The car had to make do with space borrowed from its own oversized bonnet, which wasn’t actually housing an engine, and a bit of psychic misdirection. When I got in, I was still just in a car, if an especially tidy one with polished brass fixtures and unnaturally pristine white leather seats: one of which was wide open for me, and came with the vague impression that everyone else was fairly crammed in. Likely we were all fairly crammed in, and just being given the space in turn, whenever our brains started to notice.
Alfie got in last and pulled the door shut after him, and instantly we roared off like a cavalcade of jets. Clearly the equivalent of the car yelling, “Yes, here’s my engine, you can tell I’ve got a real engine driving me along,” at anyone who cared enough to notice. As soon as we had gone into the trees and out of sight, the sound died completely, and then we were zipping along in perfect quiet, the countryside smearing past in my peripheral vision. I glanced out the window once, not a minute after we’d left, and we were already on a road I didn’t know; the car was clearly sneaking through the world at unreasonable speeds. Probably that was why the antique design: the windows were minuscule and you couldn’t see in or out very easily.
“Is there enough time for you to tell me what’s going on?” I said, looking away to let the car get on with it.
“If we knew,” Sarah muttered. She’d also upgraded since school, her hair in a mass of coiled braids woven through with a golden chain, and a dress of woven gold straps and flowing green chiffon embroidered with subtly disguised gold runes; it had resolutely refused to tangle up her legs or get muddy or wet in the least. She was almost as tense as Alfie, although she was eyeing me in a way that suggested she wasn’t convinced they hadn’t just graduated from the frying pan to the fire.
But Alfie had jumped ahead and was already taking out one of my least or rather most favorite things: a power-sharer. It was notably nicer than any of the ones I’d seen at school: the band was woven silk bound every few centimeters with thin strips of platinum that had been coated with some kind of iridescent layer, with tiny raw opal chunks embedded in the center of each one. It was designed like most of them to pass for a watch in public; this one even had a round inky glass plate for a face, like some sleek digital thing set into an elaborate antique frame, only Apple hasn’t managed the trick of accessing the void yet, and that’s what was under the glass. I wasn’t sure what I thought of carrying a nice little hole in reality around with me, but I took it anyway, trying not to want it. Without much success. My fingers curled round it like claws the instant Alfie handed it over to me. I could feel the power on the other side: all the power in London’s vast and ancient mana store, without a single barrier in the way.
“And they give new graduates unlimited lines now?” I said, with a fa?ade of coolness, while I put it round my wrist and let it fasten itself up. It made the torrent of power I’d had in the Scholomance feel like a narrow creek.
Alfie was still staring at it himself, even as I put it on. “My father gave it to me,” he said, low and tight. Usually the first thing you do when you get out of school is to start eating like a team of horses, but his face hadn’t had time to fill in yet; his cheekbones were thin sharp lines under his skin. “It’s a family heirloom…” He stopped and looked up at me desperately. “Liesel told you there’s a maw-mouth?”
“What I’m not clear on is why your council’s not taken care of it themselves,” I said. “There have been maw-mouths killed by a circle before. London must be able to do it if anyone can.” All right, so the only recorded case in modern history was the one in Shanghai, and several wizards died in the process, but given the alternatives, you’d think it would have been worth a try.
“They’re trying! Do you think we’re stupid?” Sarah said to me angrily. “We aren’t looking to be told what any idiot can look up in the Journal of Maleficaria Studies.”
I think she’d have liked to pick a fight, and I’d have been happy to oblige her, but Liesel was already jumping in to lecture me instead. “This isn’t a maw-mouth coming out of nowhere. You think maw-mouths come after big enclaves, full of wizards, warded, all strong? They know better. I told you already, the enclave was hit by something else first. If London wasn’t so old, so strong, the whole place would have gone, just like Salta and Bangkok. Salta didn’t just lose wards; the whole enclave collapsed. London is stronger, it didn’t come down, but the damage is still terrible. All the established thaumaturgical channels for the flow of mana have been disrupted! Do you not understand what that means?”