Magic Thief (An Ari Novella)

By Claire Farrell

*Best read after Crossroads*
Ari never heard of a magic thief until she was condemned as one, but that doesn’t stop anyone from shipping her off to live alone in secret while she’s being targeted by the leader of a powerful coven.
Loneliness is almost as bad as the thought of the witches binding her magic, so it isn’t long before she finds trouble - and new friends who hate Ava Delaney and the Senate as much as Ari does.
When her old life and new conflict, Ari’s choices will alter the balance of power, for bad or good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claire Farrell
• Release date: Oct 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370233519

Claire Farrell

Claire Farrell is an Irish author who spends her days separating warring toddlers. When all five children are in bed, she overdoses on caffeine in the hope she can stay awake long enough to write some more dark flash fiction, y/a paranormal romance and urban fantasy.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Iwatched him leave work. I watched him walk home. I watched him talk to a group of people outside the halfway house. I watched him grin at something one of them said.

I watched him carelessly brush a lock of black hair out of his eyes, imagining I was the one standing there, favoured with his smile, still allowed to touch him. I watched him go inside, beyond my reach, and felt sure the sky grew darker.

I stood there, in the shadows, because Noah wouldn’t talk to me anymore. Refused to even look at me.

My fingers grasped the only present he’d ever given me, a tiny, pear-shaped amethyst hanging from a silver chain around my neck. An energy surge from the demon trapped inside burned my fingertips. I couldn’t talk to him anymore either. I couldn’t use magic, couldn’t go home, couldn’t even go back to school. All because I’d been born a magic thief, and that marked me for death in the eyes of monsters.

The group outside Noah’s building moved on, too close to me. I ducked away, pulling my jacket closer around me. Darkness had already fallen, and a chill nipped at my bare skin. I let my hair fall around my face, pulled up my faux-fur collar, and kept walking away from the one person I had always loved, even when we were trapped in Hell together.

Going home meant silence. It wasn’t even my home, just somewhere I had been shipped off to in order to keep me out of the way. Nobody had come for me. Nobody had even told me what was happening. I had to spy and watch and wait while the rest of the world acted like I didn’t even exist.

Ava Delaney had promised to protect me then forgotten about me almost immediately. Her justification was that everyone who knew me was currently being tracked by the witches who wanted me imprisoned. I hadn’t been alone for long before I started to doubt that excuse.

I was supposed to stay cooped up in a tiny flat all by myself, but I walked every day, half-hoping somebody would recognise me, even as I feared it. I had learned the city by heart. That was the only good thing about my banishment. In the home with other children rescued from the slave markets in Hell, I’d been trapped, unable to leave whenever I wanted because they didn’t trust us. But I almost killed a child by stealing the magic from her body, and they didn’t want me back.

It wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose. The stupid demon had tricked me. Nobody cared that I’d done my best to help make up for my mistake. I’d screwed up too much for that. In hindsight, performing an unknown spell I found hidden in the binding of a magical book probably wasn’t the smartest idea. Continuing to summon the demon that spell had called wasn’t any better.

I kicked a few stones off the pavement.

Hey, a woman walking a dog across the road called out. Cut that shit out.

I’m not anywhere near you.

She shouted something after me. Her dog barked. I could have destroyed them both, stolen the life right out of them, and that was why nobody wanted me around. I kept walking, shoving my hands deep into my pockets and sinking into my coat as though it could hide me.

I wanted to cry, but my eyes were dry. What did I have to cry for anyway? At least I was alive. Or something. People didn’t die of loneliness. Probably.

I didn’t want to go home. At least on the streets, I could pass through a crowd and feel less alone, walk behind a group of friends and pretend I was one of them. At home, I had to look into a mirror and see my own face staring back at me.

I kept walking, away from Noah, away from my home, away from civilization to a place where the nobodies of the world fit in, where the authorities were too scared to enter, where I could hide in plain sight. Entire sections of the city had been abandoned, but some had been reclaimed.

They called it Neverland, and it had sprung up as if out of nowhere then spread outward like a plague. Full of people who had nowhere else to go, Neverland was that whispered place where the unwanted could hide. Maybe it was the power in numbers, but something was luring everyone to Neverland—even me.

The closer I came to Neverland, the more my step quickened. Nobody would reach me where I was going. The streets darkened, wind blew torn rubbish bags around, and a hollowness fell over the city. I was almost there.

I rounded a corner and breathed a sigh of relief. I could already hear laughter. Neon lights suddenly flashed overhead, making me blink. I held my hand over my eyes to adjust to the glare. Somebody had managed to steal electricity from the city centre again. It tended to last a couple of days, even weeks sometimes, before it got cut off or Integration Agents came to move everybody on. The squatters always came back, and after them, the party hounds. Because not everybody was like me. Some people had other places to be, even friends and families, but they still escaped to Neverland.

A loud, even drumbeat came from one of the buildings across the street. A girl fake moaned ridiculously loudly from an open window two doors down. She sounded too young. Not that I could talk. I passed two boys kissing in a dark corner, groping at each other as though it would help them breathe. Looking made me want—made the loneliness unbearable—so I kept going.

The streets began to fill with sounds and people. The lights in the darkness brought the place to life. I ventured past the window of a club and looked inside. Teenagers and young adults sprawled across old sofas they had likely found at the dump. Somebody had spilled glitter over a sleeping young man’s head. A boy who couldn’t have been older than seven hid under a table to colour. A woman sat close to him, her eyes dazed as she chewed on a magenta crayon, pink-tinged dribble trickling down her chin. Half the boy’s crayons were half-chewed. An older man, his nose red and swollen, shuffled-danced in a corner as a couple of giggling teenagers threw coins at him.

Neverland was the perfect place for people who didn’t want to grow up, or needed to hide, or wanted to find others who didn’t quite fit in. It was full of buildings used for parties and anything else the locals felt like doing. There were a couple of leaders, and the rest were followers, happy to party or obey or whatever.

And I watched them like I watched Noah—full of longing. I watched from the outside because I was too scared to stay anywhere for long. I hadn’t figured out the answers to give if anyone asked me questions.

I moved on and bought a bag of freshly made chips from an old takeaway that had been taken over by a gang of teenage boys. They charged little because they stole everything they used. When the electricity came on, the air smelled like grease and vinegar. When it was gone, the streets smelled like vomit and urine.

Glass smashed behind me. I didn’t look back. I held on tight to my food—I’d learned that lesson the hard way—and hastened my step.

Sometimes I desperately wanted somebody to do something, to force me to use my magic, but it wasn’t worth it. The scary head of a coven kept a trace on me now, basically daring me to use magic because then she would come for me. She was desperate to control me, boasted how people like me had been wiped out. But I remained. And for what? I couldn’t even protect myself anymore.

A young woman pushed past me, almost knocking me over. She looked back and grinned, revealing a missing front tooth. She stank of magic, enough to make me jealous. Her lipstick was smeared all over her mouth and chin, and she had one black eye. She hesitated long enough to snatch a chip before she was out of sight again. She was high on something new, something that made people reckless before they forgot to live.

I left Neverland behind, sticking to the shadows. I ate the chips and licked salt and grease from my fingers. A stray dog whined from behind a bin, more ribs than flesh, and I ditched the last of my food in front of him. He didn’t try to follow me home.

I walked through places I knew I shouldn’t to get back to the flat. Nobody bothered me. Neverland was just the centre of an abandoned district, one where criminals from all walks of life did their business. I lived right outside that zone in