Chapter 3

"And what you will be looking for, young master?"

He should have known Moon would catch him in the Wisdom of Crowe. The Chamber had looked empty when he'd snuck in and he'd hoped the guardian was sleeping like the Hobbledehoy. He briefly considered lying but then decided knowledge was best gained via the straightest road.

Mostly because that was a quote by Caractacus Crowe he'd just read.

"Moon, what's an unravelling?"

Moon gave him a suspicious look, "And why would you be wanting to know about the Unravelling?"

"So the word does mean something. I knew it. It seemed familiar but I couldn't work out from where."

"It's a word used by the old ones. Before the Line of Twilight. Wizards could draw their magic from the Neverside. And they could be casting the Spells of Perpetuity."

"A spell of perpetuity? You mean like a perpetual spell? Why would anyone need to do that? I mean, when a spell is cast it's cast. Right?"

"Not always. Just be looking at the Line of Twilight. It was cast by the nine but is held in place by their Magical Line. In perpetuity."

"What? I never knew that. But what about the Shroud?"

"Is held in perpetuity by Randal Moon. Is why Randal Moon was being in the spell."

"How do I not know this?"

"Spells that be going into perpetuity are dangerous. Like the stones, they can drain a wizard's magic. Especially now those wizards be limited by the dayside. And what if a wizard be passing? Then the spell be unravelling. Unless the spell be fixed."

"Fixed to what?"

"An object. Or a magical line."

"And you're saying the Line of Twilight is fixed to... me? To Gran? To every Crowe?"

"And every Hawke. And Whiteraven and Sandpiper. Nine magical lines. Three by three. Cubing. Powerful magic. Into perpetuity."

"But that means... what if a magical line gets wiped out? What if all nine lines get wiped out? If the Nekross destroyed all wizardkind..."

"If the tethers break, the Line could tear. If they were destroyed, the Line would be failing. Falling. It would be the Unravelling."

Tom leant against the solid stone weight of the table; his mind racing with the implications.

"I knew what the Nekross was doing was bad. But this...

"Moon, can a perpetual spell be unravelled if a wizard is still alive?"

"But of course. If a wizard holds the spell themself then he or she is weaker. If there is a day they use all their spells, then the perpetual spell will unravel. But no wizard alive today is powerful enough to cast one. It requires contact with a source of magic."

"Like the Neverside?"

"Yes."

"Or like the Salute?"

"The Salute? Oh, young Master, what will you have been doing?"

'Nothing, Moon," he rushed to reassure him, "Really. It was just a hypothetical."

"Well, I'll be thanking you to not be scaring Randal Moon. Spells of perpetuity can kill wizards if they unravel badly. And you do not have access to the Sky Ship magic any longer."

It looks like the magic from the extractor was too much for your cellular storage, Tom.

And what does that mean in English, Benny?

It's like a battery that's overcharged. It'll give you a burst of power but it'll go flat quickly.

So my days of being Bad Wolf Tom are numbered?

Did you just make a Doctor Who reference?

Let's just keep it between us.

I mean, it's for the best isn't it, Tom? You didn't like it. All that magic. That power.

No. But I swear, Benny, since I took it I am more powerful than I was before. I can feel it. It scares me sometimes.

Well, I don't think it'll last. At some point the battery will go flat and when it does your cells should recharge normally. I mean, you're still like one of the most powerful wizards in the world, right? Even without the extra magic? That's what a warrior wizard is, isn't it?

How could he not have known he'd cast a perpetual spell? Even if he didn't know about them before today, he still should have known. Something.

Hadn't he felt it inside him? Hadn't he felt them inside him? How could he not have realised?

What had he done?

Media. Circus.

And Tom Clarke had ringside seats.

He'd decided there was little point in caution anymore so he'd asked Moon to cast a facade charm. It wasn't as if magic was a big secret anymore. Especially his.

The media and a few terse Military Police stood in frustrated boredom outside the boundary of the house all morning. Benny went out a couple of times to wave at the reporters under their oblivious noses and came back as excited as only he could be.

"It's amazing. Although, what would have happened if I was wearing perfume? Would they have smelt it?"

"Perfume?" Tom was lounging in a recliner by the fireplace, a cup of hot chocolate nestled comfortably in his lap. He'd been trying to get Benny to relax but as usual the geek couldn't wind down.

"And why was Hermione wearing perfume in that scene anyway? Who puts perfume on when you're on the run and camping in the woods?"

"Benny. Enough. Please. Enough with the Harry Potter. If I see another news report of me casting that spell with You're a wizard, Harry captioned underneath it, it'll be too soon."

"Stop complaining. There are worse comparisons. I watched a YouTube video on whether Varg was Voldemort."

"Well, they both start with V."

Benny laughed, "Was their first point."

"You have got to be kidding me."

"I wish I was. Have you spoken to Sun? Or Spiers?"

Tom shook his head, "They'll call. I imagine they're all running around trying to incorporate magic into military strategy."

"And I imagine you'll have something to say about that."

He nodded, "It's not just that. They're struggling with my age. Gemma Raven said they've been out trying to find a 'real wizard leader'. One that shaves. Their words."

"Well, they're bound to get a disappointing response to that."

"Like I said, they'll call soon. I needed some time to think anyway."

