Illicit Magic Read Online Free Page A

least it made me temporarily invisible. The cat purred and nuzzled at my wrist, twisting around my ankles and arching its back, so I scratched it there too until it got bored and stalked away through a narrow gap in the fence.
    I waited, trying to decide if my house was being observed by anyone other than me but, after a few minutes, I decided it wasn’t and that I should go inside or risk standing outside, getting soaked now that the wet air had morphed to grey drizzle. My coat was ripped and my hair started to plaster itself to my forehead and I could feel sweaty damp patches sticking to my skin. What a catch .
    “Grow some backbone ,” I muttered to myself, my voice catching in the cold as I examined the sleeve sadly. I’d only owned the jacket since last autumn and had gotten it on sale for a snip. Damn. Maybe I could fix it later, sew on a new button to cover the rip or give it some kind of nifty patch . Anything so I wouldn’t have to eat into my savings to buy another coat.
    I fished the key from the inner pocket of my bag and palmed it, the jagged edge poking out from between my clenched fingers. It wasn’t much of a weapon. Perhaps I should get something else to keep about me, but I couldn’t think of anything as legal and effective as a baseball bat, only smaller. It’s all very well outlawing weapons but when you are about to be set upon by a group of beefy, potential serial killers, it’s small comfort to have a Yale key, a wing and a prayer as your only protection.
    I huffed in contempt and darted a glance to the left, then right, before jogging across the road and along the narrow, chequered tile path, made ugly with weeds in their last throes of life. I slid my key into the lock and twisted right once, closing the door quickly behind me, ensuring the Yale lock had snapped shut. Not for the first time I wished the owner would spring for a deadbolt and a more substantial door.
    Home was a very euphemistic way of describing the unremarkable terrace where I had been living for the past two years. The owner, my landlady, Mrs Kemp, had the whole ground floor. The small hallway of what had once been a family home had been portioned off so there was the door that led into her flat and then the staircase. It was now boxed in lest any tenant, God forbid, decided to spy on Mrs Kemp and upload pictures to Grannies Uncovered.
    Upstairs were two flats – one mine – that had been carved out of the former bedrooms on the first floor. A second staircase led to another flat nestled in the eaves. Mrs Kemp and her long-dead husband bought the house in the sixties, so she told me on the days when she wasn’t whining, and raised a family who now lived out of the city and barely visited. (“Good-for-nothings who won’t see a penny of my will,” was Mrs Kemp’s catchphrase. Privately, I thought they were rather sensible.)
    The old woman turned the second floor, which her arthritic legs couldn’t reach, into an income provider for her dotage. It was a cramped set-up, not particular well kept outside or in, but affordable for Zone 1 and easy to reach the tube or walk to work on the occasions that I found somewhere closeby to temp. That’s where the perks ended.
    The front door had a large, glazed panel to let in the light but even though it was sandblasted for privacy, I didn’t dare linger once I grabbed the mail that had been put on a shelf for me. I bounded up the stairs and, after stopping for a moment to examine if the lock had been tampered with – it hadn’t, used the second key to let myself through the door. It would need more than one coat of paint to disguise that it was worthless plywood. Given the lack of consideration regarding security, I was constantly surprised that none of the flats had been burgled. Maybe it was pure luck that the house looked like crap on the outside and repelled burglars.
    I thumped the door shut and leaned against it, bracing myself for Mrs Kemp’s bang on the ceiling –