Hannah held up a piece of cardstock off the rack and examined the edges, contemplating which color she should choose for the dragon’s wings. Standing in the aisle of Ricket’s Drug, Hannah had completely emptied the tiny stationary section into her handcart, and alongside that she had robbed the stock of pompoms and confetti, as well as a few plastic bottles of glimmering golden glitter. This particular piece that she was examining was a vibrant forest green, and she compared it to the paler, more mint-colored green that already sat among her other finds in the basket. She had already decided that the dragon she was crafting into being would be around five feet long, and that it would stretch mightily across the sitting room ceiling in Abbey’s parent’s cottage. She had rolls of tissue paper prepared to create tendrils of crepey smoke that would curl from the dragon’s nose and mouth, and she was determined to spin together a valiant paper knight that she would douse in that gold glitter before sending him off to be pasted on the table where he would challenge the beast head-on.
After a moment’s thought, Hannah tossed the dark green paper into her basket to join the others. More the merrier, she thought, smiling at the rainbow of art supplies she had managed to procure.
She and Abbey had agreed to meet up in a week’s time at Abbey’s parent’s home to craft the decor after Midge had gone to sleep for the evening, and although Hannah had resisted the kindly offer, Abbey had insisted upon making a night of it with some drinks and some biscuits to elevate their time. Thinking about it now, Hannah felt as if it would be a perfectly lovely time spent with Abbey, who Hannah considered to be her closest friend since moving to London the summer prior.
She hadn’t had much luck with making too many companions during her time in the city, as she was often so focused on work and her studies that she didn’t leave much room for the pleasures usually sought after by people her age. She would come home from closing the cafe and wander by restaurants where groups of girls would be gathering for dinner before a long night of dancing, each of them dressed in shining miniskirts and with their hair swept up atop their heads which they played at with their long, painted acrylic nails.
Or, more often, she would glance down the street as she biked past and would catch sight of a young couple walking hand-in-hand, giddily laughing or pulling one another in for a passionate kiss, heading somewhere for their date or for drinks with others paired up like them. When she’d take the tube home late from an evening of studying at the library, she would sit among other twenty-something year olds that were fresh from the clubs, hopping eagerly onto the train so that they could barrel headlong across town to the next set, clomping along in their platform shoes and beaming their tipsy, watery grins.
Hannah moved to the end of the stationary aisle, pushing her basket aside so a mother and her young son could cruise by her down the other direction, making a beeline for the notebooks and pens hung on the silver racks. Directly in front of her, wandering jauntily through the main front highway of the shop, two teenage girls walked with their arms linked, both gaping at each other in dramatized wonder as they giggled through whispers, their eyes hungrily gazing upon the tabloids on the end caps, pictures of a shirtless, pouting Hugh Grant clearly the topic of their animated conversation. Hannah wanted them go by, their ponytails and braids bobbing in step, and she felt a pang in her stomach.
There were moments when Hannah desired so badly to be a player and not merely a bystander in those silly, dream-like encounters--where she could leap from the platform and onto the train with feathers in her hair and makeup shadowing her eyes, some fruity, acrid drink fizzing away at her consciousness--she wanted to be surrounded by both intimate friendships and by total strangers, heading somewhere for the sole purpose of dancing, and to allow herself to roil in her twenties as boisterously as she witnesses others doing in those late night hours. Her years at home, the times where she should have been in university, were instead lined with long days of work, and then coming home and taking care of the family matters; whatever sort they might have festered in the hours she had been away making her pocket change.
Hannah turned the corner of the stationary aisle and went for the front of the shop, milling through the other weekend patrons with their own baskets moving to and fro across the glinting linoleum under fluorescent lights. She told herself that yes, it would be right lovely to go out dancing, but…there was work to be considered. Work meant paying rent, and paying rent meant living in London and keeping far away from Hastings--from all that she had grown up and grown old with. She could bear a little envious streak towards the typical life of the average young, glittering, carefree adult if it meant that she upheld what she was working towards--a career in medicine in the city, providing wholly for herself, and never having to return south to her hometown should she wish it so.