"About..." Benny stopped before he could finish the thought. Maybe it wasn't the time to bring it up.

Tom sipped his chocolate gratefully. The last thing he needed was to talk about that.

And in the other room, the phone rang.

Theresa Sun didn't know what she expected of magic. She didn't know expectations of magic was a thing she'd need to have.

So the first time she saw a spell cast, all she could see was its beauty; like plasma radiating lazy lines of energy in flowing arcs of rainbow colours. It charged the air around her like electricity: the hair on her arms shot up and she could feel a pressure in her chest. Like decompression. Like implosion.

She realised her pendant was in her hand. She hadn't remembered pulling it from her pocket but it was there. It felt cold in her hand and she gripped it tightly, soaking up the strange sense of peace it brought.

She thought that words were spoken but she couldn't remember what they were. All she remembered was the pulsating waves that poured from Tom Clarke's fingers; sliding up toward the ceiling of the staging area and then...

Nothing.

"What happened?" she asked him, her question being echoed around the room from all the other staff.

"Ma'am?"

"Major," she corrected the Surveillance Officer absently.

"Major, we have confirmation. Two missiles were fired at this facility. From space. We can't pinpoint the source of the launch yet but..."

She cut him off with a curt wave of her hand and placed the pendant back into the pocket of her jacket. Also absently.

"So what happened?" she asked him, military facade restored.

"We don't know. They just... disappeared."

"Not exactly," said Tom with an embarrassed laugh. She looked at him properly for the first time, noticing his casualness. His age. He's practically a child. His clean-cut look. Brown hair and eyes, clean-shaven.

"I'm afraid my mind wandered," he finished, obviously not disconcerted by her appraisal.

"What do you mean? What did you do?" she demanded softly.

"Ma'am." This time it was the duty guard from the gate hailing her via her radio.

She ignored the ma'am. This was a crisis after all.

"Go ahead."

"Ma'am, we have some sort of situation here."

"What kind of situation?"

"It's raining rose petals, ma'am. A lot of rose petals."

She clicked off the radio and turned her attention back to the boy, "Are you telling me you turned two missiles into roses?"

"Rose petals, actually." This from Sherwood who seemed to have re-appeared as quietly as he'd vanished in the first place. "No thorns. No stem. Just petals. Three colours. I prefer the white."

"Let the bullets in the air turn to raining rose petals," said Tom, almost apologetically. "It's a song. I was listening to it this morning. It must have, you know, stuck in my head."

"You're telling me you cast a spell that turned two missiles into flowers and it's now raining petals down over my facility?"

"Probably a wider area than that."

"East London?"

He shook his head, "Missiles tend to have a large blast radius and I... well the spell, intercepted them a few miles up so..."

"Stealthy, Tom," said Benny. "Very stealthy."

"Oh, I think we're beyond stealth now," Tom said.

He turned to Sun, "So, the Nekross. Aliens, wizards, magic. My technical advisor and I should probably get you up to speed on all that."

"Your technical advisor?"

"Yeah," he looped his arm around Sherwood's shoulders and gave her another somewhat sheepish look, "You've been working with him."

"Tom thought it might be a good idea for me to keep an eye on things."

"You're a spy?"

"More like an observer."

"How did you even get in here?"

The boys swapped an amused look and simultaneously said, "Magic."

Ten years of training. It hadn't prepared her for this.

"I'm serious," Tom said, the grin sliding off his face. "This is a fight for wizards. It's been a fight for wizards for the last three years. The Nekross got you involved but they shouldn't have. I'll answer all your questions but you need to leave the fight to me."

She looked at him again: earnest unlined face and a strange look in his eye as though the person staring back at her was older. Much older.

"That's never going to happen," she said.

And both of them knew it to be true.

She'd managed to get home and to get some sleep that night.

After everything that had happened, she thought 'sleep' might be optimistic. But exhaustion, it seemed, trumped even the most fundamental existential crisis. She wasn't a scientist but she was a scientific thinker. It had propelled her up the ranks to Major in record time and she considered it her greatest strength.

But magic? Magic just didn't fit. She didn't even know where to start in finding a place for magic in her mental map of the world. Yet the same mental framework that concluded it wasn't real, also brooked no argument in the face of stone-cold facts.

She knew how wrong 'seeing was believing' was. Eyes lied. But data was a different story. And she had data. Reams of it. And all saying the same thing.

A man - no a boy - had taken two alien missiles that were seconds away from blowing her into atoms and had rained them down on Greater London in the form of flowers.

As she sat at her breakfast table, eating her normal toast with her normal black coffee and looking out into her normal back garden, she found herself looking for petals. Pink and red and white and falling from the sky. Some had been on the sidewalk as she'd gotten out of the car last night. And the streets were full of people, hundreds of them. Gathering them up, praying, laughing. Crying.

She felt for her pendant, around her neck when she wasn't on duty, and this time she opened it up. How she would have loved a world of magic. How incredible. And how tragic that she would never see it.

If it wasn't for that magic, she would be dead. They would all be dead.

She picked up her mobile and made the call.

"Spiers, I don't care what you have to do or say. We need Tom Clarke's magic."

She finished her coffee and went into the bathroom for a shower. On the way she slipped the locket into a wicker basket by the front door. It was filled with rose petals.