“Yeah, I could do that. The thing is…” His voice trailed off.

“What?” I prodded.

“Well, the thing is that the Arch-Mage isn’t doing so well right now. A lot of other factions are unhappy with the way he’s running things. They’re just looking for an opportunity for him to screw up and they’ll jump right in there with a vote of no confidence.” Alex looked at me with panic in his eyes. “Mack, I can’t let that happen. I can’t let my fuck up be the reason that he’s ousted from power. The Ministry will disintegrate. There’ll be in-fighting and power struggles, and people will die. And it will all be my fault! And that’s even if the vamps decide to give the Ancile back. If they decide that they’re going to ignore the Arch-Mage – which they might well do – then things will be even worse.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Yeah, I could see how this was bad. And I had to admit, the Arch-Mage, for all of his posturing and his forcing me to come to the academy in the first place, was a pretty decent mage. I had actually had a few inklings as well that things weren’t looking too rosy for him. I shuddered to think what things would be like if someone like the Dean ended up taking the reins of the Ministry’s power.

“So, is there a way out? Is there some way that you can get it back?”

“Mack Attack, you know what I’m like. I’d be awful at that kind of thing. If I got caught, I’d be a blubbering wreck. And you know I’d get caught. I’m just not that kind of person.”

I felt a heavy sinking feeling of inevitability in the pit of my stomach. “But you think I could do it.” It wasn’t a question.

Alex just looked at me. I looked back at him and sighed. “Okay, what do I have to do?”

“Oh, Mack, I knew you’d help me. I knew that you’d save the day and come through and make everything right. That’s why you’re the Mack Attack!” He grinned suddenly and, for a flash, was back to his former self.

“Hey, hold on,” I said seriously, “I don’t even know if I can do this yet. Let’s not forget that I’m stuck here at the academy in the first place. How I am even going to get time off to begin to sneak into a vamp’s lair?”

Alex shifted in his seat, abruptly looking uncomfortable.

“Alex?”

He budged around again and wouldn’t meet my eye.

“Alex? Why do I get the feeling that I’m really not going to like this?”

“Okay, look. There’s an easy way for you to get a night off.”

“And how’s that?”

“Someone important asks you out, you know, like for a date or something.”

I had a nasty inkling that I knew where this might be heading. “But then I’m out on a date with this important person, not anywhere near the vamp’s place where the Ancile is,” I pointed out.

“Well, you see,” Alex demurred, “that’s where serendipity comes into our hands.”

“Oh yes?”

“There’s a party. Next week. All the Otherworld bigwigs attend. It’s an annual thing, designed to encourage inter-species cooperation. And guess what?”

“Let me think,” I said drily, “it’s being held at this vamp’s house.”

“Got it in one! It’s not his house so much as the vamps’ actual stronghold, though.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Alex laughed slightly. “In order to keep things fair, the party’s location is rotated through the places belonging to the leaders of the main different Otherworld groups. And this year we’ve struck lucky!”

I definitely didn’t feel very lucky.

Alex continued, “So all you need to do is to wangle an invitation and the hard part of getting into the building where the Ancile is kept is already covered. And if you get an invitation, it’s with someone important so that makes it okay for you to also leave the academy for an evening. The Dean won’t be able to say no.”

“It’s like you planned the whole thing out.”

“Yeah, dude!” Life leapt back into Alex’s eyes as his personality started to re-assert itself. “You just get in touch with little old Lord Shifty – because of course he’s going – and then you’re in. And you can retrieve the Ancile and put the real Palladium in its place and then there’s no fire or war or destruction and the Arch-Mage is safe and everybody’s happy.” He beamed at me, full wattage.

“Yes, see,” I said carefully, “except there’s just one small flaw in your perfectly laid out plan.”

“What’s that?” Alex looked confused and I was half tempted to bang his head against the stone wall.

“The part where I have to ask Corrigan if he’ll take me to a party for all the VIPs of the Otherworld,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Alex put his hands up. “Oh, but he thinks you’re great, dude! Everyone knows that you saved his life and saved the Pack, and are the hero of the moment. You just need to whisper a few sweet nothings in his ear and hey presto!”

