would not rise for several hours. Whatever the figure was, it was a shadow among shadows. It began to move forward.

The light from the porch illuminated the figure as it mounted the steps. Shane looked… wrong. His skin was paler than usual and his eyes glowed; not just the pupils like Lily’s did, but the whole eye shone a dull red. He opened his mouth, but the voice which came out was barely recognisable as his. ‘You,’ he said in a thick, guttural, growl. ‘You all die.’ The wind died away, and he raised his hands which began to glow. In his palms he held two balls of bright, yellow-green fire.

‘Back,’ Ceri said. Lily moved, grabbing Cheryl and pulling her back toward the stairs.

‘Ceri,’ the half-demon shouted, ‘you can’t fight him!’ Ceri felt a wave of heat pass over her as Lily’s aura lashed out, focussed on Shane. It seemed to have no effect.

Fire roared through the doors and the sigil on the floor of the entrance way burst into life. The flames rolled, bouncing back on themselves, but some still washed through toward Ceri. She threw up her arms, crossing them, palms out, in front of her face. The fire did not touch her; it wrapped around her and over her, and then fell back. Ceri heard Lily gasp behind her.

As the fire died, Shane staggered forward into the entrance of the house. The lines on the floor shone brightly, and it seemed like the wizard was walking through treacle, but still he moved on. And Ceri stood waiting for him, her arms held down, and out from her sides. As he approached, one stuttering step at a time, light began to glow in her palms. Energy twined around her hands, bands of it curling around her arms as she waited.

Shane stepped through the inner doors of the house and his lips curled into a sneer. ‘Now,’ he hissed. ‘Die.’ The fire in his hands burned brighter as he raised his arms.

‘Widder take you,’ Ceri said. She thrust her arms forward and the energy coursing around them combined into a twisting comet of raw power. It hit Shane in the chest and he screamed as he was thrown backward through the doors. The fire in his hands died as he smashed onto the stone portico steps and lay there thrashing and screaming for several seconds before he stopped moving entirely.

Ceri sank to her knees. She felt numb, drained, and she barely heard the other women as they clustered around her. She looked up, blinking, into Lily’s face. The half-demon was wearing the oddest expression, part awe, part fear, part desire. Slowly, Ceri began to recognise words. Cheryl was almost hysterical. Twill was speaking too fast to be understood. Lily was silent as she checked Ceri for signs of damage, but when she found nothing and finally spoke, it was her words which Ceri actually heard.

‘My God, Ceri, you can work magic!’

Part Two: Power

Soho, London, September 23rd 2010

It was Friday night, with a full moon overhead, and the Jade Dragon was heaving. Ceri sat with her elbow propped on the bar and watched Lily moving between her tables like the true, supernatural professional she was. Every so often, she cycled back to what she called her “special guests” at the bar, but she was busy tonight and the visits were not quite as frequent as Ceri would have liked. At least she had company.

On her left, Cheryl was sat on a bar stool, smiling happily. She was dressed in a dress which was just a little shorter and tighter than Ceri thought a woman her age should be wearing, but she did fill it out quite well and Carter seemed to be appreciating it.

The owner and manager of the Dragon stood between them, leaning on the bar with nonchalant confidence. Here, in public, and in his own domain, he was the playboy club owner with an appraising glance for every woman and a ready line of mildly flirtatious banter. Part of the reason for Cheryl’s smile was that she was getting plenty of attention, and plenty of free alcohol. Carter had insisted, now that they had finally got around to the celebration Shane had interrupted, that the drinks were on the house. Judging from the way he was flirting, Ceri was fairly sure that Carter intended the celebration to end with a bang and Cheryl was certainly hoping it would.

Ceri felt the now familiar tightening in her scalp along with a sudden shiver of sensation that ran from her groin up through her stomach. She turned her head to find Lily putting her tray down on the bar. Ceri smiled and Lily returned it with a bright smile of her own. It sent another shiver through Ceri. She had to admit that the loss of her enchanted tattoos had made things more pleasant around Lily; especially when her aura was on.

‘Having a good time?’ Lily asked.

Ceri thought about it for a second. ‘Yeah,’ she said, sounding slightly surprised.

‘You always said you weren’t into clubs,’ Lily said.

‘I’m still not, consciously,’ Ceri replied, ‘but I guess I feel… less shy.’

Lily regarded her friend. Ceri was wearing one of her teddies and a skirt short enough to be classed as a belt. The mesh and lace teddy was halter necked, high-hipped, and thong backed, and there was a distinct hint of areolae showing through. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I’d say you’re less shy. Alec’s been paying you more attention tonight and,’ she leaned closer, lowering her voice, ‘Carter wants in your knickers too.’

Ceri suppressed a giggle and replied in a voice just as low, ‘But I’m not wearing any knickers, Lily.’

Lily’s smirk was practically obscene, the light in her eyes flared; Ceri felt her stomach flutter. ‘Less to take off,’ the half-succubus breathed. Ceri’s chest felt tight and she did not think it was just the result of Lily’s aura. Lily’s tongue slid slowly from one fang to the other and Ceri felt an almost irresistible urge to kiss the full lips in front of her… And then Lily looked away as Alec approached. ‘Four Banes, Alec,’ she said.

‘Table four?’ Alec asked and Lily nodded. ‘I’m keeping an eye on them,’ the barman stated flatly. Four werewolves out drinking on a full moon, yeah, Ceri could just bet he was watching them. ‘They giving you any trouble?’

Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘Four licks versus me?’ she said. ‘No contest.’ Alec grinned wolfishly and went to get the drinks.

‘They’re from the Dog Boys,’ Lily said, absently. All the erotic tension of a few moments earlier had gone.

‘Dog Boys?’ Ceri asked. She had never really kept up with the wolf packs around town.

‘The pack from the Isle of Dogs,’ Lily replied. ‘Most of the other packs laugh at them, they’re a bit high-strung as a result.’

‘I didn’t think there were that many packs in London.’ She took a sip of her wine thoughtfully. ‘Which pack is Alec with?’

‘None,’ Alec said from behind her. She jumped, almost spilling her drink, and he chuckled. ‘I’m ronin,’ he said, ‘and I bet if you don’t know about the Dog Boys, you don’t know what that means either.’ Ceri shook her head. ‘Ronin were master-less samurai in feudal Japan,’ he explained. ‘The packs started using it for wolves who don’t belong to a pack about… forty years ago.’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said. She tried for a cute grin. ‘I’ve spent five years as a near recluse,’ she said. ‘If it’s not in a book I’ve read…’ Lily grinned at her and picked up her tray of drinks, strutting off to table four.

Alec favoured Ceri with a long, appraising look, lingering over her chest. She kept her arms from covering her breasts by force of will and tried her damndest to avoid blushing. ‘That,’ he finally said, ‘is a crying shame.’ He grinned and turned away as another waitress approached the bar.

‘Enjoying yourself, Ceri?’ She turned at the sound of Carter’s voice. He was smiling.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. She was, though a tiny part of her mind was sitting there asking why the ronin bartender who had had largely ignored her a few weeks earlier was flirting with her now.

Carter’s eyes darted over her shoulder, presumably at Alec, and then back again. ‘Have you managed to read any of the material I put on the NAS box yet?’ he asked.

‘Uh, no.’ She nodded toward Cheryl. ‘We’ve been writing up the research paper. Now that’s gone to bed, I get to have a life.’ She grinned wryly and Cheryl laughed.

‘I’m a slave driver,’ the Doctor said.

‘Really?’ Carter said, glancing at her. ‘Perhaps we can explore that later.’ He turned back to Ceri without waiting for Cheryl’s blush, but his smirk suggested he knew full well it was there. ‘Can I recommend the contents of the “Psychology” directory? It’s quite fascinating reading. Something outside your normal area of expertise. A break from the norm, if you will.’

‘Well, I have got some spare time coming up,’ Ceri said.

‘Indeed,’ Cheryl said, ‘this slave driver decided we needed a week off now that the paper is done.’

‘You are indeed, a merciful Mistress,’ Carter said. Cheryl was eating up the risqué banter.

‘That sounds like my kind of conversation,’ Lily said, returning from her drinks run. She dropped her tray onto the counter and glanced at Alec. ‘Two white wines for table nine when you’re ready.’

‘Well,’ Cheryl said, ‘I’ll be resting by catching up on all the reading and paperwork I should have been doing for the last month.’

‘Right,’ Lily said, ‘into sadomasochism. If only I’d known…’

Carter nodded. ‘Something else to explore later.’

The combination of Lily and Carter flirting with her had Cheryl more than a little flustered. Ceri tried a rescue. ‘Well, I’ve got some work to do as well,’ she said. ‘I figure if I can actually work magic now, I’d better set about getting the house enchantments up to scratch.’

‘You can do that?’ Lily said. ‘I thought it was, like, all skilled and stuff.’

‘Creating enchantments, inscribing them, researching them, that requires considerable skill and knowledge,’ Carter said, ‘though I suspect young Ceridwyn has a considerable head start should she wish to take it up. It’s the most technical of the disciplines and thaumatologists are often remarkably good at it.’

Ceri nodded. ‘But maintaining them is far easier. And I have my parents’ original designs. Aside from anything else, it’ll be an interesting exercise.’

‘So you’ll be home all week?’ Lily asked, picking up her tray. ‘I’ve hardly seen you recently.’

‘Yup,’ Ceri replied. Lily’s smile as she turned to take the drinks to their table had a very mischievous edge to it and her hips seemed to swing a little more as she walked away.

Carter leaned toward Ceri. ‘Psychology directory,’ he said.

Cheryl finished her drink and slipped off her stool as decorously as was possible. She was wearing stockings. ‘I’ll be back shortly,’ she said, and headed off toward the toilets.

Carter watched her go until she was out of sight and then turned back to Ceri. ‘It would be nice to see you pick up your parents’ work,’ he said, ‘but I was rather surprised to discover you could suddenly work magic.’

‘Uh, yeah,’ she replied. ‘Yeah, “surprised” is a word for it.’

‘Have you any idea how it happened?’

She had several ideas, but only one she was willing to talk about. ‘No one’s ever survived being hit by that much thaumic energy before,’ she said. ‘I guess it… changed me.’

He nodded. ‘It’s a working theory. Hmm… perhaps you should learn to raise a circle as well.’

‘Huh?’

‘Well it was the other assistant who did that for Cheryl, wasn’t it? And he’s no longer with us.’

‘Uh, yeah…’ Ceri said. She was still trying to shake the image of Shane’s body flying backward propelled by a bolt of raw thaumic energy. ‘Good point. Well, I know the principles.’

‘I’m quite sure you’ll be better at it than Mister Walters was,’ Carter said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and… check on Cheryl.’ He turned and headed off in the direction the Doctor had taken.

‘He’s starting early,’ Lily said, coming up behind Ceri.

‘Cheryl went to the toilet,’ Ceri said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Lily said. Ceri looked at her. ‘You’ve seen the loos here, right? Plusher than a Persian kitten? Stall doors that don’t have those gaps at the top and bottom?’ Ceri’s jaw was getting a little slack as she connected the dots, but Lily was determined to ram it home. ‘Bet you she comes back after he does, looking all flushed.’

Ceri grimaced. ‘Isn’t that a bit… sordid?’

Lily giggled. ‘No, it’s exciting. Someone might hear you. Spices things up, puts a bit of an edge on things. And she’s kind of a control freak, right? Used to being in charge? People like that can get a big kick out of being out of control.’

‘You know way too much about stuff like that,’ Ceri commented.

Lily shrugged, her eyes scanning her tables. ‘Ex-prostitute,’ she said.

Ceri’s eyes followed Lily’s, trying to see what she saw. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you’re just very perceptive. You see details and interpret behaviour from them. I mean, I have no idea what you’re looking for now.’

‘Empty glasses,’ Lily said. ‘People looking for me.’

‘It’s not just that though, is it? I’ve seen you go to tables when they seemed to be quite involved with themselves, but they always seem to need something when you get there.’

Lily looked at her briefly and then back to the room. ‘True Succubi are able to change and assume the form their subject desires,’ she said. Ceri nodded, she knew that. ‘Well, I can’t change shape, but I can still tell the needs and desires of anyone within my aura.’ She stopped and looked around at one of the other girls who was dressed in a bright blue version of Lily’s dress. ‘Sasha? Table fourteen, hun.’

The blonde waitress smiled. ‘Thanks, Lil,’ she said before strutting off across the room.

‘And my aura covers the room when I’m working,’ Lily added.

Ceri frowned. ‘I only feel it when you get close,’ she said.

Lily smiled a slightly mysterious smile. ‘I have more than one aura I use for work,’ she said.

Ceri narrowed her eyes. The half-demon was being sneaky. Well, Ceri had been practicing one thing since she had blasted Shane; closing her eyes briefly, she concentrated and let herself see the power in the room. As her eyes opened she let out a soft gasp; the Jade Dragon was humming with energy. Lines of force arced and curled around the room in such volume that she had trouble sorting through them. Lily watched her, almost as if she could sense the confusion as she worked through it all.

Sure enough, two different sets of energy traces billowed out from Lily. The smaller field seemed to originate in her groin, from the glowing pulse of energy which was the terminus of the Tantric Median. It was stronger and, given its origin, Ceri guessed that it was the source of the sensations which made her nipples tighten every time Lily came near. However, there was another field too. It spread out, tenuous, but very wide-ranging, from Lily’s head, from the Chakral Median point called Ajna. Ceri had made a bit of a study of it in her few off moments because that was the part of her head which seemed to sense magic. Mystics said it was responsible for intuition, and it seemed to be generating the field which presumably gave Lily her ability to sense the needs of her customers.

‘You’re seeing it, aren’t you?’ Lily said quietly. ‘What does it look like?’

‘It’s… kind of hard to describe,’ Ceri said. ‘Your… well, the aura I feel is a deep red.’ She lifted her hand and watched the strands of force wrapping around it. ‘It kind of clings to the flesh… caresses it… really kind of beautiful…’ She shook her head. ‘The other one is a delicate blue, very thin, almost invisible.’ She looked out at the room. ‘It just sort of drifts out like a blanket, touching everyone…’

‘Everyone I can see,’ Lily corrected. ‘Well, everyone I could see if I could see out the back of my head. I have to see them to know what they want.’

Ceri’s thaumatologist instincts were kicking in. ‘Really? Cos it extends out all around you, right through the walls. Could be it needs a visual focus to interpret, or maybe it’s a limitation of your human side…’

Lily giggled. ‘Stop… theorising!’ Ceri blushed and then frowned. Following her gaze, Lily asked, ‘What is it?’

‘Don’t know… Suddenly there’s a shower of… kind of undirected energy coming from, uh… from one of the werewolves.’ Ceri’s frown deepened. ‘It’s focussing… Oh my God, Lily, I think he’s going to change!’

Lily’s lips drew back into a snarl. ‘Alec!’ she said, but the barman had obviously already heard and was vaulting the bar. ‘If he changes,’ Lily said, ‘we’ll have hell’s own job controlling him and it could cause a cascade. The other weres’ll change and we’ll have a riot on our hands.’ She moved forward, and Ceri watched her aura expand and intensify.

The cascade of force lines around the wolf-man were contracting. Ceri had never seen a werewolf transform before, and even if she had it would not have been like this, but it looked to her as though the man was generating thaumic energy, and that energy was concentrating. She imagined that, when the sphere of thaumitons she was seeing radiating out from the man like the magnetic field around the Earth finally collapsed, it would trigger the transformation. Lily’s aura fell across his three friends like a seething, sensuous blanket, calming them and stilling the bursts of thaumitons which had started from them. Alec was there, trying to calm the Dog Boy down by force of will. Neither seemed to be having the desired effect on the transformation process.

Ceri slipped off her stool and walked toward table four. Alec and Lily, engrossed in their desperate attempts to calm the were, did not see her until it was too late. Ceri stood behind the shape-shifter and placed her hand on the top of his head. His body stiffened. Her eyes closed, and she could still see the field of thaumic energy flowing through his body, up from the base of his spine, along the Chakral Median, out through the Crown, blooming around his body, and back in at the Base. She focussed on it, trying to remember the feeling she had used to attack Shane, but with more control. She heard Lily gasp. The room became hushed. All Ceri could think of was drawing out the power building in the Dog Boy’s body. There was a moment of resistance and then…

Ceri opened her eyes. Her right hand was now palm up, held a few inches away from the were who was breathing hard, but still human. In her hand, a ball of sparkling blue energy sat, surrounded by two darker bands which slowly revolved around the ball. They looked a lot like containment circles.

The entire club had gone quiet and the sudden intrusion of a voice into the silence came as something of a shock. ‘Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?’ Carter’s voice was ebullient. ‘Alec, a round of drinks on the house.’ The noise level suddenly increased again at the thought of free drinks and the realisation that their host was there and in charge. Ceri almost did not hear Carter speaking to Lily. ‘Get these four out of here right after their drink.’ And then he was beside Ceri, her hand still holding the ball of energy. ‘What do you need?’ he said.

‘Water,’ Ceri said.

Despite the lack of humour of the situation, his lips quirked. ‘You want a drink of water?’

Ceri giggled. ‘No, a bucket… no, make that something like a bath. Need to sink the energy.’

Carter nodded and looked up at Lily. ‘Take her through to the bathroom back of my office.’

Lily nodded and started back toward the bar, Ceri following after. As they started into the back rooms, Cheryl appeared from the toilets looking flushed and straightening the hem of her dress. ‘Did I miss something?’ she asked, her eyes on Ceri’s hand. Ceri and Lily looked at her, and started giggling.

Kennington, September 25th

Ceri’s bare feet slapped on the slate floor of the kitchen as she headed for the coffee machine. Twill had obviously filled it when she heard people starting to move about; it was full of beautiful, brown wakefulness, and she poured herself a mug, turning around to lean casually against the counter. The coffee tasted like liquid gold.

Lily walked into the kitchen looking about as awake as Ceri felt. She brushed tousled hair out of her face and said, ‘Is there coffee?’

Ceri nodded. ‘Fresh,’ she said.

Lily took a mug, filled it, and took a drink, settling against the counter beside Ceri. She let out a contented sigh. ‘You’re naked,’ she said.

Ceri looked down at herself. ‘Um, yeah,’ she said. ‘Sorry. Long night, y’know?’

It had, in fact, been a long night. After boiling an entire bath of water with the energy she had pulled out of the werewolf, a trick which had had Lily watching with an awed expression, Ceri had been plied with drinks until closing time. Getting home was a bit of a blur. She thought Carter had driven Lily and her home, and then driven off with Cheryl. She vaguely remembered giggling with Lily about what they would be getting up to. Carter had a reputation for sleeping with a different woman every night, but they both had a suspicion that Cheryl was going to get a weekend.

‘You don’t have to apologise, y’know?’ Lily said. ‘I like it.’ Ceri’s cheeks coloured. ‘Though, if I’m honest, you’re sexier when you’re wearing one of those shirts, or a one of those teddy things.’ Ceri’s cheeks considered bursting into flame. ‘You looked really sexy last night.’ Ceri took a nervous drink of coffee, which did still her breathing some. ‘So are you going to start work on the house enchantments today?’ Lily glanced at the clock and added, ‘In what’s left of today.’

The sudden change of topic left Ceri floundering. She looked at the clock; it was after three. ‘Well damn,’ she said. ‘Uh, no, given the time. Carter suggested some reading. I think I’ll call today on account of sleeping through most of it, and take a look at that.’

‘Cool,’ Lily said, checking the weather through the window. It was overcast and looked like it might rain. She sucked on a fang. ‘I’ll hang around looking pretty and being a nuisance,’ she said.

A ball of glittering fairy-light whisked in through kitchen door, materialising into Twill’s normal shape and skidding to a stop in the air. ‘Oh, you’re both up,’ she said. She put her tiny hands on her hips. ‘I suppose you’ll want some breakfast? Or should I say tea?’

Ceri shook her head. ‘I’ll wait until dinner,’ she said. ‘My stomach is slightly delicate.’

‘How did you manage to escape a throbbing hangover?’ Lily said. The half-succubus never got hangovers.

Ceri shrugged. ‘Just lucky, I guess. I’m going to put something on and find my tablet.’

‘One of your teddies,’ Lily said. ‘That black one with the leaf pattern in the mesh.’

‘Uh, sure,’ Ceri said, heading for the door.

‘You look edible in that,’ Lily added. Ceri fled.

~~~

The documents in the “Psychology” directory consisted of various e-books and papers, mostly on the psychology of demons, but there were also a couple on werewolves and a single one on werefoxes. People had a tendency to discount the fox shape-shifters; they were largely solitary and, frankly, not very interesting. Ceri looked through the titles as she sat in the study. Twill had chased them out of the kitchen so she could cook.

Lily strolled into the room and Ceri glanced up, flashing her a smile. Lily smiled back and continued walking to the chaise longe. Even though she knew her friend was using her aura, Ceri could not take her eyes off the slowly moving figure. Lily sank onto the seat, lying back and stretching. Ceri let out a whimper which she really hoped Lily did not hear.

‘Thank you,’ Lily said.

‘Uh… what for?’

‘For wearing what I asked.’ Lily favoured her with a long, sweeping look and Ceri hid her embarrassment by looking down at the tablet.

‘Uh, well… had to wear something.’ A file caught Ceri’s eye and she clicked it. The title page popped up; it was a semi-academic document written in the late sixties entitled On the Care and Control of Your Succubus. Back in the sixties and seventies it had been all the rage for wizards to summon and bind succubi. A few still did it, but it had gone out of fashion a bit as the demonologists tried to gain a better reputation. Ceri flicked to the first page and started reading through a slightly rambling discussion on the benefits to be had from a sexual partner who happened to be a demon. When the author started describing some of the interesting things he had got up to with his own pet succubus, she decided to skip ahead; he had a very descriptive writing style and she was feeling hot enough already. Thankfully, things settled down when he actually started describing the psychological precepts behind successfully handling his demon.

The first thing to remember about succubi, she read, about all demons in fact, is that they seek power above all else. Demons dwell in a dimension steeped in magical energy, or so we believe, and they are constantly vying for control of that energy. When they cross over, they seek instead those who are powerful, in magical ways, here. Succubi, therefore, are attracted by power and the more powerful a wizard is, the more a succubus will be drawn to him, seeking his patronage. When a succubus behaves submissively toward you, this is a sure sign that she is seeking to make you her Master.

Ceri looked up at Lilly. ‘What are you reading?’ the half-demon asked.

‘It’s about pack behaviour in werewolves,’ she lied.

‘Cool.’ She rolled onto her side, grinning at Ceri. ‘Maybe you can give me some pointers later. You’re so much better at the academic stuff than me.’

The succubus will behave suggestively, and compliment you on your knowledge and power. Often they will indicate that they find you attractive, even if you are, by all contemporary measures, about as good looking as a walrus. Refrain from bedding the succubus immediately. Giving in too easily will make the demon think less of you. I cannot stress enough the importance of ensuring that you are the master in the relationship. I recommend waiting two to three days before finally taking your succubus to your bed. Her attempts to persuade you will increase in intensity over this time, but resist. It must be you who commands her, not the other way around.

Okay, Ceri thought, survive three days of Lily drooling over her and things should sort themselves out. She closed the file, located one which was on werewolf pack behaviour and opened it. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I can do that.’ Though whether she was thinking about Lily, or Lily’s request for information was open to question.

~~~

‘Werewolf packs exhibit substantially different behaviour from that of Grey Wolves which they are believed to be derived from,’ Ceri intoned, and then shovelled a large mouthful of pasta into her mouth. ‘God I love this dish, Twill,’ she added around her food.

‘Then eat it rather than spraying it over the table,’ Twill replied. Ceri looked suitably chastised and went back to reading the werewolf pack paper.

‘What’s this stuff called again, Twill?’ Lily asked.

‘Spaghetti alla puttanesca,’ Twill said. ‘A relatively recent recipe, but I know Ceri likes the olives and anchovies.’ Ceri nodded enthusiastically.

‘That’s Italian, right?’ Lily said.

‘Yes,’ Twill replied, pleased that Lily was taking an interest. ‘It literally translates as “whore’s style spaghetti.”’ Ceri swallowed rather convulsively and looked up at Lily. There was a mischievous sparkle in her eyes; she had known full well what the stuff was and what the name meant.

Ceri was about to say something when Lily put a forkful of food into her mouth and proceeded to slowly suck a loose strand of spaghetti in through pursed lips. It took every ounce of will Ceri had to look away, but she managed it. ‘According to this,’ she said in a desperate effort to stop thinking about Lily’s lips, ‘the idea of wolf packs having an “alpha” wolf at the head is entirely discredited, but werewolf packs do have an alpha. Says it’s likely because of the mixture of human and animal social traits.’ She looked up, thankful to see that Lily was chewing. ‘Why’s Alec a ronin?’

‘He’s never really said,’ Lily replied after swallowing. ‘He’s been at the Dragon since before I started. From the beginning, I think. I know he gets more respect from the wolf packs than most ronin do. I think he’s a friend of Carter’s from way back.’ Ceri nodded, looking down at her tablet again. ‘Why,’ Lily asked, ‘you fancy him?’

‘No!’ Lily was grinning again. ‘I was just interested. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a werewolf without a pack until last night.’

‘It happens for a couple of reasons,’ Twill said. ‘It’s usually a failed play for dominance in a pack. If a younger were tries to take the Alpha position from the current one and fails, he’s generally run off by the rest of the pack. That’s if he lives, obviously.’

‘That doesn’t fit Alec, from the sound of it,’ Ceri said. ‘I’d imagine that someone driven off like that would get no respect at all.’ Lily nodded her agreement.

‘Some leave of their own accord,’ Twill said. ‘It’s generally because they can’t stand living under the Alpha’s rule, or they’ve fallen for a she-wolf from another pack. And there are a few cases where a pack is wiped out for some reason. Often a lone survivor will never join another pack out of respect for the fallen.’

‘Huh,’ Lily said, ‘I can see Alec having gone after someone else’s Alpha female.’

‘Horn dog, yeah,’ Ceri said, grinning. Her face straightened. ‘Though it kind of makes more sense if he’s a last survivor. Especially if the others had died doing something… noble? Kind of romantic, in a sad way.’ She glanced down again. ‘Oh, there’s a bit here on that cascade effect you mentioned last night. One were changing can result in those nearby changing too, and you suddenly have a pack all wolfing out at once. Wonder if it’s some sort of backwash effect from the thaumiton collapse.’

‘You said something about that when you were talking to Carter. What did you actually do to that guy?’

‘Yes,’ Twill said, ‘I haven’t heard this story.’

‘Well, the guy was giving off this field, like a magnetic field, but thaumic,’ Ceri said. ‘It was contracting, or collapsing. I figured when it collapsed all the way there would be an energy surge and he’d transform. So I kind of… sucked the energy out. It was like what I did to get the energy to hit Shane.’

‘Then she had to get rid of it,’ Lily said, ‘so we went to the bathroom up in Carter’s offices and she boiled a bathtub full of water.’

Twill looked impressed. ‘You do know that no one knows what the mechanism is for true-were transformations?’ she asked.

‘You’ve got another paper to write,’ Lily said with a grin.

Ceri grimaced. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘if there’s an emission of thaumitons prior to a transformation, you could probably detect it. Either an enchantment or a thaumometer fixed under the tables. Might give you some warning.’

‘I’ll mention it to Carter tonight,’ Lily said, and then developed a smirk. ‘Always assuming he doesn’t have your boss tied up in the office to go bang at regular intervals.’

‘You,’ Ceri said, ‘have a one track mind.’

‘Yes,’ Lily retorted promptly, ‘I’m half succubus.’

September 26th

Somehow the study seemed less oppressive now. Ceri sat at her father’s desk with the file on the house’s many enchantments. She had extracted the bulky document from one of the filing cabinets which were kept hidden away, out of sight, behind the false walls at the sides of the room. There were files on more or less every enchantment the Brents had ever done in those cabinets. The only ones missing were a few confidential corporate ones and a couple which she knew they had done for the government, though what part of the government it had been for they had never said.

It was morning, and she could work without any distraction from Lily’s attempts to get her into bed. Which was a good thing, because her parents had created quite complex enchantments to fortify their own home, and despite her initial confidence that she could handle the necessary maintenance, she was starting to think she was in over her head.

The sigil which guarded the door was fairly simple, for a given value of simple. The complexity there was that it responded to non-magicians if they knew the correct form of wording, but she was pretty confident about that.

Then there were the runes built into the building as it had gone up. These strengthened the structure and actually repaired wear and tear. Nothing she could not handle, so long as she could work out how to actually get to them to work on them. Some were in the foundations! She finally cracked that when she found her mother’s notes on the maintenance mechanism they had built in. Everything could be handled from a central point in the cellar.

Twill flew in with a fresh mug of coffee as she was going over the enchantments for the grounds. ‘Those,’ she said, landing on Ceri’s shoulder, ‘need work. Especially the barrier on the south gate.’

‘Yeah, well they put the runes in using ink rather than carving them,’ Ceri said. ‘Dad’s view was that carving into wood didn’t make that much difference so long as there was someone there to keep up the drawings.’

Twill gave her a pat on the cheek with a hand so small it felt almost like a pin pricking her. ‘Well, now there is,’ she said.

‘Huh, yeah, if the Calendula and Elder ink is in any fit state to use.’

‘Well,’ Twill said, ‘let’s go look. Your parents kept those supplies in the cellar, didn’t they?’ She looked down at Ceri’s shoulder and sniffed. ‘Walk slowly, please, I’ve nothing to hang onto. Why did you put one of these things on anyway? I’m sure you’d be more comfortable in one of your shirts.’

Ceri looked down at the white, lace-and-mesh teddy she had put on without thinking that morning. ‘This is comfortable,’ she said, ‘and I felt like wearing it.’ And the unbidden voice in the back of her head was saying that Lily would like it; it would turn the half-succubus on and Ceri would get another compliment. There was no way she was admitting that to the fairy.

Standing up, she made her way as smoothly as she could down the stairs to the hall. Off to one side, in the corner, was the hidden-but-not-really-secret door which lead to the spiral staircase to the cellar. The stairs were dark and fairly narrow, but Ceri had been navigating them since she was old enough to walk. At the bottom, a small chamber presented them with two options; off to the right, directly below the main area of the house, were the two summoning rooms, and ahead of them was a heavy, metal door which led to into the workshop.

It was as much a laboratory as a workshop, really. Amulets and charms, as well as larger items, had been made there. There was an entire jewellery making bench at the far end, and the left wall was lined with heavy wooden tables and the kind of glassware you saw in semi-industrial chemical labs. When her mother had been working on a new potion, she had tended to get very enthusiastic.

There were two cabinets in the room. The smaller one was metal, had a padlock on the front, and was entirely empty. It had contained various things which you needed a special license to obtain and store. A couple of weeks after her parents’ funeral Ceri had taken several men in protective clothing from the Department for Environmental Affairs to the cellar to clear out the contents of the cupboard. She had been happy that they had come; she had not wanted to go near some of the stuff in there.

Beside that stood a much larger, wooden cabinet which contained the more general supplies. Ceri rarely came down here; there really was very little she usually wanted, or at least, that was what she told herself. As she opened the big, wooden doors of the cabinet and the scent of herbs, oils, spices, and other things she had more trouble identifying filled her nose, she felt a sudden flurry of excitement. Back before the accident which had claimed her parents, she had loved watching them working down here. When she had been younger, she had thought that she would be doing the same someday, and later she had just been happy to help.

‘Mum used to let me help her sometimes,’ Ceri said as she began checking the shelves. ‘I’d grind the pigments for inks, or the herbs for her potions. Even when it was clear I was never going to be able to work magic I’d still do the grunt work.’

‘You enjoyed it?’ Twill asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ceri replied. ‘It was something I could do with them. It felt like I was doing something magical, even though it wasn’t.’

‘And now you can do magic,’ Twill said. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone spontaneously developing magical talent before.’

Ceri found a packet the size of a pack of cigarettes, checked the label and grinned. ‘Cheryl checked the literature,’ she said, ‘and she couldn’t find anything either. Then again, she couldn’t find any examples of someone surviving a thaumic burst like that.’ She peeled back the wrapper of the packet and checked the slightly waxy substance inside. ‘This looks good.’

