My blood came alive with the first sip of coffee, senses sharpening like a camera lens. I saw every misty puff of breath; every pockmark on the pavement; every thread of broken glass in the bus-stop windshields. I even saw two sparrows fighting over scraps, fat and dishevelled from years of gorging on overflowing rubbish bins. The victor took wing with a stale McDonald's chip clamped in its beak, and all was right with the world.
I made a point of stepping on every crack in concrete I came across, chanting the old childhood rhyme in my head. Step on a crack and you'll break your mother's back!
How easily such a curse would solve all of my problems.
Ruben quickened his step. I thought he was trying to get away from me at first, until he seized my elbow and dragged me along with him. Coffee splashed over my fingers, scalding hot. I glared at him as I sucked it off, waving my hand to cool the burn.
"We're running late because of your coffee stop," he said. "We're going to have to take a shortcut."
I snorted. Some apology. "What do you have in mind?"
Ruben veered left, into a side-street. "You'll see."
We ducked around a row of colourful wheelie bins and turned down another street, narrower and dirtier than the last. The roads back here were made from grimy cobblestone, but every so often one of the bricks was painted gold.
A chill passed over me, like the sun had gone behind the clouds. Soon there were more metallic bricks than normal ones, and the walls transitioned from concrete limits on my vision to a gallery of stone canvases. I found myself oddly entranced by one particular mural, which depicted a forest made entirely from flags. The canopy was comprised of colourful banners, bearing the badges of nations great and small; known and unfamiliar; arcing in an imagined breeze so perfectly executed it looked as though someone had stitched the very wind into the wall.
But it was so far from Hosier Lane; from anywhere that tourists could chance upon the artwork to admire it, take pictures of it, only to print them for free and sell them for a premium. It was mind-boggling to think that someone had created something so breathtaking without financial or egotistical incentive, with no resources save spray paint and patience.
We turned down another street, and another. The only constant was a mustard-yellow clocktower that peeked over the roofs of nearby buildings, but I soon realised that every time we turned a corner it presented a new face. Slowly, like the sun struggling to make itself known through city smog, it dawned on me that our journey made no navigational sense.
"What is this place?" I asked, suspicion leaking into my voice. "It smacks of magic."
"Observant," Ruben remarked, but it was a snide compliment at best. "It's a corridor, as far as I can tell. A kind of cache, if you will."
"There are different kinds of caches?" I didn't even try to disguise my bewilderment.
"Of course," he said, as if it was common sense. "Think of the Mother Dimension — our dimension — as the world above the ground. Now think of caches as tunnels, dug under the surface of the earth to create new spaces, adjacent but hidden from plain sight."
"I think I'm following..."
"Good," Ruben said, mistakenly taking my words at face value. "A normal cache is like a basement, with only one way in or out. A corridor cache, on the other hand, has two access points. Thus it creates a tunnel between two different locations in the Mother Dimension. And then, of course, there crossroads, courtyards, mazes..."
I tuned him out, unable to take it all in at once. It was clearer than ever that I'd missed out on a fascinating and comprehensive education by forsaking the Incantum and all of the freelance instructors even remotely associated with the institution.
"Ruben," I began, casting aside my now-empty coffee cup in favour of tapping him on the shoulder. "Are you a cache mage? You seem to know a lot about —"
"Hold that thought," he said abruptly, increasing his pace — again.
This time I had to jog to keep up. "What's wrong?" I huffed. He looked even more emotionally constipated than usual.
"We're being followed," he said softly. "Try not to give us away. That means — no, Nora," he chastised, slinging an arm around my shoulders and drawing me close. "Don't look back. Look ahead. Do what I do."
I didn't like being told what to do on principle, but I also didn't mind the solid brace of Ruben's body or the warmth he emanated. I decided to humour his attempt to shepherd me and trained my eyes on the path ahead. He smelled good, but in a surprisingly aromatic way — like he burned incense at home. How a ophisticated. It was intriguing to think he might indulge in, well, anything; particularly given his inclination towards practicality.
