Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
There were eight of us in Captain Montgomery’s class.
Besides Marie Wicker and me, there was a chatty leprechaun called Ruth, and a rumpled druid who went by Kevin (but who had confided in me on the first day that his real name was Tarquin).
There was a representative from the witches’ council, who appeared to be attending purely to ensure that neither Montgomery nor his trainees got any uppity ideas above their station and who insisted that he was called by his formal title of Fetch Mayhew.
We also had a young ogre with a penchant for martial arts called Randolph, a troll – Matty – who was very sweet but whose vocabulary of colourful swear words was unparalleled, and Alan the vampire whose presence was the reason why the training sessions took place once the sun had gone down.
He’d barely spoken two words to anyone. We were certainly an eclectic bunch, if nothing else.
Naturally my reasons for attending had nothing to do with a desire to become a badge-carrying member of the MET; neither did I care about litter dropping or graffiti.
If anything, I quite liked the street art that was popping up around Danksville.
If my cats were unimpressed by it, or offended by some of the subject matter, they’d not communicated it to me.
Even if they were, I wouldn’t do anything about it.
No, I was here because I regularly found myself working as an ad-hoc investigator of serious crimes and my lack of skills in anything other than assassinating targets in creative ways was becoming a hindrance.
After fourteen days of study, I wasn’t Sherlock Holmes and I couldn’t call myself Miss Marple as I’d joked to Marie, but I understood more about the art of investigating crime. I was more than satisfied with that.
Montgomery took his usual spot at the front of the class.
I suspected that he was our teacher not because he possessed deep-seated beliefs in the value of education but because nobody else wanted the task.
Whatever his reasons, I was glad he was there.
I was growing surprisingly fond of the captain, even if he did have a truncheon rammed up his arse on occasion.
‘Good evening all.’ He didn’t smile. ‘I trust you are prepared for your final project and you know what to do and how to act. Criminality has no place on the streets of Coldstream. The rest of the country may look upon us as strange creatures imbued with dangerous magic, but we know that the opposite is true.’ He touched the centre of his chest. ‘It is our magic that keeps us safe.’
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that but I nodded and murmured ‘yes’ anyway, joining the muted chorus of my fellow trainees.
‘However,’ he continued, ‘I will reiterate what I told you on the first day. This course does not give you special licence to arrest Coldstream citizens. It does not allow you to interfere with ongoing MET investigations or to inveigle your way into the jurisdictional areas of other Preternatural groups.’
Fetch Mayhew sat up a little straighter. ‘Hear hear!’
‘You are not,’ Montgomery intoned, acting like the council witch hadn’t spoken, ‘permitted to harm anyone in the course of your investigations, whether through magical means or otherwise. You do not suddenly have a licence to kill.’
I suppressed a grin. My licence to kill had lapsed when I’d retired from my position as an EEL assassin but old habits died hard.
Montgomery continued, ‘There are no circumstances where you should think of yourselves as the long arm of the law. Complete your final project and at best you will be considered private investigators although we may occasionally request your help across Coldstream with minor security matters. Any serious crimes that you uncover should always be referred to the appropriate authorities, whether that be the druidic board of governors, the witches’ council or the Magical Enforcement Team. ’ He met my gaze. ‘Understood?’
We nodded. He cupped his hand to his ear. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Understood!’ we chorused.
He sighed. He knew we were lying; we all knew we were lying, but this was the game we had to play.
Montogomery placed his hands on the desk in front of him. ‘This has never been tried in Coldstream before now. Mess it up and it will never be attempted again. The onus is on you to follow the rules.’ He turned his dark gaze to Matty. ‘What have you learned about covert surveillance?’
The troll straightened and grinned. ‘Go for a long fucking slash first,’ she said. Montgomery winced. ‘Go for a long fucking slash first, sir,’ she added somewhat belatedly.
‘Anything else besides toilet habits?’ he asked.
‘Conduct a thorough background check first,’ Ruth said helpfully.
‘Observe your target from a safe distance,’ I offered.
‘Adhere to all legal strictures,’ Fetch Mayhew intoned.
Montgomery nodded approvingly. ‘What about communication skills? What have you learned?’
Kevin listed several techniques. ‘Active listening. Concise questions. Manage the flow of a conversation. Watch for non-verbal cues.’