Twill carried a bottle from the back of one of the shelves. It was bigger than she was. ‘The oil’s dried out though,’ she said. ‘You realise that the chances that you would come out of an accident like that with beneficial side effects must be smaller than those particles you’ve been looking for.’

Ceri shrugged and picked up the bottle. ‘Even a tiny chance is a chance,’ she said. ‘I’ll go up to Baltzman’s and get some more of this stuff.’ She waited for Twill to fly out and land on her shoulder before pushing the doors closed, and then started for the door, bottle in hand.

‘You will be putting some clothes on, won’t you?’ Twill said as they started up the stairs.

‘Yes, Twill,’ Ceri said, suppressing a smirk.

‘I’m sure you look wonderful in just a… teddy is it? But I think something a little more covering is appropriate.’

‘Yes, Twill, I’d never have thought of that.’

There was a second or two of silence and then Twill said, ‘Don’t think I won’t enchant you knickers to shrink three sizes once you’ve got them on.’

Ceri tried very hard not to giggle.

Soho

Blatzman’s was the best purveyor of magical supplies and equipment in London. Grey’s Market on Oxford Street was larger and shinier, and many people who did not know better went there, but Ceri’s parents had always bought their supplies at Baltzman’s. That was as good a reason as any for Ceri to take the trip up to Piccadilly Circus and then walk up to Great Pulteney Street. It was quiet, being Sunday, but the shop would be open for a short day; magicians were not big on Sundays as a day of rest.

The shop was correctly called “Baltzman’s Emporium of Magical Artifice,” which had resulted in the student community christening it Beema’s. Generally, though, students did not shop there, and so had never met Earnest Baltzman. If they had, they would have shown more respect. Ceri remembered him as a stern old man who had looked at her over the top of half-spectacles whenever she strayed from her parents. Then again, the last time she had been there was when she was twelve.

Ceri looked up at the six storey building built in the Regency style. Age had had a significant effect, however, and it seemed run down and in need of repair. It was not exactly an illusion, like High Towers, but Ceri knew the interior was not the same. Taking a deep breath, she opened the front door and walked in.

A bored-looking assistant glanced at her from behind a counter and then went back to reading a textbook on potion brewing. She was attractive, and dressed in a lot of black. Her hair was black as well, though unlike Ceri’s, hers was dyed. Her large, hoop earrings had pentagrams in them. Ceri hid her smirk in a smile and started through to the inner door. The front room was there for one purpose; it was a tourist trap. The cases around the walls displayed over-priced charms and amulets, and interesting looking trinkets, the kind of thing which the norms found irresistible. Baltzman could not stand tourists.

The inner door led onto a labyrinth of small and large rooms, staircases half-hidden behind screens, and bookcases. You more or less had to know what you were looking for and where to find it since there were no signs and it was very easy to get turned around and find yourself walking in circles. Her parents had said that the further up you went, the more esoteric, and potentially dangerous, the materials got. Ink-making supplies were, thankfully, considered among the least threatening of magical paraphernalia and she found them in the third room she got to.

She was going over the oil bottles, trying to find the brand her parents had used when she heard the voice from behind her. ‘May I be of assistance, young lady?’

Turning, she saw a man who had to be well into his seventies looking at her over wire-framed half-spectacles. Standing straight, he was probably almost her height, but he stooped and she found herself looking down to meet his grey eyes. Somehow, Baltzman did not look as terrifying as he had twelve years earlier. ‘Oh, yes Mr Baltzman. I’m doing some repair work on some enchantments and, well…’ She held up the oil bottle she had brought along.

Baltzman eyed the dried up gunk at the bottom of the bottle. ‘It takes years for that oil to dry up like that,’ he commented.

Ceri nodded. ‘Six,’ she confirmed. ‘I’d really like to use the same oil. It’s what my parents always used. They swore by it.’

He frowned. It was fairly clear he had assumed she was a norm who had got past the front room, but she seemed to know him and have some idea what she was doing. ‘Have we met, young lady? You appear to know me.’

Ceri grinned sheepishly. ‘I used to come here with my parents, but I haven’t been since I was twelve…’

He poked a wrinkled finger at her. ‘David and Marion Brent’s daughter… Ceridwyn?’ There was obviously nothing wrong with his memory. ‘I understood that you had… gone into the more mundane magical sciences.’

Ceri blushed a little. ‘I’m a norm,’ she said, and then amended. ‘I was a norm. I guess I was a late bloomer.’

Baltzman’s eyebrow raised, but he said, ‘That brand went out of business about three years ago.’ He stepped smoothly around her, reached up, and plucked a bottle from the shelves. ‘I think you’ll find this a suitable substitute.’

She bobbed her head, taking the bottle from him. ‘Thank you. I haven’t really done this before. I used to help Mum make ink up, but… it’s been a while.’

He looked her up and down, and nodded. ‘I think you’ll find it comes back to you. Your parents had an account with us. I’ll see that it’s transferred to your name. Have a good day, Miss Brent.’ He turned and ambled off deeper into the shop before she could reply.

Kennington

By the time Ceri was out in the garden with a pestle containing her ink and a newly cut quill made from an Eagle Owl’s feather, she had lost herself in her work and largely forgotten about Lily, or anything much else really. Time likely passed, but she did not notice as she carefully traced over the faded runes her father had drawn onto the wood of the arbour which formed the “gate” on the south side of the grounds.

There was no physical gate. The path appeared entirely open to anyone wishing to walk through, but no animals ever walked in, and anyone with ill intent trying to enter would be repelled. Well, they would if the enchantment was working properly. Currently, according to Twill, they were even getting the odd fox in through the fence.

Ceri was fairly sure she had done everything right. Dressing up in the old lab coat her mother had worn when working had not been necessary, but it had felt right; and it stopped the ink getting on her clothes. She had ground a couple of ounces of the pigment bar, made with Calendula and Elder to ward off evil, and then mixed in the oil, and ground again. A couple of iterations of oil and grinding, and she had her ink to the consistency she wanted, and all the while she had been charging the ink using the same mantra her mother had always used.

Twill had been watching the whole time, and the fairy gave a little nod of satisfaction when Ceri declared that the ink was ready. The fae’s approval had been appreciated. Somehow, Ceri felt, it was like her parents were there watching with pride as she mixed her first ink for real.

The final rune was low on the gatepost and she spent five minutes bent in half with her quill moving carefully over the badly worn surface. As she completed the final line, however, she was rewarded by a brief flare of light from all the runes on the arbour. It had worked! She had renewed the enchantment her parents had created. It was not quite as satisfying as creating one herself, but a lot of apprentice enchanters started out doing this kind of work.

She let out a slight groan as she straightened her back and sat up. ‘You need to work on your flexibility,’ Lily said from behind her.

Ceri turned, looking over her shoulder. The half-succubus was sitting on the scruffy grass beside the gravel path, dressed in one of Ceri’s large shirts. The arms were a little too long, but it was stretched very tightly across her chest. Her nipples were standing out as well. ‘I didn’t see you there,’ Ceri said, because she did not know what else to say.

‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ Lily replied. ‘I’m not sure I could have if I’d wanted to. That was… very impressive.’

‘Huh,’ Ceri scoffed, self-deprecatingly, ‘I was just tracing over my father’s work.’

Lily shook her head. ‘I could feel the power coming off you,’ she said. ‘It made me…’ She did a slow, sensuous blink, shuddering slightly. ‘…tingle.’

Ceri swallowed. ‘W-well, just wait until I get started on the house runes.’

Lily’s smile was predatory. ‘Can’t wait,’ she said.

‘Uh, well, I have the corner posts to do,’ Ceri backpedalled, ‘a-and the front gate posts to look at. Probably tomorrow.’ She climbed to her feet to go to the back of the property, but stopped as Lily stood as well.

Lily closed the distance between them, looking like a big cat stalking prey. She smiled, showing her fangs and whispered, ‘Tease.’ Ceri’s breath stopped. But then the half-demon turned back toward the house. When she spoke again, her voice was normal Lily. ‘I’m going to get some breakfast. See you inside.’

Ceri let out the breath she was holding. Another couple of days, she could last another couple of days. Sure she could.

~~~

The front fence of High Tower was different from the high, cedar plank fence panels which formed most of the other three sides. Frameworks of wrought iron spikes held up on granite posts looked rather less secure than the cedar panels, but it fitted the “haunted house” concept much better, and the runes carved into the posts made sure that this fence was no less secure than the other ones.

The carvings were just as sharp as when Ceri’s father had cut them, but as she ran her fingers over the smooth stone she could sense that they needed to be charged up, re-energised. She still had ink, and that seemed like the simplest way, so she began carefully tracing along the bottom of each rune with her quill, starting from the right and working in, then going to the left extreme and working back to the iron gate in the middle.

So it was that she was on her knees beside the gatepost, carefully tracing the last rune when the man and woman in suits arrived at the gate. They looked down at the young woman with the short, black hair dressed in a white lab coat which was slightly too small and dotted with various stains, some of them fresh, and then looked at each other. ‘Miss Ceridwyn Brent?’ the man asked.

‘Moment,’ Ceri said, concentrating on the task of laying a fine line of ink along the bottom of the rune.

The man seemed to be about to speak again, but his friend raised a hand and he closed his mouth, looking grumpy. Ceri’s pen reached the end of the rune and she lifted it away with a slight sigh. Four runes on each post burned brilliantly for a second, and then a shimmering, pale orange wall rose up along the fence line, climbing to about eight feet and hanging there for a second before dissipating. The man stumbled backward, looking slightly shocked.

‘Sorry about that,’ Ceri said. ‘I couldn’t really stop in the middle. Yes, I’m Ceridwyn Brent. Who are you?’ Stood on the inside of her newly reinforced barrier enchantment, Ceri felt quite sure that these two could be assassins from Hell and she would be safe. That was likely a little over confident, but she figured she would at least have some time to run.

The woman reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet, holding it open for Ceri to see. ‘Detective Sergeant Middleshaw,’ she said. ‘This is Detective Inspector Radcliff. We’re from the Greycoats.’

‘You’re here about Shane Walters?’ Ceri asked.

‘That’s right,’ Radcliff replied. ‘Can we come in, or do we get burned alive on the spot?’

Standing up, Ceri reached forward and opened the gate with a slight smile. ‘Enter my land without malice, detectives, leave it without hindrance.’

Middleshaw smiled back as she stepped through the gate, Radcliff looked as though he was expecting hellfire to pour down from the rooftop at any moment. If Ceri had to guess, while Radcliff was the senior officer, Middleshaw had the most experience of magic. The Greycoats were the branch of the Metropolitan Police Force which specialised in magical investigation. Originally part of Scotland Yard, they had been given their own building on nearby Greycoat Street, mostly because the norms wanted rid of them. There was, however, some movement between the Yard and the Greycoats, most commonly a norm detective moving over to provide the benefit of investigative experience to the more magically inclined detectives. Management and politicians tended to think the mixed teams were a good idea.

Closing the gate behind them, Ceri took a few quick steps to get ahead and led the way to the front doors. She had every confidence that Twill would have warned Lily of their guests, though she also had a slightly twisted wish that Lily would decide not to get dressed before they walked in.

‘Uh, it’s a lot less…’ Radcliff said as they walked into the hallway.

‘Haunted?’ Ceri suggested.

Radcliff nodded. ‘It’s a lot less haunted-looking on the inside.’ His hesitancy made him seem smaller somehow, but he was a tall man, easily six-feet in height and slim with it. It looked like there was a fair bit of muscle on his frame; the long, lean muscle that came from a regular, but light, fitness regimen. He would probably have been fairly good looking too, if he could have managed a smile. As it was the firm jaw, high-bridged nose, stark blue eyes, and the cropped black hair just made him look more grim.

‘I like it,’ Middleshaw said. ‘Your mother’s idea?’ Radcliffe’s partner was distinctly different; far shorter, but long in the leg, shoulder length, red hair, green eyes and a pale, freckled complexion. She also has a reasonable chest under that suit, topping off a slim body with wide hips. Her wide lips held a half-smile most of the time, unlike Radcliffe.

Somehow Ceri did not like that fact that the cops had been digging into her background. ‘Yes, it was, but I used to have awesome Halloween parties when I was a kid.’ She took off her lab coat and hung it up on a coat rack standing just inside the double doors. When she turned, Radcliff’s eyes shifted quickly away from her body to her face. She had kept her jeans on from her trip to Baltzman’s, but had taken off the shirt she had put on over the teddy; it simply did not fit properly under the lab coat. Now she was standing there in black jeans and a white teddy. Nothing showed, except her figure; Radcliff still looked a little hungry. Ceri looked up the stairs. ‘Up the stairs and to the right,’ she said. ‘We can talk in the study.’

With Middleshaw perched on the chaise longe and Radcliff standing beside her, Ceri rolled the desk chair out and sat down in front of them. ‘What can I help you with?’ she asked. ‘You had statements from everyone. I don’t really think there’s more to add.’

‘None of the statements indicated why Walters turned up on your doorstep and decided to kill you all,’ Radcliff said. Middleshaw sounded like a London girl, but Radcliff had a hint of a northern accent about him.

‘Because we don’t know,’ Ceri supplied.

‘That seems unlikely,’ the man replied. There was an accusation in his tone which Ceri did not like.

‘There are a couple of theories, but nothing which constitutes proof,’ Ceri said. Radcliff, she thought, did not like supernaturals, possibly magic in general. She wondered why he had joined the Greycoats. Both the detectives were looking expectantly at her. ‘He never liked me,’ she said. ‘I was the new hire, smarter than him, with a better grasp of the subject. When my work outshone his, he may have decided to remove the competition and revenge himself on Doctor Tennant. She didn’t exactly treat him that well.’

‘That seems unlikely too,’ Radcliff commented. ‘It was a rather public attack.’

‘That assumes he was all there,’ Ceri replied, ‘but I agree. The other possibility is that he had been sabotaging the experiments. When we cracked the problem, and got the results we wanted, he had to do something drastic.’

‘You’ve evidence that he was sabotaging Tennant’s work?’ Radcliff asked tightly.

Ceri shrugged. ‘Purely circumstantial. Some of the mistakes he made were a little too stupid. I had an odd dream after the accident which suggested he was responsible, but dreams are hardly admissible in court.’

Radcliff opened his mouth, but Middleshaw beat him to it. ‘Did anything seem odd about the attack?’ she asked.

Ceri laughed. ‘I don’t get attacked often enough to consider any of them normal, detective.’

‘Not according to our records,’ Radcliff interjected. ‘You’ve been involved in several assaults by supernaturals, all of them ending in the demise of your attacker.’

Ceri raised an eyebrow. ‘Three,’ she said, ‘going back ten years. I have… I had a protective enchantment my parents put on me. Supernaturals who attacked me… caused the enchantment to push back.’ She raised her right arm, showing the inside of her wrist. ‘They were destroyed in the lab accident.’

Radcliff pulled out a notebook and flipped through it. ‘So, instead you can now toss magical bolts around which “caused extensive dissolution of the body’s molecular structure.”’

Ceri shrugged. ‘Raw magic will do that. That’s what should have happened to me.’

‘Poetic justice?’ Radcliff said.

‘Are you accusing me of murder, Detective Inspector Radcliff?’ Ceri asked, biting down on her temper.

‘If we were,’ Middleshaw said before her superior could reply, ‘we would be making a huge mistake. Several test cases have proven that destroying a zombie is, at worst, destruction of property.’

‘Sergeant!’ Radcliff snapped. ‘This investigation…’

‘Will go nowhere while you persist in treating everyone who has anything to do with magic as guilty, sir,’ Middleshaw interrupted calmly. ‘Miss Brent was categorised as fully normal by four separate specialists prior to the accident in her lab. The attack by Walters was the first manifestation of her new power, and she reacted on instinct. Further, her parents were two of the most respected enchanters in the country. They were responsible for the enchantments on the doors at Greycoat Street, and they designed the secure cells there.’ Now that was something Ceri did not know. ‘Seriously sir, we’re here to get information, not to make accusations which could get us both assigned to crossing guard duty!’

Radcliff was fuming, but he was also sensible enough, or self-aware enough, to realise his subordinate had just stopped him from stepping over the line. Ceri watched the interplay, waiting for it to end before asking the question which she was burning to ask, ‘He was a zombie? He was dead when he got here?’

‘It’s difficult to tell with zombies,’ Middleshaw said, ‘the process halts the normal pathology, but the coroner estimates he had been dead for about two weeks.’

‘I’m fairly sure he was alive on the day of the accident,’ Ceri supplied. ‘That was on the second.’

Radcliff was flipping through his notebook again. ‘The coroner said that the necromancy was “particularly sophisticated,”’ he said.

‘I’m going to hazard a guess that you don’t understand how sophisticated, Inspector,’ Ceri said. ‘He used wizardry. That’s just about impossible…’ She looked around suddenly and then said, ‘Come on, you two. I know you’re listening.’

Radcliff looked blankly at her and then jumped as Twill materialised above the mantelpiece and buzzed out to hover over Ceri’s head. Lily did her best to look like she had not been standing outside the door as she sauntered nonchalantly into the study. She had put on one of her jersey dresses, a really tight one. Radcliff’s eyes attempted to pop out on stalks. He had transferred in from some northern police force, Ceri guessed. He had a wedding ring on; his wife had not moved south yet…

‘Twill, you ever heard of a zombie who could do wizardry?’ Ceri asked.

‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘Vampires have their own abilities, liches can do necromancy, but zombies aren’t capable. It’s like… like saying one of those computer things could do witchcraft.’ She pursed her tiny lips. ‘He didn’t feel like a zombie when he entered the grounds, but…’

‘He was giving off so much power it’d be hard to tell,’ Ceri supplied. She turned to Lily. ‘You hit him with your aura, right?’

‘You’re the succubus?’ Radcliff asked.

‘Half-succubus,’ Lily said, ‘my mother was a human. I hit him with everything I had, he didn’t even flinch.’

‘So he wasn’t interested,’ Radcliff said dismissively.

‘Inspector Radcliff has never experienced a succubus aura,’ Middleshaw explained. ‘Would you mind demonstrating, Miss Carpenter? On me, please, and not full strength if you would.’ She half turned to Radcliff. ‘I have no lesbian leanings what so…’ She broke off into a moan, sagging onto the lounger. Her eyes rolled back and she began to tremble, her thighs pressed together and rubbing against each other. She had, Ceri noted, pretty good legs. Her arms started down toward her groin.

‘That’s enough, Lily,’ Ceri said.

Middleshaw relaxed and lay there panting. ‘Shane didn’t react at all,’ Lily said, ‘and I used ten times as much power on him. I figured it was just that he was shielded, but being a corpse would explain a lot.’

‘But a corpse can’t work magic,’ Twill said emphatically.

‘Have you talked to Doctor Tennant about this?’ Ceri asked.

The Sergeant pulled herself upright, still looking very flushed, and straightened her skirt. ‘The Inspector wanted to talk to you three first,’ she said.

Raddcliff actually looked a little concerned as he looked down at her. ‘You okay, Kate?’ he asked. ‘That looked, uh…’

‘It was very “uh,”’ she replied, grinning slightly. ‘You want to try it? Good experience.’

‘Uh, no,’ Radcliff replied, blushing.

‘Any time you want to, Inspector,’ Lily said, smiling her best lascivious smile.

‘Lily.’ Ceri’s voice was quiet, but firm. Lily dipped her eyes and moved swiftly and smoothly to stand just behind Ceri’s chair. Ceri forced herself not to look around at her friend as she once again played demon house pet.

‘Forgive my slightly limited knowledge of magic,’ Radcliff said, ‘but if Watkins was a zombie, or something like a zombie since a zombie couldn’t work magic…’ He nodded toward Twill, which must have cost him because Ceri could tell he was not comfortable outnumbered by supernaturals. ‘Whatever the case, a zombie is controlled by someone, right?’ Ceri nodded. ‘So, have you any idea who sent him?’

Ceri could feel Lily about to speak and got in quickly before she could. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Even if we happened to suspect that someone might be involved, we would not have enough evidence to even mention the name.’ And then she could almost feel Lily fuming.

Radcliff held Ceri’s gaze for a few seconds, chewing his lip. ‘So you know who it probably was, but can’t or won’t say. So the person you suspect is someone very dangerous, or above reproach, or both.’

‘When you’ve got over your suspicion of magic, Inspector, you’ll probably make a very valuable member of the Greycoats,’ Twill said.

‘Don’t mind Twill,’ Ceri said, smirking slightly, ‘she does that to everyone.’ Twill glared at her. Ceri decided to check her knickers for enchantments for a while. The fairy was probably right though. ‘We can’t tell you who did that to Shane,’ she said. ‘Frankly, you’d laugh.’

The look Radcliff gave her was odd. She got the distinct feeling that there was a very strong reason why he did not trust supernaturals. ‘You might be very surprised what I would not laugh at, Miss Brent,’ he said.

~~~

‘Oh,’ Lily said, ‘I spoke to Carter about your idea. He wants to talk to you. Tomorrow afternoon?’

Ceri blinked, a forkful of food halfway to her mouth. ‘My idea?’

‘Yeah, y’know? The thing about detecting werewolves changing?’

‘Oh, yeah. He wants to talk to me about it?’ Lily nodded enthusiastically. ‘But he’s a wizard,’ Ceri said, and Lily nodded again, chewing. How did she manage to chew and still look sexy? ‘I mean he’s probably got more skill in his little finger than I’ve…’

‘You’re a theorist, dear,’ Twill said. She was actually eating with them for once. Well, drinking. Sat before her in a thimble was a quantity of thick, golden liquid; honey with a little alcohol to thin it. Considering she hunted insects and worms in the garden, she generally avoided eating in front of her housemates. ‘You likely have theoretical skills he does not.’

‘I guess… Yeah, I suppose there’s that.’ Ceri finished putting food in her mouth.

‘If Carter thinks he needs you to make this work,’ Lily said, ‘then that just shows how awesome you are!’ She beamed across the table; almost child-like glee mixed with a succubus’ pride in finding someone of real power. Ceri swallowed. Someone of real power to enslave herself to.

Another day. Just another day or two at the most. Hot damn, tomorrow was going to be hard.

September 27th

The enchantment in the entrance had not been too bad. It was a relatively complex pattern which had worried Ceri until she realised that, using her Sight, she could see the invisible markings on the stone. Then it had just been a question of tracing the design in fine, white chalk mixed with salt, and energising it. As the powder had flared and twisted out of physical existence, and the enchantment sigil had burned brightly on the floor, Ceri had felt good.

Now she was standing in front of the little pseudo-cupboard in the cellar, trying to understand the mechanism her parents had put in place for maintaining the house’s structural and security enchantments. She was not feeling so good, or clever for that matter.

‘I’m quite sure you’ll figure it out,’ Twill said, peering over her shoulder.

Ceri could not remember ever having looked behind the door before, or having seen her parents do so. Inside it was a vaguely cubic array of silver runes just hanging there! They hovered in empty space, some a little dimmer than others, some simple, some incredibly complex. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘sure I will.’

‘I’ll bring you coffee,’ Twill said and vanished off toward the stairs.

Great. Ceri stared at the runes, willing them to reveal to her how they were supposed to work. She reached out to touch one and… Something felt different. Turning her hand, she watched as the array turned as directed. Okay, so she could look at the whole thing by turning the model… A model! It was a model of the house and the runes built into the walls. Now that she saw it that way it was obvious; the arrangement was not “vaguely cubic,” it showed the positions of the runes in the building around it. Right. Now exactly where did that get her?

‘Wow, that’s cool.’ Ceri looked around to see Lily standing behind her, a mug of coffee in each hand. The half-succubus held out one of the mugs and Ceri took it with a nod of thanks before turning back to the model. ‘No,’ Lily said, ‘thank you.’

Ceri was concentrating. ‘Why?’ she said absently, and took a drink. The coffee felt good. She hoped it would help her neurons fire.

‘Fishnet, thong back,’ Lily said, ‘so sexy.’

Damn it! Why had she put this thing on this morning? Why had Twill not said anything? It was hardly practical for standing around in a cellar. Concentrate!

The nearest glyph was the dimmest, she reached out and touched it, and it expanded out from the model standing in front of her. Lily let out a little, delighted gasp and Ceri echoed her. She took another slug of caffeinated goodness, put the mug down and raised her left hand, slightly cupped. She concentrated, emptying her mind of everything, especially Lily standing there, behind her, watching her work magic, all naked and gorgeous with her nipples stiffening like… Concentrate!

The light in the hall grew as a ball of energy formed in Ceri’s left palm. It did not have the containment effects around it this time. It was her own power, it did what she wanted. Her right hand stretched out, index finger tracing the pattern of the rune, a fairly simple one. As it moved it left a trail of brighter silver behind it, until the rune was the brightest of the set. Her finger moved away and the image snapped back into position.

Ceri giggled and glanced at Lily. She was grinning with that same mix of glee and pride and adoration. ‘Do another!’ Lily exclaimed.

Working methodically, Ceri started tracing each sigil in turn, working from the dimmest to the brightest, holding her ball of thaumic energy like a reservoir of ink in her left hand. Lily was a background presence again as Ceri concentrated on her careful work. Once again she was just remaking what her parents had worked to create, but it felt good. It felt as though she were keeping up some family tradition which had never really existed.

There was one rune left, on the underside of the model. She twisted the block around to get at it, expanded it out, and followed the lines. It shone brightly for a second, and then snapped back. Ceri returned the model back to its original orientation…

The entire model flared brightly for an instant and Ceri heard Lily gasp. She felt it too, the power being transferred out from the model to the scattered runes in the building. Briefly she had an image of the house glowing in her mind, each and every part of the complex enchantment shining. There was a roaring sound in her ears… Then it was gone and the only sound was Lily panting. Ceri became aware that her own skin was tingling and her nipples were standing out.

‘Told you,’ Lily breathed, ‘you’re awesome.’

Soho

Expecting to go to the Jade Dragon, Ceri was a little surprised when Lily took her down a back alley far further down Dean Street. They stopped at a black painted door with a reinforced frame and Lily rapped on the wood, waiting patiently until the door was opened and the grinning form of Alec was standing there dressed in a towelling dressing gown. ‘Afternoon, ladies,’ the bartender said. ‘Come on in, everything’s ready. Head through to the main floor, Lil.’

A little confused, Ceri followed Lily in through the door, finding herself in a scruffy looking service passage. The half-succubus seemed to know where she was going, however, and walked confidently down the corridor, into what looked like changing rooms. Things became clearer when they left those through a side door and came out onto the floor of a club behind a screen designed to keep the patrons from seeing “backroom” activities. This was one of Carter’s clubs, but not one she had been to.

The main floor consisted of tables set around a central, catwalk-style stage with a chromed-steel pole mounted near the end. Set around the walls were more private booths, all equipped with low tables set a little further from the benches than Ceri thought practical, but then Ceri had never actually been the recipient of a lap dance.

A few of the tables at the end of the stage had been pulled back to make space for a trolley with equipment on it. Ceri’s gaze flicked briefly over it; there was a computer and something which looked like it was probably a digital thaumometer, but not a design she recognised. Standing beside it was Carter, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, talking to a petite, attractive girl who looked to be not much older than Ceri. She had cropped, strawberry-blonde hair and was dressed in a short, silk wrap pulled tight across a chest which looked a little large on her slight frame. As they approached, the blonde nodded toward them and Carter turned around, smiling.

‘Ceri, Lily, glad you could come,’ he said. ‘You know Alec, of course, Ceri, and this delightful young lady is Jasmine Bell.’ Ceri stepped forward and took the offered hand to shake. ‘Jasmine is one of the dancers here at the Collar Club,’ Carter added.

Now it made sense. Ceri had some vague memory of Lily mentioning the latest of Carter’s clubs, and seeing a report on it in The Wednesday Witch. The Collar Club, as was obvious, was a strip club, but it catered to weres and other people who liked watching girls with a built in fur coat dancing around a pole. The red in Jasmine’s hair should have clued Ceri in; if Jasmine was a dancer at the club, then she was a werefox. Ceri glanced around at Alec, who was now leaning on the edge of the stage. A wolf and a fox, both main bases covered.

‘So, you’re going to get them to change,’ she said to Carter, ‘and… what? Record the results for analysis, make sure the pattern’s the same.’

Carter smiled, showing a lot of very white teeth, and pointed at the trolley. ‘MagiTech-Killburn, Model Five-thousand, ten-channel, digital thaumometer, connected through via a high-speed data connection to the computer, which has the Killburn analysis software on it. I borrowed it from the university this morning.’

Ceri let out a little squeal of glee and began examining the various boxes on the trolley. As she examined the detector heads she heard Jasmine say, ‘Is she always like this?’

‘Generally,’ Lily replied, ‘but things are slowly changing. She recently got promoted from geeky academic norm to ultra-sexy goddess of magic and she’s taking time to adjust.’ Ceri blushed and tried enormously hard to concentrate on the equipment.

‘She doesn’t exactly look like an ultra-sexy goddess of magic,’ Jasmine said and Ceri started to breathe a sigh of relief; at least someone had perspective. ‘Not that she’s not hot,’ Jasmine added. Ceri hid under the trolley. ‘I mean,’ Jasmine said in a rather contemplative tone, ‘I would.’

Carter came to her rescue. ‘I was hoping, Ceri, that you would set up the sensor heads appropriately. We can trust Alec and Jasmine not to toss the furniture around when they change, so we can arrange the equipment as you see fit. I must admit, I’m not sure how we’re going to arrange it…’

Emerging from behind the trolley, Ceri looked up at Jasmine and the stage with its gleaming pole. ‘How many microphone stands have you got?’ she said. ‘And we’ll need duct tape, of course. Lots of duct tape.’

It took them around forty minutes, two microphone stands, and a fair amount of duct tape, to get the detectors set up the way Ceri wanted. They were left with nine detectors mounted on the stands and the dancing pole, forming three rings at roughly chest, waist, and knee height to Jasmine. They would be a little low on Alec, but not enough to worry about. The tenth detector was taped to a table as far from the stage as the cable would reach.

‘I don’t get how that one’s going to detect anything?’ Lily said, looking at the lonely grey box sitting all by itself.

‘It’s not supposed to,’ Ceri said, ‘which is why you’re going to stand nowhere near it.’ Lily pouted at her. ‘It’s called a “control,” Lil,’ Ceri explained. ‘It’s supposed to measure the background level during the experiment so that we can filter out external effects.’ She sometimes forgot that Lily had not done well in school, getting kicked out entirely at fifteen in what was referred to as “the Incident in the Gym.” Best scientific practice was not one of her life skills.

‘You’ll probably want me standing well away from the stage then?’ Lily said.

Ceri nodded. ‘But you won’t be alone, I’ll be standing beside you.’ Lily looked at her quizzically. ‘My power is new, I’m not sure how I’ll react,’ she explained. ‘It’s safer if Carter operates the machines.’

‘Which, I might add,’ Carter said, ‘is not exactly a skilled job. I just have to press a button to start recording and press it again to stop.’ He grinned. ‘Just my skill level, right up there with the trained monkeys.’

Ceri giggled. ‘Who’s first?’ she said.

‘Uh, that’s me,’ Alec said. ‘Carter? Could you…’ He trailed off, leaving Ceri confused until Carter picked up a small, wooden box from the trolley and carried it over to Ceri and Lily.

‘You two will need to wear these,’ the club owner said, opening the box. Lily immediately took out a silver amulet and slipped it over her head. Ceri took out a second one and looked at it. The amulet looked old, the silver black in the bottom of the marks carved into it. The design was that of a wolf’s head, but there was something caged within the silver. ‘Wolfsbane amulet,’ Carter explained. ‘Most werewolves don’t like to admit it, but they do become more animal in wolf form, and sometimes they have trouble with impulse control.’ He snapped the box closed as Ceri hung the amulet around her neck.

‘What about Jasmine?’ Ceri asked as the fox-girl started over, away from the detectors.

‘Oh, he won’t be bothered about me, hun,’ Jasmine said. ‘He’s got to be sexually attracted to someone for it to be an issue. Alec don’t do brush.’

Ceri glanced across at the big man as he climbed up onto the stage. ‘I should be fine then,’ she said, ‘he’s not interested…’

‘When we were talking about it earlier,’ Jasmine interrupted, ‘Carter said that Lily would have to wear one whether she liked it or not, and Alec said you would have to too.’ The werefox looked at her. ‘If I couldn’t smell the nervousness, I’d think you were fishing for compliments.’

