Every revolution starts somewhere. For Jameson Parker, that place is Scotland.

Jameson Parker returns, angry and ready to lash out at the government that is selling his people to the vampires across the sea. But he has a plan to set things right: he’s going to rob The Vault, the magical leash that keeps all the warlocks in the country under the thumb of Whitehall. At least, he will if he can find the time; Death herself wants him to find her missing sister, and it’s quite possible the most dangerous wizard in British history is back from the dead with schemes of his own.

Parker has a lot on his plate. As usual.

---

One

‘Black coffee, bacon butty, hard-boiled egg. Anything else you’ll be wanting, hun?’

The woman dropped my order onto the table with the overworked indifference of a career waitress, an attitude that would be netting her an above-average tip when it came time to pay the bill. There was no life path a person like her had envisaged for herself that ended up here, slinging slop in a Scottish greasy spoon.

But then, it wasn’t my choice to be there either. We were kindred spirits in that regard, hence the tip. Solidarity.

I waved her off politely and set about dunking sachet after sachet of brown sugar into my coffee. I was up to seven by the time Paul Renner finally arrived. He stood in the doorway for a moment, surveyed the scene, then slid into the cracked leatherette bench on the opposite side of my booth.

Without a word, he started to rummage around in a messenger bag he had brought with him. This was a dance I was familiar with, and ordinarily one that I would have taken great pleasure in interrupting. But this was business and, God help me, it was important enough to take completely seriously.

Yeah, I know, even I’m surprised at myself for saying that, but it is what it is.

After a minute, he pulled an envelope from the bag and slid it across the table to me. He put a finger to his lips as I unsealed it, showing off a black steel band encrusted with chipped garnets. The envelope was full of rings, but it didn’t take me long to find the second half of the pair.

I slipped it on and grabbed his hand. A tingle of magic ran up my arm, telling me an enchantment had been triggered. ‘Testing, testing. One, two, check check check.’

He winced. ‘We’re good. No-one can hear us.’

‘You sure?’ I asked, rolling my tongue around my mouth. ‘Who have you got putting these things together now, Paul? I can taste his aura and it’s horrible.’

‘Like old socks and stale cigarettes? Yeah, he wasn’t my first port of call but we’re running out of options. Whitehall are stepping things up.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a stack of files waiting for me on my desk for when my vacation officially ends. Bennet says there’s just a couple more palms to grease before everyone finally agrees to look the other way. He’s really gone out on a limb for me, I must say.’

Renner shrugged. ‘A warlock sodding off abroad without sanction and throwing around spells like Billy The Kid wouldn’t look good on his yearly appraisal, I guess.’

I nodded again. In the couple of weeks since my return from the good old US of A, our conversations had become pretty rote, and my neck muscles were bulging to prove it. I had nodded more in the last few weeks than one of those sipping birds quirky people put on their office desks. ‘How many have we lost?’

‘Lagrange, Mortimer, both of the Stent twins,’ he said, drumming a finger on the table with each name for emphasis. ‘Bilious O’Toole and Nancy McCann were taken last night, Tolliver this morning.’

‘They took Tolliver? He couldn’t light a match in a volcano. There’s more power in one of my pubes than his whole body.’

‘Amazingly inappropriate analysis aside, that’s my point,’ Renner said. ‘Whitehall is finally going wide, and they’re not having the warlocks do it.’

‘Finally rolling out the fast-trackers to mop up the stragglers, are they?’

‘Paladins.’

I snorted unexpectedly and lapsed into a coughing fit. ‘Ex-fucking-scuse me?’

‘The fast-trackers,’ Renner said, sheepishly. ‘They’re calling them Paladins now. They’ve rebranded. They made a logo.’

Renner’s free hand slipped into his jacket and returned with a business card. He handed it to me and I gave it a look. In letters so crisp they could cut glass, the name Indira Vandal was emblazoned across the middle, Paladin 2^nd Class underneath. In the top right corner, a pentagram with the royal seal in the centre.

‘Wow, they really did, didn’t they? We never got a logo.’

‘We were always a short-term solution, Parker,’ Renner said, taking back the card. ‘I’m surprised we lasted this long if I’m honest.’

‘Who’s Vandal?’

‘She’s shadowing me. Everyone has their own personal paladin now, ostensibly so we can give them a bit of tuition on the ins and outs of being a magical narc.’

‘But you’re actually training up your replacement? They really have no sense of subtlety, huh?’

‘None at all,’ he said. ‘Which is why I think we need to move up the timetable.’

I had all manner of responses to that, but I thought it best to let it sit in the air for a moment. The moment I had gotten it into my head to start this secret pushback against whatever darkness was roiling in the heart of Whitehall, Paul had been my own little Jiminy Cricket, filtering my extravagant plans down into something useable. I would have marched right into Whitehall the moment I got back, kicked off like nobody’s business, but he had convinced me we needed a plan, allies, some measure of support.

