Hair of the Dog

A Warlocks of Whitehall Novella

By Steve K Peacock

Published by Magister Books

Copyright © Steve K Peacock

For Rebecca, who has been very helpful in doing all the editing

that I didn't want to do.

I promise I'll name a character after you eventually...

One

I am pretty good at not doing magic. I mean, yes, I've had to get very good at not doing it, what with the constant threat of imminent heart-explosion, but that's not what I mean.

I know you were expecting me to go on about what happened after the last little story I told you – the one with all the fire and the intrigue and me running off to the Americas to live it large with my disgraced handler –  and I'll get to that. But for now, I'm going to talk about my first day, because we've got a bit of time and this won't take too long.

The first time Whitehall kick you back out onto the street, you've got a banging jaw ache and very little else. There's a promise of a shiny warrant card – which still hasn't materialised – and an eventual phone call from your new handler, but otherwise it's back into the world as if nothing happened.

Which is a bit rich considering that, by this point, they've had you locked in a pitch black room for about a year.

Anyway, this isn't primarily a story about how shitty Whitehall can be to my ilk. This is a story about me being good at not using magic.

The first time I met him, Maurice Wingard had been the poster boy for reform. I'd not known him during the Dark Times – when mage fought mage in a secret war for control of the UK – but he was all they talked about during the re-education sessions.

They told me I was lucky to have been assigned him as my mentor following my “graduation”, and I hadn't believed them until I had seen him. He wasn't particularly tall or strapping or good looking, nothing like that, but he had a confidence to him that radiated like a damned aura. He was one of those people that made you believe in him before he said anything.

'You'll be Parker then?' he said, offering me a cardboard cup full of expensive coffee. 'Drink up, even if you don't like it. Step one.'

I took the cup and stared morosely at the liquid inside. If you're hoping for one of my trademark witticisms, I'm going to have to disappoint you. 'Step one?'

'Ordinarily I'd give you the whole speech about diverting addictions and that business. There's loads of steps though, hundreds, and we don't have time today. Whitehall thinks you've got talent, so they want you on a job right now.'

I took a mouthful of coffee, it stung the crevice where one of my molars had been not half an hour earlier. 'I'm not even a day out of Whitehall.'

'Then you'll have to learn how to fly pretty quickly, chap. We've got a shuck to catch.'

He clapped me hard on the shoulder and led me towards a car parked half on the pavement and half in the road, viciously annoying a nearby traffic warden. Being practically thrown into the back seat meant I didn't have time to voice any more questions until we were on the move, and Wingard was not a careful driver.

I had to talk or I would end up grinding my teeth together, and I wasn't sure I was ready for that pain.

'Black shucks don't do this bit of the country. They're an East Anglian phenomenon, like vajazzling and reflective teeth.'

'You know your lore, Parker, I'll give you that,' Wingard said. He swerved violently and I heard the tail end of a barrage of curse words vanish into the throng behind us. 'And ordinarily that's true, but we've got confirmed sightings. Legitimate ones. Bears looking into it, at least according to the suits back in Whitehall.'

I tried to avoid looking out the window. The feel of the motion was bad enough without the sight of it as well. 'Even if that is true, there hasn't been a malevolent black shuck on the prowl since the eighteen hundreds. We domesticated them all, didn't we?'

'Evidently not all of them,' he said, pulling the car to a stop.

We had pulled up just outside a bank of rather posh terraced houses. London is full of them, as I'm sure you're aware – three storey compact palaces with perfect white façades and buzzers on the door. The image is slightly ruined when said door is splintered into the road, however. Undoes some of the mystique.

I looked at Wingard, who shot me an approving look, and I got out of the car to take a closer look. Yes, I was in pain and more than a little stunned at having been thrown into a job so quickly, but I was a good little soldier.

Carefully, I stepped over and through the wreckage and made for the interior of the town house, and instantly regretted it. There was a feeling, a pressure, that slammed into me the moment I crossed the threshold, something that whispered to the caged part of my identity.

Before I could listen to it I felt Wingard's hand on my shoulder again as he pulled me back out into the street.

'Sorry, should have warned you about the signature.'

The pressure left me, though it held on for as long as it could, pulling me back towards the threshold, enticing me. 'It's... been a while.'

'Yeah, this is going to be the hardest part of the job, especially for you,' he said, pulling a self-rolled cigarette out from his back pocket. 'But if you're going to do this job, you'll need to work the scene. That means you've got to keep a grip on yourself and not let the magic call to you.'

'I know all this, they make that very clear.'

He started rolling the cigarette over his knuckles. 'That's true. Different in the classroom to how it is in the real world though. Try again.'

He nodded towards the door. I took a deep breath and obliged him.

I was ready for it this time. I let the pressure in, but I could channel it this time, drown out the whispers before they could start spreading their lies, and thus could keep calm enough to study it.

Magic is weird. I mean seriously strange. Trying to describe how it feels with words always seems somewhat inadequate to me, but that might just be me lacking the correct education in flowery purple prose. But let's try it this way – say you're out for a walk at night and someone drops into step behind you, a couple of metres back. You don't want to look, but you feel him there, you know exactly where he is, hyper-aware as you've become. That is your fight or flight instinct, as I'm sure you know.

Right, now assign that a colour. Daft, I know, but stick with me here. The magic I felt inside that house was that colour, but sort of liquidy, like oil. Grungy maybe. If it had had a smell it would have stank to high heaven, but it wasn't something I had experienced before.

I followed it, pushing against the current and deeper into the house, looking for the highest concentration. A few bewildered bobbies were on guard, but if they tried to stop me I didn't notice. You can't multitask this sort of reading, you either give it your all or you cock it up.

The epicentre was in the dining room. Just being in the room was difficult, every vein in my body tensed and flexed against the power, and it was all I could do to try and maintain some composure. Thrown in at the deep end indeed. But there was an object in the room that was anchoring it, a constant in the stream that never wavered. I just had to find it.

I let my left hand roam free, surfing the magic, riding the flow of power. Like water circling a plug hole, the patterns led me to the object and I gripped it tightly, opening my eyes and pushing aside the magic.

A very confused woman in her early forties stared back at me over my closed fist. I let go of her nose immediately. 'Ah, sorry.'

'It's not the weirdest thing that's happened today, young man,' she said, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. 'So I don't think I'll hold a grudge.'

It was then that I noticed the state of the room. It made sense now that this was the centre of the magic, seeing as it was no longer so much a room as a lumber yard. Apparently the woman had owned a lot of wooden furniture, and the shuck – provided this was indeed the work of a shuck – had reduced all of it to fine kindling. Splinters and debris everywhere, except for the woman and the banquette upon which she was sitting.

'I might be somewhat of a trusting soul,' I said. 'But I find that very easy to believe. What happened here?'

'She says a dog got into the house and made a right hash of things,' shouted one of the bobbies, chuckling a little. 'A bit of an overreaction, calling us, of course.'

'I wasn't talking to you, plod,' I said incredibly politely. 'Shut your hole.'

I'm good at making friends, as you've seen before. Naturally, the gentleman overreacted and went to move towards me. It was Wingard who stopped him, ushering him out of the room while shooting me an unimpressed glance.

Not that I cared. I wasn't out to impress him, even if he was the most damned impressive man I'd ever seen. I was working.

'Thank you,' the woman said. 'They've all been very rude to me. I know it sounds daft, but I know what I saw, and it wasn't just a dog.'

'I'm getting the impression I'm going to hear that sort of sentence a lot. Can you describe this dog for me?'

She furrowed her brow in concentration for a moment. 'I don't know how it got in, I didn't hear it or anything until I just turned right into it. I couldn't get a clear look at it, which is odd; it was all fuzzy apart from the face. But it was tall, I was standing up and didn't have to look down or anything, and I was gazing right into its eyes.'

That seemed to fit with the lore, although the stuff was never particularly accurate. The magically astute aren't really keen on scientific record keeping, it doesn't mesh with the craft. The craft is art, so we have a more abstract way of looking at things and writing them down. But there was always a constant when it came to the shuck.

'Tell me about the eyes.'

'They were huge,' she said, quivering a little now. 'And it was like they got bigger the more I looked into them. They were green too, the most beautiful shimmering emerald I suppose.'

'So here's a leading question for you: did they flicker as if they were reflecting a fire?'

'Yes! I thought I'd left the fire lit in here at first, but when it was gone I saw I'd not lit it today.'

Everything changed throughout the recorded sightings, but never the fire behind the eyes. Hell, even the number of eyes was up for dispute, but there was always that flicker to them, be it red or green. Which made sense.

'Thank you, ma'am. I'll look into this for you, see what I can find out. Don't worry, you're safe now,' I lied. 'It won't be back.'

She tried for a smile and missed, and I couldn't exactly blame her. No-one wants to find a strange dog in their house at the best of times, but especially not one the size of a small bear.

I returned the smile and went back outside to clear my head. It was hard to think in there, the stench of magic made everything feel like an uphill struggle. Walking into a faceful of Wingard's smoke was actually a relief.

'You confirm it?' he said.

'I don't know,' I said, leaning on one of the railings that flanked the steps down to the pavement. 'The description is perfect, spot on. But the actions don't fit.'

Wingard took a long drag of his cigarette. 'I must confess, I don't really know much about the black shuck. I was more into the practical stuff, not folklore.'

'Folklore is as good as the practical stuff if you can channel it right. I remember taking Robin on holiday to Wales so we could get her a coblynau as, like, a familiar –' I caught myself.

'What's the matter?'

'Dark Times stuff, probably best I don't dredge up that particular corpse.'

He flicked the remains of his cigarette away somewhere. 'Why do you think they sent you, of all the new recruits, out on this mission? You're the only one that knows the folklore, and the handlers in that cushy office don't want to do the reading. This is your op, chap, I'm just here to evaluate you.'

'Well, don't I feel special.'

'Come on. Wizards love to talk, it's what we do. You're dying to educate me.'

And, so help me god, I really was. 'Okay, but I'll give you the short version. Black shucks are harbingers of doom, basically. In the olden days they'd rock up, stare you in the face and, bang, you'd be dead in a year. Nowadays they tend to be a bit nicer, giving people a second chance and steering them clear of a single sticky situation.'

'Not much in there about wrecking dining rooms and sodding off into central London.'

'No, not really. Something is clearly off with it, though. Did you study that signature it left behind? The magic was putrid, rotten.'

He tried to keep his expression neutral, but there was a twinkling in his eyes. Pride? 'How do you know? Don't tell me you had a kennel full of the beasts in your fortress once upon a time.'

'It's a basic human instinct, knowing when something is rotten. Try and feed someone a rancid chicken fillet sometime.'

I was getting mouthy again. This was good, it meant the pain in my face was dimming, probably from actually having something to do other than sit in the corner of a concrete room and crying. I'd never touch magic again, but then I didn't want to. I couldn't trust myself with that. But the things around magic, the interesting things, the things that had dragged me into that life in the first place...

Oh how I had missed them.

'Okay then, mastermind, what's our next move?'

I thought for a moment. 'I need a phonebook.'

'A phonebook?'

'Yes, unless you happen to have memorised the number for the Samaritans hotline.' 

Two

'You've got an unorthodox method, Parker,' Wingard said as we pulled up outside the community centre. London has thousands of them, just picture a miserable grey cube, you get the idea. 'It would have been easier to ask your handler for this sort of research.'

'Well, I've not exactly had the pleasure yet,' I said, pulling open the heavy glass door and stepping inside. 'Besides, it might have gotten us off on the wrong foot if the very first thing I asked for was a list of depression support groups.'

'A fair point.'

There were a remarkable amount of them in the Greater London area, I had found, which was a surprise. Walk around a city for long enough and it gets harder and harder to believe that anyone gives a solitary shit about anyone else, let alone enough of one to actively organise something as helpful as an entire support group.

On the one hand, it's a city full of depressed people desperately reaching out for help. On the other, there are actually people trying to be that help.

Cheerful bugger, me.

Anyway, I'd had the charming lady from the Samaritans steer me towards the nearest registered support group, and I had neglected to tell Wingard why until we arrived. Even back then, I favoured showmanship above most other things. Not even a year of torture can properly crush that out of a man like me.

'I can't believe you don't know this stuff, Wingard.'

He was rolling another cigarette over the knuckles of his left hand. 'Well, I was never much of a scholar. I was a soldier, just point me at a problem and it won't be much of one any more. I leave the intel to the suits.'

'You're lucky I like the sound of my own voice,' I said.

The inside of the building was considerably less vile than the outside, although that wasn't exactly hard. What colour there was had the tell tale signs of it being applied to the wall by young people – thick and streaky, no undercoat – but it helped make the yellowed faux-marble floors look less cheap and tacky. Every room was big and empty, a good multi-purpose space for whoever wanted to rent it.

