I took the box of documents and drugs to Donald, ran into Peter, and promptly got stuck in the basement with no chance of escape until nightfall. They handed me a pair of work rags, a crate of earth-type reservoirs, and put me to work.

  Speaking of the basement — half the cells down there were occupied, and even counting the prisoners I’d brought in, it was still too crowded. That was likely why Donald and his father didn’t say a word of protest to the architect. They shelved the important box and picked up shovels instead. A secret exit for the clan’s Internal Security took top priority.

  I might’ve asked the McLals for news, but they’d activated a silence amulet in the room, so the prisoners wouldn’t hear us at work.

  Peter and I mapped the tunnel directions, reinforced the expected entry points with archways, and I melted the interior sections using basic liquid stone. The wall where the passage to the future orphanage would begin turned soft and saggy like dough. The McLals, father and son, quickly got to work with the shovels, pushing the molten rock onto a tarp in the corner.

  We didn’t break through to bare soil on the first go. The stone cooled too fast, and Peter had designed the house with a thick foundation. We had to repeat the process.

  That was when Logg called a halt to that section. According to him, the rest could be done without magic, just pick and shovel if needed. The McLals showered him with heartfelt ‘praise’, knowing full well who’d be doing all the physical labour.

  Peter, for his part, snapped back like a true builder. Then he barked at both security men and ordered us to start on the second tunnel, the one that would begin with a hole in the floor. Dismantling the floorboards took as much time and effort as the first wall, and then Peter started fiddling with softening the earth and reinforcing the walls of the shaft. From what I could tell, there was supposed to be some kind of lifting mechanism under the bed, he was prepping the ground ahead of time.

  Work was only called off once we’d finished the descent and begun the actual tunnel, and only after the architect was satisfied we were heading in the right direction at the right depth.

  We emerged from the basement past midnight, wandered off to our respective bathrooms, and later regrouped in the clan leader’s room.

  The meeting with Lord Farnell, by the way, had gone smoothly. The duke had given his blessing for the orphanage without digging into the clan’s underlying motives. Bryce and Burke were already back from their visit and wanted to talk. Peter had taken over the kitchen and thrown together a very late supper — cold snacks and hot tea.

  While we layered sandwiches and wolfed them down, uncle and his grandson leafed through the papers from Kate.

  "That vampire’s a dangerous piece of work," said Bryce.

  Burke looked up from his folder of newspaper clippings and drew a sharp line across his neck with his thumb.

  "In due time," his uncle replied. "So long as it suits her to be friendly with us, she’s useful. There's far more here than your boys ever managed to dig up," he added, turning to the McLals.

  Old Albert chewed a mouthful, then grumbled, "She’s lived in this city her whole life. Her father probably started that bloody file."

  "Hey, I’m just saying she’s useful," Bryce waved him off. "No complaints about your work."

  "But we do have questions," I cut in. After my third sandwich, tomatoes, cucumbers, and ham, the hunger finally backed off, and it seemed like a good moment to speak. "What about that fop who was running the ambush?"

  "You won’t believe it," Donald began.

  "Is that a professional habit of yours?" I interrupted. "You, Nicholas, Sunset, you all start with that line."

  "Standard reaction to human stupidity," McLal explained.

  For some reason, I thought of Ellie first. Then Simon and Finella.

  "I’m used to stupidity."

  "Anyway," Donald continued, "the attack on you was the fop’s personal initiative. According to the police records, his name’s Oliver Smith."

  "You’ve got contacts in the police? When did that happen?"

  "As soon as I arrived. Introduced myself to Pumpkin, made a charitable donation to the veterans’ and pensioners’ fund for Precinct Two, we understand each other perfectly now."

  "For the time being," Albert muttered.

  The old man clearly wasn’t happy, though I couldn’t tell whether it was because his son had bribed the coppers, or because he hadn’t thought of it himself.

  Either way, that was one less problem for me, I wouldn’t have to deal with Pumpkin directly.

  "Gentlemen, let’s stay on topic," I urged, and Donald resumed his report.

  Smith had arrived in Farnell from the south — a nobody with nothing. In a short time, he’d pulled together a gang of racketeers, carved out a patch of turf at the border between the docks and the slums, and ran a couple of workshops making fishing tackle. He also offered ‘protection’ to a few street gangs made up of underage pickpockets.

  He paid tribute to those higher up in the criminal chain.

  The workshops and pickpockets didn’t generate much income, so Smith’s crew occasionally dabbled in petty robbery. The big money, smuggling and narcotics, passed him by, and getting into that side of things was practically a death sentence.

  But oh, he wanted it badly.

  The trouble with small-time thugs was that the only people they feared were their own bosses. Some Johnny-the-Poker could disembowel you on the spot or burn out your brain, while coppers were obliged to arrest you, question you, put you on trial… Sure, police interrogation wasn’t a picnic either, but getting beaten was easier to survive than an enchanted spike in the kidney.