‘She’s not,’ Lily said. ‘If there’s one thing she’s never done it’s ask for compliments.’

‘Are we ready, ladies?’ Carter said.

Ceri looked around and settled her mind to allow her Sight to manifest. Just as she began to see the overlay of energies and reality, she opened her mouth and said, ‘Yes.’ Then she bit her lips to suppress a gasp as Alec slipped his dressing gown off his shoulders and dumped it over the side of the stage. He was not some sort of Greek Adonis, but his body was firm and well-muscled, his skin tanned and taught. Thick hair covered his chest in a mat, thinning to a strip which ran down the centre of his stomach before fanning out again around a thick and quite long member hung between thick, muscled thighs. None of that was what had made her gasp, however. It was the scars, long ones, short ones, thin scratches and deep gouges. They covered his chest and, she saw when he turned, his back.

Alec glanced over at the three girls watching from one of the booths and spotted Ceri looking at him wide-eyed. She could tell he got slightly the wrong impression since the thick shaft between his legs chose that moment to grow slightly larger. Ceri felt her cheeks heating up.

‘Recording,’ Carter said. ‘In your own time, Alec.’

Ceri saw the beginning of it this time, a flare of light at the base of his spine, the Root of the Chakral Median. Every vertebrate ever discovered had two Medians, the Chakral which ran up the spine, and the Tantric which ran from the pituitary gland to the sex organs. As she watched, the flare of light became a torrent of energy building upward until it reached the Crown at the very top of his skull. With the primary power bar formed there was a fraction of a second’s break and then the same, magnet-like field flickered into existence around Alec’s body.

‘Well I’ll be thrice damned and eaten by demons,’ Carter said, his eyes on the computer screen. Ceri could not see what he was seeing from her angle, but she guessed the detectors were working. Her gaze flicked back to Alec and she saw that the field was contracting much more rapidly than it had on the Dog Boy in the Jade Dragon. It made sense; Alec was changing on purpose where the other had been giving in to instinct or emotion. The collapse went ever faster until the swirling colours fell in upon themselves. Alec’s body seemed to shine and, for a brief second, Ceri could see both the man and the wolf-man standing there. There was a pulse of energy which seemed to sweep out over the room, and then the dual image was gone and there was a huge, black-furred creature standing in Alec’s place. He looked around the room and ran a huge tongue over jaws which came supplied with an impressive array of vicious-looking teeth.

Carter, who had seen this happen a number of times, was entirely un-phased. He hit the button to stop the recording and said, ‘Thank you, Alec. Ceri, do you want to take a look at this?’

Standing quickly, Ceri hurried over to look at the monitor with its ten traces. All except the control detector’s showed a sudden surge of level, then a drop off which increased in rate. The instant of change was marked by a sudden pulse which had hit the control a fraction of a second after the others with barely any drop off in power. Ceri nodded and turned around.

Somehow, Alec had managed to slip off the stage and get around behind her without her noticing, to look over her shoulder at the screen. He backed away from the amulet she was wearing, looking slightly pained, but she could not help but notice the erection he was sporting. She quickly looked up into his big eyes and tried to appear as if she had not noticed. He looked down at her, licked his lips, and made a soft growling noise in his throat. Ceri swallowed; the only thing stopping him using that tongue on her was the amulet she was wearing.

Alec seemed to know it too. He gave what sounded a little like a whimper and backed away, sinking into one of the booths on the opposite side of the room from where Lily and Jasmine were sitting. ‘Can’t he just turn back?’ Ceri asked Carter.

It was Jasmine who replied as she walked over to take her place on the stage. ‘Takes a lot of energy to shift, hun,’ she said. ‘It’s less to turn back, but you can’t just snap between the two in an instant. And it’s worse for wolves.’ She dropped her robe into Ceri’s arms, gave a little smile, and bounced up onto the stage, slipping into the middle of the triangle of detectors. The werefox had a perfectly tanned body with the musculature of a dancer. Where Alec had just stood on the stage, Jasmine posed. ‘Ready when you are,’ she said and Ceri hurried back to her booth to sit down beside Lily.

The half-succubus leaned closer and whispered, ‘Alec’s certainly got a hard-on for you.’ Ceri’s cheeks absolutely flamed. ‘Not that I blame him…’

Ceri did her best to ignore her friend and concentrate on Jasmine. ‘Recording,’ Carter said, glancing up and smiling at the she-fox, ‘unfortunately not on video.’

‘Maybe later, gorgeous,’ Jasmine said, and Ceri saw the same flare of light in her that had begun the transformation process in Alec.

There seemed to be two main differences between the species. The first thing Ceri noticed was that the pulse which had blasted out from Alec as he shifted was missing from Jasmine’s change. The second, of course, was that she was left looking at a sexy fox-girl instead of a huge wolf-man. Alec’s changed form had no tail, but Jasmine’s had a large, luxurious brush. Her features were more humanoid as well. It had been theorised that werewolves had evolved long before werefoxes, and that the latter had developed in a manner which made them more suitable to live alongside humans. Certainly, there was a significant werefox-fetish culture, but the humans who got off on female werewolves were a lot fewer.

‘No final pulse,’ Carter said, musing over the screen even as a very sexy, lithe she-fox began to cuddle up to him with fairly obvious intentions. His statement backed up what Ceri had seen. ‘That’s most interesting and, ah! Jasmine, could you just give me a minute before you start doing that?’ Jasmine pouted, but removed her hand from the growing bulge in Carter’s jeans.

‘Do you think that’s the catalyst for the cascade effect?’ Ceri asked, checking the screen. ‘I take it that doesn’t happen with foxes?’

‘No,’ Carter said, ‘it doesn’t.’ He looked at the traces, placing Alec’s set on top of Jasmine’s to compare, and nodded. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that we can make this work. We’ll trial it here. Every time someone gets over-excited in this place, we have to close for three days while the damage is repaired. If we can get to them before they change…’ He grinned at Ceri. ‘You, young lady, have just saved me a lot of money. I knew you were a good investment.’ Jasmine was pulling at his shirt; he looked a little uncomfortable. ‘Could I ask a huge favour? If you could pack things up here? This one’s been horny all morning and if I don’t let her have her way soon I’ll be healing the scratches for weeks.’

‘We’ll manage,’ Lily said, giggling as Jasmine started to pull Carter toward one of the doors behind the stage. Lily grinned at Ceri. ‘He loves it really. He personally interviews every girl who works here.’

Ceri shut down the machines and climbed onto the stage to start stripping down the detectors. ‘Get the one on the table, would you Lil?’ she said. She worked fairly quickly, but by the time she had finished she turned to see Lily standing at the end of the stage looking up at her with a twinkle in her eye. ‘What?’ she said, grinning bemusedly.

‘Ever thought about… y’know… dancing?’ the half-demon said, nodding at the pole.

‘Huh? No, I couldn’t…’

‘Got the body for it,’ Alec said. He was pulling on his fluffy dressing gown and was back to his normal shape, but there was still a slightly embarrassing tenting of the front of the robe. ‘But I don’t think the temperament.’ He grinned. ‘Oh, you can take off those pendants now. I may still have the desire to do the same things I did ten minutes ago, but I’ve got the self-control to avoid actually doing them.’

‘Shame,’ Lily said. ‘I’m sure Ceri’d have taken her amulet off if you’d growled nicely.’

‘Hey!’ Ceri squeaked. Part of the outrage stemmed from the fact that she had had half a mind to do just that. The other half had been much stronger, and scared.

‘Don’t tease her, Lil,’ Alec said. ‘You two go, I’ll finish up here.’

‘You sure?’ Ceri asked, hopping down from the stage.

Alec nodded. ‘Carter’s going to be… busy for a while longer yet. I’ll wait for him. Go… do whatever you do.’

~~~

The sun was hot and lying in it felt good after a morning and half an afternoon spent inside. Ceri lay with her eyes closed, letting the heat seep into her body. Today she could understand what Lily saw in it, even if she still had to cover herself in sun oil to do it.

A yard or two away, Lily lay naked on her lounger, apparently content to just be near Ceri. Maybe, just maybe, the time was up and things would settle down again. If Ceri were honest, she enjoyed the attention she had been getting, and would miss it a little. However, having her friend back to being her friend would be good, and in the future, if they did slip they could just laugh it off as something nice which had happened and Lily would not be a cinder, or a slave.

Thinking about it, she had been getting more attention from more than just Lily. Jasmine had never met her before, so perhaps she just liked slightly boyish girls, but Alec had been distinctly uninterested before the accident and now… She shivered at the thought of him standing there not really hiding his attraction to her. Carter was more complex. He seemed attracted, but then he showed interest in anything with two X chromosomes. Something, though, was holding him back and she did not understand that. Nothing seemed to hold Carter Fleming back from what he wanted.

Up here on the roof, Ceri had said she felt like someone had let in the air. Lily had said it was more like Ceri had been let out of a box. She did feel more confident, most of the time anyway. Was it just the magic? Or had something else been let out?

She turned onto her front, settling her cheek onto her forearms and relaxing. There was a creak from the other lounger and she felt Lily’s hip touch hers briefly as she sat down. ‘You’ll get burnt,’ the half-succubus said, her voice quiet, as though too much sound would break the afternoon. Ceri felt the ties on her bra being untied and laid aside, and then heard the oil bottle being unscrewed. Strong fingers began to massage the oil into her shoulders.

Ceri relaxed. Lily was giving her a massage rather than spreading the oil, but there was the heat of the sun, and skilled fingers working deep into her muscles, and it felt great. Lily added more oil and worked down Ceri’s spine, hands fanning out to either side, pressing the muscles into relaxation. Neither woman said a thing; Ceri lay there, enjoying the moment. She barely noticed as the ties on her briefs were undone, the cloth pushed off her behind and dropped between legs which had once again spread automatically. Delicate yet powerful fingers worked over the small of her back and slid over her buttocks. Her hips were worked over and the hands were moving down over her thighs. As the oil was stroked over her inner thighs, Ceri became aware that the heat was not just coming from the sun. Suddenly Lily’s breathing was loud in her ears, slightly laboured, excited.

Ceri stiffened. ‘No, Lily,’ she said. The hands caressed higher between her legs. ‘Lily, no. Stop. Now!’ She lay on the lounger, breathing hard as the weight beside her vanished, uncomfortably aware of her own arousal.

Not quite there yet, Ceri thought. Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep. Everything would be all right in the morning.

September 28th

Ceri opened her eyes, blinking in the light. Something was off and she could not place it. She had had a dream… She shook her head and checked the time. Ten-thirty; a little later than she had thought. Throwing the sheets aside she swung her legs out of bed and… She was kind of sticky. Whatever the dream had been, it had obviously been a good one. She giggled softly and padded to the bathroom for a shower. What had the dream been about?

Lily standing over her as she lay in bed, pulling back the sheets. Her eyes glowing red in the darkness.

The hot water felt good on her skin as she washed away the night’s apparently rather damp activities. She squeezed gel into her hands and started to soap herself. Her hands… Lily’s hands sliding over her skin, touching her breasts… Ceri shook her head, frowning. Then she shrugged and continued washing.

Back in her room, she opened her cupboard and considered what to wear. Should she wear anything? Lily did not wear clothes around the house. But Lily liked it when she wore something sexy. She would wear something sexy for Lily. She pulled out a translucent teddy with a pretty design of roses woven into the mesh. It had a thong back and a halter neck; Lily would like that. She sat on the bed and pulled it up her legs, stretching it up and over her head. Checking herself in the mirror, she nodded, and then headed downstairs to the kitchen.

Twill had made coffee. Ceri made herself some toast and sat at the table, reading the morning paper. Her toast finished, she starting drinking her coffee. She glanced at the door, and then went back to the newspaper. Halfway through the coffee she realised she was waiting for Lily.

Lily’s mouth on hers, hot and hungry. Their breasts pressed together. Their lips separated and there were words, whispered words in her ear, the hot breath against her skin exciting. ‘You’re such a tease…’

Ceri blinked, wondering what she should do. The house’s wards were at full strength again, she could relax, kick back and enjoy herself. But what did she want to do? She wondered what Lily would want to do. She finished her coffee, set aside her newspaper, and padded out of the kitchen. Without really thinking about it, she went up two flights of stairs and knelt down in front of Lily’s bedroom door. And waited.

~~~

She seemed to have been hanging on the edge of orgasm for hours, thrashing and whimpering on the tip of Lily’s expert tongue. There seemed no end to it, so when the end did finally come it was like an explosion happening though her entire body. She lay gasping on the bed as Lily raised her head and smiled down, licking her lips. All Ceri wanted was more, but Lily stood, moving to the door.

The half-succubus paused in the doorway and looked back. ‘Mine,’ she said.

The bedroom door opened and Ceri looked up adoringly at Lily’s naked body. She wanted nothing more than to feel that body against hers again. There had been no dream; Lily had come in the night, just like a real succubus.

Lily smiled. ‘You look beautiful, pet,’ she said. ‘Stand up.’

Ceri stood, one foot slightly before the other, hands behind her back. She did not meet Lily’s eyes. Lily’s fingers touched her cheek and it felt as though every nerve in her body reacted. She let out a tiny moan.

‘Go and wait in the bedroom,’ Lily said. ‘You’re mine now. We’re going to have such a good time.’

~~~

‘My gorgeous pet,’ Lily said, her voice possessive. Ceri said nothing; her mouth was currently full of a large, rubber ball fixed around her head with a leather strap. She had not known Lily had the thing, or the pairs of handcuffs which secured her wrists to the headboard, but it had not surprised her when Lily had produced them. She had done nothing to resist being trussed up either.

Lily was between Ceri’s spread legs, her face close enough to Ceri’s sex that her breath could be felt when she spoke. Ceri wanted her closer, would do anything Lily asked just to have the half-succubus’ tongue sliding between her labia again. She looked down into Lily’s dark eyes, begging silently.

‘You want more, pet?’

Ceri nodded, and then her back arched as Lily slid two fingers into her. Lily knew exactly how to touch her. She had learned Ceri’s body quickly, aided by her supernatural senses and the skills she had learned pleasing all sorts of people before they had ever met. She knew when to tease, when to be tender, when to be hard. She knew where to stroke, how Ceri’s body reacted to every touch, pinch, and thrust. As Lily’s fingers began to thrust and circle, finding just the right spot inside Ceri to gain maximum effect, Ceri’s breathing quickened until she was panting, desperate for more.

Lily’s tongue found her clitoris, flicking it rapidly, and Ceri felt the now familiar sensation of tension beginning somewhere in the flesh between fingers and tongue. There was a pulse. Another, stronger this time. Ceri bit down on the gag, her eyes jamming shut. The pulse grew to a throb and Ceri felt herself starting to come… And then the thing she longed for began as Lily started to feed. Ceri was delivered into heaven; the long, drawn-out, incredibly intense climax which kept on happening as Ceri arched and thrashed and trembled for as long as Lily kept feeding. It was like dying. It was like living harder than Ceri had ever lived. And, when Lily finally released her, it was like her entire body was exploding into light.

And all Ceri wanted, all she desired, all she could think of, was getting more.

September 29th

Some part of Ceri’s mind was still working, analysing the situation and pointing out to her how stupid she was being. It told her that she was being used. It told her that she was so caught up in the incredible pleasure Lily was inducing in her that she was ignoring everything else. It told her that the attention she was getting, which she had longed for without even realising it, was not good attention. It pointed out that this kind of relationship could only end when Lily made a mistake and Ceri died.

Ceri was not listening to a thing her inner voice said. Not while Lily was anywhere in sight. She knew that Lily’s aura, the one that made her feel so good, worked in some way through her sense of vision. When Lily was out of the room, the little voice was louder, but not loud enough that what it was saying did not vanish as soon as her demon walked in again. When Lily was not in sight, Ceri could consider disobeying her, but then Lily would be disappointed and Ceri had started to realise that she would do anything to avoid disappointing Lily.

The half-demon, who seemed so much more like a demon every day, walked into the room and Ceri’s mind shrank back again. The flogger was in her hand and she twitched it, the strips flicking her thigh. Ceri got down on all fours, as she had been taught, and the flogger swished through the air, biting into her arse. She bit down on the cry which threatened to come out and get her more, and worse, strokes.

‘Do you love me, pet?’ Lily asked.

‘Yes, Lily.’ The day before she had used “Mistress” and got a spanking for it. That was still confusing her.

The whip swung again, several strands stinging her labia and sending a thrill of pleasure through her; it had taken very little time for her to learn to associate the pain with pleasure. ‘Then why didn’t you do something about it before I took you?’ Lily asked. Her voice was firm, but there was a hint of something odd behind it. Insecurity?

‘I made a mistake, Lily. I was stupid.’

‘Yes,’ the flogger swept down again, harder this time, ‘you were. I’m sure you can make up for it though.’

Another strike and Ceri was trembling. Yes, somehow she had to make up for it.

September 30th

Ceri sat in the study, reading a document on her tablet. It was hard to concentrate, but with Lily out of the house at work it was at least possible to. She had half-expected that she would be taken to the Jade Dragon to sit at the bar watching Lily work, unable to do anything much more than look on adoringly. Instead, her new mistress had decided she should stay home, but to remind her of her new role in life, a vibrating egg had been carefully lubricated, activated, and sunk into Ceri’s already slick vagina, and she had been ordered not to remove it under any circumstances. Lily might not have been a full succubus, but her human side supplied imaginative ways of subjugating her pet which a true succubus might never have considered.

It was quite clear that Ceri had stopped reading too soon. While giving in to your succubus too early is bad, leaving things too late can be deadly, she read. Waiting too long is likely to push the demon into taking action herself. Yeah, she definitely should have read this bit. Generally, the demon will come at night, while you sleep. This is, after all, the normal mode of operation of a succubus. If she takes control in this manner, you will be hers. Few men can break away once they are claimed, but there have been a few examples. Do not fool yourself; should a succubus take you under her power, you are almost certainly doomed to be nothing more than her slave for life. She will make use of you until you perish, which may not take long, and while it is not the worst way to go, you should take command of your succubus before it happens.

Ceri shuddered, her inner muscles clenched convulsively. Inside her the egg shifted, the buzzing vibration rolling against her G-spot, and she let out a yelp of pleasure. She understood the problem well enough; the thought of being enslaved to Lily did not seem like such a terrible thing from where she was right now. She did not want to escape, or most of her was thinking that way. Some small part still wanted her friend back, and that was the part she was trying to listen to.

A powerful magician may break free by will alone, the book went on. This is by no means a certain path to freedom. The great sorcerer Merlin himself was overpowered by a succubus at the end of his time on Earth and was never able to break free. Taking his power, she entrapped him. Yeah, well if sorcerers had ever been real, there were certainly none now, and Ceri highly doubted she had the willpower to resist Lily, even if she was only trying to break away from the power of a half-demon.

Those of more meagre power can only hope to escape by outwitting the demon, or through their skill. While this may seem simple, demons have much more experience of magic than humans do. A skilled wizard will find a way of tricking the demon into freeing him. There is also one tale of a wizard who bent a succubus to his will after falling by beating her at her own game. How this was done, however, is unknown.

Ceri turned off the tablet and sagged back onto the chaise longe. It was after midnight, but she probably had four more hours of relative freedom to plan before Lily came home. A soft moan escaped her lips as her movement moved the egg. She should take the thing out to help herself concentrate… But Lily would know. Somehow she would know and be displeased.

Standing up, Ceri walked as best she could out onto the landing and up the stairs. She had meant to go to her room, but found herself in Lily’s. At least she had changed the sheets when Lily had gone out so she was not surrounded by the thick smell of sex. She lay down, pulling the sheets up to her neck. A minute later she was sobbing softly. What the hell was she going to do?

~~~

There was no scent of lavender this time, just the smell of burning rubber. There was still the cliff edge, the beach below, and the burning car in the sand. And this time there was the urge to jump; leap out over the edge and die in the burning wreck.

‘Hardly a way out which really solves anything.’ The voice was her father’s; she had pretty much expected it.

‘I figured you’d say something like that,’ she replied. ‘You were always big on self-reliance. Then instead of helping me get it, you saddled me with those tattoos.’

‘Yes. So why do you think I did that?’

‘We did it, dear,’ her mother said. ‘It was both of us, not just your father. It was all a matter of power and understanding. So much is about power and understanding it.’

‘Everything’s changed since the accident,’ Ceri said. ‘I know the tattoos did something to me other than protecting me. It’s like my personality changed when they went.’

‘That doesn’t matter now, Ceri,’ her father said. ‘What matters now is that you’re standing on the edge and you need to decide whether to jump into the fire or face your fear.’

‘I can’t stand up to her,’ Ceri said. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Of course you can, dear,’ her mother said. ‘You’ve been doing it for years now. You just have to overcome your fear and do it.’

‘But I’m afraid of Lily… aren’t I?’

Her mother’s laughter was almost musical. ‘Oh no, she isn’t who you’re afraid of at all. You’re afraid of the same person we were when we made your enchantments.’

‘You’re afraid of yourself,’ her father said. Ceri started to turn to look at him. She got an impression of a shape in the corner of her eye, but it seemed indistinct, foggy. ‘Time to make a choice,’ she heard him say, and below her on the beach, the car wreck exploded…

‘Nightmare, pet?’ Ceri blinked and looked up from the bed. Lily was there, not looking back as she undressed. The sight of her made Ceri’s breath catch in her throat. ‘Not to worry,’ Lily went on, ‘I’ll make all the nightmares go away.’ She turned, her eyes burning red in the dim light of the barely risen half-moon coming through the window. ‘Except for me, of course.’

Ceri felt the wave of heat pass over her, the wetness beginning between her legs. Once again she was powerless to resist as her Mistress stepped forward to take her… And Ceri saw the streams of energy winding out from her demon lover. The rational bit of her shrinking mind kicked into overdrive in a desperate attempt to regain a foothold on reason.

Every vertebrate discovered had two Medians. Running up the spine was the Chakral Median, the centre of power of almost all Earth entities. Running from the sex organs to the pituitary gland was the Tantric Median. In most demons the two Medians were balanced, but in sex demons it was the Tantric Median which provided their power. Ceri watched the flow beginning to establish; her own Median beginning to connect to Lily’s, feeding her energy, giving her power, turning Ceri into a toy to be played with.

So much is about power and understanding it. What would happen if she took control of that power exchange?

Lily stopped, one knee on the edge of the bed. The light in her eyes went out and back on as she blinked and then stepped back. ‘What… what are you doing?’ she stammered. Ceri said nothing, her eyes pinching as she concentrated on the wisps of energy which curled between them. It was so hard… ‘Stop… stop it, p-pet.’ So hard, but getting easier. The patterns which marked out Lily’s aura brightened around them as the half-succubus reacted, but Ceri shrugged them aside, pushing the lines to slide around herself. ‘Ceri… no!’ Lily’s voice was sounding pleading now. ‘You c-can’t… Please don’t…’

Ceri broke the connection between them, pinching off the bands of force as they emerged from her body. The effect was dramatic as the lines snapped back into Lily and she jerked as if shot. Ceri watched the sudden burst of power at the very core of Lily’s sex, thaumic feedback from the severing of the bond, and knew that that would not be enough. ‘I’m sorry, Lil,’ she whispered, ‘but I have to do this…’ Reaching out with both mind and hand, Ceri focussed on the light in Lily’s groin and made it grow.

Lily fell to her knees. The light in her eyes had gone out and she looked up at Ceri with the same sort of imploring expression that she had received outside the bedroom door as Ceri waited for her. Moving slowly, Ceri slid off the bed. A star of blue fire began to grew in her hand and Lily looked down at it, her eyes begging for… what? A streamer of light squirmed its way out of Ceri’s palm like something out of a hentai movie, bending and twisting until it met Lily’s body. The half-succubus stiffened and let out a long, low moan of pleasure. Energy throbbed along her Tantric median; her eyes rolled back, her body shook, and Ceri poured in the energy, not letting up.

‘M-mistress…’ Lily’s voice was barely above a whisper. ‘Please… make me come…’