It reminded me of school.

'Then would you care to –'

'Not yet, boss man. It needs to be more dramatic.'

We followed the posted signs to a blue door that professed to be the room housing the support group. I was buzzing, my brain still firing from being allowed to think again. I was numb to everything else except the challenge.

'Oh, you're going to do the dramatic door opening thing, aren't you?'

'Yes,' I said, my cheeks aching from the boyish grin I was cultivating. Or perhaps that was my jaw again. 'Now then, there's a reason depression is sometimes called the black dog...'

I flung open the door and my enthusiasm fell flat.

I'd been right, of course. I'm usually right, and when I'm not it's because I'm being right about something much larger and not realising it. I'm very smart, but at times I'm not very bright. This was one of those times.

The room was caked in the shuck's magical essence, just as the woman's house had been, but I didn't notice that at first. It was the twelve corpses that grabbed my attention first. A perfect circle, arranged like some grotesque clock, a shredded body in each plastic chair staring inwards. It kicked most of the joy out of me, I won't lie.

I hadn't been taking things seriously. What a shock.

Wingard had pushed past me at some point, I wasn't sure when, and was already inside the circle by the time I thought to move.

'Claws and teeth,' he said, peering at what had once been a man. 'Big and bestial. Sounds shuckish, wouldn't you say?'

I walked over slowly, apprehensively. A memory was overlaying each body, distorting them in my head. 'Huh?'

'You're the expert here, sure, but I could see this being a dog attack. Do you concur?'

'I don't... I can't...'

They all had her face, or the face she had had when I last saw her. That horrible slack visage, betrayal and fear and disappointment all compressed into pure agony. The way it moved when I tried to hold her, everything I recognised shifting and melting away. I had to get out, get away.

'Parker?'

I wasn't listening. I couldn't say whether I was hyperventilating or not, but I remember my throat and lungs burning so I must have been. I've heard it called a panic attack or PTSD or any number of other things since, but labels aren't particularly helpful. It was a painful memory of a monstrous thing that I had done, and at that time I was still very much not ready to remember it sober.

Thankfully, Wingard slapped the memory out of me.

'Secure that shit, chap,' he said. 'You're a library in a meat suit, and a library isn't much good if I can't get at the books. Come back to me.'

'Charming metaphor,' I said. I was trying for my usual effervescent self and missing by a country mile. 'I need... I need a closer look.'

Wingard nodded and firmly, but not without concern, pulled me closer to the circle, holding me close to one of the corpses. I would have pulled away without his help, the urge was too strong. But, after a moment, Robin's face fled and I only saw the real one.

He wasn't wrong. There was a certain lupine flourish to the wounds, with the claws being mostly circumstantial and the teeth doing the majority of the damage. No defensive wounds though, or anything I would identify as such – I'm not a doctor. But still, not much damage to the forearms, and you'd expect some from someone being savaged by a giant black dog.

One by one, Wingard softly dragged me from corpse to corpse, all of them bearing the same marks. No defensive wounds, lots of bite marks, a few claw scratches. In my inexpert opinion it looked as though they hadn't moved at all during the attack, let alone fought back.

'This isn't right,' I said.

'Well I'm certainly glad we have an expert such as you on board, genius.'

'I mean... No... Shut up. Look. I've never come across anything that paints shucks as predatory. They're omens, not direct killers. These wounds look like they could have come from a giant dog, sure, but that's not how shucks kill. They don't even really kill, they just sense that a confluence of events is going to kill you.'

Wingard tapped one of the corpses on the forehead with a knuckle. A sizeable chunk of flesh plopped onto the floor. 'That's not what the evidence is telling me, Parker. So are you saying this isn't a shuck, it's something else?'

'I don't know. If it is something else, something that looks like a giant black dog... I don't know. A barghest maybe? If it is a shuck, the something is seriously wrong with it.'

'Rabid?'

I tapped the side of my head for a moment, urging the cogs to start whirring again. 'I'm not even going to hazard a guess on that. Can omens get rabies? Something is clearly off, though. We need to find this thing, now.'

Wingard pulled a flip-phone and a small notepad from inside his coat, tucked the phone into the crook of his neck and threw me the pad. 'Page thirty four, under important contacts.'

'What?'

'Call your handler, introduce yourself. Make your case.'

I clumsily flicked through the pages. 'What case?'

'To get permission for a divination ritual to find this thing.'

I wanted to object. I should have objected. They'd told me I was the only warlock who had offered to pull out his own tooth for the vault, I'd been that far gone when they brought me in. Tapping back into that energy, it didn't seem smart. Or healthy.

But Wingard's face did that confidence thing, bombarding me with his unspoken trust in me and my abilities. How could I argue with that?

I pulled out my own, government-issued, phone and dialled the number on page thirty four.

'Yes, hello, hi? Um, pick one,' said the woman on the other end. Posh and young, and if you paid attention to the last story you'll know exactly who she is.

Of course I didn't know who she was at that time, so I was a little thrown by such a, well, cute voice. 'I'll go with hi, if you don't mind. I'm Jameson Parker.'

'Oh,' she said. There was the sound of something clattering to the floor. 'Sorry, I was supposed to call you earlier and do the whole welcoming thing! I'm Charlie. I've just been so busy...'

'You and me both, Charlie.'

'Getting straight down to business? That's cool! What do you need?'

'Magic, apparently.'

'Oh. On day one? You really do waste no time. What sort, what are you trying to do?'

I glanced at Wingard, he was still on the phone. 'Divination. We're trying to track down a Black shuck that might have gone rabid. We've sort of hit a bit of a wall in the investigation, and it would really help if we could –'

'No,' she interrupted. 'Not on your very first day. The most I can give you is permission for some really minor prestidigitation, and the only reason I can even do that is because my supervisor thinks its cute when I say long words. The dick.'

'It's just Wingard said...'

'I'll see what I can do for you though, Mister Parker, because that's my job. Don't hold your breath, though.'

'I'd never do that. Bad for the brain cells.'

'If you say so. Please hold.'

A tinny rendition of Blue Danube blared at me from the speaker as she put me on hold, and I nearly threw the phone across the room on reflex. Wingard snorted from behind me.

'They somehow have even worse hold music than you'd expect, right?'

I turned to look at him. 'She says they won't authorise me this soon.'

'Why do you think I'm on my phone?' he said with a wink. 'She? Lucky you. My handler is a chain-smoking old codger from the fifties. Pretty sure he still tries to vote for Enoch Powell.'

The music cut out suddenly and she was back on the phone. 'Parker?'

'I'm here,' I said, turning my back on Wingard. 'Any news?'

'Apparently Wingard has vouched for you, so don't screw this up. Not that I think you will or anything, no pressure. Just, you know, thought I should say it. Sorry, rambling. I'm new at this. Sorry.'

'I think you're doing fine, ramble all you like,' I said. 'The more you ramble, the longer I can put off doing responsible things. The perfect partnership.'

'Oh, you're making fun of me.'

I laughed. Quietly. I'm not a monster. 'Not of you. Around you. Important distinction.'

'I'm going to love working with you, aren't I?'

'I suspect not even a little. Bye bye.'

I hung up and turned back to Wingard. He was still yapping away to his own handler, and I'll be damned if I can remember what about. Friendly banter, probably. I left him to it and started to prepare the spell.

Simple, clinical magic. A means to an end. All I had to do was build the spell in my mind, draw in the tiniest bit of power and, poof, I'd get a delightfully fuzzy picture of the shuck, maybe even enough of one to narrow down the search.

If I could focus.

Which I couldn't.

I'd more or less recovered from my embarrassing moment a few minutes earlier, but she was there every time I tried to focus on the spell. The spell would be taking shape in my mind and then she'd stroll through, calm as you like, just a fleeting visit, and shatter the entire working. I'd try again, rebuild it, and again she'd come. Poof. Up in smoke.

In frustration I grabbed at the fragments of the spell, crushed them into a crude semblance of the working I needed, and fired power through it before she could disrupt it again. Bad move. That's below apprentice-level shit. Even a rank amateur wouldn't be so carefree with the craft.

I felt the blood vessel pop in my eye, which was a new sensation, but it was somewhat masked by my eardrum exploding. That is very much a singular pain which I think doesn't need much in the way of explanation, and I'm going to count it as one of my greatest accomplishments that I didn't black out or scream.

Unless I'm exaggerating.

But here's the thing, and this isn't an exaggeration: that could have been a lot worse. Crap wizards have given themselves full-blown aneurysms being so cavalier, stroked out so badly they've been dead before they hit the ground. I knew that. Had known that.

On the plus side, my ear was in direct conflict with my jaw in the pain Olympics.

Wingard was off the phone by the time I had blocked out enough of the pain to appear as if I wasn't a total cretin. 'So then, what did your woman have to say?'

'About the magic?'

'Yes. I pulled some strings on your behalf. Did they sign off?'

Robin strode coquettishly around behind my eyes again. 'No can do. Even with your recommendation they just weren't comfortable enough to let me off the chain just yet.'

'Strange,' he said. 'They assured me –'

'What can I say,' I had to keep him on track, lest he see through my ingenious and subtle lie. 'We'll have to find another way.'

'Well, I'm open to suggestions.'

I walked another circuit of the corpses. 'How about we don't skip to the end.'

'Pardon?'

'Divining the location is great, sure. Get in, stop it, bish bash bosh. Stellar. But that's the end of the story. We follow his trail, do some proper detective stuff.'

'We don't have a trail. We've got two crime scenes –'

'Bullshit,' I said. If I could stay angry at someone other than myself then maybe, just maybe, I could keep the pain manageable. 'You were crying shuck before you'd even been to the first scene. There's a trail, Whitehall just hasn't made that available to us.'

Slowly, terrifyingly so, his expression changed. His lips curved into a razor-thin smile and his eyes narrowed just a little. 'I was wondering how long that would take you. What else?'

'This is an evaluation of me, you've not hidden that. But Whitehall aren't stupid. They wouldn't leave a killer to a rookie's first job, not even with esteemed supervision.' I was putting unnecessary bile into the words. Why not?

'Would it surprise you to know that that is exactly what they are doing? This shuck, provided of course that it is one, has killed before.'

I frowned. 'Yes, actually. Unless...'

'Yes?' he said, and I could feel him bursting at the seams, urging me on. 'Join the dots, chap.'

And I did, but I didn't dare voice my suspicions. It was too callous a result. 'Show me.'

He nodded and we stormed back to his car in unison. Reaching into the glove box, he pulled out some square of thin cardboard, a permit I think, and rammed the engine into gear. Something ground itself to dust in the mechanism deep inside, and we roared off into traffic.

What followed was a whistle-stop tour of several more buildings, both residential and public, and more of the putrid shuck stink. Not all had been murders – considerably less than half, in fact – but all of them had the same violent destruction present at the first scene I saw.

I think it was the seventh scene where I put a stop to our little stroll, grabbing Wingard by the arm as he went to get back into his car. Three dead at that scene, all women, a polyamorous relationship if the blood-spattered photos were any indication. I'd confirmed the connection several scenes earlier, but it was at this point I was sufficiently sickened to accept it.

'I know what you're going to say, Parker,' Wingard said. 'Think it through first, find the words.'

'Find the words? Find the fucking words?' I reined myself in. Shouting at the side of the road in London put you in poor company. 'Every single corpse I have seen today is one of us, Maurice. Empowered. Our people.'

'I know. I've known from the beginning.'

I managed to convey what the fuck entirely in body language at this point. You know the sort of movements, right? Gesticulating like an electrocuted swan, that sort of look. 'And you didn't think that was information I might need?'

'Whitehall thought it would make your evaluation a better judge of your skills if you lacked all the facts.'

'People are dead, and they shove this under the rug, give it to a rookie?'

'Get angry later,' his voice was ice cold. 'We can have a nice long tirade about politicians later. First, let's see about doing our job, right?'

There was so much I wanted to say, which will come as no surprise, so much I want to say now even. I didn't say it at the time, though, for the same reason I won't now: there were better things to do, and it would have changed nothing.

'Okay, but I'm going to talk this through and you are going to shut up and listen, right?'

Wingard nodded. 'Whatever you want.'

I tried to picture each of the scenes. 'There was very little in common with all the scenes, right? The dead mages all had magic paraphernalia, but that's pretty common, and nothing that radiated anything tangible you could home in on.'

'Exactly, otherwise they'd have run afoul of the warlocks by now.'

'Right. And outside of the shuck's signature I didn't feel anything indicative of a major working or anything like that.'

'Me neither.'

My ear and jaw had synchronised their throbbing. 'So it's not the magic that's drawing it.'

