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

Oh. My. God. I reached the driver door on one side just as Timmons reached the passenger door on the other. Simultaneously, we flung the doors open. Lucy squeaked with joy and threw herself at me. There was a crackle from the car’s radio and the DJ’s voice went dead. Silence descended once again.

Timmons stared at me in shock. Lucy started nuzzling at my neck, her strange black fur somehow dripping with splatters of UHT milk. All I could do was stare at Timmons. Now what?

Chapter Seven

We tried several times to re-create what had just occurred. I put Lucy in the car with more UHT cartons and kept my fingers crossed; nothing happened except more milk droplets soaked into the already grubby upholstery. We tried it with the milk, without the milk, with Lucy, without Lucy. We tried every car nearby. Not one of them worked. We’d had that one brief burst of contact with the outside world and now we were back to radio silence. Literally.

My heart, which had been hammering against my ribcage with the thrill of it all, had slowed down long before we gave up and re-grouped inside the hotel lobby. This time Lucy came with us and Timmons didn’t even think to object. He simply snapped his fingers and shut off the magical alarm before it started to scream and then he sank down on the floor.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It has to be something to do with her. It just has to be.’

Lucy skittered across the shiny floor towards him and jumped onto his lap. He stroked her absently, tangling his fingers in her strange, soft fur.

‘That car’s battery must have been dead for months,’ Anna marvelled. ‘Where did the electrical juice come from to turn on the radio? Let alone for it to pick up a signal. It’s barely credible.’

Lizzy tightened the belt of her Travotel-issue bathrobe. ‘It definitely happened, right?’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t imagine it?’

‘Oh, it definitely happened,’ I told her. Identical group hallucinations, even powered by magic, simply weren’t possible. That car radio had worked, if only momentarily. The outside world was still there – and the outside world was coming to get us. In a manner of speaking.

‘Fabian Barrett,’ Cath breathed. ‘He’s super swole.’

I might not have understood the word but I got her meaning from the dreamy expression on her face. ‘He’s got to be three times your age,’ I said.

‘Oh, he’s not quite that old, darling,’ Julie said. ‘I met him once, you know. At a party in London. He’s very…’ An odd expression crossed her face. ‘He has very white teeth,’ she amended.

My eyes narrowed slightly and I wondered what she’d been about to say but I didn’t get the chance to ask.

‘He must have been the one who sent the pigeons,’ Jodie said. ‘No-one is about to blow us up. Fabian Barrett is going to visit us instead, and solve all our problems. There’s no other explanation for the birds.’

Actually, there were plenty of other explanations but it seemed likely that Barrett was responsible for them. Perhaps carrier pigeons were just his first attempt. I wondered what was likely to come next. The billionaire was famously eccentric – but allegedly also some sort of genius. Expect the unexpected, I decided.

‘What if that was it?’ Lizzy asked. ‘What if responding to the pigeons was our one and only shot at getting Fabian Barrett in here and we’ve already failed? What if he now thinks we’re all dead and there’s no point in entering Manchester?’

‘Do we want Fabian Barrett in here?’ Julie enquired.

I tapped my mouth. ‘It’s not about him, it’s about what he might bring to our situation.’ I stood up. ‘As in food, medical supplies, letters from loved ones. He’s going to want the kudos of being the first person to enter Manchester since the apocalypse, but I think we need him more than he needs us. In fact, I know that’s the case.’

Cath’s looked downcast. ‘It doesn’t matter though, does it? The pigeons have gone. The radio’s not working. Unless we can fashion a paper aeroplane and send it over the walls, we can’t get any messages out.’

‘They shoot them down in flames,’ I said absently, remembering something Monroe had told me. ‘Anything we chuck over the wall is zapped into oblivion by the army. They’re too scared about magical contamination in their world. I can’t imagine they’d allow Fabian Barrett to waltz in here.’

‘If he wanted to come,’ Cath said, ‘he’d find a way.’

Jodie let out a humourless laugh. ‘If only the rest of the world knew how wonderful the magic really is. It doesn’t kill you. It makes you stronger.’

In Timmons’ arms, Lucy began to purr. I winced slightly. ‘There are some side effects to that magic too. She’s cute and harmless now but…’ My voice trailed off.

‘Yeah,’ Lizzy said. She shook her hand, revealing a golden downy fur, then shook it again and her skin reappeared. ‘There are definite side effects.’ Her shoulders sagged. ‘If we could get hold of one of those pigeons, we could send a message back and ask Fabian Barrett to send us in some Vegemite,’ she said mournfully.

Just yesterday the thought of communication with the outside world wouldn’t have crossed anyone’s mind; today, however, it had been dangled in front of our faces and now we were left with the prospect of it being cruelly yanked away again. Hope could be a vicious mistress but we were all still enslaved to her.

‘We’ve not exhausted all possibilities,’ I said. ‘There’s still the bogles. They’re canny bastards who pay close attention to what’s going on around them. If the pigeons passed near their community, there’s a good chance they’ll have caught one.’

Jodie jumped up to her feet. ‘Then let’s go there straight away.’

‘No.’ I was adamant. ‘They’re still skittish, even though we’re all now aware of who they are