Ceri clenched her fist and Lily started screaming as the pleasure washed over her.

~~~

It was not until Ceri was heading down the stairs to the kitchen that she realised that Twill was in there, cooking, and that she had not seen the fairy in days. Bouncing onto the slate tiles, she grinned at the bobbing, nut-brown girl and said, ‘Hey, Twill. Where’ve you been?’

‘Avoiding you two,’ Twill replied. ‘It wasn’t that hard since you’ve spent the last two days going at it like rabbits in the mating season.’ She considered briefly and then added, ‘Hyperactive rabbits in the mating season who haven’t seen any other rabbits in years and…’

‘Uh, yeah, I get it,’ Ceri said, breaking into the train of analogy. ‘You can stop now before my cheeks catch fire.’

‘Actually,’ Twill commented dryly, ‘you’re not even pink. Nor should you be, really; good sex is not something to be embarrassed about. I am glad you finally broke out of it though. It was making both of you miserable.’

Ceri frowned. They had both been miserable? ‘Well why didn’t you help?’ she asked, pushing herself up to sit on the edge of the kitchen table.

Not looking around from the frying pan, the fairy shook her head. ‘You had to do it yourself. It’s your house, you have to be Mistress of it. If I’d told you what to do, you’d be relying on me in the future.’ Food began to move into its final stages of preparation. ‘Besides, I had no idea how you could break free.’ Ceri giggled. ‘At least you’re brighter this morning,’ Twill said as the bacon sandwich assembled itself. ‘And when Lily comes down, I’ll be here to help you help her through the next part.’

‘Next part? Got to say, Lily didn’t seem too upset about it all? Actually, she seemed to be enjoying it. A lot.’

‘Her demon side took over,’ Twill said, waving her arm to waft the sandwich into Ceri’s waiting hands. ‘You’ve been her little rock of stability for five years. Your enchantment gave her focus. She had her natural inclination to… solidify your relationship with sex, but she couldn’t because of the tattoos, and so she had to control herself. You gave her a reason to not be a succubus and she hated sinking into it again. Now you need to help her get over the fact that she did.’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said. ‘I guess I should’ve noticed…’

‘You probably would have if you’d been thinking with something other than your genitals, dear.’ Ceri pouted in reply. ‘Now,’ Twill went on, ‘you can start using your brain again, but…’

‘But what, Twill?’

‘Just don’t forget you have a body as well. She’s coming.’ There was a shimmer and a blur of movement, and the little fae vanished into the air. Ceri blinked and looked around.

Lily stood meekly in the doorway, black eyes downcast. She waited there, not entering the room, and she said nothing. Ceri looked at her for a second or two and then said, ‘Come in here, Lil.’ The half-succubus walked in, her feet making no sound. Stopping right in front of Ceri, she dropped to her knees, put her shoulders back, and posed, eyes still downcast, the perfect demon pet. ‘Well you can stop that for a start,’ Ceri snapped. ‘Widder take it, Lily, look at me!’

The look on Lily’s face as she did so was heart breaking. She looked like a little girl, confused and frightened. Ceri had never seen her like that before and she did not want to now. ‘You won,’ Lily said, her voice a quiet monotone. ‘I’m yours now.’

‘Fuck that!’ Ceri replied.

‘But, Mistress…’

‘No!’ Now Ceri was angry; there was no way she was letting her friend become her slave, none! ‘You stop this, Lily Carpenter. You’re not some demon I summoned to warm my bed at night, you’re my friend. You’re half human, for Christ’s sake. Get on your feet.’

Reluctantly, Lily stood up. Ceri’s little rant seemed to have had some effect; Lily looked a little more herself, but still not happy. ‘You don’t understand, Ceri,’ she said wearily.

‘Then explain it to me, Lil. I’ve been trying to work things out from text books designed for wizards with full demons, and little bits of Twill’s “wisdom” when she feels like imparting it.’ She knew full well that Twill was somewhere in the room, hidden behind a spell, but if the fairy was going to hide, she could take the odd shot. ‘Give me something real to work with, huh?’

A small smile touched Lily’s lips. ‘Always the scientist,’ she said. She pulled one of the chairs out so that she could sit down. For a second it looked as though she was going to stop and ask permission, but she managed to sit without asking. ‘Half-demon’s not like… half-Irish,’ she said. ‘A doctor tried to explain it to Mother once. Physically I’m mostly human. There are differences, obvious ones, yeah? But I’m more human than not.’ Ceri nodded. Demons did have markedly different physiology to humans, but half-succubi had all the same organs in all the same places. Aside from the odd chromosome, they were identical to humans genetically. There was just enough difference to make inter-breeding impossible.

‘Mentally,’ Lily said, ‘my demon side matured faster. When I hit puberty it more or less took over. That’s what caused “the incident in the gym.” Well, mostly. All those hot, sweaty girls in little shorts… When an entire girls’ school, teachers and students, ends up banging each other for five hours straight… Well, I got kicked out. I couldn’t control it. I can’t control it. Maybe someday, but not yet.’

‘But you’ve been living here for five years, Lil,’ Ceri said, confused. ‘You were fine…’

‘Because you gave me power over my demon, Ceri.’ Lily was looking down again, not meeting Ceri’s eyes, but this was shame, not submission. ‘When Carter gave you the computer, he said it was for helping me, right? He knows it wasn’t just his offer of a job and his support that got me out of the mess I was in. For the first time since I was twelve, I could have a friend instead of a potential lover. And if my succubus-side did try anything, you were a threat I could use to beat it down. I had control for once. Then you went and turned into a mage of some sort.’

‘Okay,’ Ceri said, ‘I read up on succubus behaviour, so I can figure the rest. Question is, what do we do now?’

Lily sighed. ‘I think… I think if you’re not going to be my mistress I better go. Find somewhere else to live. On my own. Otherwise it’ll just start again and…’

‘No,’ Ceri said, shaking her head, ‘I’m not having that. You’re my friend for one thing, and on your own you’ll just end up losing yourself. No, there’s got to be another way…’ She chewed her lip, frowning in concentration. Don’t forget you have a body as well… ‘What if…’ she said, pausing and considering her words, ‘what if we kind of… part time it?’

‘Huh?’ Lily said, looking up.

‘Well, it’s all about power, right?’ Ceri explained. ‘Your demon side wants it, but it also respects it. You keep an eye on it and when you think it’s getting above its station, you let me know and I’ll go all Mistress on its arse. I’m still the threat you can use to control it, plus you learn to control it more. You gain power over your inner-succubus, and I get my friend back.’

Lily’s lips quirked into a grin; this time it reached her eyes. ‘With the added benefits package,’ she said. Ceri giggled. Lily’s face straightened. ‘You’re really prepared to do that?’ she asked. ‘Be my mistress when you need to?’

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said. ‘How hard can it be?’

‘You’ll have to order me about,’ Lily said.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Order me to pleasure you in all sorts of ways.’

‘Well that’s not exactly going to be an onerous task,’ Ceri said, grinning.

Lily stayed quite serious, but there was a twinkle in her eye. ‘Degrade me at whim,’ she said. ‘Dress me up in sexy outfits and have me parade about the house. Or the garden!’ A little shiver went through her body.

‘Uh…’

‘Spank me! Humiliate me! Bend me over the kitchen table and…’

‘Okay! Okay!’ Ceri yelled, breaking into the increasingly exultant tirade. Lily giggled. ‘You’re just doing that to wind me up.’

‘Is it working?’ Lily asked coyly.

‘Well I’m considering spanking you,’ Twill said, appearing between them.

‘Hands off,’ Ceri said, almost managing to keep her face straight, ‘she’s my succubus.’ She grinned, and exchanged a look with Lily. It was true, she was.

Part Three: Sorcery

Stockwell, London, October 6th 2010

Vassall Road was not too far from High Towers, so the Community Learning Centre there seemed like the easiest place for Ceri to gain her Public Practitioner’s Certificate. Anyone planning to make a living out of magic was required to have one; it certified that the bearer had basic competency and, most importantly, knew enough to be safe. Ceri had no plans to actually practice professionally, but a PPC made life easier if she ever had to do anything the police took an interest in, and the university required one if she was to raise circles for Cheryl. So, night school it was.

The building was fairly modern, just the kind of place councils put up to house “adult learning” centres. Ceri walked in through the front door along with various other students, most of them far older and who seemed to know each other. She guessed they went to a lot of night classes. Well, it was something to do.

There was a reception desk at the back of the foyer, staffed by a happy-looking middle-aged woman. Ceri stepped up, holding the pamphlet the university had given her and looking lost. ‘Um, excuse me, ma’am,’ she said, and the woman looked up, still smiling a bright smile.

‘Yes, dear,’ she said. ‘You look like you’re new. Which course did you want?’

‘I’m here for the PPC course,’ Ceri said.

The woman’s smile faltered. ‘Oh. That. You want room two-thirteen. Up the stairs, end of the corridor.’ Her nose wrinkled slightly. ‘Away from the other classes.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Ceri said, turning away and heading for a set of wide stairs at one end of the room. Magic had been around for over sixty years now, out in public view, but some people still did not like it much.

Sure enough, while there were people talking and laughing in the rooms near the stairs, there was nothing further down the corridor until she got to the end where a lone door stood open with the lights on inside. There were five other people already there; a disparate bunch of would-be practitioners looking to make their fortune with their talent. There was an irritated-looking man in a business suit, a boy and a girl who looked to be about college age, a girl wearing too much black who smelled of home-brew potions, and a teenage girl. Maybe the last one had other reasons for taking the course; she seemed a little young to be doing it for professional reasons. They were scattered through the room, largely ignoring each other. Ceri picked a chair at the front and sat down, taking her tablet from her shoulder bag and proceeding to open a note-taking application.

She felt… something and looked up at the door. A dark-skinned man with gorgeous bone structure and a thin frame, and the look of someone who found his job annoying at best, was standing in the doorway. His gaze flicked around the room, then he sucked his teeth and walked up to the front desk to dump a briefcase. The thud of it landing on the table summoned the attention of the others; except the teenager who had also noticed his entry.

‘Good evening,’ he said in a voice which was a little deeper than his body suggested. His tone suggested that the last thing he really wished them was a “good” evening. ‘I’m Carl Bellamy. I’ll be your tutor for this course. If you aren’t here to gain a Public Practitioner Certificate, you’re in the wrong room.’ He paused for a second in case anyone had actually been sitting there for the wrong course. ‘No? Good. This will be five, three hour sessions followed by an exam. Assuming you don’t mess up you’ll get your certificate on the last day. Any questions?’ No one spoke and Bellamy sighed. ‘All right, let’s go ‘round the room. Who are you, why are you here?’ He pointed at the man in the suit.

‘Daniel Watts,’ the man said. ‘Professional wizard. I’m renewing my certificate after… an incident.’ An incident, yeah. The PPC was good for life, he would have had to have had it revoked by court order.

‘Uh, Jane Peters, student.’ That was the female student, of course, and next up was…

‘Lee Marks, I’m also a student, uh, at the Met.’

‘Oh, I’m at the Met too,’ Jane said, grinning. ‘Thaumaturgy and Evocation,’ she added.

‘Applied Wizardry,’ Lee said. He grinned too; Ceri thought she might gag.

Bellamy coughed and they looked slightly guiltily at him, and the introductions moved on. ‘Lisa Tooley,’ said the teenager. ‘I’m an actress. The studio needs me to be certified before I can work now I’m sixteen.’

‘Raven Darkbride,’ said the witch in the black outfit. Ceri bit back a wince. ‘I’m a witch.’ No kidding! That seemed to be all they were getting from her. It just left Ceri.

‘I’m Ceridwyn Brent,’ she said. ‘I work at the Metropolitan. I need to be certificated for my job.’ The wizard and the two students recognised her name, and Bellamy narrowed his eyes slightly; he had probably read the newspaper article about the accident.

‘All right,’ Bellamy said, ‘we’ll be doing some practical work and evaluation tomorrow, but I’m required to start with the basic safety proficiencies, which you will be required to take a small test on before we can move on. I would therefore appreciate it if you would learn these rules by tomorrow evening since I will be required to flunk you immediately if you fail.’ His gaze fell on Raven. She looked a little uncomfortable. Not her first time here then. ‘Miss Darkbride, let’s have… three of the potion safety rules. I’m sure you remember them…’

Raven grimaced and shifted in her seat. Ceri gave it an even chance she would be out tomorrow evening.

Kennington, October 7th

Ceri opened her eyes and raised her head slightly to see the clock. It was just after eight; if she got up now she would have time for a shower before work. On the other hand, fifteen more minutes in bed seemed like a really nice idea. It was warm and comfy, and Lily was cuddled up against her back.

The half-succubus had taken to slipping quietly into Ceri’s bed at night, especially after coming home from the Dragon. She never tried anything, just cuddled up and went to sleep. It was almost childlike and the only bit of daily submission Ceri allowed. If she were honest, she liked it; it was an intimate kind of friendly act, but it felt friendly rather than erotic.

Still, the shower would be good too. She slipped out of Lily’s embrace and out to the bathroom. The water felt good, and the peach-scented body scrub smelled nice. Lily had bought it for her the week before, and proceeded to wash her with it. She grinned as she remembered. They had actually had to do the whole “Mistress and succubus” thing once in the last week, but Lily had suggested they “practice” once or twice more. Ceri had been suspicious about that until she had had a fit of the giggles during their first try out and had realised that it was actually harder than she had thought.

Drying off, she headed back to the bedroom and set about selecting something to wear. With a bra and knickers on, she turned to find a sleepy half-demon pouting at her. ‘I’m working,’ she said, knowing exactly what the pout was for, ‘not clubbing, and if your demon side doesn’t like it then her mistress says she can lump it.’ She went to the wardrobe and pulled out some jeans.

‘I like it when you dress sexy,’ Lily said. ‘I think it suits you. I think it’s more you than frumpy is.’

‘Frumpy?’ Ceri replied, standing up after pulling on her jeans. She took a white T-shirt from a drawer and pulled it on over her head. It was a little small for her, always had been, but it had the Metropolitan University logo on the front and it made her feel sort of patriotic.

‘Okay,’ Lily conceded, ‘not frumpy, and your arse looks awesome in those jeans.’

Ceri grinned and sat on the bed to put her trainers on. ‘Suck-up,’ she chided. ‘Go back to sleep.

Lily giggled softly and turned over. ‘Yes, Mistress.’ Ceri considered giving her a slap on the rump, but decided that would just encourage her and headed downstairs for breakfast.

Holloway

‘How’s the course going?’ Cheryl asked. Her words were a little muffled due to being spoken from underneath one of the thaumic accelerators.

Ceri considered vaguely that a woman intending to be lying on her back under a huge piece of machinery should have gone for trousers. ‘Monumentally boring?’ she replied. ‘I know basic magical safety rules are a prerequisite of the certificate, but I got pretty much all of them drummed into me by Mum and Dad when I was six!’

‘A refresher never hurts.’

‘How many people do you know who test unknown potions by tasting them?’ Ceri said, exasperated.

‘Live ones? None,’ came the muffled response. ‘There was a witch lived down the road from me when I was a kid who apparently used to do that. Then one day she had to be taken down by three wizards and a police special tactics squad. Could you hand me a three-quarter inch wrench?’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said, selecting the tool and placing it in the hand which had emerged from under the machine. ‘I guess being a practitioner and intelligence don’t always go together.’

‘Blenkinsop and Wallace did a paper on it,’ Cheryl commented. ‘There’s a relationship, but it’s complex. A strong will and physical health appear to be the main factors. Obviously it’s easier to learn spells if you’re brighter, but age can make up for basic intelligence there. However, you are missing a basic fact of human psychology.’

Ceri blinked. ‘I am?’

‘Oh yes. Common sense has nothing to do with intelligence. If it did, there would be no such thing as a pacted wizard.’ She had a point; making pacts with demons was a quick way to power, but not exactly a safe one. Her father had called demons, but had never drawn power from them. Even then he had told her that the creatures were dangerous and capricious, not to be trusted. Thinking about that made her really wish she had read the rest of the succubus care document the first time. Lily’s demon side was certainly dangerous and capricious.

‘Anyway,’ Ceri said, ‘we do the basic safety exam tonight and then we get on to practical evaluation and learning “good practice,” stuff like that.’

Cheryl hauled herself out from under the accelerator, stood up, and had to yank her skirt down. ‘Maybe I should have worn slacks,’ she said, nodding vaguely at Ceri’s jeans.

‘Or had me crawl around under there.’

‘I’ll teach you to do it,’ Cheryl said, ‘but I’ve been working on these machines for a couple of years and that one’s a bit awkward for giving demonstrations.’

Ceri looked down and considered. Packed in on two sides by other equipment, it would have been a tight squeeze to get them both under. ‘Yeah,’ she said with a grin, ‘it would have been a bit intimate under there.’

‘Just a little.’ The Doctor pointed to the machine on the other side of the circle. ‘When we start work on that one, I’ll show you around its insides.’ Standing more or less alone, access to the machine would be a lot easier. Ceri nodded. ‘However, that won’t be today. Could you run this one through its diagnostic sequence?’

Ceri nodded again and walked over to the brand new computer which had replaced the one she had been standing beside when the circle had breached. Tapping a key brought the screen to life, and she pulled up a console window and typed in a command. Behind her, the accelerator began to power up, a low whine signalling the starting of the cooling fans and the heating of the primary accelerator coils.

‘I should look at the main fans,’ Cheryl commented. ‘Sounds like the bearings may need work and now’s as good a time as any to do it.’ Ceri nodded, watching figures scrolling through the window on her screen. ‘I’m a little surprised we haven’t heard back from the Journal yet,’ Cheryl added, ‘but these things can take time.’

It had been a month since they had submitted their paper to the Journal of Thaumatology and aside from an email saying that it had been accepted for peer review, nothing had come back. Having never had a paper out to a journal before, Ceri was not really sure what to expect, but she could tell from the tone of Cheryl’s voice that she had been expecting something faster.

‘It’s a high profile paper,’ Ceri said, trying to sound confident, ‘so I guess they’d take their time over checking things. They’d look like idiots if it turned out we were wrong.’

‘A good point,’ Cheryl replied, not sounding like she agreed with it.

‘I think you’re right about the fans,’ Ceri said. ‘Running about five per cent over optimum temperature.’ The fans wound down into silence as the test sequence finished.

‘Right,’ Cheryl said, moving toward the machine, ‘I’ll get on that then.’

Ceri wandered over to the slab the circle had been carved into. ‘Who designed the circle?’ she asked.

Cheryl laughed. ‘Shane did, but I don’t think even he would be stupid enough to sabotage that.’

Ceri was walking slowly around the outer circle. ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘it’s solid, but I might be able to make it a little more solid.’

‘If you think you can do something with it, be my guest.’

Ceri sniffed and went to get her tablet. If she was going to improve the circle, the first step would be understanding what Shane had done. Carefully and systematically she began to grab pictures of the circle.

Kennington

‘What’s that you’re looking at?’ Lily asked. They were sat at the kitchen table and, once again, Ceri was studying something on her tablet.

‘It’s the lab’s containment circle,’ she replied after swallowing down her mouthful of the stew Twill had put out. ‘Shane designed it and forgive me for not trusting anything he did.’

‘Huh,’ Lily replied, ‘I’d have had the entire thing ground off the slab and recut the lot.’

‘That,’ Ceri said, ‘would take far too long. Cheryl insists he wouldn’t have sabotaged this, and killing himself probably wasn’t part of the deal.’

‘No,’ Twill remarked as she supervised the dish-mop in cleaning the pans, ‘someone did that for him. Though I’m still convinced he could not have been a zombie.’

‘I had a thought about that,’ Ceri said. She shovelled stew into her mouth and frowned at her tablet.

Twill and Lily looked at her expectantly. ‘Well?’ Lily asked after a few seconds of silence.

Ceri looked up, blinked, and swallowed. ‘Huh? Oh, right, Shane. What if he wasn’t so much a zombie as a puppet?’

‘I don’t get it,’ Lily replied.

‘Someone who we all suspect but who shall remain nameless kills Shane, maybe because he’s failed, maybe because he wouldn’t go as far as they wanted. They raise him as a zombie, and then they possess him, probably with one of the incorporeal demons.’ She looked down at her tablet again. ‘He was basically an undead puppet being driven around by a demon.’

Lily wrinkled her nose in disgust. Twill frowned. ‘That could work,’ the fairy said. ‘Demon possessions aren’t easy to sense without seeing the subject, and by the time I did I was more concerned about staying alive.’

Ceri nodded. ‘This circle is just a bit off,’ she said, bouncing the conversation away from Shane’s miraculous corpse again. ‘There are tiny little errors in some of the barrier runes. Not enough to make it fail, but enough to make it… leak.’ She put the tablet down and concentrated on her food. ‘That’d explain why the room was so hot all the time. And there’s no way Shane came up with this on his own. The outer barrier runes are Ctholnaraeic and that’s not something I’d expect someone like Shane to have come across. Also explains why the circle could be breached using that opening rune.’ She grinned, happy to have discovered the solution to a problem.

‘Can you fix it?’ Lily asked her. Ceri felt it was a mark of their stabilised relationship that Lily did not just say she could fix it.

‘I’ll need to take a proper look at the carvings tomorrow,’ she said. ‘On the plus side, I think the circle might even be tighter than usual once fixed because of the advanced rune structure. Right now, I gotta run.’ She pushed her chair back and headed for the door. ‘I have a test to ace.’

Stockwell

The coffee room conversation dropped in volume as Ceri walked in. Her steps faltered and then she picked up the pace again, pulling herself upright and ignoring the looks from about a third of the people on break from their classes. She wanted the coffee, and Bellamy had made it quite plain that this was the only day they would get a chance to grab some while he marked their tests. Still, none of the others had come down.

As she turned from getting her drink, a woman at one of the tables caught her eye and waved to her. Younger than many in the room, she looked vaguely familiar and Ceri walked over trying to figure out who this person was. She was sitting at a table with a group of others, but it did not look like any of them were too worried about the approaching magician. Small mercies and all that. Short, half-oriental, probably, with shoulder-length black hair, Ceri still had no clue who the woman was, just the nagging feeling she should.

‘You’re Ceri Brent, right?’ the girl said as Ceri arrived at the table.

‘Uh, yeah, but I don’t…’

‘Jenny Li, we went to school together.’ Recognition dawned across Ceri’s face. ‘Well, I did languages and you did science, but we did English and Maths in the same classes.’

Ceri nodded and sat down in the chair next to Jenny. ‘Yeah, I remember, what’re you doing here?’

Jenny nodded to the old Chinese woman sitting opposite. ‘Gran likes to learn and someone’s got to look after her,’ she said, grinning.

Mrs Li laughed. ‘Oh yeah, she likes it just as much as me, don’t you let her fool you.’

Jenny giggled. ‘Okay, yeah, we’re doing Egyptology this time. It was Mesopotamian Myth and Folklore last semester. You’re doing the PPC course, right?’ Ceri nodded. ‘I thought you were a norm? You never had to do any of the magic classes in school.’

‘I was,’ Ceri said. ‘I’m working at the Metropolitan, there was an accident and I got belted with a huge dose of thaumic energy and… Well, now I can work magic.’

‘That was you?’ The voice came from an old man sitting two down from Mrs Li. ‘I read about that in the paper. They say you’re goin’ t’ find them teenal particles.’

Ceri grinned. ‘T-Null,’ she said, ‘and we found them. There was a little article about it in Thaumatology Monthly, but I guess no one reads that here.’ There were a number of shaken heads, which figured, it was a magazine for thaumatologists, enchanters, and wizards. A few witches and thaumaturgists read it too, but it was fairly esoteric compared to… ‘Anyone read the Wednesday Witch?’ Ceri asked.

‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Li said, nodding. A couple of the other women nodded. ‘It good for the gossip pages.’

‘And the remedies,’ added another woman, late-middle-aged and possibly hypochondriac.

The man who had spoken earlier leant across the table, offering his hand. ‘Benson West,’ he said, ‘pleased t’ meet you, Miss Brent.’

Smiling, Ceri shook his hand. ‘It’s Ceri,’ she said.

‘Ben,’ he replied. ‘Don’t you go mindin’ them folks as are shy of the magic none. People our age remember the Shatterin’. Some of ‘em are still a bit tetchy about it, y’know?’

Ceri shrugged slightly. ‘My parents were born after, I learned about it in History. I was normal until last month. Suddenly some people look at me funny.’

‘Ah well,’ Ben said, ‘most of ‘em will tell you tales of how terrible it was after the War. Magic this and that comin’ out the woodwork like woodlice. People spontan’usly turnin’ into frogs. Tidal waves, earthquakes, tornados… It’s all a load o’ bollocks!’ He gave a lop-sided grin. ‘Now them kind of things happened, out in Nip-land an’ America an’ Germany. And it was hard here for a few years, but we’d just been through a world war! Anyone thought it’d be sunshine an’ roses was a nut.’ Several of the older people around the table nodded and grunted in agreement. ‘Truth is, we had miles of salt water between us an’ the bad stuff.’

Ben was brighter than he looked and knew more about magic than Ceri bet he normally let on. Britain had been protected from the worst excesses of the Shattering by the North Sea and the English Channel. In most of Europe, going east as far as Moscow, there had been real chaos and those countries had never fully recovered. The western side of America was still owned by the natives who had grabbed their land back in a line down from North Dakota to Texas, which had given them the country’s major oil reserves. China had done reasonably well, so had Australia; distance and water had been what kept you safe.

‘It’s more to do with superstition than truth,’ Mrs Li said. ‘People fear what they don’t understand, dear. It cliché, but it true.’

Ceri finished her coffee. ‘I better get back upstairs and make sure I’m still on the course,’ she said.

‘Nice seeing you again, Ceri,’ Jenny said.

Ceri grinned. ‘Nice seeing all of you.’ She waved and headed back out, hearing the conversation grow that little bit louder as she left. Damn, that was going to take some getting used to.

Bellamy nodded to her as she walked into the room. ‘Miss Brent, excellent score, please take your seat.’ He stepped around from behind his desk as she did as he had asked. ‘You’ve all passed, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know. Now that that’s over with, we can start evaluations.’ He turned and picked up a plastic bottle of salt and a wooden box. ‘This is a thaumiton source,’ he said. ‘Irradiated iron-silver, for the thaumatologist in the room.’ He smiled stiffly at Ceri who wondered if it had really been that obvious she would ask. ‘And this is common salt. Pretty much all practitioners should be able to create a basic containment circle. Let’s see how tight you can make it.’ His eyes scanned the room. ‘Mr Watts, let’s start with you. North is that way,’ he pointed back over his shoulder.

Containment circles were a pretty basic skill. Wizards, of course, learned to create powerful ones which could hold demons, but witches used them when performing delicate work to keep external influences out and the other professions usually learned them for basic protection. The most basic form was a circle, usually of salt, which was then energised by the magician’s power. Generally, the stronger a mage was, the better the containment and Bellamy had a digital thaumometer on hand to see how much energy was escaping their circles.

He let Watts form his circle, then he placed the source in the centre of it and lifted the lid. Ceri’s scalp itched almost instantly; it was a fairly strong source. Backing away two steps, Bellamy took a reading on the meter. ‘Very well, Mr Watts, raise it.’

Ceri felt the wizard’s power build and release. There was a hesitancy to it she had not expected from a professional wizard and she wondered exactly how he had got the court order to re-certify. The salt ring glowed a dull red briefly, then the colour shifted more toward orange and Watts relaxed.

‘Ninety-two per cent reduction, Mr Watts,’ Bellamy said. ‘You can drop it now. Your technique is good, but you’re a little hesitant.’ Stepping forward, Bellamy covered the source again and took it away. A dustpan and brush was produced to sweep up the salt circle. ‘Miss Tooley, would you mind.’

The teenager’s circle was a bit more of an irregular decagon, but her over-dramatic incantation was spoken confidently and seemed to make up a bit for the messy ring. The two students were boringly confident, having probably done the same exercise a hundred times in practical classes. Raven the Goth Witch gave a moving and entirely unnecessary evocation to Hecate, but her technique was flawless and she actually managed to do better than Watts had.

‘Miss Brent,’ Bellamy said, ‘let’s see what a degree in thaumatology can do for us.’ Ceri did not like the way he said it; he sounded like he had a beef with theorists. She decided not to mention she had a Masters degree.

She put her tablet aside and stood, walking over to take the salt from him. A slow blink and her Sight was showing the flow of magic in the room. Raven had half a dozen amulets or charms on her; Ceri was a little surprised to see that one of them seemed to be an illusion charm to make her skin paler. Watts had something magical in his breast pocket, though she could not tell what it was. Even through its insulating box, the thaumiton source was a dull glow. Ceri took a second to line herself up with Magical North and proceeded to mark out her circle in one long, even stream of salt.

‘A little larger than required,’ Bellamy commented, ‘and you began a few degrees off north.’

‘Treat and Broadville,’ Ceri said, ‘demonstrated in eighty-two that aligning a basic circle to Magical North rather than Magnetic or True North produces a measureable increase in efficiency.’

‘Really,’ Bellamy said. He put his box of magic in the centre of her circle and stepped back. ‘Well, let’s see how “efficient” it is.’

Like Watts and the two students, Ceri did not go in for elaborate incantations to raise a circle. Concentrating her will, she raised her right hand and pushed power into the ring of salt. The powder shone white briefly and she saw the column of barrier magic go up, blocking the thaumitons radiating from the box.

Bellamy looked down at the meter and frowned. He turned one of the knobs on the box, and then clicked it through another setting. ‘I’m reading… about four millithaum,’ he said.

‘That’s basic background for London,’ Marks said, sounding slightly awed. His own circle had managed to cut out about eighty-eight per cent.

‘Yes, well,’ Bellamy said, ‘you can drop the circle, Miss Brent.’

‘You’d better reset your meter, sir,’ she said. ‘You’ll blow the transducer if you expose it to that source on a micro-thaum setting.’ The knob clicked twice and Ceri withdrew her will. There was a sputter of energy from the salt ring, some of it at the northern point puffing out a few inches. Bellamy glanced at his meter again, probably to make sure that the source was still working.

Bellamy closed the box and placed it on the table at the front. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll have your evaluations ready for tomorrow. That’s all for today. Tomorrow we’ll be going through basic first aid, recognition of curses, maledictions, and unwanted side-effects. Miss Brent, could I have a quick word?’

Ceri packed her tablet away while the others filed out of the room. She looked up as Bellamy approached her. ‘Is there a problem, sir?’ she asked.

‘Not as such, it’s just… your technique is a little strange,’ he said.

‘Just applying what I learned, sir,’ she said.

‘Not that, and class is over, I’m Carl.’

‘Ceri.’ She smiled. ‘What’s wrong with my technique then, Carl? I admit I’m kind of winging this stuff half the time. That was the first circle I ever actually invoked.’

Bellamy’s expression was half-shocked, half-exasperated. ‘The first… Right, well, obviously there’s nothing wrong with your technique. You managed complete containment with a very basic circle.’

‘Then, uh, what?’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ Bellamy said, ‘you managed full containment with a basic salt circle. That takes… a lot of power and you didn’t break a sweat. Even with your “more efficient alignment” putting out that much power should have left you breathing hard at the very least.’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said. ‘I hadn’t really thought about that. To be honest, I’ve not really done anything much with it. Emergency stuff, um, I renewed the enchantments on my house. My parents were…’

‘I remember your parents,’ Bellamy said. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. You renewed the enchantments on your house? Can I ask how you did that?’

Ceri smiled. ‘I guess it’s not a trade secret. The boundary enchantments I re-inked. The door enchantment I used salt and chalk as a transfer medium to re-energise the symbols. Then the main house enchantments were done through this really clever model system. I think my mother came up with it since the notes were in her handwriting.’

‘How long were you working on it?’

‘I did the boundaries on one day and the house on the next.’

Bellamy sucked at his teeth. ‘And you felt fine after that? No fatigue, blurred vision, headaches?’

Ceri raised an eyebrow. ‘No. Mind you I was having some other issues at the time, um, personal matter. One of my housemates is a half-succubus.’

Obviously not knowing what to say to that, Bellamy tried his best to ignore it. ‘Most enchanters working on something like that would take several days, perhaps a couple of weeks. Since you’re new to this and have had no formal training I’d suggest you were over-exerting yourself, but there are none of the normal signs. You work with Doctor Tennant at the Met, don’t you?’

‘I’m her research assistant,’ Ceri confirmed.

‘She should have all the necessary equipment to run tests. Could I suggest that you ask her to run some broad spectrum thaumic field analysis tests together with a metabolic thaumogenesis test?’ He grinned at the expression on her face. ‘I started out as an academic, Ceri. I worked in the thaumatology department in Cambridge until… Well, I had to leave and now I do PPC courses. Whatever, I know my thaumatology. Now you go home so I can get some rest away from students.’

Ceri nodded, gathered her stuff, and headed off.

Holloway, October 8th

‘Carl Bellamy,’ Cheryl said thoughtfully as she disentangled a set of leads from a box she had pulled out of one of the back rooms. ‘The name’s familiar… Take your shirt off please, dear.’

Ceri was perched on a stool in the middle of the containment circle surrounded by an array of thaumometers not dissimilar to the one she had jury-rigged for Carter in the Collar Club. This one was a little more professional since the sensor heads were on specially designed stands, and the instruments themselves were high resolution slit-scan models, but the principle was the same. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it over an equipment rack.

Cheryl began sticking transducer pads to Ceri’s chest. ‘So, Bellamy is concerned that you seem to be generating a lot of power and not tiring from it?’

‘I’m not entirely sure what he was concerned about,’ Ceri replied. ‘Something like that though.’

‘You understand the mechanism mages use to generate power?’ Finishing with the skin contacts, Cheryl produced a headband with four contacts mounted on it and strapped it around Ceri’s head.

‘The basics,’ Ceri replied. ‘Mages generate thaumic energy through an act of will which manifests as a surge from the Muladhara node at the base of the Chakral Median. This builds up through the median until it reaches the Sahasrara node at the crown of the head. At that point it manifests as thaumic energy, but prior to that it’s more like an electrical discharge.’

Cheryl nodded. ‘The process is tiring. A mage exerts him or herself physically to generate the energy required. Attempting a sufficiently large spell, generating too much power at once, can actually kill you. Generally you know your limitations and you would feel yourself tiring and break off. Bellamy may be concerned that you don’t get the normal warning signs and you’ll kill yourself working magic.’

Ceri blinked. ‘I, uh, hadn’t thought of it like that,’ she said.

The Doctor smiled at her reassuringly. ‘Let’s get started, shall we.’ She walked over to a console and pulled up the scanning software. ‘Scanning started, biological monitors running. If you could… do something?’

Something? Okay, something. Ceri raised her hand, cupping it, and closed her eyes. There was a spark and then a ball of glowing, blue energy filled her palm. She opened her eyes and looked down at her hand. The energy shifted and shimmered. It was rather beautiful really. ‘Something,’ she said. Grinning, she looked up at Cheryl.

The Doctor was standing there with her jaw hanging open. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ she said.

Ceri frowned. ‘Boss, you’re scaring your research assistant,’ she said. Closing her hand, she dismissed the energy in it as easily as it had come.

‘Stay there,’ Cheryl said. ‘I’ll wheel this over to you. I’d like to do another run to confirm the results in a minute.’ She grabbed the trolley’s handle and pulled it over so that Ceri could see the screen. A couple of button presses and the imagery Cheryl had seen was replayed.

The scanners had supplied a basic outline of her body and the stool prior to her summoning the energy. She watched the outline raise its hand and then there was a flare of energy filling that hand. There was no reaction in the body, no stream along the spine, nothing. ‘Play it again,’ she said.

Cheryl tapped keys. ‘Watch the biometrics,’ she said. Ceri did as directed. Her heart rate and respiration remained constant through the recording, but there was a spike in neurological activity prior to the energy appearing which kept going until it vanished. Ceri noticed that the power, summoned apparently from nowhere, vanished back into the same place.

Cheryl pushed the trolley back again. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘again, but this time I’m going to run the scanners at twice the resolution. This is fascinating.’

Ceri giggled. It was fascinating, and she had never been the subject of an experiment before. ‘Lab rat number one reporting for duty,’ she said, saluting.

Rolling her eyes, Cheryl hit the record button. ‘When you’re ready…’

Once again, the ball of bluish energy flared into existence in her hand. She looked at it; raw power sitting in her palm, ready to do whatever she wished of it. ‘What’s the thaumometer reading?’ she asked.

‘You’re casually holding about five thaums,’ Cheryl said. She turned and looked around at Ceri, frowning. ‘What are you, girl?’ she asked quietly.

Kennington, October 9th

A small army of dusters skittered across the bookshelves of the study directed by a nut-brown fairy who was smaller than they were. Ceri watched them as they swirled around the books, getting into the little nooks and crannies as good little dusters should. She was sat there while Twill did the dusting, examining the processed data from the scans Cheryl had run on her the day before. Nothing she had managed to find showed anything different from the initial conclusions; somehow, Ceri was able to conjure raw thaumic energy from nothing.

‘Twill, mind if I ask you a question?’ she said.

‘Well,’ the fairy said, not looking around, ‘that obviously depends upon the question.’

‘Your magic doesn’t make you tired, does it?’

‘You mean the way human magicians tire from using spells? No, no it doesn’t. Fae magic is driven by a reservoir of energy held within our bodies.’ She flitted over to where Ceri was sitting at the desk. ‘True supernatural beings…’

‘True supernatural beings,’ Ceri interrupted, ‘exhibit the ability to generate thaumitons, using or emitting them as required by their metabolic processes. Fairies emit a constant field of T-Plus thaumitons, which tends to generate a feeling of well-being, even elation, in those around them.’

Tiny brown eyes narrowed at her. ‘If you know all the answers, Miss Know-It-All-Thaumatologist, why bother asking?’

‘Because I wanted to know what it feels like,’ Ceri said. Looking at Twill with her Sight, she could actually see the field of energy which surrounded her and the sparkle of stored energy which seemed to occupy the pit of her stomach, the Manipura node on her Tantric Median, if Ceri was judging it right.

Twill’s expression shifted to one of mild consternation. ‘What it feels like…’ she murmured. ‘What it feels like… I don’t know, what does breathing feel like?’

It was Ceri’s turn to look perplexed. ‘I don’t know, I just do it.’

‘Quite.’ She nodded emphatically. ‘Look, fae don’t learn spells like humans do. Well, fae can learn spells, and the ones who do can be very good at them, but some things just come to us naturally. We do them without thinking, like breathing.’

‘Your invisibility,’ Ceri suggested, ‘glamors, telekinesis…’

‘Flight,’ Twill added. ‘You don’t think these wings are practically capable of supporting my body in the air, do you?’

‘Honestly? I hadn’t thought about it, but now you mention it…’

Twill alighted on the desk and sat down, knotting her somewhat disproportionately long legs into a lotus posture. ‘What’s brought this on?’ she asked.

‘My course tutor got worried that I didn’t get tired from working magic,’ she said. ‘So Cheryl ran some tests on me yesterday. I don’t use the same metabolic process to generate thaumic energy as most mages do. I just… get it out of the air.’

‘That’s not how magic works, my girl,’ Twill said. Then she frowned. ‘Well, it hasn’t worked like that in… almost fifteen centuries. And that’s only if you believe a lot of old legends.’

‘Twill,’ Ceri said, ‘you’re being cryptic. I hate it when you go all Zen Master on me.’

‘Sorcerers, Ceri,’ Twill said, as if it should be obvious, ‘I’m talking about sorcerers. Merlin, Gwydion, your namesake, Ceridwen. Supposedly they could work fearfully powerful magic without the aid of demons, gods, or spirits. They understood how the universe worked, and their great knowledge gave them power. Of course, it’s a matter of legend. If they existed, no sorcerer lived past the Battle of Badon in five-fifteen.’

Ceri shrugged. ‘Merlin was supposed to be a half-demon,’ she said, ‘and I was always told that great magic in the past was either exaggerated or down to pacted wizards.’

‘My great-grandmother,’ Twill said, ‘or maybe my great-great-grandmother, told tales of Gwydion. She said he could bend the weather to his will, turn into any animal he wished, speak to the dead…’

‘None of that can’t be done by anyone with the right spells,’ Ceri replied. ‘Well, no one knows how to do animal transformations anymore, but…’

‘But he did it as though it were nothing,’ Twill said. ‘To him, it was a matter of knowing, and once you knew you could do anything. The world listened when he spoke.’ She shrugged tiny shoulders. ‘But the sorcerers have been dead a long time with no sign of them in all those years. Mind you,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘I never heard anyone tell where they came from in the first place.’