'But it's only killing magicians.'

'But shucks aren't hunters. They don't have prey. They don't pounce on the weak and tasty, they warn them or doom them. That's not a nature thing, that's nurture.'

'Are you saying someone trained a mythical black dog to hunt wizards?'

'Well, when you put it that way, it does sound daft,' I said. 'But yes, pretty much. This is a targeted attack on the magical community.'

Wingard took a few deep breaths, visibly mulling over my conclusion. 'You are aware that sounds like a conspiracy theory, right?'

'I am – was – a member of a secret community that exists underneath the mundane world, one that can harness god-like power to bend reality to their will. I think I'm at a place where conspiracies might actually have some merit.'

'Granted, but think it through. Properly. Even if someone could capture and train a black shuck to hunt magicians, why would he do it?'

'We already know they can be trained,' I said. 'We domesticated them a couple of hundred years back.'

'Semantics and you bloody well know it,' he shot back. 'We just existed near them for long enough that they stopped dooming us whenever we happened to cross paths. It's not like we taught them to bring us the morning paper or shit in a plastic tray.'

I clapped my hands. 'Well, look who knows more about black shucks than he was letting on. What a sodding surprise.'

That slightly killed the conversation for a bit, which was fine by me. I needed more time to work through my findings, such as they were. Do they count as findings if they are based entirely on supposition? This is why I was never a copper.

Sod it, suppositions are only bad if you're wrong. Which I never am, as we've established.

Building from the knowledge that these attacks were directed helped narrow things down. First of all, there are a lot of empowered people; we're not exactly small and insular. As a result, there is a great amount of variety to us, both in terms of the power we wield and the intellect. The great chunk of mediocrity that composes the group most would term as the average magician wouldn't know enough about black shucks to be up to this.

So that left us with the major powers – those with the talent to cast proper big spells or the scholarly impulse to read about them voraciously. These two characteristics don't have to overlap in a single person, of course, though they often do. I was one of those sorts where both intertwined, and I knew a fair few others personally, and more still by reputation.

This wasn't a dark lord thing though. Too sloppy. We... They liked their messages concise and obvious. It was all about power, after all. What good was fear if they didn't know who to be afraid of. Besides, they were all dead or warlocks by that point.

That left, what, the lieutenants? Wingard was probably of that calibre before Whitehall turned him – talented but not ambitious enough to really use it. Dangerous though, if given the right push. I could see it being one of them, conceivably. I couldn't deduce the why of it, but they would be skilled enough.

'Parker,' Wingard said eventually. At some point he had snapped his cigarette in half while it danced over his knuckles, and he was absent-mindedly trying to squish the tobacco into the larger half. 'Let's turn this around. You're the scholar, can you conceive of a spell that could do this?'

'What?'

'Not carry it out, this is entirely theory. Could you, hypothetically, craft a working that could control a black shuck?'

I shrugged. 'Any magician worth his salt can craft a spell that will do anything. It's doing it with enough finesse that he doesn't explode while doing it.'

'Then can you do that, smart arse?'

'Maybe. I'd need a lab, somewhere to work.'

'Get in the car.'

Three

Wingard hadn't skimped on his laboratory, which was more than a little surprising. You don't really need much in the way of equipment to do magic – you can get by for almost every single spell with a bit of chalk and a scented candle if you're strapped – and he had struck me as a very ‘no frills’ kind of guy.

But magic is mostly books, and Wingard had a library that would put most universities to shame. Old, well-maintained leather-bound books lined the walls, were neatly piled on tables, and stacked up against the wall. I was jealous – before I'd been neutered I'd had something similar, and I missed those books.

In the centre of the room sat a lone wooden table which, I noticed when I approached it, was inscribed with runes and sigils all over its surface. Most of them were alien to me, which I supposed was the point – runes are a discipline all of their own, and sigils are primarily personal in meaning, not something you decipher without a Rosetta stone.

'Don't take this the wrong way,' I said. 'But this doesn't really mesh with the whole image you are projecting.'

'And what, pray tell, is that image?'

'Well not this.'

He walked around the table and lowered the blinds on the far side of the room. Oddly, the room didn't seem to grow any dimmer. 'This isn't my lab. Belongs to someone the warlocks had to deal with last month. Nasty fellow, but a voracious reader.'

'So I see.'

It must have been quite a fight, I considered, although it hadn't taken place here. No battle damage, but plenty of signs of his competence outside of the sheer number of books. The arrangement of the books, for example, appeared merely tidy at first glance, but a prolonged look revealed that certain stacks showed that they prescribed a pentagram. Same for the runes and sigils on the table top. Pentagrams within pentagrams, all made up of things that, in their own right, were potentially powerful.

A massive battery of magical energy, constantly refilling itself, ready to be tapped at a moment's notice.

Which sounds all sinister and dangerous, I suppose, until you consider that it is basically the magical equivalent of a laptop.

Think about it. For all I know, you're reading this on a laptop now, which is an odd way to read a book but whatever. Anyway, the amount of juice you can store in something as simple as a laptop battery, what you can do with it, that's a pentagram for you. Stable, long-term storage to make magic easier to play around with.

Can't always be drawing on your own power, especially if you’re experimenting.

I reached out gingerly, testing the circuit. Every pentagram was bursting with power, which made my job simpler. Given how I had handled the minor working a few hours earlier, however, I was not exactly enthusiastic.

Wingard could see the concern in my face, but then I wasn't exactly trying to hide it.

'Relax, Parker. You're not actually doing anything. You're building the machine, not turning it on.'

I licked my lips. My teeth felt dry. 'Accidents happen.'

‘Well, let's not have one today, eh?' he sighed. 'Unless you want the suits to pop something squishy inside your chest.'

'I most certainly do not want that.'

'That makes two of us.'

'You're too kind.'

I tried to clear my head and structure whatever spell I thought would work. There was nothing I actually knew by heart that could control a mythical beast, but I hadn't been lying to Wingard either. Magic is complicated, and I hate trying to explain it laymen because it ends up sounding so pedestrian.

But here goes.

See, making a new spell isn't simple. No, scratch that. Making a new spell is incredibly simple, but making it do what you want it to is hard. It's all about getting into the right frame of mind, having the trust in your power to change the laws of reality to do exactly what you want it to. That's all a magic spell is, shorthand for the right mental outlook. It's why we write so many tomes and grimoires – reading is fantastically good at structuring a mind.

At their core, though, spell books are more like sheet music, with the construction of any spell being akin to writing a symphony. I think. I'm crap with music, but I think you get the idea.

Take this spell for instance. To whip up a wholly original spell that could control or dominate or even persuade another creature, that takes a powerful intellect. But if you break it down, piece by piece, note by note, you can make something functional.

First, you need a way of locating the target. The divination I was going to construct earlier could technically work, but it's too imprecise – that would end up being area of effect. A thaumaturgical trace – blood magic for the uninitiated, using a part of something to contact the rest of it – would require first having something with the beast's DNA, and for all I knew it didn't have DNA. That left signature-locking, which was the hardest because it required an eidetic memory unless you worked it in a place where that shuck stink was floating about.

If you're not surrounded by it, think of it as trying to copy Monet's Water Lillies from memory. You might, if you're lucky, get some semblance of similarity, but you'll never get all the brush strokes perfect.

Most likely of the three though, so that's where we start. Locator: signature-lock. There's a load of incantations for those.

Next you need the meat of the spell, what you want it to do. In this case, what we want the working to do is to override the free will of the target, which is where things get harder. Doable, but power hungry. Complete mental domination over anything magically aware – not skilled, just aware, mind you – requires complex rituals in and of itself, potent and plentiful batteries of power, and often the help of more than one lesser practitioner as a lightning rod for any fallout. For something like a shuck, a creature as much of magic as reality, or so I reckon, that's not feasible.

I quickly cobbled together one such spell, independent of the rest of the experiment, and tapped it against the power stored in the pentagrams. I felt a rush to fill that mental circuit, a draw so strong that it would drain those batteries instantly and still not be juiced enough to work. So no, it wasn't domination.

Coercion maybe? Tweaking the perception of the beast so that it saw these magicians as threats? Much less power intensive, but considerably more subtle. Magical brain surgery, more or less. You needed a deft hand and a complete understanding of the type of mind you were altering. Easy, if you're doing it to a human, not so much to a spectral ghost dog. Unlikely.

Suggestion then. That was the only other choice. Much less effective – think of hypnosis, some are more susceptible than others, and there are hard limits as to what you can make a mind believe – but piss easy on anything. Slot that one thought in there and, given enough time to gestate, you might just get your target acting how you like.

So that's the effect: suggestion.

Last, you fine-tune the effect, which is simple and easy and doesn't require much in the way of explanation. Yo, ghost hound, magicians are bad, eat them. Sorted.

Sounds simple enough, but holding that together in your head is like writing a concerto by stealing bars from a thousand other compositions and stitching them together on the fly. Frankenstein's Symphony in A minor, twelve movements and lots of those little squiggly f symbols that mean very loud.

I played the recorder at school, that's about all I know of sheet music.

Anyway, the finished spell I mashed together was a horrible mutilation of about twelve different and wholly independent spells, cribbed from what I had memorised. It was bloated and unwieldy and intensely unattractive, which I think is why Robin hadn't waltzed through and ruined it – holding it together at all required too much concentration for even my subconscious to have enough left to ruin it.

I risked tapping it against the stored power, and watched the mental circuits shimmer. It was remarkably efficient, if I do say so myself. It would drain one or two of the pentagrams, but that was barely anything. Provided you could feed it the right signature to lock onto, you could put together something like this in an afternoon, theoretically.

Assuming that this would actually work, which I had no way of knowing for sure. Even if I had been allowed to, I wouldn't test it. That wasn't who I was any more.

'I think I've got it,' I said, letting it unravel in my head.

'Okay, so walk me through it. Profile it. What sort of mind would you need to concoct this?'

I closed my eyes and sighed. 'Disciplined. It's like herding cats, that spell – you think you've got a grip on one aspect but you find your focus has left one of the others. It's a lot to order. The actual power requirements are relatively simple though, the trick is in the intellect. Doing it is easy, doing it without stroking out is hard. Doing it well without stroking out, harder still.'

Wingard pulled out a small pad and pen and started making notes. 'I think that soundly confirms your hypothesis of it being a notable figure.'

'That doesn't really narrow the pool though,' I said. 'There's no shortage of notable magicians, right?'

'That are on the loose? We've got a list. It's not that long.'

I blinked. 'What, seriously?'

'You've been off the streets for, what, a year? You honestly think Whitehall wouldn't have been busy? They've rounded up and turned or killed a lot of the truly powerful magicians. They were more than happy to compile a list. Call your woman, have her give you the details.'

Your woman.

His impressive aura was starting to tarnish a little.

Still, it was a good habit to get into, calling Charlie. Wingard had been right about one thing, I needed to strike up a good working relationship with her. Before they let me out they had said whoever my eventual operator would be was their eyes and ears regarding my situation. My true jailer. Always helps to have the jailer on side, even if I had tried to avoid her for as long as possible.

I nodded and took out my phone. This time I took a moment to enter her into the address book, my only friend, before I dialled. Couldn't keep tapping in those digits manually. This is the twenty first century, pal.

It rang twice before she answered. 'Hello Parker. What's up?'

'You sound cheerful.'

'I'm a cheerful person, lucky for you. What do you need?'

Wingard was nodding at me so fast I thought he might snap his own neck. 'Um, I need your help narrowing down a potential perp.'

'Perp?'

'Well I don't know what we call them, I'm new! Scumbag, crim, unsub, whatever.'

She giggled. 'All right, guv. Give me the details and I'll run them through the system.'

'Smart and disciplined, therefore probably not self-taught unless they were a proper prodigy. Tutored on his own though, not as part of a group. Metaphysically capable, but not necessarily ripped. Knows how to work efficiently.'

'Okay,' her words were punctuated by the tip-tapping of a keyboard. 'That helps, anything else?'

I thought for a moment. 'Let's go for someone quiet too. Thoughtful. Not necessarily a coward, but averse to direct confrontation and not keen on calling cards.'

'That rules out quite a lot of people, actually.'

'I thought it might,' I said. 'We do like to show off.'

'Yes, I do get that impression,' she said. 'Computer's showing five names.'

'That narrows things down a little, I suppose.'

I could hear her tapping a pen against her desktop. 'Not exactly, seeing as all five of them are dead.'

'Is this what it's like to work for a living?' I said. 'Because I don't like it.'

'From what I'm told,' she said. 'Pretty much.'

I thought it over for a moment. 'Which one of them is the least dead?'

'Pardon?'

