‘But this is important!’
‘Then let’s hear it.’
‘I can’t—’
‘You can’t discuss that here,’ I said with a sigh. This was getting repetitive. ‘Who are you, again?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I don’t feel comfortable identifying myself to you.’
I looked at the woman in disbelief, then shook my head and started cycling through futures. People react differently to the sound of their own name than to someone else’s. It’s theoretically possible to brute-force these kind of problems by doing one syllable at a time, but it’s time-consuming and quite frankly it’s not worth the effort. It’s much faster to try your mental library of every name that might apply to the person first. One reaction jumped out almost immediately, but the name was unfamiliar. But I must have heard it somewhere if I could be saying it … where had it been? Oh, right. Last night.
Wait. Really?
‘I promise you, it’s absolutely essential that we have this discussion,’ the woman said. ‘If you—’
‘Symmaris,’ I said.
Symmaris jumped. ‘How did you—?’
I just looked at her with raised eyebrows. I always find it odd when I get these reactions. People come here because I’m a diviner, and then they’re surprised when I know more than they tell me. They never seem to think that divination could also work on them.
‘Before you do anything,’ Symmaris began, ‘I think you should be aware that I didn’t come here alone. And there are other people who know where I am. If I don’t return they’ll know why.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘I think that, given your reputation, some precautions aren’t excessive.’
‘And I think that after you sent a bunch of thugs to try and break my bones last night, you aren’t in any position to be lecturing me about precautions.’
‘What?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘So you didn’t send Mr Wolf after me with a couple of goons?’
‘No.’
I looked at her.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ Symmaris said. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Right,’ I said sceptically. I wasn’t feeling terribly well-disposed towards Symmaris right now. ‘So now that we’ve been properly introduced, how about you tell me what this message is.’
‘I told you, I’m not discussing it out here.’
I sighed. ‘Fine,’ I said after a moment. ‘You can come into the shop. Briefly.’
Symmaris drew back. ‘I’m not going into your home with you alone.’
‘For the love of God. Are you serious?’
‘You just told me you believe that I’m out to get you,’ Symmaris said. ‘Given that, I think I’m being very reasonable not to isolate myself with you.’
I stared at Symmaris in disbelief, then shook my head and began to close the door. ‘Wait!’ Symmaris said. ‘The meeting is going to be at the hotel!’
‘I’ve known you for less than ten minutes and you’re already annoying me. I really don’t figure on spending the afternoon with you.’
‘But you have to—!’
I shut the door in Symmaris’s face and walked back to the counter.
There was a knocking on the door. ‘Mage Verus!’ The voice was muffled.
I ignored her and checked the compartment below the counter. The 1911 was still there in its hiding place. I glanced through the futures. No immediate danger, but she didn’t seem to be going away …
Knock knock knock. ‘Mage Verus!’
‘Door’s open,’ I called.
Silence.
‘In or out, Symmaris.’ I dropped down on to the chair behind the counter and leaned back. ‘Your choice.’
There was a pause. I waited. Eventually, the door creaked open. Symmaris took a small step inside and looked around the shop, one hand on the door.
‘Close it behind you, will you?’ I said.
She didn’t move. ‘I should remind you that there are people who know exactly where I am.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You seriously think I’m going to murder you? In broad daylight in the middle of Camden at eleven-thirty on a Sunday morning? If you’re this paranoid, why did you even come?’
‘I wouldn’t have had to if—’
‘Close the door, will you? There’s a draught.’
Symmaris hesitated, then – with obvious reluctance – closed the door behind her. She turned the handle a few times both before and after she did so, checking to see if it would lock. I rolled my eyes.
Symmaris walked forward. She was wearing an impractical-looking pair of high heels that made her sway slightly as she walked, and as she took each step, the tips of the heels clicked on my floor. I stayed sitting in the chair, leaning back against the wall. It was a bad posture for responding to attacks, but I’d already scanned the futures and I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen. People who are considering violence have a distinctive signature in their futures, and from Symmaris’s potential responses, I’d pegged her as the kind who ran away from danger rather than towards it.
Symmaris stopped some distance from the counter. ‘I tried calling your shop,’ she said. ‘It didn’t go through.’
‘I don’t keep the landline plugged in.’ Any number that Symmaris would likely have found would have been a fake one, but I didn’t see any need to inform her of that.
‘You could leave a mobile number.’
‘You’re under the mistaken impression that I want to be answering phone calls from random strangers.’
‘The number I found was from the Council list.’
‘I don’t want to be answering phone calls from the Council, either.’
‘You can’t just do that.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘People know where my shop is. If they can’t be bothered to make the trip to talk to me in person, then it probably wasn’t anything very important.’
‘Well, maybe if you’d been properly listed I wouldn’t have had to ask Redman to go talk to you!’
‘I notice that even you don’t call him “Wolf”,’ I said dryly. ‘But yes, I’m glad you brought up that subject. Why don’t you explain to me why you tried to get those nice young men to “send me a message” by breaking my bones?’
‘I didn’t,’ Symmaris insisted. ‘Yes, he was supposed to be delivering a message, but he was only supposed to talk to you. I specifically told him to talk. And I didn’t tell him anything about bringing anyone else.’
‘Well, congratulations.’ I leaned forward off the wall and clasped my hands in front of me on the desk. ‘You’ve got my attention.’
Symmaris looked at me, then away. She took a step closer to the shelves at the centre of the shop and started nervously fiddling with the crystal balls. ‘I know about Drakh’s operation,’ she said.
‘Oh God.’ I looked skywards. ‘Not you as well.’
‘I’m not going to ask what he’s looking for,’ Symmaris said quickly. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘That makes two of us.’
‘And I’m not saying anything about … any decisions you might or might not have made about getting involved in that.’ Symmaris carefully didn’t look at me. She picked up one of the crystal balls, swapping it with its neighbour so that they were lined up in ascending order of size. She paused, then pushed it a tiny fraction back to bring it into line. ‘I understand it would be very difficult to say no.’
‘I’m not working for Richard.’
‘But you can’t do it.’ Symmaris seemed to brace herself and turned back to me. ‘We can’t afford that. We absolutely can’t afford that. You know how much power Morden’s been getting. He hasn’t even had his seat for a year and he’s more influential than anyone else on the Junior Council. If this keeps going, he’s going to have a Senior Council seat himself. Whatever Drakh is doing, it’s going to increase the power of the Dark mages even further. It can’t go through.’