Alex Verus 5: Hidden Read online

  Praise for

  CHOSEN

  “Jacka puts other urban fantasists to shame . . . A stellar blend of thoughtful philosophy and explosive action populated by a stereotype-defying diverse cast.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Wonderfully atmospheric and emotionally gripping.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “A creative, action-packed, and highly entertaining novel with a bit of everything for everyone.”

  —Bibliophilic Book Blog

  “The most powerful and emotionally gripping entry into the series . . . Jacka has visibly grown as an author over this series, and I am thrumming with anticipation for what comes next.”

  —Fantasy Book Review

  “Alex Verus is a quick-thinking, street-smart, butt-kicking machine who is also funny, kindhearted, bold, and noble. If you haven’t met him yet, you need to get on that pronto!”

  —Candace’s Book Blog

  TAKEN

  “The action is fast and smart, playing with thriller conventions so that while readers get excitement, they also are encouraged to think about what magic might mean in human terms. A superb book in an outstanding, provocative series.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Tons of fun and lots of excitement in this fast-paced thriller . . . [Benedict Jacka] writes well, often with the ability to bring places to life as much as his characters, especially the city of London.”

  —SF Site

  “This series rocks . . . The characters are well crafted, the story well written, and each book filled to the brim with nonstop action. [A] must-read.”

  —Whatchamacallit Reviews

  “Jacka skillfully balances action and suspense with a smooth flow that results in rapid page-turning.”

  —Bitten by Books

  CURSED

  “[Alex Verus is] definitely a protagonist with whom one can relate. The whole concept of a diviner is a new twist in the realm of magic, and I’m curious to see what Jacka will do next.”

  —SF Site

  “An even more impressive tale of gunplay and spellcraft in present-day London . . . Readers will savor this tasty blend of magic, explosions, and moral complexity.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A wonderfully fun, action-packed story with witty dialogue, making it another great installment for the Alex Verus series . . . A wonderfully witty and smart hero who’s actually pretty awesome in a fight.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “Benedict Jacka is a master storyteller . . . A brilliant urban fantasy that is so professionally polished and paced that you barely remember to come up for air . . . Fun and action-packed but now bigger, angrier, and absolutely nuts. I loved it.”

  —Fantasy Faction

  “An action-packed, magic-fueled story . . . Captivated me from start till finish and had a complex mystery that you could really get into.”

  —Under the Covers Book Blog

  “Fun and exciting . . . Jacka lays another strong foundation for this fledgling series that has the potential to become something huge.”

  —Whatchamacallit Reviews

  FATED

  “Harry Dresden would like Alex Verus tremendously—and be a little nervous around him. I just added Benedict Jacka to my must-read list . . . An excellent novel, a gorgeously realized world with a uniquely powerful, vulnerable protagonist. Books this good remind me why I got into the storytelling business in the first place.”

  —Jim Butcher, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Benedict Jacka writes a deft thrill ride of an urban fantasy—a stay-up-all-night read.”

  —Patricia Briggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “[An] extremely promising urban fantasy series starter . . . Jacka deftly invents the rules of magic as he goes along, creating an emotionally satisfying story arc and a protagonist who will keep readers coming back.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Benedict Jacka will become a favorite for fans of Jim Butcher, Simon Green, and/or John Levitt. His recipe for success combines believable and well-developed characters, lots of action, enough suspense to keep one up all night, and a new twist on magic . . . Fated is one of the strongest first books in a series I’ve read in a long time.”

  —SF Site

  “An excellent example of not just great urban fantasy but also of brilliant storytelling. There is a near-perfect mix of everything, and it has been masterfully crafted with a meticulous eye for those pieces of humanity that make a great protagonist and a fantastic story.”

  —Fantasy Faction

  “Benedict Jacka gives us a new, gritty hero in Fated, which is an excellent start to what looks like a thrilling new urban fantasy series.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “[Fated] has everything I love about an urban fantasy: action, magic, an interesting new world, and a character that I really liked.”

