“You did fucking what?”

Addie drove me back to the Centre, no blindfold this time, at around seven-thirty. He’d told me that the two of us would need to find a new place to live, which really wasn’t that big an issue. I returned to a panicking Dotty frantically calling the phone that was buzzing under my pillow. I told her all about everything, Addie, Sid, magic, all of it, she was more irritated at the fact that I did expressly what we agreed I wouldn’t do.

“But it worked out?” I said, almost asking.

“You went out into town at four in the morning-”

“Quarter to five”

“Met a random man involved in the murder of apparently eight government agents,” Dotty was counting on her fingers, “...went to a second location with him, and then went to an underground bunker with another, even more random, woman.”

I didn’t have anything to say, so I just looked at her. Dotty sighed and sat down on the bed.

“Chlo, what the fuck have you gotten us into?”

“Us?”

“Yes, us, Chloe. I was the same distance away from that door when eight people were shot to death, and now you’ve told me everything.”

“Well did you want me not to?” I asked. Dotty wasn’t shouting, but her voice sounded louder, sharper, with every word. It was piercing into my already erratic mind, almost painfully so

“No. Yes. Maybe, I don’t know. You shouldn’t have gone.” She said, exasperated

“And then fucking what!” I exploded, “We wait around? Try and talk down the next batch? Let’s put little flowers in their gun barrels too, that’ll fucking convince them. Sid told me that they wouldn’t know about whoever killed those people, so they think it was us, we’d have to let them know that too in the half a fucking second before they gun us down.”

“And your solution is what? Join magical terrorists?” We were both shouting now, and the air was sharpening into cold knives. The rustling of my T-shirt was deafening. We stared at each other, I could see tears welling in her eyes, the world was distorted by the tears welling in mine. “Fuck this.” She turned and grabbed a bag of tobacco off the kitchen counter. “Get some sleep, I’ll say you had a cough or something, test yourself too.”

Magic, secret government murderers and Dotty was worried about lateral flow tests. I couldn’t fault her logic, so I wordlessly rolled onto the bed and shut my eyes.

She was right. I knew that, which just made me resent her more. Katrine had offered to meet me in the afternoon, I had a good few hours and I was starting to realise how little sleep I’d gotten.

I woke up feeling even more tired than before, about twenty minutes before I was due to meet her. I took a few minutes to shower and threw on the same clothes I was wearing before. No makeup, no socks and no food, I was about fifteen minutes late when I arrived at the memorial fountain in Hyde Park and saw Katrine, changed out of her jeans and into a blazer.

“Ice cream?” She offered me a slightly melted soft serve.

“Thanks” I took it, trying not to let the melted parts drip onto my hand. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Don’t worry,” she started off down a path, “I only arrived a few minutes ago myself, the ice creams were supposed to be an apology.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“So, magic.” The way she said it and her school-ish clothes gave me a slight sense of deja vu to GCSE English. “From what Addie says, I’m assuming that you have no idea how it works.”

“You… use magic rings to shoot fire and warm up coffee?” I could have made a better guess, but my mind was other places. I noticed that Katrine wasn’t wearing any rings.

“Ha, good one.” she said, trying not to sound deadpan “You’re close, but it’s a little more complex. Essentially, and this is grossly oversimplifying, to perform magic, you need to draw magic out of yourself, store it in a conductive ring or some other kind of circle, shape it, and release. Think of magic as a sort of omnipresent fluid, a bit like Newton’s idea of aether. Any questions so far? No? Good, it gets worse.“ She paused to manoeuvre her ice cream and lick a part that was in danger of falling onto her wrist, “Magic, unfortunately, seems to deny all proper, empirical testing. I’m working with scraps of what knowledge likely exists, but I haven’t yet been able to find a way to measure it in any quantifiable way, and I haven’t been able to measure it with instruments at all. I try to only work with Jodie, to get a reliable baseline, but there’s really no way to quantify it.”

I understood so far, I thought, at least. “So what Sid did, shooting the fire-”

“Was the third step in a process you took part in. Addie filled the ring with magic, you shaped it, and Sid released it. She would’ve had you do it but, ah, you know. Fire, untrained people, enclosed spaces, not a good mix.”

“Okay,” I continued, “so how come this isn’t a thing? If people can shoot fire out of magic rings-”

“There’s a lot more than shooting fire, you remember the card. Magic always works on some kind of dream logic.” She interrupted me again.

“Okay, but like. If magic is a thing that exists, why isn’t it better known? Why doesn’t the military have magic-specialists or magical inventions? I can think of loads of ways to use it, Tesla or Einstein, or Franklin, they could have changed the world.” Dotty was out of my mind, replaced by all the mechanical possibilities of magic

“Actually, they couldn't,” Katrine wiped off her fingers and tossed the stub of her cone in the bin. “I’ve had a lot of theories about why magic isn’t as… pervasive as it could be, but for whatever reason, not everyone is capable of doing it. I’m no genealogist, but the historical association of women and witchcraft is… well it’s misogyny, obviously. But even so, there must be some origin to it. Presumably, passed down through the X chromosome, or rather, both X chromosomes. Maybe a combination of two genes, one to move magic around and another to shape it. I’m not sure, though I’ve yet to meet someone who can do one and not the other. To the best of my knowledge, if it is dependent on both X chromosomes, neither Tesla, Einstein nor Franklin could have made the slightest use of magic”

I nearly opened my mouth to ask how Addie did magic, and then I remembered the throwaway comment I’d been too tired to think about. ‘Not enough X chromosomes.’ Instead of talking I listened to her past theories and crunched my cone, sheepish and slightly more intrigued with her.

“I’ve tried to interview various Fae creatures, but they never condescend to talk to me, for whatever reason.”

“Wait, fae? Like, pixies and stuff?” The idea of fairies existing was more of a sticking point than I thought it would’ve been.

“Uh, I’m not quite aware of any pixies, the Fae tend to be quite insular, but cryptids certainly exist, and fairies too.”

“What’s next?” I asked, half-joking, “vampires?” she didn’t answer. “Wait seriously? vampires?”

“With how prevalent they are in the folklore of so many cultures? Almost certainly. Werewolves definitely, A friend of a friend knows a few up north.”

“Well… Shit”

We kept talking and walking for about an hour. Well, she talked and I listened. She was showing off, but I was okay with that. I got to listen.

It was still bright when I got home, with takeaway sushi as a sort of apology. Dotty and I, we didn’t really do apologies, sushi was our stand-in, it brought with it the understanding that the buyer was conceding the argument. When I got there, however, I was greeted by a hunched over Dotty sitting next to a half-empty bottle of wine.

“You didn’t text me.”

Shit. I’d been in a rush, and I’d forgotten. What must she have thought?

“I brought sushi.”

“Well that changes everything, doesn’t it?” She poured herself another glass

“I brought the fucking sushi, Dotty. Can we drop this? Please” I put the bag on the counter and found another glass.

“Fine. We’ll talk in the morning” she started unpacking while I poured myself a glass. And under her breath, which I pretended not to hear, “If you haven’t run off again.”