I gasped and pulled myself back into a sitting position, my already aching body not happy about being thrown to the floor. I clutched my ribs and looked at the pigeon standing at the window. It looked back at me impatiently and then tapped its beak on the window. I pulled myself up to a crooked standing position, stumbled over to the window, and opened it.

  The pigeon hopped onto the window ledge haughtily and offered me its foot. I looked down and saw that there was a scroll tied to its leg. I looked at the pigeon, which then looked down at its leg and then back up at me expectantly. I reached out, untied the piece of parchment, and unfurled it. There was writing on it in neat, old-timey feather-and-quill-style cursive.

  It read:

  "Mageling, you have been gone far too long from your lord. I summon thee to my court. Present yourself this evening without delay.”

  I turned the piece of parchment over, and there was nothing on the back. I read the summons again, and then my lip curled in anger. I crumpled the piece of paper, remembering the demonic ritual sacrifice of the Tank Beetle, and threw the parchment back at the pigeon. It squawked and jumped backwards.

  "You tell the Pigeon King to shove it! I don't know what he is or what he wants, but I don't want anything to do with him anymore, so leave me alone!”

  I slammed the window shut, and the pigeon leaped into the air in a storm of feathers, squawking as it flew away. I watched it disappear and then frowned. I wondered if that was going to come back and bite me in the arse, but I didn't have time to worry about the Pigeon King now. I had much more pressing issues than the demonic bird.

  Raking my fingers through my hair, I slumped back down in my chair and thought about Marilyn’s words. I had to take the head from the snake. I had to find out who was leading the Syndicate and take them down. I had to be more calculated than I had been so far. Running around beating up street-level thugs had nearly got me killed several times, got me caught on camera, and got me no closer to finding out or getting rid of the Syndicate from the Estate. If anything, all I'd done was attract more thugs to the Mulberry.

  No, the only way I was going to really do any damage was by taking out the leadership. But how was I going to do that? It wasn't as if these guys advertised their hierarchy publicly, and I had about as much knowledge of the inner workings of the Syndicate as I did about plasma engines. I knew from previous experience of interrogating street-level thugs that they knew little about who was actually in charge. Most of them had probably never even met the man below the man. I had a name, and that was about it. They called him Brick, which sounded like the perfect name for a faceless thug running drugs and terrorising innocent people. But who he was, what he looked like, where he stayed, how involved he was with the dealing and the criminality, I had no idea about.

  I thought about Marilyn’s words: follow the drugs and you get the money; follow the money, and you get the men in charge. Well, I knew where the drugs were. They were everywhere, all over the Estate. Hell, I had a closet full of drugs, which I really needed to do something about. I filed that away as a mental note for later and scratched my itching scalp, my fingers coming away caked in dried blood. I grimaced and flicked the blood from my fingers.

  Well, I knew I could find drug dealers, and I was fairly certain I could follow the drug dealers back to their stashes, as I'd done with Goldilocks and his crew. Once I had eyes on the stash, I was sure I could follow the money from there. I sighed and sat back, trying to stretch my aching neck. There was a loud pop somewhere deep inside my vertebrae, and I felt a slight bit of relief of pressure in my neck. Man, painkillers were the real magic, but that was also a problem I needed to consider. How often could I be swallowing fists full of pills before that became an issue? Again, I filed that one away for later concern.

  Right now, I had to sort my equipment out. I needed to crack the Codex open again. I had to keep studying, keep learning, and keep getting more powerful. Because right now, I was maybe only a step or two above street-level goons, and if I wanted to start taking on the big boys, I had to get more skill in the Craft. Not just in how to beat people up, but I needed to start coming up with ways of being more elusive, better protected, and maybe even a way of tracking down these criminals without getting caught.

