Modern Magick, Volume 2 (Ebook)

I used to read a lot of Enid Blyton books as a child. They were about close-knit families and groups of friends, who, despite occasional bouts of quarrelsome behaviour, were very much All In It Together. Those children had siblings and loving parents and stable homes — all of it — but! They were still allowed to spend all day rambling about having adventures. Of course I adored them.

Whenever I was particularly lonely, I used to make up my own adventures. They featured me as the heroine, of course, surrounded by a fine crew of loyal chums, and we spent our time solving crimes and mysteries, uncovering long-lost spells, saving beleaguered beasts, travelling to magickal realms, and generally getting into all kinds of productive trouble. (I like that term: “productive trouble”. I must remember it for the next time Jay gets all raised-eyebrows at me).

Anyway, a good adventure story always begins with a snappy title. Five Go To Mystery Moor. Five Get Into a Fix. Look Out Secret Seven. Mine had titles like Six Go To Honeycup Dell and Six Cast a Spell, which to be fair were not as jazzy as they could’ve been but what do you want from me, I was ten.

If ten-year-old Ves could have peeped ahead twenty years at what thirty-year-old Ves would be doing, she might have fainted with delight.

‘How about Three Go Rogue?’ I mused aloud. I was speaking for the benefit of Jay and Zareen, my only companions that morning. It wasn’t even nine o’ clock yet, though the sun was already high, it being late in May. We were huddled around a table in a coffee shop not far from Home (forgive me if I don’t say precisely where. The best adventures have their secrets, too).

Jay just looked at me. He had a pole-axed air which I could not quite like, partly because the lost look in his dark eyes unpleasantly echoed the shameful clenched feeling in my own belly. This is not how an adventurer responds to a surprise! A little constructive adversity is bread and butter to a former member of the Splendid Six. This was exciting. This was thrilling.

Terrifying, said a small part of my mind, which I instantly and ruthlessly squashed.

‘What?’ said Jay.

‘Three Go Rogue,’ I repeated. ‘Though I am having trouble coming up with a suitably alliterative nickname for the three of us. It would be much more convenient if we numbered four.’

‘The Thrifty Three,’ offered Zareen, without looking up. She, alone of the three of us, appeared untouched by the suddenness with which we had been evicted from Home. She was as unruffled as ever, and had already dispatched two cups of coffee and a large breakfast. I had forced my way through a couple of pastries because the old, sunnily untroubled Ves would have done so with relish. I did not want to admit that the dough curdled in my stomach, and sat there like a lump of concrete.

I mean, for goodness’ sake. It wasn’t as though we would never be able to go Home again. Temporary, Ves, I reminded myself.

And we still had Milady’s chocolate pot.

‘Are we thrifty?’ I said, casting an eye over the table-top. It was littered with cups and teapots and plates of food, some eaten, some not. It hadn’t been an inexpensive repast.

‘Not the slightest bit, but it’s all I can think of.’

‘The Thunderstruck Three,’ suggested Jay.

‘It would do for now, but we will only be briefly Thunderstruck. We need something more lasting.’

Jay blinked at me. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s empowering. Wouldn’t you rather be The Thrilling Three than The Tremulous Trio?’

‘The Throwaway Three,’ said Jay, and stirred his half-cup of coffee.

‘Gloomy.’

‘I am, a bit.’

‘Right, we need to snap out of this.’ I sat up straight. ‘I know it’s going to be hard to manage without Home, and all our friends at the Society, and Milady, and regular hot chocolate, and the first-floor common room, and the waypoint in the cellar, and the cafeteria, and Orlando’s genius inventions, and your sister, and the pup, and Rob and Miranda and Val—’

‘Not Rob,’ interrupted Zareen. ‘Milady said he’d probably catch up with us here and there, remember?’

Right. While Jay, Zareen and I had been assigned the role of disenfranchised ex-employees out to found our own rival organisation, Rob had been cast as the eternally-on-the-fence chap who couldn’t make up his mind between loyalty to the Society and following the bold new direction laid down by the Thrilling Three. Which gave him an excuse to sometimes come help us out, and that was nice, but the list of things we would have to manage without went on and on in my head.

Focus, Ves.

‘We can do this,’ I said, opting for the short version of my little pep talk.

‘Do what, exactly?’ said Jay. ‘I am not so experienced with Milady’s double-speak as you are. One minute she was telling us not, under any circumstances, to investigate the Starstone Spire or the time-travel or the Redclovers any further and the next we’re out on our ear with a mystifying carte-blanche to do anything we like.’

‘We’re supposed to understand that “anything we like” in this context consists of all of the things Milady had just told us not to do,’ I said. ‘Her hands are tied, see. She has to toe the Hidden Ministry’s line, at least on the surface, and that’s especially true with people like Lord Garrogin around.’ Garrogin was a rare Truthseeker. That meant he knew when people were lying. He was powerful in other ways, too; not someone Milady wanted to get on the wrong side of.

‘Then why not just do as she’s told?’

‘Jay. You cannot be serious.’

He gave me the wide-eyed, solemn look of a man who’s never been more serious in the whole course of his life. ‘She was right about the dangers of time-travel. If it was ever possible, the world’s better off not knowing.’

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