And in any case, Abbey was worth ten flitting, clubbing friends combined in her ferocious loyalty--the girls had made such fast companions that Hannah was always quite shocked at the blessing of it, considering that they were only co-workers less than a year ago. Doing this token for Abbey and for Midge was something that was warming Hannah’s heart from tip to toe, and more than that, she wanted to do it. She wanted to show Abbey how grateful she was for the gift of her friendship, since Hannah held their connection in such high esteem.
Surprisingly, as she moved past a rack of candied nuts and other colorful sweets, Hannah was delighted to be able to feel that about Bartrum, too. Just that morning, as she had wheeled her bike out from behind the house Bartrum had come down from his front door in his slippers and handed her a wad of pound notes to purchase the packets of seeds that they had decided upon for the greenhouse, being that the nursery was just a few blocks away from Ricket’s. When she had blanched at the amount of cash, he had grinned, “get yourself something nice at Ricket’s, or perhaps at the bakery nearby.”
Hannah had biked away feeling all aglow. The way she treasured Bartrum’s friendship was something she couldn’t quite put into words. In a kindred sort of way: lonely girl inexplicably met lonely old man and they had found common ground where there had, at first, been none at all to tread upon.
She examined the display of market bouquets arranged cleverly in rows that sat beside the check-out lanes, the beautiful distraction poised perfectly in shoppers’ views as they made to exit the store, waiting to entice them to add completely unnecessary flowers to their list of weekly household necessities. There was a stone sitting deep in her stomach still--some unfinished thought that was eating at her after seeing the two teens together in their romp through Ricket’s. The finished program application in her threadbare backpack burned against her shoulder blades as she strode determinedly by the bouquets and entered the queue of shoppers waiting for a clerk to assist them in paying for their wares.
She had yet to tell a soul about it--having completed it the evening prior after her closing shift at the cafe, she knew that it was high time to have it sent out for the deadline at the end of May--and she knew that there wasn’t anything she could possibly do to enhance her chances of accomplishing admission. The nursing program at The King’s College was one that she had dreamed about applying for since she had first received her EMT at twenty-two. Now that her application was complete, and all that was left to do was submit it, she experienced an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion standing in the artificially-heated drugstore, the bodies of other shoppers swirling around her in their haste to track down and to purchase their fare.
She had no one she wanted to share the application with, or the news that she was submitting it. As she neared the counters, the queue growing shorter with each passing moment, the sharp realization of that cut her to the quick.
Before it could marinate for too long, she swerved from the line, snagged up a bouquet of flowers from the display--one with pink posies--and she returned to her spot, nodding graciously to the woman behind her in thanks for her brief moment of departure.
The flowers in her hand shone up at her, and Hannah allowed herself to forget about the application. She’d put it into the first mail slot she came across, and that would be that. She’d be sure to tell Bartrum or Abbey about it sometime soon…if the moment ever arose where she’d want to share about herself, of course.
The clerk nearest to her rang their bell, and Hannah stepped from the front of the queue and over to the awaiting counter, smiling sheepishly as she made to set the menagerie of crafting supplies atop the tiny check-out space beside the plastic sacks. The clerk, an older gentleman with thick wire glasses and a soured expression, looked slightly marled at the amount of construction paper.
“Making signs?” He asked her flatly as he slowly rung her up. Hannah shrugged.
“More or less,” she swept the bottles of glitter into an awaiting sack, reaching next for some of the paper that was accounted for. Above the counters, a few little boxy televisions hung on the ceiling, displaying the local news and the weather. Hannah heard the newscasters speaking curtly through the throng of the shoppers she was saturated in, “there doesn’t seem to be much sun this week after today, Max. A cold front is moving in this evening followed by several days of rain showers with temperatures as low as 7°C…”
“Seems an awful lot of green,” the clerk commented as he sorted through the various shades of paper Hannah had chosen. Hannah blinked once, then smiled, continuing to bag her purchases.
“It does, doesn’t it?” She noticed that the man next to her at the adjacent counter was buying a tin of strong ground coffee and a sack of buttered biscuits. They looked entirely delectable in all their chocolate-dipped glory, and Hannah’s stomach growled.
“Let’s move onto the traffic reports, David. Outposts are showing clear roads heading northwest bound from A1 to A5, as well as east from A10 to A13…”
“Are you a picket line girl, then?” The clerk’s voice was so accusatory that Hannah looked up from her sacks as if he had slapped her. His eyebrows were raised in a perfunctory questioning. “With all the cardstock, I mean. This seems like you’re practically supplying them with propaganda.”
