Part One can be found here

It was a kidnap, it had to be. Why was it called a kidnap? There were no kids involved, and napping was, like, one of her favourite things. This was neither snoozy, nor fun.

She dug through the mess, trying to pile things up, make sense of what had happened. Whoever had been here had been looking for something, or somethings. Had they found it? The entire place was trashed, so maybe not.

Scarlet had only been coming here for a month or so, but that was several times a week, and enough for her to spot Martin fiddling with the mirror that still hung over his desk, a jagged crack now running through it.

She pulled gently at it, surprised it was still in place. It was fixed firmly to the wall, and didn’t budge when she tried harder. All the mirrors at home were held on with, like, these tiny little clips that meant if someone closed the door too hard they fell off the wall. Wasn’t it just a touch suspicious that this one, in a squat no less, was superglued on?

That could mean the people who came here were pretty stupid, or it could mean they were trashing the place for fun, and weren’t looking for anything at all. Either way, she thought what lay behind it was probably worth taking a look at.

She hauled the desk back onto its legs, and shoved it over against the wall. Kneeling carefully, she peered around the side of the mirror, running her finger around it. She was two thirds of the way round when she heard the click.

Scrambling back, grinning and nodding to herself, and wondering where all the tossers in school who laughed at her were, when she did something cool, she watched the mirror swing open. Behind was a small cubby, containing three books, which Scarlet grabbed, before dropping down onto the floor.

One of the cushions was still intact, buried beneath a stack of paper, and she placed it against the wall, turning the books up the right way and examining them as she sat.

‘The Council.

Minutes and meeting records, 2011/12’

She opened it at a random page, flicking quickly through pages in which someone said this, and someone else said this, and a resolution was passed, and lots of outstandingly boring stuff happened. The next book was the same, only 2010/11, and the last 2009/10. She had the set. Woo.

Had they been looking for these? And if so, why? Minutes of meetings, or what she now knew of them, were boring, and entirely useless. Unless they said something incriminating… she sighed, looking at the books again, and speaking to the empty room.

‘Really? First Wuthering Heights, and now this…’

She shook her head, went back to 2009, and began to read. Within the first few minutes, she’d realised two things. The first, was that the Council wasn’t the people who mended the roads, but something else entirely. The second was that whoever they were, they were making decisions she thought the government usually made, or possibly people more important than the government, like The Queen, or the people who did the TV programming.

She kept reading, losing herself in debates over what should be done with a certain part of London, or whether a new policy for handling politicians was necessary. She was drawn from her reverie by a noise, like metal scraping across concrete. In her mind’s eye, she saw the bin door, opened too far and dragging across the pavement.

She was up, shoving the books back behind the mirror and pushing it closed, her heart hammering. There was nowhere to hide in here, just the room, and the bed… of course. She ran into the bedroom, a box just large enough to hold the single bed that lay there. The mattress was in a similar state to the sofa, but you couldn’t see through it, and she dropped to the ground, grunting as her knee caught the side of the frame.

She wiggled, getting beneath it, and lay still, panting quietly, heart thumping so loud whoever was coming was sure to hear. The door slammed, and voices reached her, followed rapidly by footsteps.

‘We’re late, we’re too bloody late.’

‘Not necessarily. Let’s just have a look, shall we?’

The first speaker hissed, foot steps coming to a stop just outside the bedroom. He was a Londoner, through and through. ‘Alex, please, just ‘ave a look around, will ya? They did a good job of it, they’ve got ‘im, and the books, so let’s not waste our time.’

The other man, still speaking slowly, as if to a child, was American, and sounded rich. ‘Please, just, calm yourself. Yes, they’ve certainly got him, but the books, I’m not so sure. Perhaps we just need to search a little more thoroughly.’

His voice grew louder, and she could imagine his face, tanned and smug as he peeked into the bedroom. She crossed her legs, swallowing hard as the sounds of papers and books being tossed about came from the other room.

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.