  —Under the Covers Book Blog

  Ace Books by Benedict Jacka

  FATED

  CURSED

  TAKEN

  CHOSEN

  HIDDEN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  HIDDEN

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Benedict Jacka.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-60943-9

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / September 2014

  Cover photographs: fire 1 © Ivan Cholakov / iStockphoto / Thinkstock; birds © gioadventures/iStockphoto/Thinkstock; fire 2 © Excentro/iStockphoto/Thinkstock; London © Sarah Jarrett / Arcangel Images.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  contents

  Praise for Benedict Jacka

  Ace Books by Benedict Jacka

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

>   Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  chapter 1

  Russell Square is one of the odder areas of London. Squeezed between Euston Road to the north and Holborn to the south, it doesn’t have enough shops to be commercial and it doesn’t have enough houses to be residential. Instead it has a mix of universities and hotels, rich tourists and poor students rubbing shoulders in the busy streets. It’s supposed to be “literary,” associations from the old Bloomsbury group, though given that you’d have to be a millionaire to own property there nowadays I doubt you’ll find many artists living in the place.

  What Russell Square does have a lot of is education: English-language schools for the expats, colleges for the students, and the British Museum for everyone. It was one of the colleges I’d come for, a long hulking brown-and-beige cinderblock called the Institute of Education, and as I approached I reflexively scanned ahead, searching for danger. I didn’t find anything and I didn’t expect to, but for some reason I found myself hesitating as I drew level with the front doors. For a moment I thought about turning away, then shook my head in annoyance and headed inside.

  My name’s Alex Verus and I’m a probability mage, aka a diviner. I train an apprentice, do contract work for other mages, and run a magic shop in Camden when I’m not otherwise occupied with personal problems or with people trying to hurt me, the second of which happens more often than I’d like. I’m good friends with a handful of mages and one giant spider, and less good friends with the magical government of Britain, otherwise known as the Light Council. The Council don’t like me for two reasons: first, they think I was originally taught by a particularly nasty Dark mage named Richard Drakh and did various unpleasant things while serving as his apprentice, and second, they suspect me of being responsible for the deaths of two Light mages on separate occasions a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it just so happens that both of those suspicions are true.

  That wasn’t the reason I was here today, though.

  As with most British universities the security at the Institute of Education is nonexistent, and I walked past the reception desk and descended into a big square concrete well with big square concrete pillars and big square ugly paintings. A sign at the bottom said LOGAN HALL, but instead of going straight in I veered left. The entry area narrowed into a corridor with few doors or windows. To my right I could hear a voice echoing, but I kept working my way around the edge of the hall, climbing occasional small flights of steps. Only when I’d circled to the back of the hall did I look through one of the doors.

  The hall was a huge auditorium, faded red seats in semicircular rows slanting down to a raised wooden stage. There were hundreds of people seated within, but the one I was interested in was the man on the stage. He was standing on the podium delivering a lecture, and behind him was a projection screen that read European Integration in Historical Perspective. It was his voice I’d heard from outside.

  I hadn’t opened the door, but there were wired-glass windows set into the wood that gave a good view inside, and I stood quietly, watching the man. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with a stooped posture and hair that had gone nearly but not quite all the way to silvery white. At a glance the two of us wouldn’t have looked much alike, but there was something in his features of my own, aged and tempered. He hadn’t seen me—the corridor was darker than the brightly lit hall and I knew the lights inside would reflect off the window glass. I could have opened the door to step inside, but I stayed where I was.

  I’d been standing there for maybe five minutes when a soft noise caught my attention. Different movements make different sounds—the steady tread of someone walking, the scrape of shifting feet, the patter of someone in a hurry—and with practice you can learn to filter them, picking out the ones that don’t fit in. It’s nothing to do with magic, just simple awareness, a primal skill that anyone can learn but which most people in the modern age have forgotten. But anyone who lives as a predator or as prey learns it fast.

  The sound I’d heard was the sound of someone trying to stay quiet and hidden, and I stepped quietly into the cover of the doorway, one hand moving to the hilt of the knife beneath my coat. The doorway blocked line of sight, hiding me from anyone behind or ahead. It blocked my view, too . . . but I don’t need a view to see.

