A Charm of Magpies 03 Flight of Magpies (16 page)

Crane put a hand on Stephen’s tattooed shoulder, pulled him over for a kiss, and felt Stephen’s hands move on him, assertive, confident, loved.

Two for joy. That would do very well indeed.

About the Author

KJ Charles is a commissioning editor by profession and a writer by inclination. She lives in London with her husband, two kids, an out-of-control garden and an increasingly murderous cat.

Follow KJ on Twitter @kj_charles, or find her at
www.kjcharleswriter.com
.

Look for these titles by KJ Charles

Now Available:

A Charm of Magpies

The Magpie Lord

A Case of Possession

Non-Stop Till Tokyo

Think of England

Coming Soon:

A Charm of Magpies linked story

Jackdaw

If you stop running, you fall.

Jackdaw

© 2015 KJ Charles

A
Charm of Magpies
Story

Jonah Pastern is a magician, a liar, a windwalker, a professional thief… and for six months, he was the love of police constable Ben Spenser’s life. Until his betrayal left Ben jailed, ruined, alone, and looking for revenge.

Ben is determined to make Jonah pay. But he can’t seem to forget what they once shared, and Jonah refuses to let him. Soon Ben is entangled in Jonah’s chaotic existence all over again, and they’re running together—from the police, the justiciary, and some dangerous people with a lethal grudge against them.

Threatened on all sides by betrayals, secrets, and the laws of the land, can they find a way to live and love before the past catches up with them?

Warning: Contains a policeman who should know better, a thief who may never learn, Victorian morals, heated encounters, and a very annoyed Stephen Day.

Magic in the blood. Danger in the streets.

A Case of Possession

© 2014 KJ Charles

A Charm of Magpies, Book 2

Lord Crane has never had a lover quite as elusive as Stephen Day. True, Stephen’s job as justiciar requires secrecy, but the magician’s disappearing act bothers Crane more than it should. When a blackmailer threatens to expose their illicit relationship, Crane knows a smart man would hop the first ship bound for China. But something unexpectedly stops him. His heart.

Stephen has problems of his own. As he investigates a plague of giant rats sweeping London, his sudden increase in power, boosted by his blood-and-sex bond with Crane, is rousing suspicion that he’s turned warlock. With all eyes watching him, the threat of exposure grows. Stephen could lose his friends, his job and his liberty over his relationship with Crane. He’s not sure if he can take that risk much longer. And Crane isn’t sure if he can ask him to.

The rats are closing in, and something has to give…

Warning: Contains m/m sex (on desks), blackmail, dark pasts, a domineering earl, a magician on the edge, vampire ghosts (possibly), and the giant rats of Sumatra.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
A Case of Possession:

“Vaudrey! Vaudrey! Crane, I mean.” The visitor peered through the window. “There you are.
Nong hao
.”

“
Nong hao
, Rackham,” said Crane, and went to let him in.

Theo Rackham had been something of a friend in China, as another Englishman who preferred local society to expatriates. Rackham was himself a practitioner of magic, though not a powerful one, and it was he who had introduced Crane to Stephen Day a few months ago.

“This is an unexpected pleasure. How are you?”

Rackham didn’t answer immediately. He was wandering about the room, peering at the maps tacked on the plastered walls. “This is your office? I must say, I’d have thought you’d have somewhere rather better than this.” He sounded almost affronted.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s in Limehouse. You’re rich. Why don’t you act like it? Why aren’t you at grand parties in the West End instead of slaving away in the Limehouse docks?”

“I do act like it, on occasion. This coat wasn’t cut on the Commercial Road. But my business is here, not the City, and certainly not in the West End.”

“I don’t see why you have a business at all. You don’t need any more money.” There was a definite note of accusation in Rackham’s voice.

Crane shrugged. “Frankly, my dear chap, I’m bored, and I would not be less bored in the West End. I need something to do, and trading is what I’m good at.”

“Why don’t you go back to China, then?” Rackham demanded. “If you’re so bored with England, why are you still here?”

“Legal business. My father left his affairs in the devil of a state. It’s taking forever to resolve, and now I’ve got distant cousins popping up out of the woodwork demanding their cut. Why do you care?”

“I don’t.” Rackham scuffed a worn leather toe against the skirting board. “I suppose there’s been no recurrence of your troubles?”

“You mean the matter in spring? No. That’s all resolved.”

“Day dealt with it.”

