Read Online Veiled by Benedict Jacka - Free Book Online Page A

one of the more unique ways to get around London, a raised railway crowded with small driverless red-and-blue trains that link up all the places in East London where absolutely no other lines go. It has four branches, winding and intertwining, and it can take you anywhere from Lewisham in the south to Stratford in the north or all the way eastwards towards Woolwich. I was on the northern branch, heading towards Stratford. Pudding Mill Lane was the last station before the Stratford terminus, and when the train arrived no one got off apart from me.
    DLR stations are very lonely compared to the Underground. The DLR was designed with automation in mind, and just as the trains don’t have drivers, the stations have the absolute bare minimum of staff. This one had none at all, and there were no passengers either. The station was asingle-platform design with rails on either side, and all around was blackness. Pudding Mill Lane was right in the middle of what had once been the Olympic Park, the great centre for the London Olympics. For a few weeks the square mile in which I was standing had been the busiest place in London, but now it was a giant construction site, a jungle of concrete and fencing and metal scaffolds, abandoned and empty. Beyond the railway to both east and west, the land dropped away into half-constructed buildings, lying silent and unused. The old running track had been torn up and now was a giant heap of dark earth, filling the air with the scent of mud and water. According to the plans, this place was going to be turned into housing eventually, but there wasn’t anyone living there now. Scattered towers rose up all around, and to one side I could see the skyscrapers of the Stratford skyline, an oval-shaped tower looming over us with a ring of rainbow neon glowing at the top, colours shifting from blue to purple to green. To the northeast, the Olympic stadium was a squat shadow in the darkness. Cars rushed along a main road to the east, but they were half a mile away and nothing else was moving. Despite being in the middle of the largest city in the British Isles, I was completely alone.
    I looked around in the darkness, already starting to shiver. It had rained while I’d been on the train, and puddles were scattered around the platform; not enough to flood the place, but enough that the wind blowing off the stone was freezing cold. I looked around and tried to figure out what to do. Okay, so I was a Keeper—sort of—and I was investigating a crime scene. What was I supposed to do?
    I’d come here with vague plans of finding witnesses, but as I looked around it became clear that that wasn’t going to work. In the few minutes I’d been standing at the station I hadn’t seen another living soul, and if there were any construction workers still on site I couldn’t see them. Instead I focused on my magesight, trying to sense magic. Stone beneath me, cold and immobile, chill air whistling around, the silent menace of the electrical rails and wires. Nothing powerful enough to tell me anything. Spells can leaveresidue, but it takes repetition and time—one-off magical events have to be extraordinarily powerful to stick around. Nothing like that here.
    I walked up and down the platform, trying different angles, hoping to get lucky. I didn’t. Another passenger arrived and waited on the platform as I walked up and down it. A train arrived. She got on; one other person got off. I kept searching. The wind got colder, and so did I.
    My nose and ears were starting to go numb. Times like this make me wish I were a fire or an ice mage. I took out my phone and called Caldera; it rang for what felt like much too long before Caldera picked up. “Hey.”
    â€œHi,” I said. “Look, seeing as this is my first solo job and all, mind giving me some pointers?”
    â€œJust a sec,” Caldera said. There was a lot of noise in the background, voices and glasses