“Except for the teeny tiny little point where I just so happened to bump into him yesterday and we almost came to blows.” Or at least I told him in no uncertain terms to fuck off, anyway.

“What? Oh, Mack Attack, no. Really?” The mage was visibly deflated.

“Do you have a back-up plan?” I asked gently.

He shook his head. “No. This is it. I’ve thought of everything else. This is the only chance there will be to get this done. And it needs to be done quickly or there’ll just be more opportunity for the Ancile to be activated.”

“The Dean really wasn’t very happy about me talking to Corrigan yesterday. He’ll be even less happy if I’m going out on actual date with him. And that’s even assuming I can get the Lord Alpha to invite me. You can bet he’s already got some glamorous shifter lady signed up for that duty.”

“Don’t worry about the Dean,” said Alex confidently. “If you can get our mate, Shifty dude, to invite you, I’ll take care of the rest.”

Somehow I thought that would be the hardest part of the whole operation. Alex’s plan, to me, appeared to be balanced on the shuffle of far too many cards. I didn’t have a problem with stealing back the Ancile thing for him, but fluttering my eyelashes at Corrigan was not going to be easy. If anything, I didn’t feel quite right about lying to him. I might not be part of the pack any more but old habits died hard. I’d just have to look upon it as a challenge, I figured. Though a challenge that could well see my head ripped from my shoulders, of course.

Chapter Eleven

I gnawed over my conversation with Alex all the way back to the main building. I had absolutely no idea how on earth I was going to achieve any success with my magic training, plus translate the Fae book in the hope that it would give some clue as to my real heritage, as well as pull the wool over the eyes of the leader of the Brethren and pilfer an ancient artifact from under the noses of all the vampires in the United Kingdom at the same time. Fucking hell. Alex, for his part, had muttered something about having to go and retrieve lesson plans and updates from Higgins in order to begin his (he hoped) short-lived career as a teacher, so I’d left him to it.

I decided that the best thing I could do would be to hit the library. There was bound to be something somewhere in there about the vampires’ lair, surely? I could pretend I was reading up about Evocation perhaps for my next lesson. Although, come to think of it, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I would just have to put the Fae book on hold for a while and hope that its disappearance from the library remained unnoticed. It was even possible that no-one knew it was in the library, of course. It definitely seemed, to all intents and purposes, to be exactly the same book that I’d come across in Clava Cairns. That meant that perhaps it wasn’t even catalogued in the academy library. I also wouldn’t be able to contact Corrigan until much later that night, so there was no point worrying about that for now. I’d just have to figure out later what I’d say to him.

I swung by the cafeteria and managed to pick up a sandwich from the remnants of what the other students had left behind, then munched it on my way to Slim’s cavernous residence. I had absolutely no idea what the rest of the Initiates were doing with their weekend; I’d just have to hope that very few of them were hitting the books themselves.

I’d swallowed down the last of the bread by the time I reached the library’s vast doors. Repeating my actions from my last visit, I reached out with a single finger and traced over the elegant shape of the inlaid dragon, wondering this time if it was meant to be the one that had been transformed into a man by the female mage in the Fae book. It was certainly a brave woman that would have taken it on, I mused, lightly touching the lethal looking talons that had been carved there. Then I opened the library doors quietly and walked inside.

The space was as light, airy and impressive as it had been on my last visit. I looked around for Slim and, for a moment, thought that the little librarian had disappeared off into some nook or cranny yet again, until I heard an agitated fluttering coming towards me. I half-turned, registered the purple figure and then smiled my awkward greetings.

“You again!” shouted Slim. “What the feck do you want?”

“Uh, hi. I would like to look at some books to help me with Evocation,” I said as pleasantly as I could, keeping the smile firmly in place. “It might help me with my lessons. I’m, uh, not doing too well,” I added in a conspiratorial tone.

The gargoyle snorted. “Well, blow me down with a fecking feather! At last a student in this place who has realised that they might actually learn something if they opened a book. Honestly, the amount of fecking Initiates I get in here demanding to be shown to the nearest Othernet station. As if we dabble in that rubbish here!”

I nodded my head wisely, glad that I’d not made that my first question. Instead, I realised that I could kill two birds with one stone.