“He did.” Crane had been afflicted by a curse that had killed his father and brother, and Rackham had put him in touch with Stephen Day, a justiciar, whose job was to deal with magical malpractice. Crane and Stephen had come very close to being murdered themselves before Stephen had ended the matter with a spectacular display of ruthless power. Five people had died that day, and since Crane had no idea if that was general knowledge or something Stephen wanted kept quiet, he simply added, “He was highly efficient.”

Rackham snorted. “Efficient. Yes, you could say he’s that.”

“He saved my life on three occasions over the space of a week,” Crane said. “I’d go so far as to call him competent.”

“You like him, don’t you?”

“Day? He’s a pleasant enough chap. Why?”

Rackham concentrated on straightening some papers against the corner of Crane’s desk. “Well. You were with him at Sheng’s last week.”

“I was,” Crane agreed. “Did you know I’ve taken a thirty percent share there? You must come with me again sometime. Tonight, unless you’ve anything on?”

Rackham, who never turned down free meals, didn’t respond to that. “What did Day make of Sheng’s food?”

Crane repressed a grin at the memory of Stephen’s first encounter with Szechuan pepper. “I think he was rather startled. It didn’t stop him eating. I’ve never met anyone who eats so much.”

“Have you had many meals with him?”

“I’ve bought him a couple of dinners as thanks. Is there a reason you ask? Because really, my dear fellow, if you’re after any particular information, you know him better than I do.”

“I know he’s like you,” Rackham said.

“Like me.” Crane kept his tone easy. “Yes, the resemblance is striking. It’s like looking in a mirror.”

Rackham gave an automatic smile at that. Stephen Day had reddish brown curls to Crane’s sleek and imperceptibly greying light blond, and pale skin to Crane’s weather-beaten tan; he was twenty-nine years old to Crane’s thirty-seven and looked closer to twenty, and mostly, he stood a clear fifteen inches shorter than Crane’s towering six foot three.

“I didn’t mean you look like him,” Rackham said unnecessarily. “I meant…you know. Your sort.” He switched to Shanghainese to clarify, “Love of the silken sleeve. Oh, come off it, Vaudrey. I know he’s a pansy.”

“Really?” This wasn’t a conversation Crane intended to have with Rackham or anyone else. Not in England, not where it was a matter of disgrace and long years in prison. “Are you asking me for my assessment of Day’s tastes? Because I’d say they were none of my damned business or yours.”

“You dined with him at Sheng’s,” repeated Rackham, with a sly look.

“I dine with lots of people at Sheng’s. I took Leonora Hart there a couple of weeks ago, and I defy you to read anything into that. Come to that, I took
you
there and I don’t recall you gave me more than a handshake.”

Rackham flushed angrily. “Of course I didn’t. I’m not your sort.”

“Or my type.” Crane let a mocking hint of lechery into his tone and saw Rackham’s jaw tighten. “But even if you were, my dear chap, I can assure you I wouldn’t tell your business to the world. Now, is there anything I can do for you?”

Rackham took a grip on himself. “I know you, Vaudrey. You can’t play virtuous with me.”

“I don’t play virtuous with anyone. But since Stephen Day’s love life is no concern of mine—”

“I don’t believe you,” said Rackham.

“Did you just call me a liar? Oh, don’t even answer that. I’m busy, Rackham. I’ve got a sheaf of lading bills to reckon up and a factor to catch out. I assume you came here for something other than lubricious thoughts about mutual acquaintances. What do you want?”

Rackham looked away. His sandy hair was greying and his thin face was pouchy and worn, but the gesture reminded Crane of a sulky adolescent.

“I want you to make me a loan.” He stared out of the window as he spoke.

“A loan. I see. What do you have in mind?”

“Five thousand pounds.” Rackham’s voice was defiant. He didn’t look round.

Crane was momentarily speechless. “Five thousand pounds,” he repeated at last.

“Yes.”

“I see,” said Crane carefully. “Well, I’d be the first to admit that I owe you a favour, but—”

“You’re good for it.”

“Not in petty cash.” The astronomical sum mentioned was ten years’ income for a well-paid clerk. “What terms do you have in mind? What security would you offer?”

“I wasn’t thinking of terms.” Rackham turned, but his eyes merely skittered across Crane’s face and away again. “I thought it would be an…open-ended agreement. Without interest.”

Crane kept his features still and calm, but the nerves were firing along his skin, and he felt a cold clench in his gut at what was coming, as well as the first upswell of rage.

“You want me to give you five thousand pounds, which you in effect propose not to pay back? Why would I do that, Rackham?”

Rackham met his eyes this time. “You owe me. I saved your life.”