We made a left turn, then a right turn, and then another left. The same pattern we'd been following since we stepped into the cache. I frowned, gleaning that corridor caches didn't have to be a straight run from one access point to another. Would I even be able to find my way out if Ruben and I got separated? Just how big was this pocket dimension, anyway?
Big enough that no one would be able to hear me scream.
Ruben slowed down, angling our bodies to the left, as if to linger in appreciation of one painting in particular. I blinked away my thoughts, taking in what I could only describe as a breathtaking masterpiece. A sinuous dragon wound around the metal fire scape, so life-like I thought it might leap off the brick wall at any moment. It scales were flowing lava, its eyes like twin fulls, baleful and yellow and full of ancient secrets.
I shuddered, feeling the absence of Ruben's warmth as he pulled away to climb the stairs. When I tried to follow, he grabbed my shoulder and pinned me in place with a stern look. "They need to think we've moved on from this area or they won't round the corner," he whispered. "I'll trick them into thinking we've walked up the stairs. You wait here."
I waved him on, leaning against the handrail. The metal structure shuddered with his movements until he presumably reached the roof, when the vibrations ceased altogether.
The quiet crept into my thoughts like a spider, unassuming at first, only to seize my heart when I noticed it. Ruben's plan was logical, because it allowed us to confront our mysterious stalker on our own terms, but I couldn't help but feel that he'd abandoned me for a safer vantage. Sure, we'd known each other for months; he was in the year above me at the Incantum, and we had a profitable arrangement at Superstition, but how well did I know him really? Enough to trust him with my safety?
No, I realised grimly, chewing on my already-tattered thumbnail. He was Chance Nightshade's lackey, and he'd shown this morning that he was willing to deliver threats on my mother's behalf; anything that would effectively manipulate me into doing the City Alpha's bidding. I'd been a fool to drop my guard, to allow my senses to wander around him.
After all, crooned that horrid voice from the past, only I can keep you safe, Honora.
A dragging, shuffling step announced the stalker's arrival. His wingtip shoes were utterly shredded, and his drab suit strained around his figure like an overfilled tortilla. The hair on his upper lip, coarse and dark as the bristles of a broom, tried in vain to make up for the lack of hair on his scalp.
The stranger froze, fixing two pale, beady eyes on my form. "Oh good," he said. "You're alone."
"That's not sinister at all," I muttered, reaching for the second sight. It was like transitioning from day to night; everything grew dark and obscure, save for a few bright points of light that marked the proximity of living organisms, like birds and rats. To my dismay, Ruben had vanished without a trace; he wasn't waiting in the rafters like I'd envisioned, ready to leap to my defence at a moment's notice. He wasn't anywhere for miles around.
I was on my own. And there was something drastically wrong with the stalker's aura.
His life force was stagnant, like the filthy puddles that formed beneath alleyway dumpsters. Whereas Ruben emanated a sense of calm and clarity at all times, the stalker was devoid of even that. There wasn't so much as a sliver of colour, an eddy of emotion, to suggest that he was a living, thinking, feeling or learning creature.
There certainly wasn't anything I could harvest to use against him. Raising my hands in the age-old gesture of surrender, I started backing away.
My instincts were bang-on; the man pulled a kitchen knife from the inner lapel of his suit. "Stay still," he instructed, raising the knife high above his head.
His expression was utterly apathetic, as if he was about to dice carrots instead of a teenage girl. I continued backing away, knowing that if I turned around I'd find the knife in my back.
"I said still."
"What's the magic word?" I asked, trying to keep a tight lid on my fear.
"If that will ensure your compliance. Stand still, please."
My back hit the wall and the lid peeled away. He was so close now I could see a yellowing singlet between the bulging buttons of his shirt. There were craters in his nose, hinting at a history of acne that had since cleared up, and I could hear the air whistling in and out of his open mouth. The gaps in his teeth. The dull gleam in his eyes.
The flashing steel as the knife as it came down.