Illicit Magic Read Online Free

bus shelter, its window smashed the third time in as many weeks. I wrenched my arm free and cursed as the fabric tore. I righted myself and sprinted on.
    The bus pulled out. Behind me a voice shrieked and I heard the impact of something large hitting the bus’ bumper and bouncing with a dull thud onto the road. It sounded awfully like a person but I didn’t dare falter for a second to look backwards to see if the person was all right. There hadn’t been any passengers left at the bus stop so I hoped it was the man who had stared at me with such hatred.
    I recognised my attackers for what they were. I’d seen the news, the headlines of the newspapers, and heard about the women. The thought of it made me shiver: all were found burned alive, their bodies twisted in agony long before their final moments of death. Their corpses charred and all but unrecognisable, yet bizarrely similar no matter when or where they were found. They had all been bound to wooden stakes which, laced with accelerants, had been torched.
    The newspapers were in their heyday. Nothing thrilled a paper better than a string of vile unsolved crimes; the very words “serial killer” sent them into overdrive. They quoted “official sources”, which said there was more than one suspect, possibly a gang of killers lurking to abduct women to their fiery deaths.
    No wonder the women at work were all concerned for each other. I didn’t give myself the indulgence of wondering if they were at all concerned about me. I doubted they would give a damn unless...
    I couldn’t help the feeling that I was going to be next.
    They would probably grimace at work when they heard about my death. Maybe they would pretend to have been my friends as well as co-workers, purely for the TV time. I pushed on, the fear bubbling in my stomach. Run! my brain screamed.
    As I took the next left and sprinted forwarded, racing across the road, I wished I was somewhere more public. I knew feinting right would take me into a smaller, safer residential street where I knew a shortcut across a small children’s play park that sat incongruously in a partially fenced roundabout. It would get me home quicker but it would also take me away from lights and, crucially, people. Witnesses . There was no time to think. I dashed right and ran full pelt, slowing to slip through the gates, bypassing the swings that were swaying by themselves on creaking chainlinks and slung myself forwards into an alley that divided the houses and led closer to my street.
    I couldn’t hear any footsteps behind me so I slowed just barely enough to allow me to glance over my shoulder without tripping in the poor light and landing on goodness-knows-what in the alley.
    My forehead knitted into a frown as I strained to hear any sound. No one was following me. At last I had a chance to gasp for breath and fill my lungs with air as I reined myself into a fast walk. I could easily have brushed the chase aside as a nasty coincidence or a random attack but that nagging sixth sense fizzling in my nerves warned me to continue to be wary and I kept up the steady jog that would carry me home.
    As I came out of the alley, instead of taking the pavement, I slipped through a crack in the fence into a corner garden and then proceeded through front gardens, hopping over small dividing fences until I could hang back in someone else’s drive, a few houses diagonally away from mine. The lights were off in this house and there was no car; I vaguely recalled the man who lived here worked away often, so I doubted anyone was going to step out and ask me what I was doing loitering in the shadow of their house.
    When something brushed against my leg, I nearly screamed but looking down, saw that it was just a black cat with a single white front paw that had chosen this moment as the perfect time to terrorise me. I stooped to scratch it between the ears as I kept my eyes on my front porch. From my low vantage point, I couldn’t see much, but at