“The devil you did. You made an introduction.”

“I introduced you to Day. You owe me for that.”

“I don’t owe you five thousand pounds for it.”

“You owe it to me for keeping quiet about you and Day.” Rackham’s lips were rather pale and his skin looked clammy. “We’re not in China now.”

“Let’s be clear. Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“That’s such an ugly word,” said Rackham predictably.

“Then it suits you, you pasty-faced junk-sick turd.” Crane strode forward. He had a good six inches on Rackham, and although he was often described as lean, that was in large part an illusion caused by his height; people tended not to realise how broad-shouldered he was till he was uncomfortably close.

Rackham realised it now and took a step away. “Don’t threaten me! You’ll regret it!”

“I haven’t threatened you, you worthless coward, nor will I. I’ll just go straight to the part where I break your arms.”

Rackham retreated another two steps and held up a hand. “I’ll hurt you first. I’ll ruin Day.” He pointed a trembling finger. “Two years’ hard labour. You might be able to buy your way out of trouble, perhaps, but he’ll be finished. Disgraced. They’ll dismiss him. I’ll destroy him.”

“With what, tales of a dinner at Sheng’s? Go to hell.”

“He goes to your rooms.” Rackham moved to put a chair between himself and Crane. “At night. He came back with you after Sheng’s and didn’t leave till ten the next day, and—”

“You’ve been
spying
on me,” Crane said incredulously. “You contemptible prick.”

“Don’t touch me! I can ruin him, and I will, if you lay a finger on me.”

The faeries at the bottom of the garden are coming back—with an army.

Bomber’s Moon

© 2012 Alex Beecroft

Under the Hill, Part 1

When Ben Chaudhry is attacked in his own home by elves, they disappear as quickly as they came. He reaches for the phone book, but what kind of exterminator gets rid of the Fae? Maybe the Paranormal Defense Agency will ride to his rescue.

Sadly, they turn out to be another rare breed: a bunch of UFO hunters led by Chris Gatrell, who—while distractingly hot—was forcibly retired from the RAF on grounds of insanity.

Shot down in WWII—and shot forward seventy years in time, stranded far from his wartime sweetheart—Chris has been a victim of the elves himself. He fears they could destroy Ben’s life as thoroughly as they destroyed his. Chris is more than willing to protect Ben with his body. He never bargained for his heart getting involved.

Just when they think there’s a chance to build a life together, a ghostly voice from Chris’s past warns that the danger is greater than they can imagine. And it may take more than a team of rank amateurs to keep Ben—and the world—out of the elf queen’s snatching hands…

Warning: Brace yourself for mystery, suspense, sexual tension, elves in space and a nail-biting cliffhanger ending.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Bomber’s Moon:

Ben bolted out of sleep, halfway to his feet before he realised he was awake. What was that noise! Something was wrong—he could feel it pressing under his breastbone. He thought he’d dreamed of a subterranean groan, felt again the rush of sticky re-breathed air and then the smoke. God! The smoke, pouring through the shattered windows of the train…

But this was his bedroom. Look, there—the alarm clock cast a faint green light on the claret duvet and gold silk coverlet, familiar as closed velvet curtains and his suit trousers hanging on the back of the bathroom door. 3:14 a.m.

His breathing calmed slowly. Was that what had woken him? Just another flashback? Or could there be an intruder downstairs?

Tiptoeing to the wardrobe, he eased open the mirrored door, slipped on his dressing gown and belted it, picking up the cricket bat that nestled among his shoes. The closing door showed him his determined scowl—not very convincing on a face that looked as nervous and skinny as a whippet’s. Licking his lips, weapon raised, he seized the handle of his bedroom door, eased it down.

And the sound came again. All the doors in the house fluttered against their frames, the ground beneath him groaned, tiles on the roof above shifting with a ceramic clatter. A crash in the bathroom as the toothbrush holder fell into the sink. He jumped, crying out in revulsion when the floor shuddered and the carpet rippled beneath his bare feet as if stuffed with snakes.

Earthquake! An earthquake in Bakewell? Home of well dressing and famous for pudding? The sheer ludicrousness of the idea flashed through his mind even as he raced down the stairs. You… What did you do in an earthquake? Stand under a door lintel, wasn’t it?

As he reached the living room, it happened again. He clutched at the back of the sofa while the entire house raised itself into the air and fell jarringly down with an impact that threw him against the wall. Bricks moving beneath his fingers, he pulled himself along the still-drying wallpaper into the hall, flung open the front door.