  So Smith came up with a brilliant idea — help one of the city’s ‘respected figures’.

  He trained, prepared, gathered people, weapons, and amulets. Unfortunately, the ‘respected’ weren’t in the market for help. At least not until recently.

  What changed? The Bremor lot had just snatched the owner of the Lame Mare, dragged him right out of bed, and while the man posed as a humble barman, he was actually someone of note in Tony the Short’s organisation. Something between a fixer and an adviser. Smith knew him, he’d been fencing stolen goods through the man.

  Donald immediately swore his team had handled the grab cleanly and had no idea how the thugs caught wind of our interest. Especially since not all Bremor clan members had been involved, just one young lord, whose name had already started circulating in the form of certain rumours.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  Bryce didn’t blow up at the security man, quite the opposite. He explained what had really happened. Turns out, my crew had slipped up. If they hadn’t called Lisa, as I’d instructed, they’d already be dead.

  Nicholas Boily’s men had tracked and taken down a tail — a weak but bloody nimble werewolf covered in distractive tattoos. They didn’t get a chance to interrogate the flea-bitten bastard, he had a poison capsule sewn into his collar and didn’t hesitate to bite down on it. The sheer readiness with which he took his own life was… unnerving.

  The lad, incidentally, was local, from Farnell. Donald McLal would still have to dig into his connections. Not a simple task, especially considering that just last night, after the attack on me, Tony the Short had OD’d in his own den, the gang’s accountant had vanished, and a pair of close associates had literally torn each other’s throats out. Shifters, apparently.

  Donald wasn’t mourning. On the contrary, he was nearly ecstatic. The news of the boss’s death had worked on the ‘barman’ like truth serum. He sang like a canary, spilling everything he knew about the kidnappings. In fact, it turned out he’d been the one overseeing that particular operation in Tony’s crew, recruiting unscrupulous but not yet completely rotten people and forcing them into work as human traffickers.

  These lads were paid ten to fifteen pounds per live body. The gang would then profit a hundred or more off each one.

  Needless to say, it was a lucrative business, but one limited by demand. The buyer preferred small batches from various suppliers. And every ‘organisation’ in the city supplied him — all but the vampires, strangely enough. They always tried to stay above regular crime, playing at being noble.

  The owner of the Mare turned out to be a real piece of filth. Donald admitted he nearly offed him on the spot during interrogation, but what saved the bastard was a unique situation that guaranteed his obedience and loyalty.

  Donald built his simple but flexible plan around that. He proposed releasing the ‘barman’ and letting him inherit Tony’s operation. Then, and this part Donald clearly enjoyed, we could wait for something… unfortunate to happen to him. Something like what happened to the others. And then trace it back to whoever arranged the accident.

  There was a second option too, not quite as fun, but more reliable: Release him under guard and keep him alive. Either way, the man had nowhere to run. Let him play bait for a while.

  "With this approach, we won’t even need the orphanage," Donald concluded.

  "I’m all for it!" Peter chimed in, he’d been saying from the start that the house wouldn’t work as an orphanage anyway.

  But my uncle cut him off: "You don’t get a say in this. And backing out’s not an option anymore. Duncan’s already told the Mayor, and I spoke to the Duke. He agreed, didn’t even try to haggle. So we’ve got no way out."

  "Strange that he didn’t haggle," I said, recalling how de Camp had fought tooth and nail.

  "Not really. Remember, his position’s different. He doesn’t have to worry about elections, and any short-term damage to his reputation, he can repair over time. Besides, the more we undermine his standing with the public, the more indebted we become, both I and the clan, for his silence. That’s far more valuable to him than any formal agreement."

  "So do your best, Donald. I don’t want to have to apologise."

  "We’re going to war with the criminal underworld, one way or another," the security man shot back. "This isn’t a one-off op. It’s a long-term campaign. The odds of something getting out of hand are way too high."

  Since the conversation had veered slightly off-course, I steered it back to the main point: I still wanted to know why Smith had arranged the ambush, and what exactly he’d been hoping to gain. It took either real guts or complete idiocy to pull something like that off.

  Donald explained that the thug had planned to extract the location of the Lame Mare’s owner from me before Tony got the chance to do it himself.

  "He really overestimated his status in the underworld?" I asked. "Or did he just underestimate us?"

  "A bit of both," Donald replied. "From his perspective, you were an orphan with no one behind you.

  He is southerner, they don’t really get what a clan is. He didn’t take Sledgehammer Harry seriously either, he wasn’t around when your teacher’s name was all over the front pages. And honestly, the operation Smith put together wasn’t that dumb. He didn’t plan on getting his hands dirty, just scare you a bit. He even had this interesting potion to weaken your will, and a strong hypnotist, a mist sorcerer, who was supposed to make you reveal where the ‘barman’ was being held. Then he’d make you forget it ever happened. You and your driver would’ve just gotten home ten minutes late."