“It’s for party decor,” Hannah shifted the second to last stack of stationary into a bag, forcing the words out and trying to keep from laughing at the ridiculousness of the man’s question. “I’m making dragons, if you really must know the root of it.”
“Quite a party,” his words hidden under his breath didn’t escape her as he reached for the last of the stationary to add it to her bill. Hannah choked down a rude word, opting instead to widen her smile and focus the rest of her attention on the sacks. She would need a good bit of math and construction work to get these to all fit in her backpack and the basket on her bike.
“This is just in from our local authorities: a disturbance on the A2 quite similar to what happened last week on Southwark Bridge. Look at all the rubble--terrible mess on all sides and cars trapped in the middle of it. Commuters are stopped dead still in both directions, almost as if a bomb has gone off…”
Hannah looked upward at the television. On the grainy screen, she could make out moving images of the A2 roadway, but almost as if she were seeing it through the lens of some old footage from war. The blacktop of the highway appeared to be jutting out, the image distorted, as large chunks of gravel broke apart in shelves and stacked upon one another like cake layers. The midlines of the road were broken in places and splayed about as if they had been lifted and thrown, and worst of all, four stray automobiles were perched among the broken road, their occupants exiting and reaching in the backseats for their children or their belongings. One car was even upside down on its top, but thankfully, Hannah spotted the red and blue rescue lights of EMS, and the car was empty with its presumed owner standing beside it, speaking with one of the EMTs.
“This is currently occurring on A2, and from our outpost beside the roadway we have no information on what occurred to cause this wreckage.”
“God, Max, are authorities still on scene?”
“Surely, David,” Hannah saw the newscaster pale as he listened to the small mobile phone that was on his desk, the speaker undoubtedly stationed at the outpost by A2, providing details.“The source of this phenomenon is unknown; some are speculating an instantaneous earthquake, but bystanders are stating that there was no such movement or sound…”
The clerk pressed the fulfill button on the register and it rang out loudly, pulling Hannah abruptly away from the screen and back to reality, “twenty-two pounds, forty-five pence.”
“Do you see the A2?” She pointed up at the screen where the images continued to flash. Beside her, the man with the biscuits looked up, and Hannah could just make out his mouth falling open in shock out of her peripherals. “Look, it’s in shambles!”
The clerk glanced up, but shrugged his shoulders after half a second’s look, something like a scoff and a scowl crossing his expression. “Just more long, arduous queues on the tubes tonight then,” he remarked. Hannah, transfixed on the screen enough that she couldn’t take in the dismissal in his tone, managed to hand over the cash and take her bags and her change, moving to the very front of the store past the counters where she could just make out the tiny television screens, but could no longer hear the news updates. She watched the myriad of people leaving their automobiles and milling about the broken roadway, some approaching the police and others gathering their things from their cars and beginning to cluster at the sides of the road, waiting to be given instruction on what to do next. A man was approached by the cameramen and was talking excitedly into the newscast, his eyes wide and his hands flapping about to describe the event, clearly shaken up.
The lumps of broken road looked sinister behind him, and Hannah felt a chill go up her spine. She had only heard about the Southward Bridge--she hadn’t gone that direction the week prior and therefore hadn’t sought out seeing it with her own eyes. But she had heard the whispers of patrons discussing the foul play conspiracies and malevolent theories at the cafe, and she had even been asked a few times if she had seen any unsavory folk wandering about the streets outside the window or coming into the shop that would spark unease or suspicion. Hannah had shrugged most of them off, but when approached by Melvin, a retired private investigator, after giving him his croissant and jam, she hadn’t been able to get the memory of the angry man in the peacoat and his untouched mug of tea out of her mind.
“Any strange folk at all, dear,” Melvin had lifted his butterknife to cut his croissant horizontally to apply the strawberry jam thickly in the middle, some of it dripping from the handle and onto his lap. “You see a lot of people day in and day out come through here. You’ve not noticed anything out of place?”
“No, sir,” she handed him a fresh napkin from her apron. “Can’t say that I have. But I’ll be sure to keep an ear out.”