There was blackness outside—the streetlamps all guttered out—and silence, a silence so profound that the pressure began again inside his throat. It was so much like being buried underground. As he strained his ears for something friendly—a barking dog, a car alarm—a wind drove up from the Wye, filling his ears with whispering.

No stars shone above. But in the neighbour’s windows, he could see something silver reflected, something that moved with liquid grace.

No way!

The curve of a horse’s neck traced in quicksilver reflected in a driving mirror. A stamping hoof—drawn out of lines of living frost and spider web—splashed in a puddle. Drops spattered cold over his bare ankles.

Coming up from the river, across the bridge, up the sleeping suburban street they rode, knights and ladies. Glimmering, insubstantial shreds of banners floated above them like icy mist. Harps in their hands, hawks on their fists, and now he could hear the music; it was faint, far away,
wrong
as the feeling that had driven him out of bed. Alien and beautiful as the moons of Saturn.

“No way!”

He clapped both hands over his mouth, but it was too late. The words were out, full of blood and earth and inappropriate, human coarseness. Their heads turned. He caught a glimpse of armour, shadows and silver, as one of the knights reined in his horse, glided close, bending down.

The creature smelled of cool night air. Its inky gaze raked over Ben from head to toe, like being gently stroked with the leaves of nettles, a million tiny electric shocks. His skin crawled with the prickle of it, ecstatic and unbearable, and he gasped, held on the point of a pin between violent denial and begging it to do more.

Long platinum hair slid forward over a face drawn in strokes of starlight. “Which eye do you see me with?”

“I…” croaked Ben, his mouth desiccated, his lungs labouring. “What? I…”

Something in the garden—something huge, covered in spikes, lifted up the house, foundations and all, and shook it like a child’s toy.

“Fuck!”

Terror goaded him into action. Lurching back into the hall, Ben slammed the door, locked it, shot the bolts top and bottom, fumbled the chain into its slide and reached for the phone. Nine-nine-nine got him a brisk, polite young woman saying “What service please?”

Outside, crystalline laughter tinkled in the starless night. The walls flexed like a sheet of rubber. “Police please! I…” …
think I’m being attacked by fairies
.

And everything went quiet. Down the street a burglar alarm brayed into the night. He opened the door a crack to see the streetlamps shining vulgar yellow-orange over a score of double-parked cars. There was, of course, no evidence the creatures he’d seen had ever been there at all. He took a deep breath, decided against setting himself up for a charge of wasting police time, and let it out in surrender. “Never mind.”

“Yes? Was it corporeal, would you say, or etheric?”

Ben rubbed his fingertips over the rough paper and vivid blue ink of the advert in the Yellow Pages. Whatever he had expected from a man who helmed an outfit called The Matlock and District Paranormal Investigation and Defence Agency—MPA for short—this clipped, military baritone was not it.

He’d phoned up in the sheer need to talk to someone who wouldn’t think he was a loony. Hoping, perhaps, for a nice old lady who would invite him round to the shop for a stress-relieving chat about accidental exposure to hallucinogens, and what he could best do to realign his chakras. He didn’t expect to be going over the incident like a mission debriefing with a man whose voice sounded as if it came accompanied by a huge handlebar moustache and a nasty attitude towards what he would undoubtedly call “arse-bandits”.

“Um, ethereal, I suppose. I don’t know, I didn’t…” Perhaps he should have tried to touch? They’d
looked
as substantial as wisps of mist, but what if they were really solid, capable of fading in and out of the visual range of the human eye? “I’ll, um, next time I’ll do tests.”

“Put the kettle on. I’ll be round in fifteen minutes.”

Oh God! Supernatural attacks and suburban disapproval in the space of a single morning.
And
he was late for work. He tucked the phone into his shoulder and rearranged the keys hanging in the key cabinet into order of size.
Not
so that he could more easily find them in the dark, just because it was more pleasing that way. What was he doing, phoning a random bunch of cranks like this anyway? It was a doctor he needed.

“Please, just forget it. I’ll…I expect I was dreaming. I’m sorry to trouble you.”

Putting the phone down Ben wandered into the kitchen. Groggy after a sleepless night, he wiped the table and put out cups and the sugar bowl, opened a packet of biscuits and slid a few onto a plate beside the milk jug. Bright summer sunshine poured into the room, glittering from the gold edges of his dinner service, displayed neatly on the pale oak dresser. The walls gleamed, buttercup yellow, and flecks of silver in the dark granite work surfaces pinged the eye with sparkles. He’d just poured water on the tea leaves and set the pot to steep when the half-expected rat-a-tat-tat came at the door.

