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

clinking. Wherever Caldera was, it sounded warm, comfortable, and a much nicer place to be than here. “Didn’t catch that, say again?”
    I took a breath, restraining the urge to hate her. “What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?”
    â€œYou’re at the station?”
    â€œIt’s cold, wet, and empty, and there’s sod-all to find.”
    â€œMagesight?”
    â€œComes up blank. Look, you know about this stuff. What do you do when you’re sent out somewhere where there’s nothing to see?”
    â€œYou got the report, didn’t you?”
    A train pulled up at the platform in a swell of light and noise. The doors opened with a hiss and I edged closer, hoping the air from inside would be a little warmer. It didn’t help much. “It just says ‘investigate.’”
    â€œHey, you’re a diviner. You’re supposed to be good at this.”
    â€œOh, sure.” The doors shut and the train pulled away, accelerating into the darkness. I walked after it, heading up the platform. “I’ll use my divination and look into the future. Hey, you know what, I’m seeing the future right now. If I stand here and wait, then in three minutes a train’s going to come. And after that,
another
train’s going to come. Here,I’ll let you guess what’s going to happen afterwards. I’ll give you a hint—there’s a train.”
    â€œHey, can you hear that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIt’s the sound of me playing the world’s tiniest violin.”
    â€œYeah, laugh it up, you’re not the one freezing your balls off. Why didn’t they send a time mage?”
    â€œYou know how many incidents we get called out to per day?” Caldera asked. “Have a guess. Then have a guess how many time mages we’ve got on retainer.”
    I was silent. “Here’s another question,” Caldera said. “You think you’re the first guy who’s noticed that some of the jobs we get sent on probably aren’t going to accomplish much?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou have to search an empty station,” Caldera said. “Given what usually happens when you’re around, you ought to be happy.”
    â€œIt’s still a shit job.”
    â€œThis is not even
close
to what our really shit jobs look like. Now, are you going to do the work or are you going to keep being a whiny little bitch?”
    I sighed. “Fine.”
    â€œBecause I’m not running out there to hold your hand.”
    â€œI get it.”
    â€œBesides, I’ve got a pint waiting for me and it’s nice and warm in here.”
    â€œI hate you so much.”
    â€œSucks to be you. Later.” Caldera hung up. I glared at my phone and shoved it into my pocket. Another gust of freezing wind swept across the platform; the air was damp and even without my magic, my London upbringing was telling me it was going to rain again soon.
    I had another try at finding a witness, but after fifteen minutes of searching I was forced to give up. The closest guy I could find was one lonely security guard still on duty at the construction site, bundled up in a booth with a space heater. He was several minutes away, had no line of sight to the platform, and from his body language didn’t seem to beinterested in anything except trying not to freeze. It was theoretically possible that some other construction workers had been on site when whatever-it-was had happened, but if they had they hadn’t called 999, and I had absolutely no idea how I would find the right individuals out of an indeterminate-but-almost-certainly-large number of construction workers who (a) had gone home for the night, (b) would probably be disinclined to talk to me, and (c) were unlikely to have seen anything useful in the first place.
    In the end I was forced to fall back on my divination, which was ironic given that I’d just been complaining