The Apprenticeship of Julian St. Albans (33 page)

CHAPTER 20

The
next morning, Alys made them all a hearty breakfast, and then they took their
cups out to the living room to play more cards. They taught Jones the Guardian
card game, which was well-suited to a morning full of phone calls and
interruptions, since he declared himself tired of losing at gin.

Julian
sighed and stood up, laying his hand of cards face down. “I’m just
gonna,” Julian gestured toward the front of the flat.

“All
this tea,” said Jacques, sympathetic. “You’ll start a flood.”

Julian
chuckled, and walked to the door. “It’ll be fine,” he said, though he
wasn’t sure of it even as he said it, with five humans and one little bathroom.
His feet took him around the couch and toward the front of the flat.

Julian
walked to the door, and paused with his hand on the door handle. Julian’s brow
knit, because there was something wrong, some reason he couldn’t open the door.
His hands moved up to take off the chain, undo the deadbolt. He was sure what
he wanted was just on the other side.

Jacques
said, “Stop!” He had to struggle to get off the couch, feet caught up
in the blanket Julian had abandoned.

Julian
slipped through the door, closing it after himself, surprised to find he was in
the hall outside their flat.

“That’s
a good poppet,” said a voice to his right.

Julian
turned and saw a familiar older man holding a paperback-sized doll made of
witch grass and bindweed, wrapped in scraps of cloth and topped with a lock of
familiar auburn hair. Julian found himself walking to the elevator with him,
hearing sounds behind him as the Guardians struggled with a door that wouldn’t open.

“Hurry
up, poppet, that won’t hold them long,” he said, reaching out and grabbing
Julian’s wrist. Julian got a flood of information through the contact, images
of a dying tree, of the lab at the Agency, of himself in Lapointe’s office
looking oddly distorted and glowing with health and life. By the time he
managed to clear his vision, they were in the parking lot, walking toward a car
with its trunk open.

“Oh,
no, no way,” said Julian, even as his feet drew him forward.

“Sleep,
little poppet,” said the man, doing something with the doll.

The
world went black.

CHAPTER 21

Julian
woke all at once to find himself sitting in the middle of a parking lot not too
far from their apartment. His limbs felt heavy and distant, and his head muzzy,
so Julian started by using his eyes and ears. The little lot was hidden behind
a couple of for-rent storefronts, but he knew the landmarks around them well
enough to orient himself. Dirt and trash had been swept to one side of the
cracked pavement, and Julian sat propped up against the side of the man’s car,
posed like an awkward doll. The sun didn’t seem to have travelled much toward
noon, so he didn’t think he’d been out long, and he could hear the sounds of
the city nearby, people bustling through their morning with no idea of what was
going on.

Julian
finally recognised the man as the cranky customer who’d made Julian carry his
box of plants out to his car. Julian felt like an idiot for not realising
sooner that he’d been after Julian’s hair, and not his wallet. The man was
mumbling to himself as he worked in one corner of the lot, the grass doll set
to one side as he fiddled with the potted plants he was setting out in no order
that Julian could discern.

Julian
found that he could move his body a little, but any attempt to go too fast or
stand up made him dizzy. He didn’t have his phone on him; it had been on the
table after Father Stephen had called to check up on them. He didn’t even have
proper shoes, just his house slippers and the dressing gown that was already
too warm out here under the August sunshine. He was obscurely glad that Alys
had taken his hedgehog slippers for repair, and he hoped he’d live long enough
to wear them again.

Well,
he couldn’t do much about what he didn’t have, so Julian assessed instead what
he did have. He had some movement; he had his new amulet; he had the energy
reserves they’d all given him yesterday and today; and he had his new,
broadened magic sense.
 

Julian
put that sense to work, sending his attention inward first, trying to feel the
place where the controlling magic was sneaking past the amulet and his own
meagre defences. He found and gathered up all the magic that was not-him,
identifying each little bit of otherness and trying to layer it as it had been
during his purification. He surrounded his heart’s magic with the feeling of
Alex, and had everyone else radiating outward in thinner and sparser layers
while he looked for the thing that wasn’t from any of his friends.

It
was hard work to manipulate magic that wasn’t his own without taking the time
to make it his own. After a seemingly endless amount of concentration,
something unexpected happened. The shells of not-his-magic solidified enough to
form a true barrier between his own magic and the world, and he felt the
controlling spell fall away like cutting the strings on a marionette. Life
flooded back into his numb limbs, and his head began to clear.

Julian
immediately opened his eyes and looked over at his kidnapper, but the man paid
him no attention at all, instead making minute adjustments in the arrangement
of his pots. Julian took a moment to fix the configuration of magics inside him
as best he could, and then he sent his senses out in little tendrils like
roots, searching for anything that might help him. He felt the little doll
trying to latch onto one of the tendrils and he pulled that one back, only to
have another one get zapped by a jolt of power so pure it was like plunging his
hand into a frozen lake.