'I'm going to Occam this. In lieu of an actual lead, I'm going to work on the assumption that is is one of those five dudes, who just happens not to be dead.'

'Wow, you're an idiot.'

'Oi, mouth. You can do some crazy shit with magic, all right? It's not inconceivable that one or all of those five rose as a lich or something.'

She let loose a sigh that made my eye twitch. 'A lich? You are the worst detective. Ever. All of them are very dead. Brain-turned-into-syrup dead.'

'Well that's as maybe but, please, indulge me.'

I could hear the eye-rolling, which is a trait I have come to expect in Charlie over the years. The very first time you witness it though, you can't quite decide whether to be abashed or amazed. That decision will inevitably impact your entire relationship with the girl. I'm sure you know what I chose.

It took her a few moments to search through the files and categorise them in order of most likely resurrections. 'Uther Von Hammersmark, died when a warlock shoved a pool cue into his brain. Only one of the five where the body was extant.'

'Wow, that's an assumed name if I've ever heard one.'

'You think?'

'Just give me the details, sarcasmo.'

She reeled off a long list of addresses, aliases, holdings and all manner of other uninteresting things and I did my best to scribble down what I could onto my right hand. I didn't get much of it down – apparently she wasn't interested in slowing down for my benefit – but I got enough.

'I'm sure this will be invaluable,' I said when she was done.

'Sure, whatever.'

I heard a floorboard creak behind me as Wingard shifted his weight ever so slightly. 'Parker...'

'Hmm?' I turned around obediently and, I'm not ashamed to say, froze on the spot.

When I had read about shucks, the lore had always been a bit vague on the physical details. I found this odd when I found myself staring into the face of a dog that could aptly be described as bigger than a great Dane but slightly smaller than a horse.

It seemed to have composed itself from the shadows that clung to the corner of the room, funnelling them off the wall and knitting them into its form like fine gossamer. It made the body somewhat indistinct and ephemeral, but did wonders on the teeth and eyes – gleaming ivory and crackling emerald respectively.

'Where did that come from?' I said, with a superhuman degree of calmness.

Wingard took a step backwards and adjusted a ring on his left hand. 'I don't know. It wasn't there, then it was. I thought it was a shadow.'

'It is a shadow, with teeth.'

'Parker?' Charlie shouted down the phone. 'What's going on?'

'Let me call you back, love. Working.'

I snapped the phone shut and awkwardly placed it on the table. The thing's eyes tracked me the entire time, so smoothly that they might not have even moved at all, like the eyes on a painting. My brain was convinced this was some optical illusion and steadfastly refused to pump me full of adrenaline.

'It's not doing anything,' Wingard said. 'Why is it just staring at us?'

He was wrong, of course. It was doing something. It was measuring us, judging us. Were we worth the effort of killing? It had killed twelve men at once of course, so I doubted it would think of us as too much trouble.

'No sudden moves. No eye contact. Don't make yourself look like a threat.'

'That's for actual real dogs, Parker. This thing is wearing shadows. Are you sure any of that even works on this thing?'

'No, but it looks like a dog, right? Dog-things are as good a set of things to try as anything.'

The shuck took a single step to the side, moving towards the door, penning us in further. It's gaze never left me, though I'm sure Wingard was equally as convinced that it was looking at him. The eyes flared.

'I'm going to talk to it,' I said, feeling the adrenaline finally get the message.

'You bloody what?'

'It's probably intelligent, right? Ever met a mythical beast that wasn't at least as bright as a Jeremy Kyle guest?'

'Can't say I've ever met a mythical beast, to be honest.'

'Well then, watch and learn.'

See how easy it is to make people think you deal with this sort of madness regularly?

I took a step towards the shuck and risked locking eyes. This didn't require dropping to a knee, although the force of its will was trying to force me down there anyway. 'I address thee, noble spirit. I beg an audience of peace, not conflict.'

'Parker...'

'Shut up, Wingard. They like the fancy talk, promise,' I lied. I had no idea whether these things liked flowery English or not, but it makes you sound like you know what you're doing. That's half the battle right there. 'I wish only to break thy bonds and liberate thee from the control of another.'

The fire in the eyes dimmed for a split second, and I felt the muscles in my neck tense in preparation of fangs piercing the skin. That it constantly looked ready to pounce was not helping my calm.

'Warlock,' it said. It's voice was unexpectedly weak, like wind through leaves, though it had trouble with the words, stuttering and stumbling in odd places. 'Oathbreaker. One who betrays.'

'Huh, is that what it means?'

English words have no place in a dog-mouth. It looks unnatural, obviously, but does a marvellous job of truly highlighting the enormous fangs. 'Guilt. The capital crime. I bring you an end.'

It slid to the side again, completely blocking the door now, a sheen of hungry saliva coating the fangs. Evidently this was not something to be reasoned with.

'I don't think my diplomatic skills are working, Wingard.'

I didn't dare look at him, but another floorboard creek placed him further away than I thought. He was counter-circling the beast. 'It seems to have you pretty well figured out.'

The shuck's head dissolved into a cloud of shadow for a second, flowing back into itself to face a new direction, right at Wingard. 'Oathbreaker. Release your guilt. Eternal forgiveness is within this one's power.'

'You are a very creepy dog,' Wingard said.

'This one helps,' it roared, and pounced at him.

Four

I tried to punch it in the face, I feel it is important to say that. I genuinely, honestly, tried to smack the thing out of the air like some sort of superhero. Sadly, it turned to smoke as I struck it, flowing past me and solidifying again only as it struck Wingard.

I snapped my head over to watch the impact as it sent him flying, hurling him across the room and into a pile of books. The shuck landed gracefully, having used him as a springboard, and prowled soundlessly around his prone form.

'Resistance?' it hissed. 'No contrition? Release your spell, oathbreaker. Accept peace.'

Wingard stood up. I had missed it moments before, but with the dust from the books now floating free in the air I could see the gentle shimmer of a shield emanating from his left hand. It hadn't done much to stop him from being heavily winded by the attack, but it might have saved him from the teeth.

He triggered another ring on his hand and the shield shifted hue, changing from a barely noticeable pink to a very conspicuous blood red. 'This is much more my scene.'

The shuck squared off with Wingard, the pair of them walking in a much smaller circle than before while I just stood there, utterly terrified. There wasn't much I could do to a dog that turned into smoke when you tried to punch it, now was there? The only thing I could think to do was leave it to Wingard to sort out.

And he made a damn good try of it.

When the shuck pressed the attack again after the momentary dance, it did so viciously. It shifted between smoke and solid, coalescing only to deliver a vicious bite or kick, flitting to whichever side Wingard couldn't adequately cover. It was faster than he was, but he had practice in fighting superior opponents. Every time the shuck appeared in a blind spot, he had already anticipated it, slamming the shield between them at the last second.

He held the defensive, and I could see him trying to get a feel for the beast's pattern. After the fifth attempt to snap at his blind spot, he twisted on his heel and caught the shuck full force as it solidified for the sixth. It exploded into smoke again, but uncontrolled this time, and came together halfway inside a bookcase with a yelp.

Not one to squander an opening, he stormed towards it, levelling the edge of the shield at its head like a blade. But it was a trick. The shuck had been reading his patterns as he had read its, and it had engineered everything. It vanished as he swung, reappearing behind him and closing its jaws around his neck.

Wingard screamed as he went down, and suddenly I had to do something.

He was contorting against the beast, trying to strike its snout with the shield, but it was clever. It kept out of his reach, waiting for him to wear himself out. It could kill him any second now, all it needed was another opening.

Instinctively I went to magic. I had the spell locked in my mind and was ready to draw in power before my pounding heartbeat reminded me why that was a bad idea. But what else was there? Without magic, I couldn't fight this thing. Can't beat smoke in a fistfight.

But then I didn't have to, did I? I had to change my priorities. I already knew I couldn't beat it, so instead I just needed to create an opening to escape – preferably keeping Wingard alive while I did so. Wounding, hurting, killing, that was all clearly beyond what I could do, but I could disorient.

I tapped the unseen pentagrams again, breaking the barrier and letting the stored energy explode all at once. It's not casting a spell, nothing Whitehall can complain about, but it does cause one hell of a flash. A magical flashbang more or less, as weeks of carefully siphoned power burst free with reckless abandon.

Same principle as popping a balloon, except the balloon is full of burning magnesium.

The flash blinded me, which I had expected, but it burned the shuck. It sizzled and roared, and as my sight returned I saw it thrashing on the floor, bits of it flashing into smoke and back at random. The pain had forced it to released Wingard, so I hoisted him to his feet and the pair of us bolted to the door.

In the corridor he stopped me for a moment, pulled a small knife out of his coat and jammed it into the door's lock, then urged me to continue. By the time we were outside, his face was white and his collar was soaked in blood, but he still had a throat. I set him down next to his car and examined his wounds.

'I don't think it got your artery,' I said. 'There's not enough squirting.'

'Don't,' he said, trying to reposition himself more comfortably. 'Don't say squirting.'

'Give me your keys, we need to get you seen to.'

He produced a small phial of liquid from his sleeve. It was black. 'Pour this on the worst of the wounds. Should stop the bleeding.'

'What is it?'

'Hell if I know. Something Whitehall gave me in case I got bust open.'

'Fair enough,' I said.

I poured it on dutifully, watching in interest as the gentle trickle of blood came to a halt. It did nothing for the actual wounds, but at least he wasn't about to empty his veins out onto the street now.

'Now we can go. That dagger's enchantment should hold the door for a bit, but I'm not sure it will work for long against ghost wolf. We shouldn't be here when it gets loose.'

'Yes, I'm well aware,' I said.

'Help me up.'

He groaned as I helped him up, but I was tactful enough to let that go. Awkwardly, he climbed into the car and drove us away. I occupied myself by turning on all the in-car lights.

'What are you doing?' he said.

I flicked the sun visor down and opened the little mirror. 'Taking precautions. For all we know, that thing travels by shadow, like a Grue.'

'A what?'

'It's a thing, from Zork. Look, never mind. The important thing is that apparently shucks are super-sneaky as well as super-deadly.'

Wingard swerved dangerously close to a parked car. 'And creepy. Did you know they could talk?'

'No,' I said. 'All the stories are just them sort of looking at people and being silently sinister. Nothing about vocalising that sinisterness like a serial killer. Where are we going?'

'I don't really know. Just, sort of, away. This is your investigation, chap. You tell me.'

I thought it over. The details Charlie had given me were still mostly legible on my hand, albeit slightly smudged from fear-sweat, but that did very much seem like a long shot. It was grasping at straws – there was no actual evidence that this guy was even involved, it was all profiles and supposition. He was a suspect purely because of what he was: a wizard who didn't want to sign up to Whitehall.

It was strange how quickly I had started to think like them, I suppose. Well, he's not a warlock so clearly he's an evil shit. So what if he's dead?

Dangerous road to go down, and lazy too. I had to be better than that, I had to be good at my job. Why? Because if I wasn't, then I'd need something else to be good at, and one of the things that I am good at happens to lead me towards being an evil shit.

So, no easy ways out. No jumping to conclusions because they fit an admittedly large hole. We look at the facts, and fit the right pieces together like bloody professionals.

'I don't think someone is controlling the shuck,' I said. 'At least not directly.'

'Seemed pretty controlled to me.'

'Nah, there was too much intent there, conviction maybe. I don't know, you sort of expect there to be a general sleepiness about things being suggested or controlled, right? The shuck was too lucid, it knew what it was doing.'

'So it chose to go mental?'

'I think it thinks it's helping.'

Wingard mulled it over for a moment, scrunching his nose as the cogs whirred. Slowly. 'Nope, I don't see it.'

'It was yapping on about forgiveness and stuff, that doesn't come from anger. That's compassion, right? Twisted, horrible compassion.'

'If you say so.'

'I know a thing or two, trust me on this. This is a shuck that drank the kool-aid.'

Wingard started to slow down, driving a bit more normally and a lot less like someone trying desperately hard to turn his car into a cube. 'So someone else is responsible for this?'

'Only so far as a particularly persuasive person is responsible for anything.'

'Oh good, we're getting into philosophy now. Best day ever,' he said, bringing his hand up to rub his wounds and stopping at the last moment.

This was a confusing job. Things were so much simpler when I had magic. If I wanted something done, I'd bend reality to make it done. Opponent removed, item recovered, anything really, it was all so much simpler with magic.

Maybe all it would take was finding the thing and fighting it on our own terms, with a plan. Wingard had been doing well on his own, and that was after having been taken by surprised in an enclosed space. If I had been properly equipped too, in a battleground more advantageous to us instead of the beast, we could take it. True, Wingard was nursing some pretty unpleasant wounds, but he was a soldier by his own admission. He'd persevere.

