Today sucked. Same abuse coming home on the bus. She could have walked, avoided the whole thing, but that would have meant walking. She could handle a few names. School had been suitably boring, typically pointless. Worse than all that, though, was that it had been almost a week since she’d done any magic.

That was wrong. That was worse than facebook and tumblr crashing on the same day, not like that was ever going to happen, that couldn’t happen, it just wouldn’t, they’d have, like, safeguards and stuff, people on hand to make sure it didn’t.

She wiped the sweat from her brow as she opened the front door and crept in. The mindless drone from the TV filled the house, and she tiptoed past the lounge and up the stairs before mum could feel the cold draft from outside.

The bed sunk beneath her like the welcome from an old friend. Which it was. The phrase ‘only friend’ bobbled up in her mind but she shoved it down and seized her computer from her bedside table with a triumphant smile. She had friends. That none of them lived within a thousand miles of her was irrelevant. And there was always Martin.

She wasn’t sure what he was. He certainly wasn’t a friend, not like that, but he wasn’t Dad either. Far too smart, and sober, and magical. Though right now, he was doing the absent thing very well. She sniffed, gazing around the room, at the wall paper that had seemed so dated over the last month or so.

Nothing like going to hell to make the Little Mermaid feel a teensy bit lame.

This was no good. She’d missed two lessons already, and he hadn’t so much as texted. Did he have a phone? Would he know how to use one if he did? She dumped the computer back on the table and stood, changing her uniform for some jeans and a baggy t-shirt.

She sneaked downstairs, checking her jacket pocket at least seven times to make sure the spell book was there, and headed out the front door. Through the estate, past the shops, and up into the nasty part of town. She hadn’t yet actually seen anything that made it nastier than her part of town, but it was rundown enough to house a squat or two, which was where Martin spent his time.

Scarlet had asked him, more than once, why he lived in squalor, when he could easily find somewhere nicer, but just like when she’d asked him why he helped people, he’d just shaken his head, and told her ‘somethings are not spoken of, particularly between a mage and his apprentice’. To which, she, of course, had asked him when she had become anyone’s apprentice, and he’d gone rambling off on some learning point and she’d forgotten the original question.

It seemed important again now, though. The clouds were gathering, angry dirt-grey barely higher than the blocks of flats, and the winter wind kept grabbing at her coat and trying to pull her along. The park was empty, the swings screeching at her as she passed, and she picked up the pace.

She couldn’t run though. Anyone saw her running and she’d look weak, next thing, they’d take her phone and maybe the book. Most of these neanderthals couldn’t read, but they’d take it anyway, just cos.

She pulled the bin door open, slipping into the darkness beyond, relieved for once to be inside with the stench of ancient filth and out of sight of the eyes she’d felt on her as she walked. It wasn’t just the wind giving her the creeps, something was going on.

Martin had said her instincts would improve, that she’d notice more and more of the world that lay behind the real one. So far, she was pretty certain that Miss Lynch at school used some kind of calming spell in her classroom. Scarlet itched every time she went in there, and even the most rabid of her classmates became strange, docile, puppies.

She climbed up the steps, hauled open the hatch and scrambled up, trying not to touch anything. She emerged into Martin’s home, and gasped. It was a right state. It was always a state, but not as bad as this. His sofa had been ripped apart, literally, torn to shreds, little flecks of white foam dusting every surface.

His table was overturned, the walls filled with diagrams she didn’t understand, had been trashed, and Martin was nowhere in sight.