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

‘Lizzy!’ I cursed. ‘You have to stop shouting all the time. We’re trying not to draw the attention of any beasties!’

Jodie took a bite of her apple. ‘That bird isn’t carrying anything,’ she said, as much to herself as to anyone.

We watched as Lizzy bounded up to the surprised pigeon. It wasn’t afraid of her, although it did flap its wings and move to an old lamp post where it could peer down at her. She started shimmying up the lamp post towards it, only getting about halfway up before she squinted. ‘It’s not carrying anything!’ she called. She slid down to the ground again while the bird preened itself.

From my backpack, I hear the faintest sound of a snore. Lucky Lucy, I thought.

‘Let’s not go chasing after every single pigeon, shall we, Lizzy?’ I said aloud. ‘There are thousands still living in the city that have nothing to do with our mission. Besides, if you run after them you’ll scare them off.’

‘Or get covered in bird poo,’ Jodie remarked, taking another bite. She gave an arch glance towards Julie. ‘I wonder how nice your new umbrella hat will be when it’s covered in guano?’

Julie smiled serenely. ‘Well, darling,’ she said, ‘at least the bird shit won’t be on my head. You’ll have fun trying to wash it out of your hair when there’s no hot water.’

Jodie scowled. Before the situation could degenerate further, I stepped in. ‘Random pigeon chasing isn’t going to do anything other than make us very tired.’

‘Well,’ Cath said slowly, ‘we could collect the guano. It might be a useful manure for the crops back at home.’

‘Hold that thought. We can leave manure collecting for now,’ I said. ‘Let’s keep an eye out for pigeons carrying messages but focus on finding the shadow beasts as Julian asked. We still need to work out what we’re going to do with Lucy.’

As if aware that she was the topic of conversation, her snores grew louder.

‘Good plan,’ Jodie said. ‘We should find her aunties and uncles before she wakes up every other monster within a ten-mile radius.’

‘If we’d taken a car, we would have found the shadow beasts by now,’ Cath said, even though none of us had been in a car that actually worked for weeks.

‘But,’ Lizzy pointed out, ‘we can’t catch pigeons if we’re in a car.’

‘We’ve not caught any pigeons on foot,’ Jodie muttered.

I counted to ten in my head. Right now, Monroe and the other werewolves would be silently padding though the city, each pack working together in perfect symbiosis, fluidly acknowledging each other’s thoughts without so much as a single snarl or moment of confusion. Then I smirked to myself. How very dull.

‘We’re almost at the spot where we came across Lucy’s mum,’ I said. ‘There are bound to be other shadow beasts lurking in the area.’

‘Do you think that shadow beasts bleed?’ Julie mused. She licked her lips slowly.

Cath gasped and jumped over to me. ‘Cover your ears, Lucy!’

I sighed in amused exasperation. ‘Come on. We’re going this way.’

I led my troupe down a street to the right. It had long since been cleared of the worst of the apocalyptic debris, although several gnarled roots still poked up from the broken road. The smashed shop fronts which lined our path no longer had dangerous shards of glass poking from their windows; nor did they have any useful supplies inside to plunder. Rather than glance into the darkened interiors or be distracted by the remnants of the destruction around us, we fell into a careful walk, moving abreast like we were entering some godforsaken Wild West frontier town. Part of me hoped to see some tumbleweed blowing across the road in front of us. This was Manchester, England, however. The best we’d see right now would probably be a few disintegrating crisp packets tumbling across the street. Pickled-onion flavour maybe. Or perhaps smoky bacon. My mouth began to water. It was better not to think of such things.

I wasn’t the only one who was thinking of times gone by. With the bickering between her and Julie now over – at least temporarily – Jodie pushed back her hair and glanced at the rest of us. ‘Do you think things will ever be like they were?’ she asked quietly.

Cath gave an awkward shrug. ‘Maybe. I mean, they can’t stay like this forever, can they? We’ll work out the supply problems and we’ll get better at growing crops and raising chickens and catching fish. There will be children soon. That means schools. And I’m not the only one learning more about medicine – lots of people have signed up for lessons. We’re all becoming more useful members of society. We contribute properly instead of doing things like working the stock market or telemarketing or valet parking.’

‘Those things have value,’ Julie said. ‘I knew a great guy who valet parked my car at the Ritz in London. His name was Billy and he had the tightest, plumpest little arse you could imagine.’

Cath smiled slightly. ‘You know what I mean.’

Julie looked away. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I know.’

‘I don’t really miss it,’ Jodie said suddenly. ‘I mean, I miss McDonald’s when I’m hung over, and window shopping at the Arndale with my friends when I’ve got time off. But I don’t really miss the life I used to have. Not all that much. The magic more than makes up for everything. I feel … useful now. Worthy. I didn’t really get that before, even though I worked in a pub run by a faery who was doing his best to make our world better. I just,’ she paused, ‘I just wish I could call up my sister sometimes and chat to her. Tell her how I’m getting on. Make sure that she’s okay and that her bastard of a husband is still on the straight and narrow. That sort of thing.’

‘My home is on the other side of the world,’ Lizzy told her. ‘I’ve been distant from it and