No, getting lazy again. A big epic fight was only half of the solution. It would stop this shuck, sure, maybe, but there was a story here. Something made it start killing, someone perhaps, and if we didn't find the source then we'd achieve nothing. Another shuck, or something worse, might fall into the same trap and we'd have no way of knowing how to prevent it. Work smarter, not harder.

'We need to go back to the victims. Find a connection there. That's what police do, right? I've watched The Bill.'

'You want to go back to another crime scene?'

I shook my head. 'Back to Whitehall. The victims are all rogue mages, I'll get more out of the files than the scenes. I assume the suits care at least that much?'

'Whitehall it is.'

I could have called Charlie and had her look into it, and I probably should have. Warlocks are the weapon, we're supposed to let other people point us in the right direction. But that's boring. And besides, this was probably quicker. What else would I do with my time anyway? Get my blasted ear drum checked out, I guess, but meh.

Now, if you're familiar with British politics at all, you probably have a pretty decent idea of how Whitehall looks. And you're probably wrong. Well, you're right for the mundane bit of Whitehall, which is all bells and whistles and dour looking private-school boys in expensive crap suits. Middle aged, middle class, middle minded. But the bit that deals with the arcane, not so much.

We're not a secret organisation really, not in the sense you would expect. There's no underground base with a secret elevator hidden in the broom closet, no codenames or that sort of thing. No, my bit of Whitehall keeps itself hidden by looking incredibly, mind-numbingly boring. Everything is just a tiny bit out of date, the lights are just that smidgen too low, and the computers still use Windows 95. The sort of floor in an office building no one wants to work in, that's how we keep the arcane a secret.

A lot of very unhappy heads turned to watch me as I walked in, and I did my best to ignore them. I was used to that sort of reception, it was hardly new. I lost Wingard somewhere between the door and my destination, though, snatched up by a gaggle of wandering suits intent on stopping me or having a dig. By the time I noticed, he had been spirited off to some corner somewhere for an impromptu debriefing.

Charlie was easy to find, even though I hadn't actually met her before. She was the only girl in the office. There were women, but they were all marching into the menopause, and her voice wouldn't have fitted in their mouths. She stood out.

'Hello,' I said, pulling up a seat and landing next to her. 'What you doing?'

'Parker? You have a phone, you know.'

'Yeah, but I couldn't have you doing all the work. Reading is a good habit to get into.'

'What do you want?'

'Files. On all the dead people associated with this case. There must be something that ties them together.'

She frowned. 'You mean apart from magic?'

'Yes.'

She shoved me over a little and unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk. Sliding it open, she revealed a thick stack of paper folders, full of documents. 'Knock yourself out.'

'Thanks,' I said, lifting the folders out and dropping them into my lap. 'I think?'

She looked at me for a moment and smiled. 'Give me half. Idiot.'

I handed her the top half of the files before digging into my half. Whitehall had done their homework, I couldn't fault them there. Every single aspect of the deceased's lives had been stringently catalogued, to a frightening degree. I didn't need to read so many internet search histories. People are filthy, and more than a little interesting.

With so many dead – the twelve at the support group and a few more besides – there were more than a couple of minor coincidences in their lives. Three of them shopped at the same supermarket, though never on the same days; four of them played World of Warcraft, though on different servers; and two of them spent their evenings looking at nothing but spanking pornography. I had a hard time turning any of these into a motive.

Then, something minor caught my eye. Again, it wasn't all of them, but four of them shared something in common that was more than idle wank fantasies or nerdy elf-murder.

'Charlie, take a look at this.'

I held out the four files and she took them off me, scanning them. 'What am I looking for?'

'I don't want to tell you in case I'm making connections that aren't there.'

'That's going to make this much... Wait a second,' she put my files on her desk and leafed through her own, picking out a number of sheets and comparing them against each other. 'Well I'll be damned.'

'So I'm right?'

'Ten of them, nine of which were part of that massacre you found at the support group, all had the same shrink. That's a pretty decent connection, I'd say.'

'I mean, it's not really a surprise, right?' I said. 'They all suffered with depression, hence the support group. Having the same doctor isn't outside the realm of possibility. And the ones that didn't see that doctor –'

'Parker, stop trying to talk yourself out of a good lead. It might not answer everything, but it's still a good place to start, right? A flimsy lead is better than no lead at all.'

The excitement in her eyes was infectious, though she kept it out of her voice. I'd later come to realise that Charlie was not a girl who allowed emotion into her voice idly, it was a calculated effect when it did happen and never an accident or a quirk of situation. Hard to dislike someone with that level of control over themselves.

'Can you find me a number?'

She frowned. 'You're going to call him?'

'I'm going to make an appointment. I'm ever so depressed, can't you tell?'

'You don't look it,' she said, scribbling a number on a scrap of paper and handing it over.

'Darling, didn't you know?' I picked up the paper and started dialling. 'We never do.'

'Don't call me that again. You'll make me retch.'

The phone rang five times before a chipper receptionist picked up. 'Hillsgrave Medical Practice, Lilly speaking, how can I help you today?'

This wouldn't take much acting. 'Hi. Um. My name's Claude Rains and, um, a friend of mine said that maybe I should talk to doctor, err...'

'Milton,' Charlie mouthed at me.

'Doctor Milton about some thoughts I've been having. Dark ones.'

'I see,' the receptionist said. 'Well it's good that you are seeking help. That's the first step. Now then, we can probably make you an appointment for, hmm...'

'Today,' I interrupted.

'Today? Oh no, sir, the doctor is fully booked today, I'm afraid.'

'But Lilly, I just... It has to be today,' I said, tears forming in my eyes. Helps the performance, don't you know. 'Today's a particularly painful anniversary for me... I can't... If I don't see the doctor today, I can't trust myself not to shy away at a later date. If I let this illness overtake me again, I just...'

She cooed at me, an honest to god coo. 'Well, I suppose... The doctor does have space for an emergency appointment...'

'Thank you. I'll be right over.'

'No, wait –' she started, but I hung up before she could finish.

Charlie looked at me with what I decided was a mixture of amazement and arousal as I blinked away the tears. 'Did that seriously work?'

'Yep.'

'Hmm.'

I neatly stacked my remaining files on top of hers and stood up. It took a moment for the blood to reach my feet again – apparently collating every little thing a person does in his life makes a file particularly good at limiting circulation – so I used to time to pick Wingard out of the crowd.

'Oh, Charlie,' I said. 'We got into a scrap with the shuck and Wingard pulled out some pretty awesome magic from those enchanted rings of his. When do I get some?'

'When you've proved you can be trusted with them, of course. Close this case and I'll put in a word for you.'

'Cheers.'

I shot her a horrible parody of a salute, the one from The Prisoner if you're interested. If you don't know what that looks like, it doesn't matter. It was a half-arsed attempt at it anyway. Point is, I was trying to look cool without looking like I was trying. Yup.

Anyway, I had an avenue to explore, which was something. Wingard was still preoccupied with his little cadre of suited overlookers, which was both a blessing and a curse. He was good to have around, considering he was silently judging all my decisions and all, but for this little interrogation he'd just get in the way. You can't slyly get information out of someone during a consultation with another dude sat there muddying the vibes.

As it was, I'd have to go alone, which meant carefully pilfering his car keys as I quietly passed the gaggle he was confined in. I was sure he'd understand. He seemed like a good sort, all told.

Five

The doctor's surgery, if that's what you call a place where psychiatrists gather, had a golden tint to the lighting that made me feel ill. It was the sort of golden brown prevalent in the seventies, but the rest of the décor was clean and sleek as you’d expect of the modern day. It was weirdly off-putting.

Lilly, the receptionist, had been lovely though. The moment I arrived, she ushered me into a smaller, secluded waiting room away from the other patients, brought me a coffee, and would walk by every few minutes just to check I hadn't started unlacing my shoes for noose materials. On her fourth visit, she called me up to the Doctor's office.

And people complain about the NHS.

Doctor Milton had a skeleton in his office, which I thought was weird, especially considering the callipers precariously balanced over the top of the skull. The rest of the room was ordinary, but even if it hadn't been, it takes a lot to shove that image to the side. He seemed to give it no mind, however, sat in his regal wingback chair – I swear, it's like their uniform – watery eyes twinkling from behind thick rimmed spectacles.

He motioned for me to sit down – not on a couch, thankfully – and I did so as he loaded a tape into a deck on his desk and hit play. It was a recording of my call with Lilly, and he stared at me, unblinking, the entire time it played. As he was an older man, mid fifties if he was a day, it gave the whole experience an air of a school headmaster rather than a doctor, especially the moments of silence once the tape clicked itself off.

'Claude Rains,' he said, his voice on the softer end of the Northern Irish cadence. 'Interesting that you would choose the invisible man as your alias.'

'I –'

'No need to explain. A lot of my patients find it easier to wear masks when they come in here. It's easier to talk about your problems if you can distance yourself from them, no? If you can fool yourself into thinking they happened to someone else.'

It was a better explanation than I'm investigating you in murder-by-ghost-wolf so I thought it better not to use my actual name. 'Yes, exactly.'

'Well, the first thing you should know is that there's no judgement here. I'm sure your friend mentioned that when he recommended me? It's all about helping you with your burden, not adding to it.'

'Do you have a lot of clients who worry about that sort of thing?' I said. See, this is how you do an interrogation. Make them think it's just a polite chat, nothing sinister going on here, guv.

'A few. I've had a number of clients who are plagued by their pasts, and they need a safe space to talk about them. Everyone has darkness in them, but if you've listened to it, allowed it free rein if even for a moment, it can take a long time to recover. It leaves a mark.'

Didn't I know it.

'And what about me? Do I have that mark.'

He smirked and stared at me for a moment, and then I felt it: that gentle probing, the gentle pressure of magic searching out magic. So the good doctor was a mage too, fancy that.

'Ah,' he said, visibly relaxing. 'I see now. We can be much more open now. I get a few mundanes coming in here and it can be hard to tell people with real problems from the dull rigours of everyday life. So, to whom were you beholden?'

'Excuse me?'

'During the war. No need to be coy, we all suffered during the Dark Times. Asking for help after the fact is no failing on your part. So, who was it? The Rider maybe? I get a surprising amount from his camp. Euros y Ffyrnig maybe? You've got a Welsh look to you I suppose.'

'Nobody that important,' I said. As we know, the best lies are always built upon the truth. 'The Dark Lord of Hampshire.'

'Is that so?' he said. 'I didn't think he had much in the way of underlings. Always thought of him as quite a solitary soul.'

'He had apprentices. Not many, but he needed a couple of people to do the legwork for him.'

He adjusted his glasses carefully. 'And this legwork, it haunts you still?'

I couldn't answer that question. Don't get the wrong idea, it's not like he was getting in my head, poking the carefully concealed nerve-cluster of crushing guilt and self-loathing that I very obviously have been cultivating. Please, if it was that easy to tap into, I'd never get out of bed.

The problem was that I needed him on edge, and he was reading me too quickly. Or, at least, the me that I had out there for him to read. Lying is more than just words, it's body language and general demeanour. I needed him to want to build my trust, it was the best way to get answers to my own questions.

So I didn't answer, I looked down at my feet.

He cleared his throat. 'Sorry, perhaps that was too personal, too soon. I did not mean to pry.'

'It's all right.'

'Perhaps we should start with why you are here today. Is it to do with your self-medication? Let's not beat around the bush here, you have all the symptoms.'

'I do?'

'You're not the first person Winston has sent to me,' he said. I tried to run through what I could recall of the files, trying to place the name. Had there been a Winston? Maybe. Probably. I had to assume there was. 'His policy of cold turkey was an admirable attempt, if misguided. I'm glad he's realised the need for professional help. Magic isn't something you can give up so easily, despite the lies Whitehall has been preaching.'

'You sound like you've researched this.'

'Oh, I have. It's all primary research too, I experimented with the system on myself first so I can guarantee it works. Just like any other addiction, the key is to unlearn it.'

Oh dear god. The urge to roll my eyes was so powerful that I could hear them squeaking against the muscles. 'You mean, like, wean myself off it?'

'Not entirely. The Milton Method concerns dismantling your mental framework and rebuilding it on firmer foundations of control and confidence. Rule the magic, don't let the magic rule you.'

I nodded in faux acceptance. I had heard this bullshit before. Nicer words, sure, but the message was the same, and it was the message that had led to a five year period of magical civil war. It starts nice and simple with magic is a force to help people, but always manages to leave out the last word.

Magic is a force to help people conquer.