‘Good. And report writing?’
‘Maintain detailed, accurate and clear reports at all times.’
‘What about conflicts?’ Montgomery demanded. ‘And tense situations?’
I answered. ‘Be prepared to deal with sensitive issues and emotional people. Always aim for conflict resolution.’
‘And what do we mean by conflict resolution, Ms McCafferty?’
I’d always found that a quick, clean kill resolved most situations. ‘Defusing problems before they start,’ I said aloud.
Montgomery sniffed. He couldn’t know what I used to do for a living but he did know something about my preferred ways of dealing with problems. ‘Indeed.’ He lifted his chin. ‘You have done well. We now move to the final phase of the course and your fieldwork assignment.’
He gripped the edges of the desk and leaned forward, his eyes glowing. ‘And to help you with this last section of the course, I have been granted special dispensation to provide you with samples of a new spell that has been specially designed for the MET.’
I sat up a little bit straighter. This was interesting.
I wasn’t the only member of the class who was intrigued. Everyone’s attention was focused on Montgomery; in particular, Marie Wicker and Fetch Mayhew were both leaning forward.
‘A new spell?’ Mayhew asked. ‘That anyone in this class can use? It can’t be very powerful then.’
Matty scowled on cue. ‘You only need to possess a little magic. You don’t have to be a fucking witch, fuckwad, in order to cast a spell.’
‘Perhaps not, but you have to be a witch in order to cast a good spell,’ Marie murmured, for once on the same side as the Fetch.
Montgomery wrestled back control of the class.
‘This is a good spell,’ he said. The only indication of his irritation was the set of his jaw.
‘Anyone with a scrap of inherent magic can use it. But,’ he added forcefully, ‘not everyone is allowed to use it. In fact, few people are even allowed to know that it exists.’
Ruth frowned. ‘That’s not fair. Spells shouldn’t be squirrelled away, they should be shared for the good of all.’
Kevin piped up, ‘But if everyone knows a spell exists then everyone will know how to counteract it.’
‘Exactly.’ Montgomery nodded approvingly at the druid.
‘Before we proceed, every single one of you must give me your spoken vow that you will not breathe a word of this spell’s existence to any other being.
You may not mention it outside this classroom, even amongst yourselves.
This is a heavily embargoed potion. If word of its existence gets out, lawbreakers will simply use their own masking spells to counteract its effects.
You are very lucky that you are being allowed to learn about the echo spell’s existence. ’
I couldn’t blame the MET for their attempt at secrecy.
Once a genie was out of the bottle, it could never be put back in and history was littered with examples of crime-detecting magic the MET had created that had become obsolete as soon as the wider community learned about it. I’d give Montgomery my vow freely.
One by one, we stepped up to the front of the class and recited from a sheet of paper: I vow that I will not reveal the existence of the echo spell, either directly or by implication, to any other living soul.
I give my word that I will not communicate anything about its existence outside the walls of this room.
It was a simple vow as the most effective ones usually were.
It was important not to leave any wiggle room.
Anyone with any magic of even the mildest sort would find it next to impossible to break their word once it was given but, unless vows were worded very carefully, loopholes could sometimes be found.
Generally speaking, blood contracts were considered a more politic and often more useful form of binding because they allowed for greater complexities, but blood contracts were easier to break.
Consequently, while the inherent destructive power of breaking a spoken vow was a peculiar infallibility of Coldstream folk, such vows certainly had their uses.
‘An echo spell?’ Kevin asked, doubt colouring his tone once we’d all said our part.
Captain Montgomery nodded. ‘Cast it on a particular spot and it will reveal visual echoes of anyone who has passed over that place during the previous fourteen hours.’
‘Only fourteen hours?’
‘Every spell has its limits,’ he said mildly.
I shuddered. For the echo spell to work, all you had to do was know where a crime had been committed and cast it in the correct place within half a day; frankly, that was any assassin’s worst possible nightmare. Even an ex-assassin’s.
It was markedly similar to my occasional ability to see ghosts, depending on the skill of the cat whose fur I had used to effect my transformation. But if Montgomery’s ‘ghosts’ were still alive and you could use the echo spell in the place of your choosing...