City of Magic: The Complete Series by Helen Harper (book club recommendations TXT) 📕

Monroe gently to his feet and turned him round before tracing the nubs of his spine. My fingers travelled lower and lower and lower…

Lucy screamed.

Both Monroe and I stopped ignoring her and pulled apart. I turned and glared at her. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What is it?’

She flung herself against the bars of her cage; I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to escape or simply drawing attention to herself.

At that moment there was the loud clanging of a bell. I froze. Monroe reached for his tracksuits bottoms and hauled them on. That sound meant only one thing: danger was approaching.

I glanced at Lucy. ‘You were warning us,’ I whispered. ‘Good girl.’ Then I was running out of the door with Monroe hot on my heels.

We weren’t the only ones sprinting out. Although a good number of people darted back into their homes and firmly closed their doors, more than enough of us sped towards the main entrance to our enclosure. Whatever the problem was, we’d deal with it face on.

How bad could this be? I calculated the odds. Okay. Pretty bad.

As we rounded the corner onto the main thoroughfare, I saw the cluster of people by the barricade. There wasn’t much action; there was no sign of a terrifying beast or a crazy onslaught of magic-induced hell. Everyone was simply standing around.

I careened to a halt. ‘What’s the problem?’

Julie turned towards me, her eyes glowing red. Her right hand gripped her lace-fringed parasol, shielding her vampire skin from the sun’s damaging rays. ‘See for yourself,’ she said. She pointed beyond the gates.

I sucked in a breath, wary of what was about to greet my eyes. I had to steel myself, however; I had to cope.

I squinted. At first I couldn’t see anything. The road beyond the barricade was empty. There were the usual old pockmarks in the tarmac and the potholes that had been left after the various magical shenanigans that had rained down from the skies above, but there wasn’t much else to be seen.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said finally. ‘There’s nothing there. In fact…’ I frowned and looked more closely. Hang on a darned apocalyptic second. ‘Wait. We’ve not been hauled here at some ungodly hour because of a pigeon, have we?’

The pigeon in question was sitting on top of a long-defunct postbox. The red paint had peeled off and there was a lot of mossy lichen snaking round the bottom half of it. The bird cooed, enjoying the attention, then ducked down to peck at some invisible insect.

Felicity edged over to me. ‘It wasn’t just one pigeon,’ she said. ‘There were dozens of them. They flew overhead and that one decided to stop. Luckily for us.’

There was only one reason I could think of that would make the border guards ring the alarm after seeing dozens of flying grey rats. I craned my neck to get a better look. Ah-ha.

‘It’s carrying a message,’ I said, spotting the tiny red cartridge strapped to the bird’s leg. For one brief second I forgot to breathe. ‘It’s a homing pigeon.’

Felicity nodded, her expression grave. ‘They all were.’

Homing pigeons are so called because that’s what they do: they fly home. The birds would have been released from a certain point and would flap their way back to wherever they lived with unerring precision. The red cylinder attached to this homing pigeon’s leg looked innocuous enough – but we were living in a strange twilight world where there was a myriad of possibilities as to what the cylinder might contain.

Julie smiled. ‘It’s terribly exciting.’

‘Here,’ Cath said, appearing breathlessly from behind us. She handed Felicity a chunk of bread. ‘It’s a bit stale but it should work.’

The werewolf nodded and tore off a small chunk before sidling up to the edge of the barricade. I watched as she tossed the bread in the direction of the bird.

‘You think it’s for us,’ I said slowly. ‘You think the message is for us.’ If that were the case, it would have come from the outside world, beyond the walls that the British Army had erected. Beyond the magical air of Manchester. This would be the first communication we’d had in almost a year.

Monroe’s gaze was trained on the bird. It cocked its head at the piece of bread but didn’t move from its postbox perch. ‘It could be a coincidence,’ he said. ‘It might not have anything to do with us.’

‘Drones don’t work,’ Theo replied. ‘Planes don’t work. Helicopters don’t work. Anything technological that’s been sent through our atmosphere simply crashes and burns. If someone wanted to get a message to us, they would use a carrier pigeon.’

I considered this before eventually nodding. ‘If you had your own pigeons and you were holding a race for them, or just experimenting, you’d make damn sure they didn’t go anywhere near the exiled city of magic. Unless you wanted them to.’ My shoulders tightened. ‘Theo is right. Whatever that bird is carrying, I’m betting it’s a message for us. Common sense dictates that it has to be.’

Monroe lifted an eyebrow. ‘Common sense was never something I associated with humans,’ he said.

‘We’re lucky that this bird chose to stop here,’ Felicity said. ‘Otherwise we’d never have a chance to see the message. Whoever sent the birds used hundreds of them. He – or she – is clearly hoping that we’ll get hold of one.’

I stared grimly at the bird. ‘So,’ I said, ‘let’s make damned sure we get hold of this one.’

The pigeon had apparently decided that the bread looked tasty. It swung its beady eyes away from us and hopped onto the road. No longer caring that it had a rapt audience, it leaned down and pecked at the crumbs. Felicity threw out some more.

‘Not too much,’ I cautioned. ‘We need to give it enough reason to stick around until we catch it. If we overdo it, we might scare it off.’

‘Kill it, darling,’ Julie said. ‘You have the strongest magic out of anyone here. Send