A Spot of Tea and Sorcery, Vol. 6

Beginning

The tussle between gangsters and the officers of the law seemed to have finally resolved.

Occasionally, a shot still rang out somewhere deeper in the warehouse district, where someone made a compelling Last Stand.

Voices echoed in the night, variations on a theme of, “He went that way!” and “Get ‘im, boys!” But it would seem that, by and large, the proud officers of the Ballycastle Special Sorcery Suppression Department had performed admirably in the line of duty, sweeping up the unsavory element and putting an end to all attempted nefarious doings on this particular night.

Unbeknownst to these brave civic heroes and their prey, Nigel Grimm observed from behind folds of invisible silk as a series of three unmarked vans pulled up on the street in front of the warehouse.

Lumbering things, armored, and driven by stern-faced individuals with the requisite granite jaws.

Wardsmen hustled members of the Brute Boys gang into the backs of these vans, heedless of their cursing and snarled protests.

Tobias Goddard wasn’t among them, Nigel noted with mild interest. Apparently, the boy had managed to get out and away.

Whether or not he would elude capture altogether remained to be seen.

That wasn’t really Nigel’s concern. The young idiot should have known better than to get tied up in this mess to begin with.

For that matter, Nigel should have had the sense to avoid it as well.

“But here we are,” he muttered softly, his voice muted under silk.

Something stirred inside the inner pocket of Yorik Balthazar’s invisibility robe.

A little houndsnose blossom with a trumpet-shaped head emerged, snuffling loudly.

It looked up at Nigel, petals fluttering, and uttered a whine, which should not have been possible, considering it possessed no vocal cords.

“Hush,” Nigel said, pressing a gentle finger against the top of the blossom’s head and pushing it back into the pocket. “Patience, old fellow. We’ve got to wait for this lot to clear out first.”

“Unhand me, you ruffians!”

The voice erupted in the night, crisper and more elegant than all the rest. Nigel’s attention instantly shot back across the road, where he saw several burly wardsmen dragging a slight, limping figure out from the depths of Warehouse 13.

He wore a once-fine suit, now tattered with age, and an old-fashioned cravat tied at his throat, pulled slightly askew.

But these were not his most striking features.

No, for the glow of the wardsmen’s thaumatic flashlights revealed a hideously scarred, Dire-burnt face.

Nigel’s jaw clenched. It was impossible to mistake the visage of Lancelot Mortimer, Dark Sorcerer and former consort of the Shadowbane Lady.

Aged and battered though he was, with his scraggly gray hair dangling over his shoulders, some of the former proud dignity still clung to him, even as the wardsmen dragged him along by his upper arms. He seemed to have misplaced his skull-headed walking stick.

That, or the wardsmen had taken it away from him.

Not that Nigel would blame them; he could feel the awful bruise on his jaw where that stone skull had struck him a good one. He wondered if it had cracked bone.

Eyes narrowed, he watched the figure of Mortimer, struggling feebly and shouting protests in his polished, Plymian accent.

He wore a sorcery-suppressant collar of silver etched in anti-sorcery runes and handcuffs, which covered the entire hand to prevent the hasty formation of sigils.

The SSSD weren’t taking any chances with their prize.

But something was wrong. That man certainly looked like Lancelot Mortimer.

And, from across the road, that voice certainly sounded like Lancelot Mortimer as well.

He moved like Lancelot Mortimer, with that distinct limp, and no one could mistake the awfulness of that Dire-burn, for which Nigel was personally responsible.

But there was something in this man’s vibe that felt off.

Nigel was no tea witch. He did not possess Luna’s ability to sense other people’s auras. But he could almost swear that something in the atmosphere of that man’s soul was not right. It was enough to make him wish he’d asked Luna to come with him. She would be able to say for certain.

Not that Luna would have come.

“I’ve got to go.”

Her voice rang in Nigel’s head, a recent, painful memory. He saw her as she had appeared in that instant, an expression of wide-eyed horror and betrayal simmering in her dark eyes, just before she tried to push past him in the counter nook and escape. Escape him. The villain, the monster.

Nigel closed his eyes, bowing his head beneath the folds of Yorik Balthazar’s dressing gown.

He could not let himself think about Luna.