Of course, it had been silly of her to immediately feel guilty over this, considering that the man she had witnessed be so gruff with her about the return of his change was most certainly just experiencing a difficult day and had been mercilessly short with her in response to it. But Hannah still felt ice in her bones at the idea of him skulking in the corner, gazing out the window so intensely as if he expected something to come crashing through it and give chase to him should he let his guard down.
A family of four pushed past Hannah, obscuring her view of the television, and she swallowed hard, her mouth dry. The seeds, then home. Her thoughts carried her out the door and to the bike rack where she had left her little rusty cruiser. The cold air of the street was peppered with sunlight through the shifting of the dark clouds above, and Hannah was glad for the lack of rain, even if the wind immediately chilled her to the bone. She threw her bag of stationary and craft supplies into the basket affixed to the front of her bike, and she dragged her maroon raincoat out of her backpack, slinging it on and zipping it up to her throat. She mounted her bike, gazing at the blacktop of the roadway just off of the sidewalk where automobiles were moving on either side. How on earth had such destruction happened?
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Pushing off from the sidewalk, Hannah drifted on her bike into the stream of traffic, headed for the nursery just round the corner. She had a list of the seeds she was to purchase tucked into her breast pocket, and she also hoped to find some trays of little plastic seed pots to bring home as well so that she and Bartrum could work on tilling them to set up in the greenhouse. The application in her backpack crossed her mind once more, forgotten in the last few minutes of the shop, and she sighed. She’d have to mail it on her way home perhaps. Or maybe on Monday; she could mail it out on her journey home from work.
She’d get around to it soon enough. She’d have to if she wanted to stop staring at it on her desk, scrutinizing both it and her worth which she had accidentally attached to it.
She saw a few people on the streets milling about beside a television store where the news was being broadcasted on the screens facing the windows looking out upon the world, and pedestrians were stopping to point and gape at the images of, undoubtedly, the chaos of the A2. When she turned the corner to head west, the wind blew so strong and so cold that she buried her face down into the collar of her coat, her eyes squinting through tears that came on from the chill.
--
Somewhere nearby, Dean went barreling down an alleyway, his legs pumping wildly in his mad dash. His chest was tight, his throat closed with panic and fatigue, but he forced his body to keep moving--keep traveling towards the flat tucked away beside St. James’s. He had three more blocks to go, and he was determined to keep to the shadows of the alleys, his eyes darting side to side as he moved, appraising the piles of garbage and cardboard in case any dark figure were to leap from them and take him by surprise.
“Damn it all,” he hissed as he exited the alley and burst onto a busy street, searching for the nearest crosswalk that was littered with tourists and pedestrians. He moved quickly into the crowd that was waiting for the light to turn, and he panted, sweat breaking out all over his back and forehead.
“Can you believe the A2?” Someone in the crowd asked someone beside them. “What have the police found out?”
“Nothing I’ve heard,” the reply was met with a few nods of those having overheard. “Seems like something bad is afoot. I don’t believe the story of an earthquake--with no one able to verify? Seems right fishy.”
Dean shrank beneath his peacoat, his pulse thundering. If this damned light doesn’t shift, I’ll-
The light changed, and Dean charged ahead, constraining himself to a very rapid walk as he strode ahead of the crowd. He made it to the other side and slid into the alley on the adjacent street, breaking back into a sprint once he entered the mouth of it. He leapt over a few discarded pallets, and he ducked around a trashbin, clenching his teeth.
Be there. Come on, George…be there.
He flew through the alley and saw St. James’s coming into view at the end. He took a sharp right as soon as he exited it, and he stopped dead in front of the first blue door on the row of streetside flats--the one with severely chipping paint, and no door handle. Glancing around quickly over his shoulders to ensure no one saw him--thankfully, pedestrians here seemed too occupied in the sights of St. James’s gardens to notice a man merely entering his flat--and he tapped his wristwatch on his left hand, waving it in front of the door.
The wristwatch tinkled merrily, and the door popped open without a sound, leading into a dark hallway with a narrow set of stairs at the end. Dean crossed the threshold and barely slammed the door behind him before he charged up the stairs, pelted across a landing, and then charged up a second flight. He did this four times before he came to the last flight, peering upward at the single door that they all led to.
His stomach dropped out from inside him.