So, yeah, wanting to speed things up was a little out of character.

I felt my hand squeeze his a little tighter. ‘Is it really that bad?’

‘Word is that the whole thing with the vampires lit a fire under the wrong kind of people. They’re stepping things up, we have to stay synchronised.’

‘Then I suppose I have a few hands to shake, huh?’

His hand squeezed back at mine, our grips growing tighter. ‘Sooner rather than later, yeah.’

‘Any other important business? My hand is cramping.’

‘Mine too. This new guy isn’t the best, not even close. He had to flick through a notepad to find out how to even throw a simple privacy enchantment on these rings. Repurposed them too, probably all sorts of old magic knocking about in there, messing things up. The hand cramps will be just the start.’

‘Lie down with dogs and you’ll get up with fleas,’ I said.

‘I think this guy may actually have fleas, come to think of it,’ he said. ‘The jewellery in that envelope has your usual enchantments, utility and passive defence are the strongest ones of the bunch, though there are a couple of offensive workings in there I managed to get from the Stents before they got nabbed. We’re scraping the barrel here, make them last if you can.’

‘I miss my magic.’

‘Yeah, well, even if we didn’t have to stay especially under the radar right now, I’d still be telling you to stick to talismans and the like. I need you on this, not the addict.’

‘Charming.’

He shrugged. ‘You know I’m right.’

He didn’t get a response. There was a slight pop from somewhere in my wrist as a sudden lurch in our grip strengths crunched bones together. Instinctively, I wrenched my hand out of his, breaking the connection. The garnets on my ring had turned black, as had the ones on Renner’s. I slipped off the ring and it crumbled in my grip.

‘So, this is what it’s come to,’ I whispered. ‘Skulking around like second-rate spies, using third-rate enchantments crafted by fourth-rate mages so weak they barely qualify for the title.’

Renner looked around nervously and leaned in closer, his voice even more of a whisper than my own. ‘This is why it’s time to act, before we get any weaker. Get those handshakes and let me know. I’ll start scheming.’

He pulled a fiver from his pocket and dropped it onto the table before getting up. I eyed it suspiciously. ‘What the hell’s this?’

‘Working lunch. I fully intend to expense it.’

I shrugged and slid the note under my coffee. ‘Stay safe, Paul.’

‘You too, Jim.’

Renner made this look very easy. He hadn’t been a warlock much longer than I had, but he had taken to the politicking and the cloak and dagger shit easier. To him, this was a typical day at the office, or at least he made it seem that way. That was helpful.

I sifted through the envelope and plucked out a couple of bits of jewellery with enough of a kick to set the hairs on my arm tingling, then downed my coffee and took a notepad from my back pocket. I crossed off a few names from the front sheet of paper – Lagrange, Mortimer, et al. – then flipped to the second page.

From the outset, Renner had wanted to bring people on board to give my little crusade a hint of legitimacy. One, even two men railing against a darkness in the heart of government smells a little too much like doomsayers braying on a street corner. He had given me a key list of people to recruit.

And every single one of them had told me to get fucked.

A not insignificant part of this situation was Paul’s fault – if you send me, noted dickhead and agent of vexation, to charm people then what exactly are you expecting? – but I’d never held out much hope in getting anyone to sign on. The one thing we all had in common was that Whitehall had kicked us within an inch of our lives, and that was at the height of our powers. Who was going to be mad enough to sign on to stand against them now, especially after I had so dutifully shut down the last attempt at an insurrection?

I finished my food and slipped on the rings and bracelets and talismans I had picked out. If I was stepping back out into the streets, I was going to do so properly attired this time. Coming back to the UK from my American sojourn had left me feeling distinctly vulnerable, and I didn’t want to walk back into Whitehall territory without something to give me a shot in the arm first. Rationally, I knew these trinkets were too weak to really work that way, but sometimes you just need enough of a boost to fake-it-till-you-make-it.

There was still one last name on the list, but I had saved them for last so I could go out on an easy victory if everyone else told me to get stuffed. He had an inexplicable soft spot for me, which mitigated a lot of the issues, after all.

Outside, the winter weather had turned bitingly cold. I turned my collar up against the cold wind, but Scottish weather, much like its people, was very insistent that it was not to be ignored. Luckily, I didn’t have far to go. Stodgy breakfast warming my innards, I set my shoulders up against the breeze and set off at a fair clip.

I immediately slipped off the curb in front of an oncoming bus and died.

Yeah, I know, a bit of a jarring segue there, but think how I felt. I saw it happen in slow motion, felt myself losing control and sliding ever so gracefully under the broad front wheel of a double decker. I felt the rubber meet my face, bones cracking, blood gushing.

And then I didn’t.

The bus stopped with the tyre a mere millimetre from grinding the tip of my nose – and then the rest of my head – into the asphalt. But I had felt it already doing that, hadn’t I? It certainly felt real enough.