But that didn't necessarily mean the good doctor was involved in the shuck matter. He was definitely warlock business, no bones about that, but so was every errant mage. Espousing this doctrine of magical reconciliation shoved him up the rankings on London's Most Wanted, sure, but wasn't in and of itself enough to condemn him as the shuck wrangler.

I looked at him a little closer now, hoping I could find something in his face that I recognised, a cloaked megalomania that belied the other self-styled Dark Lords. He had kind eyes, a trim beard, silver hair, all as much part of the uniform as the chair. I was sure he was someone, but he had thrown himself into the disguise so expertly that it was impossible to deduce who. Or perhaps I was letting myself get carried away.

It's easier when these plans are the result of some big bad. They're known quantities. New villains are the worst, and as much as I hated to admit it, I was in a new world. Of course there would be new villains.

'I'm not sure I'm ready for that, doctor.'

'Certainly you are not, Mr Rains. The purpose of the Milton Method is to help you to reach a state of readiness. And don't worry, there are safeguards in place at every step, even if you should lack the necessary strength of mind to truly complete the programme. We don't like to use the term failure, here.'

'That's very good to hear. No pressure, eh?'

A hungry smile crept onto his face, the first thing to crack the disguise just a little. 'Carefully orchestrated pressure. Nothing you can't endure, but enough to help you to build up a resistance. We must temper your resolve like the finest steel if you are to beat your addiction.'

A picture was starting to form now. He was saying all the right words, everything a self-hating mage would need to hear to put their sobriety in his hands. Maybe it was even a system that could work, I don't know. But I knew that he had no interest in making it work. The soft sell is never used by people who actually care, only by people who want you to think they do.

I've got trust problems.

'And if I can't endure it?'

He scratched at his neck, idly. 'Nothing to worry about. Like I say, there are other avenues. Try not to worry about it.'

Okay, tipping point. I could play it cool, keep working him, adroitly directing the conversation deeper and deeper until I get the information I need. Thing is, that would have him thinking he was in control of the situation, which leads to unhelpful euphemisms that dance around the point. All of that would need deciphering. I didn't have the patience for that.

Sometimes it pays to be direct.

'I just worry that, perhaps, if I fail at this Milton Method that you might set a ghost wolf on me.'

He blinked a few times, which is probably the most correct response to that sentence. 'Excuse me?'

'Black shuck. We've had one roaming the city, chewing up mages. Most of them have been your patients. Odd coincidence, that, don't you think?'

'I had nothing to do with that,' he said, pressing himself back into his chair. 'I'm a doctor.'

'Please,' I said. 'Can we not do the whole professed innocence thing. I can't exactly prove you're involved, but you are shady as fuck regardless. This new age, lovey dovey, friendly magic crap is one hell of a swindle, I'll give you that.'

'It's not a con, I'm helping.'

'Helping them do what?'

He took off his glasses. I'm sure he meant it to be a meaningful gesture, but I wasn't feeling it. 'Exactly what I said. Rebuild their lives, control their power and not let it consume them. Start afresh.'

'Wait, what? Seriously?'

'Yes.'

I frowned. 'You are actually, honest to god, trying to fix people here?'

'Mages, not people. I'll make that concession. They don't deserve to be called people until I'm done.'

'Aha! You are evil! You're reprogramming them like some sinister mad scientist!'

'I'm not evil, not any more. I did my time in the trenches, I suffered for my actions, and I realised that things needed to change. The man I was before was too far gone, I'd have to start again, free myself of that sin. That's all the Milton Method is, a way to come to terms with the past and get a clean slate. Becoming a person again and not a bundle of guilt and rage. Surely you understand?'

Which, of course, I did. But I wasn't there to argue the finer points of neuro-linguistic programming. 'Frankly, I'm very confused. Are you sure you're not a little bit evil?'

'Positive.'

'And you're not lying?'

'I'm not lying.'

'Then why are more than half of my corpses your patients, eh? That seems awfully disproportionate for you not to be involved.'

He ran his fingers through his hair in desperation. 'I don't know! Which clients, maybe I can –'

'I don't know the names. As if you'd know the names off by heart.'

'I remember all the names!' he roared. 'I force myself to remember every name, every face, as penance. They're not playing pieces in some grand game, they are people in need of help.'

I found my eyebrows halfway up to my hairline. 'Okay, calm down. I believe you.'

'If something has happened to my patients, I need to know.'

And, damn it, I found myself believing him. The internal truth detector can always be a bit skittish around mages. There should, really, have been an unspoken armistice surrounding the events of the Dark Times, everyone has a skeleton in the closet from that time – often a literal one. But we lost the war, so that didn't happen. Naturally, everyone is going to look a bit shifty.

Still, there was always the very real chance this was all an act. He could conceivably throw me off the trail with such a ruse. But then the best way to defeat a lie isn't to press the liar until he runs out of creativity.

I rang Charlie, putting her on speaker for the bewildered doctor.

'Could you read out the names of the dead patients, dear?' I said.

'Sure, I suppose so,' she said and dutifully reeled off the eight names.

Milton slumped as she read them off, his expression darkening. He drummed his left hand on the arm of his chair while his right gripped the rest tightly. I could see the recognition in his eyes, and the sadness behind that. If he was our killer, he was also a damned fine actor.

I thanked Charlie and ended the call, then remained quiet until Milton was ready to speak.

'They... Those were clients Winston sent me. Heavily troubled, most of them high ranking shock troops for various dark lords. They did some truly vile things.'

'Who is this Winston?'

'He was who the empowered turned to before I set up shop,' he said, shifting uncomfortably. He picked up his glasses again and rotated them slowly in his hands. 'He was doing his best, but without training it was a stop-gap at best. Community support. I went to him with my method, and he started to refer problem cases to me, people that desperately needed professional help. For all of them to have died...'

'Where can I find Winston?'

'You can't think –'

I held up a hand. 'I honestly don't know. Maybe he's on the level too, and this is all some disgraceful coincidence that revolves around the pair of you. But I can't take that chance, I need to talk to him. Where is he?'

Milton got up and crossed the room to an antique bureau nestled near the window. The wood creaked as he forced open a drawer and pulled out a stack of business cards secured by a thick elastic band. He removed the band and searched through them for a moment, plucking out a single card and handing it to me. 'Here.'

The card was cheap, something pumped out twenty at a time from one of those machines in supermarkets, all clip art and comic sans. It had the address of a charity on the front, one of the dozen interchangeable ones that dealt with the disenfranchised urban youth. Underneath that was written Winston Stanley, Director.

I slipped the card into my pocket and stood up to leave.

'Are you going to take me in, warlock?' Milton said. He was calm, but there was a plea hidden there.

'I never said I was a warlock.'

'You didn't have to. I should have felt it when you walked in, but it was the way you comport yourself that gave it away.'

'If you say so.'

He grabbed my elbow, but recoiled as I turned around. 'Whoever you were before all this, don't let him win. You're not responsible for who he was.'

I looked him square in the eye until he was forced to look away. I picked my words carefully. 'Turn yourself in. I'll give you the rest of the day. If someone has to come for you, they won't be kind.'

A silent nod. I recognised that, it had been my answer a year ago. He had wanted to be taken in, but the fear had been too much. It was out of his hands now and, I saw, that gave him some release.

I stepped out of the office, closed the door behind me, and allowed myself a moment. You've probably heard enough about my crippling inner turmoil, and god knows I think I'm sick of talking about it, but I hope you'll understand that I needed some time to make sure Milton's words weren't going to cause things to bubble over again.

I think the worst thing was that, when I closed my eyes to find my centre again, I saw her more clearly than I had done in that whole year. A snapshot of a memory, her laughing, like something out of a Disney film. Vicious, spiteful brain.

I locked it down though, he hadn't been able to remain eloquent enough to spark yet another doubt spiral.

By the time I made it back to the reception, I was fully in control again. Chipper and cheerful, that's me. I even managed to laugh when I saw Wingard leaning over the poor girl's desk, trying in his own appalling British way to chat her up.

I won't repeat it here. That would be inappropriate.

'You found me then,' I said, slightly louder than was necessary. Lilly shot me an appreciative look.

Wingard swivelled, turning to face me while still leaning on his arm. 'You stole my car.'

'You looked busy, and I had a lead to chase down.'

'Hmm,' he said. There wasn't much anger on his face, but I would have been livid with me if I had been him. 'Was it worth it? I had to get a bus here. I don't understand public transport.'

'I think so. Maybe. The doctor's a rogue, by the way.'

'We taking him in first?'

I shook my head. 'He'll turn himself in. If he doesn't then at least it will give another warlock something to do on his initiation.'

'Whitehall might not see it that way.'

'I don't honestly care,' I said, producing the business card. 'Can we just deal with this case first and worry about all the little things later?'

'It's your case, chap. We do it your way.'

I tilted my head to one side in gratitude and threw him his car keys. He snatched them out of the air and ushered me back into the street. 'I'm starting to feel like your chauffeur.'

'It's been a busy day. Is every day like this as a warlock?'

'Only if you're good at your job.'

'I've got nothing to worry about, then.'

Six

'Here, I think you could do with one of these,' Wingard said, pulling off one of his rings and offering it to me.

'Should I make the very obvious proposal joke?'

'Please, don't.'

It wasn't a very romantic place to do it, if I'm honest. The charity's offices – if you can call a portakabin that – were situated in a partially flooded industrial estate on the north side of the river, ever so slowly crumpling up like a paper plate in a dishwasher. Just looking out the window made you feel moist.

I apologise for using the word moist.

'What do I need this for?'

Wingard massaged the side of the ring and it changed size so slowly that I wasn't really sure it had done anything at all. 'Protection. You're not supposed to have access to this stuff yet, not until I sign off on you. But then, if you'd had some sort of weapon, maybe I wouldn't have these incredibly alluring scars.'

I took the ring and held it for a moment. I could feel the energy inside, stale and alien. Still perfectly usable, though. 'What does it do?'

'That one's a shield,' he said. 'Kinetic and radioactive, I think. Probably won't get much benefit from the latter, but the former stopped me getting chomped to death so I suppose it should be fine for you. Worked for most things.'

I put it on. 'How do I –'

'You'll know. Comes naturally to the likes of us.'

The atrophied pathways that were once home to my own magic were noticeably suckling at the power in the ring, which told me he was right. My body was halfway towards tapping the ring already, all I needed to do was allow it. Fool proof.

I looked out the window again. The water was ankle high and brown. It wasn't much of a stretch to say that this particular charity probably didn't get much in the way of visitors. I waited until a yellow crust of scum had finished floating by, then took a breath and opened the door.

'Right, let's go,' I said, foot sploshing into the drink.

Naturally, I was grumpy by the time I reached the door, which was only a handful of steps away. Wingard could hardly contain his glee at my displeasure.

'What's your plan?' he said from behind a proper childish grin. 'You can't just go in there and accuse him flat out, he'll clam up.'

'I definitely can do that,' I said and kicked in the door.

It's not as impressive as it sounds, the door was flimsy plastic that practically imploded the moment I looked at it. Putting my foot through the lock was more an effort to avoid some sort of horrible medieval disease than anything else.

Winston, for his part, had decent reflexes. I saw him scamper out of view as the door swung open, sending a chair toppling to the ground as he made a sprint for one of the back rooms. Giving chase, I leapt over his desk and followed him through the door, straight into his fist. His fight or flight response was apparently fight and flight.

'Who are you?' he screamed as Wingard caught me. I wasn't quite seeing stars, but there was a moment or two of bright flashes dancing in the periphery.

Wingard stuck out a protective hand, shielding me. 'We're warlocks. I know you know what that means, and I also know that if you had known that in advance you might not have punched my pet idiot here.'

'That's a lot of know you've got in that sentence, boss,' I managed to mumble.

'Shut up, you,' Wingard guided me behind him. I found a bit of wall to lean on. 'Honestly, I won't hold that against you. Can we talk?'

Winston, assuming it was him, backed up a little, but didn't loosen his combative stance at all. 'Finally come for me, have you? Didn't think you'd have time for someone as insignificant as me.'

'Now, be fair,' Wingard said. 'We make time for people who summon mythical black dogs to eat people.'

Winston snorted. 'Wow, you have no idea at all what's going on, do you? You simply can't understand that there might be an alternative to your weird little guilt club.'

'Please,' I said. 'Please do lecture us on how ripping mages apart is a good thing. I'm dying to hear this.'

Wingard made a gesture that reiterated his desire that I shut up. 'I think what he's trying to say, Winston, is that we know you're involved. If you want to try and plead your case, now would be the time.'

'I've got nothing to say to the likes of you, oathbreaker.'

There it was, a tie to the shuck. You don't hear many people bandying about the term oathbreaker much these days, so naturally I would have to draw a connection there. Tenuous on its own, sure, but you can't say Winston wasn't a suspicious bugger, can you?