The door had been torn clean off its hinges, splintering in half out onto the last landing about him.
“No!” Dean’s cry caught in his throat as he dashed up the last flight three at a time, coming to a stop before the wreckage of what remained of the door. He scanned it, the sight of the still-smoldering chips scattered about plunging nausea into him as he struggled for breath. He waded through the broken pile of wood and pushed into the flat, his wristwatch singeing the skin of his arm as he entered the foyer and crossed into the common space.
Bookshelves were torn off the walls, hardcovers littered about the sitting room. The oak desk in the corner had been flipped over, the papers within vomited out in disarray onto the cherry wood floor. The sofa, the large tweedy one from Brookhedge, had been slashed to ribbons, foam and stuffing leaking out in a crime scene of brutal upholstered carnage. “George!” Dean shouted, moving quickly to the kitchen, only to find all the cabinets turned out and pantry goods strewn everywhere alongside piles of utensils. The fridge had been torn out of the wall and turned over as well, its contents lying in a watery pile on the checkered tile. The dining room table was smashed in half, and the small pendant light above it had been destroyed, still dropping thin shards of glass onto the floor where they shattered like raindrops.
George’s bedroom was much the same--all of his clothing had been ransacked from the bureau and thrown about in clumps, and the mattress had been pushed onto its long side, revealing the slats of the bed frame. The side table was emptied as well, with its array of chewing gum, cigarettes, bandaids, and rubbers lying pathetically on the carpet. Dean found his own bedroom to be in the same shape, combed through right down to the anti-dandruff shampoo found upheaved in the shower.
Dean’s throat was tight, fear rushing through his veins as he tried to keep his head level. He moved back to the sitting room, surveying the damage, willing his pulse to calm. There wasn’t any sign of blood, and no trace of a brawl besides the clear use of dark magic against the wards on the front door. Whoever did this was in a hurry, and they hadn’t met much resistance on the receiving end of the flat. Dean looked at the ground, and he saw a few muddy footprints on the hard wood of the floor, tracked from the front door as if they had been walking through soil before breaking in.
How’d they get through the street entrance? His mind hummed. Of all the places that could be breached, this flat had seemed the last one that he’d ever expected them to know about. And where the hell was George?
Sweat lined his palms, and there was a ringing in his ears that he wasn’t able to shake away as he spun in circles, trying to grasp his thoughts enough to make a plan. George is missing. I’ve got to…get to Talia. Or Emery--he’ll know where to start--how could I have been so stupid to leave here when I felt that unease this morning? Panic, bright and electric, began to stir in him. What do I do?
As if on cue, a scuffing noise came from the front door, and Dean practically leapt out of his skin. His hands instantly flaming with sparkling, pulsating light, he turned on his heel to face the sound, his teeth gritted together so tightly that he felt them crack. If they were back for more, they’d meet more trouble than they bargained for with him. His magic, the power he kept locked away deep in his chest, came right up to the forefront, making his vision go scarlet. It took his senses--ate him alive. “Come on,” Brink’s most powerful Seeker snarled in a voice that wasn’t his own, the blazing magic in his palms flaring to life in his blinding rage. “Let’s see you!”
“Dean?” George’s voice was riddled with bewilderment, and the sound of it stole the breath from Dean’s lungs, causing his heart to lurch to a vigorous halt. The light from his palms evaporated as he shot forward down the hall, seeing the lanky form of his younger brother come stepping gingerly over the wreckage of the front door and stumble into the foyer. “What happened? Has there been a break in?”
Dean reached his brother and grabbed him by the shoulders, inspecting his face with intensity, “where were you?” His voice was hoarse, something squeezing his chest violently from the inside. “How long have you been out?”
“I was at Talia’s,” George met Dean’s gaze with confusion, his eyes darting between his brother and the mess of the flat behind him. “I’ve been out for maybe four or five hours.”
Dean released his brother and let out a sigh that took all of his anger and fear with it. He staggered back, his back slumping with the abrupt loss of that violent power that he had held so delicately in his hands just seconds prior. He motioned to the flat behind him, “it’s been sacked--the whole place is in shambles. When I first arrived here and saw the state of the door, I thought they’d gotten you, too.”
“Holy hell,” George exclaimed as he crossed into the sitting room, swiveling about to see the degree of disarray. “Our flat!”