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  I looked towards my desk where the Codex and my journals were stashed. A sudden bloom of apprehension rose in my chest. I hadn’t opened the Codex since that morning I had woken up surrounded by my journals with the Codex open in my lap and no recollection of studying or even sitting down to study. I stretched my neck again and chided myself, it was just a book, and I had been so exhausted recently that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I fell asleep studying. I continued to rationalise until I felt assured. Standing up, I began walking towards my desk and then stopped. I looked at the window and then walked back over to it and drew the curtains shut. Yeah… that felt right. I then locked my bedroom door and reached under my desk, feeling around in the gloom. I pulled out the false brick and grasped the book, feeling a crackle of energy as I did, as if the book had been waiting for me. I pulled it out along with my journals and something fell out beside the books. It was a thick, blood red, almost black, candle and small box of matches.

  I stared at the candle. Was that mine? I don’t remember buying a candle… in fact I don’t know if I had ever owned a candle in my life. It wasn’t new either. There was melted wax on the candle. But that made sense. How else would I be able to see in the semi darkness now the curtains were drawn? Yeah… that was right… wasn’t it?

  I sat down on the floor with the Codex, my journals, and the candle. I turned the candle over in my hands before setting it down on the floor in front of me. I picked up the box of matches, took out a match, raised it and struck it. The match flared to life, illuminating my face in the darkness… what was that? I froze. Was that… was there something in the corner of my room? I turned quickly…. and there was nothing there. The room was empty. I shook my head.

  “Shit,” I muttered under my breath, my heart thudding in my chest.

  I could have sworn I saw something. It looked like a black silhouette crouched in the corner of my room. But there was nothing there. I was alone. I was certain of that… almost certain. I looked at the match flickering in my fingertips. When had I moved it towards the candle? The flame was only centimeters from the candle’s wick. Some instinct spoke to me then. I don’t know what it was but I had a feeling and I quickly put out the match. The room fell into semi-darkness again. With bated breath, I stood up and turned the light, peering carefully around. Everything was normal. Everything was fine. It was just my regular old room.

  “I seriously need to start getting some sleep,” I muttered to myself.

  I raked my fingers through my hair and then scrubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand. Forgetfulness, black outs, paranoia, hallucinations, I’m pretty sure all of those were symptoms of a concussion. That wouldn’t surprise me. I’d taken more blows to the head recently than most people would their entire lives. Just another concern to file away for another day. For now, I needed to get to work, but this time I left the light on.

  I eased myself back down to the floor, suddenly feeling all my aches and pains again. I spread my journals out and flipped open to the most recent one. I turned a couple of pages and then looked at the last page I had written on. The page was covered in writing. And I mean covered. Every inch was tattooed with scrawled words and fragments of sentences going in every direction. I turned my head, trying to make out what I had written but not all of it looked like my handwriting. As the writing became more frenetic it looked less and less like I had written it. Even worse, it was all gibberish. Half of the words weren’t even English, or any other language I recognise, just a meaningless combination of letters.

  I shook my head and flipped to a new page. Looking at that graffiti covered page was making my head hurt and some animalistic instinct told me to move on, to not look too long at it, to ignore it. I took a deep breath and flipped open the Codex. The book fell open eagerly to a page I had never seen before. I set myself to the arduous and often unrewarding task of trying to unpick the dead language of the text. I went through all of my notes, looking for any Runes or words that I recognised and trying to parse meaning from it.

  Hours melted past. Frustration had long ago set in and was turning into a full blown migraine. The sun had begun to wane, the sky darkened and I was still staring at the same page. I had tried moving on. I had tried turning to something else but I kept ending up back on this page. It stared back at me mockingly, flaunting its secrets in my face. My eyes were red rimmed, my stomach growled, and my mouth tasted sour. I had itched and rubbed my scalp raw and my neck ached so badly it had frozen in a hunched crescent shape. My whole body was tense. Furiously, I began flipping through the pages, no longer being delicate with the ancient book. I was petulantly tossing over pages mumbling and muttering curse words under breath.

  “Come on you stupid… fucking… piece of… ow!” I pulled my hand away from the book and looked at the tip of my index finger where a bead of fresh blood was welling up from a paper cut.

  “Oh great,’ I muttered, sucking on my stinging fingertip.

  I looked down at the book again and saw the corner of the page had been stained red with my blood. As I watched, the stain grew. It bled across the page, seeping into the aged paper, then the words began to shift. The letters melted and switched around in front of my eyes and suddenly… it made sense.

  I could read the page…