Plus he attacked Wingard. Bit of a giveaway, that.

Wingard had been impressive in his brief skirmish with the shuck, but seeing him against someone with power was something else entirely. The shuck had been a defensive fight, holding still and waiting for an opening, but against Winston he was always moving, swatting spells out of the air with a rotating spectrum of shields and counterspells from his rings. With the limited space, the fight, such as it was, didn't take long.

Wingard closed on Winston within a few seconds, smashing one of his own spells back into his face and laying him out. Dropping the shield, he grabbed Winston by the throat and hauled him back to his desk, slamming him onto it and leering into his face.

'Let's try and be a bit more civil, shall we? How do we stop the shuck?' Wingard said through gritted teeth. Winston tried to respond by spitting in his face, and got a headbutt for his troubles. 'Not very civil.'

'Let me go!' Winston struggled against Wingard's grip, kicking his legs futilely.

'No.'

'I haven't even done anything!'

Wingard laughed bitterly. 'I suppose I have to respect a man so truly committed to his lies.'

'I didn't do anything! All I did as show them!'

Wingard slid him down the desk a little and drove a knee into his testicles. A bold interrogation technique, I suppose. 'Keep lying to me.'

I stepped in at this point, hero that I am. 'Wait a second. Showed them what?'

Pained eyes turned on me, from both men. I focused on Winston though, his voice a little higher than before as he spoke. 'They asked for help. All I did was help them. They needed an impartial judge, for their crimes.'

'Oh, Christ.'

Wingard's gaze changed to one of confusion. 'What?'

'We've been looking at this all wrong,' I said. 'It's not an attack, it just looks like one. But think about it, the bodies at the support group, not one of them resisted.'

Winston started to cry softly. 'Some people can't be helped. They wanted forgiveness, but they were convinced they didn't deserve it. Doctor Milton helped for a time, but...'

'But he had a bias. They needed to know from a neutral source whether they could be redeemed,' I said. 'Son of a bitch.'

'I don't understand,' Wingard said, releasing his grip on Winston and letting him sit up.

Winston rubbed his neck. 'I taught them a ritual. It beseeches the other planes, begging for something to judge the casters in the purest way possible. Weighing up their potential against their past, that sort of thing. It's never been a shuck before, always some sort of minor compassionate fey. I thought that –'

'You thought that if they could get their judgement, they'd be able to start moving on.'

'They wanted to turn themselves in to Whitehall, but I talked them out of it. You're no help.'

I turned and kicked something hard, a waste paper bin or something. We'd never considered this angle, which wasn't much of a surprise. Winston wasn't wrong, pretty much everyone had suffered during the war and afterwards from what they had done in it, but as close as warlocks are to the remaining free mages there is a very real disconnect there. I, for instance, was so afraid of myself I let them take me, reprogramme me, because I didn't see any other option. I'm not going to say that's true of every warlock – most have to be dragged in kicking and screaming – but by the time Whitehall are through, you genuinely believe that they have the only solution to living with that guilt.

They tell you that you are a monster, and you know they are right. There is no other truth.

Now, maybe that's brainwashing, or maybe we all happen to be broken in just the right way, I don't know. What I do know is that this macabre suicide pact, judgement thing is outside reality as we see it. That level of guilt, of confusion as to what we are, we don't have it. We're muzzled dogs, and we know it. Fact.

'Maybe that's true,' I said. 'And if it had stayed at that, maybe we wouldn't be so angry. But whatever they summoned is out killing more than just them. It's hunting people with power.'

'No, it can't do that, it should retreat once its job is done.'

'Do you want to field this one?' I asked Wingard. He shrugged at me. 'Really? This is basic stuff, did neither of you do an apprenticeship? Look, you summon a creature successfully enough that you control it, great, it does what you say. You die while it's in this realm though, and it's locked into your last order. Imagine that, thrashing around inside your own head, trying in vain to shake off that compulsion.'

'Oh.'

'You're bloody well right, oh. You gave those damaged people the power to summon a spectral bloody ghost bastard wolf, teach it how to eat wizards, then set it loose upon the world. Oh.'

'But it's attacked mundanes too, Parker,' Wingard said.

'Then it's not targeting magic, it's going after a specific kind of guilt first. The magic is just the deciding factor. Run a deep enough background on the mundane victims and you'll probably find some horrible secret.'

So, what, the guilt lures the beast but it only chews your face off if it smells magic?' Wingard said with a frown.

'Yes. Maybe. I don't know, it's a guess. Seems like it might be right though. It fits the facts, right?'

'Even if it does, what do we do now?'

'We pick our battles, I guess. We've got to release the thing from its obligation.'

'Well why didn't you say so? A nice easy end to the day.'

Wingard looked flustered, but I could see he was pleased that it was, at its core, a simple solution. This wasn't going to be some weird spell-weaving mumbo jumbo, at least not entirely. I had meant it literally when I said we needed to release the beast from its obligation – which is a bit mumbo jumboey when it comes to summoned things – but violence would work too. If we managed to kill it, that would release it, I suppose.

And, let's face it, there was always going to be violence. The clean and easy route never works.

But I worked out the clean and easy route anyway, because I am a god damn professional.

'Winston, how many people do you need for the ritual,' I said.

'I don't know. Maybe five?'

'Then we can't get him to come to us that way. I'm not keen on roping people in to something that might get them eaten. We'll have to taunt it.'

Wingard graced me with a slow clap. 'Superb idea, Napoleon. Should we just shout profanities into the ether and wait for an enraged shuck to chew us up?'

'Actually, yeah, something like that. It's already attacked us once, so I'm guessing one or both of us is suitably miserable inside to set off its nose. We just set up a few magical wolf-punch traps, get down in the dumps, and it will find us.'

The pair of them stared at me for a few seconds, completely agog at my genius.

'Your plan,' Wingard said slowly, counting off the words with a slight movement of his hand. 'Is to get sad?'

'Not just get sad, you prat,' I said. 'It's get sad and then punch it.'

'And this stops it how?'

'If we can subdue it for long enough, in the right place, we might be able to take up the reins, as it were. You summon something into this world, you're going to leave a trace of that act we can tap into, and through that assert control. We do that, it's as simple as telling it to go away.'

'That does sound deceptively simple,' Wingard said. 'Will that work?'

I shrugged. 'Sure, why not?'

'Why not?'

'Look, summoning things properly, like an adult, usually involves research. True Names help an awful lot. Sorting out this amateur shit requires a bit of thinking on the fly. But, if it helps, this will almost certainly work, yes.'

Wingard put his hands on his hips and sighed. His head fell. 'I need to make a phone call.'

'I'll watch this dickhead.'

Nodding, Wingard stepped outside, presumably to call his handler. I kept my attention on Winston, ready for him to make another dash for freedom, but he didn't. He looked deflated now, empty. Yet another thing I recognised.

He scratched at his left palm with his right thumb, and I saw now a small flaky patch that hinted this was not a new quirk of his. 'I don't –'

I held up a hand. 'Don't even try. I'm a warlock, not a judge. We lost the right do that when we lost the war. I work the facts, and the facts led me to you.'

'Sounds like a simple life.'

'It's,' I had to pause for a second to find the words. 'Easier.'

'I was just trying to help.'

'Listen, mate, let's not do this,' I said. 'I think we've spent enough time wallowing in how dark and depressing the last few years have been, yeah? Denial is denial, sure, but at least it keeps us from being miserable shits all the time. Now shut your face.'

I hadn't intended to hurt him with my words, but apparently I had done it anyway. He sobbed quietly under his breath, and I pointedly declined to notice his eyes tearing up. A thing I learned later was that this is the response you get more often than not when bringing in a rogue, like a dam bursting and emotions going everywhere.

He'd cycled all the way through to being relieved by the time Wingard rocked up again, still arguing with someone on the phone. ' – he's managing fine but... Yes, hang on. Parker, they want a word.'

I frowned and took the phone from him. 'Hello?'

'Warlock Wingard has detailed your plan, if such a term is adequate, and while we have misgivings we have approved his request for extensive leeway in magical preparations,' the voice was that of a public school graduate, an air of assumed authority hammered home by dint of time served in such a peculiar place. 'You will dictate to him the spells that need casting, and he will be the one to work them.'

'That's how I thought it would work anyway.'

'Good. We've had the site cleared, as per Warlock Wingard's request, and we're sending someone to collect the rogue as we speak. Kindly hand me back to Maurice now.'

'Uh, sure.'

Wingard gave me a weary look as I handed the phone back, shared a few terse words with the man on the other end, then pocketed the device. 'Right then, shall we?'

'We sure this guy isn't going to run?'

Wingard mulled it over for a moment, then turned and yanked out a tuft of hair from Winston's head. He was not particularly gentle. 'Be a good boy and wait here for the other warlocks, or some clerical thaumaturge is going to get these hairs. More than enough here to work some seriously bad stuff on you no matter where you run.'

Winston nodded, clutching at his new bald patch.

'I guess that'll do,' I said.

The water had receded a little outside, though the rain had picked up again by the time we reached our destination. It made the place look suitably foreboding, a little more gothic than it had appeared on our last visit, which was somewhat ironic I suppose as they had removed the circle of bodies this time.

The support group had been the ones to summon the shuck, allegedly, so I had figured that this would be the best place to rebind it. Not exactly a stretch, I know. It helped that the room was free of clutter, all the spare chairs and tables had been pushed up against each wall, leaving a pretty big open area in the centre to play around with.

'Okay, Parker,' Wingard said, pacing. 'What do we need?'

And I told him. It was a lot of spells, mostly wards to try and limit the beast's power or slow it down a little. There were a few actual traps designed to harm it, but nothing too deadly. The room was too enclosed to risk the properly deadly stuff, they were more likely to kill us if they were tripped than the shuck. The focus was on controlling the flow of the inevitable fight, but the actual winning of it was still on us.

Wingard, to his credit, worked the spells quickly and with little coaching. There were a few wards he was unfamiliar with, but he wasn't hard to teach. Whoever he had worked for during the Dark Times had a very capable lieutenant in him, I was certain now. His technique was without flair or flourish, very workmanlike, but also extremely stable and precise. That level of respect for magic is almost scary when you see it from the outside.

You don't see the slow, thoughtful magic much unless you have an apprentice. Mostly it's the quick, nasty, emotional stuff. Like fireballs.

Anyway, that aside, it took about an hour to rig the place with so much magic that it actually managed to overpower the shuck stink. It kicked a metallic tang into the air, or the equivalent of it in the magical spectrum, and was hardly the most subtle trap. But then, we were banking on the beast being particularly unaccustomed to subtlety itself.

As he etched the final spell into the floorboards, Wingard slumped into a blood-stained plastic chair, exhausted. 'So now we just need to get the damn thing to come here. Preferably after I've had a bit of time to rest.'

'I think you might have to use that tiredness to help your performance.'

'Performance?'

'Like I said before, you've got to make yourself miserable. It's only a small hop from tired to grumpy, and barely more than a sidle from grumpy to depressed.'

'You've put too much thought into this.'

'I put too much thought into a lot of things,' I said, Robin's face flashing behind my eyes again. 'But this is a time where that's actually useful.'

Truth be told, I probably did most of the work. I've harped on a little too much about Robin and the events of her death, so I'll try not to go over it yet again here. But like all deeply scarring things, it lurks even when you are at your best. You can let it out whenever you want, just opening a door in your head, it's so easy that you can do it by accident.

But doing it on purpose is something else. Embracing that pain, it sounds so daft to say it, so needlessly Byronic, but there's a poisonous strength in there. A venomous determination to be as dark and brooding and utterly, uncomprehendingly bleak as you possibly can. An engine of misery, churning out the blackest, most acrid depression.

The gears turn, the smoke billows, and with each puff the light goes out behind your eyes. It doesn't matter that you know this is fake, that you're doing this to yourself. It's far too toxic for that to matter. Perhaps you popped the cork yourself, but you didn't fill the bottle. That was already there, you just let it out.

As the light goes out, the world closes in. It's not vast and full of promise any more. No, it's claustrophobic and oppressive. Suffocating. Antagonistic. There's no place for you here, how could there be? You don't fit. Every breath is an exquisite agony.

I know, it all sounds a bit teenage angst, doesn't it? Dangerously close to romanticising the whole thing. But where do you think teenage angst comes from? Or any angst for that matter? It all comes from that same engine. And at that moment, I needed it.

And, holy shit, it worked.

I heard the gentle susurration of its whispered growl first of all, creeping into existence somewhere behind me. Turning, I caught a glimpse of the eyes as they winked to life, thick wisps of shadow spiralling into two great gems that caught fire at the same moment. That same soft green flame. Then the teeth, the shadow peeling back and revealing them from some other plane.