“There was nothing here for them, anyways,” Dean’s shoulders sagged, the adrenaline that had been thundering in him a moment ago suddenly leaving him completely exhausted. A note of triumph flared somewhere inside of him--of course, he and George never kept valuables up in the Known World--whoever had done this to them had done it in vain. This flat, however stable it had been in their years Seeking in greater London, was made by Common hands. It could only go so far in the ways of protection…but still, Dean bit back a scowl as he took in the wreckage, his heart forcibly wrenching itself back into its normal timbre. The wards were broken as easily as glass.
He righted the small loveseat by the window, and he sat on the armrest. “This was enough to scare me half to death. If you hadn’t walked in just now, I’d have blown the roof off this whole damned building.”
“The roadway--the A2,” George’s spectacled glare was bright with realization as he stalled in his task of picking up papers from the desk. “Same as the bridge, right?”
“Aye,” Dean ran a hand through his hair. “I knew the second I saw it crack on my Orb that they were after another one of us. I ran all the way here from Westminster--I would’ve gone to Talia’s next if all had been well here. But luckily, whoever did this is a barking idiot to think that we leave anything holed up in the Known and not home at the Atrium.”
“Just like Helena,” George said softly, gazing around at the destroyed room. Dean was silent, watching his brother take in the flat. George was old enough at twenty-one, but he was still a boy, and still just an apprentice to the Guild. If whoever had come to the flat and done this had gotten their hands on him…
This was now beginning to burn much too close to home for Dean to be comfortable with. He stood from the armrest, and he strode to George.
“Let’s fix up here, and get gone. We’ve got to tell Emery what’s happened, and then we can travel together once it’s dark to the Atrium. He’s going to blow an absolute gasket when he hears of this, I’m sure, but it’s best to do it in person and to see what he wants us to do.”
“You think it’s safe to leave right now?” George’s blue eyes--nearly the same as Dean’s--flashed warily. “What if whoever did this takes another pass at us? What if they’re watching the door?”
“I can take them,” Dean darkened, and George raised a challenging eyebrow.
“Can you, now?” Sarcasm dripped off his tongue, and Dean squared his shoulders.
“You want to see a bleeding example?” He spat back, and orange light sparked from his fingertips, singeing the carpet below his feet. “If we step out of this flat and someone comes within an arm's distance of us wanting any kind of trouble, to hell with the laws.”
George didn’t push him further, instead opting to rub his hands together and glance around the room. “So, to the Atrium?”
Dean nodded, “First, Talia’s. Let’s ring her now and make sure she’s alright, and just tell her that we are coming over. We’ll explain everything once we’re there…I don’t trust that the Orbs aren’t being tracked.”
George nodded, and he reached deep into the inner pocket of his coat and retrieved a smart, glinting golden pocket watch. He held it out by the chain, and he tapped two fingers to its face, muttering under his breath.
The watch sputtered for a moment, some strange dim light blinking from it a few times before going dormant. Dean crossed his arms.
“Come on, George, really? The Guild’s apprentice can’t even beckon an Orb?”
“Stuff it,” George’s glare was venomous as he tried his fingers upon the face again--more of a smack this time than a tap--and the watch spun on its chain, gurgling softly. “Observate!” He hissed, louder than he first had, and the watch suddenly burst into bright red light with a loud tinkle, similar yet still distinct to Dean’s wristwatch. The watch cast a beam out into the air about a foot from the glass surface, and a perfect circle of shifting scarlet light was at the end of it, growing more and more potent by the second as the watch continued to sound merrily on.
A figure appeared in the circle, darkened by the swirling mass moving to and fro within, but soon two hazel eyes and a sharp nose formed, giving rise to the image of Talia. She looked surprised to have been rung, her hair was upswept onto a rather tangled cluster on the top of her head, and her shoulders were bare, save for the fuzzy blue towel they could see wrapped around her middle.
“George?” She asked through the glimmering image of the Orb. “What’s the meaning of this? I’m literally stepping into the bath.” Her gaze swung to Dean, and then her attention clued into the wreckage of the flat around them. “Good God, Dean! What did you do to the flat?”
George covered his mouth to hide his snickering, and Dean rolled his eyes. “Seems that she is just fine,” he commented airily.
