Modern Magick

Toil and Trouble: 5

'Morning!' I said brightly, and slumped into the vacant chair at Jay's elbow. 'Disaster?'

'Not quite,' said Jay, and awarded me half a piece of toast slathered in peanut butter. 'Just some, uh, sub-optimal developments.'

To be honest with you, I really don't need feeding up; I'm quite comfortably proportioned as it is. But who can resist peanut butter on toast? I skipped over the question of Jay's inscrutable motives in sharing his food with me — trying not to notice that he was doing the same for Indira — and focused on the article instead. It was light on information and heavy on rumour, but it had the salient facts down: a book featuring a previously unheard of, and extremely powerful, enchantment had come to light, and stood to revolutionise the way magickal libraries operated. They had spared no efforts to promote the story to its widest extent; every page glittered with come-hither-and-read magick.

To my further dismay, there was another picture inside: Jay holding the book.

I jabbed a finger at it. 'Who took that?'

'No idea,' said Rob grimly. 'But it must have been somebody at Home.'

I glowered into my berry-bowl, and comforted myself with a spoonful of yoghurt. It was one thing for the Society's members to be a bit too seduced by the marvels of Bill to resist making a trip to see him; it was quite another to sell the story to the media, complete with photos.

'Does Milady know?' I asked.

'We're preparing a delegation,' said Rob.

Hence the leaden atmosphere at the table. We were all going to get it in the neck.

'Straight to bed, and without any supper,' I said glumly.

'A thousand lines each,' added Val. 'I must not reveal the Society's secrets to the newspapers.'

Jay said, 'How long before we get the swarms of reporters beating down the doors?'

'No need to worry about that,' said Rob. 'The House is pretty hard to find, if you're not familiar with the route.'

Jay looked sceptical. 'Journalists have a way of getting around problems like that.'

Val set down her mostly-empty coffee cup with a snap. 'One disaster at a time, if you please.'

'Sorry,' said Jay, contrite. 'Milady first, reporters later.'

The first person dragooned into the role of peace envoy was Nell, seeing as she is our media co-ordinator and suchlike. I don't actually know what her official job title is, if she even has one. She manages a lot of our technical requirements — she's spent decades building a huge database of basically everything we know that we know, and her team fixes all the tech bits that go wrong. She's also responsible for our internet presence (such as it is), which means our website and social media. That makes her our PR person, right? She'll be spending half of her morning putting together the kind of press release that puts out fires, or so we hope.

The second person volunteered for duty was yours truly.

'You're so good at it, Ves,' said Nell, fidgeting with her glasses. She had a second pair tucked into the coiffed coils of her grey hair; did she know? Apparently I was not the only person feeling wrong-footed by the events of the night.

'What, exactly, am I good at?' I said, trying not to sound quite so frosty as I felt.

'Making things sound good,' said Nell bluntly.

'Charming people,' muttered Jay.

'Persuading Milady to let you off,' said Rob, though since he teamed his comment with a smile of genuine affection I felt less like kicking him than I did the others.