~~~

‘Hey, Carter bedded Suzie Shore?’ Ceri said, looking up at Lily across the kitchen table from her copy of The Wednesday Witch.

‘Huh? Oh, yeah,’ Lily replied, grinning. ‘She came to the Dragon last Saturday and got a bit sloshed. Carter said he’d take her home, but he didn’t mention who’s home.’ She giggled. ‘I think he’s taken a bit of a shine to your boss.’

‘Cheryl?’

‘Uh-huh. She came in on Wednesday and they left together. And you don’t see her in the gossip columns.’ This, it seemed, was the clinching factor as far as Lily was concerned.

‘Why does that make a difference?’ Ceri asked.

‘The ones he cares about never turn up in the newspapers,’ Lily replied. ‘There’s been a couple of women I’ve known about who have never been linked with him, but he’s seen more than once. And there’s you.’ Ceri blinked. Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re telling me you haven’t noticed how he looks at you?’

‘Lil, this is Carter Fleming we’re talking about,’ Ceri said dryly. ‘Is there a girl on the planet he doesn’t look at like that?’

‘Just you,’ Lily said. ‘You’re not used to seeing him.’

‘Have you been taking cryptic lessons from Twill?’

Lily giggled. ‘Carter has the look he gives the women he’s going to sleep with and dump, the one he gives the girls who know they’re both in it for the sex, like Jasmine. And then there’s the other ones. You, me, and Cheryl and the few others like her.’

Ceri looked down at her magazine again. ‘Is he any good?’ she asked as casually as she could. She could feel Lily’s smirk.

‘I won’t say he’s the best sex I’ve ever had,’ Lily said. ‘Actually, no, he might be.’ She gave a little, over-dramatic sigh. ‘Awesome foreplay, really takes his time making sure you get what you want, fantastic staying power, recovers really quickly…’

Ceri raised her eyes to look at Lily. ‘Do I have to get the riding crop out?’

‘Only if you want to,’ Lily said, giggling. ‘I haven’t had the slightest urge for days,’ she added and frowned a little. ‘I’m… content.’ She perked up again almost immediately. ‘I don’t think you’re going to get to find out how good Carter is in the sack, to be honest. The way he looks at you, it’s like… desire and regret. I think he wants to, but he won’t.’

‘Weird,’ Ceri commented, trying to keep any disappointment out of her voice.

Lily shrugged. ‘He knew your parents, maybe it’s some respect thing.’

Ceri frowned. Yes, he had known her parents. ‘Lil,’ she said, ‘could you ask him if I could come see him tomorrow?’

‘Uh, sure, what about?’

‘Tell him it’s about my parents,’ Ceri said.

~~~

The trilling of the phone jerked Ceri out of her study of her test data with a start. Snatching up the handset from its cradle on the desk, she hit the receive button. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Ceri?’ The voice on the other end was Lily’s. ‘Can you get down to the Dragon? Now?’

Ceri glanced at the clock in the corner of her tablet; it was almost midnight. ‘Uh, yeah,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Carter said he needed to speak to you,’ Lily replied. ‘It needs to be tonight, he’s got to go down to Winchester in the morning.’

Ceri frowned. It seemed odd, but… ‘I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes,’ she said, and hung up.

Heading up to her room, she dressed quickly, pulling on a teddy she thought Lily would like and her black jeans with the red embroidery. There was a brief consideration of footwear before she plumped for a pair of sling-backed heels. Curiosity at what Carter needed to talk to her about spurred her on and she hurried out of the house and through the south gate to cut across the park to the Oval tube station.

There was almost no moon; it was two days past new and only the barest sliver showed in the clear night sky. Ceri walked quickly through the trees, her eyes darting to every shadow. She no longer had her tattoos to protect her, just her wits and whatever magic she could summon up. As her heels clicked on the path, she decided that it might be a good idea to learn a few defensive spells sometime really soon.

The skin on her scalp tightened and she paused. Slowly she scanned the trees and bushes around her, looking for the source of the aura. Her Sight cut in and she saw the streamers of energy curling out of the shadows. A vampire; only a vampire could produce that kind of aura, negative and yet caressing. She clenched her fists and pushed back on it.

There was a hiss and a female figure emerged partially into the light. From the look of it, she was dressed in skin-tight Lycra from head to foot. Her eyes shone red through the face mask. Ceri looked back trying to stay confident. This was not some vampire out hunting. This one was here for a reason.

‘What do you want?’ Ceri demanded. The dark figure watched her for a second or two, apparently gauging her. ‘You’re not hunting,’ Ceri said. ‘Your aura doesn’t affect me. What do you want?’

Reaching behind her back, the vampire produced a pair of knives and moved forward with the kind of speed only vampires and demons could manage. Ceri gasped and threw up her arms. Steel sparked off magic, a knife blocked by the bare skin of her arm, and Ceri dropped to her knees as the vampire jumped over her.

There would be another strike. Ceri turned, her hand pushing out toward the vampire as she spun. Fire burst from her palm, a jet of flame which struck its target and exploded across the undead’s chest. There was a shriek and the smell of melted plastic and charred flesh assailed Ceri’s nostrils. For a second, Ceri thought the vampire would attack again and prepared herself for another strike. Then the figure in black let out a half-sob of pain, and ran, vanishing into the darkness.

Soho

‘What possessed you to come here?!’ Lily asked. Her voice was full of concern, exasperation, and fear.

Ceri shook her head and sipped at the glass of whiskey that Alec had forced into her hand at some point. The liquid burned her throat and she almost gagged, but when it was down a delicious feeling of warmth flowed up from the pit of her stomach. ‘I was coming here,’ she said, her voice a monotone. ‘When she ran… all I could think of was to get here.’ She looked up at Lily; she had never seen her friend look so scared. ‘You were here,’ she said softly.

‘You should have gone home,’ Lily said. ‘You’d be safe inside the wards.’

‘I’m safe here,’ Ceri said. ‘I’m behind my parents’ enchantments, and a ronin werewolf, and a half-demon, and a wizard.’

‘It sounds,’ Carter said, entering the office, ‘as if you managed to defend yourself well enough on your own.’

Lily spun on her heel. Ceri felt her aura flare, but not its usual form, this was anger. ‘A widder-damned vampire assassin, Carter! Someone sent an assassin for her!’

The club’s owner smiled reassuringly and stepped right into the heart of the flames, taking Lily by the shoulders. Ceri looked at them, wondering if it was his willpower or his wizardry keeping him on his feet. ‘She’s alive, Lily. Any fight you can walk away from is a good one.’ The aura died away as Lily calmed herself. Carter nodded. ‘Good. Now go out there and be the best waitress in the club. I need to talk to Ceri.’

Lily looked like she was going to argue, but nodded. She looked back at Ceri. ‘I’ll see you later, ‘kay?’

Ceri mustered a smile for her friend and nodded. She watched as Lily headed for the door, her pace becoming more like a strut the closer she got until, as she walked through and pulled the door closed behind her, the half-succubus was all business.

Carter walked over, pulling a straight-backed chair from his desk over to in front of the couch Ceri was sat on. She watched him, taking a sip of her drink. The burning was less this time, but the warmth felt just as good.

He smiled. ‘I called a friend in the Greycoats. Some officers will want to talk to you tomorrow.’ He smiled slightly. ‘They wanted to talk to you tonight, but I told them you were safe, and in a state of shock. They’re dispatching a team to Cheryl’s flat…’

‘Oh! Cheryl…’ Ceri had not thought about it, but if someone had come after her, then it seemed likely they might try for Cheryl.

‘She’ll be quite safe,’ Carter said. ‘These people know what they’re doing.’ He looked down, gathering his thoughts, and appeared to be struggling with what he was about to say.

Ceri frowned. ‘What is it? What’s up?’

He looked up at her again. ‘About a month before your parents had their accident,’ Carter said, and she noticed his voice caught slightly on the last word, ‘your mother came to me. She asked me to keep something for you and to give it to you when “the time was right.” Well, of course I asked her when the time would be right, and she said “I hope never, but if it does come, you’ll know.”’

‘Cryptic,’ Ceri said, ‘I get that a lot lately.’ Her heart was pounding and she took a sip of whiskey.

‘Your mother could be like that,’ he replied. ‘When Lily said you wanted to ask me about your parents, I concluded this was the time she was talking about. We were close, your parents and I, in college. We lost touch after… after I left.’ There was the same sort of catch in his voice and pain in his eyes, and Ceri wondered how close they had been. He smiled, weakly, though it showed in his eyes even through the pain which was still there. ‘I can see both of them in you. You have your mother’s eyes…’

He straightened up, drawing in a breath, and took something from his inside breast pocket. It was an envelope, white and plain, with a wax seal over the flap. As he held it out to her she could see her own name written on the front in her mother’s handwriting. ‘She enchanted the seal,’ he said. ‘You’re the only one who can open it.’

Tentatively, she took the letter from him, turning it over to look at the seal. It was her mother’s personal rune. Carter climbed to his feet. ‘I’ll be out front,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll want to read it alone.’ He was gone before she thought to say anything to the contrary. Taking a deep breath, she broke the seal and pulled out the single sheet of paper within. She recognised her mother’s delicate handwriting and glanced at the corner of the page where she could see the date. Her mother had written it on February twelfth twenty-oh-four and they had died on the sixteenth of April. Focussing on the actual words was hard, but she forced herself to do it.

Ceridwyn, if you’re reading this then I’m sorry. If you’re reading this then you come to hear what I have to say through a letter delivered by a man you hardly know. It will likely seem a little odd to you that I’ve trusted Carter with this, but despite everything that happened, perhaps because of it, I do trust him. You must make up your own mind whether to trust him, I can’t give advice to you on that.

To the point then. The first thing I should say is that we told ourselves we did it out of love. We wanted to keep our only daughter safe. But we also did it out of fear, and that was wrong. We always thought we would free you when you got older, but as you do get older we find ourselves making excuses. I don’t know whether we will summon the courage to break your enchantments. I hope we do, but the letter you are reading is insurance against the chance that we do not.

Ceri blinked, her gaze falling on the inside of her left wrist, where the intricate markings had rested under her skin for over two decades. They had been her protectors all the time she had grown up. She continued reading with a growing sense of apprehension.

Your tattoos do, indeed, provide protection, but not the kind you think. The enchantment is a control and containment web. When you were little more than a toddler you were generating power. You were endangering yourself, and everything around you. We designed the enchantment to seal that power up inside you and use it to protect you. David, though I love him dearly, went too far, I now think. He locked away your talent for magic entirely, hiding it away behind these layers of enchantment. He fears what you might do, but more, I think, he fears what others might do when you are discovered.

We spoke to the Lady in Llyn Tegid soon after you were born, you see, and she told us what you were, even though we did not realise it at the time. She said, “Name her for Ceridwen, for she may surpass even the sorcerers of old.” We laughed with her at the time and didn’t realise what she’d said. We thought you’d be a great magician, we forgot that when we made the enchantments, and I remember it now. Magic is in your blood, Ceri, in a way it never was in mine, or David’s.

Again, I’m sorry. Please don’t think badly of us. All my love to you, daughter. Marion.

Folding the letter carefully and slipping it back into its envelope, Ceri drained her whiskey and stood up. The letter was shoved into her back pocket and she walked out of the office and into the bar. The sound of the Jade Dragon on a Saturday night hit her. Technically, she thought, it was Sunday morning now, but the revellers were far too busy getting on with having a good time to worry over the exact day. She was fairly sure there were words being said among the noise, but none of them made any sense. She would go to the bar, settle down to wait because she knew she would never be allowed home on her own. In truth, she did not really think she could get there alone. She felt numb.

Wandering around to the bar, she placed her glass on the counter intending that Alec should scoop it away, and lifted herself up onto one of the stools. She heard a soft glugging noise and turned to see Alec pouring more of the softly brown liquor into her glass. ‘You’re still looking shocked,’ he said, smiling.

Ceri smiled back. ‘It’s been a night for shocks.’ Raising the glass she added, ‘Thanks.’

‘Carter said you were to be looked after,’ Alec replied, ‘which is good. I get to look all considerate while all I’m really doing is enjoying the view.’

Despite herself, Ceri smirked. ‘At least you’re enjoying it,’ she replied.

‘And I get to enjoy it some more on Monday,’ the bartender said.

‘Monday?’ Ceri asked ‘What’s happening Monday?’

‘I’ll be taking you to your course,’ Alec replied. Before she could say anything he carried on, ‘Lily was sure you’d go, despite the potential danger. Carter said that was entirely unacceptable. Lily said you could be very stubborn and the certificate was important. Carter said… Well, you get the picture. I’ll drive over to your house tomorrow evening, pick you and Lily up, and keep an eye out while you’re there.’

‘Pick Lily and me up?’ Ceri said, because Alec’s status as bodyguard had obviously been decided already.

Alec chuckled. ‘You think she’s letting you out of the house without her?’

‘The Hell I am,’ Lily commented as she put her tray on the counter. ‘Two red wines and a Vee-Bomb, Alec,’ she added and grinned at Ceri. ‘The vamp on table three thinks he’s scored.’ Ceri glanced over at the table where a vampire who did not, yet, need to hide behind an illusion was entertaining two young women. ‘Those two are in here at least once a week with a different vampire every time.’

‘Chew Toys,’ Alec said, sounding disgusted. He placed the drinks Lily had asked for on the tray.

‘Don’t think so,’ Lily said, and she was off to deliver the alcohol.

‘What’s a chew toy?’ Ceri asked. ‘Aside from something you give a dog to play with.’

‘Huh,’ Alec said, grinning, ‘not a dog, a vamp. Chew Toy is street slang for someone who bounces between vampires getting bitten for the fun of it. Vamp bites get you high, yeah? They’re addictive. Not like sex with a succubus, really, physically addictive. They’re like junkies, always looking for the next hit.’

Ceri looked across at the women. They did not look like junkies. If anything, they looked like they were in control. She blinked and looked at them through different eyes. ‘They’re… some sort of fae,’ she said. ‘Their auras have the same sort of pattern as Twill’s and they’re giving of T-Plus fields.’

One of the women looked across at Ceri and smiled. The fae’s glamour shifted for a second and Ceri found herself looking at a narrow-faced, gaunt women with viscous-looking fangs. Then the vision was gone and the woman went back to cooing over her next meal. Ceri shuddered and took a drink.

‘I’ve heard of a few Sluagh Sidhe who prey on the undead,’ Alec said quietly. ‘Never seen them though.’

‘That you know of,’ Ceri commented. She looked up at him. ‘Stick to looking at me. Believe me, I’m better eye candy.’

Alec grinned, well, leered. ‘I won’t disagree.’

Ceri frowned slightly. She thought she knew him well enough. ‘Alec?’ She tried for a delicate way of asking and could come up with nothing. She went for direct. ‘I was in here one night just before the accident. You commented on my tattoos.’ He nodded, waiting for the question; at least he remembered the night. ‘You were pretty uninterested in me then, and now you’re flirting with me and you can’t keep your eyes off my boobs. What changed?’

The barman opened his mouth for a snappy comeback, and then closed it again, looking thoughtful. Finally he said, ‘I was going to make some glib comment about how I was looking at your boobs that night too, but damned if you’re not right.’

Lily returned, putting down her tray and leaning back against the counter so that she could casually watch the room. ‘What’s up with Alec?’ she asked. ‘You give him a thought? He’s not used to them y’know? He could strain something.’

‘He’s trying to work out why he wants in my knickers?’ Ceri replied and was rewarded by a slight colouring in the man’s cheeks.

‘You’re not wearing knickers,’ Lily replied. Alec could not see her smirk. Ceri could see his blush deepen.

‘Less to take off,’ Ceri said.

‘It’s like,’ Alec said, probably hoping they would stop teasing him, ‘I couldn’t see you properly and now I can. That’s what it’s like.’ She raised an eyebrow and he obviously felt she wanted a better explanation. ‘You were there, and you were the same shape and looks and all, but it’s like you were…’ He trailed off, trying to find the right words. ‘Ordinary,’ he finally said.

Ceri nodded. Lily frowned and said, ‘I’ve never thought you were ordinary.’

‘Werewolves,’ Carter said causing Ceri to jump, ‘for all their supernatural ability to shape-shift, are essentially human. Heightened senses, some additional strength and dexterity, but human. Vampires, demons, mages with the Sight, they would have seen you as you are.’ He smiled at Lily’s look of confusion. ‘Think of it like a fairy glamour. Ceri has been wandering around for years trying to stay unnoticed, even if unconsciously.’

Ceri thought of the letter; it was not unconscious, it was one of the defence mechanisms the enchantment had created. ‘I had exactly two boyfriends through school and university,’ she said. ‘They were both magicians.’ There had been some fumbling sex with the one at the Metropolitan and that had been bad enough that they had broken up soon after. ‘I’ve had more attention in the last few weeks than the rest of my life put together.’ Her own parents had turned her into a wallflower for twenty-four years, robbed her of her power, and then died before they could undo what they had done. She stabbed a finger at Lily. ‘You were the first sex I’ve had that I actually enjoyed! It’s enough to make a girl bat for the other team.’

‘Oh,’ Carter said, a smirk forming, ‘once you’ve had Lily no one else matches up.’ Both girls looked at him, the playboy millionaire. He held his hands up, palms toward them. ‘Really. All my conquests since have been a vain attempt to find someone, anyone, even half as good.’

‘You hold him down,’ Lily said, ‘I’ll tickle him.’

Ceri giggled and Carter looked, for all the world, like he was worried they would do it.

Kennington, October 10th

Two police cruisers and an unmarked black sedan pulled up outside the gates of High Towers far too early in the morning as far as anyone inside was concerned. Twill was, however up and about, just disconcerted to have guests arriving when everyone else was in bed. So it was that Ceri was hustled out of bed, half asleep, and barely remembered to throw on a shirt before she was dragged downstairs to deal with this terrible inconvenience.

Radcliff and Middleshaw, the Greycoat detectives who had visited before were standing in the main hallway. Beside them was Cheryl, and beside her was a small suitcase. Ceri half-stumbled down the wide stairs from the first landing, rubbing her eyes. ‘Morning,’ she said wearily. ‘What are you doing here with them, Cheryl?’

The thaumatologist opened her mouth to answer, but it was Radcliff who spoke first. ‘Doctor Tennant is under our protection,’ he said, ‘but it seems that your Mr Fleming suggested to my boss that she would be safe here and that it would cost less in police resources if we brought her when we came to interview you.’

‘A wise man,’ Twill commented. ‘Since Ceri renewed the enchantments nothing short of a major demon is getting in here with ill intent. I’ll make coffee.’

‘In the lounge, Twill,’ Ceri said as a bolt of bluish light sped off toward the kitchen. She looked at her guests, blinking sleepily. ‘Long night,’ she said. ‘Come upstairs and we can talk.’

She pulled a couple of rarely-used chairs from the sides of the room so that everyone could sit down, and curled up in her usual place, leaving them to decide who sat on the less comfortable ones. The detectives, it turned out, were well-mannered enough to let Cheryl take the leather wing-back. Ceri said nothing. She was hoping Twill would arrive with the coffee before she had to answer any questions. Hope died on the vine.

‘Could you tell us what happened last night?’ Radcliff said.

‘Um,’ Ceri began, ‘I’d asked Lily to see if Carter, Mr Fleming, could spare me some time tomorrow, well, today now. I wanted to talk to him about… something personal. She called about midnight and said he was going to Winchester and could I go to the Dragon right then.’

Middleshaw was taking notes. ‘That’s the Jade Dragon?’ she asked. ‘His club?’

Ceri nodded. ‘So, I went. It’s faster if you cut through the park. I got the feeling someone was watching me, and then a woman dressed all in black came at me with a pair of knives. She was a vampire…’

‘You know this because?’ Radcliff interrupted.

‘Her aura,’ Ceri replied. ‘I don’t have a vampire handy to demonstrate…’

‘I know what a vampire aura feels like,’ he replied. His eyes were hard yet, somehow, pained, and Ceri wondered again what had happened to make him distrust magic but join the Greycoats.

At that moment the footstool slid across the floor to stop between the chairs and a tray of coffee with sugar and milk standing by floated in to rest on it. Ceri leaned forward to take one of the mugs. ‘Twill, you’re a life-saver.’

‘My talent is wasted on coffee production,’ the fairy said, ‘but it is nice to be appreciated.’ She spiralled down and landed on Ceri’s shoulder.

‘Anyway,’ Ceri said after a gulp of coffee, ‘the vamp attacked, I deflected the knives and threw fire at her. I must have hurt her more badly than I thought, because she ran off. And then things are a bit of a blur until I got to the Dragon and they fed me whiskey until my nerves calmed down.’

‘Your home would have been closer,’ Radcliff suggested, an edge of suspicion in his voice.

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said. ‘I honestly didn’t think that until Lily was telling me off for not coming back here.’

‘Quite right too,’ Twill grumbled.

‘I guess I panicked. I just thought of running to where I had been going.’ Ceri suspected that she had run to Lily, to her pet demon, but she was not sure she wanted to admit that to herself never mind saying it to Radcliff.

‘I presume you can’t give a description of this vampire?’ Middleshaw asked.

‘She was wearing a ski-mask or something,’ Ceri said, shaking her head. ‘Trim, lithe, fair-sized chest. Not too old. Her aura wasn’t particularly strong. She’d had martial arts training.’

‘And you “deflected” her knives?’ Radcliff said.

Ceri nodded. ‘With my arm.’

‘Interesting,’ Cheryl said, ‘a reflexive reinforcement of the skin by magic.’

Middleshaw nodded. ‘I’ve seen it done. Colleague of mine took a blow from a katana once. Just pushed it aside and broke the guy’s nose. It’s an impressive trick.’

Ceri gave a weak grin. ‘I was kind of too busy staying alive to be amazed at my awesome skill,’ she said, ‘and then there was the throwing up and the running.’

‘And you’re still unwilling to say who you think might be behind this?’ Radcliff said.

‘I wasn’t aware you had a theory,’ Cheryl commented, her interest peeked.

Ceri sighed. ‘A necromancer,’ she said, ‘almost certainly a wizard too. Very skilled, with a reason to want to see Cheryl’s project fail.’

Cheryl blinked at her. ‘Put like that…’

‘Matthew Barnes,’ Radcliff said.

‘That’s going a little far to win a race to find a particle, don’t you think?’ Cheryl said.

‘He’s reputedly arrogant enough,’ Middleshaw said, ‘but I’d agree. It seems a little too much, and too late, I’d have thought. I mean, you’ve found it, haven’t you?’

‘Unless,’ Radcliff said, ‘what you’ve found isn’t what he’s trying to beat you to.’

‘Ceri, why’d you get up? Oh! Sorry, didn’t know there was people here.’ Everyone turned and looked at the source of the voice. Radcliff’s eyes bulged. Lily sleepily pushed soft, chestnut hair out of her face and grinned sheepishly, not even reflexively covering her nudity. ‘Hey, Cheryl, what’re you doing here?’

Suddenly, the two police officers discovered they needed to be somewhere else.

~~~

Twill had decided that Cheryl’s shoulder was an excellent resting place for an evening in the lounge with the bottle of wine the thaumatologist had brought with her. There had been a moment of discomfort when the fairy had settled down without a word, just assuming it would be okay, but then Twill’s aura had done its magic and Cheryl had relaxed. Now, with half a glass of wine in her, having a fairy on her shoulder drinking wine from a thimble seemed perfectly natural.

‘I need to tell you all something,’ Ceri said, ‘and I need to know it won’t leave this room.’ She looked down at the still naked half-succubus curled up at her feet. ‘That means you don’t tell Carter either, Lil. If anyone’s going to tell him, it’s me. You can take that as an order if it makes you feel better.’

‘Okay,’ Lily replied, looking back. ‘If it’s an order…’

Cheryl watched the exchange with interest, but did not comment. ‘Why are you telling me?’ she asked.

‘Because you know half of it and might figure it out yourself,’ Ceri replied. ‘I’d rather tell you, and have you know it’s to be kept quiet for now.’

‘Intriguing, but you have my word.’

Twill shrugged. ‘Who am I going to tell?’ she said. ‘I only leave the property to hunt.’

Cheryl glanced at the little figure on her shoulder. ‘Hunt?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ Ceri said quickly.

‘Just don’t go into her bit of the attic,’ Lily added.

‘The enchantment my parents put on me,’ Ceri said, before they could get more distracted, ‘wasn’t a protection. It was a barrier enchantment designed to keep my power locked away, to hide it. It didn’t protect me, as such, it just allowed the power I had to protect me if something contacted me.’

‘I don’t understand?’ Lily said.

‘The ability you’re now exhibiting,’ Cheryl said, ‘is not new, it simply hasn’t been able to get out of your own body until the tattoos were destroyed.’ Ceri nodded.

‘Oh,’ Twill said, her tiny eyes wide.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Lily said. She looked a little annoyed that she was not in on the revelation. ‘Your parents were magicians, why would they want you to not be one?’

‘Because she’s not,’ Twill said. ‘Not a normal one anyway.’

Lily’s frown deepened and Ceri tried to explain. ‘Normal magicians get their power from a biological chain reaction. Well, a metaphysical one, but it expresses itself in biological ways. They have to expend physical energy to create thaumic energy, their body acting as a transducer.’ Lily nodded; she got the general idea at least. ‘I don’t,’ Ceri continued. ‘I’m more like a fairy, or a demon. I’m able to…’

‘Catalyse T-Null boson decay at will,’ Cheryl broke in, her eyes sparkling. ‘It would explain everything about the way your magic works.’

‘She’s a sorceress,’ Twill said flatly. ‘To think I’d see the day they’d come back…’

‘That’s… crazy!’ Lily exclaimed. ‘Sorcerers are… legend. They didn’t really exist. That’s like… Merlin, or…’

‘Ceridwen,’ Ceri said. ‘I was named after an ancient sorceress because the Lady of Bala Lake told my parents that’s the name they should give me.’

‘Because she sensed the power in you, even as a baby,’ Twill said. ‘She’s an old one, that one. She probably remembers the sorcerers in the old days. She’d know.’

Silence descended on the room. No one seemed to know what to say until Lily suddenly burst into giggles. Everyone looked at her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it just shows how awesome I am. How many succubi can say they snagged themselves a sorceress for a mistress?’

Part Four: Doomsday

Holloway, London, October 11th

Ceri lay on the cold granite of the lab’s containment circle with a motorised engraving tool in one hand and a pot of filler sitting beside her. Lily had complained bitterly when the two thaumatologists had said they were going into work, but had caved in the face of two determined women, so long as she could come along to act as guardian angel. Though guardian demon was proving to be more accurate; a little piece of temptation on long legs.

Shane’s imperfections in the containment runes were not as bad as Ceri had thought. Minor alterations would have them operating at peek and after a morning spent working on them she was more than halfway done. The errors were, in fact, far too carefully calculated in Ceri’s opinion. Like the rune he had used to fake a containment breach, the slight modifications to the sigils were way beyond what Shane was capable of. It just added to the evidence that he had not been sabotaging Cheryl’s efforts for his own benefit. There had to have been someone far smarter behind him.

The little grinding head on her engraving tool smoothed out her latest cut and she blew the dust away, examining her work. She nodded; perfect. Putting the tool down, she looked back over her shoulder to where Lily was standing, leaning on a wall with a slight grin on her face. Despite her feelings regarding crawling around the floor in a skirt, Ceri had put on a teddy and mini-skirt that morning. She knew full well why she had done it, but she just could not quite stop herself.

‘Enjoying the view back there?’ she asked.

‘Uh-huh,’ Lily replied.

‘You going to stop looking up my skirt anytime soon?’

‘I will if you stand up.’ Smirking slightly, Ceri climbed to her feet and stretched. Her spine clicked. ‘And then I’ll look at your boobs instead,’ Lily said.

Giggling, Ceri sagged out of her stretch. ‘You’re terrible,’ she said.

‘You love it,’ Lily replied. ‘You find the attention flattering, even though it comes from a girl.’ Ceri opened her mouth to protest, but Lily went on, ‘You wouldn’t normally dress like that for work, but because I was going to be here, you did.’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said.

‘I’m half-succubus,’ Lily said, ‘I know what you want. I even know the thing you want, but you don’t really want me to do it because it’d be terribly embarrassing.’ Ceri went bright pink.

‘That sounds fascinating,’ Cheryl said as she walked in from her office.

Lily grinned at her. ‘It should do,’ she said, ‘you want exactly the same thing. Should I make some coffee or something?’

‘That’d be great, thanks Lil,’ Ceri said, and her friend pushed off the wall to go to the small utility room off the main lab.

Cheryl walked up to the circle and looked down at it. ‘How’s it going? The part you’ve worked on looks… sharper.’

Ceri nodded. ‘I’ve done some general clean-up, some slight modifications and repairs. I’ll have it finished before we leave.’

‘And you think we’ll achieve full containment with this, no leaks?’

‘Tough call,’ Ceri replied. ‘Only way to be absolutely sure would be to start from scratch. How’re the modifications on the accelerators coming?’

‘One left,’ Cheryl said, pointing at the lone machine. ‘I’ll do that tomorrow. I said I’d show you its insides.’ Ceri nodded and there was a moment of silence. ‘So you wanted her to take you right here in the circle too, huh?’ Cheryl said.

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Damn, she’s good.’

Stockwell

The woman behind the reception desk looked up as Ceri walked in and then blinked as her two flankers came through the doors. Alec was dressed like a mobster, his dark suit crisp and smart. Lily was decked out in neck to foot leather, the ultimate biker chick. The receptionist’s jaw dropped further as Alec broke off at the bottom of the stairs, folding his arms and fixing his gaze on the door.

The PPC class all looked equally bemused at Ceri and Lily as they marched into the room. Lily walked straight to the back of the room where there were windows, leaning against the wall and watching the assembled students with a flat, professional expression. Ceri went to her desk and sat down, giving Bellamy a smile and waiting for him to ask.

‘Miss Brent?’ he said after a second.

‘Bodyguard,’ Ceri said. ‘It’s Lily here and Alec downstairs, or we have a squad of Greycoats all over the place.’

‘You don’t think, perhaps, that not being here might be safer?’ Bellamy asked.

‘I don’t think anyone would trying anything somewhere so public, sir,’ she replied, ‘but I can’t convince Lily there of that, and I need this certificate.’

‘To complete your work with Doctor Tennant?’ Bellamy asked. Ceri nodded. ‘Good enough for me. Very well, today we are doing basic identification of supernatural entities, safe behaviour among them, etc.’ He looked at Ceri. ‘You’re smirking, Miss Brent.’

‘If I’d know,’ she said, ‘I’d have arranged to bring along a fairy and a werefox as well.’

Bellamy glanced over at Lily. Watts turned in his chair, looking back at the half-succubus, going a little pale. ‘Well,’ Bellamy said, ‘we’ll get to show and tell later. Mr Watts, as a wizard I’m sure you’ve encountered demons. Give me two types and their characteristics.’

Watts did not look particularly comfortable. ‘The most common type summoned are the Devim,’ he said. ‘Most people call them “imps.” They’re small, bat-winged, horned and hooved. Look like everyone’s image of a demon imp. They get used for carrying messages, canon-fodder, that kind of thing. They aren’t too bright, but they’re useful tools. There’s also a bigger version of them, the Devos. Devim are always male, but Devos come in both sexes. They’re powerful magicians, they know a lot about magic. Both Devim and Devos wield fire. It’s a basic characteristic of their nature.’

Bellamy nodded. ‘Demons, all demons, generate quantities of thaumic energy… Miss Brent? I’m sure you can explain this well.’

‘More theoretically than through observation,’ Ceri said. ‘Demons catalyse T-Null decay within their bodies. A null thaumiton will naturally decay into one positively charged and one negatively charged particle. Under the right circumstances, and demons seem to be the right circumstances, the two can be recombined, releasing energy. The most common expression of that is heat, hence the fire demons are commonly associated with.’