That
zap was enough to push the last of the spell-fog away from his senses, and
Julian gathered his strength and pushed off the car, running through the
pattern the man was making, snatching up the doll and scattering the plants.
Julian had a flash of guilt as he kicked his way through the pots, zigzagging
to avoid the grasping hands of his kidnapper. Julian pushed his worry for the
plants aside and concentrated on running flat out toward the corner of the
parking lot that looked most like an exit.
 

His
slippers slapped against the cracked pavement, barely padding Julian’s feet
against the jarring run, but he didn’t slow or look back, instead rabbiting
back and forth to try to evade any pursuit. He heard cursing and more smashing
behind him, and he wished he hadn’t been so drained lately. As if in answer to
that, he got another jolt of that cold, pure energy that put a little more
speed in his step. He made it across the parking lot, which had seemed a lot
smaller when he started running, and dashed into the alley between buildings,
only to come up against an old-fashioned iron gate with a brand new chain and
padlock on it.

Julian
kept his grip on the doll, turning to see if his kidnapper would pursue him
down the alley. He didn’t dare try to climb the gate if the man was right
behind him, wishing not for the first time that he was more Alex’s lanky height
than his own smaller stature. A clatter made Julian turn back and look up.

“Horace!
You wonderful creature, you,” said Julian, stuffing the little grass
figure into his pocket. “I wish you could pick locks, but at least you can
tell the others where I am.”

Horace
gave Julian a look, and Julian got a clear burst of pride with a touch of
slyness as he flew down to the chain and stuck his metal beak into the lock.
There was a little twitter, a burst of magic, and a click, and the lock came
open.

“Oh,
you are the most useful bird in the world,” said Julian, undoing the lock
and chain as fast as he could.

“Oh,
no you don’t, poppet!” came the kidnapper’s voice, but Julian and Horace
slipped out of the gate before he could reach them. Julian ran, Horace flying
ahead, finding himself on a quiet side street with busy foot traffic just a
short way away on the main thoroughfare, going into and out of the Underground
station. He heard the gate creaking behind him, the chain rattling to the
ground, but he kept running flat out, hoping his pursuer wouldn’t follow him
into the crowd.

Julian
made a mental note to do more training with Lapointe, finding it much harder to
sprint a second time. He could hear pursuing footsteps behind him, coming
closer. The sidewalk here was slightly uneven, and he had to pay attention to
where he was putting his feet, feeling the magic in his protection charm
working overtime to keep him upright. It finally gave out when fingers closed over
the back of his robe and he tripped, letting out a shout of pain as his knee
and hand impacted with the unforgiving concrete.

Julian
struggled, kicking out, yelling for help and trying to keep the pocket with its
precious doll away from the man’s grabbing hands.

“I’ll
make use of you yet, poppet, you’ve not spoiled it all,” he said as he
tried to force Julian upright, using his superior weight and reach to overcome
the rather pathetic resistance Julian was able to muster, after his two
exhausting sprints. “No one here will mind about you, no one ever minds in
the city, they mind their own business and let everything else go to rot.”
The man’s voice was vicious at the end of his tirade, full of old anger.

“A
few of us still pay attention,” said an unfamiliar voice, and Julian took
advantage of his captor’s moment of surprise to slip away, stumbling
pathetically to his feet. A uniformed police officer was standing in front of
him with Horace on his shoulder, and Julian felt a huge flood of relief when he
saw the man had a gun pointed squarely at the kidnapper.

“Please,
he kidnapped me, you have to help,” said Julian. “Call Agent Lapointe
or…”

“It’s
okay,” said the officer. “You’re Julian St. Albans, your description
just went out and,” he paused to chuckle, “your bird’s, too.” He
took one hand off his gun to talk into his radio. “This is Green, I have
St. Albans and his bird, need assistance at Dwyer just off Shaftesbury.”

Julian
shuffled until he was behind the officer, his knee aching something fierce,
hand cradled against his body. “Horace, can you find Alex for me?” he
asked, feeling quite piteous. “I need my Alex.”

Horace
twittered and hopped over to rub against Julian’s cheek, then launched himself
into the sky, heading unerringly toward home.

“Hands
on your head,” said Officer Green, shifting back to the two-handed grip on
his gun. “That’s it, now kneel, slowly.”

Julian
watched as the older man knelt, looking angry but somehow more sane than he had
before, as if he was pulling all the strangeness inside him and putting on a
cloak of normalcy. “Who are you?” asked Julian, frustrated.