  The corridor was empty and ordinary, pale walls and faded blue carpet. But to my sight, it was a branching spread of possible futures, lines of light forking and multiplying in the darkness. In each possible future I took a different action, moved a different way, and in every one of them my future self changed to match it: thousands of futures, branching into millions and billions. I picked out two of the delicate strands of light and focused on them, letting them strengthen and grow. In one I stepped out of hiding and turned left; in the other I moved right. My future selves walked away from me and as they did I watched, guiding the possible futures to keep myself walking down the corridor, seeing what my future eyes would see. The right-hand self found nothing. The left-hand self heard a scuffle of movement. The left-hand branches multiplied, dividing, and I guided my future self down the path, where he chased after the sound. More futures branched out, and as they did I recognised a familiar element, a signature. I moved closer to look—

  —and suddenly I knew who was following me. The instant that I did, the future wavered and faded into nothingness; now that I knew who it was, I had no reason to walk down there to find out. Physically carrying out all the possible actions I’d just run through would have taken the best part of a minute, but divination works at the speed of thought and the only limit on what you can do is how clearly and quickly you can focus. From beginning to end the whole thing had taken me less than a second.

  From down the corridor I heard another stealthy movement. I’d kept quite still as I’d used my magic, and my pursuer had no way to know that I was there. Cautious footsteps advanced up the corridor. I waited, letting them approach, then stepped out into view, the fingers of my right hand flicking forward.

  The girl who’d been following me jumped back. She was wearing jeans and a light green top and as soon as she saw me she started moving, but the metal disc I’d thrown bounced off her stomach before she could get out of the way. She began to drop into a stance, her right hand going to the small of her back.

  “No use going for a weapon,” I told her. “You’re dead.”

  With a sigh Luna dropped her arm and straightened. “How long did you know I was there?”

  Luna is half English and half Italian, with fair skin, wavy light brown hair, and a lot more confidence than she used to have. She’s an adept rather than a mage, the bearer of an ancient family curse which protects her at the expense of killing anyone who gets too close, and she’s been my apprentice for around two years. Nowadays her control’s developed to the point where being around her is almost safe, as long as you don’t touch her. “If you’re going to make a habit of shadowing mages,” I said, “you’ll have to get better at dodging.”

  “Yes, oh master,” Luna said resignedly, bending to pick up the thing I’d thrown at her. It had been a one-pound coin, and as her fingers touched it I saw the silver-grey mist of her curse engulf it. As she did, she shot a quick glance at the door behind me, trying to see what was inside.

  I rolled my eyes inwardly. “Come on, upstairs,” I said, starting back towards the stairwell. The voice of the lecturer continued from behind me, but I didn’t look back.

  | | | | | | | | |

  “I thought I told you to mind the shop,” I told Luna.

  The inner courtyard of the Institute of Education was stone with scattered trees. A faculty building that looked like a giant concrete staircase loomed over us, and high in the sky above, the thin grey cylinder of the BT tower loomed over the faculty building. The sky beyond the tower was grey; it was an overcast day. Students walked and cycled past in ones
and twos, and a cool wind gusted across the stone.

  “It’s not like the world’s going to end if it’s not open for a few hours,” Luna said. “You close it up all the time.”

  “I close it up. Operative word: I.”

  “I’m supposed to be your apprentice,” Luna complained. “It’s not like you’re paying me to be shop assistant.”

  Luna used to work for me part-time finding and buying magic items, but when I took her on as an apprentice I started paying her a stipend; mage training takes as much time as a full-time job and I wanted her focused on her lessons. “Actually, your apprentice duties are whatever I say they are,” I said. “So in fact, right now, shop assistant is exactly what I’m paying you to be. Besides, you need the practice.”

  “Shadowing you seems like practice.”

  I gave Luna a look.

  Luna put her hands up. “Okay, okay. Look, I’m bored. Nothing’s happening at class, there aren’t any tournaments so no one wants to practice, and I hardly ever see Anne and Vari these days. Even Sonder’s stopped showing up. And you haven’t exactly been Mr. Sociable.”

  I didn’t answer. I don’t know what my expression was like, but Luna drew back slightly. “Well, you haven’t,” she said defensively.

  We walked a little way in silence. A pair of girls came towards us, talking, and we split to let them pass between us. “What were you doing there?” Luna asked.

  “Looking for someone.”

  “Is it something to do with Richard?”

  “No.”

  “I was just wondering—”

  “It’s nothing to do with Richard.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was thinking of talking to the guy giving that lecture.”

  “Okay.”

  I gave Luna a sharp look. She had a carefully neutral look, which made me suspicious. “So who was he?” Luna asked after a pause.

  “Who was who?”

  “The lecture guy.”

  I very nearly told Luna to get lost. It wasn’t a nice way to treat her, but I’ve got a knee-jerk reaction to talking about anything really personal. My instinct with anything like this is to keep it to myself.