  A hot flush ran through me. Just that morning, Harry had pulled the anti-compulsion shield from my head. Lucky I hadn’t gone easy on the bastards — who knows? If I had, Tony the Short might not have overdosed, and our building might’ve ended up in rubble.

  After news like that, my uncle flat-out refused to let me go home for the night. He made me sleep in the Bremor residence. Peter was delighted, said we could get back to work in the basement in the morning. I crushed his enthusiasm.

  "I’ve got training in the morning. Not changing my schedule."

  The architect tried to pressure me through my uncle, but he refused to take sides. So, before breakfast, Burke and I headed to the Anvil.

  My cousin wanted to watch my training, and even joined in. He gave me and Knuckles a good pounding, praised Cap’s cooking, and had a proper laugh at how I kept failing to hit him with my spells during our sparring session.

  Majesty of the Mountains still wasn’t working for me, but I managed to cast Diamond Shield four times, and it held up not just against physical damage, but also cut through the binding effects Cap liked to throw around. So at least I didn’t look like a total failure.

  To finish off, I spent some time in the garden playing with clay, using Liquid Stone for shaping, Petrify to hold the forms, and Blast to destroy them.

  "What about those flying crystals of yours?" Burke asked as I called the training to a close.

  "Completely slipped my mind," I admitted.

  Burke had already seen the crystal blades, so I had no qualms about showing them. But the pocket spell, that could stay a trump card.

  I ran two fingers over the bracelet, activating the spell’s shape, grabbed the core with my will and pressed down to align it with the external structure. The heart of the spell quivered, and instead of locking into place, it crumbled into raw earth magic.

  "Bloody hell," I muttered.

  "You never did that before," Burke said. "Back at the music hall, they flew out of your sleeve on their own."

  "Different amulet," I told him. "Back then, I used a more advanced version."

  "So it’s just an amulet? Who made it? Can I order one?"

  "Talk to Harry," I said, recharging the spell core from my internal reserves, the training reservoirs were already drained. "But I don’t think it’ll suit you. For me, it’s part of control training. You’d have to learn to manage it from scratch. Warlocks don’t usually have to regulate the forces inside a spell, the power comes from your patron spirit. In your case, the drain would be huge. You’d bleed dry using ether reservoirs."

  I remembered how wildly I used to burn through magic before training with Harry. These days, it made my jaw clench just to look at the crude clan-made gear that wasted power so badly. Honestly, mass-producing amulets like that wasn’t real craft.

  "I’ll still talk to him," Burke said, unconvinced. "Could be a handy trump card."

  "Up to you," I replied, carefully aligning the freshly charged core with the external part.

  At the last moment, I remembered the overwhelming flood of sensations from the last activation, just in time.

  The power surged into my hands, crackling at my fingertips, and spread through the garden. I could feel the earth underfoot as if it were part of me, only the tree roots cutting through it felt foreign. After a few seconds, the wave of sensations subsided. Aside from the roots, I sensed the solid but obedient stones I’d worked earlier, and above them, the pile of dry clay I’d been blasting to bits.

  I nearly lifted one of the larger fragments into the air. I knew I could do it, no question, but I held back. Let that be a surprise for Burke someday. One more trump card for my pocket.

  Instead of clay, I slipped two blades from my sleeve, the ones mounted to the bracelet, and sent them flying across the clearing.

  It was far harder than before, back when I didn’t feel every bloody thing at once. Two blue sparks, catching the sunlight that pierced through the branches, picked up speed as they sliced circles around the trees.

  At some point, I stopped feeling the ground beneath my feet.

  No, the sensation was still there, just muted, as if the itch had faded. I could focus entirely on the blades now, and with a flick of thought, lopped off a couple of thin branches for fun.

  The blades spinning through the air, the way sunlight danced along their edges, it was beautiful. Even Burke stood there, watching, mesmerised.

  And if I could control two blades like this, why not try something new?

  I made the blades hover in place, spinning like little propellers, then used a rear-view spell to locate a stone behind me, buried close to the surface. With a snap of will, I yanked it free.

  The stone shot up like it’d been fired from a cannon, slicing through the tree canopy with a sharp hiss.

  Burke spun round at the sound, eyes blazing red, a conjured blade in one hand and a tiny flame in the other.

  "What was that?" he asked, tense.

  I nearly dropped the blades.

  The move had worked, but it had drained my source completely and taken a serious chunk out of the reservoir charge. I’d need to train more to avoid burning out like that again.

  Calmly, I recalled the blades to my sleeve and replied just as calmly: "Squirrels, probably. The place is crawling with them."

  I really should get my cousin out of the way and try the trick again, just not yet. My knees were shaking. I needed to sit down.