I pulled myself away from the floor with some difficulty, it was like swimming against some unseen current, and threw myself back up onto the curb. I lay there for a while, staring up at the sky, watching the clouds leering down at me.

‘Take your time,’ someone said.

My head flopped towards the bus again. A young woman in her late teens was hanging out the driver’s window, leaning on her crossed forearms. Her face was ash-white and her jet-black hair was interwoven with starlight. She smiled and even though it lit up her entire face it seemed sad but comforting.

‘Mrhmn?’ I said eloquently. ‘Mrnrn?’

‘Don’t worry, it’ll come,’ she said. ‘You’re not supposed to be here yet so everything is a little wiggly squiggly. Atropos is going to kick off when she finds out.’

A levee broke in me, letting words and thoughts rush back in to fill the empty spaces in my head. ‘What… is… going… on?’

‘You’re having a near death experience,’ she said. ‘I’m Death, you’re near me. Ipso facto Latiny Latin.’

I blinked. Looking at her was like dragging sandpaper across my eyes. ‘Death? Any relation to—’

‘To Dead?’ she cut me off. ‘Sister. I guess sibling, actually? Sister in this form, sibling in general. But, yes, very much a relation and that’s why I’m here. I’ve got a job for you.’

‘With all due respect, I’m not a private detective.’

She flowed out of the bus as a silken mist and offered me a hand. ‘Are you sure? You’re a trench coat and a fedora away from being a cliché at this point.’

‘The internet ruined fedoras,’ I said and let her pull me up. ‘Seeing as you literally hit me with a bus to have this meeting, I’m going to guess I don’t have much of a choice here.’

Death pouted and pulled away. ‘You always have a choice. No matter what you decide here, I’m sending you back to your life. I’m not shaking you down here. If anything, I’m asking for a favour.’

‘Okay, fine, I’ll hear you out.’

As she moved closer once again, I caught a whiff of what I first thought was her perfume. It was a musty smell, like a house left empty for too long, mixed with a flash of some electric spices that tickled the inside of my nose.

It wasn’t her perfume; it was a memory. My memory. An old one, long forgotten, of moving house with my parents, sitting on the oak floorboards to eat a takeaway curry because nothing was unpacked yet.

Death snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. ‘You with me? I’ll talk fast, see if I can outpace the wistfulness. Okay?’

I nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Dee’s missing and it’s causing all manner of problems. The dead have nowhere to go, blah blah blah. You’re the last living person to see her, so I was hoping you’d be able to find her.’

‘Oh, easy peasy, just singlehandedly scour the planet for the personification of every dead person who ever lived. She could, quite literally, be anyone.’

She laughed. it echoed somewhere in the distance. ‘All right, cool your jets, champ. You’re not the only person looking, I’m casting a wide net here. But yeah, she could be anywhere, but seeing as it’s, like, super rare that a living person even learns she exists, I figure she’s not done with you just yet. All I’m asking is that when she shows up again, you send her home. You do that, I’ll even pay you for your time.’

‘Got a lot of spare cash, do you?’

‘Something better,’ she said. ‘But not until you deliver. Wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings if someone else gets the job done first. You in?’

The smart move would have been to say no. I had enough on my plate with the whole resistance movement I was trying to build, there wasn’t liable to be much space for a little amuse-bouche of tracking down every missing person ever at the same time. And yet…

Look, one of the things you learn about Death when you’re going picking up the intricacies of mucking about with magic is that she’s a sneaky bitch. Her whole deal is to be welcoming and familiar, to help mitigate the sheer terror at not existing anymore. There’s not a form of life that wouldn’t be drawn to seeing her as a friend, and it wasn’t much of a leap to surmise that she picked her forms to help strengthen that effect.

She’d picked the perfect form to tug on my heartstrings, let me tell you; the perfect distillation of every physical attribute and personality trait that puts me at ease. She wasn’t playing the damsel in distress role in the classical sense, but my dopey-ass brain found enough points of similarity to latch onto regardless.

‘I’m in,’ I said. ‘No problem.’

‘Aces,’ she said. The smile grew larger. ‘You’ve got a week, just a little deadline to keep you motivated. I find that tends to hurry things along.’

‘A week? That might not be—’

‘Okay, bye!’

The world slid into focus again, air pounding against my lungs as I fell backwards away from the road. The bus continued on its merry way without issue, vanishing as quickly as it had arrived. The memory of being hit by it outlived the thing itself as it turned the corner, then grew dim and artificial, moving from memory to imagination – from what had been to what might have been.

I wondered if I would have had the same experience if I had rejected her offer.

Then again, if you make a habit of biting off more than you can chew, you’ll quickly learn how to swallow without chewing anything at all. This is absolutely a real chunk of proper Zen koan enlightenment that definitely applies here.

‘Oh god,’ I said, rubbing my eyes with my palms. ‘Why do I do this to myself?’