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

the message. One by one, the crowd turned and slowly dispersed, making their way calmly through the few gaps in the trees. When most of them had gone, I went to Max. Even with Anna standing over him, gun in hand, he continued to sneer at me with a curled lip.

‘You still don’t get it, do you, Max?’ I asked softly. ‘I’ve been in control all along. It wasn’t enough to simply smack you down, we had to smack you down in public. I knew that your arrogance meant you’d want an audience to witness your triumph.’ I leaned towards him. ‘Call this the triple bluff. It’s not enough to know the rules of the game, you have to know your fellow players too. And sadly, Max, I know you.’

His face twisted into an ugly snarl. ‘You sacrificed one of your own to prove a point?’

Julie appeared from behind a tree. She was holding a glass in one hand; goodness only knew where she’d managed to find ice and lemon. ‘You mean me, darling? I’m not dead. Not even close.’ She bared her fangs. ‘I’m a vampire. A little slit to my throat is not enough to kill me. Not now. Not with all this wonderful magic to work with.’

‘Nice of you to finally show up,’ Jodie muttered under her breath.

Julie took a sip of her drink and smiled. ‘I was a bit hungry along the way, otherwise I’d have been here sooner.’ At my look she shrugged. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, darling. I swear it on my Bafta. Besides, everything has worked out.’

Julie and I were going to have words later but for the time being I focused back on Max. ‘No one is going to follow you now,’ I told him. ‘No one will dare. Find yourself a corner of the city and stay there. Or worse will happen.’

‘You’re a stone-cold bitch, Charley,’ he spat. Next to him, Monroe started to growl. Max hissed. ‘Fine. I’ll do what you want.’

I smiled as if I’d expected nothing less. ‘Great.’

I half-turned to go. In one swift movement, he lunged forward, producing the same knife with which he’d tried to kill Julie. Before I could blink, one arm had me by the ribs and the other held the knife to my throat.

‘Any of you come one step closer and I’ll fucking kill her.’

I sighed. Then I concentrated on the swirl of magic in my belly and pushed it backwards. Max was thrown back against a tree with a loud thump.

I straightened my shoulders, shook myself off and picked up the knife. It was rather pretty; the blade was sharp and the handle was made from intricately carved bone. I nodded approvingly. I’d keep this.

Max groaned. ‘I think I’ve broken my leg. And my arm.’

I tutted. ‘Shame.’ I glanced briefly at Monroe, who was already shifting back into human and gazing at me with an amused glint in his blue eyes. ‘I might be soft-hearted,’ I said. ‘And I might have a penchant for helping others. But don’t ever mistake me for being a pushover. I am still the enchantress, after all.’ Then I smiled again.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Monroe moved next to me, casting me a long look with his blue eyes. I felt his hand brush against mine, the briefest of touches. The hairs on the back on my arm stood up, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘You know this is for the best,’ he told me.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Ejecting the undesirables?’

Monroe shrugged lazily. ‘You gave him a chance to slink away and he blew it. Killing him would send the wrong message to everyone else. And we don’t have the capacity to lock him up. Who would watch him? How long could we shove him in a cell for? Manchester no longer has the infrastructure to deal with his sort. We do what we have to do. It’s as well we have this one exit route left to us and that Anna knew about it but, from now on, we’ll have to control it from this end because the British government controls all the other roads from their end. Not to mention the damned wall they’re building.’

He watched a group of werewolves as they busied themselves building our barrier. It wouldn’t be long before Manchester was sealed off completely, us from them and them from us.

‘I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you,’ I said. ‘I’m just saying that we can’t chuck people out whenever we feel like it. There have to be proper rules. Proper laws.’

His fingertips touched mine again before he moved away. ‘There are. Screw around and get banished. Simple.’ At my look, his eyes hardened. ‘Even you can’t think there’s a place for the likes of Maximillian Strong in our city, especially at the moment. We need time and space to adapt to our new situation. We have enough problems with all this magic shit to worry about.’

He paused. ‘We should round up everyone who chose to work for him and do the same to them as we’ve done to him. They won’t do well in Manchester anyway – none of them have power or magic. They don’t belong.’ His voice was soft but there was an underlying edge to his words.

‘If they want to stay, they should be allowed to.’

Monroe sighed. ‘I knew that’s what you’d say. There’s a lot of them, though, a lot of people who wasted no time in flocking to Max’s side even though it was clear he was up to no good. Not to mention that there’s likely to be several more Max Strongs in amongst that bunch to cause us more problems in the future.’

I pulled back my shoulders. ‘Then we’ll deal with them in the future.’

‘It’s far better to be proactive than reactive, Charlotte.’

This time I didn’t bother correcting his use of my full name. Oddly, I had decided I quite liked it when he used it. But that didn’t mean that I was ever going to agree with