Wingard had been facing it the whole time, but he had been careful to restrict his response. His right hand had closed over his left, clinking ring against ring, and his expression had turned to steel. I awkwardly fingered my own ring – no snickering, this is a serious moment – waiting for the most opportune moment.

'Warlocks,' the beast said, the teeth flashing in the light again. Eerily hypnotic in the way only something designed to rend your flesh can be. 'So much pain.'

'Hello, creepy horrible dog thing,' I said, like the word-genius that I am. 'Have you come to take our pain away?'

'No, to provide forgiveness. You crave it. Allow me to provide. You will find rest and peace at last.'

'If you're going to eat us, can you do it with less in the way of speeches? Your voice is hard to listen to.'

It paced across my vision, shaking itself into the physical realm with its movement. It shed the shadow like a sort of cottony snakeskin – which is a weird image, I know, but so is a wolf forming out of darkness – and regarded us for a moment, a pale tongue licking paler teeth.

Then it moved, flashing around beside me and leaping from my blind spot. Wingard waited until it was almost on me before he unleashed the wards, just as planned.

When I had first come up with the plan, the idea had been to ease into the traps. We'd lay them around the room and have the shuck trigger them organically during the fight, putting itself off balance at key junctures so we could strike at it hard, weakening it enough to make a connection. But then we had looked at just how much power we had laid down.

Instead, we went for the cacophonous approach. Every ward, every spell, triggered at once. A grand vortex of explosive, concussive, abusive power, smashing into each other, melding, bleeding into the room at once. If Jackson Pollock had made magic, it would have looked like this.

The upshot of the whole thing being that we more or less torched all the shuck's senses. I don't know if you can invoke epilepsy in a shuck, but we did our very best to find out, and when the smoke cleared there was one very shell-shocked beast cowering barely a foot from me. Its emerald eyes had lost their fire, belching blackness out of the crevices instead.

I felt a bit cruel.

Wingard apparently didn't. With the beast stunned, he laid into it, hammering it hard with every spell he could muster from those rings of his. Pure concussive rage, aimed at bashing the shuck into submission, and it was working. It tried to flee, to will itself back into living shadow and move away, but one of the wards had been designed to prevent such a thing. Every time it tore itself to shadow, the spell would reintegrate it, painfully, just as another of Wingard's blows would land.

'Tr...Treachery,' it hissed. 'You would fight against your own peace. Illness courses through you.'

It was time to do my part. I began to search, to reach out with my senses, all in the hope of finding the residue of the ritual that had summoned it. That was the easy part – rituals are messy, they leave their signature everywhere once you know to look for it – I just needed the time for the hard part.

Wingard slammed the shuck hard in the face, forcing it down to the floor. A boot was waiting, sending it skidding to the far wall.

The thread was here somewhere, masked in the more obviously weave of the ritual and the copious shuck stink. Our own wards had complicated things even further, but I knew to discount them; they weren't hard to leaf through. Just one single magical thread, laying in the weave, if I could pinpoint it...

There was a roar from Wingard, and I risked a glance. The beast was fighting back, though most of its tricks were denied it. It still had some speed, and it was getting better at dodging his blows. The eyes were getting their fire back, which could only be a bad sign.

I dove back into my work, frantically grasping threads now, checking and discarding them as fast as I could. If I took a careful approach it would take too long, I needed the right thread now. I needed to bind the shuck before it got back on even footing with Wingard.

And I found it, shining away in the centre of the circle, a golden needle in a bloody haystack. I reached for it, and felt teeth sinking into my forearm.

Naturally, I screamed and opened my eyes, revealing that I was face to face with the shuck, emeralds burning brighter than ever. It stared at me for so long, that final instant when you know you are doomed stretching out for all time. Then it jerked its head and threw me off balance. The teeth came out of my arm and went for my neck, snapping viciously into the azure shield from my ring. I hadn't even meant to trigger it, but it had saved my life.

The shuck wailed against my shield for a moment, each bite forcing me back a little further, and I scoured the room for any sign of Wingard. I saw fresh blood, but no corpse. Then again, the beast took up most of my field of view.

The shuck saw him before I did, but it did little good. More azure magic, a pure lance of kinetic wrath, caught it in the head and pinwheeled the beast off of me. I rolled the other way, directly to Wingard's feet.

He didn't look well. The wounds on his neck were bleeding again, and his right arm hung limp at his side. 'This thing is a right bastard. Keep working.'

I nodded and he slowly began to walk at the shuck. It stood up, holding itself ready to pounce, watching and gauging him. For a man as heavily hurt as he was, he cut an imposing figure, and the shuck couldn't help but pause. I shut my eyes as he laid into it again.

It took me a moment to find the thread again, and with the pain throbbing in my arm my metaphysical dexterity was a little compromised. I grasped it though, and felt the spell force its way into my head. Complex and vast, spell upon spell in one giant concertina of power, it was a daunting task to unravel it and find the exact parameter to tweak. The noise of the fight going on around me did little to help.

But then there it was, the burning heart of the spell, the kernel of energy that dictated friend from foe. All I had to do was overwrite that, a pin prick of my own power would do it. Lucky, as that was all I allowed myself to draw upon these days.

Like a drop of ink in water, it billowed and swirled and bled into the core and quickly overcame the old magic. There was a flare of power, not mine, that burned at my magical senses, sending me reeling and forcing me to open my eyes.

Wingard had the shuck by the scruff of the neck, and it had him by the thigh, but neither were moving now. The shuck had frozen, its burning eyes dwindling to the tiniest of flames while it parsed this new information, and Wingard seemingly didn't want to antagonise it.

Then, slowly, the beast opened its mouth and released him. Wingard flopped backwards onto the floor, clearly in pain.

'Took your time, Parker,' he said.

'Sorry,' I said. 'It's delicate work, like defusing a bomb.'

'So now what?' he stared into the frozen face of the shuck. 'Can you just sort of tell it to bugger off now?'

I shrugged. 'I guess? Let me try.'

The shuck's eyes tracked me as I slowly walked in front of it. I didn't think eye contact was necessary, and it almost certainly didn't need to see me at all for my orders to take effect, but I needed to see it. There needed to be a record in my memory of this thing, this brutal and uncompromising force of nature, and I needed it to drive home my order with some semblance of authority.

We locked gazes. 'I release you from your obligation, noble beast. Go now and return to your plane unburdened. Please?'

Again, the slightly flowery language is just sort of expected when you do these things. It doesn't feel right if you don't use it.

Anyway, the shuck stared at me after I spoke and flickered for a moment as it tried to shift itself back into a shadow. Again the wards burned it and it solidified yelping. 'Your spells... They burn... Cannot leave.'

'Wingard, kill the traps.'

'Are you sure,' he said. I nodded, and he did as I asked with a single muttered word.

Now, I'm sure you've already worked out what happened next. In my defence, everything I had done led me to believe I had control. I mean, sure, I probably should have checked a little thoroughly before I turned off the only thing protecting us from a teleport-fu beat down, but hindsight and all that. I was probably blinded by my own internal wanknado of self-aggrandisement at taming the beast so quickly.

I think the worst thing was the laugh. Not the fangs or the burning eyes, but the way it laughed at me as it snapped into shadow again.

'Such guilt, warlock. Such guilt you sabotage yourself. You crave the forgiveness only I can give. Embrace me.'

'Parker,' Wingard said, trying to stand up. 'I don't think –'

A gout of living shadow slammed him to the floor mid-sentence, and he screamed the sort of scream you can only manage when falling onto an open wound. I know this because I did something similar mere seconds later as the beast slammed me down onto my arm. Then it placed a paw onto my chest, forcing me flat as the weight of it solidified.

'I released you,' I said.

It peeled back the shadow to reveal its fangs again. 'How can you release me, little warlock? You are the reason I am here. You and you alone, your suffering, it is my purpose. While you draw beleaguered breaths, my work is not complete. Rest now. Be free.'

The jaws opened slowly, a chasm of infinite blackness behind those luminescent teeth, and I don't think I'm being overly florid when I say that I could see my death. It lunged at me, for the final time, and exploded.

Yeah, that didn't really register with me at first either.

It went off like a smoke bomb, filling the room with wisps of darkness, and then gently faded away until the room was clear. It took me a few blinks to truly comprehend that I wasn't dead, and that a very smug looking Wingard was standing above me, offering a hand.

I took it. 'Well, that was humbling.'

'Pardon?'

'I think I rewrote the wrong bit of the ritual. Set myself as the target there, not the new owner. Oh well, you live and learn.'

Wingard smiled. 'If nothing else, at least you're the only one at threat if it comes back.'

'Comes back?' I said. 'What did you do to it?'

'Remember that spell you worked up for controlling it? Figured I'd give that a shot. Basically banished the thing,' he reached into his pocket and produced his phone. The screen was flashing. He scowled and tossed it away.

'You saved my life, then. Impressive, considering I barely described the spell to you.'

'I'm not a slouch, Parker. I can piece a spell or two together myself, you know.'

'You're right, sorry,' I said. 'And you're a demon in a fight.'

'I do my best. You better get that.'

A split second after he spoke, my own phone started buzzing. A text message from Charlie.

I'm sorry. Nothing I could do.

I showed it to Wingard. 'She's an odd girl, this one.'

He had a dead smile on his face. 'Not so much. Whitehall is just taking a little longer than expected, that's all.'

'Huh?'

'Well, didn't exactly have authorisation for that spell now, did I?'

The realisation slammed into me like a lead weight. 'But... I... No... You were defending me. It was justified! Tell them!'

'There's no arguing with them, Parker. But hey, I will say that it was worth it. At least I saved you. Go out a hero, and all that.'

'This is wrong.'

'Sure it is, but what can you –'

I felt the air fill with power – the cheap and nasty tang of stale and stored magic once again – and Wingard stopped.

It should have been more grandiose than it was. There should have been gouts of blood, as if a bomb had gone off inside him and blown the ribs open. It should have been like the chest-burster scene in aliens in fact, painting this grotesque memorial as his life ebbed away.

But it was just a muffled pop and then he fell over.

Seven

'Please calm down, Parker,' she was saying over and over again, but I wasn't listening. I was too busy screaming down the phone.

I can't really remember the words. The minutiae is overtaken by the sensation at times like that, and while I was staring into his dead eyes all I remember feeling was a gnawing emptiness, betrayal. Whitehall had built us up, sure enough, given us a purpose and sent us on what was basically a suicide mission but, ultimately, expected us to succeed.

And then, at the very end, they pulled the rug out. It wasn't right.

'He was a model warlock, wasn't he?'

'Yes,' she said, quietly. 'But rules are rules. Without his handler to vouch for him.'

'I'll kill him.'

'Fucking shut up! They monitor these lines and –'

'I don't care,' I said. 'I want them to hear. He was saving my life, this is a disgrace.'

'I know. I know. But please, just calm down. He knew they'd go to the vault if he did it, this wasn't a surprise to him. It was a sacrifice. Make it mean something.'

I was quiet. How do you respond to that? I managed to say something, at least. 'I'm not worth this. Tell whichever suit-wearing shitbag that asks that I'm taking the rest of the day off.'

I rung off before she could reply.

Wingard was still laying there, staring up at me with his mouth open. I was amazed at how quickly my anger at his death was becoming anger at him. The more I stared the more I realised just what he had lumbered me with. A sacrifice is an obligation, and now I was bound as much as the shuck had been. At least my focus was something altogether less malicious, but it was still against my will.

Nobody should feel forced into being a good man, and yet there I was. I'd known Maurice Wingard for all of a day, and he had given up his life to save mine. That's not something you can live up to, and yet I had to try.

The bastard.

So, yeah, this is why you have to get good at not doing magic. If you don't, you go out a hero.

And I'm not a hero.

Thanks For Reading

I hope you enjoyed the book (if you made it this far then I’m going to assume you at least didn’t hate it), and I’m very thankful for you taking the time to read through Jameson Parker’s first little adventure.

If you enjoyed it, or even if you didn’t, please consider writing a little review. Writers can’t grow without feedback, and pretty much every comment received will give me something to work on in the future. This is especially useful for series like this one; I want to make sure I’m giving you what you want to read, after all!

So, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads if you want, and if you’re interested in keeping up to date with what I’m doing and future releases you can find me at @stevetheblack on twitter or even sign up to my newsletter from my website at stevekpeacock.com (you even get a free Warlocks of Whitehall novella for doing so!)

More books by Steve K Peacock

Diplomancer

Lore and Order (Book 1 of The Warlocks of Whitehall)

And keep an eye out for his next book: Ghosts on the Wind, a Victorian thriller.