‘Very good. Other demons you’ll encounter,’ Bellamy continued, ‘are Dakag, somewhat lizard-like, big and brutish, popular as bodyguards, and the ever popular succubi. Can anyone tell me the unique characteristic of the succubus or incubus?’ Bellamy raised an eyebrow. Ceri had raised her hand, but so had Lily. ‘Lily, was it?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied. ‘Incubi and succubi are the same thing, able to transform into the object of desire of their victim. In female form they are able to collect sperm from human males, which they can use to inseminate human females. Under the right circumstances, this can produce a half-demon child which the demon can use as an anchor, allowing it to remain in this dimension when it would otherwise have to leave.’

Ceri smiled, rather proudly. Bellamy looked vaguely surprised. ‘Are you a practitioner, Lily?’ he asked.

‘Oh no, sir,’ she replied, ‘I’m a half-succubus. Dad explained the mechanics once.’

‘Well,’ Bellamy said, ‘half-demons are rare. They tend to have some powers from their demonic parent.’ Everyone was looking back at Lily now. ‘And in the case of succubi, they tend to be supernaturally attractive.’

Lily smiled. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Bellamy chuckled. ‘Miss Lily notwithstanding,’ he said, ‘demons are dangerous, power-hungry creatures who’s motives are… unknown really. Exactly what they want from us is something which no one has ever been able to discover. When dealing with them, it’s best to have them contained within a properly constructed circle. Some magicians, usually but not limited to wizards, make pacts with demons to gain greater power. Does anyone know why this is dangerous? Mr Watts.’

‘Using demonic power in your magic is addictive,’ he said, and Ceri knew how he had lost his license. ‘The more you use it, the more you want to, and the harder it is to work magic without it. Go too far and it’ll eat you up entirely.’ Ceri wondered how close he had come.

‘Forming a pact with a demon is illegal,’ Bellamy said. ‘Unfortunately, it’s difficult to detect and people do it. Whatever you feel might be the benefits, don’t succumb to that temptation.’

As the class went on, Ceri got Lily to relieve Alec downstairs so that the class could meet a werewolf and see some of the signs that showed while they were human. Alec was a bit bemused at first, but relaxed into it. Ceri was thankful for her research into pack politics since it made her sound cleverer than she otherwise would have been. Alec actually looked impressed at her knowledge.

On fairies she was not so good. Twill never really talked about them and Carter’s library of e-books had not included anything about them. Tooley, the teenage actress, seemed far more knowledgeable, however. She had been a huge fan when she was younger and was fascinated when she discovered Ceri and Lily lived with one. She knew all about fairies, pixies, and their larger brethren, the Sidhe, as well as the solitary fae creatures like hobs, boggarts, brownies, and other mischievous, malign, and beneficial creatures.

Undead were a subject none of them knew too much about. Ceri had half expected Raven or Tooley to be vampire fans, but even the Goth witch found them a turn off. Ceri displayed her knowledge of the thaumic decay they used to keep themselves alive and mentioned that the older ones used magic to hide their true, corpse-like, natures. Bellamy told them about the four types of zombie, including one which was not a true undead, but a magically cursed human, and also briefly mentioned ghouls, but he stated that the ones everyone would generally meet were Class One zombies, magically animated corpses, and vampires.

They wrapped with a discussion on ghosts, spirits, and other immaterial creatures, though there was little to discuss since, aside from some classifications; no one knew too much about them.

‘Tomorrow we’ll be discussing basic protection and first aid spells,’ Bellamy said as he handed out some sheets of paper. ‘In particular, the ones explained here. Then we’ll do ethical considerations. On Wednesday, you’ll sit your exam. Have a good evening.’

‘I like your teacher,’ Lily said as Alec drove them home. ‘He didn’t fuss over me being half demon.’

‘He seemed nice enough,’ Alec commented.

Ceri stayed quiet. It was only a short drive, but still she was nervous. She hated cars. She had been in a few recently, but only when she was drunk enough not to care.

‘That wizard though,’ Lily said, ‘you should be careful of him. He stank of demon.’

‘Pacted, reformed.’ Ceri said through slightly gritted teeth.

‘Huh,’ Alec grunted. ‘Carter always said that was the one thing he’d never do. Too easy to do it, way too hard to break free.’ He pulled the car up outside High Towers and said, ‘Wait there,’ before getting out and just standing there for a few moments. Apparently satisfied, he leaned back in. ‘All clear,’ he said. ‘Get inside. I’ll see you to the door and then I’ll leave you be for the night.’

Twill was waiting for them in the hallway when they walked in, Alec hovering in the doorway to be sure there was no trouble, but intending to leave. Cheryl was standing on the stairs, looking worried. ‘Something was sniffing around the wards at the back and the south gate,’ the fairy said.

‘I’m on it,’ Alec said. ‘Make sure the wards are secure.’

Ceri nodded and started for the stairs to the cellars. ‘Cheryl,’ she said, ‘come with me, you’ll probably like this.’ She headed down into the darkness of the cellar, summoning up a ball of light as she went to help her boss down the stairs. Once in the corridor the house enchantments took over, light glowing from the sequence of runes inscribed into the ceiling hidden behind frosted glass domes.

Opening the door to the enchantment maintenance cupboard, Ceri was rewarded by a gasp from Cheryl. ‘This is the system my mother came up with for maintaining the house’s enchantments,’ Ceri said. She pushed her hand into the model’s control area and rotated it around to look at the south and west sides. Everything looked fine; whatever had been checking around the house had stayed well outside it.

‘It’s… beautiful,’ Cheryl said, leaning over Ceri’s shoulder to look at the animated model.

Ceri smiled. ‘Yeah, it kind of is.’ She twisted the model back into its rest position and a shimmer passed over the runes. ‘It’s certainly damn useful,’ she added. ‘I’ve no idea how I’d have renewed the runes without this thing.’

Alec was returning from his tour of the grounds as Ceri reached the top of the stairs. ‘Whatever it was,’ the werewolf said, ‘it’s gone now. I found a few scent traces. Probably undead. Doesn’t look like it got over the fence.’

‘There’s no damage to the house enchantments,’ Ceri said. ‘I’ll check the fence in the morning before work.’ Alec nodded, hovering in the doorway as though conflicted. ‘You can stay if you want, Alec,’ Ceri said, ‘but we’re out of beds so you’ll have to bunk with Cheryl.’ Since Lily had more or less moved into Ceri’s bed anyway, Cheryl had been put into Lily’s room while she was staying. It had been the obvious thing to do since her parents had never considered a guest room a necessity.

Alec and Cheryl looked at each other. Alec’s cheeks were a little coloured and Cheryl’s eyes had widened. Lily looked at both of them and developed a broad smirk. ‘Uh, it’d be overkill,’ Alec said finally.

‘We’re quite safe in here,’ Cheryl said, ‘and Alec probably has better things to do than hanging around here…’

‘Well, no,’ Alec replied, ‘not really, but you wouldn’t want me to be hanging around here like, uh…’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind,’ Cheryl said, ‘I’ve never really, uh, met a real werewolf. To, uh, talk to, um…’

Lily’s giggle broke into the stream of excuses. Ceri joined in a second later, and the older pair looked at each other and then scowled at the younger ones. They looked back at each other. ‘You could at least stay for a drink,’ Cheryl suggested. Lily and Ceri just giggled more.

Holloway, October 12th

‘I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,’ Ceri said to Lily, ‘I’m just saying it’s weird when my thirty-something boss is getting more dick than I am, okay?’ They were in the lab, Ceri going over the accelerator modulation software for the third time.

Lily giggled and then tried to straighten her face. ‘You don’t know they did it,’ she said.

Ceri looked at Lily. ‘Have you seen the way she’s walking?’

‘Well, she is a little bow-legged, I admit, but…’ She stopped in the face of Ceri’s glare. ‘Yeah, okay, so they were banging each other until two. You’ve no idea how hard it was keeping my hands to myself last night.’

‘Then why did you?’

‘It’s not my place to initiate anything,’ Lily replied as though it should be obvious.

Ceri grimaced. She was not really a naturally assertive person; being the mistress in their rather odd relationship was necessary, but a lot harder than she had thought it would be. It did not help in the least that it felt like taking advantage of a friend.

Lily sucked on a fang. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you find me desirable right? Sexy?’

Ceri giggled despite herself. ‘Lil, rocks find you sexy.’ She looked back at the console, scrolling through code, but not entirely seeing it.

‘Right,’ Lily said with a nod. ‘Well, I know you’re not convinced, but I think you’re gorgeous. You’re fit, good body, responsive, and you’ve got power. I may be only half demon, but power’s still the biggest aphrodisiac a demon can get.’ Ceri giggled. ‘I’m serious! I can’t help it, it makes me wet just thinking about it.’

‘Lil!’ Ceri’s cheeks went scarlet.

‘Point is,’ Lily went on, ‘I want it, so I don’t see what’s stopping you when you want it. Say the word and I’ll go down on you right here and now.’

It was more than tempting. Lily’s matter-of-fact acceptance of her status just made it more tempting. Ceri bit her lip. What ultimately stopped her was Cheryl walking in from her office. ‘Tonight,’ Ceri said quietly, ‘before we go out to class.’ A sudden thought hit her and she said it aloud before she could change her mind, ‘And it better be good or you’ll be wearing cane marks when we leave.’ She was rewarded by a tiny gasp and a shudder from the half-succubus.

‘Want to crawl around under a thaumic accelerator?’ Cheryl said, oblivious to the exchange.

‘Sure,’ Ceri said. She closed the file she had been reading and joined Cheryl in front of the machine.

‘So,’ Lily said, ‘you two are going to be lying under that machine for an hour?’

Cheryl nodded. ‘If you want to go get some lunch or something…’

Lily moved to the middle of the circle and sat down. ‘Are you fucking kidding?’ she said. ‘I just wanted to be sure where I could sit for the best view.’

Stockwell

‘Magic,’ Bellamy said, ‘is dangerous.’ He paused, letting the bald statement sit for a second before continuing. ‘Oh, it’s dangerous to you people, the casters, and to those you may attack with it. As we’ve discussed, you are allowed under the law, to use offensive magic to defend yourself, and some of you may be further licensed in the future to use offensive magic for your work. However, that’s not what I mean.’

His gaze moved around the room, falling on each student, but he finally looked up at Lily, standing at the back. ‘Miss Lily, would you mind coming forward?’ Looking a little bemused, Lily walked to the front of the class. Bellamy smiled at her. ‘It’s not often I get such a useful demonstration of the ethical considerations of magic.’

‘I, uh, don’t do magic,’ Lily said.

‘No,’ Bellamy said, ‘but you are magic, and your very nature is an indication of what I’m talking about.’ He turned to the class, grinning. ‘Please answer honestly, and don’t be afraid to admit it, is there anyone in the room who would not like to go to bed with this young lady?’ There was a rather embarrassed silence, aside from the sound of Ceri trying not to giggle. ‘You’re not actually using your aura either, are you Lily?’

‘That’d be rude,’ Lily replied.

‘Quite.’ Bellamy bowed his head slightly. ‘Because Lily has this “unnatural” attractiveness as part of her being, the law does not penalise her for it. That would be like locking someone up for being a skilled martial artist. Her aura is different. It requires an act of will to use and so falls into the category of offensive magic. She can use it defend herself, but if she were to use it offensively, it would be classed as assault.’

Lily nodded. ‘Not that anyone’s ever complained when I’ve used it in any way,’ she said, grinning wide enough to show her fangs.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Bellamy replied, suggesting he had been hit with a succubus aura before. ‘However, we’ve covered that, on to the more subtle effects. Sex with a succubus is, quite frankly, amazing. It’s not simply that they’re good at it, they manipulate the flow of energy through the body, prolonging the moment of climax so that they can feed.’ Ceri shuddered at the memory of it. Lily could, indeed, keep you on the edge of orgasm for what felt like days. It was incredible, awesome, but even as she remembered it, she recognised the danger, and where Bellamy was going. ‘Sex with a succubus, or an incubus,’ Bellamy went on, ‘is addictive. They can rapidly come to control someone totally, they enslave their victims. If Lily were to actively pursue someone to do that, it would be illegal.’

‘I avoid having steady partners,’ Lily said, ‘except under specific circumstances. Even then it pays to be careful.’ She glanced at Ceri when she said it.

‘So,’ their teacher said, ‘Lily is a half-succubus who could be tried should she enslave someone with her undoubtedly pleasant powers. What about a wizard who summoned a succubus and sent it to do the same to an enemy?’

‘The wizard would be tried for misuse of magic,’ Watts said. ‘The demon is considered a tool. It’s similar to sending a zombie to kill someone. The zombie is considered a weapon.’

Bellamy nodded. ‘Excellent, Mr Watts. However, using magic to enslave someone, whether by addicting them to a succubus, or using a number of spells which permanently control the mind, carries a harsher penalty than murder. Since there is no reliable way to remove a magician’s powers, they sentence someone like that to entombment in rock. You’re alive, unaware, suspended in magic, possibly for eternity.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘The same applies to killing someone with the intent to turn them into a zombie, and also the binding of sentient undead if you’re a necromancer.’

Lily looked over at Ceri again. She was thinking the same as Ceri was. Shane Walters had been killed and turned into a zombie. It seemed that Matthew Barnes had committed the worst crime it was considered a magician could do, and he would know it. If he would do that, there was probably nothing he would stop at.

October 13th

Alec and Lily had to go to work on the night of Ceri’s exam, but Alec had called in some favours to make sure she would be safe. She was not entirely sure how safe she felt riding on the back of a motorcycle behind a man with dark hair and fangs, but Alec vouched for him and the six other werewolves. Four were males, two of them with a female sitting behind them. Ceri had not got all their names, but the one driving the bike she was on was called Dane.

Somehow, being on a bike was not quite as bad as being in a car. Maybe it was the air rushing past, Ceri was not sure. Even so, she held onto Dane rather firmly. He did not seem to mind. In fact he seemed quite prepared for it and Ceri wondered whether Alec or Lily had told him she got nervous around motor vehicles.

Of course, a squad of leather-clad bikers flanking Ceri into the community building freaked out the receptionist more than Alec and Lily had. Ceri ignored her, heading straight up the stairs while the werewolves stationed themselves at strategic locations around reception, the staircase, and the hall leading to the classroom. Dane positioned himself outside the door with a nod to Bellamy.

Ceri sat down at her desk and looked at the closed booklet in front of her. She looked up at Bellamy and waited.

‘Very well,’ the teacher said, looking around at the clock, ‘this is a one hour paper. Answer three of the five questions. You may begin.’

~~~

‘Congratulations,’ Bellamy said as he handed Ceri a signed sheet of paper. ‘I look forward to reading how you’ve surpassed Mat Barnes in the future.’

Ceri smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘though I don’t think…’

‘Trust me,’ Bellamy said, ‘you’ll outshine the bastard.’

Nodding, slightly confused, Ceri took her leave. She was the last of the students to go. They had all passed, even Raven who had looked enormously relieved to receive her temporary certificate. The proper one, together with a little plastic registration card would be sent to them by post, Bellamy had explained.

Dane was waiting outside the room. ‘So, you’re a proper magician now?’ he asked.

Ceri waved the paper at him with a grin. ‘Yeah, this says I am anyway.’

He grinned, showing fangs. ‘Cool. I’m supposed to take you up to Soho now. Your babe-friend said she wanted to celebrate when you passed your course.’

Ceri had no doubt that Lily had said something like that. ‘Okay,’ she said and started for the stairs.

‘Donny, Kort, and Tabby’ll go pick up your boss and take her along,’ Dane added. ‘Alec insisted.’

Ceri giggled at that and Dane looked at her a little oddly, but he did not ask the question and she did not think it appropriate to supply a reason. ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ she said, ‘how do you know Alec? I mean, I thought the packs didn’t have much to do with ronin.’ She felt Dane stiffen beside her. ‘I’m, uh, sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to offend…’

He made a visible effort to relax. ‘Not your fault,’ he said, ‘he probably said he was ronin, right?’ Ceri nodded her reply. ‘Yeah, he would. Technically he is, but he was Black Wolf pack…’ He broke off, almost sounding as though he had said too much. ‘He saved my life, back before I made Alpha. I owe him.’ The alternative, and more obvious, reason seemed reasonable, but there was more to it.

On the other hand, it seemed rude to ask so Ceri changed the subject. ‘So, Alec didn’t say which pack you guys were with.’

‘North Hills,’ Dane replied. ‘We’re a nomad pack. Mostly hang ‘round the Chilterns.’ They had reached the top of the stairs and the two wolves waiting there turned smartly and without a word to follow them down. Two more were collected at the bottom of the stairs, while the last two approached from around the reception area. Ceri had never seen werewolves together as a pack and she found it fascinating. They really did operate as a cohesive whole. Dane seemed to say nothing, but the others knew their place and purpose.

As the quintet of motorcycles cruised down to the end of Foxley Road, the two trailing bikes peeled off without a word, heading for High Towers to pick up Cheryl. The remaining bikes picked up speed as they turned onto Camberwell New Road, heading for the Oval and then Vauxhall Bridge. The soft hum of the well-tuned engine between Ceri’s thighs buzzed through her body. It was far more relaxing than she had thought it would be and she pulled herself closer against Dane’s back and tried to forget that she was riding on something with wheels.

He was not a big man. No taller than Ceri, he nevertheless had quite a broad back and a lot of dense, corded muscle running over his chest. On the north side of the bridge, they kept running straight up Vauxhall Bridge Road and Ceri grinned; they were taking the long way around, past Buckingham Palace, rather than going up Millbank. Giving her a bit of a show on the way to the club.

‘I’m surprised there’s no she-wolf sitting where I am,’ she said, not having to raise her voice much to be heard. Werewolves had successfully lobbied for Parliament to vote against a law on compulsory helmets during the nineties. Werewolves were a lot about freedom, especially not having rules imposed on them by non-werewolves.

‘That a subtle way of asking if I’m single?’ Dane asked.

‘No, genuine surprise,’ Ceri replied with a laugh. ‘You look like a good catch.’

‘Aleena seemed to think I was,’ he acknowledged, ‘but she died about four years ago.’

Once again Ceri felt like she had put her foot in it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘She died well,’ he said. ‘I miss her, but she went down fighting and she took six of the bastards with her when she went.’ There was a fierce pride in his voice, along with a hint of pain. According to the books Ceri had read, while an Alpha would not deny themselves after their partner’s death, neither male nor female would take another mate.

The Palace was lit up as they cruised around to drive down The Mall and Ceri spotted the flag flying over it. ‘The Queen’s in,’ she commented, not really knowing what to say. It raised a short, barking laugh from Dane. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘you don’t know if they really are weres, do you?’

She felt a rumbling chuckle in his chest. ‘We don’t comment on the rumours,’ he said.

‘That’s no fun,’ she replied with a giggle. There were a number of rumours to the effect that the Royal Family had werewolves among them, but if they were true it was a well-kept secret. Better known was Charles’ enthusiastic embrace of witchcraft; it went well with his image as an ecologist.

The traffic was not heavy and Ceri was almost sorry the trip was over when they pulled up outside the Jade Dragon. ‘Are you coming in?’ she asked as she swung her leg over the back of the Norton.

‘Not our scene,’ Dane replied. ‘You go have fun.’

Ceri was a little disappointed. ‘Okay, and thanks for this evening. I enjoyed your company.’

Dane smiled, showing his fangs. ‘Been a while since I had a good looking girl on the back of this old thing,’ he said, patting the tank in front of him. ‘I’ll see you again, maybe.’

She smiled back. ‘I hope so,’ she said, and then turned with a wave to walk into the club. As the door closed she heard the throaty roar of the bikes pulling away.

Cheryl was already there, beaming in pride at her protégé’s success, but Lily gave her no time to express that pride as she appeared from between the tables and began hustling Ceri toward the back rooms. ‘Time for the congratulations in a minute,’ the half-succubus said. ‘First you get changed. I got some stuff for you to wear. You can change in Carter’s office.’

Lily, it seemed, had been shopping. The dress was short and black with fake buckles down the front and a built in bra. The bottom half of each cup was mesh, as was the bottom two inches of the skirt, and there was a pair of matching, strappy, platform heels. Ceri eyed the outfit and concluded that Lily had ulterior motives. For starters, she had no underwear available that would work under it. Shrugging, she undressed and squeezed into the tight dress.

Her demon was standing outside the office when Ceri emerged. Lily’s smirk turned into a delighted smile. ‘You look gorgeous!’ she said. Rushing forward, she wrapped Ceri in a hug. ‘Congratulations,’ she said, giggling, ‘I knew you could do it!’

The giggle was infectious. ‘If this is what I get for a simple PPC exam,’ she said, ‘what happens if I get my doctorate?’

‘When you get your doctorate,’ Lily said, ‘I’m going to…’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. Ceri went bright red, then begin to fidget, and then the red evened out into a deep flush down her neck and across her chest. ‘That’s what you get when you get your doctorate,’ Lily said a little louder. ‘Now let’s go join the party.’

Ceri’s legs were a little wobbly. ‘That’s… an incentive,’ she said.

‘You asked,’ Lily replied, taking Ceri’s arm and leading her out into the club. Suddenly Ceri was being handed a drink and lifted onto a stool. Cheryl was congratulating her, as was Carter. Both of them looked proud and happy for her. Alec stood behind the bar with a smile on his face until things calmed down again.

‘I hope Dane behaved himself,’ the barman said. Lily was back at her tables, and Carter and Cheryl were discussing something about funding off to Ceri’s right.

‘A perfect gentleman,’ Ceri replied. ‘He seemed like a nice guy.’

‘He is,’ Alec said, ‘but he’s been without his mate for a while and I don’t think he’s taken any of the offers the girls in his pack have made.’

‘He said his mate had been killed.’

Alec nodded, carefully wiping a glass with a tea towel. ‘Yeah. There were a lot of deaths and Aleena was one of them. Could have been worse, they were fighting demons.’

Ceri frowned. ‘Demons? Someone sent demons after a nomadic werewolf pack?’

Alec looked at her, his expression suggesting he wished he had not mentioned it. ‘Some things you’re better off not knowing too much about, kid. Forget about it.’

Ceri narrowed her eyes a little and then nodded. ‘Okay, mysterious, but okay. I have someone trying to kill me as it is, I guess I should concentrate on one death threat at a time.’

‘It’s a good attitude,’ the werewolf replied. ‘I try to limit my potentially lethal circumstances to one at a time.’ He grinned and she giggled, but she got the feeling he was joking to hide a nasty reality. His face straightened suddenly. ‘And you might want to consider applying that attitude right about now.’

Frowning, Ceri looked around to see a man in his late twenties walking in with a woman on each arm. He was good looking in a slightly pale, academic sort of way, with a shock of black hair above narrow features and dark brown eyes. The women had the pale-skinned look that some younger vampires favoured. Blonde and brunette, they wore matching short, black dresses in a mesh fabric which left little to the imagination. In any normal world, the man would not rate two girls who looked even vaguely that sexy.

Before anyone else could move, Carter was walking over to intercept the threesome. ‘Doctor Barnes,’ he said, ‘not often we see you here in London.’

Matthew Barnes smiled, but the smile came nowhere near his eyes. ‘I had business at my publishers,’ he said. Ceri’s eyes wandered over his associates. Lily had mentioned he had two vampires as bodyguards and these, she guessed, were them. Her eyes narrowed; the blonde looked like she had a nasty patch of red skin across her chest, but it was hard to tell through the dress.

Carter looked around at one of the waitresses. ‘Tessa, please show Doctor Barnes to table sixteen.’

‘I was hoping to have your half-succubus…’ Barnes began.

‘Lily’s tables are full,’ Carter said smoothly.

Ceri looked around, spotting Lily moving toward the bar. She met her friend’s eyes and waved her over as Tessa led Barnes and his girls toward their table. She could tell Lily had seen him from the way her aura was flaring as she got closer. Carter moved toward them, obviously feeling the same thing.

‘That’s Barnes,’ Lily hissed.

‘I know, Lil,’ Ceri said.

‘The bastard’s tried to kill you three times now, Ceri…’

‘You can’t prove it, Lily,’ Carter said. Ceri thought about the burn on the blonde vampire’s chest, probably left there by her own fire. Now was not the time to bring it up. ‘If you do anything, he can defend himself.’

‘I’ll…’ Lily’s body tensed and the skin on Ceri’s scalp tightened as the half-succubus’ aura flared hot and angry.

Ceri slipped from her stool and stepped close to Lily. Her hand reached up and gripped her friend’s jaw, she leaned in so that she could whisper in Lily’s ear. ‘He’s here to taunt you into acting. You will not rise to it. You’re better than that. Don’t make your Mistress ashamed of her pet.’

Lily’s eyes widened, and then she looked down. ‘Yes, Ceri,’ she said quietly.

Ceri released her hold on Lily’s chin and stepped back a little. ‘Now you do your job and ignore the freak,’ she said. Lily bowed her head slightly and pulled herself up straight. She looked around, spotted a table where the drinks were getting low, and started toward it.

Carter watched her go and then looked around at Ceri with a raised eyebrow. ‘You seem to have our Lily under firm control,’ he said. Ceri thought she detected a hint of disapproval. Or was it protectiveness? Was he worried she was taking advantage of Lily?

‘Only way we could make things work,’ she said. ‘You ever had a succubus decide you were her chosen master?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘but I have read that document I put on your tablet. I thought it might be informative, not of practical use.’

Ceri shrugged. ‘We’re hoping she can eventually overcome her demon side, but for now I have to be her mistress at times or she’ll try to control me.’ She felt her cheeks heating. ‘I got it a little wrong and she did try. I broke free, and this is what we came up with. It’s not easy, I’m not exactly a natural dominatrix.’

Carter’s lips twitched. ‘Fun though, I’d imagine.’

‘I enjoy it,’ Lily said, returning from her table. She was smiling, focussed on being the best waitress in the Jade Dragon. ‘And,’ she added, ‘Mistress is getting much better at pushing my buttons when she needs to.’ Ceri blushed slightly. ‘You were right,’ Lily said. ‘I was being… emotional.’

‘That’s your nature, dear,’ Cheryl said. ‘Succubi are tuned to emotion. And your protectiveness of Ceri is very endearing.’

Lily shrugged slightly. ‘Since we’re not keeping it quiet… Ceri’s my mistress, I can’t help being protective.’

‘You can rationalise it that way if you like, Lil,’ Carter said, ‘but you’d have been doing the same thing before Ceri’s accident. Your demon side is not the governor of your actions you like to make it out to be.’

‘Maybe,’ Lily said. She did not look convinced and changed the subject by the simple expedient of looking around at Alec. ‘Three red wines for table two, please.’

Carter waited until Lily was taking the drinks to the table before he turned to Ceri once more. ‘I’m glad to see you’re not taking advantage of her,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, you don’t seem the type, but I know power can go to your head.’

Ceri glanced over his shoulder toward Barnes’ table. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I just did take advantage of her, well, of that aspect of our relationship.’

‘For her own good,’ Cheryl commented.

Ceri shrugged slightly and gave a sheepish smile. ‘I take a few liberties,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think Lily minds. We’re still at the stage where we’re trying each other out. Y‘know, testing limits. I think mine are a lot more, uh, restrictive than hers.’

‘That’s almost certainly a good thing, dear,’ Cheryl said. It was more of a comment on her potential power as a sorceress, Ceri suspected. Of course she was right; the ancient sorcerers had been beings of terrible power. It would be far too easy to let that kind of power turn you into something horrible. She shuddered.

Carter misinterpreted her look of disquiet and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about that, Ceri. Enjoy yourself in the knowledge it’s unlikely you’ll ever ask her to do something she would actually find degrading. If my memory of that paper serves, the object of the exercise is to demonstrate to your demon that you’re the boss, not to test the limits of your depravity.’

Ceri giggled. ‘Yeah, but did you read the introduction? The author’s limits of depravity were…’

‘More of less non-existent,’ Carter said, smirking. ‘If you ladies will excuse me, I need to be a little sociable around the tables.’ Ceri nodded, smiling, and picked up her drink. Carter smiled warmly at Ceri and Cheryl, and started off toward Lily’s tables.

‘Good evening, ladies.’ Ceri had not heard Barnes approaching, though his voice identified the stiffening sensation in her spine which had suddenly developed. ‘Doctor Tennant, isn’t it?’ he added. ‘I have a terrible memory for faces.’ Fine, if he wanted to play it that way…

Ceri turned and nodded as Cheryl spoke. ‘That’s right, Doctor Barnes. And this is my research assistant, Miss Brent.’

‘I recall some enchanters of that name,’ Barnes said. ‘Relatives?’

‘My parents.’

‘Ah. What happened to them? I don’t recall hearing anything about them recently.’ He smiled pleasantly, but Ceri was watching his eyes and they were dead. Ceri did a slow blink, knowing he would think she was reacting to the taunt; he knew full well what had happened to her parents and was trying to needle her.

She looked at the protégé magician with her Sight. ‘They’re dead,’ she said to say something rather than blurt out her shock. Black striations formed a web through Barnes’ body. His Chakral Median was a thick line of darkness up his spine. Barnes was not simply pacted to some demon, he was consumed by it. ‘A car accident,’ she went on and closed her eyes to shut off the image before her.

‘Fate can bring even the greatest of us down so ignominiously,’ Barnes said blandly. His attention shifted back to Cheryl. ‘I heard you had a bit of an accident in your lab, Doctor. A student died?’

‘One of my students was murdered,’ Cheryl said acidly.

‘And it wasn’t an accident,’ Ceri said. ‘The murdered student sabotaged our containment circle. It was a foolish mistake since the instability actually produced better results than a solid circle would have. Whoever told him to do it was clearly a very poor thaumatologist.’

Barnes’ eyes remained flat, but a flicker of anger moved over his face. ‘Perhaps they had another reason for the sabotage,’ he said. ‘Something you haven’t deduced.’

‘We’ll have the circle ready to go again tomorrow,’ Cheryl said. ‘Ceri is really quite brilliant. She’s repaired all the damage Shane did, improved the synchronisation software, and she can raise a circle easily as well as he could.’

Barnes’ eyes narrowed. ‘Good luck with that,’ he said, and stalked off toward the toilets as though that had been his intention all along.

‘Was there a reason we were needling him?’ Cheryl asked.

‘He came here to wind us up,’ Ceri replied, ‘and I’m sick of hiding behind werewolves and wards. I want him annoyed and in a rush to stop us or he’ll be hanging over our heads until Doomsday.’

‘Is that entirely wise?’

‘Maybe not.’ Ceri took a drink of her wine. ‘On the other hand, he seems determined to kill me anyway. I’d rather be in control of it.’ Her eyes flicked up to see Lily heading back toward them. ‘Considering I forbad Lily from doing anything drastic, I’d prefer not to talk about it in front of her.’

Cheryl nodded. ‘We’ll take the morning off,’ she said, changing the subject without further comment. ‘I suspect we’ll be late getting to bed. Then how do you feel about running up a trial of the system in the afternoon?’

‘You know I’ve never raised a circle that large?’ Ceri replied. ‘Though Carl Bellamy seemed to think I was capable enough. The test circle I did was too large, he said.’

Cheryl snapped her fingers. ‘That’s where I heard the name! Bellamy was involved in some scandal about… two years ago. He wrote a paper on dark containment circles, and Barnes claimed he had stolen the concept and theoretical work from him. Bellamy denied it, of course, but Barnes had some notes and files which the people at Cambridge said proved the claim.’

‘Barnes stole Mister Bellamy’s work.’ Lily said.

Cheryl lowered her voice. ‘Well, there have been a few rumours about Barnes taking credit for students’ work, his own becoming unimaginative. It happens to some. They have a few years of brilliance and then burn out.’ The researcher developed a slightly self-deprecating smile. ‘I prefer being the slow and steady type. I’m no genius, but I get the work done.’ She reached out a hand to pat Ceri’s arm. ‘And I give full credit to the brilliant people I work with when their work is vital to our success.’

‘You actually have morals,’ Lily said. Barnes was walking past as she said it. Ceri saw his face cloud over, but he kept walking. Lily had not been looking at him and he had no way of knowing she was making an inference about him. Her scalp tightened, however, and she was quite sure it was not due to Lily.