The
kidnapper laughed. “You’ll see, it’ll be harder than you think to make
anything stick to me.”

A
small crowd was gathering behind them, people having finally noticed the drama,
and Julian turned warily to watch their backs while Green kept the kidnapper in
his sights. Julian lit up and cried out, “Alex!” when he saw the two
Guardians and his beanpole of a boyfriend trying to push through. “James,
Jacques, help him.”

“We
will,” said James, slipping through and coming up to stand beside the
officer. “I’m James, this is Jacques, we’re here for our Charge.”

“Good,”
said Green, lowering his gun and shaking out his hand while James and Jacques
drew their own in eerie synch. “I’ll cuff him.”

“Be
careful, he’s very good at magical subversion,” said Jacques.

Julian
largely ignored the end of their drama, letting Alex sweep him up and kiss him
softly. “I thought I’d lost you,” said Alex softly. “Are you
okay?”

“I
hurt my knee and my hand when I tripped,” said Julian, “but the
spell’s broken, I have the doll so he can’t control me with it again.”

Officer
Green put handcuffs on the man, helping him stand, and Alex’s attention snapped
to him. “Fenway?” said Alex in a tone of disbelief.

“So
you do remember the little people,” said Fenway with a sneer. “Too
bad you never looked under your nose before I damaged your little poppet.”

“You
know him?” asked Julian, snuggling up to Alex’s side, careful not to take
anything but comfort from him, in case his own magic was still tainted somehow.

“He’s
one of the crime scene techs, you might have seen him around the Agency,”
said Alex distractedly.

“Oh!
I did, I met him in Lapointe’s office, that day I went in to deal with Fischer without
you.” He could only vaguely remember it, muttered words and a limp
handshake, but that explained why the man’s face had seemed doubly familiar.
“He was at the greenhouse the one day I worked, too, that’s when he got my
hair.”

“I
remember seeing his name in the receipts,” said Alex thoughtfully.
“He actually got a quicker pass than me, since he bought after the murders
instead of before.”

Fenway
snorted. “Who do you think kept putting people on your trail?” he
said.

James
came over to see Julian, while Jacques helped Officer Green escort Fenway to a
police car. “How’d you get away?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

“I’ll
need to see someone about my knee and hand,” said Julian, holding up his
scraped palm, “but I don’t think anything’s broken. Horace helped me
escape, I didn’t know you’d taught him to pick locks!”

Alex
looked sheepish. “Only mundane ones, and don’t say that too loudly, it’s
not really very legal,” he said, looking around. More police had arrived,
and a pair of paramedics were pushing through the crowd toward their little
tableau. “Let’s get you looked at.” Alex smirked, then swept Julian
up in his arms and carried him over to the parked ambulance, where he used a
spell to hold the doors open at the right angle to give them a little more privacy
from the onlookers.

James
set himself up to guard them, and soon enough Jacques joined him, the two of
them looking serious and dangerous. Only someone who knew them would see the
slight chagrin in their faces at having let their Charge get kidnapped in the
first place. Alex hovered just out of the way of the paramedics, holding
Julian’s uninjured right hand and humming his favourite diagnostic tune. Julian
felt the warm little trickle that said Alex was looking him over quite
thoroughly indeed, and it relaxed him while the apologetic emergency med tech
pulled gravel out of his hand with tweezers.

Julian’s
knee garnered rather more concern, as the thin silk of his pyjamas hadn’t
protected it at all, and it had taken the brunt of his weight when he fell.

“I
think we’re going to have to take you in for an x-ray,” said the tech
apologetically. “I’ll get the gravel out before we go, but it’s already
swelling more than I’d expect if it’s just a scrape.”

Julian
sighed. “Who all can fit in the ambulance?” he asked, gesturing with
his now-bandaged hand to Alex, James and Jacques.

“Oh,”
she laughed. “Um, I think everyone, since it’s non-emergency, if the big
one rides in front.”

“It’s
protocol for one of us to, anyway,” said Jacques, voice rich with amusement.
“Not that there’s a big risk of attack from the front with Fenway off to
jail, but that’s how it’s usually done.”

Soon
enough the gravel was out and a saline-soaked pad laid over the top, and
everyone climbed in the ambulance while Alex sent a number of texts and calls,
and Julian awkwardly sent a few more of his own. The damage had mostly been to
the meat of his palm, which made it hard to hold the phone, but he managed to
alert Geoff and Thomas to the goings-on by sending a photo of his hand first as
an excuse for typos.

Julian
had been concentrating so hard on his own messages that he was surprised to
find Dr. Chesterfield waiting for them at the ambulance entrance, looking
concerned. “It seems I get to treat your body as well as your magic today,
Julian. Alex, there’s already an order for you with the apothecary, if you’ll
just go down and donate.”