Ben sighed. Mr. Matlock Paranormal was certainly living down to his expectations. Ignoring anything he didn’t want to hear? Check. Too manly to use the doorbell? Check.

Straightening his tie, Ben took a deep breath, walked down the hall corridor and opened the door with a touch of defiance. His visitor stood half in the porch’s shadow, half in sunshine, backlit by the strong summer light, and for a moment all Ben could process was tawny gold and earth colours. Then the man stepped forward into the shade—a tall fellow with sandy, spiky blond hair, an air of athleticism, and an open, confident face made quirky by a nose once broken, set slightly askew.

He held out his hand. “Wing Commander Gatrell. Call me Chris.”

It was worse than Ben had imagined. Military
and
hot. A combination that spelled trouble at the best of times—and this was very much not the best of times.

“How d’you do.” He made sure his handshake was firm and brief. “And, well, what do you do, exactly?”

The Yellow Pages lay open beside the phone. Gatrell nodded at the advert without looking away from Ben. “We do exactly what it says. Investigate and defend against the paranormal.”

“Who’re you going to call: Dambusters?”

Gatrell gave him a startled, piercing look before forcing a chuckle that revealed the beginnings of laughter lines around his eyes. “I hear the Ghostbusters one twice a day on average, but that’s new. Not bad.” He shrugged off his tweed jacket and hung it up on a coat hook without asking, as if he were in his own home. “I should paint it on the car. Give me a hand in with the equipment.”

Doesn’t include “please” in his vocabulary
, Ben thought, to distract himself from the sight of the man bending down to bring a Geiger counter and something that looked like a short-wave radio with extra tubes out of the boot of his shabby white Volvo. Suggesting he was a man whose fashion sense had been formed by the Famous Five books, the wing commander wore olive-drab moleskin trousers, his lighter green shirt tucked in and topped with a beige-and-russet knitted tank top.

“Take this.” Gatrell dropped a grey scuffed device into Ben’s hands. “As we’re here, we’ll do the outside first. Walk round the house, tell me if it beeps.”

Ducking his head over the scanner, watching the needle tremble as he passed the yew arch his father had spent so much time clipping, Ben allowed himself a small smile. It was good, after a long night spent terrified to look out of the window, not to be alone any more. He knew himself well enough to realise that if he had really believed last night’s incident was a mere hallucination, he
would
have called the doctor. The fact that he had not done so meant that, on some level, he believed what he had seen was real. He could bear a little contempt, surely, if it brought with it the flesh-and-blood company of another human being. Particularly one who just might know what to do next.

A noise disturbed his thoughts. In his hands the grey box vibrated, the needle flickered between red and black fast as a snake’s tongue. As he approached the corner of the new extension, the machine’s buzz became a beep and then a shriek.

“Aha.” Gatrell appeared at his shoulder, checked the readings against his own and gave Ben a triumphant grin. “Inside, then.”

Going indoors, they walked carefully together around each room, scanning the walls. Ben’s apprehension returned as Gatrell’s clear, observant gaze took in every detail of his life from the thousands of CDs to the sheet music, perfectly squared up, on its stand.

“You keep it nice.”

Was it a compliment or a hidden jibe? Ben tightened his grip on the whatever-it-was meter and scowled. “I like neat. Don’t expect me to apologise for not being slovenly.”

Gatrell paused in front of the bookshelf full of gay fiction. As he browsed the titles, Ben waited for the inevitable recoil, waited for him to angrily demand the machine back, invent some spurious excuse to walk out the door, leaving Ben to fight the underworld alone.
Oh, here it comes.
He swallowed hard, bracing himself. But Gatrell just drew a sergeant-majorly fingertip over the top shelf, raised a sandy eyebrow at the complete lack of dust and said, “You’ll make someone a lovely wife.”

Damn you!
Ben thought, feeling more bitterly stabbed than the little jibe really merited.
Get out of my house
.

The retort,
Why, Wing Commander, I didn’t know you were interested
,
formed in his mouth. Before he could say it, Gatrell had opened the door, gone through into the newly built living room, and Ben’s anger and sarcasm was foiled. The moment during which he could say something without making it into a big issue passed in silence, leaving him fragile and resentful and looking for trouble.

As Ben came into the room, Gatrell opened the side panel of the bay window and leaned through, looking out at where Castle Road made a sudden swerve, just outside Ben’s front garden. Closing the window, he turned round and brushed his hands on his trousers. “I believe you.”