~~~

The toilets in the Dragon were very plush, even if you were not having illicit trysts with the owner in one of the cubicles. Deep red flock wallpaper with a Chinese dragon design and mood lighting gave the place a sumptuous feel. Still, it was a toilet… Pulling her dress down, she flushed the loo and unbolted the door. She paused. Someone had entered the room and her scalp had tightened.

She waited, and then heard one of the other cubicles open and close, the bolt clicking home. Letting out her breath, she stepped out of the cubicle and crossed the room to the sinks. The liquid soap had a faint jasmine scent. Ceri smiled and rubbed it over her hands, lathering them. She glanced in the mirrors and smiled slightly at the girl looking back. It was the same face as always, but the outfit was… far less shy. Something made her frown; some slight error in what she was seeing…

She threw herself sideways. The mirror shattered as the vampire’s fist slammed into it. It was the blonde again. She grinned maliciously at Ceri as she rolled, trying to keep her eyes on her attacker. The vampire pulled a sliver of glass out of her hand; the wound healing over almost instantly. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘How did you spot me?’

‘Didn’t,’ Ceri replied, ‘but all the cubicle doors were open.’

The vamp glanced back at the doors. ‘That is very good. And before you think of burning me again,’ she raised her hand, shaking a charm strapped around her wrist, ‘that’s been taken care of.’

‘No knives this time?’ Ceri asked, hoping to buy time. She struggled back to her feet, wondering vaguely why the vampire was not attacking.

‘Too quick,’ Blondie replied. ‘Master’s decided to make it slow. I’m to drain you while he watches.’

Ceri narrowed her eyes. Lily had said Barnes’ vampires seemed like thralls. If he had worked magic on them to control them there was a chance. ‘Master,’ she said, ‘right, so he’s using your senses. In that case I can tell him what a cowardly prick I think he is.’ It was there, the tenuous streamer of energy linking the vampire with Barnes. She was identifying the core of the spell within the vamp’s mind when a hand gripped her throat. She had not seen the vampire move.

‘You’re warm,’ the vampire purred. Ceri braced her forearms against the vamp’s chest and pushed. There was a slight wince of pain as the mesh abraded the vamp’s burn, but the pressure did not let up. ‘That’s mean,’ she said. ‘It’s a shame you keep my aura off you. This will hurt much more without it.’ Ceri felt the wall against her shoulder blades and the vampire’s breath hot on her neck.

‘Bet you didn’t think of this, bastard,’ Ceri croaked out to the magician listening in, and her power flared, blasting into the matrix of the spell. The vampire’s fangs grazed her neck and then were jerked back, the girl staggering in confusion. Ignoring her, Ceri bolted for the door, yanking it open and heading for the club’s main floor.

Carter and Lily were standing by the bar with Cheryl. All three were looking a little bemused. ‘Where’s Barnes?’ Ceri snapped.

‘He just left in a considerable hurry,’ Cheryl replied, ‘with only one girl. We don’t know where the other’s gone.’

‘Damn!’ Ceri slammed her fist onto the counter. ‘Um, the other vamp’s in the ladies’ toilet, probably a bit confused.’

Carter’s face went dark. ‘I’ll see to it.

Ceri put a hand on his arm as he walked past. ‘She was controlled, some sort of mind link spell.’

‘Enslavement spell,’ Carter spat. ‘Illegal and immoral. Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on her.’ He continued on, vanishing behind the screen wall which led to the toilets.

Cheryl sighed. ‘I guess we won’t be getting that lie in,’ she said.

Kennington, October 14th

They did get something of a lie in; Sergeant Middleshaw arrived at eleven o’clock sharp, on her own. She looked tired and Ceri wondered whether she had had any sleep at all that night.

‘No partner?’ Ceri asked as she took the detective upstairs to the lounge.

‘He’s in Newcastle,’ Middleshaw said. ‘Personal business.’ She walked into the lounge and sat down as though she would have fallen down if the chair had not been there to catch her. ‘The timing was sucky, but he’s got good reason. I can’t fault him.’

It was a curious thing to say, and Ceri suspected the detective’s fatigue was talking. ‘Do you want to ask me questions,’ Ceri asked, ‘or are you here to tell me things?’

‘Probably both,’ Middleshaw admitted. ‘Your vampire’s name is Andrea Leighton. We believe the brunette vamp with Barnes is her sister, Eleanor, but she’s vanished. Cambridge locals talked to Barnes this morning and he claims Eleanor had business in Manchester. None of his concern, not like she’s his slave, cue laugh, you get the picture.’

‘But Andrea must have…’ Ceri began.

‘Andrea’s in the secure facility at Greycoat Street under protective custody,’ Middleshaw interrupted. She looked up as a mug of coffee floated toward her, taking it with a deep sigh of relief. ‘Thanks, Twill,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been to bed yet.’ She took a gulp of coffee and went on. ‘The girl’s memory is a mess. It looks like breaking the Enslavement triggered some sort of curse. She doesn’t remember much of the last four years or so, and what she does remember has her curled up in a corner sobbing.’

‘Killings?’ Ceri asked.

‘Oh hell no,’ Middleshaw replied. ‘If she remembered killing people it would endanger her master. No, she doesn’t even remember attacking you. She remembers… various acts… with her sister.’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said.

‘Exactly. Is there anything you can tell me which would be useful?’

‘I thought it over,’ Ceri said, ‘and the answer is “no.” It’s all circumstantial, or my word against his.’ Middleshaw sagged, but nodded wearily. ‘Andrea only ever referred to her “Master,” and while I’m pretty sure it was him directing her, I can’t be absolutely sure, and you’ve only my word for it.’

‘Yeah,’ Middleshaw said, ‘I figured as much. The forensic thaumatology team say there’s no evidence the control spell ever existed. They’re working on cracking whatever it is that’s blocking her memory, but it’s apparently amazingly complex.’

‘Demonic magic,’ Ceri said. ‘They know more about working maledictions than any human ever and Barnes is in deep with them.’

Middleshaw paled. ‘Fuck! Are you sure?’

Ceri nodded. ‘He’s… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like he’s riddled with dark energy. Like he’s… rotting.’

‘They do, eventually,’ Twill said. ‘They think it’s easy, taking power from demons, or ancient spirits, even from angels and some fae. The more they do it, the more they find it harder and harder to work normally, and the more they rely on their borrowed power. And the more they do it, the more it rots their spirit until it takes over entirely.’

‘I’ve met them before,’ Middleshaw said flatly and pulled out her mobile phone, flicking through the contacts. ‘I’ve had to deal with a couple. It wasn’t nice.’ Her attention turned suddenly to whoever answered her call. ‘Hecks? It’s Middleshaw. Expert here suggests the magic on the Leighton girl is probably demonic. Tell the forensics guys.’ She listened to the response, nodded, and hung up, sagging into her seat and gulping down more coffee. ‘See?’ she said. ‘You were helpful.’

‘Not in the way I’d like,’ Ceri replied. She looked up. ‘Morning, Cheryl,’ she said.

Wrapped in a long, silk and lace robe, the thaumatologist looked sleepy, but at least rested, unlike Middleshaw. ‘Ceri, Detective, morning. Any news?’

‘Nothing good,’ Ceri replied.

‘Morning, Doctor Tennant,’ Middleshaw said. ‘We’ve placed guards around your department at the Metropolitan. Will you and Miss Brent be going there later?’

Cheryl seemed to consider that for a second before saying, ‘No. I have my laptop with me. I have some procedural documents to go over. I recall some additional analysis runs Ceri was going to do. We’ll work from here today and make a fresh start in the morning.’

‘Fair enough. There’s a watch on Barnes. If he leaves Cambridge we’ll know about it. I’d better get back to the office,’ Middleshaw said, not moving.

‘I think,’ Ceri said, ‘that you should interview me for another hour. The lounger in the study’s actually pretty comfortable and I think a nap would improve your chances of surviving the car journey back across the river.’

Middleshaw smiled weakly. ‘I can’t, they’d want to know what I was doing and…’

‘We went over the nature of the magic I dispelled,’ Ceri said, ‘to determine whether there was any useful information to be gleaned from it and unfortunately concluded that there was not. Twill, see that Detective Middleshaw is comfortable, would you?’

The tiny woman buzzed across to hover in front of the detective, hands on hips. ‘I’ll use a sleep charm if I have to,’ she said.

Middleshaw laughed. ‘Okay, yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll be more use when my brain isn’t running purely on coffee and adrenaline. Chief’ll probably send me home as soon as I get in anyway.’ She climbed to her feet and allowed Twill to escort her out and across the landing.

‘They got nothing from the vampire you freed?’ Cheryl asked, replacing the policewoman in the chair.

‘There was some sort of curse backing up the control spell. Her memory’s got more holes in it than a colander.’ Ceri sighed. ‘How did Barnes get messed up enough to be like this? I mean, as far as I can see it’s “there but for the grace of God go I.”’

Cheryl looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It’s a danger,’ she said, ‘but I think you’re too aware of it to fall into that trap. From what I recall, Barnes always had it easy. He was clever, certainly, but his father over-indulged him and he got used to everything just coming to him. He started out in wizardry… I suspect the first time he wanted to try other things and wanted those to come without effort he turned to a demon to make it happen. He may be little more than a tool to them now.’

‘If that’s the case,’ Ceri said, ‘why would they want him to stop us finding the T-Null? That has to be his own professional rivalry, surely?’

Cheryl shrugged. ‘Perhaps.

The sound of a yawning Lily paused the conversation. The naked half-demon wandered in looking just as beautiful as always, despite the rubbing of her eyes and her gaping mouth. ‘Why’s Twill hovering over a sleeping detective in the study?’ she asked.

Holloway, October 15th

‘Damn! I didn’t get the rod recharged,’ Cheryl growled, picking the offending lump of iron alloy up and glaring at it. She looked around at Ceri. ‘It takes two days to charge the thing to capacity.’

Ceri looked around at the circle and then back at Cheryl. ‘You’ve got me doing this now, not Shane.’

‘You think you can raise something that big on your own?’

‘My father could’ve done it,’ Ceri replied. ‘His summoning circle back at High Towers is this size.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. You start on the circle and I’ll get the instruments ready.’ The doctor headed off into her cage to power things up.

Ceri got the salt and begin meticulously working on marking out the runes. She took her time, checking each one for signs of tampering as she went. After last time, she was taking no chances, but she found nothing wrong. As she filled the inner circle, Cheryl emerged to start up the accelerator systems.

‘What’s a “dark circle”?’ Ceri asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘You said the research Carl Bellamy was working on was into “dark circles.” I’ve never heard of them.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Cheryl set the power-up sequence going and turned around. ‘It’s a containment circle which isolates everything within. Nothing gets out, not even light, so the circle goes black.’

‘Okay,’ Ceri said, finishing off the inner ring. ‘That doesn’t sound too useful.’

‘I’m not aware of a practical application,’ Cheryl replied. ‘It was pure research. We’re set, do you want to start the outer ring?’

Nodding, Ceri moved to the northern point of the pentagram and began laying the salt, moving deliberately around until the circle was complete. Standing where she had started, she drew in a breath and focussed herself on the circle. Raising her arms was a pointless gesture, but it felt right. The salt in the circle glowed a brilliant white for a second and Ceri smiled. Her Sight showed her the shimmering cylinder she had created and it looked rock solid. ‘We’re ready,’ she said.

‘In the cage with me,’ Cheryl said. ‘You don’t need to be watching things out here and it’s safer.’

With both of them inside the silver-iron mesh, Cheryl stood before the main control console and typed in a command. ‘Resonance inducers coming up,’ she said. On the monitor screen for the cameras around the lab, Ceri could see the familiar light display as the coils began to resonate the magic of the circle. As it turned solid white, Cheryl typed another command in and said, ‘Initiating the pulse generators.’

Ripples of colour began to run across the surface of the cylinder like stones hitting a pond as the accelerators fired. Ceri’s eyes flicked to the data readouts from the sensors inside the circle. ‘I think this’ll be better than the last run,’ she said. ‘Look at those thaumic field readings.’

Cheryl followed her gaze and smiled. ‘This is excellent. You see the way the reading dips and then recovers? I’m fairly sure that’s an effect of recombination. If we have solid evidence of that then we’ve cracked the second element of the…’ She stopped speaking as the readings from the interior sensors died without warning. ‘Damn! We’ve lost the signal,’ she said. ‘Shutting down.’ Her fingers danced over the keys and the accelerators and coils fell silent.

Ceri stepped out of the cage, looking around at the circle, and came to a grinding halt. With the coils and accelerators off, the circle should have gone transparent again. Instead it was a boiling wash of colours. She summoned her Sight and things only got worse. Arcs of thaumic energy rippled across the surface of the barrier, never getting outside it, but snaking across the surface like undercurrents. ‘Uh, Cheryl, we have a problem,’ she said.

Cheryl joined her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should drop the circle.’

‘I can’t,’ Ceri replied. ‘The field inside isn’t falling off. If I drop the circle, we get hit in the face with several hundred thaums.’

~~~

‘Okay,’ Cheryl said, ‘what do we have?’ An hour had passed and the circle was still going. The building had been evacuated, apart from Ceri and her boss. For the last forty minutes, Ceri had been alone while Cheryl had calmed down the Dean. For once the High-energy Thaumatology Building was living up to its reputation and people were nervous.

‘I’ve run simulations,’ Ceri said. ‘I think I’ve got this almost worked out.’

‘Go on then,’ Cheryl said.

‘Okay,’ Ceri began. ‘The system works by creating an intense energy field just inside the containment circle. A normal energy field, not a thaumic one. Null thaumitons enter the circle, strike the field, and some of them decay taking energy from the field to create the mass for a pair of positive and negative thaumitons which stay within the circle.’

Cheryl nodded. ‘But then we add in the recombination effect,’ she said.

Ceri nodded. ‘A T-Plus and a T-Minus hitting each other within the right vector range collapse back into a T-Null, releasing their mass as electromagnetic energy.’

‘Which reinforces the field the nulls can use in the decay process!’ Cheryl said exultantly. Despite the massive problem they had, she was positively glowing at the discovery.

Ceri nodded, grinning despite herself. ‘With the old circle, the leakage would prevent this from happening, and then we had the breach. The new version stops any thaumitons with mass from escaping, so the field builds up until the energy generated inside the circle is enough to make it self-sustaining.’

‘All right,’ Cheryl said. ‘How do we stop it? We’ve got a thaumic bomb in the middle of London at the moment.’

‘Ah, well if my figures are right, we don’t have to.’ Ceri tapped the screen of her tablet. ‘The excited energy field gives off light, which can escape the circle. That will bleed energy out of the decay field and, eventually, collapse the system.’

‘How long?’

‘According to the readings we got just before the sensors went down, estimating how much more energy went in before you killed the power, and taking an average for the frequency spectrum we seem to be getting out… another four hours.’

Kennington

It took four hours and seventeen nerve-racking minutes for the thaumic field to begin collapsing, and then another thirty-five minutes before Ceri was happy that they were not going to unleash a rain of frogs on the university, or turn everyone blue, when she dropped the circle. The instrument column on the inside of the circle had been a pile of molten metal when they could finally see it. Cheryl was, surprisingly, sanguine about it.

‘The data we have is remarkably good,’ she said as she went over it on her laptop back at High Towers, ‘and it’s not like we’ll be able to repeat the experiment.’

Ceri nodded. ‘Yeah, I think the Dean might blow a fuse. Okay, I think I’ve got this model right. The thaumic field in the circle reaches a natural balance at about four-hundred and fifty-two thaums. At that point, the radiant energy from the excitation field becomes large enough that it can’t grow. Not without external input anyway. It took a little longer to come down than I think it should have and I haven’t quite worked out why that is yet, but I have a good approximation working.’

‘Bad, but not too bad,’ Cheryl commented.

‘Yeah, like it would have levelled the university, but not the city,’ Ceri laughed. ‘You think this is what Barnes was trying to stop us finding out?’

Cheryl frowned. ‘If he had worked out that this was possible, wouldn’t he have published the theory? Besides, it’s interesting as an effect, but not exactly useful.’

‘Make a pretty good weapon.’

‘Barnes does get a lot of funding from the military for exotic application of theoretical techniques. One of his teams came up with the encrypted network system the Army started using last year.’ She frowned in thought for a second and then shook her head. ‘But no, it’s not big enough. There are perfectly good mundane methods of levelling a building. Even though nukes are banned under the Glasgow Accords, things like fuel-air bombs have as much punch without the issue of blowing a hole in the universe.’

Ceri turned her tablet around to show Cheryl a graph. It grew rapidly, vanishing off the top of the scale at the end. ‘That’s if you use a standard circle,’ Ceri said. ‘If you remove the radiant energy leakage you get this. As far as I can tell, the field never stops growing.’

‘But how would you stop the radiant…’ Cheryl face showed her sudden comprehension, and a degree of horror. ‘Dark circles,’ she said. ‘Barnes stole the dark circle work from Bellamy. If he could get our resonance system to work on a dark circle…’

‘He’d have a doomsday device,’ Ceri said. ‘An explosion of thaumic energy with a near infinite field potential.’ She looked at the screen. ‘I don’t even know where to start calculating what it would do.’

‘I don’t think you can start,’ Cheryl replied. ‘Infinite Field Theory is being studied by a couple of thaumatologists in the US, but it’s not really considered a serious subject. Half of it is conjecture and imagination.’

‘Well this,’ Ceri said, waving a hand at the screen, ‘isn’t conjecture or fiction. You have to call the Journal and tell them we need to add a warning to the article.’

Nodding, Cheryl reached for the phone. ‘We’ll go in tomorrow and disable the accelerators,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anything happening accidentally.’

Ceri nodded. She was busy accessing the university’s archive of theoretical papers for anything she could find on Infinite Field Theory.

Holloway, October 16th

Half a dozen uniformed policemen were still on guard at the High-energy Thaumatology Building. It made Ceri feel safer knowing they were there, decked out in enchanted body armour and carrying sleep batons. She nodded to the two at the main entrance as she walked in with Cheryl. It was Saturday morning and the place was quiet, almost unnaturally quiet. Ceri found herself looking around nervously.

‘How are we going to do this?’ she asked Cheryl as they walked into the lab.

‘Remove the primary accelerator coils,’ Cheryl replied, walking into the cage, ‘and disconnect the resonator units from the coil. We’ll remove them from site, and…’

Ceri turned as the thaumatologist’s voice cut off suddenly. ‘Boss?’ There was no answer. ‘Cheryl? You okay?’

Someone stepped out of the cage and Ceri gasped. ‘She’s fine,’ Matthew Barnes said, ‘sleeping soundly. You, unfortunately, will be harder to enspell, so…’

Pain exploded across the back of Ceri’s skull. She fell, rolling onto her back, and saw the brunette vampire, Eleanor, standing behind her. Then she saw nothing.

~~~

The pain behind her eyes kept her lying still for several seconds after she regained consciousness. She was resting on cold stone; the granite block of the containment circle, she guessed. The cool felt good against her temple and she decided that just listening was probably the best bet for a while.

‘The policemen have been dealt with?’ Barnes’ voice. The reply was in a language she did not understand, but the guttural quality and Barnes’ history suggested a demon. ‘Good,’ Barnes went on, ‘see that we are not disturbed. I want to savour this.’ There was the sound of heavy footfalls moving away, out of the room.

‘The backup will be complete in ten minutes.’ Another voice, female. Eleanor?

‘That long?’ Barnes sounded impatient.

‘There’s a lot of data. You want all of it, don’t you, Master?’ Yes, that would be Eleanor; just as enthralled as her sister had been.

‘How hard did you hit the witch?’ Barnes said. ‘I want her awake for this.’

Ceri prepared herself. When she moved, she would have little time to take Barnes out; possibly less to stop the vampire. Fire was probably out, perhaps electricity.

‘She’ll probably wake up before the backup’s finished.’

Ceri opened her eyes, locating Barnes immediately. Eleanor was standing right beside him, but there was no sign of Cheryl. Not to worry about that now. She pushed the worry from her head, summoned her power, and stretched out a hand toward Barnes. Lightning arced from her fingertips, travelled six or so inches, and then struck the edge of the circle, shattering into a spider web of charge.

When her ears stopped ringing, Ceri heard Barnes clapping, slowly. ‘That was very good, Miss Brent,’ Barnes said. ‘Remarkably good, in fact. I knew there was no way you could have gained magical power from that accident. As you can see, I’ve raised the circle. Congratulations again, you did a remarkable job of fixing the “errors” Walters put in.’

Ceri pulled herself into a sitting position. Her head was throbbing. Reaching to the back of her neck she winced and drew it away. There was blood on her fingers. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked. ‘And where’s Cheryl?’

‘Doctor Tennant is fine. In her cage, waiting for me to tell her what to do like a good slave.’ Barnes’ smile was malicious. ‘If it were you there, I’d make it permanent and enjoy myself, but she’s too old. I prefer something younger.’ His gaze shifted to Eleanor and he licked his lips.

‘What did you mean about my power?’ Ceri snapped. Gritting her teeth hurt and she had to force her jaw to unclench.

‘Nothing could have survived that blast,’ Barnes replied. ‘I assume you were contacted by a demon. Such an intense field could easily attract one. No one learns magic as fast as you have, girl. I know! I’m a genius and I couldn’t work that kind of spell so soon after developing my power.’

‘That’s because you’re impatient,’ Ceri said. ‘Impatient and stupid. I couldn’t work magic until recently, but I’ve been learning about it for two decades. You wanted everything and you wanted it now. It takes time to learn things, you perverted imbecile.’

Barnes’ face darkened. ‘You’re in no position to insult me, witch, I’ll…’

‘I’m in a perfect position to insult you, you widder-damned, black-souled son of a bitch. You’re going to kill me anyway, what’ve I got to lose.’ Ceri struggled to her feet. ‘Maybe once upon a time you were a genius, but that was years ago. Now you’re just a finger puppet for some demon lord. Do you like it having his hand up your arse?’

Barnes bolted toward her and it was only the superhuman speed of his vampire bodyguard which stopped him breaking the circle. ‘No, Master! The circle!’ It seemed to be taking most of Eleanor’s strength to hold him back, but he calmed down to a mostly sentient level after a few seconds.

‘Very clever, Miss Brent,’ he growled. ‘Get me to cross my own circle. Very clever.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Ceri said, annoyed that the vampire had stopped him, ‘what can you possibly gain from blowing the country apart?’

‘Don’t be stupid, girl,’ Barnes snapped, ‘the bomb isn’t that…’

‘Using a dark circle the thaumic field reaches a transfinite level pretty quickly,’ Ceri snapped. ‘Didn’t you do the… No, of course you didn’t do the math. I doubt you’re even up to doing it now. You just took the word of your master.’

‘I don’t have a master,’ Barnes said flatly.

‘Yes you do,’ Ceri said, smiling sweetly at you. ‘Y’know, that demon with his arm rammed up your…’

‘Enough!’ Barnes roared, holding himself back with main force. ‘Tennant, start up the system.’

From the cage, Cheryl’s voice sounded, flat and vaguely inhuman. ‘Initiating resonance inducers.’ Ceri went pale.

‘You see, Miss Brent,’ Barnes said, ‘I’m not going to kill you. I don’t kill people. I have other people do it for me.’

The first flickers of colour began to slide across the surface of the circle. Ceri ran at it, slamming her fists into the impenetrable shield. ‘Cheryl!’ she screamed. ‘Cheryl, stop it! Shut it down!’

‘She won’t respond,’ Barnes said. ‘The spell is quite powerful.’

Ceri could barely see out through the circle now. Her skin was prickling. She had to think of something, but the throbbing in her skull was not helping.

‘Initiating pulse generators.’ She heard Cheryl’s voice over the hum of machinery and saw the burst of particles as the four beams hit the circle. In a few seconds, she would be standing in several hundred thaums of magic field. Sorcerer or not, she doubted she could survive it. It would be like the breach, but infinitely worse. She blinked. The breach…

Barnes watched as bands of colour began to twist across the surface of the shining white cylinder. His smile was pure malice. ‘Goodbye, Miss Brent,’ he said. He was starting to turn away when he saw something; a spot of silver appeared in the white, moving quickly, inscribing what looked like a rune of some kind. He recognised it a second before it was completed; Blotherian, the rune of betrayal, assassination, and the opening of hidden ways. His eyes widened. Then he was hit in the face with a few hundred thaums of magical energy.

The circle collapsed and a wave of energy blew outward. Eleanor screamed as she was tossed across the room like a rag doll. Thaumic sensors cut the power to the equipment around the room before overloading and exploding. Ceri was left standing in the circle, surrounded by a nimbus of bluish light.

There was a roar and the demon rushed into the room. Big, hulking, with a draconic head; a Dakag demon, common bodyguard and thug material. There was a scream from the cage; Cheryl had regained her senses. The demon ignored her and charged toward Ceri, stopping as a bolt of energy as big as its head shot from her hand. For an instant it stood there, wreathed in blue light and arcs of electricity, then it seemed to collapse in on itself and vanish.

Cheryl rushed out of the cage and started to run toward Ceri, but a raised hand stopped her. ‘No!’ Ceri said through gritted teeth. ‘Too hot. Get a containment team. Hurry!’ The doctor’s common sense started to cut in again and she nodded, rushing out to find a phone.

Ceri fell to her knees, her eyes on the spot where Barnes had been standing. There was nothing there, not even a pile of ash. Matthew Barnes was gone.

Part Five: All Hallows’ Eve

Denmark Hill, October 17th 2010

‘To be honest,’ Doctor Looper said from inside a magical hazard suit, ‘I was not expecting to see you again so soon, Miss Brent.’

‘At least I’m conscious this time,’ Ceri replied, grinning a little.

‘Indeed. And you seem to be quite healthy aside from the rather high thaumic output level.’ He glanced down at the wooden box containing his thaumometer. ‘Thirty-eight thaums,’ he said. ‘Quite how you’re alive I’m not sure, but at least it’s dropping. I’ll leave you to the tender mercies of Miss Carpenter.’

‘Thanks, Doctor,’ Ceri said as he waddled to the door in the thick rubber suit with its silver-iron mesh lining.

Lily bounced in as soon as he was out. She had been scared silly with worry when Detective Middleshaw had informed her that Ceri and Cheryl were being taken to the hospital, but now that it seemed clear that Ceri was going to be all right, she was back to her perky self. Cheryl had already been released; there seemed to be no lasting effect from Barnes’ mind control spell. No physical or metaphysical effect anyway.

‘I did as you asked,’ the half-demon said. ‘Eleanor’s in the same state as Andrea was. She had a broken leg, cracked skull, and three broken ribs when she was brought in, but she’s a vampire. She was transferred to Greycoat Street this morning.’

Ceri nodded. ‘I’m down to thirty-eight thaums,’ she said. ‘Might be out of here tomorrow, maybe Tuesday.’

‘Well, Cheryl’s moved back to her place,’ Lily said, ‘so you can have a few days of rest and recuperation with just us around the house. Well, and Twill, but she tends to avoid us when we’re…’

‘Resting and recuperating,’ Ceri said with a smirk.

‘Yeah,’ Lily said brightly. ‘Oh, I wanted to ask. You have the two summoning rooms in the cellar, right?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well… do you need both of them?’ The half-succubus had one of her more childish looks on, a pleading sort of expression.

‘I guess not,’ Ceri said. ‘I mean, I’m not sure I want to get into summoning anything, but I don’t really need two rooms to do it in. Mum hardly ever used hers. You can have it if you want.’ Lily beamed. ‘What do you want it for?’

‘Surprise,’ Lily said.

‘I’m sick,’ Ceri whined, ‘you can’t keep secrets from me.’

‘No you’re not, and yes I can.’

Ceri pouted.

~~~

There was salt air on the breeze. Below her the wreck had stopped burning and the scene was almost serene. Ceri turned to see her parents standing there behind her.

‘I do forgive you,’ she said.

The slightly transparent figures frowned. ‘For what, dear?’ her mother asked.

‘The enchantments,’ Ceri replied, ‘they weren’t a good thing to do to me. They changed me, isolated me, stopped me from being who I should have been, but in the end I had twenty years to learn how to be a sorceress before I got that power. So, I forgive you.’

Her father hung his head. ‘I was afraid, Ceri,’ he said. ‘I convinced myself it was for your good, but I know it was fear. I was afraid of what you might become. I’m sorry.’

Ceri smiled. ‘I know, and I could still end up going bad, but I think I’ve had a good start at not ending up like Circe or Morgana. And I have two good role models to look to.’ Her parents smiled back, their shapes starting to fade. ‘There is one thing,’ Ceri said quickly.

‘What, dear?’ her mother said, her voice sounding more distant.

‘Are you really here or am I just dreaming?’

There was no answer, just the scent of salt air on the breeze and a feeling of happiness.

Ceri smiled in her sleep, stirring briefly and turning over before settling back into deeper slumber.

October 18th

With her energy output down to just over a thaum, Ceri was allowed visitors who were not half-demonic, which meant Radcliff and Middleshaw could come and talk to her. She was not exactly looking forward to it, but she knew she would be faced with it sooner or later, and in the hospital there was one big advantage.

‘She is fit,’ Looper told the detectives, ‘but she is not to be stressed. Aside from anything else, doing so could cause another rise in her thaumic output and cook the pair of you.’

Radcliff looked as though he was ready to turn around and leave, but Middleshaw just smiled and nodded. ‘It’s just a couple of questions, Doctor,’ she said. ‘We’ve no suspicion that she did anything wrong.’ Looper nodded and left them alone.

‘No half-succubus keeping you company?’ Radcliff asked. He did look a little happier, though that was overlaid with his nervousness about being in a room with a girl giving off magical energy. Whatever he had done in Newcastle, it had made him more cheerful.

‘She’s up to something at home,’ Ceri said. ‘She wouldn’t tell me what. Frankly, I’m worried, but mostly in a good way.’ She smiled. ‘Any sign of Barnes?’

Middleshaw shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Frankly, we thought you’d had some sort of hallucination at first,’ Radcliff said. ‘The team watching him reported that he was still in Cambridge. When they went in to talk to him it turned out to be some sort of golem he’d made to let him sneak out.’

‘A Simulacrum,’ Middleshaw said. ‘Not a perfect duplicate and pretty easy to spot close up, but he was counting on no one getting that close to it.’

‘We’ve had several diviners trying to find him,’ Radcliff put in, ‘but according to them he’s not on the planet. One of them said he was not in this universe. You didn’t actually see what happened to him?’

Ceri shook her head. ‘The circle was still up, and opaque. He got hit with the same sort of thaumic surge as I did. It’s possible he was totally destroyed.’

‘Well,’ Radcliff said, ‘he never got to wipe the data recorded by the lab cameras, which I’m sure he intended to do. They whited out when the surge went off, but they do confirm your story up to that point.’

‘What about the policemen who were guarding the building?’ Ceri asked. She recalled Barnes asking whether they had been “dealt with” and was not hopeful.

Radcliff’s face darkened. ‘Two dead,’ he said, ‘one on life support. The other three were injured, but not too badly.’

‘Damn,’ Ceri said. ‘I’m sorry…’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Radcliff said, a little sharply. ‘You didn’t ask some… demon-tainted bastard to try to kill you.’ There was a hint of something personal in the vehemence the detective put into the statement. Again Ceri felt that Radcliff had a good reason for distrusting the supernatural.

On the other hand, he seemed to be rather more trusting of her now. ‘Thanks, Inspector,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you seem a bit more… happy with things today.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Radcliff said, half-grinning, ‘I’m just ecstatic to be in a room with a woman who’s leaking magic all over the place.’

‘A thaum or so,’ Ceri said. ‘It’s barely enough to make your hair stand on end. Perfectly safe.’

Radcliff narrowed his eyes a little, and then his grin got broader to show he was kidding. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said. ‘I believe you. And you asked about the guys who were hurt guarding the building, and you took care of Kate a couple of days ago. You’re considerate, which I don’t expect from magicians, and I guess I won’t get far in this job treating all you magic-types as bad guys.’

‘We’ll get him educated yet,’ Middleshaw said, smirking. Then her face straightened. ‘We had some enquiries regarding you and Doctor Tennant from the Ministry,’ she said. ‘I’d expect a visit for some guy with a starched neck and no sense of humour sometime soon.’

Ceri grimaced. Great, the Ministry of Supernatural Affairs was sticking its nose in. ‘I may need to be in isolation for far longer than I thought,’ she said.

Kennington, October 19th

‘I thought your surname was Brent, not Munster.’ Ceri smiled at the driver; she was getting kind of used to that kind of reaction, especially from ambulance men.

‘It’s mostly illusion,’ she said. ‘Mum always wanted to live in a haunted house.’

‘Well, sure looks the part,’ the driver said. ‘You got any actual ghosts?’

Ceri opened the door of the car and stepped out. ‘Don’t think so,’ she said, ‘but you never can tell.’

‘Huh, right. Well, hope your recovery goes well.’

‘Thanks,’ Ceri said and pushed the door closed.

There was a little shimmer of light along the fence line as she pushed the garden gate open. It was as though the house had missed her. Walking down the path, it seemed that no one else had. There was no sign of Lily or Twill, so she kept on going to the door, pushing it open and stepping through. Again the house responded; the entrance sigils flared as she stepped over them to the inner doors. Grinning, she pushed open the inner doors.

Lily was standing in the middle of the hall, dressed in a kinky parody of a nurse’s uniform, with a huge grin on her face. Twill floated down from above the door. ‘She insisted,’ the fairy said. ‘She said the doctor instructed you to rest and that she was going to “nurse” you.’ Ceri looked at the tiny woman. ‘Welcome back, Ceridwyn. Do try to cut down on the hospital visits, I miss you.’ The fairy darted forward and gave Ceri a quick kiss on the cheek before zipping away again.

‘C’mon,’ Lily said. ‘You’re going to bed to… rest.’

‘Rest,’ Ceri said, ‘yeah, I’m sure I’ll get plenty of… rest.’

Lily shrugged slightly. ‘Well, I missed you too.’