“Sorry, Talia!” George quipped. “Called you by mistake!”
Talia blanched, “what? You can’t do that, it has to be specifically--”
“Be over after your bath!” George called, reaching for the face of his watch, “don’t boil yourself!”
“George! What is--”
George tapped the watch face, and the beam of light disappeared, taking Talia with it. Dean looked accusingly at George, “you couldn’t think of a better reason to have called than that?”
“She’d know I was lying,” George shrugged. “Talia is better caught off guard with a lie than lied directly too, as I know you know.”
Dean bristled, and George stowed his pocket watch back into his coat, “I’ll drop it for now. What do you think all this means, Dean?”
“I can’t be certain,” Dean looked out the window and spotted a dark thrill of clouds beginning to crest the horizon, moving towards St. James’s gardens on a gust of breeze. His meeting with Cal burned at his mind, and he contemplated telling George all that he had heard, but he knew that it would take longer than he had the nerve for, especially if George were to think he was barking mad for even entertaining Cal’s gossip.
Still, the thought of it sent a chill down his spine. “We’ve got to keep our heads in the meantime. Whoever did this has it out for us.”
“Let’s go to Talia’s, then,” George gathered his coat around him and made for the door. “I’m worried about her, even if we just saw her in her skivvies getting ready for a night in.”
“Let’s see your work, first,” Dean took one long backward glance at the flat. “Fix this room, and I’ll do the rest. We need to lock this place up and I’d rather not leave it a mess.”
“You really want to waste time on cleaning?” George looked appalled, but Dean crossed his arms and tapped his foot, unrelenting. “Fine,” George groaned, raising his hands to the room and furrowing his brow. He murmured a few words beneath his breath, rubbing his palms together and gazing around at the disarray. Slowly, ruby red light began to form between the crack of his palms, and when he turned them out towards the room and took a deep breath, the light formed into a few tendrils of glimmering power that moved like smoke from his hands and began to curl its way around the room. The sitting room began to slowly creep to life, guided by the magic that worked to lift things from the ground and set them back to normal. Furniture rose into the air and floated slowly back to where it belonged, and the various books and papers that had been thrown like confetti around the flat flew obediently back onto their respective shelves and drawers.
Dean turned to the kitchen and the bedrooms and waved his hands, his own orange light crackling between his fingers and shooting out quickly and with purpose. He could hear his power clattering in the kitchen and the bedrooms as things shifted in their rueful cleanup as well; the fridge especially made a great groaning noise as it clattered back against the wall, the discarded food and bottles that had been within it clunking back gracelessly onto the plastic shelving before the doors swung shut.
In less than a minute’s time, the flat looked as if it had never been ransacked at all, save for the front door. George dropped his hands and grinned at Dean, and Dean clapped one hand on his brother’s shoulder, nodding.
They stepped past the broken front door carefully, determinedly dodging the splinters, and once they were through, Dean waved his hand once more, that same spark of orange illuminating their faces in the dark of the staircase landing. The door lifted from the concrete they stood upon and righted itself on the hinges, crunching back together as some invisible thread wove the wood back into its solid state.
“Ward it,” Dean said finally as the door swung shut behind them and they heard a series of several locks sliding into place.
“My wards are never enough,” George complained. “Look what good they did this time…didn’t even put up a fight.”
“Go first, and I’ll put mine over top,” Dean pushed his brother’s shoulder towards the door. George nodded and placed a palm on the surface of the door, closing his eyes. A red glow ruminated beneath the skin of his hand, setting the door glimmering with bloody, luminescent light. Dean placed a hand on the wooden frame too, his own orange light weaving with George’s as he sent every last protective spell he had committed to memory imbuing into the fibers of the door. His power met his brother’s on the surface of the wood, and for a moment, orange and red flamed together, setting the door into such a cascade of color that it looked as if fire had burst from the other side and was eating the wood away as easily as paper.
The door dimmed after a moment, and George clicked his tongue. “It’s done,” George removed his palm and shook it, as if to rid it of pins and needles. “Let’s be off.”
Dean didn’t speak, but he followed his brother down the stairs, the last bit of light from his palm leaving a glowing imprint on the doorframe that faded ever so slowly to darkness as they pulled their coat collars up and slid wordlessly out onto the street below.