Not now. He could not let himself be distracted.

He was already physically compromised. Weakness shuddered through his veins, testimony to the severmist poison he’d breathed earlier that evening, a noxious anti-sorcery gas.

It had very nearly proven the end of him and, were it not for Luna’s quick action, he might even now lie dead behind the counter of The Arcane Bouquet.

Leaning heavily against the brick wall at his shoulder, Nigel watched as Mortimer was loaded into the final van, isolated from the rest of the gang.

The doors slammed, and his vociferous protests were abruptly cut off.

More wardsmen appeared from the direction of the harbor, toting three large crates among them.

Though Nigel could not sense it from this distance, he would bet his life those crates contained the bootlegged Dire Matter which Mortimer had come down here to claim tonight.

Quite a nice haul—Nigel couldn’t help a pang of regret not to be able to swipe a handful of the stuff.

And, judging by the way the wardsmen staggered, those crates were positively bursting.

It had to be several fortunes’ worth! How had Mortimer sourced it to begin with?

Then again, the Brotherhood’s connections ran deep and dark and possibly even more twisted than Nigel knew.

Just as the crates were loaded into the trunk of a sleek, black automagic mobile, the heroic figure of Officer John Ward strode forward.

The other officers greeted him deferentially, and Ward clapped several of them on the shoulder in the manly mode appropriate to a figure of his proud status.

Nigel’s lip curled, and his hand unconsciously began to shape a dark sigil before he stopped himself by shoving it deep into his trouser pocket.

It wasn’t as though the Sovereign Troth would let him actually do anything with it anyway.

One by one, wardsmen dispersed to various vehicles—some to the criminal-conveyance vans, others to the non-descript, undercover mobiles lining the street.

Engines turned over, thaumatic exhaust puffed in clouds, and the vehicles pulled away, leaving the Dire-blasted, gun-hole-spattered Warehouse 13 empty and abandoned.

Even so, Nigel forced himself to wait a few minutes more, just to be safe.

A cold wind blew damply up from the harbor, spattering droplets against the folds of his invisibility robe.

The fabric was not particularly thick, and Nigel shivered beneath it, though whether from cold or the after-effects of shock, he couldn’t say.

That exposure to severmist had taken the wind from his sails.

If he were wise, he would go home to his bed right now and stay there for the better part of a week.

But the truth was, he didn’t believe it. He didn’t believe the wardsmen had successfully rounded up Lancelot Mortimer. It was simply too easy. And if his instincts were correct, if Mortimer was still at large in the darkness . . .

The sorcerer’s voice whispered like a poisonous fog in the back of Nigel’s brain: “You must know what I have planned for her.”

Nigel’s fists clenched. He’d never committed outright murder before.

Not premeditated, purposeful, bloodlust-fueled murder.

He’d never wanted to. Even as a Dark Sorcerer, there were always more interesting matters drawing his attention, and he’d found the notion of homicide somewhat distasteful. But now . . .

He set his teeth. If he found Mortimer tonight, Nigel fully intended to end him once and for all. Gruesomely, if necessary. And if that very act was what it took to finally and completely damn his soul, so be it. It wasn’t as though the gods had much use for a warped soul like his anyway.

The houndsnose in his pocket whined again. Two green leaves hooked over the edge of the inner pocket, like two little paws. The slender green stem wriggled with eagerness. “I know, boy,” Nigel said. “It’s time.”

Pushing away from the wall, he darted across the street, casting not even a shadow to betray his presence.

There was no sign of any lingering wardsmen or Brute Boys.

Not that Nigel was particularly concerned about either of these, but he knew he must stay on alert.

Mortimer might not have been alone, after all. There could be other sorcerers abroad.

Nigel rounded the big brick building until he came to where a giant bolt of Dire Matter had blasted a hole right through the wall.

There he withdrew the houndsnose from his pocket and held the blossom up to the edges of the hole, which dripped with anti-glitter motes, invisible to all but sorcerous perceptions.

“Get a good whiff,” Nigel said, as the flower sniffed deeply at the broken bricks.

“That’s what his magic smells like.” Then he crouched and placed the houndsnose at his feet.

“Now, find him for me. Find that nasty sorcerer, there’s a good boy. ”