~~~

Twill buzzed into Ceri’s bedroom looking mildly annoyed. ‘There’s a man here,’ she said curtly. ‘He’s a normal, but he’s wearing enough charms to stock a shop.’ She buzzed up to hover two inches in front of Ceri’s nose. ‘One of them is a fae repellent,’ she added, ‘and he’s got some stiff looking man in a uniform with him.’

Ceri sighed and wafted the fairy away. ‘That’ll be the “Man from the Ministry.”’ She disentangled her limbs from Lily’s and slipped out of bed.

Lily made a grumbling noise. ‘You’re supposed to be resting.’

‘Your idea of resting,’ Ceri said, ‘seems to involve a lot of exercise.’ She located one of her shirts in the cupboard, a thin silky one in pale blue. She pulled it on and started doing up the buttons. ‘Get dressed, Lily,’ she said with a tone of mild authority. ‘Something… suitable, but not subtle.’ She started for the door.

Lily giggled. ‘Yes, Mistress,’ she said to Ceri’s retreating back.

There were, indeed, two men standing in the hall when Ceri marched down the stairs. One was a short man with a narrow face and watery eyes dressed in a badly fitting, blue suit. He could have been anything from twenty-five to fifty. Beside him was a man with greying hair dressed in an Army uniform and holding his cap. Someone seemed to have inserted a steel rod up his spine.

She stopped half-way down the steps and let the sight of her dressed in nothing but a satin shirt sink in before she spoke. ‘Good… afternoon, probably, gentlemen,’ she said.

‘Ceridwyn Brent?’ the ratty-looking man asked. Then he sneezed, loudly. ‘I beg your pardon, I’m allergic to magic.’ Well, that explained all the charms and the fae repellent. Why a man like that would join the Ministry was beyond her. ‘I am Alfred Whistler,’ he said, ‘with the Ministry for Supernatural Affairs.’

‘Yes,’ Ceri said, ‘I gathered you were from the government.’ She walked down the last couple of steps.

The soldier stepped forward, offering his hand. ‘General Andrew Morton,’ he said, ‘Army Special Projects.’

Ceri took the hand and shook it. It did not look like Whistler was going to offer his. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘Please come up to the study. We can talk there.’ Letting go of Morton’s hand, she led the way back up the stairs.

Pulling out two chairs from the side of the room, Ceri arranged herself on the chaise longe and smiled as they sat down looking uncomfortable. ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ she asked.

‘Prior to his disappearance,’ Whistler intoned, his voice half-funeral drone, half-nasal whine, ‘Doctor Barnes was engaged in creating a device which the Special Projects Division…’

‘He told you he could create a thaumic bomb,’ Ceri said, interrupting him. ‘A weapon which could replace nuclear weapons without the danger of another Shattering.’ The two men looked at each other. ‘I assume you asked Cheryl to build the thing and she told you to get stuffed?’

‘Doctor Tennant was… uncooperative,’ Whistler said.

‘We have the basic concepts,’ Morton said, ‘and the research on dark containment circles Barnes produced. Our people can crack the problem in time, but it would be easier with your help.’

‘A man named Carl Bellamy produced that research,’ Ceri said. ‘Barnes stole it off him. And you can’t build one of these devices. Ever. Not even to test the theory.’

Morton smiled indulgently. ‘I appreciate your pacifist sentiments, Miss Brent, but Doctor Barnes assured us…’

‘Barnes,’ Ceri said, ‘was consumed by his own greed for power. He belonged to some demon lord, body, spirit, and soul. He lied, General.’

‘Didn’t you ever look into his eyes?’ Lily was standing behind them. Both men jumped slightly and turned. Whistler’s jaw dropped. Morton swallowed visibly. Lily had picked her shortest, tightest sweater-dress. ‘They were dead,’ she continued. ‘The dead eyes of a man consumed by darkness.’ The half-succubus circled around Whistler’s chair, then the lounger, to stand behind Ceri.

‘What would Doctor Barnes have to gain from lying to us?’ Morton asked.

‘Not him,’ Ceri replied, ‘his master. The field strength produced by this system within a dark circle rapidly increases to the point where it can’t be calculated. Effectively, for an instant after the circle is dropped, an infinite thaumic field exists in our normal space. We currently don’t have the mathematics to describe what that would do, but from what I read it would almost certainly warp reality so much that a permanent T-Null decay trap would be created.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not conversant with the more esoteric thaumatology theorems,’ Whistler said.

Ceri smiled slightly. ‘Huge amounts of thaumic energy would pour out through a hole in space-time,’ she said. ‘It would make the Trinity bomb site look like a mountain spring.’ She looked at them. ‘If you ever started one of these up, you could never let the circle collapse. It reaches its potential after a minute or less. It never degrades. Create one and apply the power and you’ve handed the world to the demons.’

Morton looked uncomfortable. ‘Doctor Barnes presented us with models of the bomb indicating that that kind of thing would not happen,’ he said, unwilling to just give up on his ultimate weapon.

‘And you believed him?’ Lily said, a perfect eyebrow raised.

‘Give the data and equations to Cheryl and I,’ Ceri said, ‘and I’m quite sure we can find the manipulations and errors which make it look safer than it is. You’ll pardon me, but we have actual experimental data on a working version with a standard containment circle. Barnes never got anything working, did he?’

‘No,’ Whistler said. ‘No, he did not. Despite several million in grants he failed to live up to his reputation.’

‘If the Chinese Empire builds one of these things…’ Morton said.

‘Cheryl and I are adding information about the runaway effect to our paper,’ Ceri said. ‘The dragons would never allow anything like this to be built.’ She looked squarely at the general. ‘I’m sorry, but you don’t get to justify this through fear of what others might do. The only other people who wouldn’t be terrified at the prospect of another Shattering are the Chinese and the Australians. We both know the Aussies are no threat and the Chinese have more sense. Neither of them would want this kind of thing opening in their territory. That leaves the British government. Please don’t tell me I live in a country which wants to end the world.’

Whistler straightened his back. ‘No, Miss Brent,’ he said, ‘you don’t. I’ll recommend to the Minister that all work on this project be scrapped.’ He paused. ‘I was told to ask… You have no idea where Matthew Barnes actually is do you?’

‘No,’ Ceri replied. ‘None at all.’

‘Where ever he is,’ Lily said, ‘I hope it’s somewhere hotter than Hell.’

~~~

‘Lily,’ Ceri asked once the two government men were gone, ‘what have you done in the cellar?’

Lily beamed at her, bouncing on her toes. Ceri experienced an odd feeling of dread combined with anticipation. ‘Wait there,’ Lily said, and bounded off up the stairs.

Ceri waited impatiently for the half-succubus to return, wondering what on Earth Lily had wanted the room for anyway. Her mother had rarely used it, and a few years of neglect on top of that had made it a less than savoury place. The floor had always been uneven, which had never bothered Marion who preferred a more natural feel.

When Lily did come down the stairs, she was naked again and carrying a silver chain from which were suspended a pair of gleaming new keys. She handed them to Ceri with a serious look on her face.

‘What are these for?’ Ceri asked.

‘Come with me and I’ll show you,’ Lily said and started off toward the cellar door.

Both summoning rooms had large, iron doors with a silver-iron layer anodised onto the inside. Lily opened the nearest one to the stairs and indicated that Ceri should precede her. The door opened onto a flight of stone steps which went down to the floor level, but Ceri knew before she got there what Lily had done.

The room had been kitted out as a dungeon. There was a large cage at one end, a smaller, kinkier-looking one beside the stairs, a set of shelves with an array of sex toys, paddles, and whips. A Saint Andrew’s Cross had been mounted over the summoning circle. Ceri turned slowly, looking around the room with an expression of complete bemusement.

‘You turned the place into a dungeon?’ she said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Lily replied. ‘It’s okay, isn’t it?’

‘It must have cost a fortune!’

‘Not really.’ Lily was sounding a little worried; afraid that Ceri disapproved. ‘I called in some favours. I used to be in the sex industry y’know? Some people owe me big time for a few things I haven’t told the police about.’

‘And you used up favours like that for… fun?’ Ceri blinked at her.

‘Not… not entirely fun,’ Lily said, faltering.

‘I don’t understand, Lily,’ Ceri replied.

Lily looked up, her face serious. ‘I changed the lock,’ she said. ‘You can get in without a key, but you need the key with the star on to get out. And that cage has silver-iron cores in the bars. The other key locks that and the padlocks on the shelf there. If I’m locked in there, my aura is locked in with me. If you think I’m getting out of hand, you can lock me in. And if I think I am, I can come down here and there’s no way I can get out unless you let me out.’

‘It really is a dungeon,’ Ceri said.

Lily nodded. ‘For when I think I can’t trust myself.’ She paused and looked down. ‘Or when you think you can’t trust me.’

Ceri walked the two paces to where Lily was standing. She raised her hand, lifting Lily’s chin gently with her index finger and looked into her eyes. ‘That’s never going to happen, hun,’ she said softly.

‘You can’t know…’

‘Lil,’ Ceri interrupted, ‘the very fact you put this together so I could do it if I needed to tells me I won’t need to. You’re stronger than you think you are. And you’re my friend.’ Suddenly she was being hugged fiercely. She laughed softly and hugged Lily back until she had to ask to be released so that she could breathe.

Soho, October 31st

‘Happy birthday,’ Lily said, planting a small kiss on Ceri’s cheek.

Ceri smiled. ‘Is it midnight?’

‘Just past,’ Lily confirmed, ‘you’re officially twenty-four.’

‘If you want to be pedantic,’ Ceri said, ‘that’s not until five o’clock tonight.’

‘You want me to take the kiss back?’

Ceri giggled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I want you to give me more of them at five o’clock.’

‘We’ll have guests by then,’ Lily reminded her. ‘Everyone’s to be there for the party at four-thirty, just before sunset.’

Ceri nodded. ‘I know, make sure everyone’s in before Samhain starts.’ She looked out at the floor of the Jade Dragon where it was Halloween Party Night. Technically, Halloween began at sunset that evening, but the club was not open then and many of the patrons would be avoiding leaving the house by that time. Lily had persuaded Ceri that “it would be fun to start her birthday” among the rich, the famous, and the exotically dangerous, and their hangers-on. Ceri did have to admit that the place looked great with skull lanterns on the table, and illusory chains and cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. Carter’s magic had had a rare, frivolous, outing.

The staff were “in the spirit” as well. Most of the waitresses were body-painted up as skeletons; carefully painted white bones on a black base-coat. Lily, as befitted the Dragon’s best waitress, was different. Painted red from head to foot, she had a pair of small, fake horns fixed to her forehead and a pointed tail attached to a belt around her hips. The half-succubus’ aura was turned up just a little more than usual and, combined with the “costume,” it was giving Ceri a hard time. Lily had suggested that Ceri get painted as well; Carter had been amused and quite willing and the make-up girl they had employed to dress the staff had begun coming up with ideas. Ceri had said “no,” though she was sort of regretting it now that her inhibitions had been dulled by wine.

Carter, dressed in a huge wizard’s robe, emerged from the back rooms and swept up to Ceri and Lily. ‘Happy birthday, Ceri,’ he said. He looked around and spotted Alec behind the bar, wrapped in a huge, black cloak with a cowl. ‘Mr Death, glass of wine for the birthday girl.’

Alec brought the wine over. ‘Happy birthday, kid,’ he said. ‘Y’know, boss, I’m not sure I consider this outfit dignified.’

Lily leaned over slightly to whisper in Ceri’s ear. ‘They do this every year.’

‘Well,’ Carter said, grinning, ‘we could have gone with the other option.’

‘What was the other option?’ Alec said, falling for it.

‘Oh, Jessie thought you’d look fantastic done up the same as the girls,’ Carter replied. ‘Little pair of black Speedoes…’

‘I’d pay to see that,’ Lily said.

‘Yum,’ Ceri added, grinning.

‘See?’ Carter said. ‘That’d have gone down a storm.’

Exactly what Alec said in reply was inaudible, which was probably a good thing. Ceri and Lily giggled. ‘No respect for your elders,’ Alec grumbled.

‘I’ve seen you naked, Alec,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve got nothing but… respect for you.’

‘You are coming to the party tonight, aren’t you?’ Ceri asked, partially to save Alec’s blushes. ‘Both of you?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ Carter replied.

‘I’ll be there,’ Alec said, nodding his head in the voluminous cowl. ‘And I sent a message to Dane like you asked. No idea if he’ll make it. The nomad packs move around a lot.’

Ceri sipped her wine. ‘It was a thought,’ she said. ‘To thank them for playing bodyguard.’

‘Oh, he’ll be there if he gets the message in time,’ Alec said. ‘You did say we could all stay overnight.’

Ceri nodded. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘It’s the first time I’ll be taking cover. I mean, when my parents were alive they would stay in on All Hallows’, but I could go out if I wanted.’ She grinned. ‘I’d go out with the other kids to get sweets and then we’d go home and have my party.’

‘The wards and enchantments will be up properly,’ Lily said. ‘Well, for the first time since I’ve been there. It’ll be awesome.’ She turned slightly. ‘Oh, table four,’ she said, and strutted off, tail swinging.

‘It will be fascinating,’ Carter said. ‘I’ve never seen that house fully active.’

‘It won’t be too bad,’ Alec said. ‘Last quarter was tonight.’

Carter nodded. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘All Hallows’ is no time for anyone supernatural to be out in the open.’

Kennington

It was just before sunset and those assembled for Ceri’s birthday party were safely within the doors of High Towers.

Carter was there, talking to Cheryl. He was in a tuxedo with a black shoulder-cape, complete with blood-red satin lining. Cheryl was pulling off a tight, blue satin evening dress rather well.

Nearer the door were Dane and his pack; all those who had guarded Ceri, plus another two couples. They had not dressed specially for the occasion, but biker leathers worked well for a wolf pack anytime and anywhere.

Alec, dressed in a tight, black T-shirt and leather jeans, sort of oscillated between Dane and the little huddle of dancers from the Collar Club and waitresses from the Jade Dragon. Lily had invited the girls, because Ceri said she could, though the only one Ceri really knew was Jasmine.

Even over the sound of conversation, everyone heard the delicate sound of wind chimes and turned to look as the shimmering ball of blue light swept down the stairs, buzzing over their heads, a shower of golden dust sprinkling down as Twill passed. Several of the girls gasped and giggled gleefully. Twill swirled back to the staircase and even some of the men gasped as she came to a stop above Ceri and Lily, standing on the small landing.

Lily was dressed in a very short, strapless, PVC dress with a red, netting skirt. It showed a lot of cleavage and left little to the imagination. It was very Lily though, while Ceri’s outfit was so very not Ceri.

The Mistress of the House was wearing a floor length, halter-necked negligee, giving her something of a “Morticia” look. Mesh from the bust down, there was only a little back thong hiding her modesty, but a nimbus of light seemed to surround her as she smiled down at the assembled friends, and friends of friends.

‘Welcome,’ Ceri said. ‘Welcome all to my home. Come in good faith, baring no malice. Leave at your will without hindrance.’ She paused briefly before adding, ‘And for widder’s sake have a good time, it’s a party!’

Laughter filled the room as Ceri and Lily walked down the stairs to greet their guests. Music began to play, not yet at a level where conversation was impossible, and sheets lifted as if by magic to reveal tables with various bottles and glasses on them. Twill flitted around informing people that there was food in the kitchen while Lily kept herself busy introducing the people Ceri did not already know.

She had more or less finished when Twill flitted up to them. ‘There’s someone coming up the path,’ the fairy said. ‘A witch, and she’s hurrying.’

Ceri frowned and headed quickly for the door. She opened the outer door just as Detective Middleshaw was about to knock. The woman looked a little flustered; there was almost no light left in the sky and, sure enough, the wards along the fence-line were shimmering. High up to the north, the sky was showing streaks of bright pink as the Northern Lights flared brightly. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Middleshaw said, glancing back at the fence.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d come at all,’ Ceri said, smiling. ‘Come in before the light goes entirely.’ She stepped back, allowing the detective to enter. ‘Your partner couldn’t make it?’

‘John’s… He sends his apologies, but it’s his wife’s first All Hallows’ in London and he needed to be with her.’

Ceri glanced at her. ‘She’s a supernatural?’

Middleshaw’s eyes narrowed slightly, then softened. She lowered her voice. ‘She’s a vampire. Not by choice.’

Ceri winced. ‘That… explains a lot,’ she said. ‘Go on in, I’ll be along in a second. Oh, the biker types might be a little suspicious of you. Sorry about that, but they’re good people.’

The detective grinned and nodded, turning to walk inside while Ceri took one more look out at the gathering night. A surge of light bolted across the barrier as something invisible and intangible skated across it. Samhain, Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve; it had always been the time when the world was closer to the supernatural than other times of the year. It was the beginning of the dark half of the year and some still marked it as the time when one year ended and the new one began. For Ceri, having her birthday on this day, that had always been true.

Out on the streets, normal children and their parents would be setting out to gather sweets. It was a tradition which had grown in popularity since the Shattering. Even the humans could sense the rise in power which marked the beginning of the Old Calendar year and the laughter of children helped to keep the spirits away.

For supernaturals, this night was a time to hide behind magic wards if you could, thick walls if you could not. The dark forces at work on Samhain night seemed to be attracted to other things with “unnatural” natures. With the gathering inside, Ceri was expecting quite a light show tonight.

She pushed the door closed, sealing out the darkness, and concentrated for a second. There was a soft glow from the lock and she nodded. No one else would be coming in now, not without demolishing the porch. Turning, she strode into the party.

~~~

By midnight, the party had divided somewhat. The hall was the largest open space in the house, and so it was where people were dancing. The sight of werewolves in biker leathers dancing with werefoxes in next to nothing would likely have made many a norm freak out. It had certainly been enough to persuade the older party goers to retire to the lounge where they could talk and drink in more comfort. Ceri, who was not really used to dancing in four-inch heeled sandals, had gone with them, and Lily had turned up eventually, curling herself onto the footstool beside Ceri’s chair.

‘Cheryl,’ Carter said, settled back in the other wing-backed chair with a large glass of Cognac in his hand, ‘what do you plan to do now?’

The chaise longe had been carried through from the study and that was where Cheryl was sitting, leaning against Alec who looked quite comfortable with the arrangement. ‘Well,’ the thaumatologist said, ‘we still have a huge amount of data to analyse. Even though our last experiment was rather abruptly terminated there’s probably a year’s worth of work to be done on it.’ She sipped from her glass of wine. ‘I’m actually wondering whether we may be able to build a… thaumic reactor using the technology. For power generation.’

‘I’ve got some ideas about using the data to formalise some of the Infinite Field Theory equations the Americans have come up with,’ Ceri said.

‘I thought that was largely the stuff fantasy writers got involved in,’ Carter said, smiling slightly.

‘Currently, yeah,’ Ceri replied. ‘I’m hoping some of our data may be extrapolated to make it a bit more real.’

‘Extrapolated?’ Lily said. ‘If you can use “extrapolated” in a sentence you haven’t had enough to drink.’

Ceri giggled. ‘Probably not.’ Light flared through the stained glass window at the end of the room and she glanced around at it. ‘Might as well get drunk,’ she added, ‘I don’t think I’ll be sleeping before dawn.’

‘The pack’ll be glad they’re inside,’ Alec commented.

‘North Hills, right?’ Middleshaw said from her seat near the fireplace. ‘I’ve heard good things about them.’

‘The nomad packs have a poor reputation, Detective,’ Carter said, ‘but it’s often undeserved. I’m glad to hear that the Greycoats don’t listen to rumour.’

Middleshaw grimaced. ‘Please, I’m off duty, it’s Kate. If I believed everything I heard I’d be wondering whether you had been replaced with a doppelganger.’

Carter chuckled. ‘Please don’t let on that I went to a party and didn’t have a girl in my lap. It would ruin my reputation. You’re a witch, Kate?’

She took a swig of beer from the bottle she was holding and nodded. ‘Third generation on my mother’s side and my father was one too. He was in the Greycoats before me, and his father was a Superintendent in the regular force. To be honest, I’m better at witchcraft than I am at police work, which is why I’m still just a sergeant.’

‘I think, however,’ Twill said from her place on the back of Ceri’s chair, ‘that you will make an excellent team with your new partner.’

‘He’s sad,’ Lily said. ‘I hope he finds what he wants.’

Middleshaw glanced at her and then at Ceri, frowning slightly. ‘Succubi,’ Ceri said. ‘You can’t keep your desires from one, even a half one.’

‘I’m a little surprised you came tonight,’ Carter said. ‘Not unpleasantly at all, but surprised. Are policewomen allowed to go to wild parties wearing short skirts?’ There was a teasing smile on his lips and Middleshaw’s cheeks coloured a little.

‘Now you’re living up to your reputation,’ she said, her lips twitching. ‘I’m off duty. There’s nothing illegal going on here, no one here is a criminal that I’m aware of, and my hemlines are a matter of personal discretion when off the clock.’

The playboy bowed his head. ‘Your hemline is most appreciated, I assure you.’

Middleshaw’s cheeks coloured more deeply. Ceri decided that it was not so much what Carter said, or even how he said it, it was that he just gave off the air of a man who appreciated women for what they were. He was good looking and rich, a fairly lethal combination in itself, and his reputation suggested he really was looking for women to take to bed at all times. He did not need to flirt much for a girl to get the impression she was in for a good night.

‘So, what did you get for your birthday, Ceri?’ the detective asked to give herself breathing room.

‘Oh!’ Ceri said, blushing. ‘I haven’t even opened them all. Twill, would you oblige?’

Twill floated up from the chair and off to one of the alcoves at the side of the room, returning with a train of packages of various shapes and sizes following her. The brightly wrapped presents settled down on the rug in front of Ceri’s chair, and the fairy dropped onto the arm opposite Lily to watch the unwrapping.

‘I didn’t ask for anything,’ Ceri said as she picked up the nearest box. ‘Some of the invitations were very last minute so I specifically said that presents were not required.’ The package was small, but had been wrapped incredibly precisely. ‘This is Twill’s,’ Ceri said. ‘She can get folds and creases tighter than anyone I’ve ever met.’ There was the sound of wind chimes as Ceri began to open the package.

Inside the box was a black, velvet choker with a bird skull attached to it by a gold fitting. ‘It’s charmed,’ Twill said. ‘Put it on and you’ll always know which way home is.’ Grinning, Ceri fixed the choker around her throat and gave the tiny, brown woman a kiss on the top of her head.

As she turned to pick up the next package, Dane stalked into the room. He circled around the back of Carter’s chair and settled onto the floor beside Middleshaw’s chair. He nodded up at the policewoman. ‘I’m Dane,’ he said, dropping his jacket behind him.

‘Kate,’ she replied.

Ceri had unwrapped a package from Cheryl containing a matched set of earrings and necklace; ivory stars inside circles of silver with carefully inscribed runes marked on each ring. She hung the earrings in her ears, but the necklace remained in the box since she was already wearing Twill’s choker.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Dane said, ‘presents.’ He reached behind himself for his jacket, rummaging in a pocket before pulling something out and tossing it toward Ceri. ‘Didn’t get a chance to wrap it or anything,’ he said. Ceri caught the small object, turning it over in her hand. It was a small figurine of a wolf carved in jet, its head raised in a silent howl. ‘Tabby makes them,’ he said. ‘She said you should have it. Shows you’re a friend of the pack.’

‘Thank you,’ Ceri said, ‘it’s beautiful.’ She placed it on the arm of the chair beside Twill where it almost looked life-size beside the tiny fairy.

There was a carefully wrapped box from Alec to open next. Ceri noticed his cheeks colouring a little as she picked it up and checked the label. ‘I hadn’t a clue what to get you,’ the wolf-man said, ‘but, uh… well…’ She opened the box and pulled out a black teddy with mesh inserts across the chest. ‘I checked your size with Lil,’ he said, his cheeks reddening more, ‘and I, uh, noticed you seemed to like them…’

Ceri giggled. ‘It’s lovely, Alec, thank you. I promise I’ll wear it to the Dragon next time I’m there.’ She smirked. ‘Though you won’t be able to look at my boobs as easily in this.’ While Alec blustered and tried to calm his glowing cheeks, Ceri reached for the last package, which was not exactly a package.

Five foot long and wrapped in deep purple silk, Ceri picked the object up and looked at it with a confused expression. ‘Well, it’s not from Lily,’ she said. ‘She gave me her presents earlier.’ Lily giggled.

‘Somehow I feel we don’t want to know,’ Middleshaw said.

‘Want to know,’ Dane chuckled, ‘maybe, but I suspect it’s not for polite company.’

‘Hey!’ Lily said. ‘The dress she’s wearing was one of them.’

‘If that’s the most decent,’ Cheryl commented, ‘I think Dane is correct.’ Lily pouted.

‘It’s from me,’ Carter said. ‘I bought it… oh, fifteen years ago. I really don’t know why. I think, at the time, I thought it would increase my power.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s never worked for me, so I’m passing it on to you.’

Frowning, Ceri untied the silk and unwrapped the object. It was a staff. The head came out first; a blue glass orb held in a moulded metal grip. She pulled the rest of the shaft free. The top third of it was slightly thicker than the rest, with carved and inlaid lines in what looked like a simply artistic pattern in blue. The base was another piece of moulded metal and the shaft between the two sections was textured wood, dimpled for an easier grip.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Ceri said. ‘I thought you didn’t give presents.’

Carter smiled. ‘Call it another investment. It’s never been much use to me. It just sat on my wall looking enigmatic. I have this… feeling, an intuition if you will, that giving it to you is the right thing to do.’ He chuckled. ‘Besides, a magician needs a staff, I feel. It sets the right tone.’

‘Mages hardly ever use staves these days,’ Twill said. ‘Something of an archaic practice, don’t you think?’

‘I’m an old fashioned sort of wizard, my dear Lady Twill.’ He took a drink from his glass, watching as Ceri ran a finger over the inlaid design. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘the old ways are best.’

November 1st

Ceri had to step over two sleeping couples to reach the kitchen. Alec did not “do brush,” but it seemed that was not a trait shared by all werewolves. The pack had brought their bedrolls in with them, and they were doing double duty as sleeping space for wolves, foxes, and humans. Looking back before she entered the kitchen she found herself wondering which of them were paired up. Or indeed whether there had been couples or just a mass of tangled bodies. It was hard to tell. She turned and went hunting for coffee.

By the time the activities in the hall had got heated, Ceri had already retired with Lily to engage in some heated activity of their own. She was moderately sure that Cheryl had ended up with Alec again, in Lily’s room. It was rapidly becoming “the guest bedroom” and Ceri was starting to wonder when Lily would just move her clothes into Ceri’s room. What had happened to Carter, Kate, and Dane she did not know.

Twill had made coffee. Ceri blessed the little woman silently and poured herself a mug. She settled down at the table and relaxed, letting the caffeine work its magic.

Lily’s bare feet slapped on the slate as she wandered in rubbing her eyes. ‘You got up,’ she said, pouting. She poured herself a mug of coffee and took a drink before adding, ‘I was planning to wake you up properly.’

‘You almost never wake up before I do, Lil. Besides, didn’t we spend enough time doing that last night?’

‘She’s half succubus, my dear Ceridwyn,’ Carter said from the doorway. He was dressed in his tuxedo trousers and a white shirt which was now a little rumpled. It occurred to Ceri that she had not remembered to dress before coming down.

‘Yes,’ Ceri said, moving herself slightly to cover more of herself with her arms, ‘enough time is never enough time.’

Lily, of course, was not the least bit bothered to be standing before her employer in the nude. ‘It’s not like I’m a nymphomaniac or anything,’ she said. ‘You want coffee?’

‘That would be glorious,’ Carter replied. ‘Then I should be heading off. I have afternoon plans with a French supermodel.’

Ceri laughed. She noticed that while she was embarrassed to be sat there naked in front of Carter, he seemed not entirely comfortable with her nudity as well. He was obviously not bothered by Lily, so why her? ‘Where did you end up last night?’ she asked.

‘In what I assume is Lily’s room,’ he said. Ceri thought about that for a second and decided that she was not going to ask. ‘Kate fell asleep on that lounger of yours after Alec and Cheryl left. I believe Dane went to sleep on the rug beside her.’ He smiled and took a coffee mug from Lily. ‘Thank you, my dear.’

Lily did a little curtsy and grinned. ‘It was a good night,’ she said. ‘It’s been a good summer, even with all that’s happened.’

‘It has been… interesting,’ Carter agreed.

Ceri took a drink of coffee and considered. She had started her first ever job, survived being practically drowned in thaumic energy, twice, and discovered both a fundamental particle and that she was a sorceress. She had almost fallen prey to the demonic side of her best friend, and the machinations of a demonic wizard. She had defeated both through wit and power, and her relationship with Lily had become something she suspected she had yet to discover the true nature of. Yes, it certainly had been a very interesting few weeks.

‘Academia is going to be quite boring after all this excitement,’ she said, ‘but I think I could live with a little boredom for a while.’

Carter and Lily looked at her. ‘Planning to finally get that doctorate?’ Lily asked.

Ceri’s cheeks flushed. ‘I have plenty of incentive,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of doing a full study on the were-creature transformation, if you wouldn’t mind me bothering a few of your dancers, Carter.’

The club owner nodded. ‘Be my guest. I suspect the north Hills pack might be available to help as well.’

Ceri nodded, experiment plans and a thesis outline already forming in her head. ‘That sounds like a plan, she said. ‘And I can’t imagine there’s much chance of me accidentally blowing up the planet doing that. It should be a fairly safe area for study.’ Both Carter and Lily winced, looked at each other, and started laughing. Ceri looked between them, bemused, and then began laughing herself.

Well, laughter was as a good a way as any to start a new year.

###

About the Author

I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.

I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still loved the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

Writing, sadly, is not my main source of income. By day, I’m a computer programmer. I work for a telecommunications company in Manchester, England. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, and (recently) Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

For More Information

The Thaumatology Blog: http://thaumatology.wordpress.com

Other Books in the Series

Demon’s Moon - B006JPN7A0

Legacy - B006OKR8PK

Dragon’s Blood - B0072S1DOU

Disturbia - B007GNICZO

Hammer of Witches - B007YG2I44

Eagle’s Shadow - B008E17TYW

Ancient - B00923F8AS

Dragonfall – Coming December 2012

The Other Side of Hell – Coming December 2012

Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe

Tales from High Towers’ Study - B006ZAJ7TY

Tales from the Dubh Linn - B0080XPD88

Table of Contents

Part One: T-Null

Part Two: Power

Part Three: Sorcery

Part Four: Doomsday

Part Five: All Hallows’ Eve