Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

I ran to the trees and did a swift check round. Had I seen something, or was my imagination on overdrive? Whatever, there was no hint of vamp, or of magic. Letting Ascalon slide back into the ring, I jogged over to the man and his dog, said a brief hello, and confirmed he was as old and human as he appeared and hadn’t seen a flasher making a fast exit. Then I sprinted back to the bushes, poked around and again found nothing. Rolling my shoulders to get rid of the tension, I jogged back to Katie.

‘Did you see him?’ she asked, expression worried.

Crap. Katie really didn’t need to hear I thought her flasher might be a vamp stalking me; it would knock her confidence way down. ‘Sorry, no. Probably scared him off with the sword.’

She frowned at me. ‘He was weird.’

I snorted. ‘I think sick is the word you want.’

‘No. He was naked, but he wasn’t trying to, y’know, flash. It was more as if he was spying and he sort of fell over.’

I pursed my lips. ‘He fell over?’

‘Maybe not fell over exactly, but sort of crumpled downwards.’

‘Okay, that is weird. But he’s gone now,’ I said, aiming for reassuring. ‘So he can’t have been hurt.’

She hugged her helmet, still anxious. ‘Maybe. Did you see the animal under the trees? It was weird too. Dog-like, but not. And big.’

I gave her a considering look. Maybe my imagination wasn’t on overdrive. A big dog might account for the dark shape I thought I’d seen. ‘I didn’t get a clear look, Katie. Sorry.’

She gave an almost imperceptible shudder. ‘Do you think the animal was something to do with the Carnival? They’ve got some odd exhibits. Maybe one of them escaped? The man could’ve been looking for it?’

I hadn’t thought of that, but then my paranoia was stuck on vampire. Whereas Katie’s was stuck on finding an explanation that wasn’t scary. ‘Could be,’ I said, and dug out my phone and called Carnival security, more to reassure Katie than anything.

The duty manager hadn’t had any escapees reported, so he took my rather sparse details, asked if I was sure they were animals and not some sort of fae, then thanked me and said he’d check it out. He also suggested I phone the zoo. I did. And got almost the same response, albeit with the guarantee that they took security very seriously, and would have known if any animal had escaped. They would, of course, look into it.

‘Nothing, but they’ll let me know,’ I told Katie as I came off the phone. ‘I think we should tell the police about the flasher.’ Which the naked male was, whatever else he might be, and as such needed to be reported. ‘Can you describe him?’

She twisted the strap of her helmet, chewed her lip, frowning at the bushes. ‘Dark, wavy hair. Pale-skinned. Tall-ish . . . I think.’

‘And definitely naked,’ I prompted.

‘Yes, but I didn’t see anything, y’know, important, just enough that I could tell he didn’t have clothes on.’

I gave her a comforting hug, and phoned the police.

An hour later, we waved them goodbye. They’d taken our statements and I’d managed to let them know, without Katie hearing, my suspicion the flasher might be a vamp. They’d said it wasn’t unusual to get flasher reports from the park and they’d do a more thorough check during daylight. Then they wrapped the bushes up in enough blue and white tape that it looked like the vegetation had been a victim of an over-excited troupe of maypole dancers. The coppers’ parting shot had been to ask if we wanted a police liaison officer to contact us to arrange some counselling.

‘Counselling,’ Katie muttered miserably once we were on our own again. ‘We don’t have to, do we? It wasn’t like I even saw anything.’

I hugged her again. ‘It’s only if you think you need it, hon.’

‘Yeah, well I don’t. I had enough counselling last year.’

When the vamp kidnapped her . She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. That counselling hadn’t been fun, but it had helped, which was what mattered. ‘Hey.’ I gave her shoulders another consoling squeeze. ‘Wanna hit the Rosy Lea for coffee and a fry-up?’

She eyed me dubiously from under her lashes. ‘You don’t do coffee and I don’t do fry-ups.’

I grinned. ‘Semantics.’

She huffed and handed me her spare helmet. ‘You gonna tell Mum about tonight?’

‘Do you want me to?’

She heaved a sigh. ‘No. I’ll tell her. She’s gonna freak out, though.’

Yep, Paula would. But in a good way, Then again, what mother wouldn’t? She was as protective as I was about Katie, apart from when it came to Katie’s new boyfriend, Marc. But before I could say anything, a bird-like warbling sounded. Katie started, grabbed for her phone. She frowned then shot me a bemused look. ‘You’re never gonna believe this, Genny! Someone’s pulled a “Harry Potter” in Leicester Square!’

‘A what?’

‘A “Harry Potter”. At least that’s what they’re calling it on Twitter. Tavish’s bots picked it up. Look!’ She held her phone out.

The display showed a video clip of the Empire’s façade. The huge poster over the cinema’s entrance advertised Conan the Barbarian . On the poster, a half-naked, muscled-up Conan was looming high above the battling hordes, actually swinging his sword at his legion of attackers. As the video clip played, Conan’s adversaries stopped attacking and traipsed off into the wings as if taking a tea break. Conan looked around in satisfaction, hoisted his sword over his shoulder and followed, leaving the poster advertising nothing more than an out-of-focus vista of an empty, rocky plain.

I looked at Katie. ‘That is a poster, isn’t it? Not some new vid-screen the cinema’s using?’

‘Definitely a poster.’ She tapped her screen. ‘And it’s definitely a prank of some kind; there’re already apologies and reassurances on twitter that it’ll be fixed soon.’ She gave me an expectant glance.

‘You’re right,’ I said, answering her unspoken question. ‘It sounds like an ideal job for Spellcrackers, if we can—’

Katie’s phone gave another bird-like warble at the same time my phone beeped with a text – from Leandra, the witch who monitored our night phones.

Big problems in Leicester Square! Six jobs already and more coming in. You available?

Leandra had sent the text to every witch on Spellcrackers’ books. I raised my brows at Katie. ‘Jobs, plural?’

‘Yep. The rest of the posters are the same. Well, according to Twitter, anyway. Going by the ton of tweets, it looks like it might even be trending soon.’

‘Going by the tweets,’ I corrected, ‘it looks like we’re in for a busy night.’

Conan the Barbarian twirled his sword like a cheerleader’s baton, pointed it out at the cheering crowds forty feet below in Leicester Square, then did a slow bump and grind as he shot me a salacious wink.

‘Bet you don’t do that in the film,’ I muttered, ignoring the whoops, whistles and calls for ‘more’.

I used the controls on the hydraulic lift basket I was standing in to nudge myself closer to the top of the film poster, then focused on the splatter of muddy-coloured oil paint that was the ‘Harry Potter’ spell. How the hell the magical vandal had got it this high was a mystery – one the police were responsible for unravelling – all I had to unravel was the spell.

Which was proving easier said than done.

‘Okay, let’s try this again,’ I murmured, crunching three liquorice torpedoes to boost my magic, and touching the cleaned mascara brush I held to the paint. Carefully, I teased out a fat orange stripe from the muddy mess, then another of indigo, followed by pink, green, and five shades of yellow, until I had all the stripes separated out into a seemingly random colour wheel. Mentally crossing my fingers, I checked the poster. Conan scowled, hefted his sword like he meant business and froze. I compared it to the A4 copy the cinema manager had given me, and blew out a relieved sigh. They matched. Finally, I’d hit on the right combination. After two long hours.